Apparently the Lancet report is so disturbing to some pro-war folks that they are now denying its very existence. Here's Tim Blair, listing stories that he believes progressives have invented:
Poor progressives. All they have is Lancet reports, Ayad Allawi killing people, the menace of depleted uranium, plastic turkeys, oil pipelines in Afghanistan, Jewish media conspiracies, another Stalingrad in Baghdad, Bush's dumbness, harsh Afghan winters, the massive influence of Jeff Gannon, and looted Iraqi museums. They never get to invent any stories at all.
I sent him a copy of the report in the hope of convincing him that it really exists, but unfortunately Blair has not corrected his post.
More like this
Take a good look at the chart above. This represents the increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan since 2001. The number of soldiers that are presently in country might be a little high on this chart, given that The New York Times estimates 68,000 soldiers currently in Afghanistan.…
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an excellent article on the Lancet study and the way it was ignored in the American news media.
Daniel Davies notes that the blogs have just as bad:
Other than that, the response in the world of weblogs has been exactly the same as the rest of the…
As my readers know, the reason why the Lancet study and the ILCS give different numbers for deaths in Iraq is because the studies measured different things over a different time periods. Of course, that fact isn't going to stop pro-war columnists from claiming that the ILCS refutes the Lancet…
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…
No one is debating the existance of the Lancet report, just pointing out it's methodology is so flawed as to be useless. The 100 thousand dead civilians is an invented story.
You know this so why misrepresent what Blair says? Isn't that dishonest?
Not as dishonest as his mirror/proxy/redirect of Blair's site...
No doubt you read the report carefully yourself, with a critical eye. I did.
This kind of study where a random location is chosen, but where interviewers select the '30 nearest houses' is wildly open to investigator bias.
Excluding Fallujah (where the location wasn't even randomly selected to begin with), excess deaths from violent causes totals 21. They visited 988 households. No doubt neighbours mentioned nearby houses where people were killed.
If non-random selection of 'nearest houses' played a role just 1 in 40 of cases, there would be no increase in the violent death rate.
In fact, it so strains credibility that the violent death rate in Fallujah was almost 100x worse then anywhere else (per capita) that the authors felt compelled to write:
"This presents the potential of subconscious or other forces influencing the selection of the starting point."
I think that this consideration likely applies to other non-random aspects of the methodology as well.
G'day Tim,
I know that you honestly believe that you have a serious "Academic" understanding of statistics - but perhaps you should go have a brief chat to some of the mathematicians or physicists that work at your University.
As a physicist I know that I found your explanation of the validity of the Lancet report (especially the concept of a "confidence interval") to be one of the most amusing things I had read in years. As a service to humanity you should spread your interesting "understanding" of statistics among people that deal with figures (in a real world sense) for a living. They won't thank you, but they will be genuinely amused.
I think part of the problem that you have in your weird obsession with the other Tim is that you expect your views to be received with reverence and awe - the fact that there are groups of people that find you amusing, in a laugh at, rather than a laugh with sense, is just too big a blow to your ego.
Just a thought.
I agree. It's my understanding that the Lancet estimate has been discredited. When persons opposed to the war cite it, listeners tend to discredit everything that was said with it.
You do need something more accepted by the general community and not just by the Daily Kos types.
G'day Tim,
Considering your "all troll all the time" policy - your response to my post was extremely amusing.
Thanks Tim, tremendously good value.
Sorry about the above post. Due to a cache problem on my PC, my post above came out weirdly scrambled and I jumped to the conclusion that the scrambling was an edit on your part (it was oddly funny).
"it's (sic) methodology is so flawed as to be useless."
Well, Amos, it sounds like you know something about sampling studies like the one published in The Lancet. Care to tell us, in professional terms, specifically what the flaws are in its methodology?
"It's my understanding that the Lancet estimate has been discredited.a"
Really? By whom? In what way?
The study published in The Lancet clearly has elements that are 'invented'. For instance, within the report it states that most casualties where caused by aerial bombing; and yet if you read the evidence published within this is simply not true. I could go on at length on how the researchers and supporters of the study know nothing at all about bomb damage assessment, but I doubt any of them would bother listening at this late stage.
Seeing as the other stories Blair mentioned all have elements that where invented, I don't really see a problem with his post.
Very petty of you to mirror Blair's blog...can't you argue out in the opinion, or do you have to act like a twelve-year-old? Notice I'm not hiding behind the mask of anonymity...
Yes but notice Lambert has (deliberatly?) confused Blair's assertion that the Lancet study is 'invented' (ie false), with an assertion that it dosn't exist- which he never made.
Who's claiming this dishonest and flawed report dosn't exist? Nobody.
Lame. And, in my opinion, dishonest.
"The study published in The Lancet clearly has elements that are 'invented' For instance, within the report it states that most casualties where caused by aerial bombing; and yet if you read the evidence published within this is simply not true."
Really! I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific than this. What evidence published within (by which I assume you mean in the article in The Lancet) shows it is simply not true? What other elements in the study are "invented"?
"I could go on at length on how the researchers and supporters of the study know nothing at all about bomb damage assessment..."
I'm sorry, but I also did not realize that knowledge of bomb damage assessment was required to be qualified as an epidemiologist, or to do mortality studies.
Amos? Are you going to tell me specifically what the flaws are in the study that was published in The Lancet? I would really like to know.
Here's a debunking of the 'report' by Slate, hardly a pro-Bush publication. I'm sure Lambert will thank me for this link, he is after all a professional truth seeker, right? That's why our society so respects our 'intellectual' class... oh no wait, we consider them delusional buffoons barely competent to handle scissors without running which is why we are so careful to keep them far from the processes of actual political power. Oh well, here it is anyway.
Enjoy!
http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/
"This kind of study where a random location is chosen, but where interviewers select the '30 nearest houses' is wildly open to investigator bias."
In what way?
"Fallujah (where the location wasn't even randomly selected to begin with)"
Since Falluja was excluded from the study results, it makes no difference.
"No doubt neighbours mentioned nearby houses where people were killed."
So what? Only deaths that occurred in the households included in the survey were counted.
"In fact, it so strains credibility that the violent death rate in Fallujah was almost 100x worse then anywhere else (per capita) that the authors felt compelled to write: "This presents the potential of subconscious or other forces influencing the selection of the starting point.""
That is not why they wrote that.
"I think that this consideration likely applies to other non-random aspects of the methodology as well."
Such as what?
Amos, unfortunately, you are a day late and many dollars short with that Kaplan article. It has already been torn to shreds by better people than I am, so I won't waste my time reinventing the wheel.
Daniel Davies demolishes Kaplan's main argument here. And here our host Tim Lambert shreds another one of Kaplan's arguments.
Care to try again, Amos?
Shirin, you have not read my post, or the study, correctly.
Ths study states in its conclusions that the increase in mortality was largely caused by aerial bombing.And yet the figures within the study do not prove this at all. Page 5 of the report mentions the 21 violent deaths the study analyzes. And yet, in order to blame aerial bombing as the main cause of death, the research team brought in the figures from their Fallujah sample- which they themselves dismissed as too inaccurate.
The graph of violent deaths on page 5, most significantly of all, does not match the pattern of aerial bombardment in the war in any way at all. The heaviest bombing raids happened in the months leading up to the invasion, and during the actual advance on Baghdad. Soon after the fall of Baghdad the aircraft carriers went home, as did the heavy bombers, to be replaced by smaller close air support aircraft. These in turn use much smaller bomb payloads. And yet this is where the study claims that violent deaths caused by air attack went UP instead of down.
Anyone knowing anything at all about bomb damage assesment could spot this. In fact, the investigative teams from Human Rights Watch, who actually visit the scenes of violent deaths, have noted that most of them seem to have occurred in ground combat rather than from aerial bombardment.
For the 100,000 figure to be accurate, bombing would have to be killing a staggering number of civilians every single day. However, there have been many periods where there has been no aerial bombing for many days, even weeks at a time, during the study period. For the study to be right, individual raids by one or two aircraft must have killed thousands. It just doesn't add up.
Yikes! The self-accredited statisticians are coming out of the woodwork again. Not a single flaw actually pointed at, but the insinuations are there all right: The researchers may have been biased in selecting houses! Tim just doesn't know what a CI is! Trust me, I'm a physicist! The report contradicts itself on the issue of aerial bombings! And they could go on! (but choose not to.) (and they surely choose not to back any of the claims by facts.)
Thanks, oh sagacious impartial scientists! It must be your sense of scientific accuracy that compels you to pursue this matter. The appearance that you are merely desperately trying to invent flaws in a study that is damaging to the policies that you are promoting is just a miserable coincidence.
I must wonder though, where was your scientific skepticism when you were swallowing and regurgitating the "intelligence assessments" about Saddam's atomic, biological and chemical weapons?
So what happened to your Tim Blair mirror site?
How much will this farce end up costing you?
What is the likelihood of keeping your job?
It's too bad all those Kurds were naive enough to swallow those CIA "intelligence assessments" about Saddam's chemical weapons, otherwise they'de still be alive today. Silly old Kurds, getting gassed by weapons that didn't exist.
As for the Crooked Timber 'demolition' of Kaplan's work I can't see how. It's wrong. Although there are a lot of numbers between 8,000 and 200,000, one of the ones that isn't is a little number called zero. Zero? Who's claiming zero?
The Lancet study states that it has a 95% chance of being correct in it's esimation that between 8000 and 200000 people died after the war. Kaplan is right, this esimate is so vauge as to be utterly meaningless, and anyone who quotes the 100,000 dead figure based off the Lancet study is either dishonest or an idiot.
Or, as in the case of leftist academics, probably both.
Man, the people attacking the Lancet study seem to get even more ignorant, and even more proud of their ignorance, as time goes by.
I mean, how feeble is it to resort to arguing that numbers that are uncertain but have confidence intervals are "utterly meaningless"?!? But I guess all science must seem "utterly meaningless" to people who have no grasp of it.
Wilbur, you say "Ths study states in its conclusions that the increase in mortality was largely caused by aerial bombing". In fact, the only use of the word "aerial" in the study is in this sentence (page 7, second column): "The
remaining 58 killings (all attributed to US forces by
interviewees) were caused by helicopter gunships,
rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry." Note that neither a helicopter gunship nor a rocket is "bombing". They are, however, both used quite intensively to support urban ground combat, which does exactly match the pattern of the page 5 chart which you mention. You go on at length about "bombing", which is not mentioned in the report at all.
Note also that this sentence concludes a paragraph which is making the point that "household
interview data do not show evidence of widespread
wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the
ground."
You also say the research team "blame aerial bombing as the main cause of death". This simply isn't true. They do say "Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces
accounted for most violent deaths." But both of these statements are true when Falluja is excluded.
In other words, what the report shows, between the lines, is that ground combat supported by helicopter gunships and rockets kills lots of people. Are you suggesting that this isn't true?
"Shirin, you have not read.the study, correctly."
On the contrary, it is you who have not read the study correctly.
"Ths study states in its conclusions that the increase in mortality was largely caused by aerial bombing."
No, that is not what it states. Reread the study, please, and read it correctly this time.
"And yet the figures within the study do not prove this at all."
That is probably why the authors did not make any such claim, as you would know had you read it correctly.
"Page 5 of the report mentions the 21 violent deaths the study analyzes."
I don't know what you are referring to here. There is no mention at all on page 5 of "21 violent deaths", and nowhere do I recall the study "analyzing 21 violent deaths". Perhaps you would be kind enough to point me more specifically to what you are talking about.
"And yet, in order to blame aerial bombing as the main cause of death."
They did not blame aerial bombing as the main cause of death. Please read the study, and read it correctly this time.
"the research team brought in the figures from their Fallujah sample"
No, they didn't. The figures from the Falluja sample were not included in the calculations.
"which they themselves dismissed as too inaccurate."
No, they didn't. Reread the study, and read it correctly this time. Due to the extraordinary violence to which U.S. forces had subjected Falluja, the numbers were so much higher than for other clusters that Falluja was considered an outlier and was excluded from the study on that basis. That is not dismissing it, nor has it anything at all to do with the accuracy of the Falluja results. (And by the way, this was after the first massacre, but before the Nov '04 massacre and razing of the city).
"The graph of violent deaths on page 5, most significantly of all, does not match the pattern of aerial bombardment in the war in any way at all."
Yes it does, as you would know had you read the study correctly. It tracks very nicely, in fact.
"The heaviest bombing raids happened in the months leading up to the invasion"
No, they didn't, as any Iraqi can tell you.
"and during the actual advance on Baghdad."
As any Iraqi can tell you, the heaviest bombing took place in the three weeks beginning March 19, 2003, and the graph very clearly reflects that, as you would know had you read the study correctly.
"Soon after the fall of Baghdad the aircraft carriers went home, as did the heavy bombers...And yet this is where the study claims that violent deaths caused by air attack went UP instead of down.
Either we are not looking at the same graph or one of us does not know how to read a graph, and that person is not me.
"Anyone knowing anything at all about bomb damage assesment could spot this."
One does not need to know anything about bomb damage assessment to know that everything you are saying is utter nonsense. Anyone who knows anything at all about reading a graph would never waste time making the claim you have just made, bomb damage assessment notwithstanding.
"In fact, the investigative teams from Human Rights Watch, who actually visit the scenes of violent deaths, have noted that most of them seem to have occurred in ground combat rather than from aerial bombardment."
Please provide a reference for this claim.
"For the 100,000 figure to be accurate, bombing would have to be killing a staggering number of civilians every single day."
No, they wouldn't. That simply is not how these things work at all.
"However, there have been many periods where there has been no aerial bombing for many days, even weeks at a time, during the study period."
Irrelevant even if true.
"For the study to be right, individual raids by one or two aircraft must have killed thousands."
Completely False.
"It just doesn't add up."
What doesn't add up is what you have posted here. Virtually every word of it is contrary to the facts, and reveals that you have not read the study correctly.
"It's too bad all those Kurds were naive enough to swallow those CIA "intelligence assessments" about Saddam's chemical weapons, otherwise they'de still be alive today. Silly old Kurds, getting gassed by weapons that didn't exist."
Amos, you need a bit of help with your timeline. You see, Saddam used chemical weapons on the Kurds in the '80's, as a result of their support of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. During that time the U.S. was quite fond of Saddam, and gave a wink and a nod to all his atrocities in Iran and in Iraq. Saddam did not use chemical weapons on anyone after around 1988, even when he was attacked in 1991, which would have been quite an opportune time to use them. And then there is the inconvenient fact that to date no one, including the Bush administration's own weapons inspectors, has managed to find any remotely convincing evidence that he has had any since then.
"As for the Crooked Timber 'demolition' of Kaplan's work I can't see how. It's wrong.
No, Amos, it is not wrong, you are innumerate, and apparently incapable of understanding what you are reading.
My understanding is that the report gives a 95% certainty
that between 8000 and 194,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the
war.
Fred Kaplan gives a better explanation here
.
The site, Iraqi body
count, keeps track of Iraqi civilian deaths also. They only record deaths that are printed in media reports, and
all articles are triple checked. This
number is 16,000 - 18,000. They also
acknowledge that many deaths go unreported, so the number is likely to be a
huge under estimate.
Regardless, the loss of human life is an obscenity, and
should be no cause for celebration. The
fact that the right-wing is using this as some sort of a moral victory, is also
an obscenity, and shows a deep seeded contempt for human life.
Appologies for above post. I don't know what happened with the format.
Appologies also for linking to a site mentioned in previous posts. Seems that Kaplan has already been discredited.
I read better next time.
David Heidelberg,
Fred Kaplan's so-called "explanation" is worthless because he is completely ignorant of the math or the principles involved. To put it simply and briefly, not every number between 8,000 and 194,000 is equally likely. The most likely figure is the mean of the distribution, which is around 98,000. the least likely are the endpoints of the confidence interval, 8,000 and 194,000, each of which is as likely as the other to be the true value. The farthest a figure is from the mean, the less likely it is.
It is also worth noting that those who attempt (all without any success whatsoever) to challenge the results of the study published in the Lancet invariably claim that the prediction is too high, when the probability that it is too low is at least equally likely.
Iraqi Body Count provides a very valuable service, but they use a completely different methodology, which is well known to undercount deaths.
We are in agreement that every death under these circumstances is an obscenity.
If being able to email a document makes it real, does this mean that "Mein Kampf", "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion" and "MMR causes autism" (paraphrase) counts as real by your definition?
Shirin, we are in complete agreement.
I understand that the Kaplan methodology is flawed.
How could he make such a mistake? and why are the RWDB clinging to such a flawed analysis?
Shirin,
The reason that the lower number should be used, by those who recognise the study as legitimate, is that to do otherwise is to reward uncertainty in measurement. Otherwise, scientists would go "Measurement too vague to satisfy p < 0.05 ? Bugger that, p = 0.50 is good enough for me!"
I think it might be a good time to start a petition towards the Brittish and US governments to make a large scale study of the deaths caused by the Iraq war. In Britain the issue has been brought up by some MP:s but Blair has refused. (I wonder why?)
Anyone who complains that the Lancet study should then be urged to sign that petition. If they refuse they have just shown that they aren't really worried about the accuracy of the report but about the fact that casualties are reported at all.
Wronwright, if anyone here ever gets interested in what you credit and what you don't we may let you know. You probably have about Amos' chance of a call back I'd guess.
Now Russell though, Russell is a very funny guy and he should stop by more often for sure. Come back again to play soon Russell (perhaps you'll say something next time).
It keeps you young playing with the children and Whacko, looks like somebody's let the Tim Blair trollz out of their pens. Everybody into the mud!
