Chris Bertram points out that a new study suggests that the Lancet's finding of an increase in infant mortality following the invasion of Iraq is correct. The Washington Post reports:
After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program....
International aid efforts and the U.N. oil-for-food program helped reduce the ruinous impact of sanctions, and the rate of acute malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis gradually dropped from a peak of 11 percent in 1996 to 4 percent in 2002. But the invasion in March 2003 and the widespread looting in its aftermath severely damaged the basic structures of governance in Iraq, and persistent violence across the country slowed the pace of reconstruction almost to a halt.
Via Juan Cole I find that Rod Nordland and Babak Dehghanpisheh have written:
The leading British medical journal, The Lancet, recently published a study that used interviews and extrapolations to estimate the total figure at 100,000 or more, mostly from aerial bombardment. Other statisticians have since dismissed the study's conclusions as unreliable and speculative.
No no no! The people who dismissed the study's conclusions were not statisticians and displayed profound ignorance about statistical methodology.
Update: David Adesnik attacks the malnutrition report, calling the 11% and 4% acute malnutrition figures "pseudo-statistics". Adesnik offers no criticism of the methodology---the only reason he offers for rejecting the figures is that they were compiled under Saddam. But his reason makes no sense at all. Even if, for the sake of argument, we believe that Saddam could force UNICEF into cooking the statistics, why would Saddam have been artificially lowering the figures? Surely he would have been raising them so that he could point to the harm that the sanctions were inflicting on Iraqi children.
In an update, Adesnik puts his money on the scenario that the Washington Post is belatedly reporting the results of this study conducted 29 April--3 May 2003 which found that 7.7% of Baghdad children were acutely malnourished. Well, he's lost his money, because that was a different survey. The Post is reporting the results of a national survey conducted in April/May 2004.
Adesnik also argues that even if there is a new survey the 2003 survey, "conducted less than three weeks after the invasion of Iraq", proves that "the increase from 4 to 7.7 percent was Saddam's doing." Adesnik does not seem to have bothered to read the conclusion of the 2003 study (which was conducted six weeks after the start of the war, not "less than three" as Adesnik claimed):
Seven out of 10 children reported had suffered from diarrhoea at some time during the previous 5 weeks. Diarrhoea is likely a major factor in the rise in malnutrition since the war, linked mainly to the poor quality and low quantity of water, poor sanitation, large amounts of uncollected garbage and frequent electricity cuts.
Adesnik seems to be unaware that a sick child can lose a lot of weight in a few weeks.
Now the 2003 study just covered Baghdad, while the 2004 one was a national one, so the numbers are that comparable, but it does seem that malnutrition got worse after the invasion and things still have not improved.
Update 24/11: David Adesnik has replied. First, he is unconvinced that the Post is reporting the results of the IAIS survey:
Hoping to track down the data, I sent an e-mail to IAIS on Sunday asking for further information about their work. In addition, I spent a considerable amount of term searching for related information on Google and Lexis-Nexis, yet found absolutely nothing.
Of course, it may turn out that IAIS really has done a new survey. But for the moment, there is hardly enough evidence to substantiate Tim's allegation.
Well, I didn't spend a considerable amount of time searching, I just looked at the IAIS home page, which says:
Malnutrition in Iraq
In recent days data on malnutrition from the IMIRA survey have been published in Iraq and elsewhere (see Washington Post ). According to our findings 7.5 percent, or 216,000, children between 6 months and 59 months of age at the time of interview are acutely malnourished. Acute malnutrition is more widespread in the south than the north of Iraq. Acute malnutrition is measured by comparing a child's height and weight to a standard reference population. See the Fafo IMIRA web pages.
I trust that clears things up.
Originally, Adesnik wrote that the 2003 study was conducted "less than three weeks after the invasion of Iraq". He now says that this was an "ambiguity" and that he was counting from the fall of Baghdad. Forgive me, but "invasion of Iraq" is not an ambiguous way to refer to "fall of Baghdad". And it makes no sense to count from the fall of Baghdad in any case, since the disruptions to water supplies and so on would have started with the bombing campaign at the start of the war.
