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Title: Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit
Source:
The Independent
URL Source: http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/118356
Published: Feb 14, 2007
Author: Les Roberts
Post Date: 2007-02-14 09:58:38 by leveller
Keywords: None
Views: 36131
Comments: 457
The US and Britain have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide 14 February 2007 On both sides of the Atlantic, a process of spinning science is preventing a serious discussion about the state of affairs in Iraq. The government in Iraq claimed last month that since the 2003 invasion between 40,000 and 50,000 violent deaths have occurred. Few have pointed out the absurdity of this statement. There are three ways we know it is a gross underestimate. First, if it were true, including suicides, South Africa, Colombia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia have experienced higher violent death rates than Iraq over the past four years. If true, many North and South American cities and Sub-Saharan Africa have had a similar murder rate to that claimed in Iraq. For those of us who have been in Iraq, the suggestion that New Orleans is more violent seems simply ridiculous. Secondly, there have to be at least 120,000 and probably 140,000 deaths per year from natural causes in a country with the population of Iraq. The numerous stories we hear about overflowing morgues, the need for new cemeteries and new body collection brigades are not consistent with a 10 per cent rise in death rate above the baseline. And finally, there was a study, peer-reviewed and published in The Lancet, Europe's most prestigious medical journal, which put the death toll at 650,000 as of last July. The study, which I co-authored, was done by the standard cluster approach used by the UN to estimate mortality in dozens of countries each year. While the findings are imprecise, the lower range of possibilities suggested that the Iraq government was at least downplaying the number of dead by a factor of 10. There are several reasons why the governments involved in this conflict have been able to confuse the issue of Iraqi deaths. Our Lancet report involved sampling and statistical analysis, which is rather dry reading. Media reports always miss most deaths in times of war, so the estimate by the media-based monitoring system, http://Iraqbodycount.org (IBC) roughly corresponds with the Iraq government's figures. Repeated evaluations of deaths identified from sources independent of the press and the Ministry of Health show the IBC listing to be less than 10 per cent complete, but because it matches the reports of the governments involved, it is easily referenced. Several other estimates have placed the death toll far higher than the Iraqi government estimates, but those have received less press attention. When in 2005, a UN survey reported that 90 per cent of violent attacks in Scotland were not recorded by the police, no one, not even the police, disputed this finding. Representative surveys are the next best thing to a census for counting deaths, and nowhere but Iraq have partial tallies from morgues and hospitals been given such credence when representative survey results are available. The Pentagon will not release information about deaths induced or amounts of weaponry used in Iraq. On 9 January of this year, the embedded Fox News reporter Brit Hume went along for an air attack, and we learned that at least 25 targets were bombed that day with almost no reports of the damage appearing in the press. Saddam Hussein's surveillance network, which only captured one third of all deaths before the invasion, has certainly deteriorated even further. During last July, there were numerous televised clashes in Anbar, yet the system recorded exactly zero violent deaths from the province. The last Minister of Health to honestly assess the surveillance network, Dr Ala'din Alwan, admitted that it was not reporting from most of the country by August 2004. He was sacked months later after, among other things, reports appeared based on the limited government data suggesting that most violent deaths were associated with coalition forces. The consequences of downplaying the number of deaths in Iraq are profound for both the UK and the US. How can the Americans have a surge of troops to secure the population and promise success when the coalition cannot measure the level of security to within a factor of 10? How can the US and Britain pretend they understand the level of resentment in Iraq if they are not sure if, on average, one in 80 families have lost a household member, or one in seven, as our study suggests? If these two countries have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide, and have actively worked to mask this fact, how will they credibly be able to criticise Sudan or Zimbabwe or the next government that kills thousands of its own people? For longer than the US has been a nation, Britain has pushed us at our worst of moments to do the right thing. That time has come again with regard to Iraq. It is wrong to be the junior partner in an endeavour rigged to deny the next death induced, and to have spokespeople effectively respond to that death with disinterest and denial. Our nations' leaders are collectively expressing belligerence at a time when the populace knows they should be expressing contrition. If that cannot be corrected, Britain should end its role in this deteriorating misadventure. It is unlikely that any historians will record the occupation of Iraq in a favourable light. Britain followed the Americans into this débâcle. Wouldn't it be better to let history record that Britain led them out? The writer is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2268067.ece
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Dawggone it.............this ain't from the white house files either, but maybe it will work......its from some organization.....I've also kept the url for this--just in case. As it relates to the comments at the bottom of this article, I thought about whacking them off--but then I thought, 'oh what the hell--at least these are known entities--its not like they write some blog on the world wide web! Media Matters for America Details False Claims Made by Bush Administration Regarding Iraq's WMDs Third Anniversary of Iraq War Serves as Grim Reminder of Falsehoods that Led to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq March 17, 2006 (Washington, DC) -- March 19th will mark the third anniversary of the Iraq War. The occasion is sure to spark coverage of the false Bush administration statements about the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath of the invasion. In response to assertions by media figures, including Bill O'Reilly, that President Bush's pre-war claims had been vindicated, Media Matters for America compiled several examples of claims made by Bush regarding Iraq's weapons capability. In each of these cases, his unequivocal assertions were not only found to have been false, but determined to not have been justified by the intelligence available at the time. Iraq's aluminum tubes were