Faiza’s view of elections

147 thoughts on “Faiza’s view of elections”

1. for another viewpoint on Sunday’s elections…
   “I have participated in many elections in my life and I usually say that the day you lose your ability to be moved by people going to vote, you should change your career. This was probably one of the most moving elections I have ever seen.”
   Carina Perelli, the leading electoral expert at the UN who has helped advise on dozens of elections from East Timor to the Palestinian territories.
   http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4772109,00.html

2. Interesting read, she seems weary of people overanalyzing the event. I share that. At the high level one can conclude that democratization is a transition that is happening singularly under occupation (based on Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan). She adds the example of Lebanon to that list.
   E. Bilpe

3. At any level, Bilpe, you are a pompous racist orientalist bigot with less than zero appreciation for the concerns of Iraqis.

4. Is Faiza saying that the Sunni insurgency and Zarqawi will wither away if the US leaves? Or that the Zarqawi’s Sunni insurgency will take over and rule peacefully if the US leaves? Notice she is unclear on these crucial issues.

   Does Faiza feel that Zarqawi will honor the results of the elections better than the current vote-counters? Didn’t he threaten the voters and vote counters?

   Surely it is obvious that Allawi is the better choice over Zarqawi?

5. On the one hand it’s exhilarating to read about the number of Iraqis who voted, and to consider the possibility of self-determination in Iraq.
   Yet this whole process was deeply manipulated by the US. The Iraqi people had little to do with it. The US selected the government under which the elections took place and American taxpayer money supported pro-US parties.
   The comparison to elections in South Vietnam is apt. I don’t think the US goal is true self-determination for Iraq, but to keep a pro-US government in power.
   I don’t think that any government derived from the occupation will in the end be regarded by Iraqis as legitimate.

6. Ham– thanks for that helpful link.
   Warren W– I think Faiza’s pretty clear when she says:
   Even in the resistance, there are extremist movements that we can’t deal with and other national movements that can be included in a political dialogue.
   You blithely talk about “Zarqawi’s Sunni insurgency” as though that is all the Sunni insurgency that there is. She, being very well informed about the situation, is pointing out that no, there are different strands, some of which can and some of which can’t be accommodated.
   Bilpe– it’s amazing that you could even think that, democratization is a transition that is happening singularly under occupation, but I guess maybe you’ve been consuming too much US mainstream media recently? Try reducing the dosage and using other sources of information as well. Then you might learn about all kinds of other countries where solid, well-based democratization continues, while also learning about the very fragile and partial nature of the “democratization” in those three countries, especially so long as the essential questions of national sovereignty are left unaddressed.
   Shirin– I don’t think that calling Bilpe names is courteous, at all…

7. At any level, Bilpe, you are a pompous racist orientalist bigot with less than zero appreciation for the concerns of Iraqis.
   My, my!

8. “Please add your own comments that are courteous, fresh, helpful, and to the point”
   I’ll give her “fresh” and definitely “to the point.”

9. Helena, I apologize to you for not complying with your request for courtesy. I will try to refrain from such outbursts in the future.

10. Tom Friedman’s view of elections:
    “hen there is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This Charles-Manson-with-a-turban who heads the insurgency in Iraq had a bad hair day on Sunday. I wonder whether anyone told him about the suicide bomber who managed to blow up only himself outside a Baghdad polling station and how Iraqi voters walked around his body, spitting on it as they went by. Zarqawi claims to be the leader of the Iraqi Vietcong – the authentic carrier of Iraqis’ national aspirations and desire to liberate their country from “U.S. occupation.” In truth, he is the leader of the Iraqi Khmer Rouge – a murderous death cult.”
    Shirin– does mentioning this little anecdote so contrary to your view make Mr. Friedman all those wonderful adjectives as well?

11. Shirin– does mentioning this little anecdote so contrary to your view make Mr. Friedman all those wonderful adjectives as well?
    DG, obviously the answer is yes — duh!. One apocryphal anecdote does not a popular movement make. Tom Friedman is a neocon Zionist warmonger, and nothing he writes is to be taken seriously.
    Helena, as someone with a good deal of experience with Lebanese history, how would you address comparisons to elections held under Syria’s 28-year occupation of Lebanon? I’m sure you’ve addressed this on prior occasions — excuse me for revisiting old territory.

12. Those parts of the insurgency that Faiza thinks can be accomodated in the political dialogue might well be accomodated by the newly elected government.
    Yes, the Sunni insurgency includes others besides Zarqawi and the Return Party, but it’s hard to tell from outside where the borders are.

13. The legitimate Iraqi resistance is not likely to allow itself to be co-opted by a government it does not consider legitimate, and it is unlikely to consider legitimate any government that “invites” the occupying power to stay.

14. Since it’s ok for apologists for the ‘resistance’ to disown affiliation with Zarqawi and company, is it now ok for hawks to disown ‘collateral damage’ and Abu Ghraib? There are many strains of occupier, you see, it’s all exceedingly complicated…

15. and it is unlikely to consider legitimate any government that “invites” the occupying power to stay.
    Cue newsreel of Syrian troops, circa 1976…

16. Bilpe, Argyll, DG and WarrenW taken together are quite frightening. To have one of them raise the spectre of “Vietcong” is extraordinary after all these years.
    The giving of a hateful name to the defenders of the oppressed is a repeated manoevre. In the 1950s in Kenya, it was the “Mau Mau”. Just as with the Vietcong, there was no such organisation. It was an invention of the British colonial power. So is “Al-Quaeda” an invention, and now the “Zarqawi” thing. Not to say that there are no real freedom fighters, only that the myth and the reality are nothing to do with each other.
    I cannot think of any case since 1945 where this manoevre has been successful. Where in the past (“Red Indians” &c) it was the pretext for real genocide, now it is more often the boast of an ineffectual power whose time has past. Perhaps we may be reassured, therefore, rather than scared.
    My sympathies as always are with Shirin and all the Iraqis. I am not a pacifist, although I believe that peace is an essential good like water, food, and shelter. The right of self-defence and the right to repel an invader are recognised in law all over the world.
    The self-satisfied crowings of the supporters of imperialism are repellant. They disfigure this board. The rules here preclude the kind of response they really deserve, which is dismissal with contempt.

17. Good article from Adrian Hamilton of the Independent, reproduced at http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=58513&d=4&m=2&y=2005
    Headline is Self-Determination for Arabs: Will West Accept It?

18. From a Reuters report:
    ‘More than 1,400 U.S. troops have been killed since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the conflict is costing Washington more than $1 billion a week.
    ‘Wolfowitz said the big turnout in Iraq’s elections showed the violence “is not a nationalist insurgency. It is an unholy alliance of old terrorists and new terrorists” of remnants of deposed President Saddam Hussein’s regime and “new terrorists drawn from across the region.”‘
    Here Wolfowitz attempts the Big Lie. Everybody knows that Iraqis have the legal right to bear arms against an invader. Everybody knows that the US invaders have no right whatsoever to be in Iraq. Wolfowitz wants to do a sleight of hand and mouth so that you will believe that he has the legitimacy, using the elections as rag to distract. The elections have nothing to do with it. The yankee must go home, that is all.

19. “Is Faiza saying that the Sunni insurgency and Zarqawi will wither away if the US leaves?”
    If the U.S. leaves four things will definitely happen.
    1) In the absence of American troops the violence will be drastically reduced. That is because the overwhelming majority of the violence, and by far the worst violence is committed by American troops with their bombs, their missiles, their bullets, and their abuse and torture.
    2) The violence from the part of the resistance that is targetting the occupation will cease.
    3) Popular support for other groups committing violence will be greatly reduced.
    4) Iraqi security forces will do their jobs willingly once they are no longer killing their fellow Iraqis on behalf of the occupying power.
    “Or that the Zarqawi’s Sunni insurgency will take over and rule peacefully if the US leaves?”
    There is no such thing as “Zarqawi’s Sunni insurgency”. Zarqawi is, if he is even in Iraq, a minor factor in the resistance, he is despised by most Iraqi people, including much of the resistance, and he is not Iraqi. So no, he will not rule Iraq.
    “Notice she is unclear on these crucial issues.”
    No, she isn’t.
    Does Faiza feel that Zarqawi will honor the results of the elections better than the current vote-counters? Didn’t he threaten the voters and vote counters?
    Surely it is obvious that Allawi is the better choice over Zarqawi?

20. “The giving of a hateful name to the defenders of the oppressed is a repeated manoevre”
    In fact, one might even add another to the list–“Yankee doodle” in 1776. Gee, if it weren’t for those wonderful redcoats and Hessians, I guess there wouldn’t have been Democracy in North America (which, btw, is true, isn’t it?)?

21. Sorry – I posted prematurely:
    “Does Faiza feel that Zarqawi will honor the results of the elections better than the current vote-counters?”
    Zarqawi, Zarqawi, Zarqawi. What is this desperate need to have a bogeyman of the week? The real issue is that for the Bush administration the election was not about the will of the Iraqi people at all. It is just another move in their shell game.