Next Adesnik writes:
what I doubt is that 200,000 thousand children can get that sick in the space of a few weeks. Major combat operations were fairly localized and coalition bombing raids did not target civilian infrastructure.
While most Iraqis probably were dependent on official food rationing programs that may have been disrupted during the war, I tend to doubt that such a disruption would translate so immediately into a national epidemic of malnutrition. Of course, that is just speculation---but Tim is only offering more of the same.
I am perplexed by this response. I didn't offer "just speculation", but quoted the conclusion of the study, which found that "Seven out of 10 children reported had suffered from diarrhoea at some time during the previous 5 weeks." Adesnik can doubt that the children got sick, but the doctors who examined them seem to think otherwise.
Adesnik next argues that Saddam was cooking the malnutrition figures and that we don't know whether he was artificially increasing them or decreasing them because "speculation about Saddam's motives is futile." Well, it doesn't seem likely that Saddam could get Unicef to cook their numbers, but we have independent evidence that malnutrition was lower before the war---the recent Lancet study found that infant mortality was quite a bit lower before the war (and was conducted when Saddam was no longer in a position to influence the results).
Moreover, the infant mortality and malnutrition figures seem to show a consistent pattern and support each other. If you study the table below, you will see that things were very bad in the late 90s, then the oil-for-food program made things a lot better and that things have gotten worse since the war.
| Acute Malnutrition Rate | Infant Mortality Rate |
|---|---|
| 1996 11% (1996 MICS) | 1999 10.8% (Unicef 1999) |
| 2002 4% (Nutrition survey 2002) | 2002 2.9% (Lancet 2004) |
| 2004 7.5% (IMIRA 2004) | 2003-2004 5.8% (Lancet 2004) |
Update 26/11 Further discussion with Adesnik is here.
Actually, Oxblog has pointed out that the study may not be recent at all.
http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2004_11_21_oxblog_archive.html#1101058982126…
I might point out that the people who supported the Roberts study's conclusions were not knowlegable on bomb damage assessment and displayed profound ignorance about bomb damage assessment methodology. I still haven't seen anyone anywhere explain how the withdrawal of the aircraft carriers and the big heavy bombers (in may and april last year, respectively) caused the death rate from air strikes to go UP. Odd that. Or that the big 100 aircraft plus air raids that preceded the ground war (some of the largest air strikes of all) don't seem to have had an impact on stats. Even odder still.
Wilbur, Oxblog is wrong. See my update.
Glad you've found some studies to laughably juggle into a conclusiveness that suits your prejudices Tim.
Why not just have the courage to say it?
Release Saddam from prison immediately.
For the children.
This is not an issue of opinion, C.L.
Whether the mortality rate in Iraq has changed since the invasion, and in what direction, and how much, and from what causes, are issues of fact.
As such, they are susceptible to discovery by methods tried and proven reliable over years of research.
Roberts et al. used those methods, published their results, and by so doing exposed themselves to criticism just as honest researchers have always done.
If their study had been seriously flawed, they would have deserved to be called on the carpet for it.
But, so far as I can tell, not one valid criticism has been leveled against their study. Instead, it has been viciously attacked by an army of the uninformed.
Critics of the study seem to have three things in common: a sudden and passionate interest in statistics, a total ignorance of the same, and a belief that any report that the war has had some bad effects must be politically motivated and thus suspect.
Your comment that Roberts et al lies among some unspecified "studies to laughably juggle into a conclusiveness that suits your prejudices" adds nothing valuable to the debate. It sheds no light, except as it reveals your own prejudices.
It is contemptible hogwash.
Sorry, but that's how I feel.
But the UN reported that Iraqis were given six weeks of rations before the war started, and most Iraqis were stocking up for longer than that, which was the reason why there was no humanitarian crisis. Is it really credible that such an increase in child malnutrition could take place during that six week period, given that Iraqis had cupboards full of lard?
Phil, did you actually try reading the conclusion of the report that I posted? It's only two sentences long. The malnutrition was caused, not be a shortage of food, but by diarrhoea. Having food is no use if the child can't digest it.
