Bush Disputes Lancet Report
No surprise there, but here’s what he said:
President Bush slammed the report Wednesday during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden. “I don’t consider it a credible report. Neither does Gen. (George) Casey,” he said, referring to the top ranking U.S. military official in Iraq, “and neither do Iraqi officials.”
“The methodology is pretty well discredited,” he added.
Ali Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said in a statement that the report “gives exaggerated figures that contradict the simplest rules of accuracy and investigation.”
Last December, Bush said that he estimated about 30,000 people had died since the war began.
When pressed whether he stood by that figure Wednesday, he said, “I stand by the figure a lot of innocent people have lost their life. Six hundred thousand — whatever they guessed at — is just not credible.”
No, it isn’t…I could believe as much as 150,000, perhaps, as a high mark, when you include murders and sectarian violence, from the beginning of the invasion, and that’s an incredible tragedy, to be sure…but this number doesn’t come close to passing the smell test…
No offense, Mark, but it seems like a pretty weak argument against it to just say, “Nope, I don’t like it.” There may well be problems with the methodology, but it feels like nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to arbitrarily say that anything higher than 150,000 must be false.
Yes, if you want to critique the result, critique the methodology. It is a standard epidemiological study using methods apporved of by the US Government for estimating deaths in situations like war and natural disaster. Show us some specific objections to specific methods. Otherwise we can only conclude that your objections are based on the “Republican science’ apporach of accepting scientific results only to the extent that they conform to your prior expectations.
It is also instructive to meditate a bit on the numbers that even you are willing to entertain. 150K excess deaths in a nation of 25 million? That is equal to 50 9/11s in three and a half years, or almost one every three weeks. Consider the relative impact if this would have happened in a country the size of the US. It would be equivalent to 1.8 million people dead, or one 9/11 every other day for the past 3 1/2 years.
These outcomes should weigh on your conscience, if you have one.
Oh sure it is.
Interviewer: Sir, how many people have been killed to your certain knowledge in the past week?
Karbala Resident: Oh at least a gazillion.
Interviewer: A gazillion, is that right sir?
Karbala Resident: You betcha.
Interviewer: Thanks for such a perspicacious and precise answer.
Uhh.. huh.
Oh sure it is.
Interviewer: Sir, how many people you know have been killed to your certain knowledge in the past week?
Karbala Resident: Oh at least a gazillion.
Interviewer: A gazillion, is that right sir?
Karbala Resident: You betcha.
Interviewer: Thanks for such a perspicacious and precise answer.
Uhh.. huh.
HenryH, of course they weigh on our conscience (not mine alone, yours, too – we only have one president at a time). And I’m quite sure they weigh on the President’s, as well.
However, our intellect must also weigh the effects of freedom. There weren’t many violent murders in, say, Stalinist Russia, I don’t imagine…no doubt some of the crime and chaos is a direct result of the invasion, and it must be weighed against that elusive quantity ‘freedom’.
Nobody is saying the level of Iraq casualties is not far too high. The Lancet study is beyond all reasonable belief, however, and therefore ‘methodological’ arguments don’t carry much weight. You could ‘prove’ to me that the moon is made of cheese, and I still won’t believe it – not because I’m a stubborn anti-science Republican, but because it contradicts the facts of reality…
“There may well be problems with the methodology, but it feels like nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to arbitrarily say that anything higher than 150,000 must be false.”
this isn’t deaths by malaria…it is directly pointed at our military and their mission. Reporting on the subject with ‘problems with the methodology’ really shows what your opinion of our military and their mission.
mark rightly disputes the numbers, and you proceed to dispute mark’s rxn to those numbers.
in fargus world-innaccurate depiction of our military, is not the problem, people who dispute it are. Classic ned lamont syndrome.
Actually, mtl, you don’t know anything about me. For instance you don’t know that I actually work for the Department of Defense. I guess to find out something like that you’d've had to take the intolerable step of asking, huh?
Mark, fatalities are vastly underreported in every conflict. There are big incentives for official sources to undercount and/or fudge definitions, as we witnessed this summer. And the media misses more casualties as the violence increases, because reporters’ movements are increasingly constricted and sources less willing or able to talk.
