1. tfk
  2. If this is success, I don't know how they'd recognize failure

If this is success, I don't know how they'd recognize failure

By tfk on March 14, 2007.

i-62753180a13578b44ace5b0c57fe3fc6-icas0307.jpgThe Discovery Institute says:

Even with more forward operations by US troops in the past month, and even though the full complement of added US forces has not been attained yet, the number of US fatalities is down. In other words, the Surge is working.

It's true that the number of fatalities is lower, but not nearly as much lower as they seem to believe. The source they cite looks at raw numbers of fatalities from time periods of different lengths, rather than the averaged values plotted above. As you can see, this is the first month since August that falls below the linear regression line. You would get an observation this far or farther from the regression line 70% of the time, so claiming that this month's numbers represent some sort of massive change is a little silly.

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Policy and Politics

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No fair, you are using that evil Arab algebra.

Surely the DI can't be arguing that the Iraq war policy is the result of intelligent design. Or maybe they can; after all, if the human body is the result of intelligent design, the Iraq policy certainly could be, too. All we need to do is redefine "intelligent."

Creationism is just one part of the DI's brilliant plan. They are out to promote a range of conservative policies.

All we need to do is redefine "intelligent."

Like this, Mark? (O'Leary alert!) "It's a failure, but it's still a designed failure."

I guess that sums up Iraq, too.