You should quit this ranting about the Lancet study. People might think you're obsessed.
I like the way tha CL provides an "either-or" scenario to describe the current situation in Iraq. No one questions Saddam's brutality (although many in the west didn't seem to mind his brutality during the 1980's when the U.S. and U.K. governments extended full support to his regime in full knowledge of his crimes). The fact is that the west bears the responsibility for upwards of a million deaths in Iraq from the combined effects of Gulf War I, the sanctions regime, the almost continual bombing of the country between 1990 and 2003, and the latest aggression. Its ironic when I hear people say that "Anything is better for Iraq than Saddam", thus justifying in their minds the current abhorent conditions in the country. This is all linked with the fallacy that the U.S. and U.K. are "basically benevolent" countries that "universally respect human rights and support real democracy". I suggest that CL and others who share his/her views read the latest book by British historian, Mark Curtis, entitled "Unpeople". Curtis has read through volumes of declassified U.K. government files which prove that the political and economic objectives of the elites have always driven British foreign policy (its exactly the same for the U.S.). Some of the contents of the files indeed make chilling reading - nowhere on any of them is human rights of indigenous peoples even hinted at. The bottom line has always been that U.K. and U.S. planners encouraged the support of repressive regimes that were/are the best for the exploitation of other country's capital by the corporate establishment.
jre wrote:
"not one valid criticism has been leveled against their study".
1) when they attempted to verify their figures in a small sub-sample of their sample, 19% of their small sub-sample could not be verified
2) they used cluster sampling, a method that is prone to systematic error
3) their numbers are small, as verified by the enormous confidence intervals of their final estimate
4) they undertook post-hoc data manipulation; they excluded data after they had taken the measurements. This is quite simply poor practice.
these are all valid criticisms of the study. What is more, you have to make an assumption that all of these have no significant effect, because the final statistics are so borderline. That is a big assumption; and I have to tell you that assumptions are not what science is about.
but then, why let rationality get in the way of what you feel ?
yours
per
Per, these criticisms have been dealt with already in other postings. 2 and 4 are reasons why the 100,000 is an underestimate. You double counted 3. There isn't any reason to suspect that the 19% who couldn't provide death certificates were fabricating. (and even if they were it doesn't follow that the estimate is to high.)
Dear Tim,
this is hard work.
they identified a number of deaths through interview, and tried to verify this information by requesting death certificates. They failed to get confirmation in 19% of their tiny sub-sample. This is a prima facie reason for believing that their numbers are inaccurate.
Specifically, if you take out the 19% of the numbers, you would have an excellent chance of losing such "statistical significance" as the study has. It follows that if they overcount the number of deaths, their final estimate will be too high.
You appear to have problems with basic english and logic. It doesn't matter whether 2/4 result in an overestimate or underestimate; they are valid criticisms of the study.
small sample numbers are an important concern, and no, I didn't double count this criticism.
and I must applaud your level of logic. 19 % of deaths cannot be verified (the study). You transform that into "there isn't any reason to suspect [they] were fabricating".
what you have is a study based on assumption, after assumption, and that just ain't science.
per
The bottom line is that the invasion of Iraq has cost a lot of civilian lives. What if the tally is "only" 50,000 this time (on top of the earlier carnage)? Is this still not a mass slaughter? I am amazed at how the political right is desperately trying to downplay the Lancet study. To reiterate, 'our side' has routinely been involved in wars (either directly or by proxy armies) of aggression that have resulted in genocide on a mass scale. Whether it was the Phillipines, or or Viet Nam/Cambodia, or Indonesia, or Iraq, or Iran, or many places in Latin America, or Africa, there are those who refuse to believe that our governments are anything but virtuous servants of the people. The evidence of U.S./U.K. atrocites is accrued in any numer of volumes - from William Blum's "Rogue State" to Ward Churchill's "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" to Mark Curtis's "Web of Deceit" and "Unpeople" to John Pilger's "New Rulers of the World". The denialists seem like alcoholics to me, who refuse to believe their problem. "The opposite of everything is true" is their battle cry. It is appropriate to question how many of the investigators in Iraq searching for evidence of mass graves of Saddam's victims for his trial are also looking for the graves of 'our' victims. They should not be that hard to find - after all, there may be more than a millon of them since 1990.