First Wilbur, then Amos: Wilbur claims that the estimates of Iraqi deaths doesn't add up because the US has not been bombing every day. Where on Earth did you learn this? From CNN, Fox News or ABC? Our corporate media don't report the daily carnage from Iraq as a result of US/UK bombardment. It doesn't fit with the pre-prepared establishment script. Wilbur's comment reflects a brazen ignorance of the real story: that Falluja is still being bombed almost daily, for example. Just because our media doesn't report it doesn't mean it is not happening. In 1998, we now know that the US dropped some 18,000 bombs on Iraq. Wilbur, did you know this? Or is it a case of out of sight, out of mind? Amos, much of this also applies to your arguments. The collective denial and amnesia displayed by you and your ilk is exactly the strategy that the Pentagon and Whitehall had in mind when they launched this little ipmerial adventure two years ago (though, the outcome, with fierce internal resistance and the election of a majority Shia government sympathetic to Iran was hardly in the plans of the 'crazies' in the Bush administration who plan US foreign policy). Fact is, so long as no 'official' body counts are done, the coalition can deny that there was any carnage. Its a clever ploy designed to appeal to those who wish to cling to the embers of the long-discredited argument that we are the righteous defenders of liberty and freedom. Call it conditional compassion, but the comments of Wilbur and Amos are based on the old one-way moral mirror with which our governments drip-feed lies and propoganda to convince us that our lands cherish freedom, democracy and universal human rights. Of course its all gobbledygook, but there are still those out there who want to believe it. The deaths of 100,000 (or probably more) Iraqis just doesn't fit cozily int this scenario. So it has to be denied. In spite of bags of evidence to the contrary, the dreamers also believe that the sanctions either didn't happen or didn't lead to many deaths in Iraq. That the US deliberately bombed the civilian infrastruture in Iraq out of existence in the first Gulf War has also long gone down the memory hole of the dreamers; it couldn't happen they believe because our noble leaders just do't do such nasty things. Wake up people. Human rights and democracy mean nix to the current lot in the White House and their minions; in fact, looking through the past 50 years of American and British history, human rights didn't mean much over that time, either. Go to the library and read some of the declassified documents of British state planners in the 1950's and 1960's and you'll realize how human rights was actually an impediment to western corporate interests and expansion, and that US/UK governments were more concerned in finding ways to prevent democracy than to establish it abroad.
Do we see rail companies do a tally of how many people have died in rail accidents? Oh, and I bet you'd love the people who tallied the dead from bombing in Germany.
If a tally were to be done, wouldn't it be more appropriate for some neutral body, say the Swiss government or Human Rights Watch or the Red Cross, to do it than the US or Britain?
Anjam,
I agree with you. But a tally should be done and those who do it should not be allowed to be intimidated by the UK and US governments - don't be surprised if they try to use their political muscle to block such a count being made, because whatever the outcome its going to shed a bad light on their war.
All this yelling and screaming makes me want to go somewhere else and play.
Perhaps anyone who got yelled at/yelled would like to play too. It's a simple game. Pick any peer-reviewed journal (eg. an epidemilogy or health science journal) have a friend pick a random article - that adds a fun social element - then dismantle its methodology and dismiss it. Coz hey, it's not like you ReALLY need to spend all that time on a PhD (Poor Hungry Dog right?) to do a REAL peer review. I mean, hey - expertise isn't god-given is it? So I'm sure just researching what a few people have written around the internets means you'll be able to do a good enough job...
Why don't I go first:
"Antioxidant supplements for prevention of gastrointestinal cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis" from Vol. 364 Issue 9441, p1219
They write:
Methods: With the Cochrane Collaboration methodology, we reviewed all randomised trials comparing antioxidant supplements with placebo for prevention of gastrointestinal cancers. We searched electronic databases and reference lists (February, 2003). Outcome measures were incidence of gastrointestinal cancers, overall mortality, and adverse effects. Outcomes were analysed with fixed-effect and random-effects model meta-analyses and were reported as relative risk with 95% CIs.
Well already I can see this research is just useless. Fixed effect models indeed! ...
Shirin, you are wrong about the quote above.
The authors wrote, regarding the unexpectedly high violent death rate in Fallujah "This presents the potential of subconscious or other forces influencing the selection of the starting point.", precisely to give one reason why the number could be so inflated.
In the study a random spot was chosen, and nearest houses decided at the discretion of the teams on the ground. This experimental design gives interviewers latitude in picking houses. In a well designed study, there would have been a *random* system for picking individual houses, decided ahead of time.
You don't think its a little wierd that "accident related deaths" tripled in the postwar period? Could this not reflect a bias on the part of the teams in gravitating toward houses where previously surveyed neighbours mentioned people died?
Scientists frequently encouter sitations in which observer bias might be a problem. Usually its addressed by experimental design - randomization or 'blinding' the observer. Not so here.
Followed the link to your blog, Andjam. Very ironic, your outrage there over the Burmese government's refusal to release their tsunami victim statistics.
And I don't see why a tally must necessarily be done by a neutral body. If this war is humanitarian in nature, as some claim, is it not in the immediate interest of the self-proclaimed do-gooders to carry out as accurate an assessment as possible of the damage? How is it possible to help the Iraqis at all when the humanitarians in question do not even agree on the order of magnitude of the death toll, and are indeed explicitly not even interested in determining the extent of the damage at all?
I swear I hadn't read Tim's Sunday posting before making my comment. Have now, though ;)
DK, plus they claim to have reviewed ALL randomised tests. How credible is that? Did thye check all the foreign language journals? Obviously not. So clearly they were selecting the trials that support their preconceived political views.
Ian, fair enough, so if that's the case why have our holier-than-thou governments resisted all efforts to see how many civilians REALLY died in Iraq? You can add the effects of the sanctions and Gulf War I to the tally. If its true that Tommy Franks famously remarked, "We count every screwdriver but don't do body counts", perhaps its because the carnage would shed a bad light on their imperial adventures. I can't believe how much denial the Lancet study has spawned. The same thing happened within a year of the first great slaughter of faraway people by U.S. forces in the Philippines in 1901-02, where credible estimates now suggest that between 500,000 and a million people were butchered. One U.S. general claimed that his aim was to create a "howling wilderness" there; one in six on the island of Luzon was massacred. Yet, true to form, within a year collective amnesia had begun to set in amongst U.S. historians and the media who could not believe that a "government of men", and "that most peace-loving of nations" could be guilty of such genocide.
Jeff
I'm not sure what you're responding to but my last post was in response to dk.au's invitiation up-thread to invent specious attacks on a randomly selected scientific paper.
You don't think its a little wierd that "accident related deaths" tripled in the postwar period?
It is of course not weird at all. When the hospitals are full of bombing victims, accident victims are more likely to die. When people have to store fuel for their domestic generators because electricity is not working, house fires are more common and more serious. Absolutely everything is more difficult and more dangerous in a combat zone, even going to the shops for a pint of milk.
And on one other point that has not so far been challenged (most of the Blairite know-nothing posse have been adequately knocked back on all the rest)
This kind of study where a random location is chosen, but where interviewers select the '30 nearest houses' is wildly open to investigator bias.
It of course, isn't. How near a house is to a particular point is not a matter of opinion and indeed is pretty much an objective fact, unless you are moving close to the speed of light. Even if your frame of reference is moving at the speed of light, the relation "is nearer than" is still preserved. When the report says "the thirty nearest houses", that's what it means. If anything, this might bias the results downward, since if one of the thirty nearest houses had been completely destroyed, it was replaced with another one.
But Daniel what if the houses were moving at the speed of light while the researcher was standing still?
"The reason that the lower number should be used, by those who recognise the study as legitimate, is that to do otherwise is to reward uncertainty in measurement."
So, ummmmm, what you are suggesting is that "uncertainty in measurement" should be dealt with by NOT using the figure most likely to be the true population value, but the figure LEAST likely to be the true value. And, of course, you are suggesting that the lowest possible,not the highest possible figure should be used, and of course that has nothing to do with your wish to underestimate mortality, no indeed!
"Shirin, you are wrong about the quote above."
No, I am not wrong. You, however, appear not to have understood what you have read.
"The authors wrote, regarding the unexpectedly high violent death rate in Fallujah "This presents the potential of subconscious or other forces influencing the selection of the starting point.", precisely to give one reason why the number could be so inflated.
You do not appear to understand what you have read.
No, they did not write that regarding the "unexpectedly high violent death rate", nor did they write it to give a reason why the number might be "inflated". It was part of a paragraph explaining why they were forced to alter their methodology for selecting households in that cluster, and how and why they altered it, and that is all it was.
"In the study a random spot was chosen, and nearest houses decided at the discretion of the teams on the ground."
That is a gross misstatement of what the authors wrote in the study. They did not decide the nearest houses "at their discretion". Please reread the article and try to understand it.
"This experimental design gives interviewers latitude in picking houses. In a well designed study, there would have been a *random* system for picking individual houses, decided ahead of time.
Clearly you do not understand at all what you have read. No, it does not give interviewers latitude in picking houses, and yes, it is random. Please reread the study and try to understand it this time.
"You don't think its a little wierd that "accident related deaths" tripled in the postwar period?"
Not at all. This is one of the many well-known "side effects" of war.
"Could this not reflect a bias on the part of the teams in gravitating toward houses where previously surveyed neighbours mentioned people died?
No. The methodology does not permit that.
"Scientists frequently encouter sitations in which observer bias might be a problem. Usually its addressed by experimental design - randomization or 'blinding' the observer. Not so here."
The authors of this study used standard, recognized experimental design for cluster studies, using standard, approved techniques of randomization. Revealingly, the only people who have tried to criticize this study are people who 1) don't understand the methodology and the mathematics involved, and 2) have a desire to minimize the harm the U.S. has done and is doing in Iraq. Professionals with knowledge and experience in the fields involved have unanimously accepted the study's validity.
Also revealing is the fact that some of the very same people who are rejecting and trying desperately to discredit this study have readily accepted previous mortality studies by the same authors using the same methodology as this one. Of course in those previous cases the results served their political agendas, whereas in this case, they do not.
Not a statistician, but I read the Kaplan article (as well as CT's 'debunking') and it seems to me Kaplan has a point. The Lancet report might be a perfectly sound bit of epidemiological research (not equipped to judge), and might provide useful information to those responsible for planning and executing similar wars in similar situations. But the huge range of outcomes makes it close to useless for saying anything about this particular war. So what if the "likeliest" values are in the middle of the range? The war was fought, and there is a single number of deaths that resulted. While that number will never be tied down to the nose, it does not seem useful to say that it was somewhere between very low and very high, and probably in the middle -- especially given how easy it is to misstate that conclusion. Even the resident scholars at CT (though perhaps not DD himself) have offhandedly tossed out statements like "100,000 civilians died," which however you slice it is not what that report said.
I'm probably whistling in the wind, seeing as the 'debate' in this thread consists of each side calling the other stupid. (In such cases, both are usually correct.) But statisticians, tell me what I'm missing here.
George, to quote a few statistical text books on Confidence Intervals (CI's).
"There are two approaches to estimating population parameters from sample statistics - point estimation and interval estimation. Interval estimation uses sample data to compute a range or "interval" of values which has a known probability of capturing the population parameter being estimated. This range of values, bounded by upper and lower confidence limits, is called a confidence interval because there is a known probability that the interval captures the population parameter being estimated.
...we can determine ...under the Normal Curve that 95% of the sample means fall between 1.96 standard deviations above and below the mean. All other things being equal, the higher the confidence level, the wider the confidence interval. Thus, a 99% confidence interval will be wider than a 90% confidence interval for the same data. Since the most commonly cited confidence intervals in the social and behavioural sciences are the 95% and 99% confidence intervals, we are forced by tradition to select between these two.
All other things eing equal, the more variable our data, the greater the standard error of the mean, and the wider the confidence interval. All other things being equal, the smaller the sample size, the greater the standard error of the mean, and the wider the confidence interval." (Diekhoff, G. 1992, pp95-110)
"I should have a word about the interpretation of confidence limits. The parameter u (mu, the popultion mean) does not jump around from experiment to experiment. Rather, mu is aconstant, and the interval is what varies from experiment to experiment." Howell, D, 1987, p185)
An interesting consequence of this if applied to the Lancet data is that the mean number of deaths would not alter, only the upper and lower boundaries of the CI. For the skeptics of the validity of the study this is something to keep in mind.
Thanks Chorlto. But I'm not skeptical of the validity of the study, just its usefulness. And sorry to say, what you quoted is not helping. The war was not an experiment, it was a single event that cannot be duplicated.
In plain English, what would you say is the conclusion of the Lancet study, and how is that useful to us?
George and others, I'm also a non-statistician, but I'm a bit shocked and bemused by the implication that if the number of Iraqi deaths is nearer to 8,000 than 194,000 (the range quoted above), that it is any vindication whatsoever to the Coalition forces, in humanitarian terms.
Let's have a little context here. The World Trade Centre attacks in 2001 caused a furore, very properly (although that very quickly turned toxic for many people, and for elements of the US government - but that's another story.) It was very properly considered that 2,792 or 2,819 dead - somewhere in the high 2000s according to what report you are reading - was too many.
So if we use the LOWEST figure in the Lancet report range and say that "only" 8,000 iraqis were killed by Coalition troops / accidental death arising from war zone conditions, what the **** are we saying about our perception of the relative value of American and Iraqi lives?
Sorry to butt in with my Humanities background and non-mathematical approach - useless, I know, but I reckon if 8000 people died over a year or two in Oz due to foreigners coming in with weapons, I think some of you might think it was a bit bloody serious. Me, I think the "mean of the distribution" argument looks good, but what would I know - isn't the minimum bad enough for you?
Hi George,
The point I was trying to make is that whilst the upper and lower bounds for the CI are quite large it does not alter the fact that the calculated mean for the study (or experiment if you want to use that term) is 98000. As pointed out by a previous poster the mean for the sample is the more likely value that represents the true population mean rather than the two extreme values. This of course is in statistical terms.
That the interval is broad is probably due to the limited sample size. If the sample size was larger it is more than likely that the CI would be narrower hence removing some of the strength in the skeptics argument that the studies findings are "almost meaningless" due to the upper and lower bounds of the CI be so disparate.
Regardless of these statistical nuances, the data and the analysis indicate that a very large number of people have died post-invasion (8000 is still a lot of people). I agree with Helen, the minimum is bad enough for me.
Sorry, let me be clear about that: 8,000 deaths would still be a tragic outcome, and judged in a vacuum, a course of action that resulted in 8,000 deaths (let alone 98,000) is unacceptable. I do think there's a double standard for "Western" deaths versus "Third World" deaths, but your comparison to 9/11 is arbitrary, or even a non sequitur (since, as we all know, Saddam didn't do it). Better to compare civilian deaths in the Iraq war to civilians killed by Saddam himself, which are (best estimates) also in the range of a few hundred thousand -- not counting soldiers killed in his wars, which may boost the figure into the millions.
But I'm not debating the war (a fruitless effort these days), just trying to get at the meaning of the Lancet study. If somebody did the same study with a much larger sample size, and it ended up with the same mean and a much narrower confidence interval, then you're right Chorlto, the mean would then be a much more solid figure. But there's no guarantee that would be the result. A better study might come up with a mean lower (or higher) than 98,000. That's what the large confidence interval means, right? The researchers had to make the range very large to be 95% confident that the right answer fell within it.
I don't want to get into a long and boring flame war but I must take issue with
your comparison to 9/11 is arbitrary, or even a non sequitur (since, as we all know, Saddam didn't do it)
Where the hell did I ever bring up the apocryphal "Saddam linked to 9/11" propaganda, which I'd be the last person to subscribe to (since it's incorrect). Further, that reference is,itself, the non sequitur. WHO was responsible for 9/11 was never an issue in what I wrote. Community attitudes to the deaths of 2,819 Americans versus 8,000+ Iraqis was the issue.
And I'm getting a little sick of the moral equivalence argument here. "I'm just going out to bash the brains of someone's beloved dog with a claw hammer, because, y'know, someone else did it, so I'm no worse than them, OK?!"
Sorry, paragraph breaks don't seem to occur naturally in this comments system...
Hey Tim, has Mary Rosh put something in your drink? What's with the Tim Blair mirror site thing?
Guys, 95% is NOT a large confidence interval. It is, in fact, the most commonly used confidence interval in all kinds of studies from public opinion polls to quality control, to epidemiological studies. Only very rarely will you see any kind of sampling study with a smaller confidence interval, and larger ones are not unusual. Sample size is not really a major factor in this case
In the simplest possible terms, a 95% confidence interval means that there is a 95% probability that the true population value lies within the interval. In addition, the value at the midpoint of the interval has the highest probability of being the true value. The probability that a value in the interval is the true value decreases as it gets farther and farther from the midpoint. This decrease is symmetric. That is, values that are equidistant on both sides of the midpoint have an equal probability of being the true value. Thus, those detractors of the study who insist that the true value could just as easily be 8,000 as 98,000 are wrong on two counts. 1) It is far less likely to be 8,000 than 98,000, 2) it is exactly as likely to be 194,000 as 8,000.
People have mentioned the sample size of the study published in The Lancet, and some seem to think it was too small. That is incorrect. The standard number of clusters typically included in these types of studies is 32, and this study examined 33 clusters, so in fact the sample size was somewhat larger than usual. If someone were to do additional studies it is unlikely that the sample sizes would be any larger since experience has shown that a larger sample size will not yield significantly different results. The real value of additional studies, which the author of the study under discussion have recommended, is to confirm or refine the results of the first study.
I wasn't trying to be obnoxious, so if I came across that way, sorry. Of course you weren't claiming Iraq was responsible for 9/11, but instead of 9/11 you could have mentioned, say, Darfur, where something on the order of 10,000 people are dying every month. If that's not enough for anyone to do anything about, why get exercised over 8,000 Iraqis? I'm being facetious of course (and maybe rather too morbidly). We're basically in agreement: war is bad for children and other living things. I do, however, think there is a tendency among opponents of the Iraq war (not necessarily you) to kind of forget about how horrible Saddam's reign of terror really was, and therefore how good it is that he is out of business. Okay that's it, I will not mention the war outside the context of the Lancet study again...