22. Shirin,
    In my book the apologies are due to me, not to Helena. You know where to find me.
    E. Bilpe

23. Helena,
    I have not seen many spontaneous democratization processes in the Arab world, therefore the 3 Arab plus the non-Arab Afghani examples might mean something. If you have a different perspective in one or two of the basic tenets around this conflict you may arrive at the same conclusions I have. I am surprised at the flat dismissal I get time and again, without any consideration for the substance of the assumptions nor the factual data. For one, I do see the Iraq war and post war arm-wrestling as a proxy war between the US and a multiplicity of anti-American islamic currents. Iraq is just the theater, because it matters to both sides much more than the barren lands of Afghanistan.
    Respectfully,
    E. Bilpe

24. Shirin’s 4 points
    If I believed your 4 points were an accurate list of what will happen if the US military leaves Iraq right now, I would seriously consider immediate US withdrawal. Why wouldn’t I? Except that your 4 points don’t indicate who will govern Iraq.
    I think your idea that the US won’t be there to be a target or to fire weapons is true. But it seems clear that the insurgency will continue the battle to take down the Allawi government and/or the elected government.
    Then the insurgency will introduce some sort of dictatorship, proabably after fighting among themselves to see if the dictatorship will be Baathist or Islamist. Zarqawi might be despised but he might win that battle.
    Or are you claiming that the elected government will be allowed to govern without violent opposition?
    Or are you a straightforward supporter of one of the factions inside the Sunni insurgency? If so, which one?
    Also for shirin and Helena: The phrase “Zarqawi’s Sunni insurgency” could mean just his faction or the idea that Zarqawi is the whole insurgency. I apologise for the ambiguity.

25. Yeah, WarrenW, and it might come down to depending on R2D2 and C3PO. Or a fight between them.
    Have you no idea how embarrassing it is to read your childish fantasies?

26. Warren,
    1) How very revealing that you have completely avoided addressing my first point – that the overwhelaming majority of the violence, and the worst violence, will cease immediately the moment the Americans leave Iraq.
    2) I did not mention who will govern Iraq, because I was listing the things that we can accurately predict.
    3) Also very, very revealing is the way you have carefully spun my second point, which was that violence from the legitimate resistance, which is targetting the occupation, will cease once the occupation is ended.
    4) Every one of your predictions is pure speculation. They are also self serving and based on no real knowledge, and a lot of disinformation about Iraq.
    As to your questions:
    1) There is no elected government, and none will result from the process that began on Sunday. What will result from the “election” is an assembly that will select three people who will in turn select a Prime Minister who will have to be “palatable to the Bush administration”. Further, that assembly will have been chosen in an illegitimate and corrupt process devised, and already manipulated, by the occupying power.
    2) I do not accept your designation “Sunni insurgency”, though it is certainly less offensive than your “Zarqawi’s Sunni insurgency”. The correct term for those who are attacking targets directly connected to the American occupation with the goal of ending the occupation is resistance. The correct term for those who are attacking Iraqi and other targets not connected with the American occupation is criminals.
    It is not the ambiguity of your “Zarqawi’s Sunni insurgency” that is offensive.

27. Dominic
    I don’t understand your references to movie robots or to fantasies.
    Shirin
    If the Americans leave Iraq they won’t be fighting in Iraq — they won’t be shooting and they won’t be shot at. I thought that was what you meant by your points #1 and #2 together.
    Your claim that the US violence is the “Worst violence” is interesting, but you don’t give us any reason to believe you. Clearly, after a US departure, the level of violence might go up, as the various Iraqi factions attack each other. The Shiites, in particular, will then have a reason to annihalate the Sunni power base. And vica versa.
    I didn’t omit your first point, but what do think was “Revealed”?
    Are you claiming that if the US leaves right away the elected government will be allowed to govern without violent opposition?
    If you don’t recognize the elections, who would be the legitimate leader of Iraq; Sadaam, Zarqawi, Sistani, al-Sadr, Allawi, Talabani?
    Or are you a straightforward supporter of one of the factions inside the Sunni insurgency? If so, which one?
    I don’t know what you mean that I have “Spun” your second point. And if this is so very, very revealing, pray tell us what it revealed.
    Your first point is that when the Americans leave they will stop shooting, and your second point was that when they leave they will no longer be shot at. Where’s the spin?
    Several commentators, including Shirin, have said that the violence will stop if the Americans leave. I am objecting to this speculation on the grounds of common sense and the grounds that the “Insurgents” obviously want to take state power by force. None of you have addressed these obvious objections of mine.
    I can speculate that if the US leaves right away then there will be a holocaust of Iraqis as the sides fight it out. If you cannot disprove my speculation then I have disproved the certainty of your prediction of Iraqi peace, once the US leaves.

28. I haven’t read all these comments in detail, but I have to ask if anyone is aware of the fact that analysts such as Juan Cole have made it clear that the key reasons most Iraqis were voting was to remove U.S. hegemony.
    Also, someone or other had the idea that democracy was enabled by the occupation — which I suppose has an element of truth to it, but sidesteps the fact that the Bush administration opposed elections until Sistani leveraged his considerable political clout. (This neo-colonialist notion that the U.S. is the single benefactor bestowing democracy has got to go.)
    Speaking of which, isn’t the real issue moving forward what the U.S. will do now that we’re looking at a pro-Iran, religious Shi’ite government in Iraq? Ok, it’s a secular-religious coalition, but it sure isn’t completely secular.
    Anyway, I want to know what is going to happen when (not if) the new Shi’ite alliance asks the U.S. to leave.

29. Vivion, to illustrate one of Cole’s many blind spots (the subject of much comment here in the recent past) here is a quote from his blog today:
    “In my view, this outcome would have many advantages. The Kurds are largely Sunnis, so they can represent some of the interests of the Sunni Arabs (religious issues versus ethnic ones.)”
    Cole is referring to speculation (in the New York Times) about a coalition between Shi’ites and Kurds.
    Now, maybe you can tell us, what are the “religious issues” pressing any Iraqi government at this time?
    Cole plays a three card trick as between sectarianism, democracy, and race which somehow never needs to be resolved. As soon as it can be shown that one of these is really not critical, Cole presses one of the other buttons and dances another little jig.
    Cole is not helping the US public to come to its senses and demand that their aggressive troops are sent home. On the contrary, he keeps spinning another yarn to imply, but never prove, that there is some reason for them to be there.
    He should come out straight and say that Iraqi religion, nationalism, and economics all point one way for the US forces: out!

30. I thought Shirin’s four points were excellent, and describe very well what would probably happen if the US simply withdrew. The support for the Sunni Islamists such as Zarqawi would wither away, as they wouldn’t have any justification.
    There is another issue however which means that things will not be so simple. That is Kirkuk. The Kurds are moving towards wanting full independence. And in my opinion want all of Kirkuk, and will not be satisfied with half, which was recently said to be the agreement. You saw the reports of Kurds being moved into Kirkuk in order to be able to vote in the election. A conflict over Kirkuk would not be resolved by an American withdrawal.
    The apparent news that the UIA alliance may be about to win big in the election gives me more hope for Iraq than I have had for a long time. Although a religiously coloured regime may not be desirable, I am certain they are going to pursue unity in Arab Iraq, and sooner or later – probably sooner – they are going to ask the US to leave, although they agreed to eliminate that point from their election programme. The point I am not certain about is what the deal with the Kurds will be.

31. Have you no idea how embarrassing it is to read your childish fantasies?
    The self-satisfied crowings of the supporters of imperialism are repellant. They disfigure this board.
    One cannot help but wonder why you are unable to refrain from hurling personal invective when you address an interlocutor who disagrees with you.

32. Dominic, Shirin, etc,
    A question for any of you, via Gene at Harry Hatchet’s blog:
    Do you have evidence that the armed insurgency in Iraq includes anyone who can be described fairly as a social democrat or a liberal, or even anyone whose democratic credentials extend beyond calling himself a democrat?
    Someone over there points to an organization calling itself the “Iraq National Foundation Congress” which seems to be an idealized secular, anti-occupation democratic movement of and for the people dedicated to true democracy and human rights etc etc. But strangely the most deadly attacks on both Iraqi civilians, election officials and coalition forces have not been claimed by them.
    What other groups am I missing, and what have they accomplished either toward expelling the occupiers or establishing TRUE democracy in Iraq. What evidence have you that any such group represents a majority of the Iraqi people in its wholesale rejection of the elections embraced by millions of Iraqis?
    I notice too that my Abu Ghraib analogy went unanswered as did the Lebanese comparison. Ah well.

33. “I want to know what is going to happen when (not if) the new Shi’ite alliance asks the U.S. to leave.”
    Vivion, there is reason to strongly suspect that will not happen, at least not in the near future. I am not sure whether you are aware of this or not, but two days before the election a spokesperson for the “Shi’ite” list announced that they would not be asking the Americans to leave. This followed the announcement in the previous couple of weeks that they would not be seeking close ties with Iran and that they did not intend to form an Islamic government. It was also a 180 degree reversal of one of their key positions, and ran counter to the will of the overwhelming majority of Iraqis.
    In addition, Bush publicly reversed his earlier statement that if asked by the “new government”, he would (but that he didn’t think he would be asked), and announced that he would not withdraw.
    In the current issue of the New Yorker is a 20 page article about Allawi, in which the author writes that he was told by one of the candidates on the so-called “Shi’ite list” that the Americans had let them know that they had three requirements: 1) No Iranian influence, 2) no Islamic state, 3) No asking for withdrawal of the occupation. That can hardly be coincidental.
    As further evidence that the American occupiers are manipulating the process to their advantage, Reuters reported that an American official stated that they had made it very clear to the candidates that any Prime Minister would have to “be palatable” to the Americans.
    The Bush administration was dragged kicking and screaming into this election, but believe me every step of the way they have worked and will continue to work to make sure this will be just a new “Iraqi” facade on the occupation.
    Just another move in their shell game.

34. Following Shirin’s remarks about the American imposition of conditions on the candidates, I am sure that is right; conditions were imposed. I am equally sure that the UIA alliance found it convenient to accept, in order to have a chance of power.
    What happens afterwards, when the UIA is in power, is quite a different matter. It would be kind of difficult for the US to engineer a coup, if they found that this democratically elected government didn’t conform to US requirements. I am certain the UIA is basically planning to go its own road once in power. Though it won’t be easy coping with the Americans. We shall see.

