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Subject: Where for art tho Lancet threads?
EW3    10/14/2006 6:52:31 PM
Is SP getting hacked. We've had 1 thread lock up so it can't be posted to. And the two replacement threads hacked. Seems like right after sheck makes cogent points about the fallacy of the report, the thread he does it on disappears.
 
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Plutarch    Arbalest Reply   10/30/2006 12:27:52 PM


Un study, my arse. the UN simply regurgitated what the Iraqi deputy information minister told them. Which you became YOUR latest battlecry. Show us....on what day since that figure appeared have more than 100 iraqis died? 100 is the average, so maybe you could find 2 days in which more than 100  Iraqis died...Pick a date, any date...still waiting; been waiting since you spewed that Iraqi garbage.

 

All along, it has been Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

 

 

 

 

and their enablers.



Ridiculous argumentation. Here is an entire website devoted to counting dead Iraqis and it averages 100 per day.

 
3000 killed in June's 30 days= 100 dead per day. 3400 killed in July's 31 days= 110 dead per day, 3000 dead in August's 30 days = 100 dead, 3500 dead in September's 30 days=116 dead per day, and if the current trend in October continues when all the numbers are released it will be around 110 dead per day.
 
 
 
Pick a date any date, and count the numbers, heck someone's already done it for you so just read the news articles.  Keep in mind that this is the baseline, the minimum number of dead, and it is still more than most conflicts classified as a civil war. 

 
 
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Plutarch    George Will   10/30/2006 12:52:18 PM
Interesting article by George Will on Iraq:
 
"The latest plan to pacify Baghdad?announced in June, declared a failure in October?was called Operation Together Forward. But U.S.-Iraqi togetherness is a sometime thing. Last April, The Washington Post's Jonathan Finer reported from Hawijah, Iraq, on a joint patrol to search for roadside bombs. The Iraqis refused to ride in armored U.S. Humvees, preferring pickup trucks because a cleric told them that anyone killed in an "occupier vehicle" would not go to heaven. Eventually, after threatening them with jail, U.S. Army Lt. Aaron Tapalman browbeat them into Humvees:
 

"About an hour later, the patrol came across a white bag on the roadside that Tapalman suspected might contain a bomb. When he asked some Iraqi soldiers to move it off the road, their commander balked, saying it wasn't his job. 'It is your job to protect the people,' Tapalman said, increasingly exasperated. 'I can go and move it myself, and you know what? I will, but don't you think your people should see you doing that kind of stuff? Someday we're not going to be here anymore.' The Iraqi soldier declined again, apologetically, and drove away."

A mordant joke told during the Cold War concerned asking an Italian, a Frenchman, an Englishman and a Russian to each describe his most cherished dream. The Italian said, "I want my country to produce the greatest artists." The Frenchman said, "I want my nation to produce the greatest philosophers." The Englishman said, "I want my country to produce the greatest parliamentarians." The Russian said, "I want my neighbor's cow to die."

The joke was no laughing matter because it turned on this truth: A history of brutalizing tyranny had stunted the Russians' aptitude for collective aspirations. Which brings us back to Iraq, which Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times covered for two years following the 2003 invasion. He recently returned. His Oct. 23 report ( "Into the Abyss of Baghdad") begins:

"I keep seeing his face. He appears to be in his mid-20s, bespectacled, slightly bearded, and somehow his smile conveys a sense of prosperity to come. Perhaps he is set to marry, or enroll in graduate school, or launch a business?all these flights of ambition seem possible. In the next few images he is encased in plastic: His face is frozen in a ghoulish grimace. Blackened lesions blemish his neck. 'Drill holes,' says Col. Khaled Rasheed, an Iraqi commander who is showing me the set of photographs."
 
Electric drills are the death squads' preferred instruments of torture.
McDonnell:

"One evening I accompanied a three-Humvee convoy of MPs through largely Shiite east Baghdad ... The objective that evening was to patrol with Iraqi police, but the Iraqi lawmen are hesitant to be seen with Americans, whom they regard as IED [improvised explosive device] magnets. The joint patrol never worked out ... The next night, an armor-piercing bomb hit the same squad, Gator 1-2. A sergeant with whom I had ridden the previous evening lost a leg; the gunner and driver suffered severe shrapnel wounds."

For what?"
 
link
 
 
 
 
 
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Arbalest    Plutarch   10/30/2006 2:42:29 PM

"Also the western districts are Al Anbar, Najaf, and Ninawa, hardly immune to violence."

True, but the vast majority of the population of Al Anbar is between Ramadi and Baghdad; thus it is easy, if not necessarily quite correct, to lump Al Anbar with Baghdad. Najaf has always been a problem. Mosul has some violence, as does most of Iraq, but it is not nearly the same level as Baghdad.

A map of Iraqi population density is available at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps... , and shows the clustering around Baghdad, and south to Najaf. One level up is a list of many maps of Iraq. While the maps are by no means conclusive, they do point to the Lancet’s number (~655,000) being obviously wrong.

 

"Fighting in most wars in history is localized."

