[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help] 

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

OMG!!! Could Jill Biden Be Any MORE Embarrassing??? - Anyone NOTICE This??? Sudden death COVID vaccine paper published, then censored, by The Lancet now republished with peer review Russian children returned from Syria Donald Trump Indirectly Exposes the Jewish Neocons Behind Joe Biden's Nuclear War Key European NATO Bases in Reach of Russia's Oreshnik Hypersonic Missile Supervolcano Alert in Europe: Phlegraean Fields Activity Sparks Scientists Attention (Mass Starvation) France reacted to the words of a US senator on sanctions against allies Trump nominates former Soros executive for Treasury chief SCOTUS asked to review if Illinois can keep counting mail-in ballots 2 weeks after election day The Real Reason Government Workers Are Panicking About ElonÂ’s New Tracking System THEY DON'T CARE ANYMORE! Young Americans Are Turning Off The TV Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government Is Using Your Tax Dollars To Silence Your Voice "Terminator" Robot Dog Now Equipped With Amphibious Capabilities Trump Plans To Use Impoundment To Cut Spending - What Is It? Mass job losses as major factory owner moves business overseas Israel kills IDF soldiers in Lebanon to prevent their kidnap 46% of those deaths were occurring on the day of vaccination or within two days In 2002 the US signed the Hague Invasion Act into law MUSK is going after WOKE DISNEY!!! Bondi: Zuckerberg Colluded with Fauci So "They're Not Immune Anymore" from 1st Amendment Lawsuits Ukrainian eyewitnesses claim factory was annihilated to dust by Putin's superweapon FBI Director Wray and DHS Secretary Mayorkas have just refused to testify before the Senate... Government adds 50K jobs monthly for two years. Half were Biden's attempt to mask a market collapse with debt. You’ve Never Seen THIS Side Of Donald Trump President Donald Trump Nominates Former Florida Rep. Dr. Dave Weldon as CDC Director Joe Rogan Tells Josh Brolin His Recent Bell’s Palsy Diagnosis Could Be Linked to mRNA Vaccine President-elect Donald Trump Nominates Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture Trump Taps COVID-Contrarian, Staunch Public Health Critic Makary For FDA F-35's Cooling Crisis: Design Flaws Fuel $2 Trillion Dilemma For Pentagon

Pious Perverts
See other Pious Perverts Articles

Title: BeAChooser Bozo Count at 40 Plus and Counting - A Possible Site Record
Source: Minerva
URL Source: http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=45820&Disp=409#C409
Published: Feb 19, 2007
Author: Minerva
Post Date: 2007-02-19 21:59:28 by Minerva
Keywords: None
Views: 27305
Comments: 375

Last night I took a guess at Beachy's bozo count. Today he spilled the beans and indicated that the number I guessed, between 40 and 50, was substantially correct.

Beachy Spills the Beans

What does this mean? Well .... it means he is a piss poor excuse for excuse for an advocate. Nobody takes him serious. This is probably why Goldi booted him.

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  

Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 93.

#7. To: Minerva, christine, zipporah (#0)

It is pretty fucking sad that this, of all forums, has come to this 'back and forth sniping tripe'.

Brian S  posted on  2007-02-19   22:24:07 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

It is pretty fucking sad that this, of all forums, has come to this 'back and forth sniping tripe'.

Yea - Freeper like mentality by people who hate being exposed to anything not part of the echo chamber they want to live in.

Anyone who places anyone on bozo for non harassment reasons on a forum is an intellectual coward.

Destro  posted on  2007-02-20   0:26:29 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Anyone who places anyone on bozo for non harassment reasons on a forum is an intellectual coward.

There is no intellect present in an exceedingly dishonest poster with a very questionable agenda.

You should know better than that. And his behavior IS a form of harassment, he twists the words of other posters, will not debate honestly, constantly infers others are stupid, etc. He's a classic narcissist, therefore impossible to reason with or get along with.

Diana  posted on  2007-02-20   5:36:11 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

He's a classic narcissist, therefore impossible to reason with or get along with.