35. “If the Americans leave Iraq they won’t be fighting in Iraq — they won’t be shooting and they won’t be shot at. I thought that was what you meant by your points #1 and #2 together.”
    I was very explicit, Warren, in stating that the overwhelming majority of the violence would stop as soon as the Americans were gone because they are the ones committing the overwhelming majority of the violence. How that translates to “the U.S. will not be there to fire at” is a mystery to me.
    “Your claim that the US violence is the “Worst violence” is interesting, but you don’t give us any reason to believe you.”
    You really think a few thousand guerilla forces with kalashnikovs, RPG’s, car bombs and homemade roadside explosive devices are more violent than 150,000 troops with bombs, planes, helicopter gunships, tanks, heavy machine guns, and the power and the will to use them massively and opening at any time of the day or night? You think a few car bombs going off in a day are more violent, deadly and destructive than hundreds of half ton and one ton bombs? Amazing!
    “Clearly, after a US departure, the level of violence might go up”
    That simply is not possible given the massive violence the Americans commit every day.
    “as the various Iraqi factions attack each other. The Shiites, in particular, will then have a reason to annihalate the Sunni power base. And vica versa”
    That is pure speculation, and it is based on no real knowledge of Iraq’s history, and social and political structure, and a lot of mis/disinformation. The likelihood of continued massive violence is far, far greater if the Americans stay.
    “Are you claiming that if the US leaves right away the elected government will be allowed to govern without violent opposition?”
    As I believe I have already pointed out, there is no elected government. The next “government” will be appointed by a prime minister who will be appointed by a three member committee chosen by an illegitimately “elected” national assembly in an election that has already been manipulated by the occupying power.
    “I didn’t omit your first point, but what do think was “Revealed”?”
    No, I see now that I misread what you wrote. You did not exactly omit it, but you certainly minimized it to the point of near invisibility, and grossly mischaracterized the role of the American foces merely as “shooting and being shot at”.
    “If you don’t recognize the elections, who would be the legitimate leader of Iraq; Sadaam, Zarqawi, Sistani, al-Sadr, Allawi, Talabani?
    I hope this is not a serious question.
    “Your first point is that when the Americans leave they will stop shooting…”
    Is that all you think they do? Just shoot? And perhaps you also think the only people they shoot at is “insurgents”?
    “and your second point was that when they leave they will no longer be shot at.”
    No, that was not my second point.
    “Several commentators, including Shirin, have said that the violence will stop if the Americans leave.”
    No, that is not at all what I said.
    “I am objecting to this speculation on the grounds of common sense and the grounds that the “Insurgents” obviously want to take state power by force.””
    It is not speculation at all to state that the violence will immediately be reduced if the Americans leave. It is, in fact, common sense. The Americans are committing the overwhelming majority of and the most devastating and deadly violence. If the are not there to continue to commit this violence, it will drastically reduce the total amount of violence. It will also bring about a cessation of the violence on the part of the resistance which has focused its attacks directly on the occupation.
    With all due respect, you have no idea who what you call the “insurgents” are, let alone what they want.
    

36. “but two days before the election a spokesperson for the “Shi’ite” list announced that they would not be asking the Americans to leave.”
    Please document this claim. I may have missed this but it directly contradicts more recent statements, eg
    ‘ “No one welcomes the foreign troops in Iraq. We believe in the ability of Iraqis to run their own issues, including the security issue,” Mr Hakim said. “Of course this issue could be brought up by the new government.” ‘
    This from Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, via Juan Cole on Feb 1.

37. for Shirin, via Warren:
    Your claim that the US violence is the “Worst violence” is interesting, but you don’t give us any reason to believe you. Clearly, after a US departure, the level of violence might go up, as the various Iraqi factions attack each other. The Shiites, in particular, will then have a reason to annihalate the Sunni power base. And vica versa.
    Please don’t ignore his question, it is the same one I asked on an earlier board and had invectives spat at me in result that I “had no education about the region.” Warren’s analyses of your points is pretty logical, I’d love to see the process by which you rationalize out from under it instead of sidestepping.

38. because they are the ones committing the overwhelming majority of the violence.
    The Americans are committing the overwhelming majority of and the most devastating and deadly violence.
    Demonstrably false ; please examine the Iraq Body Count database. Among deaths attributed to specific source, insurgent-sponsored incidents have killed many more civilians than even the trigger-happy US Marine Corps — it’s not even close.

39. “It would be kind of difficult for the US to engineer a coup, if they found that this democratically elected government didn’t conform to US requirements.”
    1) It is not a democratically elected government. It is an assembly chosen in an illegitimate, corrupt election in which a major portion of the population was virtually completely disenfranchised, another major portion of the population was coerced into voting by a religious edict, and other means of coercion (e.g. withholding of food rations) were preceived by many voters, whether they were real or not. It was an election in which which the identities of the majority of the candidates’ identities were unknown, most positions on the issues were unknown, and the only parties that were able to campaign at all were the three who were sponsored and provided security by the Americans or who had their own resources to provide financing and security. Further, it is the first part of a very undemocratic process designed by the occupying power to maximize its opportunity to influence the final outcome.
    2) I think you may be underestimating what the Bush administration is capable of and willing to do to ensure the “right” final outcome.
    “I am certain the UIA is basically planning to go its own road once in power.”
    And they have already been warned by the occupying power that that road will be filled with roadblocks if they do not adhere to U.S. requirements.
    “Though it won’t be easy coping with the Americans.”
    I would not put anything past the Bush administration.

40. Shirin said
    “You really think a few thousand guerilla forces with kalashnikovs, RPG’s, car bombs and homemade roadside explosive devices are more violent than 150,000 troops with bombs, planes, helicopter gunships, tanks, heavy machine guns, and the power and the will to use them massively and opening at any time of the day or night? You think a few car bombs going off in a day are more violent, deadly and destructive than hundreds of half ton and one ton bombs? Amazing!”
    Yes, if those insurgents have millions of rounds at their disposal, a tribal infrastructure for trafficking them, misguided zealots to detonate themselves in a sadistic act of nilhistic dogma, and are hellbent on causing as much bloodshed and anarchy as possible. Regardless of US military capabilities, to say that the US isn’t showing any restraint but is equally hellbent on causing as much death as they can upon a defenseless population while they can is not just wrong, it is demented beyond belief of rationality.

41. Shirin wrote:
    You think a few car bombs going off in a day are more violent, deadly and destructive than hundreds of half ton and one ton bombs?
    All in, today’s Iraq Body Count database reveals the following: (all figures from since the beginning of the invasion)
    1800 civilian deaths attributed to “airstrikes,” “US airstrikes” “aerial bombardment” or variations thereupon
    268 attributed to ‘cluster bombing’
    (nb this includes invasion figures)
    versus
    600 attributed to ‘car bombs’
    968 attributed to ‘suicide bomb’ ‘suicide car bomb’ or variations thereupon
    180 attributed to mortars or variations.
    171 ‘roadside bomb’
    125 Rockets and RPGs
    Unattributed deaths by ‘gunfire’ number around 3000, with more unattributed deaths numbering close to 2000. Examining the IBC list within these categories reveals a large proportion of them to have been directed at cooperative civil and coalition targets. The same is the case with unattributed ‘bomb’ deaths.
    If anyone is interested in examining these statistics in more detail, I would be happy to email an easily sorted spreadsheet. Regardless of the thoroughness of the IBC reports (I happily admit they are incomplete and imperfect), if Shirin’s claim were accurate, it should be manifested in the observed distribution of intended targets and type of attack. A cursory glance at the known facts reveals nothing of the kind. I don’t see why the IBC should exhibit a systematic bias toward undercounting airstrike casualties and overcounting suicide bomb attacks, and if anyone here can think of one I’m all ears.

42. Argyll,
    Iraq Body Count provides an important service, and was the only one doing any kind of count of civilian deaths for some time. However, they depend on news media reports, which are not reliable, particularly given the now almost total U.S. control over access to information, and the U.S. practice of spinning, ommiting critical information, and sometimes out and out fabrication. This has been the case since the beginning, and has become increasingly pervasive now since for most reporters virtually the sole source of information of any kind is the daily press conferences held by U.S. authorities, giving the U.S. almost total control over information.
    Civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces are grossly underreported and/or are falsely reported as “insurgent” deaths. Deaths at the hands of “insurgents” are, if not overreported, certainly reported consistently. That not only creates the false impression that the “insurgents” are doing all the killing, it skews the numbers for those who are using news media reports.

43. There is plenty to criticize about the election process, and the desire of the U.S. to control outcomes in Iraq should be obvious. Too much blood and treasure have been expended to expect the U.S. to just hand over power and walk away.
    But these elections, flawed as they may have been, were not at the order of the U.S. They were demanded by Sayyid Sistani. He demanded these elections, and in the face of difficult security situation, did not relent. He made voting a religious obligation, which is not a light matter at all. As I have said elsewhere, this is a very political move reminiscent of Imam Khomeini, rather than a “quietest” ayatullah. His constituency took his order very seriously, and lined up to vote even as bombs and mortars were going off. People who think this bravery was because of a newfound love of democracy are hopelessly naive and/or completely uninformed about the nature of Shia’ Islam. They did it because they were ordered to by Sayyid Sistani, and were promised martyrdom if they died trying to vote. Martydom is a touchstone for the Shia’.
    As the election results trickle in, it is clear that Sistani is being handed the mandate that he asked for. Make no mistake, he is the power and unifying thread behind this fractious Shia’ alliance. He has effectively become the Khomeini of Iraq.
    What remains to be seen is what he will do with this mandate. He is no friend of the U.S., but I am not expecting him to demand an immediate pullout of U.S. troops. The catch 22 is that the U.S., for all the violence it perpetrates and provokes, has become indespensible in the actual functioning of the state. An abrupt departure, would IMO result in even more chaos. If one removes the knife quickly from the wound, the resulting blood loss may kill the patient, and this patient (the Iraqi state) is already on life support. My expectation is that he will be reaching out to Sunni and Kurdish leaders in order to try to pull a broken Iraqi state back together. Najaf is set to take a very prominent role in governance for awhile (as compared to Amman), which is effectively out of reach of the U.S. and the Zarqawi types. If he is successful, the U.S. presence in Iraq (and whatever geostrategic designs, including enduring bases) is finished.