The study answers you objection thusly:
The study also finds a close correlation in the increase of death rates over the years among “active” and “passive” reporting methods, including the DOD’s.
I don’t believe the study is above reproach, but criticism should be based on more than “it just don’t smell right.”
Andy, true enough, and Fargus, I hear what you’re saying, too (I did read the study, btw). Nevertheless, I stand by my opinion on this matter…I will believe a higher death count than the official one, Andy (like I said, about 150,000 is my ‘breaking point’ on believability), but I can’t believe 600,000+…
I stand by my statement. You actually took the the time to chide someone for being upset about exagerated deaths at the expense of our military. One of the authors of this report said he wanted it to come out before the election.
What kind of sick belief system do you live under?
Let me guess, it wouldn’t bother you if the gop ‘distorted’ anything about democrats in this upcoming election*? You care more about your own political party than our military.
*Since you have the advantage of working at the dod, you better come up with every foreign policy success the dems have had, starting with Carter because the gop is going to paint the democratic party as ‘unfit for duty’, based on every one of their failures. Dems will be scrambling for talking points, and you can be ahead of the curve.
“Show us some specific objections to specific methods.”
I outlined the articles in the New York Times and The Guardian that appeared in a previous posting, and they both carried extensive criticisms by many other experts in the field. Even quotes from the Lancet researches cast much doubt upon their credibility – take the time to actually read what opposing researches have said before you keep spouting off about morality and conscience.
“For instance you don’t know that I actually work for the Department of Defense.”
Which proves…what, exactly? I have one friend who works for the NSA, and two others who are in country in Iraq at the present time, which means absolutely nothing within the context of my arguments. They’ve told me many things which are not being reported by any of the MSM regarding the war and related security efforts, but I won’t drag their views into this, because it goes against their standards of ethical conduct. Given your statement, you seem to possess an insider’s knowledge that we apparently do not – so either spill all of it, or keep your chest – pounding to yourself, please.
Which proves what? That mtl’s baseless accusation that my goal is to smear the military, for which I faithfully work every day, is nothing but a filthy smear. I’m not trying to say anything about what you should think of my opinion based on my job; only that if I held such an opinion as mtl so nastily accuses, I’d have to compartmentalize pretty damn well to work for the military. It’s not chest-pounding. It’s just a legitimate response to mtl’s mischaracterization of me.
As for the rest, he’s not very convincing. All he has is the assertion, without anything to back it up, that the figures are exaggerated horribly, and that to claim otherwise is somehow partisan or ridiculous. As a mathematician, a scientifically-minded person, forgive me if “because I said so” is never a good enough argument.
Dmac to suggest the two articles you cite provided extensive criticisms by many experts in the field seems to be stretching by a mile what was reported in the NYT and the Guardian. The NYT quoted two “experts” (1 or 2 sentences) neither of which had issues with the study’s methodology. They instead voiced a concerns about extrapolating from the sample to the entire country, that is the population (Blendon) and second that there was a tone of accuracy that is just inappropriate (Berry). However, that is what statistics is about–using a sample to tell us about a population with a certain degree of accuracy. The Guardian provides us the opinion of Mr. Anthony Cordesman questioning the way the estimated was derived, without specifics as to the particular issues he had with the methodology except to suggest that it must have something to do with politics. Maybe politics is the basis for its release at this time, but that has little to do with the methodology of the study.
Mtl you are just threatened by everything and everyone. Maybe the neocons should have thought this through a little better before jumping in with both feet. Its not like every adult with real foreign policy experience in the US wasn’t saying that attacking Iraq was a bad idea. God even his old man could have provided decent council.
Lastly, why don’t you list a few of the dems foreign policy failures and we can compare them to the bang up job this administration has done in Sudan, Afganistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. Its hard to believe that in 5 years the US has gone from one of the most admired countries in the world to one of the most disliked. I’m sure it is due to the dems and the biased news media.
