Take a look at this:
It makes the logical part of my brain cry. It’s like they figured out the most complicated way to pervert statistics to give them the numbers they want.
You find that methodology to be complicated?
Of course, since these numbers are given by ‘Iraqi authorities’ to western news outlets, they are worth less then shit.
In a few years, Iraq will a free(er) press. Then we can believe Iraqi press releases. Until then, I want to see independent verification.
According to her, she included the 30,000 Kurds and Shiites murdered by Saddam after the war. It looks like to me that she was deliberately overestimating.
No. She had to make an estimate of the Iraqi population since the 1987 census. In doing so, she took the 30,000 Kurds and Shi’ites into account, but she did NOT present them as casualties of the Gulf War.
Bolding mine. Estimating the war casualties was part of the excersise, as was estimating the casualties of the resulting rebellions. She did NOT present them as a cumulative number.
Bolding mine.
Yes. So?
My point was, Libertarian, that the US fired a federal employee because her estimate was “too high” for their moral conscience. The official figure, accompanied with basically “we’re just taking a wild stab at it”, prevailed over the numbers from someone who actually did some fucking research. This means that while finding “independant data” is going to be hard enough, I see no reason to exclude possibly overstated Iraqi figures, especially if we have to take “official” (historically underestimated, as per Gulf War 1.0) US estimates into account as well.
Oh, well, I agree with you there. I certainly trust nothing that the US government says. Meanwhile, my opinion is that the person who most wants extensive civilian deaths — and will likely do all he can to faciliate exactly that — is Saddam Hussein.
“Gulf War 1.0” is a great line.
Are we now at v1.1 or is this a whole new release - Gulf War 2.0?
Depends on whether or not Saddam has any “bugs.”