Thanks Shirin, it looks like I was getting the terms confused. When I said "the confidence interval is huge" I guess I meant "the range of possible correct answers is huge." But that doesn't change the issue: whatever you call that range, it's huge. I understand the idea that values in the middle are more likely than values at the extremes, and that values equidistant above and below the mean are equally likely. But when the range is so broad, what does that get you? Can you break down the "likelihood" into further intervals inside the 95%? In other words, if it's almost certain (95%) that the right answer is between 8k and 198k, then is there a range where we might say that the answer is "probably" (50%+1) within that range? Is that "probably" range maybe the middle third, which is still 60k people?
Also, as a non-statistician, I'm scratching my head how it could be that a larger sample size wouldn't give better results. My layman's interpretation of the study results is that the huge spread between max and min is due to the compounded margin of error from all the variables being measured. Wouldn't a larger sample size cut down on the compounding?
Hi Shirin,
I wasn't trying to imply that 95% CI's are unusual. In fact my first post highlighted the fact that 95% or 99% CI's are the most commonly used CI's in research. I don't have a problem with the sample size used in the Lancet study. I only wanted to state that in statistical terms a larger sample size may have resulted in less extreme upper and lower bounds of the CI, thus providing a more precise result that was less likely to be misinterpreted by the pro-war lobby.
In addition I was trying to make the case that the true number of extra dead soince the invasion was more lilely to be 98000 than ether the upper or lower bound. That is way too many extra dead in Iraq, dead due to an increase in violence, violence that has resulted from the onset of the invasion and the resultant civil unrest that we have seen for the last 18 months or so.
Helen 17/3/2005 10:34:56
So if we use the LOWEST figure in the Lancet report range and say that "only" 8,000 iraqis were killed by Coalition troops / accidental death arising from war zone conditions, what the **** are we saying about our perception of the relative value of American and Iraqi lives?
This is quite true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. The 911 attacks were independent to the standard of Iraq governance. And they were suffered by a country with a much larger population.
The proper ethical counterfactual to Iraq regime change is Hussein regime maintenance, not with 911. By this standard Iraq attack looks like a much bigger humanitarian disaster than 911. The US has more than ten times Iraq's population. And the security rationale for Iraq attack was gratuitous and superfluous. It was a war of contingency, not necessity.
Moreover the US & UN were containing, inspecting & victualing (oil for food reduced child mortality) the Hussein's regime quite sucessfully. So much so that Iraq's political atrocity toll for the 1993-2003 period was < 1,000, say 500 killed pa. This is about two orders of magnitude less than the annual excess mortality (~ 50,000) caused by Iraq attack.
So this Iraq attack has probably made things at least ten, and perhaps 100, times worse than they otherwise would have been for this generations vulnerable Iraqis. But at least a proto-Islamist, pro-Iranian mullah is going to be in charge of things now, providing war lords and witch doctors do not commandeer the oil fields, as they do in Columbia.
The invasion was clearly a strageic disaster. It is also, so far, proving to be a humanitarian disaster. And things could easily get worse.
Shirin; the 21 violent deaths are indeed on page 5 of the report. In fact, they are in the graph you claim to be able to read, where they ARE COLOURED IN WITH RED INK.
Also, Shirin notes "As any Iraqi can tell you, the heaviest bombing took place in the three weeks beginning March 19, 2003, and the graph very clearly reflects that, as you would know had you read the study correctly."
The graph actually shows far heavier loss of life much later than March 2003. The dark blue parts, from Fallujah, are the bits I'm talking about. These where used for the study to claim most of the deaths where to blame on aerial bombardment.
As for the contradictory investigation by HRW; see also http://hrw.org/doc/?t=mideast_pub&c=iraq
Their investigators have stated online many, many times that most casualties where caused by ground operations rather than aerial bombardment. You can try googling them.
Jeff Harvey states that 18,000 bombs landed on Iraq in 1998 alone... as I tried to point out, with some of the heaviest bombardment preceding the ground war, why didn't those figures show up ANYWHERE in the study? I can't see any pre-invasion fatalities from aerial bombardment at all.
The study also states on page two that all six of the interviewers used where Iraqis fluent in english and arabic, and that information was recorded in english.
After the british mission was withdrawn in 1991, english in iraq could only be learnt with Baath party patronage and approval. The background of the interviewers is not stated or explained in detail.
I understand HRW has used foreign survey teams to get around this problem.
Wilbur: occasional typos or misspellings of obscure words are one thing, but your inability to distinguish between 'where' and 'were' does your argument no service.
Wilbur,These are figures (18,000 bombs) released from the US government. If you don't believe it, look it up. Dahr Jamail is one of the few reporters that is not bogged down in Iraq and he's recently said that while in Falluja there were still daily U.S. aerial bombardments. Read Tom Engelhardt's recent piece, "Flattened Iraq", and you'll get the picture. Much of the country was virtually blown to pieces in the first Gulf War. Part two probably had the effect of bombing some of the earlier rubble into smaller fragments. As for Ian's curt reply, understanding relevant history is an important part of determining the relevance of the Lancet study. What I've said time and time again is that human life is immaterial to the established order in the U.S. who are pursuing their own imperial agenda. When Nixon and Kissinger secretly bolbed Cambodia, beginning in 1969, they were well aware of the devastation it would cause. Four years and half a million tons of bombs later, an estimated 500,000 were dead. The only difference now is that those in power who initiated this illegal aggression are terrified more than ever of public opinion. They needed the most mendacious propoganda campaign in recent world history to convince the public - at least in the U.S. - that Iraq posed an imminent threat. All along they knew the country was largely devastated - lacking an air force or a navy - and that it was mostly defenseless. Critics of this insanity pointed this out time and time again but were ignored by the corporate media who drooled over the prospects of the conflict. The only real concern the governments of the U.S. and Britain has was the backlash of public opinion if coalition, and to a lesser extent, Iraqi civilian losses were high. But they were also smart enough to know that the memory of most people goes back only so far as last night's 11 o'clock news. Thus, recent military planners in the west have used specific tools to literally get away with murder. One is to block all attempts at counting the number of civilan casualties of military campaigns, because these will only shed bad light on them. Paul Bremer, for example, repeatedly impeded attempts by an Iraqi NGO to count their civilan dead. The Bush-Cheney junta has even employed PR firms to 'manage the outrage', hiring 'information warriors' and 'perception managers' to obscure the real human costs of the conflict. The longer they can do this, the more the outrage will subside. I have presented past examples of carnage at the receiving end of U.S. aggression, and people like Ian tell me in so many words that this is irrelevant to the current situation. But of course it isn't. History endlessly repeats itself. The only challenge for citizens now is to demand that our governments are held accountable for the misery and suffering our economic and military policies create abroad. Ths lot in the White House - most of whom were known as 'crazies' in diplomatic cicrles in the 1980's and 90's because their views were so extreme - have no interest in democracy or the vlaue of human life. I suggest that Wilbur, Ian and others read, in detail, Project for the New American Century, The Grand Chessboard, and, most importantly, the National Security Document of the United States. I have read them, and they provide a clear perspective on the aims and objectives of Bush and his cronies. After all, the NSD and PNAC were written by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Eliot Abrams, who are playing suc a critical role in formulating current U.S. policies. So 100,000 dead in Iraq? Its a figure that is readily believable, and probably even higher.
You lefy morons will never be satisfied. You think there are too many civilian casualties, so you refer to crap studies like this Lancet "Report," knowing fully well that the Coalition governments are doing a reasonable job limiting collateral damage. If the governments involved were to take steps to lower this damage, they would do so at a severe loss of military life.
Basically, you guys see all your deep-felt beliefs going down the toilet, so you clutch at anything that reinforces your limited grasp on reality.
C'mon, guys, grow up, admit that you were wrong about Bush and the war, and MoveOn.
Since the study is finding excess civilian deaths after the invation, this is what is found.
Kristjan, When mentioning Saddam's victims, you should add, "with our help because we didnt care". Moreover, aren't those who aid and abet crimes also complicit in a court of law? Why aren't any of the politicians in Reagan's or Thatcher's government who defended Saddam in full knowledge of his crimes sitting in the dock alongside Saddam? Moreover, why not a big brouhahaha over Suharto, who was one of the biggest mass murderers and torturers in the second half of the twentieth century? Was it because, as Clinton said, he was "our kind of guy"? Does this explain why Britain continued to sell him arms in full knowledge of his atrocities in East Timor, and why he lives in comfortable retirement in Jakarta today, with the billions of dollars extorted from his country safely tucked away in a Swiss bank account? And if you want to use civilian deaths as a 'rough guide' for prosecutors, why isn't Henry Kissinger on trial for his role in the Cambodian bombing? This led to half a million dead. While we're at it, what about all of the the vile regimes the US/UK still support at present? Algeria, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Columbia..... oh, such hypocrisy. Why bother?
"After the british mission was withdrawn in 1991, english in iraq could only be learnt with Baath party patronage and approval."
Where on EARTH did you pick up this piece of unmitigated, unadulterated BS? And what is your point in mentioning it?
Jeff Harvey,
Are you aware of Cheney's and Rumsfeld's involvement in PNAC? They are signatories to its Statement of Standards. You can see it on the PNAC website.
just two points:
1. The study counts total deaths and doesn't make a distinction between "civilians" and "combatants"; that tagline was added by Lancet editorial staff
2. This thread seems to have quite a bad case of "Kaplan's Fallacy" - the argument from the width of a confidence interval to the assumption that the true figure is at the lower end. In fact, all the evidence (the rise in violence as a course of death, the fact that the total average is brought down by a fall in the death rate of the Kurdish provinces and the Fallujah cluster) suggests that the true number is more likely to be in the top half of the confidence interval.
"The background of the interviewers is not stated or explained in detail."
What "background"? How is any of this relevant? What is your point?
"I understand HRW has used foreign survey teams to get around this problem.
What problem?
Perhaps anyone who got yelled at/yelled would like to play too. It's a simple game. Pick any peer-reviewed journal (eg. an epidemilogy or health science journal) have a friend pick a random article - that adds a fun social element - then dismantle its methodology and dismiss it.
I know you meant this as satire, but sometimes the peer-review process lets through some papers with flaws any idiot can point out.
Followed the link to your blog, Andjam. Very ironic, your outrage there over the Burmese government's refusal to release their tsunami victim statistics.
I'm glad you have a sense of humour. But they didn't release statistics, they released false statistics and wouldn't allow anyone else in to check or to help.
And I don't see why a tally must necessarily be done by a neutral body. If this war is humanitarian in nature, as some claim, is it not in the immediate interest of the self-proclaimed do-gooders to carry out as accurate an assessment as possible of the damage?
Because some would ascribe malevolent motives to doing a casuality toll.
How is it possible to help the Iraqis at all when the humanitarians in question do not even agree on the order of magnitude of the death toll, and are indeed explicitly not even interested in determining the extent of the damage at all?
They managed to do a heck of a lot of vaccinations without a casualty toll. So, to paraphrase an answer about the Heisenberg compensator "Fairly well, thank you".
So, ummmmm, what you are suggesting is that "uncertainty in measurement" should be dealt with by NOT using the figure most likely to be the true population value, but the figure LEAST likely to be the true value.
Do I have to explain the concept of "null hypothesis" to you?
Minor typo:
But they didn't release statistics
should read
It's not that they didn't release statistics
Warbo; oops, my bad. I blame high-speed typing.
Jeff; I wasn't denying the 18,000 figure. But I was also trying to point out that the complete absence of casualties from bombing in pre-invasion Iraq is perplexing when the post march 2003 figure is so high in the study. By the way, I am familiar with the bombing campaign. An old flatmate of mine was flying in it, and a work colleague was one of the forward air controllers in the 1998 effort.
Shirin; Seeing as you didn't understand what I was implying, I'll give you an example. Lets suppose we wanted to study mortality in Germany around 1945/46. Whom would you trust more to do the survey- a bunch of international staff from a human rights organisation, or a group of germans who learnt english only with Nazi party funding and approval? Whom would you trust to send out in to the field unsupervised? And if you extrapolated your entire results from the study of only 21 deaths, would you be worried that only one or two members of the survey team might be able to hurt the study?
A link on the withdrawal of the british mission in 1990 is available at http://www.baghdadbulletin.com/pageArticle.php?article_id=135&cat_id=9 Note also that Iraqi teachers, in any field, also had to be baath party members to get a job; http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/iraq/chi-0304270491apr27…
The shortage of English speakers in Iraq has been a constant problem for visiting journalists and businessmen, many of whom find that their new translator used to work for Saddam.
"sometimes the peer-review process lets through some papers with flaws any idiot can point out."
In this case it is the idiots - or to put it less harshly, those who are ignorant of principles involved AND who have a desperate need to believe Iraqi casualties have been low - who are frantically trying to find flaws. Professionals in the field of epidemiology, and people who are knowledgeable about the principles involved in the study are in unanimous agreement that its methodology is valid, and its findings at least plausible.
Wilbur, why don't you cut the bull and just say straight out that you think the Iraqi interviewers in the study cannot be trusted because they all learned English with Ba`th party "patronage and approval" and are therefore all bound to be Saddam supporters?
I'll say this for you, Wilbur, I haven't seen many more creative attempts to discredit the study. Unfortunately for you, your argument fails completely because both of the premises on which you base it are complete BS, as I tried to tell you before. I don't know where you get your information about Iraq, but you need a better source.
1) "After the british mission was withdrawn in 1991, english in iraq could only be learnt with Baath party patronage and approval." Utter rubbish. First, it is plainly and simply untrue. In fact, it is more than merely untrue, it is outlandish. English has always been overwhelmingly the number one foreign language in Iraq, and is part of the curriculum of every public and private school, with the possible exception of the Kurdish schools. Proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking English is an absolute must for any Iraqi who studies science, engineering, technology, medicine, dentistry, nursing, or any one of a number of related fields. Since the overwhelming majority of Iraqi university and college students study in one of these fields, the overwhelming majority of educated Iraqis must study English throughout their schooling because you see, Wilbur, in Iraqi universities and colleges all the instruction and textbooks for those fields are in English.
Second, Wilbur, even if your absurd assertion WERE true, there would still be plenty of Iraqis fluent in English who had learned it before it became a "special privilege" to be enjoyed only "with Ba`th party patronage and approval". (I would love to know, by the way, exactly how this "patronage" is supposed to have worked. Did those supposedly chosen for the privilege of learning English get sent to special Ba`thist English schools, or something? Or do you think English instruction was provided only by the "British mission" before 1991?)
2) Your argument also depends upon the utterly fallacious notion that anyone who obtains a benefit from the powerful, will be a supporter of their "benefactors". This notion is particularly fallacious when people are driven by desperate conditions to find any way they can to survive and maintain a decent life. It is simple human nature that most people will take what benefits are available regardless of the source, and sometimes and in some respects regardless of the price. It is also human nature that if the net of all that comes from this source is negative, they will despise the source more and be even more eager to take what few benefits they can.
The fact is that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who were members of the Ba`th party joined because it was the only means available to them to provide a decent life and a decent future for their families. (In this way they were very much like the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who are joining the U.S.-sponsored army, or working for the occupation. Quite simply they have no choice but to swallow their disgust and put their own lives at risk in order to feed their families in these most desperate circumstances.) They were party members in name only, and they despised Saddam and his regime as much as everyone else did.
PS Wilbur, you do not help your argument by using as your source 2003 articles from a well-known pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ, such as The Baghdad Bulletin. Nor are the cheery little "human interest" articles planted in mainstream media the early months of "liberation" by the Bush administration's highly paid P.R. firms. Even in those days Iraqis were very aware of the harsh realities of "liberation". By now even the the most willfully blind American war cheerleader has to know what bunk those stories are.
"Better to compare civilian deaths in the Iraq war to civilians killed by Saddam himself, which are (best estimates) also in the range of a few hundred thousand -- not counting soldiers killed in his wars, which may boost the figure into the millions"
1) According to the highest estimates from even remotely credible sources the total mortality for both sides in the Iran-Iraq war is about one million, with Iran suffering more deaths than Iraq due in large part to their use of "human wave" attacks, but let's say it was 50/50. "A few hundred thousand" plus, half a million cannot by any kind of reasonable arithmetic, add up to millions.
2) It is fallacious to compare Saddam's "lifetime" body count with that achieved by the Americans in a year and a half, although even then the Americans have so far done a better job of killing Iraqis than Saddam could ever have dreamed of. The only reasonable comparison is between the March, '03-September, '04 tally, and the number of Iraqis Saddam's regime killed in the year and a half before March, '03. But I will give you an even better deal. Let's compare Saddam's per annum kill rate during, say, the ten year period before the American attack with the kill rate since March, '03. I assure you, the rate will be many times higher post-March, '03.
This is a serious allegation, Shirin. What is your evidence for it?
Andjim wrote:
"Because some would ascribe malevolent motives to doing a casuality toll."
Well, some ascribe malevolent motives to NOT doing a casualty toll. Fucked if you do, fucked if you don't. Given that criticism is inevitable, not carrying out a count in order to avoid criticism was pointless from the very start. That's not a reasonable excuse. If you're going to be criticized whether or not you do something you might as well do it, and do it right from the start.
" They managed to do a heck of a lot of vaccinations without a casualty toll. So, to paraphrase an answer about the Heisenberg compensator "Fairly well, thank you"."
How do you know the vaccinations did any good if they have no quantifiable means of estimating the death rate before, during, and after the vaccination campaign? In fact, without any hard figures whatsoever how the hell do they know they're doing any good at all?
"I know you meant this as satire, but sometimes the peer-review process lets through some papers with flaws any idiot can point out."