intended to enrich uranium In an October 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati, Bush told his audience, "Evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." The "evidence" he went on to cite included the claim that Iraq had "attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." More than three months later, in his 2003 State of the Union address, the president repeated this claim: "Our intelligence sources tell us that he [Hussein] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." But in contrast to Bush's firm statements, the various U.S. intelligence agencies disagreed over the purpose of the aluminum tubes -- a dispute that the president was well aware of. While the CIA concluded that the tubes were suitable to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs, both Department of Energy (DOE) experts and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had dissented from this view. These agencies' position that the tubes were "poorly suited" for uranium enrichment was included in the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided to Congress in October 2002. Prior to his October 7 speech, the CIA delivered to the president a one-page summary of the NIE's findings, which noted that DOE and INR believed the tubes were "intended for conventional weapons," rather than a nuclear bomb. Despite this disagreement, he and other administration officials went on to repeatedly cite the tubes as solid evidence that Iraq's nuclear program had been revived. Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." But months earlier, the CIA had voiced serious doubts about the basis for the uranium assertion and implored administration officials not to include it in Bush's speeches. Specifically, the agency sent two memos to the White House expressing such doubts. Further, then-CIA director George J. Tenet directly asked then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley not to use the claim. INR similarly responded in the October NIE that claims of Iraq seeking to purchase nuclear material from Africa were "highly dubious." These warnings led the administration to remove a uranium reference from the October 2002 Cincinnati speech. Nonetheless, they included the claim in the 2003 State of the Union. On July 22, 2003, Hadley took responsibility for the administration's use of the claim in Bush's State of the Union address. He acknowledged, "I should have asked that the 16 words be taken out." Iraq possessed stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons In an October 5, 2002, radio address, Bush asserted that "Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons." In his speech in Cincinnati two days later, he unequivocally declared that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." Months later, on March 6, 2003, the president further claimed that "Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents." But the intelligence did not justify the president's unequivocal claims. For example, a classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report published the in September 2002 had found "no reliable information" to substantiate the claim that Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons. Moreover, while the intelligence community believed Iraq possessed biological agents that could be quickly produced and weaponized, the October NIE made clear that the agencies lacked hard evidence to back up this assumption: "We had no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons, agents, or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal." Iraq's unmanned drones could attack enemies near and far In the year preceding the war, the president and other senior administration officials repeatedly emphasized the threat of Iraq mounting an attack on U.S. soil as a major rationale for war. In the October 7 speech, for example, Bush claimed that Iraq had a fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to deliver chemical or biological weapons. "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," the president declared. But the ability of these drones to carry out such attacks was a matter of dispute among intelligence agencies. While the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had endorsed the view that the Iraqi UAVs could be used by Iraq to attack its neighbors and possibly the United States, analysts at the U.S. Air Force -- which controls the U.S. fleet of UAVs -- dissented from this view in the October 2002 NIE. They contended that the planes were unarmed reconnaissance drones -- a conclusion endorsed by analysts at the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. But months later, Bush continued to cite the UAVs as a threat to the United States. On February 6, 2003, he said, "Iraq has developed spray devices that could be used on unmanned aerial vehicles with ranges far beyond what is permitted by the Security Council. A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland." Iraq would mount unprovoked attack on U.S. Moreover, the president's broader claims suggesting Iraq's ability to attack the U.S. without provocation overlooked the intelligence community's unanimous conclusion that the likelihood of such an attack was minimal. The NIE stated that an Iraqi attack on the U.S. would likely only occur if "Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable." Moreover, the NIE classified the confidence level for this judgment as "low." INR went a step further, concluding that Hussein was "unlikely to conduct clandestine attacks against the U.S. homeland even if [his] regime's demise is imminent." As with the intelligence community's conflicted assessments concerning the purpose of the aluminum tubes, the president was directly informed in January 2003 of the widely-held view that Iraq was unlikely to consider attacking the U.S. unless attacked first. Despite having read the intelligence agencies' assessment of the threat, Bush said on February 25, 2003, "The risk of doing nothing, the risk of the security of this country being jeopardized at the hands of a madman with weapons of mass destruction, far exceeds the risks of any action we may be forced to take." In his 2003 State of the Union address, he continued to emphasize the risk of an unprovoked Iraqi attack. "The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country," he said in the speech. "The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it." Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes On September 26, 2002, President Bush repeated a claim put forth by British intelligence that "the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given." On September 28, he again made the claim in his weekly radio address. But the administration chose not to consult the CIA before making this assertion. If they had, however, they would have learned that two weeks earlier, the agency had objected to the claim that Iraq could mount an attack so quickly. In discussions with the British government, the CIA had noted that the claim was based on a single, unreliable source and had advised British intelligence to remove it from a dossier they had compiled on Iraq's weapons capability. Who is the liar? The above examples support the argument that in 2002 and 2003 the Bush administration often disregarded the misgivings among the intelligence community about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq. Whether senior Iraqi generals believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs does not change the fact that the many in the U.S. intelligence community doubted he did and that the Bush administration chose to ignore them. This is the argument that many have made: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV): In a November 1, 2005, floor statement, Reid referred to how the Bush administration "consistently and repeatedly manipulated the facts" in making the case for war. "Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate," Reid said. "But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the administration then that its claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities were false." Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL): In the "Additional Views" section of the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2004 report on prewar intelligence, Sen. Durbin, along with Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-NY) and Carl Levin (D-MI), described Bush's claims that Iraq could launch an attack in as little as 45 minutes as an example of how the administration "repeatedly overstated what the Intelligence Community assessed at the time." Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA): In a March 5, 2004, speech, Kennedy cited Bush's claims concerning the aluminum tubes. He responded: "In fact, as we now know, the intelligence community was far from unified on Iraq's nuclear threat. The administration attempted to conceal that fact by classifying the information and the dissents within the intelligence community until after the war, even while making dramatic and excessive public statements about the immediacy of the danger. ... The evidence so far leads to only one conclusion. What happened was not merely a failure of intelligence, but the result of manipulation and distortion of the intelligence and selective use of unreliable intelligence to justify a decision to go to war. The administration had made up its mind, and would not let stubborn facts stand in the way." Sen. John Kerry (D-MA): "The facts speak for themselves," Kerry said in a November 14, 2005, floor statement. "The White House has admitted that the president told Congress and the American public in the State of the Union address that Saddam was attempting to acquire fuel for nuclear weapons despite the fact that the CIA specifically told the Administration three times, in writing and verbally, not to use this intelligence. [...] This is not relying on faulty intelligence, as Democrats did; it is knowingly, and admittedly, misleading the American public on a key justification for going to war." Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT): In an October 24, 2005, floor statement, Leahy said, "We know that the key public justifications for the war -- to stop Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons and supporting al Qaeda -- were based on faulty intelligence and outright distortions and have been thoroughly discredited." Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean: In a July 12, 2003, CNN interview, Dean cited Bush's uranium claim as evidence that he misled the country into war with Iraq. "The big deal is not so much that we went to war over a deal between Iraq and Niger which didn't exist and that the administration knew ahead of time it didn't exist," he said. "The big deal is the credibility of the United States of America and the credibility of the president in telling the American people the truth and the rest of the world the truth." Former President Jimmy Carter: In his book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Simon & Schuster, November 2005), Carter wrote that the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq using "false and distorted claims after 9/11." More information can be found at http://www.mediamatters.org.
Your spam is showing, BAC! Whatever the number of civilians killed - they were all American War Crime casualties - add the wounded, crippled and orphaned. That's no small number; whatever it may be. Your parade of distracting details is on the brink of "un-interesting."
On September 26, 2002, President Bush repeated a claim put forth by British intelligence that "the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given." On September 28, he again made the claim in his weekly radio address. nice find
Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is. ~George W. Bush thanks BAC for posting. You're the only real celebrity who posts here. and thanks for letting Minerva have your picture (BAC's picture is in #350)
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
You-who, BeAChooser, your input is requested on another discussion thread.
It doesn't say that.
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Yawn. I could prove I was the king of Mars were I to pull facts out of my butt the way you are doing above. You are still posting the same stuff from the same kook blogs. You and hiding your misinterpretation of some other very questionable sources behind spam. If you you had a reputable and specific quote that supported your crap, you would post it with a reference and let it speak for itself. I know that. Everyone else on the site knows that, the lurkers know that and some drunk passed out in an alley in Outer Mongolia probably knows that too. Instead of doing this, you give us the same crap as before with ten pages of blater to window dress it. BAC, I can tell just how worthless your argument is by how long your post is. The longer the post, the more you have to hide and the more you are skating on bullshit. It always works that way with you. It NEVER varies. The BAC bullshit index moves in direct proportion to the length of the post. Goldi was right when she booted your ass for being a an irrational nut. You really are a kook.
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OK, here is what you've given us so far: 1. Links that were not what you claimed them to be which you tried to dishonesly fob off on us as "proof" of your kookery. 2. Either cherry picked quotes from studies that were not on point or allegations that studies not on point somehow supported your kookery - without the benefit of a supporting quote. 3. Lots and lots of links to one or two kook blogs which you have been told time and time again no rational person accepts as being of equal diginity with Johns Hopkins or even being legit. 4. Reams of long, black rambling, ranting, kooky paragraphs explaining how the SHIT above somehow proves up your kookery. Using what you have provided I can pull the following inferences: 1. You have nothing matching the dignity of the Johns Hopkins study with which to refute the Johns Hopkins study. 2. You don't like people considering the ramifications of the Johns Hopkins study. It bugs you. Thank you for sharing this. I will give it all the consideration I would give to the rant of any other dishonest kook.
