:: Dejectedly takes plaque off wall, tosses it in trash can::
Shodan, you seem to think I’m arguing something I’m not.
This is EXACTLY what I’m arguing.
Imagine a voter, Samantha Jones. Sam is a staunch Catholic–pro social justice, anti death penalty, mostly antiwar. But she’s also extremely anti-abortion, and considers that the single overriding issue.
She disagrees with Bush on just about everything EXCEPT for abortion. But the abortion issue is so important to her that, based on his and Kerry’s stated positions, she votes for Bush.
This article suggests that she’s not acting reasonably, because Bush does not appear to be having a substantive effect on the number of abortions performed. As you said, if the abortion rate is independent of who is president, then it is not a reason to vote for Bush, for Kerry, against Bush, or against Kerry.
She needs to set that issue aside and start looking at other issues.
That is the start and finish of my argument.
Whether the OP is stupid is another question entirely. I’m not here to defend the OP; I’m just here to suggest that the cited article raises an interesting issue for those single-issue voters whose issue is abortion. Namely, they need to get out more.
Daniel
[QUOTE]
There are natural acts with rubber chickens? Or Ann Coulter, for that matter.
I found this thread while searching to see if someone had already posted about the Johns Hopkins report. I, too, am stunned by the numbers.
We have killed 100,000 people that we went to liberate. Most of them are women and children who died violently. That is in addition to the normal death rate for that period.
That is like 33 World Trade Centers in an 18 month period.
Are there really people at SDMB who find that laughable? I don’t give a damn what your politics are on Tuesday. What kind of human being are you?
First the study is wrong, then if it turns out that maybe it’s right, then that’s not important. Look at this rubber chicken instead!
Again: like has been said: if abortion rates go down under Democrats (Clinton) and up under Republicans (Bush) this doesn’t establish a link… but that is precisely the problem. Then what’s the point of voting for Republicans on the abortion issue?
The whole Partial Birth sham pretty much showed their unwillingness to actually pass meaningful anti-abortion legislation when they had the chance.
And just because correlation doesn’t prove causation doesn’t mean causation cannot be proven. Most experts on abortion rates have suggested that there ARE relevant policy factors that affect those rates, and that reasonable explanations can be given for WHY as well, although proving those cases is much harder, but they are at least plausible: sex education and good family planning services drives down the rate of unwanted pregnancies for obvious reasons. So a good social safety net gives expectant mothers more hope that they can support their children (which is perhaps an argument AGAINST a social safety net!). Lower unemployment also means less abortions, probably both because of the hope factor and the destitution desperation recklessness factors. All of these things, arguably, are things that Democrats are better at than Republicans. So, barring any serious attempt to stop abortions, it’s at least plausible that Democrats are better for lowering abortions when it comes to results.
Of course, I doubt there is much effect at all, since most of these chains of effect are several times removed. But it’s not impluasible either, and certainly no one has demonstrated any good reason to think that Bush is worth voting for because he has ever saved what would have otherwise been aborted lives.
And of course, while John Kerry has never actually encouraged someone to get an abortion, Bush has personally lent his signature to death warrants and made little attempt to curb or speak out about the pratice other than to endorse it (in fact, he seemed pretty eager to sign a record amount of them). Can’t see how Bush is the better Catholic here. 
I’m going to be perveiced as indulging in America bashing, but…honestly, what do your medias show you? Every other day at least, on the evening news, I watch bodies being removed from building destroyed during an american attack in Irak, with of course long shots of the children’s corpses.
Or am I being whooshed?
A Bush-voting Republican, apparently.
A President who deliberately lies in order to start a war against a nation that posed no threat to us does not represent me in any way, shape, or form.
Um, sometimes they show us some smoke? Also, Julia Roberts is pregnant!
No, see, that’s the thing. You aren’t being whooshed. NONE of that is shown on American TV. You might see long shots of body-like things every now and then, and maybe an slightly injured person once in a blue moon, but to the average American, American and Iraqi deaths are some abstract number that means nothing because they’re not seeing it. American media isn’t even allowed to show returning COFFINS of dead soldiers.
This administration remembers well that during the Vietnam war there were bodies and injured soldiers shown every night on the nightly news, and that helped fuel the anti-war movement. They’re not making that mistake again, and the media just goes along with it. There’s no such thing as a “liberal media bias” in America, but the right-wingers like to call up that boogie-man whenever someone on TV happens to tell the truth. It does happen, though that never includes pictures of what’s really going on. I’ve had cause to be home all day, and have had the TV on (CNN and MSNBC) and the John Hopkins story was only mentioned once, on MSNBC. I hardly ever watch TV news, so it was a shock to see how negative stories are spun and minimised.
Anyone can see pictures of dead and wounded soldiers and Iraqis on the Internet, but whenever I’ve linked to pictures (with warnings) I’m the one blasted and scorned, and the links are derided and dismissed.