I don't think he can be reasoned with either. He hasn't posted for as long as he has to be swayed from his opinions of 9/11 just because someone finally posts something that should make him think, "hey, maybe these kooks are right after all about 9/11." I doubt that will ever happen. Nevertheless to leave his stuff posted without any rebuttal makes it look like he has won the argument to a lurker, which is not a good idea. Calling him names only helps his side of the argument for an impartial lurker.

RickyJ  posted on  2007-02-20   5:49:57 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

This is a good example of how he operates.He said few Iraqis are dying because there is no hard evidence for all those killed (typical BAC spin/logic).

I wrote this post to him after he made the claim that there are few photographs, videos or death certificates of dead Iraqis:

******

"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."

******

And this is what he wrote in response to that post:

******

"It appears that you are accusing the US military of doing that. It would take quite a few people to gather up and bury the roughly 600,000 bodies that are missing. For which there is absolutely no physical evidence of them dying. So how many US soldiers are you accusing of this atrocity, Diana? A thousand? Ten thousand? Surely by now ALL the soldiers in Iraq are aware this is going on. Do you accuse all our soldiers who are in Iraq and have served in Iraq of this genocide and coverup, Diana? Is that really your position?"

******

You see what he is doing here? If you go through his post carefully, you can see how many inflammatory accusations he is making. A person has to decide whether they are willing to put up with that kind of dishonest and potentially harmful behavior.

Diana  posted on  2007-02-20   6:40:54 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

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.

Les Roberts Answers Your Questions

Juan Cole: 655,000 Dead in Iraq since Bush Invasion

"Not to mention that for substantial periods of time since 2003 it has been dangerous in about half the country just to move around, much less to move around with dead bodies.

There is heavy fighting almost every day at Ramadi in al-Anbar province, among guerrillas, townspeople, tribes, Marines and Iraqi police and army. We almost never get a report of these skirmishes and we almost never are told about Iraqi casualties in Ramadi. Does 1 person a day die there of political violence? Is it more like 4? 10? What about Samarra? Tikrit? No one is saying. Since they aren't, on what basis do we say that the Lancet study is impossible?

There are about 90 major towns and cities in Iraq. If we subtract Baghdad, where about 100 a day die, that still leaves 89. If an average of 4 or so are killed in each of those 89, then the study's results are correct. Of course, 4 is an average. Cities in areas dominated by the guerrilla movement will have more than 4 killed daily, sleepy Kurdish towns will have no one killed.

If 470 were dying every day, what would that look like?

West Baghdad is roughly 10% of the Iraqi population. It is certainly generating 47 dead a day. Same for Sadr City, same proportions. So to argue against the study you have to assume that Baquba, Hilla, Kirkuk, Kut, Amara, Samarra, etc., are not producing deaths at the same rate as the two halves of Baghad. But it is perfectly plausible that rough places like Kut and Amara, with their displaced Marsh Arab populations, are keeping up their end. Four dead a day in Kut or Amara at the hands of militiamen or politicized tribesmen? Is that really hard to believe? Have you been reading this column the last three years?

Or let's take the city of Basra, which is also roughly 10% of the Iraqi population. Proportionally speaking, you'd expect on the order of 40 persons to be dying of political violence there every day. We don't see 40 persons from Basra reported dead in the wire services on a daily basis.

But last May, the government authorities in Basra came out and admitted that security had collapsed in the city and that for the previous month, one person had been assassinated every hour. Now, that is 24 dead a day, just from political assassination. Apparently these persons were being killed in faction fighting among Shiite militias and Marsh Arab tribes. We never saw any of those 24 deaths a day reported in the Western press. And we never see any deaths from Basra reported in the wire services on a daily basis even now. Has security improved since May? No one seems even to be reporting on it, yes or no.