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One more thing. I've asked you to stop pinging me when you post the same shit and the same kook references time and time again. I told you I wasn't impressed the first time you tried this bamboozle. I told you the second time as well. I then told you the third time. Coming back with the same spam a 4th time won't have a different effect - and only kooks like you think that doing the same thing over and over will get you a different result. Don't bother to ping me if you are just going to whitewash the same shit for a 4th pass.
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I notice that you are a nut case and that you have the time to be on the web pretty much 24/7. Are you one of those kooks on disability? That would explain a lot.
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Yes it does raise a red flag.. that being that our media is controlled by none other than those who rule us.. Hmm well lemme see ...just a thought since we havent seen or the media permitted to take photos of caskets returning from Iraq other than one that was leaked.. are you then saying that the 3,000 plus number we are told died in Iraq shouldnt be believed? Then I guess there were only a few who actually died.. using this logic of yours..
The Pentagon's Secret Air War Over Iraq In statistics provided to Tomdispatch, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles." ... One weapon conspicuously left out of this total is rockets -- such as the 2.75-inch Hydra-70 rocket which can be outfitted with various warheads and is fired from fixed-wing aircraft and most helicopters. The number of rockets fired is withheld from the press so as, according to a CENTAF spokesman, not to "skew the tally and present an inaccurate picture of the air campaign." The number of rockets fired may be quite significant as, according to a 2005 press release issued by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who helped secure a $900 million Hydra contract from the Army for General Dynamics, "the widely used Hydra-70 rocket… has seen extensive use in Afghanistan and Iraq… [and] has become the world's most widely used helicopter-launched weapon system." ... The number of cannon rounds fired -- some models of the AC-130 gunship, for instance, have a Gatling gun that can fire up to 1,800 rounds in a single minute-- is also a closely guarded secret. The official reason given is that "special forces often use aircraft such as the AC-130" and since "their missions and operations are classified, so therefore these figures are not released." Repeated inquiries concerning another reporter's statistics on cannon rounds fired by CENTAF aircraft prompted the same official to emphatically state in an email: "WE DO NOT REPORT CANNON ROUNDS."... According to Roberts, who was last in Iraq in 2004 (where, he says, he personally witnessed "the shredding of entire blocks" in Baghdad's Sadr City by aerial cannon fire), "rocket and cannon fire could account for most coalition-attributed civilian deaths." He adds, "I find it disturbing that they will not release this [figure], but even more disturbing that they have not released such information to Congressmen who have requested it." ... Macdougall reported that the B-1B Lancer, the long- range bomber that carries the largest payload of weapons in the Air Force was, for the first time in over a year, again being employed in combat in Iraq. "These B-1 bombers were central to the raid. We're told they flew a ten-hour mission, and by the looks of their empty bomb bays, these planes dropped thousands of pounds of munitions. They bombed 25 targets deep inside Iraq," he said... I had a question for Lt. Col. Kennedy: Could he explain how CENTAF decided what was an acceptable level of civilian caualties it was willing to sacrifice for military aims? His answer: "Not in a sufficient manner that you would be happy with." ... During the Vietnam War, the United States conducted a clandestine air war in Cambodia, lied about it to the press, and hid it from the American public. In Iraq, the military has, these last years, engaged in a different kind of secretive air campaign, but their methods of keeping it a mystery appear to have certain similarities....
How is the bozo count doing Mr. Advocate? Getting close to the 50+ ban region yet?
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Thanks for that information, Aviator. Lord, 650,000 Iraqi deaths maybe a lowball figure in light of what the military has used in that nation,roughly the physical size of California. This is shameful, absolutely shameful. May the neocon cabal - the IsraelFirster war pigs who propelled us into this war of lies, rot in hell for what their machinations have wrought on a people who posed absolutely zero threat to America.
Well, first of all, Roberts' survey does not say all the "excess deaths" have been directly caused by the US or its Iraqi surrogates. Roberts is saying that combat deaths of insurgents, combat deaths of noncombatant civilians, deaths from breakdown of medical system, deaths from criminal activity, deaths from Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, etc. exceed a "baseline" mortality rate by this 655,000 amount. But when we look at the money expended on the war, and the number of missions both on the ground and in the air, 100,000 dead from the war seems a ridiculously low number. At $1 trillion cost for the war, which is $ 1 million x $1 million, a total of 100,000 deaths means it costs $10 million to kill each and every person. Is there anybody out there so stupid as to allege the US military which is supposed to be the most lethal military force in human history takes $10 million for each and every dead body it produces? The answer to where is this violent activity happening is in the secret air war. They're expending huge amounts of rockets and cannon rounds which they intentionally don't report. They are also stepping up the use of B-1 bombers. There have probably been over 100,000 missions flown. Balad air base is as busy as O'Hare Airport in Chicago. As with the total cost of the war, are all these air missions being flown and nobody ever gets hurt? Give me a break.
Oh I realize that. But all of these Iraqi deaths came as a result of the US invasion. It's unlikely sectarian violence related deaths or insurgent deaths or high crime related deaths would have happened to such a monumental degree if we had not done "regime change" in March 2003. All these deaths were a direct or indirect result of our illegal and immoral invasion. There's no wiggle room for blame - we are to blame for invading a sovereign stable nation which caused all hell to break loose thereafter.
