October 11, 2006
The Greatest Conspiracy Ever
I'm frankly amazed that the same idiots who brought us the massively inflated body count study just before the 2004 election cycle would be stupid enough to try to float their same lies again, saying that as many as 650,000 Iraqis have died since the war began in 2003, 601,000 from violence.
Proving once again that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics," this study overestimates the number of actual deaths by just a mere 600,000 or so, according to the widely-regarded anti-war Iraq Body Count which puts the maximum number of Iraqis killed at less than 50,000.
Even the basic premise of the study is dishonest, taking into account all Iraqi deaths over the past few years—car crashes, cancer, heart attacks, adverse drug reactions; anything will do—and including those non-war-related deaths along with the deaths of insurgents, Iraqi police, Iraqi military, and "legitimate" civilian combat-related deaths.
Now I'm not surprised that someone blatantly dishonest enough to use sockpuppets to protect his fragile ego is supporting this dreck, but I expect people with a modicum of common sense to realize, that as Blue Crab Boulevard notes, that for this study to be close to valid, that an additional 15,500 people are dying each month than every recognized government and private estimate of deaths has ever supported. That's 400-500 additional deaths per day than any media outlet on the planet has reported.
Let's use common sense for just a second: if this study was even third of what they claim (which would be almost 217,000 civilian deaths), don't you think that such a catastrophic loss of live would have been noticed by someone? al Jazeera, or al Manar, or maybe slightly larger and well-funded news organizations, such as the Associated Press, Reuters, or United Press International? Of course it would have. It is a mathematical impossibility to have hidden even this number of civilian combat deaths from a war zone so thoroughly saturated with media.
As a former President once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. It would have taken the greatest cover-up in human history to have been able to have covered up 217,000 civilian deaths as a result of the war, much less the massively inflated body count of 650,000.
As I just left in the comments at Matthew Yglesias' site:
...Where are the bodies?The Iraq war is extremely well covered by the international news media and is of specific interest to the Arab media in particular, and yet not a single media outlet in the world will independently claim even ten-percent of what this study suggests. Don’t it set off even the slightest alarm bells when a figure this greatly inflated comes across your radar?
A simple, cursory look at the well-respected anti-war site Iraq Body Count will reflect that the maximum number of civilian deaths is less than 50,000.
I know some are completely blinded by partisanship on both sides of this issue, but common sense has to tell you this study (once again timed for release before an election—how convenient, that) is patently absurd.
To buy these conclusions, you have to swallow the impossibility that Reuters, the Associated Press, UPI, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, Robert Fisk, al Manar, al Jazeera, and every other news conglomeration in Iraq are a willful part of the largest cover-up in human history, hiding three times of the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (214,000 according to wikipedia) over the course of three-plus years.
It’s patently absurd.
I know we disagree and disagree strongly over the Iraq war, but even the most rabidly anti-war bloggers should come out strongly against this politically-motivated farce, if for no other reason than to protect your own integrity.
This “study” is a blatant falsehood, and you know it.
So say so.
And yet, odds are neither Yglesias, nor Sock Puppet, nor Think Progress, nor Rising Hegemon, nor attytood, nor any other liberal blog likely have the integrity to challenge the study nor the world's media outlets.
It is quite simple: either all of the world's media organizations are involved with a massive conspiracy with the U.S., British, and Iraqi governments for more than three years to cover up massive civilian losses roughly triple the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
--OR--
This study, like the one issued before it, is another statistical lie.
I'll let you and Occam figure out which is more likely.
Update: The Iraqis think this study is bogus as well h/t HotAir:
THE Iraqi Government described as "exaggerated" an independent US study which estimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died since the 2003 US invasion.US President George W. Mr Bush had similarly called the report "not credible".
The study estimated that one Iraqi in 40 had died as a result of the conflict by comparing the death rates from the period before the war to the period from March 2003 to June 2006.
"This figure, which in reality has no basis, is exaggerated," said Iraqi government spokesman Ali Debbagh.
"It is a figure which flies in the face of the most obvious truths," he said, calling on research institutions to adopt precise and transparent criteria especially when the research concerns victim tolls.
The study has no basis in reality, and flies in the face of the most obvious truths.
Of course, that's just the Iraqis saying that, not the report of an anti-war Democrat researcher who has contributed money to anti-war candidates, so the Iraqis are assuredly wrong.