So if 24 Iraqis can be shot down every day in Basra for a month (or for many months?) and no one notices, the Lancet results are perfectly plausible.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-20   7:11:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Les Roberts Answers Your Questions

Juan Cole: 655,000 Dead in Iraq since Bush Invasion

Readers ... note that not one of the following verifiable facts and concerns about the Les Roberts study is addressed in Mr Coles article:

*********************

1. The 655,000 estimate is many, many times larger than any other estimate out there (and there are about half a dozen others). Those other estimates were more like 50,000 at the time the John Hopkins study was published. Are they all wrong and only John Hopkins right? Even various anti-war groups such as Human Rights Watch and IraqBodyCount have indicated the John Hopkins' figures are outlandish. So why are FD4UMers so voraciously defending JH's estimates?

2. The report and the peer reviewer of the report (the Lancet) ignored a major discrepancy between the pre-war mortality estimate derived by the John Hopkins team and the estimates derived by other organizations such as the UN and WHO. The UN and WHO, in largers studies, came up with rates between 7-8 per 1000 per year compared to the John Hopkins rate of 5-5.5 per 1000 per year. And these larger rates were estimates that the Lancet had previously endorsed as accurate. 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, perhaps a tenth as much.

3. A recent UN Development Program study, http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf, states that there were 24,000 war-related deaths (18,000-29,000, with a 95% confidence level) during the time covered by the Hopkins report. This is approximately ONE-FOURTH the number of excess deaths that Les Roberts' 2004 John Hopkins study found. And the UN used similar techniques - clusters, etc. - but with a much larger data set than John Hopkins. Why is there no mention of this study in the lastest John Hopkin's report (which claims its results verify the first JH report)? Why was this discrepancy not addressed by the Lancet *peer* reviewers?

4. According to the latest John Hopkins 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 about 92 percent of the total 655,000 estimated dead. But investigations by media sources that are not friendly to the Bush administration or the war have not found evidence of anywhere near that number. The Los Angeles Times, for example, in a comprehensive investigation found less than 50,000 certificates. Even if that investigation were off a factor of two, there is still a huge discrepancy. To take the Johns Hopkins results 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 happened to get 92 percent by pure chance.

5. A principle author of both John Hopkins studies, Les Roberts, has publically stated he disliked Bush (not unexpected given that he is an active democRAT) and the war. He has admitted that he released the study when he did to negatively influence the election against Bush and the GOP. And he has admitted that most of those he hired to conduct the study in Iraq "HATE" (that was his word) the Americans. None of that is a good basis for conducting a non-partisan study.

6. Nor is the behavior of the Lancet. They've not only failed to ask important questions during their *peer* reviews, they admit they greatly abbreviated that peer review process for the 2004 report so the results could be published in time to influence the 2004 election. They also reported on their own website in 2004, that the deaths estimated by John Hopkins were comprised solely of civilians. But the study made no such claim. In fact, it clearly states that the investigators did not ask those interviewed if the dead were civilians, Saddam military or insurgents. Which leads one to wonder if the Lancet actually read the report they claimed to review.

7. When media 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. This 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 the deaths. And Les Roberts did the exact same thing in another interview.

8. In the Garfield interview mentioned above, he stated "And here you see that deaths recorded in the Baghdad morgue were, for a long period, around 200 per month." Let me repeat that figure ... 200 A MONTH, in one of the most populated and most violent regions in the country during the time in question. And now Les Roberts is asking us to believe that 15,000 (on average) were dying each month in the country since the war began. How could Garfield not have questions about this new estimate given his previous statement?

9. Richard Garfield is another of those who advocated mortality statistics before the war that are widely divergent from those derived using the Les Roberts/John Hopkins 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. That is compared to the Les Robert's estimate of 2.9 percent. So why didn't Roberts or Garfield address this disparity? And note that 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 Roberts' study?

10. There is NO physical evidence whatsoever to support the claim that 655,000 Iraqis were killed from the beginning of the war to mid 2006. There are no killing fields filled with bodies or mass graves. There are no photos of these mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter or the funerals afterwords. There are no reporters, of ANY nationality, saying they saw these bodies or the slaughter. There are no US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. There is NO physical evidence.

11. Dahr Jamail is an example of the above. He is viralently anti-American. He has close ties to the insurgents and arabs. So look on his website ( http://dahrjamailiraq.com/) for any indication that 500, much less 100 Iraqis were dying every single day on average 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.