Can't resist picking on the ladies, can you BAC. Christine is good enough to let you post here & you don't have the brains to be grateful. (No surprise.)
True. As the occupying power under international law, the US is solely responsible for providing a functioning government. However it's a distortion to accuse Roberts of whipping up anti-military hysteria because of his survey and to allege the military itself killed all those 655,000.
BAC, BAC, BAC - These were all killed at the hands of American War Crimes. The numbers matter little, whatever they are. There's the bottom line, Slurpy. All your spamming can't change that.
BAC has only been here a week and I heard a rumor that more than 40 people have him on bozo. I see why Goldi booted his butt. He make a shitty front man for her party.
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Who dat be who's accusing Roberts thusly? Pas moi.
Do you mind if I call you "Bozo Bait"?
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Every time a clown's nose honks another bozoing takes wing. ;-)
Are you trying to say that the death rate in Iraq since this war started is no higher than in other countries who are not at war? I suppose all the American and British troops are there repairing the waste-water treatment plants and passing out flowers and cookies to the Iraqi people.
Uh.... Perhaps you haven't heard, but often in wartime when people are killed, their deaths are not always documented by photograpshs, film, video or even by death certificates. In fact quite often they are killed and their bodies are quietly buried in mass graves where they aren't discovered until some time later. I'm surprised you aren't aware of this practice.
Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes On September 26, 2002, President Bush repeated a claim put forth by British intelligence that "the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given." On September 28, he again made the claim in his weekly radio address. Very informative post which sums up a lot of the alarming false claims made to scare Americans into thinking they were in danger of being wiped out by Iraq. I remember at the time the tv was on in the other room on FOX news, and they kept repeating the word "terrorist" like they would try to use it mutliple times in each sentence. I would be on the computer but keep over-hearing, "the terrorists this, the terrorists that..." over and over and over until I was about ready to pull my hair out. This was right before the invasion when they were trying to drum up fear and a sense of urgency. Before THAT they were only referring to Islamic fundamentalists and those responsible for 911 as terrorists, but in the spring of 2003 suddenly FOX news deemed Iraqis terrorists as well. They sure do believe in lots of repetition of words and phrases to drum thoughts and ideas into peoples' heads. It doesn't work on me though, I just find it very annoying.
There are retired people and wealthy people who have more time on their hands to be fair.
The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year. Iraq has already used weapons of mass death against another country and against its own citizens. The Iraqi regime practices the rape of women as a method of intimidation, and the torture of dissenters and their children. And for more than a decade, that regime has answered Security Council resolutions with defiance and bad faith and deception. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020928.html Radio Address by the President to the Nation Among the evil committed by the Bush regime against the Iraqi people, are the very deeds he claims Saddam's regime was committing. As Rumsfeld put it, after watching the Abu Ghraib: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/14864 What is shown on the photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon has blocked from release? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images, "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe." They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he added. A Republican Senator suggested the same day they contained scenes of "rape and murder." Rumsfeld then commented, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is. ~George W. Bush Great Bozo pic!
Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is. ~George W. Bush There is much more to my reason for not believing Steven Jones than his not being a metallurgist. Why try to misstate my views, Hayek? Ex-Professor Jones claims some expertise in the subjects of structures, demolition, steel, fire, concrete, impact, seismology and macro-world physics. Yet, ex-professor Jones spent his entire 30 year career studying sub-atomic particles and cold fusion. Not once in that career did he publish a paper that had anything remotely to do with any of the topics needed to speak authoratively on the WTC. Furthermore, Professor Jones has been dishonest about a number of subjects. To give you just one example, in speaking about the molten material seen flowing out of the South Tower shortly before it collapsed, he said "In the videos of the molten metal falling from WTC2 just prior to its collapse, it appears consistently orange, not just orange in spots and certainly not silvery." This is untrue. If you watch this video, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863&q=cameraplanet+9%2F11, you will see silver color in the stream of material once it gets away from the window. This occurs from 12 seconds in the video to 33 seconds in the video. It is especially clear at about 32 seconds. You'll also see it from 57 seconds to a 67 seconds. And from 74 to 75 seconds, material can be seen pouring from the corner of the tower and that material is very clearly silver, not orange. So Steven Jones is demonstrably lying. Why would you trust such a liar, Hayek? For the same reason you trust Les Roberts? No, Hayek, you know full well that I've posted over a dozen different sources on this thread alone that say Les Robert's studies are not what you and he claim. Why don't you try arguing what the blog actually says? Why don't you TRY to address the points I raised in post 123? Is the basis of your belief so thin you can't do that? Don't hide. Do you wish to claim the following points are untrue? Yes or no? By the way I've added a few based on what I discovered during the course of this thread. 