44. Andrew,
    1) There are a lot of “ifs” in your “insurgent” scenario that do not stand up under any kind of knowledgeable scrutiny. In fact, it amounts to speculation with no basis in anything close to reality.
    2) What the U.S. has done and is doing when it is “showing restraint” includes destroying an entire major city, rendering it uninhabitable, and killing thousands of men, women, and children, most buried in the rubble of their homes flattened by bombs (and by the way, why are THOSE numbers not anywhere in Iraq Body Count’s tabulations?). According to the only scientific study done to date, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians had been killed as of Summer, 2004, most of them as a result of U.S. air strikes, and around half of them women and children. I don’t think anyone who has not seen it can begin to appreciate the extent and the magnitude of the destruction the U.S. has done.
    How many roadside explosive devices would it take to destroy as much as one half ton bomb?

45. From Dominic: Now, maybe you can tell us, what are the “religious issues” pressing any Iraqi government at this time?
    I really couldn’t follow your post, or what point you were trying to make. The tone of this particular question sounded a bit snide, but I’ll assume you didn’t mean that. As far as an answer goes, the first concern of a would-be Islamic government is how to make the government more Islamic, no? I’m using Iran as a baseline here.
    I’m not saying this is good or bad. Just wondering what the U.S. will do in response.
    Which brings me to Shirin’s post, in which she made the case that the U.S. is truly the puppeteer behind the elections at this point. I have yet to be convinced of this, at least as a black or white issue. Certainly, the U.S. has been trying to throw its weight around, what with using marines to “get out the vote”, and other charming details that Helena and others have catalogued.
    HOWEVER — it seems to me that even from the early months of the occupation, Iraqi politicians and notables have found ways to push the envelope and leverage their strengths to lobby for greater independence from the U.S. Remember, Bush has a great interest in appearing to be handing sovereignty over to the Iraqis; this is something that can be used against him, within limits.
    Bottom line: I can imagine the new Iraqi government formally requesting the U.S. to come up with a timetable for withdrawl. At which point even the Republican base over here is going to start asking why we are still over there. I’m not talking about would-be pundits and real politik-ers.
    It is for this reason that I’ve managed to scrape up some optimism. Curious about what other folks think; it looks like there are various cross-currents in the comment section.

46. Deaths at the hands of “insurgents” are, if not overreported, certainly reported consistently.
    Interesting that the IBC makes no such distinction. Unfortunately “insurgent” deaths are treated by the IBC as plain old civilian casualties. Interesting, but irrelevant. I am grouping by type of attack, not type of victim, for a reason. There is no reason to believe that type of attack should be skewed toward car bombs and away from airstrikes, unless the former were being systematically confused for the latter.
    But if the US-controlled media (including such administration mouthpieces as Al Jazeera, Arab News, Human Rights Watch, Mother Jones, etc etc etc) are unable to observe and therefore represent a more accurate distribution of targets and form of attack, how may I ask are you? What are your sources that permit you to make the serious claim that “[t]he Americans are committing the overwhelming majority of and the most devastating and deadly violence.” Why are these sources not reporting such incidents in an appropriate ratio to any of the IBC’s 50 or so news agencies?

47. Shirin said
    “they depend on news media reports, which are not reliable, particularly given the now almost total U.S. control over access to information, and the U.S. practice of spinning, ommiting critical information, and sometimes out and out fabrication”
    Your lack of balance oozes from your every paragraph. Are we to suppose from your partisan ravings that the spinning and fabrication of news reports is by title a “U.S. practice”? Capitalist journalism is an imperfect science if there ever was one, but it is by far a more laudable endeavor than the laughable propaganda spewed as fact by not only arab state media but by every state media since the dissemination of the printing press! Calling the twisting of facts into a favorable light a “U.S. practice” ignores the hard work globally of generations of skilled professional liars, some of whom apparently imparted you with all your views.

48. and by the way, why are THOSE numbers not anywhere in Iraq Body Count’s tabulations?
    They are counted.
    How many roadside explosive devices would it take to destroy as much as one half ton bomb?
    A car weighs several tons and can hold about as much explosive as most categories of airborne ordnance. Hundreds of thousands of tons of RDX, Soviet anti-tank mines and other categories of munitions remain unaccounted for in Iraq.
    According to the only scientific study done to date…
    If you are referring to the Lancet study, I would refer you to Heiko Gerhauser’s criticisms on Crooked Timber and elsewhere regarding 2002 infant mortality. The Lancet’s 100k figure leans on the insane notion that 2002 infant mortality was a mere 2.9%, directly contradicting UNICEF and WHO findings. Furthermore the Lancet study makes no effort to distinguish civilian from ANY other category of victim (the results are misrepresented in the accompanying editorial.) Surely if 240 civilians were to have been slaughtered every single day for 14 months (as the Lancet demands that we believe) some meaningful proportion of them would have been noticed by the news media in Iraq, US manipulation notwithstanding. Why do you presume the Lancet’s research findings to be more accurate than the collective observations of hundreds of reporters in Iraq?

49. Vivion, it seems you were exactly the right person to ask. Your reply is that the business of an “Islamic” government in these circumstances is to become more Islamic. A perfectly circular argument and a good example of the Mad Hatter’s tea party that is US “scenario”-gazing vis-avis Iraq.
    Perhaps you point the way out by adding that you are using Iran as a baseline. As it happens, the reason the US is menacing Iran right now is nothing to do with them being “Islamic” let alone “terrorist”. It is precisely because Iran’s economy is going very well indeed.
    Once again: “It’s the economy, stupid!”
    Argyll, you wanted evidence that the resistance has social democrats and liberals in it. Let’s rather try a different question. What evidence do you have that the resistance is anything other than middle class (where middle class equals any or all of the following: national bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, peasants/farmers, professionals, bureaucrats)?
    You may not have those particular parties but you surely have the class that gives rise to those parties, in other circumstances, and also to “religious” parties. Right now what you have is a class fighting an armed struggle for its survival.

50. imo, some of the assumptions here are quite naive…the UIA Alliance will NOT be asking the Coalition to leave any time soon…they will NOT be pawns of Iran..they will NOT be introducing a theocratic state…they will NOT even be coming to power, as such…lacking a 2/3 majority in the new National Legislature, they will have to cut a deal either with Allawi or Barzani (the Kurdish leader)…even beyond that, the UIA list is a hodgepodge of disparate Shiites/Sunnis/Clerics/Secularists (including Chalabi and some Sadristas) brokered by Sistani/Hakim…it will be extremely difficult to impose “party discipline” on this group…it is not inconceivable that Allawi could pick off splinter UIA legislators (in addition to cutting a deal with Barzani) to retain the Prime Ministership.

51. What evidence do you have that the resistance is anything other than middle class
    I know only what their deeds and public statements tell me. On that basis I’m not sure that social justice and human rights rank highly among their priorities.
    On the topic of solidarity with the Iraqi working class, people might be interested in this, also this, and this.

52. people, regardless of “class”, whose avowed aims are to kill election workers, candidates and voters are FASCISTS pure and simple.

53. “I can speculate that if the US leaves right away then there will be a holocaust of Iraqis as the sides fight it out. If you cannot disprove my speculation then I have disproved the certainty of your prediction of Iraqi peace, once the US leaves.” – WarrenW
    Speculations are not provable or disprovable ahead of time. They are predictions of what may happen. But we can say one thing for sure (now that we know that Saddam’s mass graves identified so far number less than 6,000): way, way, way more Iraqis are dying in 2004 and 2005 than in 1992-2002.
    And as for the argument that the US bombs are killing less Iraqis than the IEDs from the insurgents, that is speculation too. But the fact that the US (Bush administration) does not make an attempt to count or note the Iraqis killed by it’s actions (indeed, they have expressed contempt for that whole idea!) does SPEAK VOLUMES.
    Let me repeat that: THE FACT THAT THE US ADMINISTRATION IS MAKING NO ATTEMPT TO COUNT THE IRAQI DEAD FROM IT’S BOMBS AND BULLETS – INDEED, STOPS OTHERS FROM DOING SO – DOES SPEAK VOLUMES.
    If the US presence in the country is a peaceful and stabilizing force, and reduces the number of killed Iraqis and MNF troops, then the number that is being recorded (the MNF troops) would be going down.
    It is not.
    Let me repeat that: It is clearly not.
    There is no way IBC can go into Fallujah and count how many people have been killed, since they are not allowed in. I heard, via private email, that 950+ civilians were killed in Najaf in August 2004. And I think it is important to keep in mind that it was Sistani, not the US troops or the insurgents, who stopped the violence in that case.
    Additionally, the Iraqi death toll is pushed up by stress (I know I’d be stressed if bombs were being dropped in my neighborhood… and the US drops bombs every day) and by lack of access to health care and by lack of clean water and by lack of clean environment, and probably by exposure to DU.
    Did you know one group of US troops sent to Iraq in 2003 have a cancer rate now of 8 out of 20 people?
    I heard that the US has ordered enough bullets for Iraq for 2005 that it turns out they will have 38 bullets for every man, women and child in that country.
    I’ll be the arms manufacturing industry is very happy.

54. Social justice and human rights, huh? Nice sentiments, but aren’t you being a bit one-eyed?
    Why is it that you can understand the idea of politics as an expression of class interest when you are talking about the working class, but when it comes to the middle strata and the national bourgeoisie, you can’t?
    Why is it that their politics must be judged by subjective standards while working class politics are seen (correctly) as a response to objective circumstances?
    The Iraqi middle classes are no more wicked, religious, capitalist, liberal, social-democrat, or whatever, than your average common-or-garden middle class anywhere in the world. Your question is therefore an idle one. You should look at the dire circumstances these poor people are in. They are fighting for their lives against a vicious invader, while you stand at the side with a clip-board in your hand, wanting to check out how many of the are liberals and social democrats. I think that is absurd.