12. 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.

13. But the discrepancy is even worse than that. As noted by the author of this blog, http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2006_10_08_archive.html#116069912405842066, "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?"

14. 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 (note who he uses to get his message out), 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, instead 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." Then why didn't they keep the Fallujah data point?

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 according to The United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report killed an estimated 305,000. So are we to believe that with gun fire rather than bombs, 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 (for example, Tokyo had 100,000 people killed in just one raid). Two cities were attacked with nuclear weapons. And yet Les Roberts and his 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?

****************

Number 4 is particularly damning.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-20   12:04:10 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Readers ... note that not one of the following verifiable facts and concerns about the Les Roberts study is addressed in Mr Coles article:

*********************

1. The 655,000 estimate is many, many times larger than any other estimate out there (and there are about half a dozen others). Those other estimates were more like 50,000 at the time the John Hopkins study was published. Are they all wrong and only John

Reading no farther than the first few lines, you already make a misleading statement, implying that Cole's numbers have no basis.

To give an idea of the lack of coverage of daily death statistics, Cole cites an example in Basra where the Iraqi governmente stated that one person each hour was assasinated for politcial reasons in that city. None of these made the news. That gives 24 unreported people just for political reasons in one day alone in one city alone. And Basra wasn't and isn't considered a particularly violent city.

When you extend the lack of reporting about daily deaths in Basra, across the entire country and its 36 million population, you have an environment where hundreds of people could easily disappear without any major media noticing.

Cole is proving his point quite well - and Cole has actually been to Iraq, unlike you. He just isn't offering proof in a way that you've set up in your own little world. All I can say is, life goes on without you.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-21   0:07:04 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

"1. The 655,000 estimate is many, many times larger than any other estimate out there (and there are about half a dozen others). Those other estimates were more like 50,000 at the time the John Hopkins study was published. Are they all wrong and only John"

Reading no farther than the first few lines, you already make a misleading statement, implying that Cole's numbers have no basis.

They don't. At least not an honest one. For all the reasons mentioned. Now the fact that John Hopkins estimate that Cole chooses to champion happens to be an order of magnitude different than half a dozen other estimates probably should have been a clue to Cole (and you) that something is amiss.

To give an idea of the lack of coverage of daily death statistics, Cole cites an example in Basra where the Iraqi governmente stated that one person each hour was assasinated for politcial reasons in that city. None of these made the news. That gives 24 unreported people just for political reasons in one day alone in one city alone. And Basra wasn't and isn't considered a particularly violent city.

Are the folks in Basra somehow different than the folks surveyed by John Hopkins for their study? Because in the study samples (supposedly random), 92 percent of those who claimed deaths were able to provide death certificates presumably issued by a hospital, morgue or the health ministry. But when the LA Times (not a friend of the war or Bush) went to Basra to count the death certificates issued by those organizations, they didn't find the number of deaths you and John Hopkins suggest. They found perhaps a tenth that number. So are the folks in Basra different than the folks selected *randomly* by John Hopkins to represent the folks in Basra? Hmmmmmmm?

Cole is proving his point quite well - and Cole has actually been to Iraq, unlike you. He just isn't offering proof in a way that you've set up in your own little world. All I can say is, life goes on without you.

Are you sure you can believe Cole? Did he provide a source to this claim? Do you know for a fact that the official in Basra said what he claimed? Can you prove that the deaths he claims were not reported to the authorities and counted? Can you prove death certificates weren't issued for those deaths? Here is another side of that claim: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12892865/site/newsweek "According to the local independent daily Al-Zaman, Shia-on-Shia murders are taking place at the rate of one per hour. (British sources dispute that, saying the city has averaged about 100 murders a month.)" Also, did you notice it is Shia-on-Shia murders? I thought the anti-war crowd has been claiming sectarian violence is the problem? I thought the Shia community was this monolith that is going to side with Iran?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-21   21:18:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Now the fact that John Hopkins estimate that Cole chooses to champion happens to be an order of magnitude different than half a dozen other estimates probably should have been a clue to Cole (and you) that something is amiss.