1) The 655,000 estimate is many, many times larger than any other estimate (and there are half a dozen others). Even anti-war and anti-American groups and individuals have indicated the Lancet figures are outlandish. 2. The report and peer reviewers ignored a major discrepancy between the pre-war mortality estimate derived by the John Hopkins team and the estimate derived by other organizations (such as the UN and WHO) in much larger studies. The UN and WHO came up with rates of 7-8 per 1000 per year compared to the John Hopkin's rate of 5-5.5 per 1000. And these larger rates were estimates that the Lancet had endorsed as accurate previously. And this pre-war mortality number is one of the key numbers used in determining excess deaths. If it were as high as the UN and WHO found, then the number of excess deaths would be far less. 3. According to the report, 92 percent of those who claimed deaths in their families (501 out of 545) were able to provide death certificates to prove it. Therefore, if the study is statistically valid there should be death certificates available for 92 percent of the 655,000 estimated dead. But investigations by anti-Bush, anti-war media sources have not found evidence of anywhere near that number. What they found were numbers closer to those other, much lower estimates. To take the Johns Hopkins study seriously, you have to believe that the Iraqi government recorded deaths occurring since the invasion with an accuracy of 92 percent, but then suppressed the bulk of those deaths when releasing official figures, with no one blowing the whistle . And you have to believe that all those dead bodies went unnoticed by the mainstream media and everyone else trying to keep track of the war casualties. Alternatively, you have to believe that the Iraqi government only issues death certificates for a small percentage of deaths, but this random sample got 92 percent by pure chance. 4. The author of the article and the studies has publically stated he disliked Bush and the war, released the study when he did to negatively influence the election against Bush and the GOP, and admitted that those he hired to conduct the study in Iraq "HATE" (that was his word) the Americans. 5. The Lancet not only failed in its *peer* review to question why the pre-war mortality rates used in the study were so vastly different than numbers from previous, larger studies that they had previously blessed, they also reported on their own website that the deaths were comprised solely of civilians when the study made no such claim. And they admitted that the peer review process was greatly abbreviated so that the results could be published in time to influence the election. 6. When interviewers of the lead researchers completely misrepresented the results (for example, calling all the dead "civilians"), those researchers (one being Les Robert) made no effort to correct those falsehoods. And they went on to lie, both directly and by omission, about the methodology they used. That is indisputable. For example, here is what another of the John Hopkins researchers, Richard Garfield, told an interviewer: "First of all, very few people refused or were unable to take part in the sample, to our surprise most people had death certificates and we were able to confirm most of the deaths we investigated." That is a LIE since the first study (which is what he was talking about) indicates they only confirmed 7% of them. And Les Roberts did the same thing in another interview . 7. In the interview URLed above, Garfield stated "And here you see that deaths recorded in the Baghdad morgue were, for a long period, around 200 per month." 200 a month, in one of the biggest and most violent regions in the country. And now Les Roberts is asking us to believe that 15,000 were dying each month in the country since the war began. 8. Garfield is another of those who advocated mortality statistics before the war that are widely divergent from those derived using the Les Roberts study interviews. In fact, Richard Garfield said the most probable number of deaths of under-five children from August 1991 to June 2002 would be about 400,000. His *expert* opinion was that the rate in 2002 would was 9-10 percent compared to the Les Robert's estimate of 2.9 percent. So why didn't Robert's or Garfield address that disparity? And the Lancet blessed and championed the conclusions of Garfield back in 2002. So why did they ignore the discrepancy during their peer review of Les Robert's study? 9. There is NO physical evidence to support the claim that 655,000 Iraqis were killed from the beginning of the war to mid 2006. There are no bodies. There are not photos of mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter. There are no reporters saying they saw these bodies. There are no US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. 10. Dahr Jamail is an example of the above. He is viralently anti-American. He has close ties to the insurgents. Look on his website ( http://dahrjamailiraq.com/) for any indication that 500, much less 100 Iraqis were dying every single day back in 2003 and 2004 when he first started reporting from Iraq, which was during the period covered by not only the second but the first John Hopkins study. You won't find any indication. 11. Last year was arguably the most violent since the invasion. Yet even the Iraqis reported the number killed was on the order of 16,000 in that year ... an average of 45 a day. That certainly stands in sharp constrast to the John Hopkins researchers (and their proponents) who claim that more than 500 a day have died every day on average since the invasion began. 12. The number of dead the John Hopkins methodology gives in Fallujah is so staggering that even the John Hopkins researchers had to discard the data point. Yet in interviews, Les Roberts has responded as if the Fallujah data was accurate. For example, in an interview with Socialist Workers Online (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271), when asked why two thirds of all violent deaths were concentrated in this city, Les Roberts didn't respond "the data was wrong or atypical in Fallujah" as it states in his report. No, he answered the question as if he thought the data point was representative of what happened in Fallujah as a whole. He said "we think that our findings, if anything, underestimated the number of deaths because of the number of empty and destroyed houses. Some of the families probably fled, but many are probably dead. Of those families sticking around in Fallujah, a quarter lost a family member in the few months leading up to the interview." 