I thought it would be evident that my feelings in this case were that an earlier post was a silly and empty statement, unworthy of respect. Apparently it was not evident to everyone. In all, per, your response tends to support my asertion that critics of the study are pumping like crazy and coming up dry. To choose two examples:
Read the
study:
The researchers addressed the issue, did the best they could to get the data, and discussed their results candidly. What more do you want? There's hardly a prima facie reason here not to believe the results.
What, exactly, does this mean? It sounds as if you are suggesting that (a) the 19% of cases where a death certificate was requested but unavailable be culled from the data, and that (b) this might somehow invalidate the whole study. With a moment's reflection, I'm sure you will realize that (a) is statistically unsound, and that (b) is not true.
There may yet be a valid criticism of the study, but yours does not qualify. If I may gently suggest it, perhaps you are allowing your feelings to impede your rationality.
Jeff Harvey, are you one of these 18 year old kids whose just discovered the tedious works of Pilger and Curtis or something? Your hysterical advert, and your ideological need for the Lancet study to fit into your particular world view, is rather cringe worthy.
On the Lancet; now that the UK governments' chief scientific medical officer has thoroughly investigated this piece of work, and has reported back that is indeed horseshit, as many of us had suspected, and therefore has now been discredited in the eyes of every reputable mainstream media source, it is now time to accept that it was a hoax and you were wrong. You believed it in good faith, but it's turned out to be a load of bunkum. It's time to show some grace and return back to the IBC figures; by pursing this Lancet conspiracy theory you only look like a bunch of fruit cakes desperate for ever more dead Iraqis.
What do I want ? I want results I can trust, not results where I have to believe.
The authors think it unlikely that deaths were falsely recorded. But the fact is that they do not know, and neither do you. That is prima facie a valid criticism.
If the 15 deaths they couldn't verify come out of the pre-war deaths, that would be a different outcome to if they come out of the post-war death totals. I point out to you, that if you reduce the non-Falluja post-war deaths by only 3, that the difference between pre and post-war will not be significant on their analysis.
I appreciate that this analysis will be very difficult for you to understand. Nonetheless, I have tried to stick to issues that are clear and easily comprehensible for you, and more to the point, verifiable.
For the record, scientists routinely do not take account of data that they cannot verify.
yours
per
Bob, Does this mystery person, the "UK governments' chief scientific medical officer" have a name? Is this "thorough investigation" of Roberts et al. published where an inquiring mind might read it and see what it is based on? Who, exactly, are all of these "mainstream media sources" in whose eyes Roberts et al. has been "discredited"? Specifics please - and please don't say the Washington Times, Newsmax, the Weekly Standard, Freerepublic.com, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or the like. My time is valuable, and I come here to learn things.
Bob:
I was interested by Mr. Church's question as to who the "chief scientific medical officer" was so I used that new fangled tool - the internet and found the following.
There is no office called the chief scientific medical officer, however in the U.K. Department of Health there is a Chief Medical Officer - Dr. Sir Liam Donaldson (Sir Dr. maybe, damn I never understood royal protocol) and a Chief Scientific Officer - Dr. Sue Hill. A quick look at their websites revealed nothing about Iraq in the last few months.
So, yes, more details would be in order don't you think? A possible first contact for information would be Mary Rosh. Good luck and I look forward eagerly to more details.
Regards,
Yelling
Per,
You've already been taken down a few pegs, but I thought Id take particular issue with this:
"they undertook post-hoc data manipulation; they excluded data after they had taken the measurements. This is quite simply poor practice."
Anyone who's worked with statistics in the real world, or even read much about them, understands that discarding outliers is a common and accepted practice- as long as the rationale for discarding them are explained by the authors (which they were). If you'd ever read a scientific or medical journal, you'd understand how frequently this occurs. If you'd ever written a paper, you'd understand why it occurs.
You can take exception to the reasons for the discarding- and people often do- but you cannot take exception to the practice of discarding in general- at least, not without looking like an ignoramous.