The media shows us nothing. Almost nobody in America knows how many people we are killing, or who we are killing.
Almost nobody has seen any of it, the devastation, the coffins of soldiers - indeed, the government actually refuses to let the public see these things.
I’m serious. Almost nobody knows about any of it. Why do you think Bush still has so much support?
It is considered exploitative and in poor taste in our culture to show such pictures on the news and you all know it. We don’t like to look at pictures of dead children or soldiers because we think it’s quite disrespectful to the dead.
Besides, every news program shows pictures of dead soldiers–as they really were, either their enrollment or pictures supplied by the family–as they should be. I just watched CNN and they had a roll call of the dead, as they do on all network and cable news shows, with their names, hometowns, and how and when they died. I don’t need to see their twisted dead bodies and am frankly quite puzzled, to put it mildly, at those who want to.
As for 100,000 people, well, since Arabs for the most part have no notion of a free and accurate press and their own national news is a steady diet of hysterical propaganda, I have always reduced any such figures in my own mind by 75% or more. As the years go by, the numbers quietly reduce themselves closer to my figure.
Which is, IMO, stupid. If we as a nation are willing to sow the seeds of war, we as a nation had damn well better have the nerve to see exactly what it is we’ve reaped. Anything less is cowardice.
If you think “shock and awe” is a kewl thing, you better have the stomach to see the eight-year-old kid who got shocked and awed into a bloody corpse.
I’d wager the typical Arab has a better idea of the reality in Iraq than any sheltered, self-censoring coward in America does. At least they know the news they get is propaganda, unlike (say) the typical Fox News viewer…
I agree with everything you say to Mehitabel.
It’s hard to realize that Nick Ut’s famous, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Kim Phuc in Vietnam would never have seen the light of day if today’s atmosphere were in place back then.
In cases like this, it’s disrespectful to them to treat them as non-entities. Out of Sight, Out of Mind, and Americans can sleep at night not knowing the horror that’s being perpetrated in their names, with their tax dollars.
Just the fact that you can be so calm and dismissive means that you need to see them. I don’t want to see them, but at least I know about them. Not that I’ve seen them all, but the ones I have seen, I’ve cried and mourned the people in them.
There are some photos that every mother in America should see. Bush’s “security mom” vote would plummet to near zero.
shakes head sadly The number is going to be far higher. Falluja wasn’t even counted in that estimate.
And as the months go by, some quietly lie to themselves about the blood of babies soaking into the ground.
You couldn’t even read the article? If you had read it, you would have seen that the figures did not come from an Arab news source. The study was a joint effort by Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and a University in Baghdad. (I assume that you are not as dismissive of Arab university researchers.) Those responsible for the research indicate that the figures are based on samplings and that the figures may be revised later, but should be reasonably accurate. Standard research procedures were followed.
In 1972 I travelled in Europe and saw the most horrible images on television one night. I asked a European what that was about. He said, “That is about what the Americans are doing in Vietnam.” Even though there were images that we did see on our broadcasts, I had seen nothing like that. It was the reality of war. It makes a difference.
Who are these people who would wear blinders and cover their ears. They don’t want to know the truth.
Really? The media doesn’t actually show film that’s commonplace on all mainstream UK news programmes?
We also don’t show bare boobies. But it’s all available to those who want to seek it out. As are places where people who have a weird need to see dead babies can go.
I feel sorry for the children, although I think the lives of the vast majority of them will be much better than they would have been in the Quday Hussein regime, for example. But if the insurgents were not cowards who use them as human shields, they would be OK. The Iraqi people are a lot more primitive and backwards than we were led to believe and will kidnap aid workers trying to help them rather than let a sewer plant be built.
They and their children are paying the price.
The methodology of the Lancet’s estimate did not rely on the press (original article - requires free registration):
So there may have been some exaggeration, but it would have had to be extremely consistent.
I just don’t know. You knock on the door of a Fallujan. They say “Oh yes, my next-door neighbor, his wife, and ten children were killed”, which might or might not be true. But supposed said neighbor had three insurgents in the basement who were also killed and were the reason there was an airstrike in the first place? Would the neighbor know about them to begin with? Even if he did, would he confess that the neighborhood has terrorists in it to the authorities, even if it’s a nice friendly doctor?
Well with brainless morans like this wanker in the US army and actions like this * I can well imagine how that figure could be reached.
- BTW on Ch4 news(UK channel) they had an interview with the doctor who dealt with the poor bastards who managed to survive that attack. All civilian with women and children in the mix. They were trying to escape from the area due to heavy US bombardment.
Sounds a bit like wishful thinking, Mehitabel. Remember, many of the people interviewed would be pro-invasion, and would have reason to under-report household deaths. You should read the full report [pdf], as they were very thorough given the circumstances. Obviously there’s a margin for error, but we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of per cent differential here.