It certainly does.

The people who did the John Hopkins survey actually went out into Iraq, went to a diverse collection of sites, and risked their lives in the process.

The other people are like you, where if they even go to Iraq they stay behind the Green Zone and compile news reports from other people who also stay behind the Green Zone.

Now to compare apples to apples, tell me how the John Hopkins' study compares to another study that also had people going house to house in Iraq and taking a survey.

When you get to that, tell me why you keep harping on "Where are the bodies," when a 655,000 death count + or - the confidence range would mean an average of 4 bodies per day in 89 regions throughout Iraq.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-21   23:55:10 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

The people who did the John Hopkins survey actually went out into Iraq, went to a diverse collection of sites, and risked their lives in the process.

So did this group http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf from the UN Development Program. In a much larger study than John Hopkins', they only found 24,000 war-related deaths at a time when John Hopkins was claiming 98,000. The UN used similar techniques - clusters, etc. So perhaps the difference is that they didn't hire folks to conduct the study who (according to Les Roberts) HATED Americans and the researchers weren't trying to influence a US election against Bush.

The other people are like you, where if they even go to Iraq they stay behind the Green Zone and compile news reports from other people who also stay behind the Green Zone.

You know nothing about me.

Now to compare apples to apples, tell me how the John Hopkins' study compares to another study that also had people going house to house in Iraq and taking a survey.

Asked and answered.

Now it's your turn. Tell us how a study that claims its random sample is representative of the country at large could have 92 percent of those claiming deaths provide a death certificate as proof when various mosques, hospitals and bureaucracies that issue death certificates can't (according to the LA Times) locate even 10 percent of the deaths the John Hopkins' study claimed? This should have been another sign to Cole (and you) that something is terribly amiss.

By the way ... did you ever find the source of Cole's claim about the deaths in Basra? No? Did you ever confirm that those deaths weren't reported to authorities or that death certificates weren't issued in those cases? No? Did you ever confirm those deaths weren't counted in the estimates put out by such organizations as IraqBodyCount? No? Did you ever find out why the British said the death toll was closer to 100 a month than 1 an hour? No?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-22   19:09:58 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

So did this group http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-% 20English.pdf from the UN Development Program. In a much larger study than John Hopkins', they only found 24,000 war-related deaths

Your "group's" report consists of the following sections

Chapter one examines housing conditions, the availability of infrastructure and services, and environmental issues.

Chapter two describes and analyses the characteristics of the Iraqi population.

Chapter three discusses the findings on nutritional status and child health.

Chapter four describes the ILCS findings on coverage of reproductive health services and birth history.

Chapter five focuses on the general health situation of the Iraqi population and their access to health services.

Chapter six considers the supply, demand, and quality of education in Iraq.

Chapter seven presents an analysis of the present living condition of Iraqi women

You know nothing about me.

You believe I know nothing about you. That does not mean I don't know anything about you, Emperor.

Asked and answered.

Spamming a 178 page report is not answering.

Now it's your turn. Tell us how a study that claims its random sample is representative of the country at large could have 92 percent of those claiming deaths provide a death certificate as proof when various mosques, hospitals and bureaucracies that issue death certificates can't

Irrelevant. Bureaucracies tracking or not tracking death certificates they issue, does not equate to people receiving or not receiving said death certificates. The LA Times said the agencies could not provide summaries of these certificates, not that they did not issue any more than 50,000.

By the way ... did you ever find the source of Cole's claim about the deaths in Basra?

Cole was there and knows people there. You weren't, and don't.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-23   0:16:56 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Your "group's" report consists of the following sections ... snip ... Nothing about taking a survey to find out the extent of the war's casualties.

Did you look for the chapter titled "War-Related deaths - between 18,000 and 29,000." In Orange type. It's on page 54 (or 53 or 55 depending on how you interpret the numbering). That chapter says "The ILCS data has been derived from a question posed to households concerning missing and dead persons during the two years prior to the survey." And the study was based on much larger sample than the John's Hopkins' study.