Update: One of the "Loose Changers" in the comments accidentally helped provide a good self-debunking point contained in the report:
If you'd bother to read the study before denouncing it, you'd find that they were able to produce Death Certificates to verify 90% of the reported deaths in the sampled households.
If that is indeed the case and the study results are validly extrapolated, then the Iraqi government should be able to produce 540,000 death certificates. Even if they can provide death certificates for just half of those that the study authors claim were killed by violence, then government morgues should be able to produce 300,000 death certificates, which again the media would have picked up very quickly as the media consistently uses the Iraqi morgues as a source for fatalities for their stories on a daily basis.
In short, the study provides the evidence—or lack thereof—debunking itself.
Update: Baghdad dentist Omar Fadil cuts loose:
When the statistics announced by hospitals and military here, or even by the UN, did not satisfy their lust for more deaths, they resorted to mathematics to get a fake number that satisfies their sadistic urges.When I read the report I can only feel apathy and inhumanity from those who did the count towards the victims and towards our suffering as a whole. I can tell they were so pleased when the equations their twisted minds designed led to those numbers and nothing can convince me that they did their so called research out of compassion or care.
To me their motives are clear, all they want is to prove that our struggle for freedom was the wrong thing to do. And they shamelessly use lies to do this…when they did not find the death they wanted to see on the ground, they faked it on paper! They disgust me…
This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives.
As they say, read the whole thing.
I read about this and blew it off as the garbage it represents. This is the kind of tripe one would expect from supermarket tabloids, not from institutions sponsored by MIT; then, again, consider the geographical location.
Posted by: Old Soldier at October 11, 2006 11:16 AMThe Iraq Body Count counts specific acts of violence as reported by the press. The maximum they report is achieved simply by adding up all the "up to X people were reported killed in the explosion" figures from all the reports. This is in no way intended to mean the maximum possible additional deaths caused by the war.
This study, as you say, counts all deaths, but, as you noticeably do not say, it subtracts from that the number of deaths that you would expect over that period, extrapolated from the number of deaths that occured during the years before the war.
That is to say, during unstable times, people are poorer. Some poor people turn to crime. Sometimes the crime turns ugly and the victim gets shot. Sometimes the victim is armed and the criminal gets shot. This doesn't get reported in the media, and the only way to pick it up is to look at the statistics.
There's no conspiracy to hide these deaths, it's just that the vast majority of them are too mundane to make the news. We do indeed regularly see spectacular discoveries of 60 mutilated corpses here and 30 bodies there, but you can only get an overall impression with statistics.
Statistics are hard to collate in Iraq at the moment, so of course all these results should be taken with a grain of salt. But please, tell us what methodology you would prefer. Or would you rather just not know?
Posted by: Mat at October 11, 2006 11:38 AMIf you check Iraq body count, they say that they are listing only confirmed deaths, and, IIRC, deaths of *CIVILIANS*. Their "maximum" is not the maximum number of deaths possible... it's the maximum number of confirmed, verifiable deaths of civilians.
But don't believe me. Ask them.
As for how it could be happening, without someone reporting it, someone *did*. And when Lancet suggested 100,000 deaths, I reckon you complained about that, too.
But here's one thing to think about. How many Iraqi soldiers were killed in the initial invasion? How much "collateral damage" do you think was done during the invasion? Massive bombardment, and soldiers going in full force, are going to cause a lot of deaths... and the Pentagon tries to avoid body counts.
Posted by: Longhairedweirdo at October 11, 2006 12:23 PMWow, talk about an intellectually dishonest rant, Yankee. You don't bother to read the methodolgy used and just flat dismiss it out of hand because your gut tells you to. Bravo.
Consider this. How many people are dying violently in Baghdad alone these days? 100 a day are the reported figures. _Half_ that number extrapolated for 3 1/2 years is more than the entire Iraq Body Count figure, and that's just for the capital. There's another 90 or so good sized cities and towns, some of which have virtually no Allied forces present and the crazies are running things. You think they're all dutifully reporting any and all deaths to what passes for a government there?
You have an entire country of rather poor people invaded and occupied, their entire infrastructrue shattered, a total power vacuum created, sectarian battles playing out on the streets, basically civil war wherever American and British troops aren't, which is pretty much everywhere. You think that under those circumstances an extra 300-400 people could't disappear quietly into the night, every night?
Posted by: Jared at October 11, 2006 12:28 PMGood lord, we've been invaded by Truthers.