55. Susan said:
    I heard that the US has ordered enough bullets for Iraq for 2005 that it turns out they will have 38 bullets for every man, women and child in that country.
    Dominic said:
    You should look at the dire circumstances these poor people are in. They are fighting for their lives against a vicious invader
    The the close-mindedness of your single dimension arguments is staggering. Susan, you present a suppy-logistics fact worded in such a way as to imply that US soldiers are out seeking to overkill everything with a pulse in the country. Dominic vividly imagines a door-to-door slaughter by racist crusaders. Shirin? I don’t even want to get in her head. You realize your views are extremist, don’t you?
    Meanwhile, over on the far right, we have Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush painting rosy pictures of smiling voters and heroic soldiers fighting evil-doers. They lie, too, and it’s hard to believe they aren’t aware of their own fabrications and exaggerations any less than you are.
    Now, how can you argue that it is illogical for me to believe that the truth of the situation lies somewhere in between?

56. Social justice and human rights, huh? Nice sentiments, but aren’t you being a bit one-eyed?
    I consider it ‘one-eyed’ to fetishize national sovereignty at the expense of all civil order, human rights and the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. On that topic, Susan’s claim that ” 950+ civilians were killed in Najaf in August 2004″ strains credulity more than a bit. I’m more than a bit curious to see this ‘private email.’
    Also unusual is Susan’s claim that more Iraqis have died in the past year than in TEN years under Saddam Hussein. Amnesty International might have something to say about that. Also UNICEF, and Richard Garfield, and John Pilger, who famously guessed that sanctions killed 200 Iraqi children each day? Was he lying then, or now?
    The US didn’t stop the Lancet fom carrying out its survey, and did nothing to obstruct its rushed peer review and election-sensitive publication schedule, to say nothing of its outrageous conclusion.

57. http://gnn.tv/videos/video.php?id=18
    The above is a link to a short video on the “shock and awe” campaign and how much money is being spent and made in making war on Iraq. It is a truly sickening example of how the US media cheerleaded the dropping of US bombs in Iraq, and they are almost having orgasms over the “military might” that the whole invasion portrayed.

58. Susan, your biased language strikes again. From your link:
    “It was an unparalled orgy of military fetishism that featured, as its primary spectacle, the wholesale demolition of a major cultural capital, one of the oldest in the history of human civilization.”
    Not to sell short the awful experience of living in a city being bombed, I merely ask for you to exhibit some rationale and context. The firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo was wholesale demoltion. The Russian shelling of Grozy was wholesale demolition. There are many other similar examples, obviously. No real attempts at specifying targets; just an “if it is there, kill it” scorched earth policy. But to say this is what the US was trying to do to Baghdad with its billions in specialized munitions is just foolish, I mean come ON! Is a modicum of moderate thought too much to ask from you?

59. Did anyboday ask the victims of the Scottish Highland Clearances, whether their views were social-democratic, or liberal, Argyll and Andrew?

60. This comment over at Harry’s nails it:
    The defining difference between the heroes of ‘the resistance’ that you romanticize and every national liberation movement in previous historical periods, is that unlike the latter your heroes have no open political or social programme; they don’t publish manifestos, they don’t hold conferences and they certainly don’t stand in elections.
    The reasons for this are variously that: 1 they have no political or social programme beyond re-establishing a dictatorship and repressing Iraqi civil society and 2. if they published their political and social programme it would make it extremely inconvenient for you and others who seek to romanticize their reactionary policies to drum up sympathy for them.

61. “They may be hooligans, but they’re our hooligans” (Northern Ireland woman, c.1975)
    Yankee, go home!
    Argyll, it’s none of your business.

62. ‘Sovereign rights’ no more protects Hussein or his would-be successors than ‘the sanctity of the home’ defends the right of abusive husbands to beat their wives and molest their children.
    A state’s right to self-determination are not absolute, nor do they void international norms regarding the human rights of its citizens. For a movement to fairly represent itself as ‘sovereign’ and/or democratic there must be some declared political program, including an openness to elections. I have seen neither of these from any of Iraq’s immumerable resistances. You have no evidence they represent the national will of Iraqis better than those parties that stood for office.

63. Dominic “it’s none of your business” is a totalitarian sentiment. It is a slogan for a fascist. It is antithetical to the very idea of international law.

64. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
    Sharif Ali bin Hussein, head of the Constitutional Monarchy Party, likened the vote outcome to a “Sistani tsunami” that would shake the nation.
    “Americans are in for a shock,” he said, adding that one day they would realize, “We’ve got 150,000 troops here protecting a country that’s extremely friendly to Iran, and training their troops.”

65. Argyll, your feelings are going to be hurt.
    Not by me or anybody like me. You can clearly fend off what I say quite easily, for the time being, but this time will pass.
    You are going to be hurt when things go the opposite way to what you think they should, and you find nobody cares about these ideas that seem to make so much sense now, and so long as you stand behind the guns of the US forces.
    The defeat of imperialism hurts, and humiliates, the now ex-imperialist. This defeat is coming your way.
    For the rest, let us remember what fascists are, in case we be caught by surprise while watching for them in the wrong quarter.
    Fascism is capitalism maintained by arbitrary force, as opposed to bourgeois democracy.
    You had better mind your own business. If not, you may find that while you were fretting about Iraq in your fantastic way, fascism has crept up behind you in the USA.

66. Michael Young reviews Ferguson, Perle, and Khalidi: “Imperial Waltz”

67. I followed your link, Argyll.

68. Shirin: “and by the way, why are [the numbers from the November massacre and demolition of Falluja] not anywhere in Iraq Body Count’s tabulations?”
    Argyll: “They are counted.”
    Where? All I found were the ones from the Spring massacre.
    Shirin: “How many roadside explosive devices would it take to destroy as much as one half ton bomb?”
    Argyll: “A car weighs several tons and can hold about as much explosive as most categories of airborne ordnance. Hundreds of thousands of tons of RDX, Soviet anti-tank mines and other categories of munitions remain unaccounted for in Iraq.”
    I prefer to deal with reality over the kind of pure fantasy you have engaged in here. The reality is that the U.S. has already used orders of magnitude more destructive and deadly power on Iraq than the resistance possesses. The further reality is that, based on past and present performance, the U.S. will continue to escalate its massive use of violence.
    Your fantasy of fleets of cars packed to the brim with explosives is just that – pure fantasy, with even less substance than Bush’s fantasies about Saddam’s “vast stores of the most deadly weapons known to man”, and Coni’s “mushroom cloud”.

69. “If you are referring to the Lancet study, I would refer you to Heiko Gerhauser’s criticisms on Crooked Timber and elsewhere regarding 2002 infant mortality.”
    Unfortunately, I don’t have time to go into this point by point – in fact, I should be working on something else right now – but I do feel obligated to reply. I have read the study itself, and based on that alone I find Gerhausen’s criticisms self serving and without substance. I have also read what several actual experts have to say about the infant mortality figures, and I find them more credible than what someone has to say who has no expertise in Iraq, infant mortality or public health. In addition, I have read some criticism of Gerhausen’s criticism, which take it apart quite convincingly.
    “The Lancet’s 100k figure leans on the insane notion that 2002 infant mortality was a mere 2.9%”
    No it doesn’t. The infant mortality figures are only a small part of the overall results, and if removed would not have a major effect on the study. Furthermore, the authors of the study devote considerable time and space to discussing possible problems with their infant mortality figures, and in fact they adjusted the numbers to reduce the effect of possible underreporting of infant mortality for 2002.
    “directly contradicting UNICEF and WHO findings.”
    Actually, no. The UNICEF findings were for the period of 1995-1999, and merely extrapolated for 2002. Significantly, the extrapolation is based on a continuation of the steadily deteriorating conditions of 1995-1999, and is not adjusted for the fact that by 1999 the oil for food program had begun to significantly decrease the rate of malnutrition, especially in children.
    “Why do you presume the Lancet’s research findings to be more accurate than the collective observations of hundreds of reporters in Iraq?”
    Because the “observations” of hundreds of reporters in a war are by necessity anecdotal, and dependent on many uncontrollable variables in an extremely chaotic situation. Because in the case of this war in particular, access to information by the press has been tightly controlled, and there have been significant penalties to be paid for reporting that displeased the Bush administration.
    The overwhelming majority of reporters remain holed up in the Green Zone and totally dependent on daily U.S. official spin fests aka press conferences. The rest of the time they are “embedded” with troops, which means that with rare exceptions what they see and hear is controlled, and what they report is also controlled, as several reporters have learned to their peril when their reporting made their handlers unhappy.
    Because, while there is a place for what Iraq Body Count does, particularly in tracking trends, scientific studies using proven methodologies have proven to provide better data in terms of actual numbers. Because the authors of the study are recognized as preeminent experts in the field, and have a proven track record in other conflicts. Because the study was subjected to rigourous peer review before publication. Because other experts in the field have confirmed that the methodology was sound, and the results credible.
    I could go on, but I have already spent more time than I should.