"Sometimes"? In the hard sciences? Almost without exception, idiots are simply being idiots, not savants pointing out flaws in Einstein's theory of relativity.
For someone who is pretty damn sure that "vaccinations" did a lot of "good" without having one single solid fact to verify your thesis, you sure have little trouble assuming the Lancet study - the largest, most carefully reviewed study available on Iraq - is full of holes "an idiot" could pick.
In other words, you believe good news (or simply make it up on the spot) when unsupported by any set of data, and disbelieve bad news, even when supported by peer reviewed studies. We all have our biases, but your attitude displays yours quite clearly.
How do you know the vaccinations did any good if they have no quantifiable means of estimating the death rate before, during, and after the vaccination campaign?
Oh no! The Iraqis' immune systems won't function properly unless your demand for a count is satisfied! But they'll get autism anyway!
"Sometimes"? In the hard sciences? Almost without exception, idiots are simply being idiots, not savants pointing out flaws in Einstein's theory of relativity.
Hello? Did I mention hard sciences anywhere? (I'd ask if you'd heard of Hendrik Schon, but that was fraud, not flawed methodology. And I'm not alleging fraud with this study.) Is epidemiology a hard science?
Almost without exception, idiots are simply being idiots, not savants pointing out flaws in Einstein's theory of relativity.
Yet you'd be the first to complain if I were to say that some of those critics of his theory were motived by anti-semitism, wouldn't you?
For someone who is pretty damn sure that "vaccinations" did a lot of "good" without having one single solid fact to verify your thesis,
I assume that if vaccination works for westerners, it'd work for Iraqis. Then again, I'm one of those naive people who assume that democracy can work for Iraqis.
you sure have little trouble assuming the Lancet study - the largest, most carefully reviewed study available on Iraq - is full of holes "an idiot" could pick.
I didn't say that the study had holes "an idiot" could pick.
In other words, you believe good news (or simply make it up on the spot) when unsupported by any set of data, and disbelieve bad news, even when supported by peer reviewed studies. We all have our biases, but your attitude displays yours quite clearly.
You know, if immunisation doesn't work for Iraqis, you should write something about it. You might even get published in a high impact factor journal.
Andjam
Firstly, soem forms of immunisation rely upon what's known as the "herd immunity" effect, fail to innoculate a sufficiently large proportion of the population and the disease you're attmeting to control will persist.
Secondly, given the persistent corruption in Iraq and the dubious nature of many of the claims made by the coalition and the iterim government, counting vaccinations would probably be a good way to ensure the money for vaccines didn't simply end up in one of Chalabi's Swiss bank accounts.
I could go on but is there really any point?
"This is a serious allegation, Shirin.
You're joking, right? Suggesting that the Bush administration and the "coalition" (sic) employed propaganda about the effects of the invasion and occupation, and that the Baghdad Bulletin was part of that effort is a serious allegation?!
I assume that if vaccination works for westerners, it'd work for Iraqis. Then again, I'm one of those naive people who assume that democracy can work for Iraqis.
Ah, the old 'racism' card.
The Iraqis' immune systems won't function properly unless your demand for a count is satisfied!
You're not only insulting, you're not very bright either. I bet you think the only reason a vaccination campaign can be unsuccessful is biological differences between Iraqis and non-Iraqis. Incomplete coverage, spoiled vaccines, inappropriate vaccines, wrong targeted demographics, plain and simple corruption or incompetence have no affect on a vaccination campaign. No need to check.
I didn't say that the study had holes "an idiot" could pick.
You said: "I know you meant this as satire, but sometimes the peer-review process lets through some papers with flaws any idiot can point out."
If you acknowledge that the Lancet paper does not match your characterization then this discussion is pointless: you accept its methodology, have no independent data to counter or refute its results, and are engaged in arguing for arguments' sake.
These widemouthed trolls who've escaped from the apronstrings at Timmy Blair's place aren't even funny any more! Where have the funny trolls gone, like Russell the physicist who knows about numbers?
Give us our funny trolls, Andrea - we want our trolls NOW!
Yes, Shirin, it's a serious allegation that the Baghdad Bulletin was a 'pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ'. Now for the second time of asking, what is your evidence for this claim?
Really, JoT! And what about it is so serious? Is it the suggestion that the "coalition" (sic) devoted a considerable portion of its resources to propaganda? Or are you defending the Baghdad Bulletin?
Shirin, you stated; "I don't know where you get your information about Iraq, but you need a better source."
Hmmm. I guess all the serviceman I know and work with (including a close relative) who have been over there hallucinated and never actually saw what they told me.
Or is your knowledge of Iraq as accurate as your earlier assertion that you could read a graph (you seem to have gone very silent on that bit in red ink)?
By the way, how many people do YOU work with who have actually been there? And I take it they didn't find the language barrier a problem?
To put it in terms you can understand: the Lancet report is about as accurate as you saying you have a 14 inch dick, when your envious obsession with Tim Blair pretty much tells us that you can't find your small dick with two hands, a pussy, and a microscope. You loser.
Well, Wilbur, really, I don't know how my sources can possibly compete with all the serviceman you know and work with (including a close relative). There is, after all, nothing like spending a few months riding around in tanks and humvees, bombing cities, blowing away families at checkpoints, beating up hajjis, breaking down doors at 3 AM and bullying the families inside, and spending one's time off isolated in the Green Zone or a military base eating at Burger King to give one an accurate and in-depth knowledge of a country and its people. After all that they must really know everything there is to know about Eyerack and Eyerackians.
And working with these people, who have actually been there, makes you truly knowledgeable as well.
Now that I know who YOUR sources are, I am almost embarrassed to mention mine, starting with my own years of experience living, studying, working, getting married, having children, running a household, living the daily life of the country, travelling its length and breadth, listening to its music, reading its literature, speaking its language. And what is the point of adding that my sources also include every member of my family, most of my past and many of my present friends, neighbors, colleagues, teachers, schoolmates...
As for the language barrier, no, not a problem. Every one of my sources is at the very least bilingual. One of my very good friends, a Shi`a from Najaf who studied at university in Mosul, and fought in the 1991 rebellion, is proficient in seven languages. One of my closest friends, a Kurd from Erbil who lived for 8 years in Baghdad and studied at university there, speaks, reads, and writes 5 languages. I have four languages myself. But I am forced to admit we are exceptions. Most are merely bilingual, unless they are Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Armenians, or Turkmen, in which case they are probably trilingual since childhood.
Wilbur, I must bow to your superior knowledge of every aspect of Iraq now that I know about all the servicemen you work with (including a close relative). After all, how can a mere Iraqi compete with that?
PS Wilbur, thanks for reminding me about that graph business. I had hoped to spare you the embarrassment, but if you insist I will certainly respond. Not right now, though, as I have other more pressing demands on my time.
PPS Wilbur, I am soooo sorry. I know when you tell all those servicemen that you work with (including that close relative) what I have said will remind you that they also win hearts and minds by passing out candy to children, and making it look like they are rebuilding Iraq by putting new coats of paint on crumbling school buildings.
Shirin, I like your take on how to bow to superiour sources. It's a long time since I've laughed so much because of a comment.
Shirin - you seem to be assuming that Wilbur and his contacts are US military, as opposed to being members of a national force that doesn't bring a Burger King with them on operations. :-) You also seem a bit light on actual rebuttals and heavy on appeals to authority (ie, your own). Frustrating for me. I'm a passerby with no strong opinion on the Lancet study (the moment I found out it was a largely statistical analysis based on a poll I lost interest due to my distrust of and, I openly admit, ignorance of the finer details of statistics/probability). I have to say, your contributions are too strident to convince me either way (you are trying to convince middle-of-the-road people like me, yes?).
As for 100,000 people being killed in Iraq because of the invasion - until we see list of their names people are going to find that number, or any number arrived that way, hard to believe. What are the victims' names? Seriously, who are they? Unless entire towns were wiped out (towns that had no relatives or friends in other towns), then where is the long list that identifies at least a large portion of the dead?
A statistical study based on a small sample is ALWAYS going to be the subject of debate, even if the number arrived at seems reasonable to most people (I will admit that 100,000 seems awfully high to me, especially given the study's own estimate of its likely accuracy).
At the risk of bringing the Nazis into the debate via a back door (and hence invoking Godwin's law accidentally, but I'm NOT comparing ANYONE to the Nazis, so read carefully), most of the Nazi holocaust victims eventually had names, dates of birth, etc (except, tragically, many of the "gypsies").
Sure, the Nazi's affection for paperwork certainly helped a lot, and even then it took a while, but in the end we didn't have to rely soley on statistical guessing (see my distrust of stats in my use of the word guessing? I live with an econometrician and it drives her crazy. Don't get me started on "seasonally adjusted" figures!). With the holocaust, eventually we had names, life stories, etc etc. Much better than a range of possible numbers with the middle number being chosen because it's the most likely. Or least unlikely. Or... Ugh, statistics! :-)
I realise it's early days still, but until we start to see names and dates of birth of the victims then people are going to take issue with statistical reports like the Lancet one for the same reason they take issue with political polls. It doesn't matter whether you live and work in Iraq or are a member of the coalition military - these sorts of surveys have a very limited utility in my humble opinion - the Lancet study makes the Iraq Body Count site look grounded in concrete by comparison.
Speaking as someone who wants to KNOW the ACTUAL numbers of those killed and when and how, or at least an estimate expressed with more confidence than the Lancet study and based on a lot more testimony/evidence, it's really annoying that all we have to go on is the Iraq Body Count website and the Lancet study. Surely at least ONE of them is way off? What if they BOTH are? Grr.
End of rant. :-P
Skev
Shirin I am simply asking you to substantiate your original allegation that the Baghdad Bulletin was "a well-known pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ". For the third time of asking, what is your evidence for this?
Skev, the Lancet study and the IBC are measuring different things. There is no reason that should both give the same number. I would like to see a larger survey done. The fact that the US/UK governments won't do this suggests that they think the Lancet study is in the right ballpark.
Tim, IBC and Lancet overlap where violent deaths are concerned. Lancet's estimate for these is 57,600 according to Richard Garfield, one of the lead authors of the Lancet study. The latter includes military deaths and so cannot be considered a complete overlap with IBC, which records only civilians killed. And the further the Lancet estimate is broken down into its constituent parts, the more inexact extrapolations become (for instance, in their sample they recorded 4 violent deaths for March and 1 for April, 2003, meaning that - if one were to rely solely on the Lancet - one would have to derive an estimate of the total number of Iraqis killed during the invasion period of the war from these 5 deaths).You are right to insist upon a larger survey.
No JoT, you are not "simply" asking me to substantiate an allegation. You have asserted, and reasserted that to suggest the Baghdad Bulletin was a coalition (sic) propaganda organ is a "serious allegation". I want to know why you think it is such a serious allegation. Do you think I am maligning the coalition (sic) for suggesting that they devoted a considerable portion of their resources to propaganda? Or is it the Baghdad Bulletin you think I am maligning?
I think you'll find, Shirin, that every government "devotes a considerable proportion of its resources to propaganda". Mentioning this with regard to any particular government is hardly to "malign" it, at least not in relation to the behavior of other governments. To judge whether you've genuinely maligned the news magazine "Baghdad Bulletin", on the other hand, one would first of all need to know the basis of your claim that it a was "a well-known pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ".This is indeed a serious allegation to make against a news magazine, especially one that declares itself to be "Non-aligned, apolitical and non-religious". I suppose it's possible you believe the dissemination of government propaganda to be the role of news magazines in general, but if so, why single out the Baghdad Bulletin?So for the fourth time of asking, what is your evidence for this allegation?
Skev,
1. Do you apply the same "name and address" standard to Darfur, the Asian Tsunami and, for that matter, smoking?
2. Compared with the estimated one million dead in the Iran-Iraq War; the two million dead in the Vietnam War; the one million dead in the civil war in the Congo and the hundred thousand Kuwaitis and Iraqis estimated to have died in the invasion of Kuwait and Gulf War I, 100,000 dead isn't a particularly large number.
As I've said before on this board, the Lacent study is not saying "the evil Americans brutally murdered 100,000 innocent people" it's saying that mortality from all sources increased, with a major part of that increase attributable to allied bombing. The authors aren't responsible for the misinterpretation or misuse of their results by others.
Just while you're chatting on a related subject, JoT, would you venture your opinion as to whether you'd prefer to hear Fox and the Murdoch press described as "Fair and Balanced(TM)", or as "Republican propaganda"? This is completely off the topic of the Baghdad Bulletin, really; I'm just interested as to which of those two descriptions you personally might find more irritating or offensive.
While we're disucssing the possible methodological flaws in the Lancet study, here's one that hasn't been mentioned so far: surveying households for deaths of members would seem to exclude cases where the entire household had been killed and there was no-one left to report.
But, of course, this would imply the Lancet figure was probably low so let's hear no more of such silly nonsense.
My understanding, Frankis, is that there's a considerable body of well-researched and indeed "well-known" evidence that the Fox network is a "Republican propaganda machine", to quote US film critic Roger Ebert's review of a documentary on the subject (Outfoxed).Do you have any such evidence to offer with regard to the Baghdad Bulletin?Your apparent ad hominem interest in what I might "personally" find "irritating or offensive" is surely immaterial to these deliberations.
I have no such evidence whatsoever, in fact, JoT. And as I said, I agree that my question was quite immaterial to your friendly chat with Shirin. Thanks for your interesting response.
Shirin wrote: "Professionals in the field of epidemiology, and people who are knowledgeable about the principles involved in the study are in unanimous agreement that its methodology is valid, and its findings at least plausible."
strange how shirin can speak for all professional epidemiologists...
In fact, this article has several problems:
1) the post-hoc data manipulation (exclusion of falluja)
2) not all deaths were audited, and of those that were, only ~80% could be verified.
3) the range of final values for the 95% confidence interval, of 8 to ~190 k, is a twenty-fold range. That is an appalling resolution, and in itself makes the study virtually worthless in itself.
Shirin is very quick to raise the issue of ideological persuasion biasing the argument adopted, and this is the issue. This is a scientific study which is virtually worthless, and it is being put to ideological use.
yours
per
per/David Bell, shirin is not speaking for all professional epidemilogists but reporting what all professional epidemiologists who have been consulted have said about it. See http://chronicle.com/free/2005/01/2005012701n.htm for more on this.
1. If you don't think Falluja should be excluded, then will you accept the 300,000 deaths you get if it is included?
2. It isn't necesaary to audit all deaths, just a random sample of them. This is basic statisitics.
3. The CI is broad, but that doesn't make the estimate worthless. Do you agree with the BMJ's call for a larger survey?
"Shirin - you seem to be assuming that Wilbur and his contacts are US military, as opposed to being members of a national force that doesn't bring a Burger King with them on operations."
I am assuming nothing. I have concluded based on his comments that is what he is talking about. If you are suggesting that he might be saying he works with Iraqi "servicemen", for starters one has to wonder how they can communicate with him, given that according to him hardly any Iraqis know English because learning English was a special privilege for Iraqis that could only be undertaken with the approval and patronage of the Ba`th party.
"You also seem a bit light on actual rebuttals and heavy on appeals to authority (ie, your own)."
Really? I have only made one "appeal to my own authority" here. I made it in response to Wilbur's appeal to the authority of "all those servicemen (including one close relative)" he works with. I am not sure how else you would have had me answer that particular argument, but I do think my actual experience living in Iraq as an Iraqi, not to mention my close relationship with all different kinds of Iraqis with actual experience living in Iraq as Iraqis trumps his servicemen (including one close relative) pretty thoroughly.
"I'm a passerby with no strong opinion on the Lancet study
What has that to do with my supposed appeals to authority (i.e. my own)? I have made no appeals whatsoever to my own authority in the matter of the study published in the Lancet.
(the moment I found out it was a largely statistical analysis based on a poll I lost interest due to my distrust of and, I openly admit, ignorance of the finer details of statistics/probability)."
You say you have no strong feelings about the study, yet you admit you have a knee-jerk negative reaction to it due to your distrust of statistical analyses, which is apparently largely based on a lack of knowledge and understanding of it.
"I have to say, your contributions are too strident to convince me either way (you are trying to convince middle-of-the-road people like me, yes?)."
Well, I am sorry you find my comments strident and are unable to see past that to their content.
"As for 100,000 people being killed in Iraq because of the invasion - until we see list of their names people are going to find that number, or any number arrived that way, hard to believe. What are the victims' names? Seriously, who are they?"
How would you suggest one go about obtaining the name and cause of death of every Iraqi who has died since March, 19, 2003? What methodology would you employ? How much time and money do you suppose your methodology would cost? And how accurate would it be in a situation in which many thousands of people have been disappeared, or buried in the rubble of their bombed homes, or burned beyond recognition, or blown into small pieces?
"A statistical study based on a small sample is ALWAYS going to be the subject of debate, even if the number arrived at seems reasonable to most people"
As I have already pointed out before, for this type of study it was not a small sample but was, in fact, somewhat larger than the norm. However, I don't know of anyone, including the authors of the study, who does not believe that more studies are indicated.
"(I will admit that 100,000 seems awfully high to me, especially given the study's own estimate of its likely accuracy).
On what basis does it seem small to you?
"most of the Nazi holocaust victims eventually had names, dates of birth, etc (except, tragically, many of the "gypsies")."
I believe that would be most of the JEWISH holocaust victims. Either way, you are talking apples and oranges. A large number of very dedicated people to whom it was personally extremely important have devoted years of time, and a great deal of money to the research that yielded that information.
"Sure, the Nazi's affection for paperwork certainly helped a lot..."
And the Bush administration's efforts to conceal reality is a major impediment to efforts to obtain any kind of count.
"and even then it took a while"
It was a major effort involving a lot of time, a lot of people, and a lot of money, and it would take a great deal more resources and time in the case of Iraq.