You think that under those circumstances an extra 300-400 people could't disappear quietly into the night, every night?
Um, no. People have friends and family, both near and far, who would notice these additional people disappearing were it actually occurring, and they would certainly find a very sympathetic media rather quickly if this was occurring. But it isn't, is it?
Beside where are the bodies?
Sunni and Shiite death squads don't bury bodies, they dump them. The bodies of those they torture and kill always turn up within hours or days, and are taken to closely watched central morgues for identification.
According to your theory, there must be some ignored allyway in Baghdad with 600,000 dead people in it that nobody's stumbled across yet.
Folks, I can point you to the common sense answers that if the level of violence alleged was there it wold be widely reported in the media and the bodies would certainly turn up, but all I can do is ask you to use your brains, I can't force you too.
According to this study, we're short almost three times as many people in Iraq as died in both atomic bomb strikes, and yet nobody in Iraq, including the media, seems to know that entire cities worth of people are unaccounted for.
This is bull, and deep down, you know it.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 12:47 PMBeside where are the bodies?Some of them are here:
Officials at Baghdad mortuary say they received 1,855 bodies in July, as the capital remains gripped in a wave of violence which has beset it for months.Almost 2000 in one month! That's a plausible count of 50,000 over three years from just one mortuary in Baghdad. Posted by: Mat at October 11, 2006 12:59 PM
Almost 2000 in one month! That's a plausible count of 50,000 over three years from just one mortuary in Baghdad.
And yet, the outbreak of sectarian violnce is less than a year old, isn't it?
Your still more than a half million bodies short from even your sickest flights of "Loose Change" fancy.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 01:05 PMAnd yet, the outbreak of sectarian violnce is less than a year old, isn't it?No.
Your still more than a half million bodies short from even your sickest flights of "Loose Change" fancy.To make this clear, I don't know precisely how many people have died in Iraq because of the war. I'm very, very confident that it's more than shown on the Iraq Body Count, not least because the Iraq Body Count says it's more than shown on the Iraq Body Count. But the Baghdad morgue figures are another clue.
We can argue about what may or may not have happened in Baghdad until judgement day, but it's a complete waste of time. The only way to get a good overall picture is by the analysis of statistics. And the methodology used in this case seems as good as you're likely to get, given the limitations of conducting research in an environment like Iraq. Given the evidence we're seeing, from the media, from the Baghdad morgue, and other hints, a figure of about half a million doesn't seem implausible.
So you do in fact find it implausible. Fine. Can you explain what specifically is wrong with the methodology used here? What specifically would you change to come up with a more accurate figure? Because so far, all you've done is say "come on, it can't be that bad, right?" Which isn't a very convincing argument.
Posted by: Mat at October 11, 2006 01:23 PMIf you'd bother to read the study before denouncing it, you'd find that they were able to produce Death Certificates to verify 90% of the reported deaths in the sampled households.
And to reiterate Jared's point, this is an estimate of EXCESS Mortality. Not occupation casualties. The mortality rate from all causes of death since the invasion are up by an estimated 650,000 from what would have occurred if the same mortality rate from the two years prior to the invasion had been maintained.
In other words, things might not have been so great under Saddam, but they sure as hell haven't gotten any better so far.
Posted by: Ed at October 11, 2006 02:08 PMRight. Occam's Razor clearly tells us that the simplest explanation for this study is that a team of researchers devoted years toward the development of reliable and widely-used statistical methods; hundreds of hours of labor to researching and writing an article that applies those methods to a current conflict; surreptitiously grooming peer-reviewers to approve the article for publication . . . all to make the previously-unheard-of observation that the Iraq War has delivered catastrophic consequences to the people of Iraq.
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 02:22 PMdo you have anything more substantial to say than "i dont believe it so it cannot be so"? no? thank you. even the instapundit, who usually will link to just about anything, didn't link to it.
Posted by: g at October 11, 2006 02:59 PMSo in your world, it is more conceivable that a single academic study led by someone with a distinct and noted anti-war bias—who’s previous nearly identical study was widely panned and never replicated—is telling the capital "T" truth?
You have to believe the outlandish claim that 600,000 people—more than 2% of Iraq's population—was wiped out without anyone in the country at all having any indication that a simply massive genocide was occurring. And it would be a major genocide—twice the side of the Darfur Genocide, and approaching Rwandan Genocide levels—without the world’s media and the Iraqi government alike becoming unaware of such a slaughter right under their noses?