70. The infant mortality figures are only a small part of the overall results, and if removed would not have a major effect on the study.
    Complete nonsense. The infant mortality figures contribute at least 40 – 50k ‘excess deaths’ to the midpoint result of the study, which you would know if you had actually read ‘Gerhausen’s’ [sic] criticism in any depth. Do your homework. UNICEF estimates of 10.2% are almost 4 times higher than the Lancet figures for 2002, not for 1999. Your explanation of declines in malnutrition is deficient — only chronic malnutrition declined, which was not a major component of infant mortality in the UNICEF results (70% is due to diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.) Acute malnutrition is the ONLY category to have declined. Chronic malnutrition actually increased. Shall I go on?
    Because the authors of the study are recognized as preeminent experts in the field,
    Argument to irrelevant authority [again!]. The authors of the study are epidemiologists.
    Because the study was subjected to rigourous peer review before publication.
    The peer review was rushed in order to make the US election timetable, which the authors as much as admit (to their disgrace) in their accompanying editorial. They furthermore disgracefully misrepresented their own results as portraying ‘civilian deaths’ when in fact their study analyses ‘excess deaths’ of all categories.

71. Your fantasy of fleets of cars packed to the brim with explosives is just that – pure fantasy
    My fantasy is drawn directly from IBC’s own database. My imaginary ‘fleets of cars’ are actually 100 or so distinct incidents, with an average yield of 7 or 8 civilian deaths per incident. I can only encourage you to read the IBC database with greater care. I will not contest your guess that they are undercounting US airstrikes (though you have no documentation for this of any kind.)

72. “My imaginary ‘fleets of cars’ are actually 100 or so distinct incidents, with an average yield of 7 or 8 civilian deaths per incident.”
    And anyone who cares to take a few minutes to compile the information can easily give you ten times that many “distinct incidents” involving U.S. bombs, and/or machine guns, and/or other weapons with a far higher “average yield”.
    I will address your comments regarding the “Lancet study” (sic) when I have more time.

73. “Hundreds of thousands of tons of RDX, Soviet anti-tank mines and other categories of munitions remain unaccounted for in Iraq.””
    What is fantastical about this statement or the one before? 148 tons of RDX was stored at al qaqaa alone! To say nothing of thousands of Russian and Chinese anti-tank mines from Saddam’s vast arsenal.

74. Shirin said
    “And anyone who cares to take a few minutes to compile the information can easily give you ten times that many “distinct incidents” involving U.S. bombs, and/or machine guns, and/or other weapons with a far higher “average yield”.”
    Shirin, these people do exist, and they spend much more than a few minutes at it. They are the scores of journalists braving very real peril under the most adverse of environs to try their best to get the story right, while you sit at a computer and disparage them as neo-con lackeys. Not every media outlet in Iraq can be represented as a make-up caked fox news anchor flinching at door slams, but unfortunately for you the facts on the ground just do not support the vision you earnestly wish were true. The majority of civilian carnage in Iraq is Sunni/Baathist/Islamist in origin, whether you like it or not. Whether the US presence is the humiliating trigger for this violence is a parallel issue, but to say the US is actively slaughtering innocents at “10 times” the insurgent pace and it is simply not being reported? Well, I simply have to refer back to my comment on your education by propaganists you conveniently avoided.

75. “And anyone who cares to take a few minutes to compile the information can easily give you ten times that many “distinct incidents” involving U.S. bombs, and/or machine guns, and/or other weapons with a far higher “average yield”.”
    Yet you are unwilling to cite so much as a single source to corroborate this statistic.

76. http://chronicle.com/free/2005/01/2005012701n.htm
    “Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored”
    “One of the peer reviewers told The Chronicle that he had had about a week to comment on the paper.”

77. It is difficult to believe that there are people even in the USA who sincerely believe that the Iraqi resistance has used even a tiny fraction of the lethal force used by the invading US forces. Yet, the evidence is here in this thread. There are indeed such people.
    In support of Shirin, let me refer Andrew and Argyll to the following two reports. (By the way, there are not very many reporters in Iraq who actually go out and look and talk to people. Most of them sit indoors in the Green Zone by the US Embassy in Baghdad).
    Go to: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000196.php#more
    And to: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/020705H.shtml
    (French original at: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3218,36-397156,0.html

78. Dominic, neither of your links on Fallujah offers any data regarding the civilian death toll in Iraq nationwide, not even hard data regarding the death toll in Falluja. The IBC may not be comprehensive, but it does at least cover all Iraq. I could offer you very moving testimonials written by victims of car bombs and suicide attacks but it would prove nothing.
    Like Shirin, you continue to make claims without providing any evidence to back them up. The argument that civilian death tolls are unknowable is quite different from the positive claim that the US has killed more civilians than the insurgency, let alone ‘orders of magnitude’ more. You and Shirin have made this claim again and again. This is argument by assertion.
    Undoubtedly, the US possesses more weaponry. But it also possesses more sophisticated weaponry, and its targeting is tactical. This is why I have cited the ‘target’ field in the IBC database — because regardless of how much firepower the US has deployed, the proportion of documented civilian targets belongs OVERWHELMINGLY to the insurgency.
    Your claim that “most [Iraqi reporters] sit indoors in the Green Zone” is incorrect. Many of the IBC accounts are first hand reports from Al Jazeera Pakistan Times AFP Xinhua and many other agencies reporting from all corners of Iraq. I permit without proof Shirin’s point regarding some systematic undercounting of airstrikes. But I simply cannot acknowledge on faith alone that tens of thousands of civilian deaths have remained uncounted and unnoticed by any media at all.

79. Argyll, all you are saying is that your data is harder than mine. I don’t make that kind of argument and I don’t want to have any infantile arguments of that kind.
    You cannot accept that your armies and your air force have visited slaughter on huge numbers of civilians and continue to do so. For me, that makes you a phenomenon, notable and perhaps worthy of study. It does not make your denials worthy of discussion on their own terms.

80. Here’s one from your side that explains in simple terms the connection between torture, shock-and-awe, and exemplary destruction: http://amconmag.com/2005_02_14/article1.html
    By the way, I grew up in the middle of “terrorism”. It’s not good but you have to realise that the destruction wrought by irregulars is as nothing compared with the organised terror of a uniformed army and air force.
    But you are not interested in reality are you, Argyll? What you want to do is to sell the line that the US forces just happened to be in the neighbourhood when all this “insurgency” started to happen, so your boys just kinda started helping out.
    I’ll tell you something about real terrorism: the chances of it being of the “Salvador Option” variety are always high. With these Iraqi bombers, nobody knows. The reported rate of suicide bombing, if true, is orders of magnitude greater than anything previous. Which still comes nowhere near the power of the conventional forces being applied daily in Iraq.
    Nobody knows what is really going on in the resistance, least of all somebody like you, Argyll. The Yank officers make announcements that there are x thousand of them, and they are all Ba’athists! You would have to laugh if you didn’t know that the Yank officers are so short of intelligence they are torturing people. Which means they are desperate (or just monsters). Because anybody with half a brain knows that torture is not for intelligence. It’s for shock and awe, i.e. terror.

81. Nobody knows what is really going on in the resistance
    I agree, actually. Which is why it is ridiculous to speak authoritatively about “the resistance.” It is also ridiculous to cite civilian casualty figures drawn from thin air.
    Arguments from anecdote and assertion are fine but arguments from hard data are infantile? I must now unlearn all the statistics I picked up listening to the anti-sanctions crowd of yesteryear. Good thing, since nowadays the same authorities are busy re-writing statistical history via studies like the Lancet [sic].
    Your comment about how stupid and sadistic are all the ‘Yank officers’ is most telling. Are they all quite as stupid and sadistic as the men who slaughtered Margaret Hassan?

82. You know who slaughtered Margaret Hassan now, Argyll? Rubbish.
    You don’t have any facts at all, pal, statistical or otherwise. You’re busking it.
    If you don’t get my drift about your hard data claims, go to Kurt Nimmo’s site where he makes the point more explicitly in reference to Frank Salvato.
    What can be said with certainty about the resistance is that for an Iraqi to kill an invader in defence of the sovereignty of his country is universally recognised as his right.
    The stupid Yank officers who one day tell us the resistance are Ba’athists and the next day it is Mr Zarqawi and the next day it is Salafis or Wahhabis – these are aggressors with no rights at all.
    What we don’t know about the resistance is how much of it is not actually resistance but rather the result of the Yanks playing both sides against the middle, using agents provocateurs, and the “Salvador Option”.
    There is nothing here to give you comfort, Argyll. Yanks must go home, that’s all.

83. Dom, if you read above (Feb. 4, 2:55pm) you’ll see I’ve already said that uncorroborated US official accounts should be rejected as readily as the state propaganda lies of any nation, which all dissemanate (to call state media spin a “U.S. Practice” alone is preposterous bigotry, which Shirin realized and ignored).
    Your logic has crumbled when faced with a fact you wish not to believe, that indiscriminate salafist insurgent violence is killing more iraqi cilvians than is the targeted US violence. You speak repetitively of “power of conventional forces” and ignore any hard evidence to the fact they might be acting discretionally.
    “Argument by assertion” means you are saying “this is the truth because I said so.” But corroboration of truth is a vital of endeavors; to dismiss asking proof as “infantile” places you in a very disturbing group.
    To the argument at hand, using US marines as a counter-insurgency force in urban areas is unleashing a bull in a china shop; wanting them out is logical of course. But the marines aren’t mortally dedicated to slaughtering the shop’s owner with suicide belts for casting a ballot. To the impartial observer, this is a crucial moral difference.

84. “Discretionally” Andrew? That’s a good one.

85. Yes, Dominic. “Indiscretional” use of the power available to them would be to pump every Iraqi man, woman and child with Susan’s 38 bullets (see above). You seem to believe this is their stated genocidal crusader goal, and they just can’t figure out how to achieve it; odd, considering nobody is paying any attention to civilian murders by the military.

86. Dominic, the only thing I noticed on Kurt Nimmo’s site relating to our discussion was a prominent link to the Iraq Body Count database. I notice too that Nimmo seems to believe in the “500,000 dead Iraqi children” claim, which is more or less contradicted by the Lancet report he also believes in. Interesting stuff.