13. The UN Development program found that the 2004 John Hopkin's study was off by about a factor of 4. Here's the UN report: http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf. It says that the UN found after the first year that there were 24,000 war-related deaths (18,000-29,000, with a 95% confidence level), which is approximately 1/4th the number of excess deaths the Les Robert's study found. And the UN used similar techniques - clusters, etc. - but with a much larger data set. Why is there no mention of this study in the lastest John Hopkin's report? Why was this discrepancy not addressed by the Lancet *peer* reviewers? 14. "The claim is 654,965 excess deaths caused by the war from March 2003 through July 2006. That's 40 months, or 1200 days, so an average of 546 deaths per day. To get an average of 546 deaths per day means that there must have been either many hundreds of days with 1000 or more deaths per day (example: 200 days with 1000 deaths = 200,000 dead leaves 1000 days with an average of 450 deaths), or tens of days with at least 10,000 or more deaths per day (example: 20 days with 10,000 deaths = 200,000 dead leaves 1180 days with an average of 381 deaths). So, where are the news accounts of tens of days with 10,000 or more deaths?" (http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2006_10_08_archive.html#116069912405842066) 15. John Hopkins claims "We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654,965 (392,979 - 942,636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601,027 (426,369 - 793,663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gun fire." But during World War II, the Allied air forces carpet bombed German cities, using high explosives and incendiaries, and killed only 305,000. So are we to believe that with gun fire, twice as many Iraqis have been killed in the last 3 years, as died in all Germany during WW2 due to strategic bombing of cities which completely flattened entire cities? Likewise, Japan had about 2 million citizens killed (about 2.7 percent of their population), both military and civilian. Many Japanese cities were firebombed during that war (Tokyo had 100,000 people killed in just one raid). Two cities were attacked with nuclear weapons. And yet Les Roberts and crew want us to believe that just as large a percentage have died in Iraq where the Coalition has gone out of its way to avoid civilian deaths? Who do you think you are fooling, Hayek?
Yes it does. Look on page 54 of the report. You'll find a section with the headline "War-related deaths - between 18,000 and 29,000". It states that "the ILCS data indicates 24,000 deaths, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 18,000 to 29,000." Now 24,000 is about 1/4th the 98,000 estimated by Roberts during the same period.
Ping to #401. ROTFLOL!
I don't see it. And how would an out of context quote from a report on another subject be relevant? This report wasn't done at the same time as the Lancet study, it wasn't done for the same purpose and wasn't done in the same manner. In addition, I am almost certain it deosn't even address the Lancet study. As I said above, you are trying to twist a non-applicable source to your purpose. It's as clever as the fake link scheme that you tried before this. But what does it prove? I mean about the argument in general - not about you. If you have any doubts here, read the table of contents of this tomb you have posted without any further reference. The focus is on something entirely different from the Lancet study. Now, unlike you I don't get disablity for being a kook. Hence, I have to focus on my work.
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You honestly think that NO OUTLET in our media would show photos and video if they had proof the war had killed MORE THAN TEN TIMES the number that the Bush administration had said? You honestly believe that? You sure you live in the US? ROTFLOL! And by the way, how do you explain the foreign media completely failing to publish such proof if it exists? You think the French wouldn't if they had the proof? You think al-Jazerra wouldn't? And they have sources inside Iraq. Dahr Jamail is a good example. Are you saying he is controlled? ROTFLOL!
But the John Hopkins report specifically said that most Iraq deaths are NOT due to air power. My goodness. Those numbers are STAGGERING. One can see why Les Roberts thinks we've killed as many people in the last 2 years as we did during the CARPET BOMBING of Germany's cities in WW2. ROTFLOL! What you forgot to mention is that the John Hopkins reports only attributes a portion of the overall excess deaths to coalition military actions.
Did the John Hopkins report mention your side is getting its ass kicked?
Yes it does. Look on page 54 of the report. I don't see it. It doesn't say what you claim it does. But I suppose you already know that.
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Isn't it interesting, the number of FD4UM members who choose to bozo themselves rather than read verifiable facts? Now as far as I know, there is no such "ban region" nor do I intend to leave just because some members of FD4UM are afraid to face facts. I shall continue to post sourced facts on various threads to show that what some here are presenting as reliable truth is far from it. This thread is a good example. I posted well over a dozen sources pointing out major flaws in a study that would have you believe the Iraq war has killed twice as many people as carpet bombing of German cities killed in WW2. NOT ONE of the posters on this thread has even dared take on the facts I listed in post #123. Instead, they are bozoing themselves right and left. And to think that at one time they dared me to come over here and debate them. But it takes two to debate and so far I haven't even found one willing to do that. ROTFLOL!
Wow! I guessed your bozo number right on. I guess I flushed you out. But I haven't seen you post any facts yet. Mostly you've just blathered out some pretty strange opinions and then posted links that were not what you said they were to support them. That or some really wacky blogs that it looks like you wrote yourself. You did post one article from the UN however, but you didn't give us the specific quote or tell us why it was at all on point.
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
People told you that your unsupported kooky opinion was BS. What can they do past that point?
