I noticed that online ad revenues are up, so it’s going to be a big deal. Washington Post has more registered internet readers than hard copy subscibers.

On another note, the London Times went back online for free. I think it finally dawned on them that they were killing themselves by stopping traffic to potentially millions of readers. It’s a good UK online paper. Link at Drudge.

Thanks.

I’ve heard an unbelievable number of bad arguments from the anti-war crowd/crowds. Often the arguments presuppose a set of criteria or presuppositions that are just wrong, e.g., that war is always immoral. The 100,000 figure represents another kind of bad argument via vilification. I just hope that the public is discerning enough to know that. But, as P.T. Barnum said. . . .

A.

A point I forgot to make last night (it was late, I was high on an Eagles victory), the 33 clusters in the Lancet study did not cover all of Iraq. They were the 33 areas they looked at, and were based on similar demographics (# of households, mostly).
And I forgot to make the point, that a study like this, esp when using the numbers from Fajulah, is bound to give an impossible result.
Imagine if you did a similar study in the US that used Washington DC or Baltimore to estimate the number of murders. Even if you toss in other clusters with 0-1 per capita murders, the overall picture of America would make Iraq look like a resort.
Wait, maybe that’s where Moore, Penn et al got the idea that Iraq was a paradise…

Wuzzy is right, not only about the Lancet study, but also about the attempt to minimize civilian casualties.

Here’s another way of putting the last point: “hardliners” are probably grumbling right now because the new style of warfare practised in Iraq is too, shall we say, “politically correct”!

That’s why, Gary, your use of the word “slaughter” in your last post is, well, loaded. “Slaughter” implies deliberate killing, i.e., murder. And that’s just not what is happening. And it’s what would have to be happening—and on a huge scale that couldn’t fail to be noticed—if the 100,000 figure were true.

Look, no one wants innocent civilians to die. Even 1 is too many. But there’s a big moral difference between innocent civilians—and not 100,000!—being killed by accident and innocent civilians being killed on purpose (and as a matter of policy to boot). You may be opposed to the invasion of Iraq, but your opposition will carry little moral weight if you can’t acknowledge a huge moral difference like this.

Good debaters know how to give credit where credit is due.

Adrian

I appreciate all your feedback. I do listen and try to have an open mind about the war. I actually am learning from all of you. I do agree that the Lancet Report is probably flawed and biased. I now think the 100,000 is on the high end as well. I still think we would all be very surprised, perhaps even shocked, if we new the exact number of innocent Iraqi casualties. I am predicting the number is still high. In my heart, I will always believe the government continues to disrespect the Iraqi civilians that have been innocently slaughtered by the U.S.-led invasion. “The Pentagon said on Monday that it has no plans to determine how many Iraqi civilians may have been killed or injured or suffered property damage as a result of U.S. military operations in Iraq. Historically, the Petnagon hasn’t attempted to count civilian casualties and loses resulting from U.S. military action.” (Gulf News)

When a study uses poor methodology, which was my point about anecdotal evidence through interviews, the results are suspect even before they are analyzed. So just because a “study” is generated by some group does not mean that it is worth repeating. Many factors can influence the results, and building a good statistical universe is essential to minimizing these influences. While I have not reviewed the study myself, others who are familiar with statistical processes have, and have found the methodology wanting, therefore it really should not be used in an argument about consequences.

You said:
“Why do the Republicans manage to politicize any frank discussion of the war. This means that if I were to say, “a study concluded an extra 100,000 deaths have occurred in Iraq since the invasion” people would hear that as a political attack on the President, rather than as a simple statement of fact.
However, you also said, in the original post that I responded to:
“Actus, I agree with you. I have to wonder if the response of invasion in Iraq is proportionate given what we know now.”, and then proceeded to lay out this study as an argument against it. You likened it to multiple 9/11s. You pointed out that Australian lawyers “call this reckless murder”. This looks, whether it was intended this way or not, to be an attack, not a “frank discussion”.

However, I frankly did not take it as a political attack on Pres. Bush specifically, but I did feel it was an unjust assessment of the policies there, because the analysis of whether it was a just cause was too simplistic, with too narrow a scope and not near enough depth. Of course, that’s hard to do here, especially when it’s not our blog.

2)”33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002.”
Self reporting is the least reliable type, espescialy in less than free cultures. An attempt was made to match information gathered to death certificates, but the study doesn’t say how many were verified. I wonder why that was…
The study recorded 142 post-invasion deaths total. 73 from violence. Of that # 52 were in Falluja. So… 21 deaths happened in the other 14 clusters. That averages 1.5 deaths per cluster. With this method of gathering samples it only takes one or two fake reports to majorly blur study.
Then the authors admit:
“We suspect that a random sample of 33 Iraqi locations is likely to encounter one or a couple of particularly devastated areas. Nonetheless, since 52 of 73 (71%) violent deaths and 53 of 142 (37%) deaths during the conflict occurred in one cluster, it is possible that by extraordinary chance, the survey mortality estimate has been skewed upward. ”
Stop the presses! The violence is Iraq (or any way) isn’t spread out evenly? And that also means that statistical extrapolation is absolutely USELESS for this kind of analysis.
Then the authors admit this regarding children…
“Removing half the increase in infant deaths and the Falluja data still produces a 37% increase in estimated mortality.”
Odd, that put their numbers at twice the high end of most other studies.
3) The lead author is an opponent of the war and submitted the study to the Lancet on condition that it be published before the election.

Now, they study itself claims: “We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.”
Those numbers in the paren? That means they are 95% certain that the actual number falls between those two extremes. The exit polls had a better CI spread than that!

is it 30, or is it 40? If there are 17 white men, then that is a majority of 30 but a minority of 40, ya know? Unless he is claiming that he has fewer than 15 white male “top editors”… in which case, why not just state the number? The rather desperate attempt at ambiguity suggests not only that he isn’t confident his estimate will turn out to be true, but that he really hasn’t even THOUGHT about it! But he can’t admit to not having thought about it, because after all, diversity is the MOST IMPORTANT attribute of an editorial staff… not experience, not credentials, not qualifications…

AAAAAAAAUUUUUGGHHH!!!

Adrian

A cover-up is a deliberate attempt to hide some embarrassing fact. I’m not sure that “not keeping track” fits that definition. Perhaps it’s not physically possible.

I’m still not convinced about the 100,000 figure. 100,000 seems disproportionately big—unless the coalition has been systematically killing innocent civilians or being careless on a scale too massive not to have been noticed from day one.

Yes, even 8,000 dead are too many. But 8,000 is better than 100,000 in this respect: it suggests that the coalition forces haven’t been systematically killing innocents or being careless on a massive scale.

It seems to me that one can have good grounds for thinking that the invasion of Iraq was immoral without having to find any extra immorality in the prosecution of the war. If one is going to mount a case against the Iraq invasion, one ought to do it soberly and without exaggeration.

I agree, of course, that, even supposing it was right to invade Iraq in the first place, the systematic deliberate slaughter of civilians or widespread unnecessary recklessness with their lives would be sufficient to make the prosecution of the war immoral. But I’m just not sure that that’s really what’s going on here.

Adrian

When we trust our leader to take us to war, we’re also trusting that our institutions of war will do their best under pre-established guidelines. Yes mistakes will be made, but such is the fog of war. Once we’re comitted, we have to stick it out to the end. To waver over body counts, especially over the enemy & collateral damage only compounds the danger to us. “Don’t tread on us”.

The notion that 100,000 died as a result of our actions is hard to swallow. But we’ll see in a few years. In the meantime, soldier on.