You see my point. The Lancet’s methods may have been scientifically valid, but only in the areas in which the study was made. Using the local population(s) generates a number about 25% of the value the Lancet reported. Whoever used the total population of Iraq, instead of the local populations, was either incompetent or had a political agenda.

 

George Will has a point, but the link doesn’t work. In any event, we need to get a timetable in place to shift the burden of peacekeeping and law enforcement to the Iraqis. It is their job. I see enormous value in setting up a stable, democratic Iraq, but I see no value in keeping a US presence there into 2008.

There is a chance that radicals, of one form or another, will try to take over Iraq, and they may succeed. But if it happens after we leave, then it is not a US loss, but an Iraqi loss.
 
 
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PlatypusMaximus       10/30/2006 3:22:56 PM
Ridiculous argumentation. Here is an entire website devoted to counting dead Iraqis and it averages 100 per day.

 
3000 killed in June's 30 days= 100 dead per day. 3400 killed in July's 31 days= 110 dead per day, 3000 dead in August's 30 days = 100 dead, 3500 dead in September's 30 days=116 dead per day, and if the current trend in October continues when all the numbers are released it will be around 110 dead per day.
 
 
 
Pick a date any date, and count the numbers, heck someone's already done it for you so just read the news articles.  Keep in mind that this is the baseline, the minimum number of dead, and it is still more than most conflicts classified as a civil war. 
 
 
An entire website?  there's plenty of garbage out there with an entire website devoted to spewing it. Why cannot 1 single reputable news organization compile enough information out of Iraq to find 100 dead on ANY day? They'd love to plaster tomorrows headlines with 100 die across Iraq...but they cant.
 
"As the death toll climbed for both U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians, who are being killed at a rate of 43 a day, the country's Shiite-dominated government remained under intense U.S. pressure to shut down Shiite militias."
Oct 19, 2006 7:54 am US/Eastern
 
 
"Casey's estimate of when the Iraqi army will be ready was noteworthy because it has not changed even as the security situation in the country has deteriorated. Iraqis are now being killed at a pace of more than 40 each day in sectarian fighting and revenge killing."
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24, 2006

 

I choose today. How many died today? Tomorrow?
Says Who?
 
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Plutarch    Arbalest   10/30/2006 3:29:02 PM


"Also the western districts are Al Anbar, Najaf, and Ninawa, hardly immune to violence."


True, but the vast majority of the population of Al Anbar is between Ramadi and Baghdad; thus it is easy, if not necessarily quite correct, to lump Al Anbar with Baghdad. Najaf has always been a problem. Mosul has some violence, as does most of Iraq, but it is not nearly the same level as Baghdad.


A map of Iraqi population density is available at link... , and shows the clustering around Baghdad, and south to Najaf. One level up is a list of many maps of Iraq. While the maps are by no means conclusive, they do point to the Lancet’s number (~655,000) being obviously wrong.


 


"Fighting in most wars in history is localized."


You see my point. The Lancet’s methods may have been scientifically valid, but only in the areas in which the study was made. Using the local population(s) generates a number about 25% of the value the Lancet reported. Whoever used the total population of Iraq, instead of the local populations, was either incompetent or had a political agenda.


 


George Will has a point, but the link doesn't’t work. In any event, we need to get a timetable in place to shift the burden of peacekeeping and law enforcement to the Iraqis. It is their job. I see enormous value in setting up a stable, democratic Iraq, but I see no value in keeping a US presence there into 2008.


There is a chance that radicals, of one form or another, will try to take over Iraq, and they may succeed. But if it happens after we leave, then it is not a US loss, but an Iraqi loss.

 



Here is the link again:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15...


 
I agree that the Lancet study has flaws.  The population map really brings things into perspective with the Western provinces almost empty of people, not much sense in using that many clusters from Anbar.  But the death toll is still pretty high in Iraq.
 
Regarding setting up a stable and democratic Iraq.  I'm afraid that battle is lost, as the Iraqis are more interested in killing their neighbors than fostering civic societies; the Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Kurds all want to see their neighbor's cow die, but don't want to come together as a nation.
 
There will be a US presence in Iraq into 2010 and beyond as the military has said so, and the violence will continue until US troops leave. 
 
There is a chance that radicals, of one form or another, will try to take over Iraq, and they may succeed. But if it happens after we leave, then it is not a US loss, but an Iraqi loss.
 
This is incorrect thinking, and kind of a cop out, we might as well blame Saddam Hussein for the violence ten years from now...maybe we should blame Tsar Nicholas for the gulags in the 1960s.  Iraqis were responsible for Iraqis until the US invaded their country overthrew their leaders, and governed them for two years; at that point it became the US's problem and the US had an obligation to fix it.  If that was not feasible the US had an obligation to find the most effective leaders in Iraq to stabilize the country, also the US could have broadened international support for the effort and since the US failed at all these things, the Iraq mess is an American failure.  Specifically it is a GWB/Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld/Paul Wolfowitz/Jerry Bremer failure the way Vietnam was a Lyndon Johnson,/Hubert Humphrey/Robert McNamara/McGeorge Bundy defeat.
 
