Well, you yourself pointed out one problem in post #13. To the extent that people argue about the validity of the numbers, then we’re missing the real issue (why did we get into this war), and there seem to be a lot of questions about this type of analysis (per the CNN story linked to above). To the extent that it does get people to discuss why we got into this war, then I’m all for it.
If it were me, I’d just say that estimates vary between 50k and 500k. We really don’t know, but either number is too high. Way too high. But then it comes down to whether you think the war was good policy. If you did, then maybe the number isn’t too high. If it was bad policy, which I think it was, then any number is too high.
Didn’t they try to shift blame in the Foley thing too by whining about the timing of the revelation? Boy, that’s mighty pathetic when your best defense is complaining about when you get caught.
Zoe’s post above says the study cites a figure of roughly 30% being directly due to coalition forces, vs. terrorist or sectarian violence.
Since I don’t in any way believe our troops are driving around indiscriminately killing people, in some sense the breakdown of who killed how many isn’t as important to me as the total. If you start a bunch of fires that get out of hand and cause a massive forest fire, your initial fuckup caused all the deaths even if you only directly burned down three buildings yourself.
Should we add in the ones killed by Iraqis on behalf of US forces? What about the Pro US Iraqi forces killed by insurgents? Which tally do you want them in? I mean ten thousand dead bodies here, ten thousand dead bodies there, after a while you’re talkin’ a big heap of dead bodies!
We want George II to get credit for all the bodies that should be tallied up on his list! When the glorious tale of America’s Righteous War Heroes of the Grand War in Iraq, version 2.0 is celebrated in the future, we want full credit for great things to be given.
Shouldn’t we add in at least some of the bodies from Afghanistan? I mean they are part of the entire Holy War on Terror, right?
The only thing that pushes my skeptical buttons is the sheer enormity Twice or even three times wrong, well, fog of war and all that. But an order of magnitude? Times two? Boggle. The same issues apply to questions of methadology and reliability, which I will not pretend to understand. (I tried to read a book on statistical analyses once and damn near slipped into a coma.) I’m going to have to assume that the authors of the studies are mathematically sophisticated enough not to misplace a decimal place. Kinda thing could really poochfuck your academic career.
So what’s left? A campaign of deceit on the part of the respondents? Seems like that could only mean that they are lying because they hate us, which might be good news humanity wise, but bad scoobies geo-political wise.
And if there are methodology flaws, is there any chance that such a flaw could be an order of magnitude? Math moron that I am, I doubt I could do it myself, never mind fellows who have some smattering of aptitude.
Bush continues talking like we are in WWII and he does not bother to tell his base that they need to sacrifice too (no taxes to beat the axis). Bush himself godwinized the discussion on Iraq when he implies that the people who opposes him on the Iraq war would not have sacrificed to defeat the Nazis.
Anyhow, regarding the OP I mentioned on that thread this:
That number, 330,000, was my estimate based on the ratio of people killed in El Salvador, since the administration clearly is applying the “El Salvador option” in Iraq, the result was grimly expected.
I just did not expect it was going to be much worse.
And this is only half over if **Squink ** is correct.
What? 600,000 people have died in Iraq since the war ? Whats that , about 200,000 per year? Well that appears to be a slight decline in the Iraqi death rate since the days before the US invasion.
During the first 6 years of the Clinton adminisration, 1.4 million Iraqis died That included 560,000 children under the age of 5.
Incidentally, because of the deterioration of the health care system in Iraq, I saw reports of medical people saying the number of people dying for health reasons alone is worse now than before the war.
Dutch, you lovable goof, according to your cite that estimate covered the 6.5 years between March 1991 and November 1997, which included the immediate aftermath of the first Gulf War and the subsequent airstrikes. The Clinton administration began in January 1993, nearly two years after the start of that period.
Moreover, since we’re chewing over methodology issues, it’s worth pointing out that the “half-million kids killed by sanctions” figure has been seriously disputed. A 2001 article in The Nation, no fan of US policy regarding Iraq, had this to say:
Actually, if you’ve studied Sampling Theory, the size is fine. (It is always surprising what a small sample works.) The trick is to avoid bias in your sample. The thing that impressed me about the study, from the report in the Times, is how they tried to avoid Baghdad bias - ie counting the easy to reach casualties near the reporters and the green zone. They report that the casualty rate is actually higher in some provinces outside.
Counting by media report is useless - what media is out there, and if the insurgents have a strong presence in a town, what paper is going to report who they blew up?
IIRC, the study indicated that the percentage of deaths from Coalition forces has been going down, but I don’t know if that is from fewer killings by them or from more by the insurgents (or both.)
I took a Statistics class in college (it was a requirement for all journalism majors; laugh about that if you want), but I don’t remember a lot of it. How confident are they, statistically, with the sample they have?
