Despite the Lancet article from last year in which a death toll of as much as 100,000 was advanced based on one particular (and disputed) statistical sampling method, no agency who is counting actual reported deaths has yet reached 50,000.
Side note:
Both Scott Plaid and Shodan have reached an agreement in a separate thread for a separate purpose that neither will post assertions in Great Debates until around 3:30 p.m. EDT (8:30 PM. UTZ?) on Monday, July 11. (They are permitted to post questions, but they are forbidden from responding to questions posed to them.)
Therefore, their absence from this thread (and this Forum) for the next week should not be laid to either an inability or a lack of desirre to respond.
See? It’s all about what you choose to put in bold face and large type. I noticed you were very selective about what you chose to highlight. How about posting my message again, this time only highlighting the bad stuff? It might look a little different, Mr. honesty-in-quoting.
I don’t know why I said that if chemical weapons were used the number would still be below 1000, since I just finished saying urban combat could put the casualties into the ‘low thousands’. BTW, the whole point of this was that I supported the war even though I thought the casualty count could be even higher than it is today, and that quote shows that to be true - especially if you go read other threads where I say that I thought the chance of a ‘fortress Baghdad’ scenario was actually quite high and could become very ugly.
In fact, just for yucks let’s quote my message again in Mr. Svinlesha dishonst style, only this time highlighting the bad stuff:
Gee, it’s amazing what a little selective bolding will do.
Feh, I made the prediction that this was going to end like North Ireland vs IRA in the worst of times of that conflict. The administration however helped to expect worse things to happen when they said that their template for Iraq was EL Salvador. Now we have this prediction if we follow that path:
In El Salvador, out of 5,000,000 people the civil war left 75,000 people dead, 8,000 missing, and nearly one million in exile. (take into account that the truth commission found that almost 90 percent of the dead was the responsibility of army and paramilitary dead squads.)
So what do we have if “The El Salvador plan” is used in Iaq?
Iraq: out of 22,000,000 people, in the end we will have 330,000 dead, 35200 missing and 4.4 million in exile.
The pieces are now being put in place: A cleptocracy (hello Mr. Chalabi!), American companies in control and dead squads coming up:
Hey, when that is going to be your acceptable level of success, then sure, we have a chance to succeed!
BTW I am not naive to ignore that currently the Al-qeda faction of the insurrection has to be taken apart, but I don’t think this is the only element of the revel forces, eventually ethnic and politics will be the biggest part of the repression to come.
But this never happened, so your ass is still hanging out, vis a vis your prediction of only 500 American dead. Try a larger font; maybe that will disguise your woeful record of post-war predictions.
No, it never happened. I never claimed to be clairvoyant. The point is that I supported the war even though I thought that might happen. And because I thought Iraq had WMD, I thought there was a good chance they might be used.
And by the way, I strongly lobbied my own government to join the war.
Sure. They have been worse than some advocates hoped for, and not as bad as some opponents feared.
Pre-war, some were suggesting that US troops would be gassed, that Saddam would level Tel Aviv, that women and children would rise up in that streets of Baghdad, there would be a refugee crisis, civil war, starvation, etc. As things went along, the disaster was postponed to when Baghdad became Stalingrad, when Tikrit, then Nasariyah, then Fallujah was going to be an intractable nightmare, when the elections were going to be made impossible by widespread violence …
Not that those were unreasonable possibilities to consider; certainly I did at the time. But my point is, neither side has been wholly correct in it’s predictions. Cherry-picking a few erroneous predictions that were made by one side (and by individuals that had the integrity to make themselves vulnerable to second guessing) as if that unassailably proved one’s own rightness is rather weak debating form.
Sorry no more, but I’m leaving town in a few hours. I’ll try to check back when I return.
But please note my point here. The fact that some of the pessimistic fears did not play out does NOT mean those fears were unwarranted; and indeed, they still could happen. Playing the game of “You predicted A, it didn’t happen, therefore you’re wrong about everything” is childish – and that goes both ways.
”Mr. honesty-quoting-in?” Ooooh, Sam – I love it when you talk dirty to me.
Seriously, though, this has to be one of the lamest replies you’ve ever posted to me, Sam. You entered this thread to ridiculously assert that, prior to the war, you sternly warned others that “… the U.S. had better be prepared to spend years or decades in Iraq,” and to express your contempt for those who now, after a few thousand casualties, have begun to question the wisdom of the invasion. You would have the reader believe that you, at least, were fully aware of the risks involved in the war, that you were fully prepared allow others to bear those risks (and how very generous of you, by the way), and that you even warned everyone else of these dangers prior to the invasion.
Yet you did not. Sure, you thought there was a distant possibility that the US might loose up to a thousand troops, but your honest estimate was really about 500. In your post you claim, ”Before the war I said that I thought that the war itself would result in maybe 500 U.S. casualties, but a ‘Fortress Baghdad’ scenario could result in thousands of American soldiers killed, and if Saddam used WMD, the toll could be even higher.” In fact, you thought no such thing: you estimated that at most the US would lose 1000 troops, “probably less,” and that only if Iraq employed chemical weapons against US forces. Anyone with two eyes in his can read this quite plainly in your pre-war post.
You thought the actual fighting would be over in about 2 weeks, and a “Japanese-style occupation” would last a year or two – ”Maybe much less, but not more.” We search in vain for your stern, pre-invasion warning that the US should be prepared to spend years, maybe decades, in Iraq. No: you bought the administration’s rosy-eyed version hook, line, and sinker. You don’t get to go back now and pretend like you warned us then this might happen all along.
As for what I chose to format in bold in your post, as if that somehow “twists” the plain meaning of what you wrote: I simply put in bold those passages which I felt were relevant to the point I was making – which, by the way, has nothing whatsoever to do with your clairvoyance, and everything to do with your demonstrated lack of anything resembling integrity. The contrast between your opening statement above:
…and what you really said cannot, in my opinion, be more telling. The accusation that by bolding certain sections of your text I misconstrued your plain meaning is too ludicrous to require further comment.
Allow me to help you figure this paradox out. You said that because, as usual, you don’t what the fuck you’re talking about, and prefer bullshit to matters of weighted fact.
This is a very nice attempt at a reversal, Mr. Stone, but what does “very ugly” mean, exactly? In other words, put up or shut up: either provide quotes – more than one, by the way – in which you claim US casualties could number in the thousands, and that the US should be prepared for a decades-long occupation of the country, or retract the gratuitous revisions you’ve posted in this thread. furt:
Excuse me?
I’m not concerned with the erroneous predictions in Sam’s post; were that my beef, I’d have been forced to set virtually the entire thing in bold. Rather, I’m concerned with Sam’s gratuitous misrepresentation (in this thread) of the dire warnings he allegedly posted prior to the invasion (in other threads).
Agreed. Bricker:
I cannot honestly say that, after my experiences on this board, I view the other side as reasonable a priori. The only thing I can promise is that I’ll do my best to acknowledge reasonable arguments from the other side when I see them, and weigh them accordingly as I work towards what I hope to be the correct conclusion.
It seems to me, reading your prediction post, that you clearly meant that the “war” would be quick, with little or no resistance, and the after-war occupation would be minimal and relatively peaceful. Now, it seems to me you are trying to weasel out of your predictions by saying that “urban warfare” somehow includes the almost daily insurgent attacks in all of Iraq. Am I missing something?