Likewise, cluster sampling (which you dismiss out of hand) is also a common statsitical practice. Get used to it. Or, I guess you don't have to, since you apparently flip burgers or sell paint or somesuch for a living- having never worked with real-world stats before.
This was the first stab at quantifying the results of the war on civilian mortality, done on a small scale. Jeff assumes that, since the stats and methodology appear to be in order, it's probably approximately correct. Im sure he'll revise that opinion when a better-funded study is done.
Whereas you appear to assume that you can learn everything you need to know about statistics from Gonick's "The Cartoon Guide To Statistics", and that- in the absence of any legitimate criticism- a study that pisses you off is probably got some kind of intentional methodological or statistical error that only you, the talented amateur, can uncover, since all of the so-called experts are apparently on the take...
Wu
1. Diarrhoea is a function of sewage and water supplies.
2. Sewage and water supply systems depend on electricity for pumping and processing as well as chemical delivery (eg cholorination
3. Electricity, chemical delivery, sewage and water supply systems all stopped functioning in Iraq for a long time after the invasion due to bomb damage looting and folk just leaving their job site.
4. Not to have a massive increase in diarrhoea would have been astounding.
5. If rehydration salts are not readily available, the death rate among children from diarrhoea becomes really high. http://rehydrate.org/index.html
Forgot that one. Sorry
Dear Wu
I note in your ramblings you talk of issues regarding outliers, whereas per talked of post-hoc manipulations. I am wondering if you have a problem with basic english, since you can't seem to distinguish words. It also seems that your data cannot be very reliable, since you see no problem in discarding ~25% of your data as "outliers". Strangely enough, I have never seen data that bad published anywhere before.
Of course, if you knew anything about epidemiology, you would know that real epidemiologists set out the conditions under which they will test or discard data before they start collecting the data, and so avoid the problems of post-hoc data manipulation. But then and again, what sort of idiot would fail to understand such basics ?
When I read what per wrote, i see that cluster analysis is prone to systematic errors; and strangely enough, that is exactly what my textbook on medical statistics tells me. Fundamental english tells me that these words are different from "dismiss out of hand". You do seem to have some problems with your basic comprehension of words, Wu. Have you seen a psychiatrist ? do you flip burgers ? And are you really happy with using a method with known defects, and assuming these defects don't operate ?
I think you are right with your next bit tho'; that Jeff assumes the study is probably approximately correct. And that is really the problem; it is an assumption, a belief, a religious faith. But you shouldn't confuse that with science.
Do you sell paint for a living ?
michael
Wu, how did you get it so wrong! How did you make so many mistakes ? I'll bet you must be feeling a right little peckerhead by now !
So tell me where do you get your science background from ? Are you like an assistant professor epidemiologist, and per is a full professor epidemiologist ?Like, you do know what you are talking about - don't you ?
Do you have to be so offensive when you post ?
james
Bob, why believe me? Why believe Pilger or Curtis? Two senior UN agencies documented the genocidal effect of the Anglo-American sanctions on Iraq. Two senior UN officials, Hans von Sponeck and Dennis Halliday, who were in charge of administering aid to the country, and who know a hell of a lot more about the situation than you do, resigned over what Halliday referred to as "complicit genocide" by the west. As far as Curtis and Pilger are concerned, I've respected their work for many years, thank you very much. Pilger spent 4 years in Iraq and has won a spate of international journalistic awards, most recently the Sophie Prize. Curtis bases his latest book on actual declassified documents, and quotes from them. The words thus come straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, and lay bare the myth that western policy is driven by anything other than establishment and business priorities. Human rights dont even register on the radar screen of the U.S. and U.K. elites, but why should they? As Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky said years ago, concern over human rights actually clashes with the objectives of U.S. and U.K. foreign policy. This is because the best countries for business investment and resource exploitation tend to be those lacking real democracy that exploit peasant workers and the environment (in other words, deregulated economies of banana republics). Countries that torture union leaders, murder priests, and exploit the poor tend to be those where the return of the investment value is highest. However, like most dupes of western policy, you appear to suggest that we can do no wrong in this world and that our foreign policies are driven by humanitarian values. As I said above, this is utter garbage.