"but in the end we didn't have to rely soley on statistical guessing (see my distrust of stats in my use of the word guessing?"
What I see is a lack of knowledge and understanding, which could be overcome by taking a basic course at your local community college. If you did that you would, at the very least, realize that the correct word is estimate, not guess. :)
"the Lancet study makes the Iraq Body Count site look grounded in concrete by comparison."
Only if you don't understand the principles and methodology involved in the two different methods of tallying. For starters, they are not keeping track of the same thing.
"it's really annoying that all we have to go on is the Iraq Body Count website and the Lancet study. Surely at least ONE of them is way off?"
1) It is the responsibility of the occupying power to obtain reasonable estimates of casualties they are causing.
2) IBC and the authors of the study in the Lancet do not count the same thing.
3) 98,000 "excess" deaths is actually shockingly low considering the deterioration of basic civilian services such as electricity, water, sewage, transportation, communication and medical facilities.
"strange how shirin can speak for all professional epidemiologists..."strange how shirin can speak for all professional epidemiologists...
I have not spoken for anyone at all. What I have done is cite the stated position of every professional epidemiologist who has publicly commented on the study.
Shirin, Your posts are excellent and thoughtful.
You must remember that writers like Skev and JOT are like many others bamboozled by our establishment, corporate media which has been drip feeding the public brazen lies over Iraq and the "war on terror". They have learned nothing from history: the slaughter of faraway peoples (either directly or by proxy) to support US/UK foreign policy in conflicts camouflaged by the fear of communist expansion (e.g. Viet Nam, Cambodia, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, Korea) and in the original US colonial expansion a century ago (e.g. the Phillipines, Cuba, Haiti etc). The fear of communism lost its utility with the collapse of the system in the Soviet Union, hence a new bogeyman has been called upon to replace it, and its called terrorism. Not terrorism of the state, whereby the U.S. Britain, and some of its allies (e.g. Turkey, Colombia, Algeria, Uzbekistan along with Russia and China) rank near the top of the list, but that of individuals and loosely organized groups (e.g. Hezbolloh, Al Queda). Our media does not include state terror in its lexicon. Nor does it appear to inlude aggression (which is, in fact, what the attack on Iraq was - pure and simple godfatherly aggression). Since they can't come to believe that 'our systems' are anything other than honest and democratic, its inconceivable to them that we live in plutocracies and oligarchies, where the policies of our nations are dictated by a small coterie of individuals shoved in front of the electorate every few years who are dedicated to creating a local and global community in which a few wealthy groups or individuals rule, with the primary aim of enriching themselves and their cohort even further, at the expense of the vast majority of humanity. Its clear that domestic poverty is irrelevant to the 'crazies' who are currently in charge of US policy, so why in hell would they worry about people with a different color of skin and ethnic background on the other side of the planet?
As for JOT wanting evidence that the Baghdad Bulletin is biased, I would refer him/her to the atrocious warmongering columns of Judith Miller in the NY Times or Charles Krauthammer in the Wasbhington Post, whose pro-aggression rants were hardly if ever challenged in these so-called 'liberal' papers. Same goes for the grand apologist of western aggression, Thomas Friedman. If you look at the situation in Iraq, how on Earth can the media there be free and independent when the occupation has completely reorganized the Iraqi government and bureaucracy, chosen judges, installed 24 ministers, placed advisers with multi-year contracts in these ministries, all of which give the occupation and its political agents economic and political leverage. It has also issued Transitional Administrative Laws that will control Iraqi governance while the transitional National Assembly operates and well into the period following a presidential election. The National Assembly is thus handcuffed and must answer more-or-less to the occupation authorities. Before he left, Bremer handed down 100 or more rules with force of law that have had significant effects on the Iraq economy, privatizing large segments of state-owned property in violation of international law, and creating a new structure of vested interests to ensure continued US domination. With direct respect to the media, we all know that Allawi (with US backing) shut down Al Jazeera, has refused to co-operate with 'non-embedded' repoprters, that US forces have been justifiably accused of intimidation of media in Iraq that have not been in general support of the occupation, and, most importantly, that the media can NEVER be regarded as free under conditions of a brutal military occupation. I am sure that when the Soviet Union occupied much of eastern Europe the media was similarly chained to a leash - why does it not apply under conditions of a US occupation? Again, JOT, its a situation where you've been seriously brainwashed into seeing the world through a one-way moral lens. Its time our media was unleashed from establishment control and started challenging accredited lies of our politicians, instead of rehashing them as truth. As fr the Lnacet study, its a great piece of work and was desperately needed at a time that the 'crazies' in the Bush-Cheney junta refused to consider the human toll of their little adventure. None of the critics have bothered to talk about the human toll of Gulf War I (approximately 200,000 dead), the effects of the sanctions as evidenced by two UN reports and two senior UN officials (500,000 to 1,000,000 dead) not of the historic precedents that I have discussed earlier. Nor have they in any way explained why none of the recycled Reaganites in the current US administration, who wholly supported Saddam in full knowledge of his crimes (and exhorted him to attack Iran) are not sitting in glass cells in the Hague along with lesser thugs like Milosovic on charges of war crimes.
I assume that if vaccination works for westerners, it'd work for Iraqis. Then again, I'm one of those naive people who assume that democracy can work for Iraqis.
Ah, the old 'racism' card.
Do you regard a card only 3 years old as "old"?
You're not only insulting, you're not very bright either. I bet you think the only reason a vaccination campaign can be unsuccessful is biological differences between Iraqis and non-Iraqis.
If you bet that, you'd have bet wrong. I know that even the Australian government has been half-assed in the past about the number of times some vaccinations have been done.
I didn't say that the study had holes "an idiot" could pick. You said: "I know you meant this as satire, but sometimes the peer-review process lets through some papers with flaws any idiot can point out."
I said sometimes, not all the time.
If you acknowledge that the Lancet paper does not match your characterization then this discussion is pointless
At no time in this thread did I attack the methodology in the paper. That does not mean I cannot discuss things such as the interpretation of the paper, what Tim regards as "real", or who, if anyone, should do additional studies.
"At no time in this thread did I attack the methodology in the paper. "
No, yer just attacking anyone who agrees with the paper.
Can you, Andjam, in just one sentance of 15 words or less explain why yer so het up about this issue. Without attacking the paper's methodology obviously.
You must remember that writers like Skev and JOT are like many others bamboozled by our establishment, corporate media which has been drip feeding the public brazen lies over Iraq and the "war on terror".We're all fallible, Jeff, and I'm no exception. Show me where I've been bamboozled on any subject, and I'll be grateful for the enlightenment. Fail to do so, and I'll thank you to withdraw your remark.As for JOT wanting evidence that the Baghdad Bulletin is biased, I would refer him/her to the atrocious warmongering columns of Judith Miller in the NY Times or Charles Krauthammer in the Wasbhington Post, whose pro-aggression rants were hardly if ever challenged in these so-called 'liberal' papers.A specific allegation was made on this page about the Baghdad Bulletin which has so far not been withdrawn (or defended). All that I've consistently and I believe patiently requested is for Shirin to substantiate her description of the Baghdad Bulletin (not the NY Times or the Washington Post) as "a well-known pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ". Your effusions on the corporate media notwithstanding, you are unlikely to shed much light on this until you engage with the specifics. Would you take seriously critics of the Lancet study whose arguments rest solely on the evils of "Big Medicine" and the pharmaceutical industry?Again, JOT, its a situation where you've been seriously brainwashed into seeing the world through a one-way moral lens.Again, Jeff, you feel free to make swingeing judgements on no stronger evidence than my request that a serious allegation against a small newspaper be substantiated. Bold conclusions about me seem to be quite your forte.
iangould said:
1. Do you apply the same "name and address" standard to Darfur, the Asian Tsunami and, for that matter, smoking?
I don't agree with the comparison I think you're trying to make. Iraq, for all its many ills under Saddam, was at least a developed nation with communities and a census. These people had names, on that we can agree I'm sure. Where we seem to disagree is that you're implying that the level of death in Iraq was the same as the tsunami (which swept away entire communities and all their knowledge about themselves), and government records in Iraq were similar to those communities affected by the tsunami. Is that what you're suggesting? Seems a bit of a stretch to me.
Even WITH your comparison, the level of confidence of, say, the tsunami victim numbers is much greater. Counting actual bodies, or noting that a community of 300 people is simply gone leads to better estimates than the Lancet study, surely?
Like I said, the 100,000 figure seems high to me, but I have a genuinely open mind on the subject. I don't see the figure, in itself, as overtly political (though the lack of any real effort to gather real information on deaths is very frustrating).
2. Compared with the estimated one million dead in the Iran-Iraq War; the two million dead in the Vietnam War; the one million dead in the civil war in the Congo and the hundred thousand Kuwaitis and Iraqis estimated to have died in the invasion of Kuwait and Gulf War I, 100,000 dead isn't a particularly large number.
If you say so, though most of those conflicts were very different (and lasted longer) than the one we're talking about. Eventually, if Iraq winds up with a reasonable open and democratic government, I guess we'll find out much better numbers after several rounds of Iraqi national enquiries. It's hard not to be impatient for more "real" figures though.
As I've said before on this board, the Lacent study is not saying "the evil Americans brutally murdered 100,000 innocent people" it's saying that mortality from all sources increased, with a major part of that increase attributable to allied bombing. The authors aren't responsible for the misinterpretation or misuse of their results by others.
Agreed.
All the best,
Skev
Shirin said:
I am assuming nothing. I have concluded based on his comments that is what he is talking about.
Based on what exactly? There is more than one country's forces in Iraq.
If you are suggesting that he might be saying he works with Iraqi "servicemen"
No, I'm trying to suggest that he's not necessarily a Yank and so when making snide cracks you should keep them general so not as to appear presumptious. It just seemed odd to me that you assumed he was US, that's all. Not a major point!
When I suggested you relied on appeals to your own authority too much and then said: "I'm a passerby with no strong opinion on the Lancet study you replied:
What has that to do with my supposed appeals to authority (i.e. my own)? I have made no appeals whatsoever to my own authority in the matter of the study published in the Lancet.
Sure you have. You were responding to the suggestion that the interviewers were not to be trusted. You said (to Wilbur):
I'll say this for you, Wilbur, I haven't seen many more creative attempts to discredit the study. Unfortunately for you, your argument fails completely because both of the premises on which you base it are complete BS, as I tried to tell you before. I don't know where you get your information about Iraq, but you need a better source.
And when challenged on that you appealed to your own authority as an Iraqi, rather than any actual evidence or link etc. Again, not a major point, but hardly an invalid one.
You say you have no strong feelings about the study, yet you admit you have a knee-jerk negative reaction to it due to your distrust of statistical analyses, which is apparently largely based on a lack of knowledge and understanding of it.
Close! ;-) What I actually said is that I lost interest in the study, not disliked it. That's all. I find statistical extrapolations dull and frequently irritating, which led me to largely ignore the study as I'd much prefer something more grounded in, dare I say it, "reality". The range of possible death numbers in the Lancet study is just too wide and the picking of the middle of the range too arbitrary for me to find the resulting number even interesting, let alone credible. It may turn out to be right. Or under. Or over. What annoys me is the waiting to find out! :-)
Am I negative towards statistical analysis in general? I guess. Towards the Lancet study? Not really. i was trying to make light of the fact that I have only skim read the Lancet study (and reports on it). Surely we can agree that this kind of study would be a lot more useful if it was more certain of its own results?
Well, I am sorry you find my comments strident and are unable to see past that to their content.
Are you really sorry? Or was that sorry in a "I'm sorry my cigar smoke bothers you" kind of way? :-)
I said: "most of the Nazi holocaust victims eventually had names, dates of birth, etc (except, tragically, many of the "gypsies")." to which you replied:
I believe that would be most of the JEWISH holocaust victims.
Your point? You lost me there, especially since I acknowledged that we weren't referring to the gypsy victims of the holocaust. Your later point about the time and cost of finding names for the victims of the holocaust was actually one I thought I had made myself, so I'm not sure what that was about.
1) It is the responsibility of the occupying power to obtain reasonable estimates of casualties they are causing.
Agreed, I guess, but in the mean time the Lancet guess (ahem) estimate is the best we have? Frustrating!
2) IBC and the authors of the study in the Lancet do not count the same thing.
Okay, but they have a big overlap don't they? Why the significant apparent difference?
3) 98,000 "excess" deaths is actually shockingly low considering the deterioration of basic civilian services such as electricity, water, sewage, transportation, communication and medical facilities.
Is it? So... The Lancet study indicates that the Iraq invasion was, relatively, LIGHT on civilian deaths? I don't think I've heard ANYONE spin it that way, not even the White House! ;-)
All the best
Skev
In a single stream-of-consciousness paragraph, Jeff Harvey said (many snips):
You must remember that writers like Skev and JOT are like many others bamboozled by our establishment (...) They have learned nothing from history (...)The fear of communism (...) terrorism of the state (...) its inconceivable to them that we live in plutocracies and oligarchies (...) a few wealthy groups or individuals rule (...) the 'crazies' who are currently in charge of US policy (...) people with a different color of skin and ethnic background on the other side of the planet (...) grand apologist of western aggression (...) handcuffed (...) violation of international law (...) US domination (...) intimidation of media (...) brutal military occupation (...) Soviet Union (...) chained to a leash (...) you've been seriously brainwashed (...) one-way moral lens (...) challenging accredited lies of our politicians (...) the 'crazies' in the Bush-Cheney junta (...) their little adventure (...) recycled Reaganites (...) wholly supported Saddam (...) glass cells in the Hague (...) thugs like Milosovic (...) war crimes.
Is any of this meant to be remotely convincing to anyone not already in agreement with you? Seriously, tone it down a little if you want to be taken seriously by the genuinely centrist. Yeesh! ;-)
All the best,
Skev
JOT, You never answered my point. How can the Baghdad Bulletin be considered to report news independently under a brutal occupation by a foreign power? Answer: it can't. If it was truly independent, it would have met the same fate as Al Jazeera and the 30 or so reporters killed by coalition forces.
JOT, While I am at it, where do you stand on international law, the Nuremburg code and aggression? I'd also like to ask you in you have any evidence that papers in former communist blok countries were biased. I assume, like everyody else, that they were. But what's the difference between this and a Baghdad paper operating under a military occupation?
Skev, JOT, Sorry, and point taken. I was having a heavy day yesterday and let it go too far! But the stuff Skev pasted (above) that I said in my email I do stand by. The current US administration is pursuing criminal foreign policies in my opinion that are creating misery abroad. If one reads the National Security Document (Bush's grand imperial strategy) verbiage you should get a good perspective of where these people in his administration are coming from. While everyone here argues about the validity (or lack thereof) of the Lancet study, they are forgetting relevant history, that human life is utterly irrelevant in the pursuit of global economic and military domination. The NSD spells all of this out, and it is reinforced by Project for the New American Century. Its a suicidal foreign policy that these neoconservatives - too kind a word in my opinion, hence why I prefer Ray McGovern's term 'crazies' - have embarked upon, but this is where the world is now headed. Regimes that routinely kill and torture their citizens (e.g. Uzbekistan, Turkey, Colombia, Nigeria, Indonesia and others) will continue to receive huge amounts of military aid and hardware from 'our side' shedding full light on the hypocrisy of the media's rehashing of Bush's words and the "march of democracy". The NSD and PNAC contradict this, and most of the Bush team are signatories on both. I am convinced that the loss of 100,000 or more people in Iraq does not matter to these people. Many of them were in the Reagan administration which blockaded Nicaragua leading to the deaths of an estimated 35,000 people, and for which the US was found guilty at the International Criminal Court for "Unlawful use of aggression" (another way of saying state terrorism). So why the vast denial over the possibility of 100,00 dead civilians in Iraq? John Bolton apparently said in an interview during the war that he thought that 10,000 dead (a figure cited to him) wasn't so bad. He then went on to ask the interviewer if he was a communist. Unless we abandon the notion of a black and white world, in which we see our governments are "defenders of freedom" (in light of volumes of evdence to contradict it), then there may be more Iraqs in the near future. This is what I meant by one-way moral mirror in which we are primed by our media to see the world.
Can you, Andjam, in just one sentance of 15 words or less explain why yer so het up about this issue. Without attacking the paper's methodology obviously.
I'm jealous - not only did they get published in the Lancet, but they dictated conditions. :p
This outstanding piece by David Edwards sums up exactly what I mean by 'compliant media':
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7447
Jeff Harvey said:
Skev, JOT, Sorry, and point taken. I was having a heavy day yesterday and let it go too far!
Okay, but then you say:
But the stuff Skev pasted (above) that I said in my email I do stand by.
So why apologise? Seriously, if you think the extreme language you used was okay, then stand by it. We can agree to disagree. I won't do the little snip snip I did last time with your larger comment, but I could.
Basically, you assume the worst of motives (criminal) to those you disagree with, and assume the worst of outcomes (suicidal). Apart from anything else, your language gives you no where to go if those you disagree with come out with policies that strike you as being worse! What will you say then? "Even more criminal"? "Even more suicidal"?
This one stuck out for me though:
Many of them were in the Reagan administration which blockaded Nicaragua leading to the deaths of an estimated 35,000 people
So, you were opposed the UN's sanctions against Iraq too? Were you were in favour of the US/UK-initiated oil-for-food exemptions?
and for which the US was found guilty at the International Criminal Court for "Unlawful use of aggression"
The ICC has handed down a ruling on a country not part of the ICC? When did that happen? Got a link? It's news to me and I'm genuinely interested.
(another way of saying state terrorism).
Is it? That seems a stretch, and doesn't sound like a legal argument. But I'm no lawyer.