Or are they just part of the grand conspiracy?
You’ve got a screw loose.
do you have anything more substantial to say than "i dont believe it so it cannot be so"?
You mean other than the governments of the two countries most involved claiming the study flies it the face of reality?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 11, 2006 03:05 PMEd:
The whole point is that they extrapolated less than 600 deaths into 600,000. This is ridiculous. Wasn't it Orwell who said that some things are so stupid only an intellectual would believe them? I react to this the same way I react to a holocaust denier: You would have to be an idiot to believe that crap.
In five years of flying tens of thousands of missions over Germany the Allies managed to inflict 590,000 civilian German casualties...and even in that war with millions dead, people noticed the fire bombing of Dresden.
As for whether things have gotten better so far, 80% of the people of Iraq support their PM. That PM was elected to power. Niether he or his government would exist if not for the invasion.
This will be used as propaganda to help create more violence and more bloodshed. How does that help?
Posted by: Terrye at October 11, 2006 03:21 PMOh no, the idiots are back again.
Posted by: bri at October 11, 2006 03:55 PMRight, CY. I can't imagine why a government who vowed to liberate the Iraqi people (and the weak, inept leadership installed by that government) would dispute a study that suggests their efforts coincided with a spike in that nation's mortality rate. It's baffling, really.
As for the matter of "genocide," I don't even know what to tell you, since you clearly haven't fully comprehended what the research is supposed to be suggesting. I do find it instructive, however, that you would throw such words around so carelessly on a blog that strives (or so you claim) for accuracy and clear thought.
Yes, Bri, the idiots are back -- but it seems, actually, that they've been here all along.
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 04:33 PMThose elected members in Congress that are connected, in anyway, to this lie should answer to www.PurgeCongress.com.
Posted by: cmunit at October 11, 2006 05:08 PMI propose a challenge to the most notorious Lancet-apologist of all, Tim Lambert:
Use the study itself to extrapolate the number of death certificates supposedly having been published by the Iraqi government since the invasion.
As you say, this should produce an insanely high number of death certificates, which will not match up with Iraqi records, thus debunking the entire basis for the survey.
Come on, everyone go to Lambert's blog and persuade him into coming up with the number - just so we can watch his head explode at the thought he has been covering for these hacks for 2 years.
Posted by: Seixon at October 11, 2006 07:02 PMThis was one pi** pore study by a professor. Asking around a few villages and then multiplying the result. Sounds more like a kindergarden guess. It was fully explained when the said the UK idiot Galloway was involved. Forget it, it's too lame to worry about. By the way the poster that "said" they had death records is as full of it as the professor. I hope your family doesn't let you out on the street alone. You are a danger to yourself. The soldiers job is to make sure the other guy dies, not die to prove a point to some left wing democratic coward in the U.S.
Posted by: Scrapiron at October 11, 2006 07:03 PMAccording to the silly report more than 22,000 people have died every single month in Iraq since the invasion. They do not tell us who these people were or where their remains are. They should, they made the claim they should back it up with something other than a survey.
This is absurd on its face. Do I think these men spent years coming up with this for no good reason? No, they came up with it to create propaganda and feed antiAmericanism. If it inspires more hatred and paranoia and gets a few more people killed, that is just icing on the cake I guess.
Posted by: Terrye at October 11, 2006 07:26 PMd doesn't like it when trolls come to his little unused teacher blog, but he's happy to come out from under the bridge himself, it seems.
Posted by: bri at October 11, 2006 07:45 PMThis was one pi** pore study by a professor. Asking around a few villages and then multiplying the result.
Your knowledge of statistics is astonishing, Scrapiron. And you, too, Terrye:
According to the silly report more than 22,000 people have died every single month in Iraq since the invasion. They do not tell us who these people were or where their remains are.
Because there's really no difference between statistical extrapolations and obituaries -- if we don't have names and burial locations, it must be phoney baloney! [Insert cliched quotation from Mark Twain about lies and statistics here].
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 07:52 PMd doesn't like it when trolls come to his little unused teacher blog, but he's happy to come out from under the bridge himself, it seems.
That's actually not my blog you're referring to, bri. Trolls can go wherever they want, as far as I'm concerned.
I happen to come here because I find Confederate Yankee to be an interesting, stimulating source of political debate and wise-crackery. And the comments. I can't get enough of the comments.