"Now it's your turn. Tell us how a study that claims its random sample is representative of the country at large could have 92 percent of those claiming deaths provide a death certificate as proof when various mosques, hospitals and bureaucracies that issue death certificates can't"

Irrelevant. Bureaucracies tracking or not tracking death certificates they issue, does not equate to people receiving or not receiving said death certificates.

So that's going to be your *excuse*? That Iraq's morgues, hospitals, etc actually issued 655,000 death certificates but failed to write down the fact that they had or record any other information about the dead? ROTFLOL! Do you know how absolutely lame that sounds? ROTFLOL!

"By the way ... did you ever find the source of Cole's claim about the deaths in Basra?"

Cole was there and knows people there. You weren't, and don't.

But at least I was able to URL a source which discussed this rather than just claimed it. And how often have Iraqi defense ministers said something which later turned out to be untrue? (sarcasm) And noted that British authorities disputed that claim. And it didn't say anything about the claim being that one per hour had been killed for the last year as Cole claimed. I tell you what ... let's look at some more sources.

From May 2006, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article485489.ece "Majid al-Sari, an adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, describing the situation in Basra to the daily al-Zaman, said that on average one person was being assassinated every hour."

Well at least now we know the real source of the claim. And according to the article "Tribes who once lived in the marshlands outside Basra are engaged in constant feuds with other tribes." So the violence is Shia on Shia. Gee ... I thought you folks have been saying the Shia are a monolith aligned with Iran.

But do we find any other articles about this? No. All the sources I found repeat the same Patrick Cockburn article. I couldn't find the original al-Zaman article. If you can, I'd love to see it. But let's assume that Cockburn was only quoting that article.

Can we trust al-Zaman, http://(www.azzaman.com?

None other than Juan Cole provides us with this (http://www.juancole.com/2006/11/al-zaman-good-riddance-to-rumsfeld.html ) from the editorial staff at al-Zaman. It's in regards to the resignation of Rumsfeld.

"Everyone should read the signs of joy in Iraq after the announcement of the departure of a politician whose name is linked to the most heinous crimes, which began with the scandal of Abu Ghraib prison and ended with his unleashing of death squads and criminals to disrupt the security of Iraq. His crimes also included dissolving one of the oldest armies in the region, for the most part made up of brave patriots, as a preparation for the partition and tearing apart of Iraq.

That's not exactly a fair representation of the facts in my opinion. A bit of an exaggeration ... wouldn't you say?

And I found this from October 2006, http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/e0f5ff85-f2a0-4fa5-9a31-0035ae7d5198.html "While violence continues to take a toll on Iraqi journalists, actions by the Iraqi government are seen as trying to stifle press freedoms. Parliament urged Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on October 16 to shut down the Al- Sharqiyah news channel and "Al-Zaman" newspaper after what it described as their negative coverage of a recent draft law the parliament passed on turning Iraq into a federal state. The outlets warned that the law could lead to the disintegration of Iraq on ethnic and sectarian grounds, "Al-Zaman reported on October 17." I suppose they meant the Shia on Shia murders that it's claimed are occurring in Basra at the rate of one an hour? (By the way, I'm certainly against al-Zaman being shut down and I'm willing to assume they did a fair reporting of the story in question).

So what do we know about the Majid al-Sari?

He's quoted in the Chicago Tribune saying "[Iran] wants to promote its own brand of theocracy, especially among Iraq's Shia population, and yet make sure that Iraq remains weak," said Majid al-Sari, a senior adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Defense. "They don't want too much instability in Iraq. Just a little." The article goes on to say that "Iranian cash is being funneled to an array of armed Shiite groups in the city, partly to tie down coalition military forces, and partly to keep any one militia from consolidating power, said a military analyst familiar with the tense situation in Basra." So perhaps this violence is actually just part of the wider, ongoing, undeclared war with the terrorist sponsoring state of Iran? Perhaps the solution is not to withdraw precipitously from Iraq but take the war to Iran.