All the best,
Skev
Skev, If you think what I am saying is based on anger and frustration with the 'system', then it is. Do you also disrespect writers like Robert Fisk, Mark Curtis, Saul Landau, Mickey Z, John Pilger, George Monbiot, Gore Vidal, Paul Street, Tom Engelhardt, Edward Herman and other strident critics of western policy simply because their columns also reflect their anger over western foreign policies which create carnage and suffering on a mass scale around the world? Nothing I said in my email that you cut and pasted is in any way exceptional. You might just not be looking hard enough for the facts.
So the US is not a signatry to the ICC. What does this tell you about their respect for international law? Imperial America (the United States of Amnesia) has unilaterally opted out of one international treaty after another. The neocons believe that they are to be the 'law': no constraints. Bear in mind that the US not only ignored the findings of the ICC, which also stated that they owed $5 billion in reparations to Nicaragua for their terrorist war, but that they increased their efforts to destroy the Nicaraguan economy in order to put a client regime in place. By 1984, four years after the Sandanistas had overthrown the brutal US-supported Somosza regime, the World Bank and Inter American Development Bank stated that Nicaragua had the fastest growing economy in Latin America, and constituted a model system for alleviating poverty and creating a just society. The fear that this "disease" - nationalism, in which a country's assets are used to benefit all sectors of society, rather than a narrow, elite sector - terrified the Reagan planners and it was George Schultz who famously said in 1985 that "we have to cut out the disease" (meanig Nicaraguan nationalism). By 1990, five years after initiating their terror war, Nicaragua's economy was the second poorest in Latin America (all but ruined) and it has never recovered. Last year I learned that Nicaragua has the second highest infant mortality rate in the Americas (after Haiti). I don't need anyone to tell me how the US wants to "spread the seeds of democracy" when they have been propping up vile regimes for years and actively suppressing real bottom-up democracy in order to serve the interests of US investors. I am surprised that you knew nothing of the Nicaraguan case, but why should you? Our media has the habit of sending the volumes of unsavory actions taken by 'our side' down the memory hole. One has to look for the 'truth' in books and on internet sites.
Jeff Harvey said:
Skev, If you think what I am saying is based on anger and frustration with the 'system', then it is.
Nothing wrong with anger, in moderation. Too much is bad for you and your arguments though. Simply emoting does not add anything to one's position, and makes people like me suspicious of your motives and opinions. There seems to be a tendency in many places to overstate one's opinion in an effort to make it more convincing and urgent. It has almost precisely the opposite effect on me and many others.
Do you also disrespect writers like Robert Fisk, Mark Curtis, Saul Landau, Mickey Z, John Pilger, George Monbiot, Gore Vidal, Paul Street, Tom Engelhardt, Edward Herman and other strident critics of western policy simply because their columns also reflect their anger over western foreign policies which create carnage and suffering on a mass scale around the world?
Actually, the names I recognise in that list are exactly what I'm talking about. People who call themselves journalists or commentators who let their emotions, opinions, and prejudices cloud their ability to argue their points rationally or even, in some cases, faithfully report the facts.
Nothing I said in my email that you cut and pasted is in any way exceptional. You might just not be looking hard enough for the facts.
What facts? Strip away the invective and hyperbole and I'm mostly left with unsupported assertions.
So the US is not a signatry to the ICC. What does this tell you about their respect for international law?
Not much. Doesn't tell me much about "international law" either. If countries don't agree on the basis of transnational rules, then there aren't any.
Imperial America (the United States of Amnesia)
Overly negative slogans like that are the kind of thing that make moderates like me simply tune you out as background noise. If you only want to preach to the converted, then go ahead and overstate, bluster, and chant. But if want to reach out you'll have to moderate your tone.
has unilaterally opted out
Heh - is there any other way to opt out of something other than unilaterally? :-) For some people, the word "unilateral" has almost become a negaive in and of itself these days.
of one international treaty after another.
One after the other eh? You're not overstating again are you? Name six. :-)
The neocons believe that they are to be the 'law': no constraints.
Hang on, wasn't the US refusal to sign first made clear under Clinton? Was his administration full of neocons too? Has it occured to you that when both a noble Democrat president and a RethuglicanBushitlerhaliburton stooge agree on policy that maybe it's in the US's best interest? It's okay for you to disagree with that assessment, but to simply assume that it's made out of some imperial disdain for international relations says more about you and your beliefs than the policy itself.
(SNIP much paranoid "analysis" in which the US is all poweful and evil) I don't need anyone to tell me how the US wants to "spread the seeds of democracy" when they have been propping up vile regimes for years and actively suppressing real bottom-up democracy in order to serve the interests of US investors.
More paranoid rantings, assuming the worst yet again. I'm not even American and I roll my eyes at this sort of stuff. Look, I spent a few years in government, not long but enough to know that the complicated conspiracies that people like you believe in betray only your own ignorance as to how democratic governments actually work.
When the US holds its nose and does limited business with governments it dislikes, they get criticised (with some validity). But when the US government tears down those same governments, the fact that they once had very limited dealings with them is flung in their faces as if it's some kind of sin for them to do anything different or shift position. Simply pointing out a shift or inconsistency in policy over time is a pretty hollow point to make. Judge the current policy on its merits, don't assume it more of the same.
I remember hwen it was the left that wanted to tear down tyrants, even if it meant dealing with institutions and methods they disliked, in the short term.
I am surprised that you knew nothing of the Nicaraguan case,
Well, I had heard the allegations before, but I knew nothing of the ICC "decision" (was the US tried in absence? Was there any defence? Is it any wonder the ICC is not taken seriously?).
but why should you? Our media has the habit of sending the volumes of unsavory actions taken by 'our side' down the memory hole. One has to look for the 'truth' in books and on internet sites.
Yes, but only certain books and websites, right? Just the ones that support your views and permanent outrage. Doesn't it ever bother you that in order to find supporting material you have to narrow the scope of publications and authors in a way that excludes most of the mainstream?
I realise that excluding the mainstream press fits nicely with your "the mainstream has been bamboozled" views, but it's a pretty small loop you've trapped yourself into. Step back and listen to yourself - only you and those that agree with you can see the truth? If you want me to belive that then you'll need much better arguments presented much more rationally.
And use more paragraph breaks... :-)
All the best,
Skev
Skev,
Turns out the US terror war on Nicaragua was condemned by the World Court, to which the US was a signatory. So much for their compliance with international law.
You might also consider the fact that the attack on Iraq constituted aggression which was condemned by the World Court as the "supreme international crime", and is based on the Nuremburg trails, which produced the Nuremburg Code. This code was effectively written by US international attorneys who argued that Nazi Germany was guilty of systematic agression against its neighbors. US actions in Viet Nam and Iraq also qualify as aggression. So clearly the US has no utility for international lws it helped to formulate if they conflict with the interests of US elites (two examples already).
The US has also opted out of the non-nulcear proliferation treaty, the small arms treaty, the intercontinental ballistic missle treaty (thanks to neocon Bolton for his efforts in this regard) and are actively trying to saboutage the Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances and the comprehensive landmines treaty, as well as the refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and be subject to the International Criminal Court. They have violated a number of the Geneva Convention codes in Iraq. Skev, you should check out there voting record at the UN generals assembly. Some of the motions they have vetoed over the past thirty years would even embarrass you. Let's see, that makes 7 treaties violated and several more that have they have refused to sign. This sounds very much like an wholesale rogue state to me.
Lastly, I have read much of the mainstream material, and I have learned to read it with very much of a large bag of salt. I trust it no more now than I would have trusted Pravda or anymedia that was controlled by a narrow range of vested interests that are bolstering their own agenda. The mainstream press does not permit dissent, or a deviation from the views of the establishment in any significant way. This may explain why there is a witch hunt currently underway against liberal US academics who haved challenged 'official' views whereas journalists like Judith Miller were able to print nonsense about the non-existent threat posed by Iraq on the most wafer-thin evidence (mostly from Ahmed Chalabi) and have seen their careers unaffected. Some of Miller's information was apparently even chanelled directly to her from from the White House which was subsequently used by White House staff (e.g. Cheney) in press conferences and interviews that Iraq was somehow involved in the 9/11 atrocity, that Saddam Hussein supported Al Queda, and that Iraq possessed arsenals of WMD (they stated that it must be true because it was printed on the front page of the NY Times). Why did the 'mainstream' not challenge these lies? Why have these lies faded from memory and been replaced by the latest spin which is a desire to bring "democracy" to the Middle East, which contradicts the aims and objectives of the PNAC and NSD of which most of the current administration are signatories? Why is the utter hypocrisy of many of the claims of Bush and his staff not challenged by the 'mainstream'? Why did and does the 'mainstream' refuse to publish dissenting views? The same is true in the UK, where the BBC still wheels out the same discredited hype. Skev, with respect to recent history, I also suggest you read up on the first 'war on terror' declared by the Reagan administration in 1981, and escalated in 1985, which warned against the 'imminent threat' of a Nicaraguan attack on US soil. Although Nicaragua has a population of just over two million, I remember reading about the fact that it was "two days by road from Texas" and that it was a "dagger pointed at the state", and similar nonsense. The media, which played the fear card in 1983 over the threat (non-existent, of course) posed by Grenada, switched to Nicaragua which of course was also defenseless. But the aim was to scare the daylights out of the US population which would allow the Reagan adfministration to push through unpopular legislation at home (as Bush is doing now) while forcing them to huddle under this umbrella of fear. Nothing changes. Most of the current incumbents, to repeat what I said earlier, are recycled from the Reagan government, and their vision of democracy is probably much like it was in the 1980's, with 'model' systems being Guatemala, El Salvador, and latterly Nicaragua. All of these countries are among the poorest in the western hemisphere.
Lastly, I don't now how to use the paragraph break in this blog. Please advise!
Best,
Jeff
The way you are supposed to put paragraph breaks in is with <p>.
I've modified the code so that if you don't specify any manual breaks, it automatically put a paragraph break whenever you press return.
Skev, More non-mainstream material FYI. I don't think any of this by Bill Blum is remotely controversial. Its just that our mainstream media choose to ignore it. I wonder why?
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=7491
Hi again. Jeff Harvey said:
Turns out the US terror war on Nicaragua was condemned by the World Court, to which the US was a signatory.
No wonder I couldn't find any links!
So much for their compliance with international law.
A country has to RECOGNISE a court before it can be judged by it. By not being part of the court, the US is outside its jurisdiction. Think about it - imagine if any international court could simply determine for itself which country is covered? But I'm no lawyer, and I suspect you aren't either. In fact I think your focus on "international law" is bogus.
I'm curious. Do you believe in civil disobedience? If a law is wrong it's morally/ethically okay to break it and even encourage others to do so, right? As long as one is willing to bear the consequences. Why should international law be any different?
I suspect your real objections to certain US policies is not that they are "illegal", but that they are immoral or unethical or politically unnacceptable or dangerous etc etc. I doubt their legal status is really what irks you. Unless I've misjudged you and you're a bit law-and-order type. ;-)
You might also consider the fact that the attack on Iraq constituted aggression which was condemned by the World Court as the "supreme international crime", and is based on the Nuremburg trails, which produced the Nuremburg Code.
That sentence was unclear. Are you saying that the World Court condemned the latest Iraq invasion? I can't find that on Google. Or did you mean that invasions in general are condemned? Why is it that the only links you seem to give are to zmag rants and yet on stuff like this you provide no links? :-/
This code was effectively written by US international attorneys who argued that Nazi Germany was guilty of systematic agression against its neighbors. US actions in Viet Nam and Iraq also qualify as aggression.
Is that a legal opinion? Whose?
So clearly the US has no utility for international laws it helped to formulate if they conflict with the interests of US elites (two examples already).
And when did the US leave the World Court? Hardly part of a recent trend...
The US has also opted out of the non-nulcear proliferation treaty
Heheh... You mean the nuclear non-proliferation treaty I assume! :-D
the small arms treaty, the intercontinental ballistic missle treaty (thanks to neocon Bolton for his efforts in this regard) and are actively trying to saboutage the Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances and the comprehensive landmines treaty, as well as the refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and be subject to the International Criminal Court.
That will do for now - look at those examples. They are either obsolete treaties that had lost their relevance, or proposed treaties/obligations that were clearly either against US interest or else would make no sense to sign, such as Kyoto (no credible observers think Kyoto will ever work, and it will probably not be renewed).
They have violated a number of the Geneva Convention codes in Iraq.
More legal opinion. Whose?
Skev, you should check out there voting record at the UN generals assembly.
Surely you know that nations make votes in the UN for all sorts of tactical and strategic reasons. Alas, you don't get specific so I can't comment.
Some of the motions they have vetoed over the past thirty years would even embarrass you.
EVEN ME? Gosh! ;-)
Let's see, that makes 7 treaties violated and several more that have they have refused to sign.
Not quite seven! One can't violate a treaty one never signed, and I don't count seven violations there. And if a treaty is quietly put to death (nuclear non-proliferation) because it was out of date (the other main signatory didn't even exist any more), and no nation kicks up a stink, that hardly counts as a violation.
This sounds very much like an wholesale rogue state to me.
Huh? And there you lose me. To describe a nation as generous, free, tolerant, and courageous as the US as "an wholesale rogue state" (whatever "wholesale" means in this context) staggers my credulity. I really am starting to suspect that you're taking the piss now. Are you just trolling me for a reaction? There's no way you could seriously believe that the points you just made, even if true, lead to "an wholesale rogue state". I don't even know how to frame my reply. When I think of a "rogue state", the mental description doesn't even come CLOSE to the US.
Look, it's OKAY to disagree with US policy (I know I often do). But rogue state? I laugh outloud when i read crap like that - you reveal either a total lack of imagination as to how bad things could get, or a total misunderstanding of the way tolerant democratic governments work, or you don't know what "rogue state" means.
Lastly, I have read much of the mainstream material, and I have learned to read it with very much of a large bag of salt. I trust it no more now than I would have trusted Pravda or anymedia that was controlled by a narrow range of vested interests that are bolstering their own agenda.
The New York Times is to be trusted no more than Pravda was? That's not just unsupportable, it shows a disconnect from reality that casts a doubt over everything else you say. Can't you see the trap you made for yourself? it's like a self-imposed non-religous cult.
The mainstream press does not permit dissent, or a deviation from the views of the establishment in any significant way.
Evidence for this extraordinary assertion? Please, no links to zmag or similar, that would only bolster my point.
I feel like I'm having a conversation with a Bible literalist. The only evidence they will accept is evidence that supports their views. There's just nowhere to go.
Sorry, I can't go through the rest of your post and comment. Partly because I'm busy, and partly because, after your earlier comments, it's hard to make the effort to comment on a series of over-stated unsupported assertions. I can't even ask you to link your assertions to credible sources, because our definitions of credible sources is so different. We live in different worlds with different standards of evidence.
Your other post linked to a zmag article and said:
Skev, More non-mainstream material FYI. I don't think any of this by Bill Blum is remotely controversial. Its just that our mainstream media choose to ignore it. I wonder why?
Why? Perhaps because it's a hollow list of baseless assertions that wouldn't make the grade at a half-decent paper. Here's just two excerpts:
As numerous interventions have demonstrated, the engine of American foreign policy has been fueled, not by a devotion to democracy, but rather by the desire to:
1) make the world safe for American transnational corporations
2) enhance the financial statements of defense contractors at home
3) prevent the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model
4) extend political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power"
5) fight a moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy.
The notion that US policy makers formulate policy with these aims in mind is A FANTASY. Pure and simple. Looking at outcomes and deducing that they were intended and assuming they were intended for all the worst reasons is the height of foolishness. Stop doing it. The world will make a lot more sense if you do, and you'll be able to make real change. The other excerpt is the author's own bio:
William Blum is the author of "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower." The book has been endorsed by Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone, A.J. Langguth (former NY Times Bureau Chief), Thomas Powell (Pulitzer Prize winning journalist) and Dr. Helen Caldicott (international leader of anti-nuclear and environmental movements)
Wow. Check out those endorsements. Another guy traped in an echo chamber.
All the best,
Skev
Skev, you might feel that those threaties are obsolete, but speaking as a non-American (and I think our host will agree with me in this), it's a very big thing for the rest of the world that the US unilateral decides that they don't want to follow treaties they have signed. Of course, we aren't too happy about the treaties they haven't signed either, but that's on a whole different level, and part of international politics.
The Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty is no longer valid! Thank God! Now Bush no longer has any excuse for attacking Iran - they can build as many nuclear weapons as they want. North Korea too!
Shev -
While I can't particulary endorse Blum, it is not just "Looking at outcomes and deducing that they were intended and assuming they were intended for all the worst reasons" that results in this understanding of the creation of US policy. One could also read the internal discussion creating the plans - to the extent they are made public.
To go through Blum's 5 motivations list aboveone by one:
1:see Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Expanded) By Stephen Kinzer, Stephen Schlesinger. Harvard University Press. http://www.fetchbook.info/fwd_reviews/search_0674075900.html
2:I generally think this one is overhyped by anti-war activists, but one book that made me question myself on that was Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation
By Frank Kofsky Palgrave Macmillan. Contains detailed examination of discussions between airplane manufactures and foreign policy makers.
3: Chomsky's Detering Democracy. You can roll your eyes if you want, yell echo chamber again or whatever, or try to address the points. Personally when I was a rightwing highschooler and heard Chomsky saying nasty things about my country I tried to prove him wrong by looking up every reference and reading every counter point - and at the end I had to admit his point stood.I f you want something a little less polemic Try Gabriel Kolko The Politics of War. Again extensive documentation of internal discussions showing that this was a motivation for US policy.
4:Imperial Brain Trust: The Council On Foreign Relations And United States Foreign Policy
By William Minter, Laurence H. Shoup. Or heck just read the Project for the New American Centrury's Rebuilding Americas Defenses.
5: Are you really going to debate this one?