Posted by: d at October 11, 2006 07:57 PMWTF?? This sounded like it was something. Until I followed the link, and found out you guys were arguing about a study that HASN'T EVEN BEEN PUBLISHED YET!
In words of one syllable, shee-it!
WTF?? This sounded like it was something. Until I followed the link, and found out you guys were analyzing a study that HASN'T EVEN BEEN PUBLISHED YET!
In words of one syllable, shyee-it!
According to the silly report more than 22,000 people have died every single month in Iraq since the invasion. They do not tell us who these people were or where their remains are. They should, they made the claim they should back it up with something other than a survey.
The WHO and the World Bank "estimate" 1.2 million traffic deaths each year. Obviously this "estimate" is also silly, since that number of auto deaths would surely fill the news programmes, that number of wrecked cars would clog any street in any city in the world, and no-one, NO-ONE has yet listed the names of those supposedly killed in cars each year. The WHO and the World Bank get money by raising the spectre of traffic casualties, and both of them are clearly anti-automobile simply for having made such unfounded "estimates".
Right?
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 11, 2006 09:24 PMI also posted at the other web site (Yiglesias), and I'll repeat part of the post here. Given the difficulty with data collection asserted by one of the authors on CNN this morning (Malaysia time), does the data collected represent a random sample? Is it representative of the Iraqi population as a whole?
If not, the extrapolation is invalid, no matter that the study methodology (stratified sampling) is widely accepted. It is the application of the methodology that is the problem.
I would have not given a point estimate, especially of an extrapolated result.
Well, if you really disagree with this study so passionately I suggest you do the following:
1) Read it.
2) Examine the specific claims that it makes, the data that it relies on, the methodology used to gather that data and the analysis used to reach the conclusions.
3) Look at the degree to which they conform to accepted standards of statistical sampling.
4) Point out any mistakes, shortcomings or faulty reasoning that you find.
If you're really dedicated, go for:
5) Conduct your own study of pre-invasion versus post-invasion iraqi mortality and get it published in a relevant peer-edited journal.
Or I guess you could just whine about it on a blog because it doesn't fit your ideological agenda. It beats having to actually make a well reasoned argument.
Posted by: justaguy at October 12, 2006 12:11 AMLet's say I took poll, ran an extrapolation, and came out with a conclusion that 80% of Americans are Republicans.
Now, my methodology looks good, i.e. I sampled "randomly" and I even got 92% of the respondees who claimed to be republican to produce a party membership card.
Hmmmmm, something doesn't pass the smell test, better check again. Maybe I should call up the GOP and see how many cards they've issued?
Nah, I'll just publish conveniently close to an election, and then wait for people to figure out where I went wrong. or not.
If 92% could produce a death certificate, but there aren't that many death certificates from the government records, what's the chances that they just happened to poll people who had certificates, but that most don't for some reason?
This survey could be correct - but if I had been the people doing this report, I would have had an independent team review my data and check the death certificate issue.
Also, if they are simply looking at mortality rates pre & post, yeah sure, Grandpa died a year earlier than he would have because medicine wasn't being imported in 2003 as compared to 2002.
But maybe it would have been better to compare the many other years of warfare and before food for oil program was in place, too.
Posted by: Aaron at October 12, 2006 03:09 AM"Let's say I took poll, ran an extrapolation, and came out with a conclusion that 80% of Americans are Republicans."
It is perfectly possible to conduct a methodologically sound study that produces misleading results due to sampling error. Possible, but not probable. Even if there were no net increase of deaths as a result of the invasion, the study wouldn't be wrong per se. They aren't saying that there have been an increase in deaths of 600k with absolute certainty, they are saying that with 95% certainty the increase in deaths falls between 426,369 and 793,663. There would be, I believe, a 2.5% chance that there are less than 426,369 deaths, and 2.5% that there were more than 793,663.
So a) even if the results wind up being misleading, don't assume that it is due to dishonesty on behalf of the researchers. They did risk their lives going throughout Iraq conducting research on a vital question that I don't see anyone else tracking down. Unless you have specific evidence of dishonesty or sloppyness on their part (which will probably come out when the article is subject to review by actual statiticians), that's just an ad homenum attack on facts that you do not like.
And b) if you doubt the results, or question their accuracy go out and do your own methodologically sound study and get back to us with the evidence that disproves it. Of course, since you have shown that you have a preconcieved notion of what the answer should be you can't really do that (the whole objectivity thing with science) but you get my point...