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Comments (411 - 457) not displayed.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#371. To: beachooser, Critter, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#369)
#372. To: rowdee (#370)
Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes
(About the quote: Speaking on the war in Kosovo.)
#373. To: BeAChooser, Minerva (#369)
#374. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#375. To: scrapper2 (#374)
One more for ya BAC, this was today. Yeh I know, it's only one, but I thought you'd like to see the handiwork of the Great Decider
#376. To: BeAChooser (#366)
It's a study by the UN Development program which found that the 2004 Lancet study was off by about a factor of 4.
#377. To: BeAChooser (#369)
(Edited)
#378. To: BeAChooser (#368)
#379. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#380. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#381. To: BeAChooser (#369)
There are not photos of mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter. There are no reporters saying they saw these bodies. There are not US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. That should raise a red flag.
#382. To: ... (#378)
Among the largest of America's "permanent" megabases in Iraq is Balad Air Base with the sorts of daily air-traffic pile-ups that you would normally see over Chicago's O'Hare Airport. And yet, as Tomdispatch.com has written numerous times over these last years, reporters in Iraq almost determinedly refuse to look up or report on the regular, if intermittent, application of American air power especially to heavily populated neighborhoods in Iraq's cities...
#383. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#384. To: AGAviator, BeAChooser (#382)
In statistics provided to Tomdispatch, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles."...The number of rockets fired is withheld from the press so as, according to a CENTAF spokesman, not to "skew the tally and present an inaccurate picture of the air campaign." The number of rockets fired may be quite significant as, according to a 2005 press release issued by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who helped secure a $900 million Hydra contract from the Army for General Dynamics, "the widely used Hydra-70 rocket… has seen extensive use in Afghanistan and Iraq… [and] has become the world's most widely used helicopter-launched weapon system." ...
#385. To: scrapper2 (#384)
(Edited)
Lord, 650,000 Iraqi deaths maybe a lowball figure in light of what the military has used in that nation, roughly the physical size of California.
#386. To: AGAviator (#385)
Well, first of all, Roberts' survey does not say all the "excess deaths" have been directly caused by the US or its Iraqi surrogates. Roberts is saying that combat deaths of insurgents, combat deaths of noncombatant civilians, deaths from breakdown of medical system, deaths from criminal activity, deaths from Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, etc. exceed a "baseline" mortality rate by this 655,000 amount.
#387. To: beachooser, Critter, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#365)
#388. To: scrapper2 (#386)
All these deaths were a direct or indirect result of our illegal and immoral invasion
#389. To: beachooser, Critter, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#366)
#390. To: LP Bozo King Thread (#383)
(Edited)
#391. To: AGAviator (#388)
However it's a distortion to accuse Roberts of whipping up anti-military hysteria because of his survey and to allege the military itself killed all those 655,000.
#392. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#393. To: Minerva (#392)
(Edited)
Captain Paul Watson
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
#394. To: BeAChooser (#368)
#395. To: BeAChooser (#369)
There is NO physical evidence to support the claim that 655,000 Iraqis were killed from the beginning of the war to mid 2006. There are no bodies. There are not photos of mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter. There are no reporters saying they saw these bodies. There are not US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. That should raise a red flag.
#396. To: rowdee, BeAChooser (#370)
(Edited)
"The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country," he said in the speech. "The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it."
#397. To: Minerva (#380)
#398. To: BeAChooser, Diana, SKYDRIFTER (#365)
[George W. Bush]
(About the quote: Speaking on the war in Kosovo.)
#399. To: Ferret Mike (#393)
(About the quote: Speaking on the war in Kosovo.)
#400. To: Hayek Fan, scrapper2, ..., kiwi, bluedogtxn, ALL (#353)
What boggles my mind is that in the WTC debate, BAC refuses to accept any information from a person with a doctorate in physics because he isn't a metallurgist.
BAC accepts as gospel information from a blogger who appears to have no training whatsoever in epidemiology, and who's expertise appears to be that he collects old mathematics textbooks.
#401. To: Minerva, ALL (#376)
"It's a study by the UN Development program which found that the 2004 Lancet study was off by about a factor of 4."
It doesn't say that.
#402. To: ... (#401)
#403. To: BeAChooser (#401)
(Edited)
#404. To: Zipporah, ALL (#381)
Yes it does raise a red flag.. that being that our media is controlled by none other than those who rule us.
#405. To: AGAviator, ALL (#382)
The Pentagon's Secret Air War Over Iraq
In statistics provided to Tomdispatch, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles."
"rocket and cannon fire could account for most coalition-attributed civilian deaths."
#406. To: BeAChooser (#405)
#407. To: BeAChooser (#401)
It doesn't say that.
#408. To: Minerva, christine, ALL (#383)
How is the bozo count doing Mr. Advocate?
Getting close to the 50+ ban region yet?
#409. To: BeAChooser (#408)
Isn't it interesting, the number of FD4UM members who choose to bozo themselves rather than read verifiable facts?
#410. To: BeAChooser (#408)
But it takes two to debate and so far I haven't even found one willing to do that.
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