The notion that US policy makers formulate policy with these aims in mind is A FANTASY You have already stated that you believed that the US has accidently became a superpower and disregard the actual outcomes of US actions ("opps did we just overthrough a democracy and impose a pro-american neoliberal dictator, dangit we were trying for freedom, Real!y!!"), Now the question becomes - should we ignore extensive documentation of the decision making process also? Perhaps we should assume that there is nothing going on in the decision making process other than what is handed to us on sheets of talking points.
Andy
Skev, are you serious when you state that Blum's 5 point assertions are inadmissable? Heck, I dont even think the neocons themselevs would be able to deny it. There are volumes of eidence to support it. As I am a busy scientist, this is my last long post (because you will NEVER accept what is clearly right in front of you) and if you honestly believe that these assertions are baseless then you've been living in a bubble for way too long. Why not read Tom Athansiou's excellent "Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor" for a start. Amy Goodman's "The Exception to the Rulers' might open your eyes a bit too. Add to this Mark Curtis' "Web of Deceit", and you'll even learn a bit more. One little fact: research by Edward Herman in the 1980's (and unchanged today) revealed that the US gave and still gives more economic and military 'aid' to countries with vile human rights records than to countries with better records in this capacity. Why is this, I wonder? Herman spelled it out: countries that routinely torture priests, murder union leaders, and have non-existent human health and environmental regulations tend to be the best countries for business investment. Period. In fact, human rights appears to be off the scale as far as US investment is concerned. This is because it actually conflicts with the two primary aims of US foreign policy: business and military expediency. That is point one. Point two is that a whistleblower last year leaked a document to journalist Greg Palast, that was an internal memo in the department of Homeland Security under then-attorney general Jonathon Ashcroft. The memo stated that there were three countries of 'great concern' with respect to US security, listed as 'terrorist risks'. I ask you now, before you read on: which countries do you think the document highlighted? Perhaps Iran, Syria amd North Korea? No. The countries were Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. The document went on to state that the US government had hired the company "Choicepoint" (you may recall Choicepoint was involved in the 2000 Florida election recount fiasco because it was in charge of obtaining voter lists for registration). Now I ask you: what is the security risk to the US from these three Latin American countries? Go to Blum's list and check off number 3. Each of these countries had elected a populist leader (Kirscher in Argentina, Lulus in Brazil, and Chavez in Venezuela) who were politically left of center and who have stated that they wanted to invoke political systems that challenge the existing order and redirect more of their respective countries wealth to all sectors of society, including the poor. Kirschner also wants to challenge IMF/World Bank 'rules' with their brutal strategic adjustment programs and austerity policies that always harm the poorest sectors of society. Of course, there are two big concerns here for the US plutocrats: the first is that these governments threaten the existing order, whereby it is deemed that the profits of their resources and capital are 'by right' the property of US investors. Higher taxes on US-owned multinationals will eat into profit margins. This cannot be allowed (read Guatemala, 1954). Second, the success of these new governments may encourage others in the region to follow suit (as they have done recently in Uruguay, for example). Those in power in the US are terrified that this 'real democracy' will become a pandemic and you know what that means. This is why the Reagan administration, in George Schultz's famous words, had to "Cut out the cancer" in Nicaragua, as they did earlier in Guatemala at the cost of an estimated 300,000 lives (admitted to by Clinton who publicly apologized for longstanding US behavior towards the country during his presidency). So sorry, Skev, its time you put aside your mainstream papers and started hunting a little further for the truth. However, I will admit that it ain't pretty.
Kristjan Wager said:
Skev, you might feel that those threaties are obsolete,
I referred to only one treaty as being obsolete (nuclear non-proliferation). The other major signatory didn't exist anymore.
but speaking as a non-American
I'm also a non-American, by the way...
(and I think our host will agree with me in this), it's a very big thing for the rest of the world that the US unilateral decides that they don't want to follow treaties they have signed.
The US had to withdraw unilaterally. There was no one else (that mattered) left apart from the US. Not much of a treaty.
Of course, we aren't too happy about the treaties they haven't signed either, but that's on a whole different level, and part of international politics.
Quite so. Which action is worse? Signing a treaty and not honouring it, or refusing to sign it in the first place? Good people can disagree on these things and still be good people, yes?
All the best,
Skev
Andy B said:
The Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty is no longer valid! Thank God! Now Bush no longer has any excuse for attacking Iran - they can build as many nuclear weapons as they want. North Korea too!
Umm... you're kind of making my point for me. Iran and North Korea were clearly not bound by the treaty. And the USSR was gone. Hence it was obsolete. Why pretend? :-)
(SNIP)
You have already stated that you believed that the US has accidently became a superpower and disregard the actual outcomes of US actions ("opps did we just overthrough a democracy and impose a pro-american neoliberal dictator, dangit we were trying for freedom, Real!y!!"),
If you're going to misrepresent my statements like that, I see no point in debating you. You're essentially debating someone else anyway, don't let me interrupt. :-)
All the best,
Skev
Speaking in general terms: Signing and not honouring it. By not signing it, you have clealy show your stance, that's not the case in the other situation.
Jeff Harvey said:
Skev, are you serious when you state that Blum's 5 point assertions are inadmissable?
Not inadmissable. Unsupported.
Heck, I dont even think the neocons themselevs would be able to deny it.
Dunno, ask a neocon! :-)
There are volumes of eidence to support it. As I am a busy scientist, this is my last long post (because you will NEVER accept what is clearly right in front of you) and if you honestly believe that these assertions are baseless then you've been living in a bubble for way too long.
"clearly right in front" of me? "living in a bubble"? This sort of language is not conducive to making me want to plough through yet another long l o n g solid paragraph of assertions backed up only with clearly biased and non-mainstream "sources". And you know what? I can't do it. Looking at the rest of your solid mass of text, I just can't make myself scan through it, looking for anything remotely like a realistic argument backed by credible sources.
So if the object of this discussion was to see who gave in first, then you win. Congrats!
Oh, and you mentioned that you're a scientist. I realise that social sciences are "wretched" and have difficulties "testing" their theories, but if you really ARE a scientist, doesn't the way you restrict your sources of trusted information even give you SOME pause? (shrugs)
Anyway, real life intrudes here too. All the best, I guess we disagree less on the issues themselves than we do on what are the best ways to form opinions on the issues. I just can't make myself believe that these small fringe publications and clearly biased writers hold the truth when most of the mainstream disagree with their extreme interpretations.
Difficult to have a dialogue in this situation. Ah well.
Skev
Skev, Sorry you didn't read the rest of my post, cos' it provided some of the evidence you asked for but say is unsupported. Still, my advice is to read a bit more around the subjects we've discussed rather than to deny arguments I have made that have volumes of evidence to back them up. I'd throw in Bill Blum's book while I am at it. Good luck in your reading.
Skev, Last two points then I am gone! First, I am not a social scientist but a population ecologist. Second, you state: "I just can't make myself believe that these small fringe publications and clearly biased writers hold the truth when most of the mainstream disagree". You are hung up on the 'mainstream'. Who fits into this class, in your opinion? Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, etc. because they appear on 'mainstream' media outlets? Or Wolf Blitzer and Jim Clancy at CNN? Tom Brokaw? Dan Rather? WHO? Your strategy has been to marginalise those writers - including eminent academics like Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, historians like Gore Vidal, Bill Blum and Mark Curtis, and reporters like Robert Fisk and John Pilger - simply because their views and literature (with plenty of empirical evidence to back them up) are shunned by - here we go again - the 'mainstream', whatever that is (shrugs). Perhaps they have been shunned not because their views are so outlandish, but because they threaten to 'expose' the mainstream for what it is - a narrow sector of elite opinion shared by those who have both wealth and political power which they use to further enrich themselves. And who controls the media by and large? The establishment - hence why dissenting views are excluded or marginalized.
I'm surprised that the confidence interval is so large - can someone help me explain how that comes to be?
Paul, the confidence interval is NOT large. 95% is the most commonly used confidence interval in any kind of sampling study from opinion polls to product quality control to. 99% confidence intervals are not terribly uncommon, and in my experience, 90% is the smallest confidence interval you will ever see in any kind of common use.
Shev-
Iran and North Korea were clearly not bound by the treatyIran and North Korea have faced sanctions, threatened war, and diplomatic isolation in the name of the NNP treaty - how does this make it null and void? You are aware that Iran definately has no weapons and virtually no one outside of the US believe North Korea does (despite what North Korea may say to get attention).
Perhaps the sarcastic ender was unfair, if so i'm not sure what your point was when you derided looking at the outcomes of events. But anyway we are ignoring the main point - the internal discussion have all been extensively documented in well respected works and show those motivation showing major role.
Andy
Shirin, in an earlier post on this page you claimed that the Baghdad BulletinBaghdad Bulletin - a small newspaper with a reporting staff of seven Western and four Iraqi journalists which was edited by David Enders, who now reports for The Independent (London) and The Nation, among others - was "a well-known pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ".I have repeatedly (four times) asked you to provide evidence in support of this serious allegation, which simple request you have consistently dodged and finally ignored. If you are unable to substantiate this defamatory remark then admit it was baseless and retract it - or are you waiting for Tim Lambert to request that you do so?
Apologies for the broken html code in my post, Tim - please edit if necessary.
Dear Tim/ Shirin
you believe you speak for all professional epidemiologists. Strange, but the UK government took advice from its own epidemiologists, and they took the view that the lancet study was insufficiently robust to be relied upon. This is in the public domain, and you know so.
1) If falluja is included, is there any statistical significance to the 300,000 deaths ? I believe not.
2) The whole point of auditing is to find out that in the case of the lancet study, up to ~20% of the deaths may be made up or imaginary. This uncertainty isn't factored in to the analysis, because it is of such borderline significance in any case
3) I would say that the estimate is virtually worthless. It adds virtually nothing new to knowledge
4) Finally your link from the chronicle is amusing. Apart from whining from the lead author (why does no-one believe me ?), it makes several howlers. Just for example, the 95% confidence interval does not take into account mis-reporting of deaths.
yours
per
"not creatively snipping...":
"This is in the public domain, and you know so."
It is news to me so perhaps you will oblige with a link?
"If falluja is included, is there any statistical significance to the 300,000 deaths?"
"Statistical significance" makes sense only when a hypothesis is being tested. What hypothesis are you asking about here?
Andy B said:
Shev-
That's the second time you've called me "Shev" instead of Skev. I accept that you're unwilling or incapable of correctly representing my views, but could you at least get my name right? Use copy and paste if you have an eyesight problem. :-)
"Iran and North Korea were clearly not bound by the treaty"
Iran and North Korea have faced sanctions, threatened war, and diplomatic isolation in the name of the NNP treaty - how does this make it null and void?
Because they were clearly ignoring their treaty obligations. And their pariah status has many causes, including human rights.
(SNIP)But anyway we are ignoring the main point - the internal discussion have all been extensively documented in well respected works and show those motivation showing major role.
The examples you gave of internal discussions were mostly historical and did NOT match the negative fanasy descriptions of the motivations given in the article mentioned earlier by way of... Wait - THIS is the main point? :-P I think not!
I think if you scroll up halfway you'll find that MY main point was that statistical studies based on scant evidence and resulting in findings with wide margins for error SUCK as a way to assess national policy outcomes. My first few comments were a lament over the lack of dependable info we have on Iraqi casualties. This segued into me lamenting the way some here rely on what can only be described as fringe sources (yes, when Chomsky talks about anything other than linguistics, he's on the fringe). The rest is way, WAY off topic.
All the best
s-K-ev
Referring to North Korea, Skev talks about 'treaty obligations' and 'pariah status' apparently without noting any hypocrisy over the current view by most of the world's nations of the U.S. (as a wholesale rogue state) and of its traditional stance of opting out of its 'treaty obligations'. C'mon man! Gimme a break, I can't take this much humor leading up to Easter!!!
Jeff Harvey said:
Referring to North Korea, Skev talks about 'treaty obligations' and 'pariah status' apparently without noting any hypocrisy over the current view by most of the world's nations of the U.S.
Most of the world's nations do not view the US as a pariah, not even close. I DARE you to back that one up with any real credible data (yes, it has to be from the mainstream - I'll let you decide what is mainstream (hint: I don't mean Fox)).
(as a wholesale rogue state)
Whatever that means...
and of its traditional stance of opting out of its 'treaty obligations'.
Yeah. A grand and consistent US tradition. All those hundreds of treaties signed over a couple of hundred years, all of them backed out of. If it's such a tradition then why are you outraged?
I can see why Americans who love their country can't stand statements like yours. All invective all the time with no balance.
C'mon man! Gimme a break, I can't take this much humor leading up to Easter!!!
Actually, I can handle it. You crack me up! ;-)
Skev
Skev,
Its obvious that you are one of the many denialists. uch of the world regards the US as theplanet's ultimate rogue state, and, yes, a pariah. There's the blood of tens of millions of people around the world on the hands of successive US (and UK) governments, Democrat and Republican alike over the past 100 years. I am not blaming the populace of the country, as there are millions there who abhor what is being done by the established order in 'their name'. Why on Earth did Bill Clinton publicly apologze for successive US supported quasi fascist regimes in Guatemala that have murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians since the US-bakced overthrow of the socialist president Arbenz in 1954? There are countless examples of this around the world since World War II. You just don't wanna face the truth. A poll was held in 50 or so countries just over two years ago in which they were asked the question: "Which country is the greatest threat to world peace and stability?". Six per cent said Iraq, and another 11 per cent said North Korea. But eighty-three per cent of respondents said the United States. The game is up.<>p
Finally, refect on the words of U.S. state planner George Kennan who died on March 17 at the age of 101. Kennan was a leading diplomat and played a key rle in the truman administration.<>p
One of his best-known pieces of writing is "Policy Planning Study 23", written for the State Department planning staff in 1948. It read in part:<>p
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. ... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. ... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. ... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."<>p
What's the difference today Skev?!?! Nothing. Nothing at all has changed. At least Kennan, who was considered a moderate, was brutally and amorally honest. The current gang in DC certainly are'nt. They are veiling their lies and deceit with catchy phrases like 'democracy', but the real agenda coud not be more different. Have you heard of Kennan, Skev? Probably not.
Jeff Harvey used paragraphs! Some were a bit large and poorly spelled, but actual paragraphs! Hooray! ;-)
Okay, you gave a list of reasons why YOU feel people SHOULD regard the US as a pariah or "wholesale rogue state" (I'm calling it a WRS from now on), but that's not quite what I asked for is it. You gave no actual evidence that these people DO regard America as a WRS etc. I'll come back later to see if you can. Citing a single semi-related poll without linking to it (or even naming it so I could find it) is not very convincing.
Here's a hint: if you hadn't used such over-the-top language you might have got away with it - it would be easy to find evidence that many people strongly disagree with this or that US policy position (heck, so do I), but since you're now looking for evidence that entire nations regard the US as a pariah or WRS, you're going to come up empty. Ah well.
As for Kennan, your quote was a baffling choice to use as what he was arguing was hardly in keeping with the picture you're painting of US policy approaches. Did you think I wouldn't check? In the same paper he also says:
It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples. (...)
We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have the answers to the problems which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples.(...)
We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
...and so on and so on. You or I as 21st century people may not like his condescending tone towards Asia, nor his selfish concern for the US and to heck with everyone else, but he was writing not long after a brutal war with Japan and he was hardly arguing for world conquest or empire. He's suggesting the US pull its head in and mind it's own business and stop trying to meddle and be liked internationally. How is that strongly relevant to your arguments?
But what would I know, I'm "bamboozled" and I'm a "denialist" and I "just don't wanna face the truth". Now where's that send button, oh there it is...
Bye!
Skev
"you believe you speak for all professional epidemiologists."
Reporting what others have stated publicly is hardly speaking for them.
"the UK government took advice from its own epidemiologists, and they took the view that the lancet study was insufficiently robust to be relied upon. This is in the public domain, and you know so."
Who were those epidemiologists? What did they actually say, and in what context did they say it? For my part, I would far rather hear on any subject from non-government sources than those working for any government. That is particularly true of a government such as Tony Blair's, which has a track record of consistent mendacity on the subject of Iraq.
1) If falluja is included, is there any statistical significance to the 300,000 deaths ? I believe not.
2) The whole point of auditing is to find out that in the case of the lancet study, up to ~20% of the deaths may be made up or imaginary. This uncertainty isn't factored in to the analysis, because it is of such borderline significance in any case
3) I would say that the estimate is virtually worthless. It adds virtually nothing new to knowledge
4) Finally your link from the chronicle is amusing. Apart from whining from the lead author (why does no-one believe me ?), it makes several howlers. Just for example, the 95% confidence interval does not take into account mis-reporting of deaths.
Shirin wrote:
"For my part, I would far rather hear on any subject from non-government sources than those working for any government..."
so I guess that you are now speaking for all epidemiologists, except those that disagree with you.
I guess that is a step forward.
per
No, I am speaking only for myself about my own preferences regarding sources. I am speaking only for myself when I say I do not trust what political sources have to say. I am speaking only for myself when I say I most particularly do not trust governments and politicians when they make assertions and statements that serve their own agendas. And I am speaking only for myself when I say I do not trust governments and politicians when they make self-serving statements regarding issues on which they have a history of consistent mendacity.
I notice that you have not answered my questions, so I will ask them again. Who were those epidemiologists? What did they actually say, and in what context did they say it? And I would appreciate seeing some sources, too, if you would be kind enough to provide references.
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." - From the essay "Notes on Nationalism"
George Orwell has been dead for over 50 years, it's remarkable how his work continues to become more, rather than less, relevant.
"it's remarkable how his work continues to become more, rather than less, relevant."
Remarkable in a terrifying kind of way.