Posted by: Justaguy at October 12, 2006 06:34 AMOr better yet. There were 3 shooting deaths in hartford last night, 6 people killed in traffic accidents, 10 people died from heart attack, and 3 more from other disease. That is 22 deaths in one night. Now extrapolate that against the base population of the US. It says that there are thousands and thousands of deaths each day in the US. Especially shootings. But that isn't really the case is it? It is a mathematical illusion. Fluff. Nada.
Posted by: Specter at October 12, 2006 07:31 AMAnd...you can knock 70K to 80K off their analysis just by the fact that they could only confirm 90% of the 554 deaths in the sample population.
Posted by: Specter at October 12, 2006 07:36 AM700 bodies a day - not reported by the media..not likely, especially since the MSM is determined to only publish stories that make Bush look bad.
This 'study' by John Hopkins, was published in England, in a journal that has a poor reputation. (the 2004 attempt to affect the election)
this 'study' was not published in a respected US journal, why. I think the authors knew it would not pass a peer review in the US.
The researchers when down the street, stopped at each home where the family was there and willing to talk. I wonder how many of the deaths were double counted?
this is cheap politics not research.
Posted by: Marvin at October 12, 2006 07:58 AM"I happen to come here because I find Confederate Yankee to be an interesting, stimulating source of political debate and wise-crackery. And the comments. I can't get enough of the comments." d
Or maybe because nobody goes to your, er, sorry, the two other sites I've seen you at. But come on, you gotta admit, you just can't run with the big boys. Stick with bilbo and frodo. They're more your speed.
Posted by: bri at October 12, 2006 11:47 AMThis 'study' by John Hopkins, was published in England, in a journal that has a poor reputation. (the 2004 attempt to affect the election) this 'study' was not published in a respected US journal, why. I think the authors knew it would not pass a peer review in the US.
Uh, actually, Marvin, The Lancet is the most prestigious medical journal on the planet. But don't let that get in the way of your fantasy. Keep dreaming.
Posted by: d at October 12, 2006 01:30 PMLet's say I took poll, ran an extrapolation, and came out with a conclusion that 80% of Americans are Republicans.
Are you were trained in making such studies, did you used the same techniques that were acceptable in other studies, and did it pass peer-review in the third most prestigious scientific journal in the world?
This 'study' by John Hopkins, was published in England, in a journal that has a poor reputation.
Top 10 Impact Factors, scientific journals (2006):
Nature 51.97
Science 48.78
New Eng. J. Med. 19.84
Cell 15.34
PNAS 14.88
J Biol. Chem. 10.62
JAMA 8.49
Lancet 7.78
Nat Genet. 7.56
Nat Med. 6.53
This study is bogus because I don't like it and especially because it comes from the same group that determined the same thing 2 years ago.
I mean, they must be biased because I didn't like what their 2004 study said!
idiots. read the study first, then (and only if you actually understood it) criticize the methodology, sampling methods, etc...
The data is freely available to anyone who asks for it. I'm sure the expert statisticians among you can find all the problems and provide us with the "real" casualty rates (but you have to subject to peer-review and make your methodology public, as these guys have).
Until anybody does that, they have no basis whatsoever for criticizing this study's results.
Posted by: ME at October 12, 2006 04:18 PM"There was a sample of 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in 47 geographical locations. That is a big sample, not a small one. The opinion polls from Mori and such which measure political support use a sample size of about 2,000 individuals, and they have a margin of error of +/- 3%." [...]
"That qualitative conclusion is this: things have got worse, and they have got a lot worse, not a little bit worse. Whatever detailed criticisms one might make of the methodology of the study (and I have searched assiduously for the last two years, with the assistance of a lot of partisans of the Iraq war who have tried to pick holes in the study, and not found any), the numbers are too big. If you go out and ask 12,000 people whether a family member has died and get reports of 300 deaths from violence, then that is not consistent with there being only 60,000 deaths from violence in a country of 26 million. It is not even nearly consistent." [...]
"We can ensure that the people responsible for this outrage suffer the consequences of their actions. A particularly disgusting theme of some right-wing American critics of the study as been to impugn it by talking about it being "conveniently" released before the November congressional elections. As if a war that doubled the death rate in Iraq was not the sort of thing that ought to be a political issue. Nobody is doing anything about this disaster, and nobody will do until people start suffering some kind of consequences for their actions [...]"
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans at October 12, 2006 04:35 PM