87. for an Iraqi to kill an invader in defence of the sovereignty of his country is universally recognised as his right.
    Unfortunately for you, the group you label ‘the resistance’ [knowable enough for rhetorical purposes, I guess] is killing far more Iraqi civilians than US soldiers. On the order of 50 to 1. My concern is for them, not for your despised stupid and sadistic US soldiers. Haven’t I made myself clear?

88. Thanks for that AmCon link … interesting times indeed when ‘progressives’ cite Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos with approval!

89. I find it distasteful to have to quote something called “American Conservative,” but you posted the link, Dominic.
    It reads
    “In that respect, it is like the attack on Fallujah last November, which

90. Andrew, your politics may be a matter of taste, but you don’t have to lay that on me.
    Since you raise the question, let me tell you that I do not use the word “progressive” in relation to myself or others. I have no use for it, or the word “left” for that matter. Let me mention a few more while I am about it. I do not seek to “influence”, or to give or receive “insights”. Any vocabulary that becomes worn and indistinct should be rested.
    In other cases, the vocabulary was misleading from the start. Karl Marx rightly denied being a “Marxist”. “Marxism” was the invention of Karl Kautsky and Plekhanov. “Leninism” was never claimed by Lenin, but was an invention of Stalin. “Stalinism” is bandied about by people, but most of them have no knowledge of the Stalin period at all, and then “Stalinism” becomes just another stick to beat people over the head with.
    I will always be happy to quote from any source if I know why I am quoting it – because I have read it and considered it. I don’t appreciate any kind of “guilt by association”, thanks very much, Andrew.

91. Shirin: “The infant mortality figures are only a small part of the overall results, and if removed would not have a major effect on the study.”
    Argyll: “Complete nonsense. The infant mortality figures contribute at least 40 – 50k ‘excess deaths’ to the midpoint result of the study which you would know if you had actually read ‘Gerhausen’s’ [sic] criticism in any depth.”
    You are going to have to help me out here because I have so far been unable to find anything from Gerhauser’s (pardon the previous misspelling of the name) comments anywhere that refers to anything remotely related to this and I do not have the time required to pour through endless blog comments trying to find it. Perhaps you would be kind enough to point me to the specific location of the information in question, or better yet to paste the pertinent quotes here with a link to the page so I can see them in context.
    “Do your homework.”
    I consider that the most important “homework” is to read and analyze the actual study, which I did as soon as it was available to me. The second most important “homework” is to read and listen to critiques of the study by recognized professionals in fields pertinent to the study. I have read, reread and analyzed the article in Lancet, most recently yesterday afternoon. I have also read critiques of the study by a variety of experts in pertinent fields, and have discussed the study with others with pertinent expertise. In addition, I am quite qualified myself to analyze statistical information, and while I am far from an expert in the field of public health, I do have an above average layperson’s knowledge and understanding. And do forgive me, but spending hours searching for and reading blog comments by someone who, based on the number and type of Google hits, appears to be a professional blog commenter, who is apparently not a recognized expert in public health or statistical analysis, and who is unabashedly biased in favor of the war on Iraq, is not as high on the “homework” priority list.
    “UNICEF estimates of 10.2% are almost 4 times higher than the Lancet figures for 2002, not for 1999. Your explanation of declines in malnutrition is deficient — only chronic malnutrition declined, which was not a major component of infant mortality in the UNICEF results (70% is due to diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.) Acute malnutrition is the ONLY category to have declined. Chronic malnutrition actually increased.”
    What you are not taking into account, I am afraid, is the fact that the UNICEF estimates for 2002 are not based on field data for that year, or the year before, or the year before that. They are statistical projections based on data from 1995-1999, and do not take into account the effects of oil for food, which by the way had a greater effect on acute than on chronic malnutrition. And FYI, acute malnutrition has a far greater effect on infant mortality than does chronic malnutrition.
    What you, and as far as I can tell, your source, Heiko Gerhauser, also conveniently ignored completely is the fact that the authors of the study recognized and acknowledged with lengthy explanations that their pre-invasion infant mortality figures could well be too low, and that they halved the increase in infant mortality to compensate for this possibility. Your failure in this regard is particularly significant given that you have ignored that fact that I pointed that out to you. Given that the UNICEF 2002 estimates were probably too high, and by the authors’ own admission their 2002 estimate may have been too low, halving the increase they found is exactly the right correction.
    Shirin: “Because the authors of the study are recognized as preeminent experts in the field…”
    Argyll: “Argument to irrelevant authority [again!]. The authors of the study are epidemiologists.”
    Not this time, and not again, and evidently you do not understand the scope of the field of epidemiology. The authors of the study are public health professionals with recognized and proven expertise and experience in the field of estimating wartime casualties.
    Shirin: “Because the study was subjected to rigourous peer review before publication.”
    Argyll: “The peer review was rushed in order to make the US election timetable…”
    Even if true, that does not negate the validity of the peer review, since that is always on a timetable related to publication.

92. Shirin: “The infant mortality figures are only a small part of the overall results, and if removed would not have a major effect on the study.”
    Argyll: “Complete nonsense. The infant mortality figures contribute at least 40 – 50k ‘excess deaths’ to the midpoint result of the study which you would know if you had actually read ‘Gerhausen’s’ [sic] criticism in any depth.”
    You are going to have to help me out here because I have so far been unable to find anything from Gerhauser’s (pardon the previous misspelling of the name) comments anywhere that refers to anything remotely related to this and I do not have the time required to pour through endless blog comments trying to find it. Perhaps you would be kind enough to point me to the specific location of the information in question, or better yet to paste the pertinent quotes here with a link to the page so I can see them in context.
    “Do your homework.”
    I consider that the most important “homework” is to read and analyze the actual study, which I did as soon as it was available to me. The second most important “homework” is to read and listen to critiques of the study by recognized professionals in fields pertinent to the study. I have read, reread and analyzed the article in Lancet, most recently yesterday afternoon. I have also read critiques of the study by a variety of experts in pertinent fields, and have discussed the study with others with pertinent expertise. In addition, I am quite qualified myself to analyze statistical information, and while I am far from an expert in the field of public health, I do have an above average layperson’s knowledge and understanding. And do forgive me, but spending hours searching for and reading blog comments by someone who, based on the number and type of Google hits, appears to be a professional blog commenter, who is apparently not a recognized expert in public health or statistical analysis, and who is unabashedly biased in favor of the war on Iraq, is not as high on the “homework” priority list.
    “UNICEF estimates of 10.2% are almost 4 times higher than the Lancet figures for 2002, not for 1999. Your explanation of declines in malnutrition is deficient — only chronic malnutrition declined, which was not a major component of infant mortality in the UNICEF results (70% is due to diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.) Acute malnutrition is the ONLY category to have declined. Chronic malnutrition actually increased.”
    What you are not taking into account, I am afraid, is the fact that the UNICEF estimates for 2002 are not based on field data for that year, or the year before, or the year before that. They are statistical projections based on data from 1995-1999, and do not take into account the effects of oil for food, which by the way had a greater effect on acute than on chronic malnutrition. And FYI, acute malnutrition has a far greater effect on infant mortality than does chronic malnutrition.
    What you, and as far as I can tell, your source, Heiko Gerhauser, also conveniently ignored completely is the fact that the authors of the study recognized and acknowledged with lengthy explanations that their pre-invasion infant mortality figures could well be too low, and that they halved the increase in infant mortality to compensate for this possibility. Your failure in this regard is particularly significant given that you have ignored that fact that I pointed that out to you. Given that the UNICEF 2002 estimates were probably too high, and by the authors’ own admission their 2002 estimate may have been too low, halving the increase they found is exactly the right correction.
    Shirin: “Because the authors of the study are recognized as preeminent experts in the field…”
    Argyll: “Argument to irrelevant authority [again!]. The authors of the study are epidemiologists.”
    Not this time, and not again, and evidently you do not understand the scope of the field of epidemiology. The authors of the study are public health professionals with recognized and proven expertise and experience in the field of estimating wartime casualties.
    Shirin: “Because the study was subjected to rigourous peer review before publication.”
    Argyll: “The peer review was rushed in order to make the US election timetable…”
    Even if true, that does not negate the validity of the peer review, since that is always on a timetable related to publication deadlines.

93. Please forgive the inadvertent double posting.

94. “these people do exist, and they spend much more than a few minutes at it. They are the scores of journalists braving very real peril under the most adverse of environs to try their best to get the story right”
    Which journalists are you referring to here? Would those be the journalists who sit holed up in the green zone getting all their information from the daily press conferences held by the Americans and occasional interviews with Iraqis who work in the green zone? Or would those be journalists who are imbedded with U.S. occupation forces whose movement, access and point of view are directly controlled and whose reporting is indirectly controlled by the occupying power? Certainly it is not the tiny handful of independent journalists who really do take their live in their hands to get a point of view other than the official U.S. one, some of whom actually speak, read and write Arabic, and whose reports are largely shunned by the mainstream U.S. media.

95. “appears to be a professional blog commenter”.
    Yes, and a sophist or “trick-cyclist”, not sincere, only there to waste time and muddy the waters.
    How to spot them quick is the problem. After that it is a matter of rigourously ignoring them.
    “Don’t feed the trolls!” is the correct motto. I’m afraid, Shirin, that you and I have been doing just that on this thread: feeding trolls.