And here's one last comment concerning conditions in Basra in 2007, a year later.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6373087.stm "Tony Blair has said the operation to allow Iraqis to take the lead in frontline security in Basra had been "completed" and "successful". ... snip ... He said the situation was different in the two different areas, with no Sunni insurgency or al-Qaeda suicide attacks in the Basra area. He also said sectarian violence in Basra had fallen "enormously", and the number of murders had fallen to 30 in December. ... snip ... "Of course I am devastated by the numbers of people who have died in Iraq, but it's not British and American troops that are killing them. They are being killed by people who are deliberately using terrorism to try to stop the country getting on its feet."

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-23   12:22:18 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Did you look for the chapter titled "War-Related deaths - between 18,000 and 29,000." In Orange type. It's on page 54 (or 53 or 55 depending on how you interpret the numbering). That chapter says "The ILCS data has been derived from a question posed to households concerning missing and dead persons during the two years prior to the survey." And the study was based on much larger sample than the John's Hopkins' study.

Given the stated purpose of the survey, any questions about missing and dead persons were quite secondary to that stated purpose. Since the survey's purpose was not to track the excess deaths, but instead try to measure the overall quality of living conditions, it should not be relied upon to give an estimate of the excess deaths.

Irrelevant. Bureaucracies tracking or not tracking death certificates they issue, does not equate to people receiving or not receiving said death certificates.

So that's going to be your *excuse*? That Iraq's morgues, hospitals, etc actually issued 655,000 death certificates but failed to write down the fact that they had or record any other information about the dead? ROTFLOL! Do you know how absolutely lame that sounds? ROTFLOL!

Clearly you don't understand the meaning of

"Grossly undercounted," and

"Serious lapses in recording deaths," and

"Continued spotty reporting," and

"Unable to compile the data,"

But at least I was able to URL a source which discussed this rather than just claimed it.

And your URL isn't someone "claiming" it who just happened to take the trouble to put it onto the Internet?

Well at least now we know the real source of the claim. And according to the article "Tribes who once lived in the marshlands outside Basra are engaged in constant feuds with other tribes." So the violence is Shia on Shia. Gee ... I thought you folks have been saying the Shia are a monolith aligned with Iran.

More irrelevant remarks. As the occupying power, the United States is responsible for the security of the country, period. This means protecting the people from criminals and violence of all forms.

Many people within the US and even within the military warned against exactly this type of chaos. The Administration ignored them.

Can we trust al-Zaman, http:// (www.azzaman.com? None other than Juan Cole provides us with this (http://www.juancole.com/2006/11/al-zaman-good-riddance- to-rumsfeld.html ) from the editorial staff at al-Zaman. It's in regards to the resignation of Rumsfeld.

"Everyone should read the signs of joy in Iraq after the announcement of the departure of a politician whose name is linked to the most heinous crimes, which began with the scandal of Abu Ghraib prison and ended with his unleashing of death squads and criminals to disrupt the security of Iraq. His crimes also included dissolving one of the oldest armies in the region, for the most part made up of brave patriots, as a preparation for the partition and tearing apart of Iraq.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with that statement, and if you do, it is yet more proof of your moral depravity.

That's not exactly a fair representation of the facts in my opinion. A bit of an exaggeration ... wouldn't you say?

Not in the least.

And here's one last comment concerning conditions in Basra in 2007, a year later.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6373087.stm "Tony Blair has said the operation to allow Iraqis to take the lead in frontline security in Basra had been "completed" and "successful". ... snip ... He said the situation was different in the two different areas, with no Sunni insurgency or al-Qaeda suicide attacks in the Basra area.

Debunked Here

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-24   0:01:00 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Bidding starts at 1 euro for an 8-track with a cult following.

Dakmar  posted on  2007-02-24   0:07:13 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

An 8-track with a cult following.

Blue Oyster Cult - "Don't Fear the Reaper?"

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-24   0:30:45 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

they had become like they are
power chord>

fluff...I'm not they!
They aren't we!
Them ain't me!

helter skelter.. :)

Dakmar  posted on  2007-02-24   0:37:49 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

        There are no replies to Comment # 93.

End Trace Mode for Comment # 93.

Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help]