Doug asks for Democratic foreign policy failures…hmmm…well, I’ll try:
Let’s see:
Vietnam
Bay of Pigs
Iranian Hostage Crisis
Somalia
How’s that for starters?
Four disasters over twenty years of Democratic administrations (1960-1968, 1976-1980, 1992-2000) — also I’m not sure if Somalia, albeit disastrous, is in the same league as the other three –
As Fargus’s boss has noted, stuff happens … if you will use the silly metric of disasters-per-administration, it’s not a bad record –
Using the same methodolgy, I could produce results that completely dispprove global warming.
This information was distributed world wide. It is at best innocently innaccurate. regardless it is sermon material for al-sadr. dod might be out of touch with the universe, but we have soldiers who are fighting for their lives. one of the greatest difficulties they face is misinformation, alienating them from the people they are trying to help.
here’s a link of a person in Iraq, and his opinion:
http://politicscentral.com/2006/10/11/jaccuse_iraq_the_model_respond.php
“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.”
this one pretty much sums it up. part of you wants it to be true, because you need it to feed your beliefs.
the disasters aren’t exactly hidden.
I was just wondering what the dems have touched that turned to gold. or at least copper.
when a gop guy asks a democratic candidate where the dems have been right on foreign policy in the past 40 years, what’s the talking point(s)?
this election is going to be brutal on democratic foreign policy. music to a special segment of the conservative base.
The most dissaffected conservative voter isn’t the evangelicals, it is the foreign policy fans. They have had every talking point on 40 years of democratic fp miscues and disasters memorized. Now they are stuck with Iraq. It bothers them that they have lost the high ground of making some pretty dramatic fp successes(bush I, Reagan). They don’t approve of bush for squandering their crediblitity. These people are also the realists…after indoctrinating themselves in the school of fp blunders, they grudingly will go and vote for bush, in fear of the alternative.
I’m going against the media, this election is a lot closer, as soon as rove flips the switch.
“Mtl you are just threatened by everything and everyone.”
yes. the dod put a chip in my head. they made me a neocon.
” Its hard to believe that in 5 years the US has gone from one of the most admired countries in the world to one of the most disliked.”
foreign policy as a popularity contest=never pleasing your critics and abdicating control of one’s country…
classic dem theory. brush up on those fp talking points.
(as an aside, if the conversation deteriorates-it hasn’t-any animus I express will be contained in this comment thread.)
not to distract from the search for victory, but I caught another blunder that would make a dem wince.
Iraqi War Resolution, tom dashcle:majority leader. See, you guys do have a talking point.
“we can compare them to the bang up job this administration has done in Sudan, Afganistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China.”
I give you sudan in part…same as rwanda, but also question the world’s commitment when given a humnaitarian nightmare that they too are unwilling to address. Intervention is basically a matter of establishing a safe zone, not even drawn out conflict, and the world won’t budge. So either they are not in Iraq becuase they disapprove of Bsuh, or the y needed a new excuse after exhausting them on rwanda and the sudan.
Afghanistan? taking it down in less than 4 weeks, with miniml exposure of troops, where the soviets were trapped like Vietnam for years?
Iraq?-I still don’t know the outcome, you are telling me that you do?
Iran?-seems civil unrest is moving towards taking care of the problem for us.
NK? how is anything different, except we aren’t giving him his bribe money? bush is even being multilateral, dealing with the six affected parties. it comes down to carrot or stick. (or ‘basketball’ or stick…)
Russia? have you ever heard of the Ukraine? what a ‘failure’ it would be if they were admitted to nato in the next two years.
China? are we at war with them? has any policy changed? should any policy change?
Lybia giving up their wmd program, also leading us to further investigate AQ kahn, learning about nuclear tech being passed around in the ME that our intelligence services failed to find?
and lebanon, not in my words, but the man who is described as the ‘political weathervane of Lebanon’ on wikipedia:
“It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” explains Jumblatt. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45575-2005Feb22.html
This kind of stuff has got to make you gag. Believe in yourself, you know more about the world and other countries, than their own native leaders. read some more juan cole…