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Plutarch    100 deaths a day   10/30/2006 3:49:13 PM

Deaths from yesterday, Oct 29:
 

Arbalest    Plutarch   10/30/2006 4:31:05 PM

It may very well be that the battle to set up a stable and democratic Iraq was never winnable. If so, then this points to the Iraqis as being incapable of handling democracy. The context of George Will’s quote ". . . not my job" supports this conclusion; at least it points away from the US.

For what it’s worth, the data in your 10/30/2006 3:49:13 PM post points to the primary cause of deaths in Iraq as being sectarian; Iraqi-getting-even-with-Iraqi. It looks like the end-result of the fall of Saddam Hussein (or his successor), whatever the cause, and not specifically US-caused.
Perhaps the Lancet should have also checked the various news reports, to compare cause-of-death with their data. With data pointing away from the US, I think that the Lancet's number would have been much lower, perhaps 180,000.
Perhaps partitioning Iraq will be the solution. The Turks and Iranians are unlikely to be happy.

 

As far as Iraq being a GWB/Dick Cheney/. . . problem, it is true that they are the ones who popped the pimple known as Saddam Hussein, but eventually this pimple had to pop. It should have happened in GW1. In the 10 years between GW1 and GW2, Saddam Hussein did not stop killing people.
It is easy to show a strong and specific link between Saddam Hussein (and his 25 years of murders) and much of the violence and killings in Iraq today. Can anyone show an equivalently strong and specific link between Tsar Nicholas (d. 1917) and the gulags in the 1960’s?
 
That authoritarian governments maintain prison camps, and send "undesirables" to them, is generic.
 
The Shia-Sunni conflict does not involve the West, predates Saddam Hussein, and will continue indefinitely, but Saddam Hussein certainly made the conflict worse in his part of the world. In that part of the world, the culture is different and people have very long memories. It is quite likely that, at least while the generation of the children of the victims of Saddam Hussein live, the violence caused or worsened by him will continue.
 
 
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Plutarch    Arbalest   10/30/2006 5:09:43 PM

“For what it’s worth, the data in your 10/30/2006 3:49:13 PM post points to the primary cause of deaths in Iraq as being sectarian; Iraqi-getting-even-with-Iraqi. It looks like the end-result of the fall of Saddam Hussein (or his successor), whatever the cause, and not specifically US-caused.”

 

This sort of violence should have been taken into account by US war planners when planning a war in a sectarian society held together by violence.  There were concerns that Kosovo would turn violent after the NATO bombings and Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, so why weren’t these same concerns voiced and addressed by US war planners? That is a failure of planning by the US. Even if the violence is not US caused and I am not saying any of the violence is US caused; only the US had the military force to stop or curtail the violence. It simply did not have the will.

 

 

“Perhaps the Lancet should have also checked the various news reports, to compare cause-of-death with their data. With data pointing away from the US, I think that the Lancet's number would have been much lower, perhaps 180,000.”

 

The point of the Lancet study was to find all deaths caused by violence in Iraq regardless of the source of that violence; clearly Iraqis are the most responsible for the violence, but the US is responsible for not being able to stop it, for not nipping the insurgency in the bud in 2003, for not stopping the death squads, and for allowing thugs like Sadr to have unprecedented political control in Iraq.  When Shiites are in danger from Sunnis they do not call neither the US Army/Marines, nor the Iraqi Army or police, they call Sadr and he can deliver.

 

“Perhaps partitioning Iraq will be the solution. The Turks and Iranians are unlikely to be happy.”

 

Nobody will be happy with the state of Iraq that’s why there is violence, perhaps partitioning Iraq is the solution, but it will be a bloody partition, nothing like the “Velvet Revolution”.

 

“As far as Iraq being a GWB/Dick Cheney/. . . problem, it is true that they are the ones who popped the pimple known as Saddam Hussein, but eventually this pimple had to pop. It should have happened in GW1. In the 10 years between GW1 and GW2, Saddam Hussein did not stop killing people.

It is easy to show a strong and specific link between Saddam Hussein (and his 25 years of murders) and much of the violence and killings in Iraq today. Can anyone show an equivalently strong and specific link between Tsar Nicholas (d. 1917) and the gulags in the 1960’s? “

 

But the level of violence in 2002 was far lower than it was in the 1980s in Iraq.  According to Anthony Cordesman the Baghdad morgue only averaged 150 bodies per month in 2002, now it averages 3,000.

 
 
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PlatypusMaximus       10/30/2006 5:18:44 PM
Now we're both pointing to news sources that are proven liars, but that's beside the point..
69 Iraqis died today. 69 dead means 69 bodies...that's what, 138?
It's risen considerably since the bombing in Samarra, it's really bad,  but it like it or not, it aint no 100. Not without relying HEAVILY on foggy info,  the mouthpiece of our enemy, or both. 
69/tomorrow = ?
 
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PlatypusMaximus       10/30/2006 5:32:38 PM
Lancet claims more Iraqis dead than died in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, and Saddam's 30-year reign COMBINED.
 
 
Seriously...grow up.
 
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