Bob is, to put it politely, lying like a rug. The Foreign Secretary has responded to the Lancet Study. He has not done so on the basis of advice from Liam Donaldson or Sue Fox, both of whom hopefully have better things to do with their time. Although he rejects the 100,000 number (and does so for reasons I consider to be ill-founded; watch this space), he is quite clear in so doing that the Lancet report is a serious and well-conducted piece of work and needs to be taken seriously.
It might be worth pointing out that Roberts and his team are aware of the other figures on infant mortality. I just spotted that they quote http://www.who.int/disasters/stats/baseline.cfm?countryID=62 in a footnote, where it states the rate was 107/1000, and this in turn uses the earlier Unicef report as a source.
Of course they are aware of other figures for infant mortality in Iraq. One of the authors is Richard Garfield, who is the world's foremost authority on the subject.
I have noticed that you tend to tell little lies, dsquared, like your little assertion in your analysis of the Lancet study that the authors did not interview any families of the resistance. How the hell do you know? (The reports on C4 news of locals describing dead men with guns as women and children should give you pause for thought.) And apparently anyone who questions this piece of junk science - because they happen to have a political and military understanding of the situation in Iraq - is lying. Quite desperate, I thought. BTW, Geoff Hoon said on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby that Liam Donaldson's department has carefully checked this study and has reported back that it was complete horseshit, so you're wrong.
Jeff, the containment policy saved millions of lives by degrading Saddam's military and preventing him from being able to start anymore wars and cause millions of deaths - or have a regime strong enough to wage anymore genocidal campaigns against it's own people. Your policy of allowing western companies to prop up the regime again, as they did in the 1980s, would have led to untold death and misery - you should be ashamed. I would also remind you that the UK/US have stopped wars in the Balkans and Afghanistan, to name two areas, in recent years, and they provide an incredible amount of aid to places that you don't care about because they're of no geopolitical interest to you, like Sudan - a country where genocide certainly would have happened, if has not happened already, if you had your way and great deterrent powers like the US and UK were abolished. So I think a little bit of humility would be in order, kiddie. I must confess that I do despise you people; if you were around during WW2, every time the Nazis carpet bombed us you'd be blaming Winston Churchill. There's now a legitimate war for democracy going on in Iraq, and all you can do is carp and moan, and propagandise for the enemy, and blame us for the deaths they cause. It is true that when the chips are down, the left can never be accounted for.
Correction; it was Roy Anderson who checked the Lancet study on behalf of the government, and he is the UK's chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence.
And apparently anyone who questions this piece of junk science...
Ahhh...there's the clue right there.
There's nothing 'Junk' about the paper. As has been said numerous times, and has been shown by the enablers and wargasmers exactly zero times.
Best,
D
And thus the circle of life is completed, because Prof. Brignell hates Roy Anderson with a passion:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2004%20July.htm
Bob, it is you that is now speaking utter "horseshit" to phrase Geoff Hoon (who is an obnoxious individual anway). What proof do you have - even the tiniest shred - that "containment" saved hundreds of thousands of lives? This is the same pathetic argument used to defend the concept of preventive wars - its based on two steps. First, a regime is claimed to be making WMD and to be a threat to our very survival, and second we must attack it before it attacks us. But any nation has the capability of making WMD, and threat is in the eye of the beholder. The current batch of recycled Reaganites in the current Washington DC junta didn't mind arming, aiding, and abetting Saddam's regime when it was clearly a danger in the 1980's - we extended him loan guarantees and full diplomatic cover in full knowledge of his crimes. It was only when he invaded Kuwait and no longer did as he was told that he became a "new Hitler". Suddenly, the media "remembered" the crimes committed under Saddam but developed collective amnesia over the west's culpability in making the monster. The fact was that, so long as he did the west's bidding, Saddam could do what he wanted and expect full support in doing so. The same was true of Suharto, one of the great torturers and mass murderers of the late twentieth century, who enjoyed full diplomatic and military support from London and Washington until he became uppity and started challenging IMF rules in the mid 1990's. Again, the media then suddenly stumbled on the fact that Suharto was a monster, but it took twenty years to do so. There are many similar examples. The west has had a traditional history of dealing with the world's most brutal dictators: by supporting them. Uribe's government in Colombia and Obesanjo's in Nigeria are two current examples of brutal regimes whose militias have murdered thousands of civilians over the past four years but that receive complete support from the Pentagon and Whitehall. The media pays scant attention to these regimes, because our planners and transnationals have a vested interest in bolstering them. Uzebekistan is another example - Britain has increased its financial support to Karimov's regime in recent years, in spite of widespread state torture and murder. Your containment argument is so utterly disgusting that it is hard to dignify it with an answer. To reiterate what I have said before, human rights has never entered into western foreign policy. Its utterly irrelevant. The prime consideration has aways been business and military expediency. Ths is why Britain and the U.S. have traditionally supported dictatorial regimes and continue to support many around the world, including those in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman etc.