Skev, Kennan was expressing the view that has dominated US thinking for almost 60 years. You cited perhaps his most relevant part of the quote: that the US cannot afford world benefaction or altruism. This is absolutely the case if it wants to retain its status on the world stage. Further, it has to dispense with idealistic slogans and thus get on with the job of enriching itself while abandoning the notion that it should seek to redress imbalances in the world. When George H.W. Bush said in 1991 that "The American way of ife is not up for negotiation", he was stating a simple fact: that the US establishment will take whatever measures it needs to ensure that it will continue to overconsume depleting global capital (resources) and in order to do this it maintain an inequity in the way in whic the capital flows.
At present, humanity is living off a one-time inheritance of natural capital, in the form of fossil-age groundwater supplies, deep rich agricultural soil and biodiversity. Research on ecological footprinting by Bill Rees and Mathis Wackernagel reveal that mankind has been living in deficit ecologically since about 1980 - and that the richest 16% of the world controls and consumes something like 80% or more of the planet's resources. Based on 1999 data, we have overshot the planet's sustainable carrying capacity by about 40%. And the US alone maintains a per capita deficit of about 5 hectares per person. This means that it has to be appropriated from elsewhere, because there are insufficient quantities of natural capital to retain the lifestyle of the average US citizen within the borders of the US. To be fair, all of the developed nations are financing huge ecological deficits (Holland and the US have the largest per capita deficits). Where do our countries obtain this capital to maintain bloated rates of overconsumption? From underdeveloped countries with puny per capita impacts and a surplus in resources. This is why our governments are pushing to deregulate national economies and to create a system of unfettered globalization. The way this is currently structured, it allows us to get our hands on desperately needed capital as cheaply as possible, hence why then WTO, IMF, World bank and ICC (all western bodies) are pushing for 'free trade' and economic 'liberalization'.
THIS is what I frequently give lectures on at universities and elsewhere with respect to the attempt of a small number of very wealthy people - not just in the US, but across the world and even in poorer countries - to do whatever it takes to ensure that the poor remain poor in order to further enrich themselves. I suggest you log into Quark Soup and read some of my comments with respect to the continued depletion of our planet's ecological support systems mostly as a measure by the rich nations (and the rich within the rich nations) to maintain the status quo. It is all connected - hence why the war in Iraq was nothing more than an imperial adventure that was based on the aim of political control of a critically vital resource-rich region and ready access to another in the Caucasus. Lastly, it was about power. I reiterate that you should check out economist Tom Athanasiou's book, "Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor", or else Brian Czech's "Shovelling Fuel for a Runaway Train". My lectures highlight the link between corrupt corporate behavior and government policies, overconsumption and the undermining of our global ecological life-support systems.
Shirin, are you ever going to stand by your claim that the The Baghdad Bulletin was "a well-known pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ"?I've repeatedly and civilly asked you to provide some evidence in support of this highly defamatory description of the BB and by direct inference its very small team of journalists (I've mentioned one of them, editor in an earlier post). Nothing I have seen or read to date supports this serious allegation, which in view of your inability or reluctance to substantiate you appear to have to have made in error. If any such evidence specific to the BB exists I am genuinely interested in seeing it, but arguments like those of some of your supporters (just look at Judith Miller at the NYT! Krauthammer at the WP! What about Fox? or Pravda?) fail to convince, let alone provide a shred of evidence that the BB was "pro-coalition", nor that it was a "propaganda organ", nor that this was "well-known".If you are this cavalier and unrepentant about making egregious but unfounded accusations, why should anyone take seriously anything you have to say about realities in Iraq, of which you claim firsthand knowledge? So for the sixth and final time of asking, either support your comment about the BB or retract it.
And, my apologies to Tim for making a second post I neglected to preview and which contains an html error. The sentence was meant to read:
...and then I posted a useless link! OK, maybe third time lucky:Shirin, are you ever going to stand by your claim that The Baghdad Bulletin was "a well-known pro-"coalition" (sic) propaganda organ"? I've repeatedly and civilly asked you to provide some evidence in support of this highly defamatory description of the BB and by direct inference its very small team of journalists (I mentioned one of them, editor David Enders, in an earlier post).Nothing I have seen or read to date supports this serious allegation, which in view of your inability or reluctance to substantiate you appear to have made in error. If any such evidence specific to the BB exists I am genuinely interested in seeing it, but arguments like those of some of your supporters (just look at Judith Miller at the NYT! Krauthammer at the WP! What about Fox? or Pravda?) fail to convince, let alone provide a shred of evidence that the BB was "pro-coalition", nor that it was a "propaganda organ", nor that this was "well-known".If you are this cavalier and unrepentant about making egregious but unfounded accusations, why should anyone take seriously anything you have to say about realities in Iraq, of which you claim firsthand knowledge? So for the sixth and final time of asking, either support your comment about the BB or retract it.
OK JOT, I have spent the better part of a day looking into the record of the Baghdad Bulletin and, although not speaking for Shirin, I retract what I said about it. It looks to be about the best in terms of independent journalism that could be said about conditions in a country that is illegally and brutally occupied by a foreign invader. So I give you the nod on this one. The editors and writers look like they are doing a pretty good job with the paper under pretty bad circumstances. My mistake, and I retract it.
However, not to give everything away, I wonder how much leeway they really have to 'tell it like it is'. This is not to say that they don't want to be fully independent, but that they will be muzzled by the US authorities if they go TOO far. If the media in the US fears the same thing, what can be said by a paper that will be read by the occupying forces, and what will be their reaction to undue criticism? Just a point for further debate.
Over here in Europe we have 'Euronews', which always makes a big pitch of being 'independent'. For the most part I agree, but occasionally they make a statement that has no proven credibility or which supports the official version only. Just over a week ago, they made this howler in discussing the Halabja massacre: "This was one of the reasons for the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003". There is not a shred of evidence to support this claim except to accept the 'official reasoning' of Bush and Blair at face value. If they had said one of the 'alleged reasons' I would have thought this was bad enough, but to state it as a clear reason without any criticism dents their 'independent' veneer.
I don't mean that 95% is large. I'm surprised that quoting the results at 95% confidence means that the bounds given on the result differ by nearly 200,000.
I'm not expressing suspicion of the study, I just want to understand it better.
Paul,
The main reason is that some neighbourhoods surveyed did much worse than others. Comparing mortality rates before and after, it is up by a factor of 1.5 on average. But for some clusters the factor is below 1.3 and for others above 1.9. So the 95% confidence interval for that statistic is a rather wide 1.1 to 2.3. Extrapolating from these numbers (of course the cluster-by-cluster figures are unavailable) gives the wide excess-deaths CI.
All that is excluding Falluja. See pages 4 and 5 of the study.
Hi again. Jeff Harvey said:
Across all that time, all those presidents, all those Congresses/Senates, and both the major parties, there has been no shift at all? I guess from your side of the fence, viewing the mainstream parties from way, way over there, they could seem a bit similar. But surely you're engaging in lazy big-picture analysis?
THAT'S your summary of US policy over the last 60 years? This is teenager stuff, beneath you or any adult. And you lecture on the subject? Not in a formal educational context I hope. If so then I pity your students, having to listen to that sort of childishly simplistic "analysis" and having to spout it back to you to get good grades. Ugh.
I'm curious - what exactly do you think the big plan is for the "US establishment"? To consume all the resources and then... what? Eat the poor? Then what? Eat each other? Then what?
Give "the establishment" credit for SOME brains, or at least survival instincts. If the maths of it all is SO obvious to you, then why isn't it obvious to "the establishment"? Are they blind? Do they not care? Or maybe, just maybe, do they see a different outcome?
One of those three "one-time inheritances" is renewable, and the other is protectable, so I'm not sure what you mean by "one-time". And isn't running out of oil going to be a GOOD thing?
Blah blah, and not a credible link to be had. This sort of empty stats is why the environmental movement is in political trouble.
These institutions are all houses with many rooms - do you really believe the simplistic paranoia you're promoting? I don't mind paranoia as such, it's the ridiculously simplistic aspect of it that cracks me up.
Is this an attempt at an appeal to authority? That is, your own? I give lectures too, sometimes with other people present! Can we zip up our pants and put away the rulers now? Look, either back up your positions with short summarised arguments or give it up.
Even if this was true, it cannot possibly last. You said so yourself!
I'll decline that invitation thanks - one comment thread with you is enough (and even now you STILL don't provide a link! Was I supposed to do a search for the exact domain name?). Feel free to copy and paste anything relevant to my original concerns (if you even remember what they were).
Whoopsie! Your tin hat is slipping. Here, let me... hold still... there you go, all safe now!
YAWN. Fascinating story, but free of convincing MAINSTREAM evidence.
I'm always deeply suspicious of people debating ONLINE who, instead of making a convincing argument with links to credible sources, instead tell me to go off and read PAPER books and get back to them when I have. In my experience, the books are usually either not relevant or as empty as the person who made the recommendation. Once bitten...
No, I will not read those books. We're online in a comment section right now, so put your case appropriately. Either make a short sharp explanation of your position, or link to someone else who has, or else give it up. No disguised appeals to authority please.
You DO know I've never attended any of your "lectures", right? ;-) Seems an odd thing to say... twice.
All the best,
Skev
Skev,
The articles by Rees and Wackernagel are based on peer-reviewed studies in journals like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They aren't opinion papers at all, but based on empirical research. Methinks boy you need to get to an academic library fast and do some reading, instead of blathering on about lack of empirical evidence. In coming posts, I will give you a list. Rees and Wackernagel's book is full of cited references, but you will probably ignore them anyway.
Second, you reveal a brazen ignorance of the way in which the world works. As I have said a million times, there is plenty of empirical evidence that humans are depleting natural capital through overconsumption. The fact that we are losing biodiversity at 1,000-2,000 times the natural background rate for well-studied vertebrate groups is clear evidence, as is research detailing the continued overpumping of aquifers (check out the rates of overpumping of the Oglalla aquifer, for example) and of the fact that agricultural soils, which take thousands of years to be generated are being exahusted in decades. Lots of evidence there, if you bother to get off your backside and go to the library and look through the web of science instead of sitting atop a pedestal of ignorance and claiming that it ain't so with no evidence whatsoever.
I would be very interested to know what kind of professional line you are in. Certainly not a scientific field. That is patently obvious. But do you honestly think that many of those living high off the hog today give a damn about what will happen in 50 or 100 years? They are too busy wallowing in contemporary excess to care less about it. They are also in collective denial - hence their refusal to accept humanity as a global force that is simplifying natural systems at an astonishing rate. Most worrying or all is that these systems generate a range of conditions that in the words of senior scientist Simon Levin at Princeton permit our existence - they do not exist by virtue of doing so. No, our existence hinges on a a critical range of ecological services that emerge over variable spatial and temporal scales as a function of the biological processes of communities and ecosystems. But since I suspect that you have never so much heard of an ecosystem service then I am probably wasting my breath.
Skev, if you want to discuss science with me, prepare to learn something, but do not blindly dismiss what you do not understand.
Skev,
This is just for starters (a few eco-footprint studies - there are hundreds more that track the overshoot of the material economy). If you want references that deal explicitly with loss of biodiversity, overuse of water and soil, I'll be happy to oblige.
By the way, ALL of these natural resources are renewable is used sustainably (I suspect that you were referring to water). But based on current levels of human overconsumption, all three are in rapid decline. Thus, humans are living off a one-time inheritance of natural capital instead of on income. The Living Planet Index of the U.N. and World Bank (initiated in 1970 with an index of 100.0) based on the health of coastal marine, inland freshwater and forest ecosystems reported by 1998 a 30% decline on average of all three indicators (by 1998 the index had dropped below 70% and it continues to fall).
This is proof enough that we are eating into the account of the natural economy to support vast amounts of overconsumption in the developed world. The Iraq conflict is just part of a wider pattern of resource wars that will emerge as we continue to drain the natural economy to support the material economy. Another example from many: eleven of the world's fiftenn major fishing grounds are on the verge of collapse because of overharvesting. Historically, local populations had to make do on the local resource base or else face societal collapse. Now, thanks to improved technologies, Homo sapiens is a global force and we can move to new areas when resources in old ones have been depleted. But the planet is finite - Earthlike planet's are hard to find these days. In the current bloated, hair-trigger economy, globalization allows conglomerates to move around in search of desperately needed capital. Hence why 'free trade' is the credo of corrupt western financial institutions. Protectionism - in the name of protecting local markets, human populations and the environment - is the big enemy of free trade. As humans are currently co-opting more then 40% of net primary production, and 50% of freshwater flows, increased population and per capita consumption is going to drive these figures up, leaving less for nature. And humans will sadly lose more in the process.
Here are the references:
Exploring past and future changes in the ecological footprint for world regions van Vuuren DP, Bouwman LF
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS 52 (1): 43-62
Historical accountability and cumulative impacts: the treatment of time in corporate sustainability reporting
Lenzen M, Dey CJ, Murray SA
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS 51 (3-4): 237-250
Tracking the anthropogenic drivers of ecological impacts
Rosa EA, York R, Dietz T. AMBIO 33 (8): 509-512
Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy. Wackernagel M, Schulz NB, Deumling D, Linares AC, Jenkins M, Kapos V, Monfreda C, Loh J, Myers N, Norgaard R, Randers J. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 99 (14): 9266-9271
Hi Jeff,
Sorry for the delay in replying, I've been on the other side of the country for a few days for my brother's wedding. You said:
I wasn't suggesting that they were opinion papers, nor that they were unscientific. Where did you get that? I was complaining about your lack of links to external pages. WEB pages. Are you seriously suggesting that there is NOTHING online that supports your views outside of places like zmag etc? I'm a busy guy having a chat with someone online that is trying to convince me of something, yet that person won't link to anything but fringe online publications or irrelevent science papers.
Why do I say your science references are irrelevant? Because the things you say that I strongly disagree with are your political "analyses" such as (to pick one example):
Can you find a peer-reviewed science publication that supports this view? No? I thought not. Your repeated attempts to sidetrack the issue to areas that are not relevant (areas that, incidentally, we may even agree on, such as resource depletion) are no longer amusing. Do you not even remember my first few comments? Scroll up if you care to.
Hmm, it occurs to me that maybe the reason you never link to anything isn't so much because there are no links out there, but because you don't know how to insert a clickable link into a comment. After all, it took a while for you to master the art of the paragraph! :-) If so, I suggest you go Googling for some introductory HTML tutorials, after all, a "scientific" guy like you should pick up the basics of HTML in no time. You then said:
This sentence is a straw man (I complained that YOU didn't have any linked data, not that it didn't exist) combined with mild ad hominem ("boy", "blathering"). Boring. And beneath you.
As stated, I was complaining about the lack of links in your posts. Look, I'm a busy guy with better things to do than go to libraries to look up stuff I never disputed with you in the first place.
I'm not looking for links to academic articles about species vanishing, I want you to back up your political assertions. Instead you twist and squirm around like a... twisty... squirmy... thing. :-)
Actually I DON'T want to discuss science with you. I want to discuss politics. What followed in the rest of your posts was more of the same - several appeals to authority, more attacks on straw men, and various vague insults, all in an attempt to prove points that were not in dispute here (that we are consuming too much), while avoiding the points that I actually stated disagreement on. Try again, and pay attention next time. The closest you get to the conversation I'd LIKE to have is this:
THIS is your non sequitur. How does one (overconsumption) lead you to the other (Iraq is part of "resource wars")? I'm not interested in disputing the science right now, I'll accept (for argument's sake) all the claims of all the mainstream science community on resources and the environment (while recognising that there is diversity of opinion within the scientific community). But how do you get from this to your (frankly, slightly nutty) political opinions?
You're confusing outcomes with intent. No? Then back up your claims.
All the best,
Skev
Hi Skev,
Busy this week but will get back to you.
Jeff
No doubt you read the report carefully yourself, with a critical eye. I did.
This kind of study where a random location is chosen, but where interviewers select the '30 nearest houses' is wildly open to investigator bias.
Excluding Fallujah (where the location wasn't even randomly selected to begin with), excess deaths from violent causes totals 21. They visited 988 households. No doubt neighbours mentioned nearby houses where people were killed.
If non-random selection of 'nearest houses' played a role just 1 in 40 of cases, there would be no increase in the violent death rate.
In fact, it so strains credibility that the violent death rate in Fallujah was almost 100x worse then anywhere else (per capita) that the authors felt compelled to write:
"This presents the potential of subconscious or other forces influencing the selection of the starting point."
I think that this consideration likely applies to other non-random aspects of the methodology as well.
No doubt you read the report carefully yourself, with a critical eye. I did.
This kind of study where a random location is chosen, but where interviewers select the '30 nearest houses' is wildly open to investigator bias.
Excluding Fallujah (where the location wasn't even randomly selected to begin with), excess deaths from violent causes totals 21. They visited 988 households. No doubt neighbours mentioned nearby houses where people were killed.
If non-random selection of 'nearest houses' played a role just 1 in 40 of cases, there would be no increase in the violent death rate.
In fact, it so strains credibility that the violent death rate in Fallujah was almost 100x worse then anywhere else (per capita) that the authors felt compelled to write:
"This presents the potential of subconscious or other forces influencing the selection of the starting point."
I think that this consideration likely applies to other non-random aspects of the methodology as well.
No doubt you read the report carefully yourself, with a critical eye. I did.
This kind of study where a random location is chosen, but where interviewers select the '30 nearest houses' is wildly open to investigator bias.
Excluding Fallujah (where the location wasn't even randomly selected to begin with), excess deaths from violent causes totals 21. They visited 988 households. No doubt neighbours mentioned nearby houses where people were killed.
If non-random selection of 'nearest houses' played a role just 1 in 40 of cases, there would be no increase in the violent death rate.
In fact, it so strains credibility that the violent death rate in Fallujah was almost 100x worse then anywhere else (per capita) that the authors felt compelled to write:
"This presents the potential of subconscious or other forces influencing the selection of the starting point."
I think that this consideration likely applies to other non-random aspects of the methodology as well.