While I am bashing Bob here, I should also add that he mentioned Sudan. Ah, now there is an interesting case. In 1998 under Clinton the U.S. bombed a pharmaceutical plant in the country that made cheap vaccines for TB and malaria. The claim was made by the U.S. government that the plant was allegedly making components for "chemical weapons" when in fact no evidence was presented, and never has been, although the U.S. (as per usual when the strong attack the weak) has since refused to pay a cent in reparations for this naked act of aggression. The factory was in fact making cheap drugs for the populace, as was claimed by its owner. A subsequent German study several years later estimates that at least "several tens of thousands of people" had died as a result of the bombing and its effects on a civilian population that is dependent on access to cheap vaccines. None of this was reported in the media. Sudan is a rogue state by any definition, but what is the difference between "their victims" and "ours"? As far as Saddam is concerned, the blockade, which resembled a medieval siege, made the populace more dependent on him. Bob, your childish arguments appear to suggest that the blockade was only preventing military parts and/or components that could be used to rebuild WMD for Iraq. This is patent nonsense. The list of material that was withheld staggers the imagination: everything from ambulance tires to hospital incubators to light bulbs to ping pong balls to every kind of medicine imaginable was embargoed. Moreover, its quite likely that Saddam Hussein would have been deposed internally had the U.S./U.K. not sanctioned the country to the extent that it did. I won't even bother at this point to counter your equally simplistic arguments over the Balkans and Afghanistan wars, which also had nix to do with humanitarian values but where there was a clear alternate political agenda. This has been discussed in detail by authors like Jeffrey St. Clair, Alexander Cockburn, Mark Curtis, and others.
Dear Wu
I note in your ramblings you talk of issues regarding outliers, whereas per talked of post-hoc manipulations. I am wondering if you have a problem with basic english, since you can't seem to distinguish words. It also seems that your data cannot be very reliable, since you see no problem in discarding ~25% of your data as "outliers". Strangely enough, I have never seen data that bad published anywhere before.
Of course, if you knew anything about epidemiology, you would know that real epidemiologists set out the conditions under which they will test or discard data before they start collecting the data, and so avoid the problems of post-hoc data manipulation. But then and again, what sort of idiot would fail to understand such basics ?
When I read what per wrote, i see that cluster analysis is prone to systematic errors; and strangely enough, that is exactly what my textbook on medical statistics tells me. Fundamental english tells me that these words are different from "dismiss out of hand". You do seem to have some problems with your basic comprehension of words, Wu. Have you seen a psychiatrist ? do you flip burgers ? And are you really happy with using a method with known defects, and assuming these defects don't operate ?
I think you are right with your next bit tho'; that Jeff assumes the study is probably approximately correct. And that is really the problem; it is an assumption, a belief, a religious faith. But you shouldn't confuse that with science.
Do you sell paint for a living ?
michael
Wu, how did you get it so wrong! How did you make so many mistakes ? I'll bet you must be feeling a right little peckerhead by now !
So tell me where do you get your science background from ? Are you like an assistant professor epidemiologist, and per is a full professor epidemiologist ?
Like, you do know what you are talking about - don't you ?
Do you have to be so offensive when you post ?
james