96. Shirin, from one remark of Helena’s, I believe you may be Iraqi.
    I wonder what you think of the following: http://www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/0205/saddam-innocent_040205.htm

97. which by the way had a greater effect on acute than on chronic malnutrition… acute malnutrition has a far greater effect on infant mortality than does chronic malnutrition.
    I mentioned and addressed this already. Acute malnutrition is a very small component of Iraqi infant mortality. Chronic malnutrition INCREASED. I recognize UNICEF’s number is an extrapolation, but oil for food is NOT sufficient to warrant a 75% reduction and your ‘halve the difference’ guesstimate is laughably unscientific. And I wonder if you know what the study’s conclusion would have been WITHOUT the removal of the fallujah outlier cluster? Why not report that number?
    that does not negate the validity of the peer review, since that is always on a timetable related to publication deadlines.
    Peer reviewers were given one week to review data in order to meet a publication schedule determined by US elections [see cite above]. This is disgraceful and highly non standard. Peer review of scientific studies (especially of such complexity and scope) ordinarily takes months.
    recognized and proven expertise and experience in the field of estimating wartime casualties.
    More passive voice, more empty appeal to authority. There is no such thing! I am an expert in reading the English language, applying elementary logic and using a calculator. I also have a professional understanding of statistics, as does Gerhauser, who is also a professional scientist.
    I notice you have completely failed to address my earlier point, which is that the Lancet study does not count civilian deaths at all, but rather ‘excess deaths.’ Fred Kaplan at Slate has a bunch of objections including several from lavishly credentialed scientists that I havent even mentioned yet: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/
    “Beth Osborne Daponte, senior research scholar at Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies, put the point diplomatically after reading the Lancet article this morning and discussing it with me in a phone conversation: “It attests to the difficulty of doing this sort of survey work during a war.

98. Yes, and a sophist or “trick-cyclist”, not sincere, only there to waste time and muddy the waters.
    You have cited a magazine called ‘American Conservative’ run by Pat Buchanan and have the audacity to call me an insincere sophist? Wow. I wonder what’s in it for me to be re-reading the research you didn’t bother to read once at 4 in the morning? Not enough, that’s for sure.

99. BTW Shirin, the IBC also tallies hospital morgue and NGO statistics.

100. who is unabashedly biased in favor of the war on Iraq
     “I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea” – Study coordinator Les Roberts
     “Democratic imperialism has led to more deaths not fewer” – Lancet editor Richard Horton
     These are the comments of impartial agents?

101. I consider that the most important “homework” is to read and analyze the actual study, which I did as soon as it was available to me.
     You read the summary, as did I. And yet you still misrepresented the results as a tally of civilian casualties.

102. One more thing, and then I am probably dropping this thread for good.
     that they halved the increase in infant mortality to compensate for this possibility.
     This is incorrect. I have to imagine Shirin is referring to this line in the study summary:
     “removing half the increase in infant deaths and the Fallujah data still produces a 37%
     increase in estimated mortality”
     That’s a “what if” scenario. It’s not used for their headline figure.

103. “I wonder what you think of the following”
     I skimmed it, and the short answer is that I think the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

104. Well, variety is the spice of life.
     This is from Jonathan Steele in today’s Guardian:
     “As Iraqis know, the main killers in Iraq are not the insurgents but the Americans. The Iraqi ministry of health’s latest statistics show that in the last six months of 2004 they killed almost three times as many people as the insurgents did.”

105. 1) You have failed utterly to support in any way your rather outlandish assertion that the results of the study reported in Lancet depend heavily on infant mortality figures. You cited a claim made by one Heiko Gerhauser that infant mortality accounts for 40,000-50,000 of the casualties in the “midpoint result of the study”, yet provided not one syllable from your source, and did not even acknowledge a request for the information to access what Gerhausen wrote about. That failure nullifies your claim.
     In any case, your numbers 40,000 or 50,000 – assuming that they have some basis in reality – have exactly zero significance in isolation. They are only meaningful in context, and of course you have failed to provide any context whatsoever.
     2) Malnutrition, both acute and chronic, may not be significant as direct causes of infant mortality, but they are definitely a contributing factor in that they weaken their victims and make them more susceptible to infections, and other problems that ARE the direct cause of death.
     3) One of the chief causes of the rise in infant mortality that inevitably results from war is the increase in the number of women giving birth in situations where there are no medical assistance or facilities, usually because they cannot leave home, or because access to medical facilities is denied them.
     4) The authors of any study are obligated to work with the numbers that come out of the study, even if those numbers appear unrealistic. As I have already stated, the authors of the study fulfilled their obligation to acknowledge that the pre-2003 infant mortality reported by their study subjects is almost certainly unrealistically low. And, contrary to your claim, the study does not “lean on” infant mortality, which is only a small fraction of the overall result.
     5) “your ‘halve the difference’ guesstimate is laughably unscientific” I have always wondered what this technique of falsely assigning ownership to the interlocutor is supposed to accomplish. As you know very well, it is not my “halve the difference” anything, unless, of course, you think I am one of the authors of the study.
     6) Public health specialists’ evaluations of a public health study most certainly DO override the opinions of non-public health specialists. Further, evaluations of a study of war casualties by professionals who have experience in studying war casualties override the opinions of those who do not have this experience. And they certainly do override the opinions of a “research assistant” who clearly has an agenda, and who appears at the very least to have a second career as a blog commenter.

106. Jonathan Steele needs to work on his critical reading skills.
     http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ifs/hi/newsid_4220000/newsid_4222300/4222353.stm
     As do you.

107. Shirin, as I already pointed out, the authors of the Lancet study did NOT halve the infant mortality stats. You misunderstood the summary, as I describe above.
     Epidemiologists have no more business tallying war casualties than they would tallying crime statistics. Armed robbery is not a public health issue, and neither is death by cruise missile or suicide bomb.
     But since the study plainly doesn’t refer to civilians, the entire argument is a bit silly.

108. Shirin you have an agenda, I have an agenda, the Lancet authors have a HUGE agenda, this proves nothing. I have already cited one expert in public health willing to say the study is flawed, I’m sure i can find many more. Arguments from authority are no more useful than arguments from bald assertion: “no it is not” “you are clearly wrong” etc etc etc.
     And, contrary to your claim, the study does not “lean on” infant mortality, which is only a small fraction of the overall result.
     Each death in the study stands for about 3000 deaths extrapolated to Iraq. So the proper number is not 40-50 but merely 30k surplus deaths resulting from their grievous undercount (20 infant deaths from 10 expected). My mistake. It only acounts for a third of the total, rather than almost half.
     I could care less whether Mr. Gerhauser is a research assistant, a tenured professor or a night watchman in a bowling alley. I am not citing his opinion, but a sterile set of facts accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

109. You also make an elementary mistake, typical of someone unschooled in statistics, by referring to the study’s midpoint without citing its confidence interval. I’m sure you are aware of how wide the confidence interval of this study is. You refer to its midpoint as if it were a known fact, rather than one outcome among a great many possibilities (I believe the low end estimate was 8,000.)
     Along those lines I will now answer the question you ignored upthread regarding Falluja. Had the results from that cluster been included, the study would have reported 298,000 likely excess deaths. Had the authors used this number (rather than alluding to it ominously again and again) the study would have been the object of ridicule. But the authors chose to prune their guesswork so as to artificially hold their results within the realm of plausibility.

110. “as I already pointed out, the authors of the Lancet study did NOT halve the infant mortality stats. You misunderstood the summary, as I describe above.”
     You may be right. I may have misunderstood that, but it is irrelevant to my point, which was that you used the tired old technique of erroneously making me the owner of the halved infant mortality rate.
     “Epidemiologists have no more business tallying war casualties than they would tallying crime statistics.”
     There are many very highly qualified people who disagree with you here.
     “Armed robbery is not a public health issue, and neither is death by cruise missile or suicide bomb.”
     Death rates and causes of death in areas of armed conflict are very much public health issues.
     “But since the study plainly doesn’t refer to civilians, the entire argument is a bit silly.”
     Then why do you insist upon making the argument over and over again?
     Incidentally, according to the study, approximately half the excess deaths were women and children. Can one safely assume that at least the majority of those were not combatants? We also know that many of the male casualties have been non-combatants. Therefore, it is very safe to say that the majority of the excess deaths were of civilians.

111. “Shirin you have an agenda, I have an agenda, the Lancet authors have a HUGE agenda”
     You have no idea what my agenda is, and I really don’t know what your agenda is, but it appears to be driving your assumptions about the nature and the size of the authors’ agenda, and how it drove their conduct of the study. It seems to me that you are making unwarranted assumptions about their conduct of the study based on the fact that they are opposed to the war, as any reasonable person must be, and that they – or the editors of Lancet – apparently hoped that Bush would not be reelected.
     “this proves nothing.”
     Heiko Gerhauser has a clearly declared pro-war agenda. That may not prove anything, but it puts his generally very questionable attacks on the study in perspective.
     “I have already cited one expert in public health willing to say the study is flawed, I’m sure i can find many more.”
     One expert “and I’m sure I can find many more” – not very impressive really, particularly given the number of public health and other experts who have found the study very credible, and in many cases backed up their conclusion with specifics. In addition, the authors of the study cited several concerns about their own study, as any good scientists whose work was not agenda-driven would.
     “Arguments from authority are no more useful than arguments from bald assertion: “no it is not” “you are clearly wrong” etc etc etc.”
     Nonsense.
     “Each death in the study stands for about 3000 deaths extrapolated to Iraq. So the proper number is not 40-50 but merely 30k surplus deaths resulting from their grievous undercount (20 infant deaths from 10 expected). My mistake. It only acounts for a third of the total, rather than almost half.”
     Please help me out and explain to me clearly and specifically how you arrived at this number.
     “I could care less whether Mr. Gerhauser is a research assistant, a tenured professor or a night watchman in a bowling alley. I am not citing his opinion, but a sterile set of facts accessible to anyone with an internet connection.”
     First you cited Mr. Gerhauser as the source for your 40,000-50,000 infant deaths assertion. When I asked for assistance locating “Heiko Gerhauser’s criticisms on Crooked Timber and elsewhere regarding 2002 infant mortality“, which was supposed to confirm the 40,000-50,000 number, you did not even acknowledge my request. Now you suddenly change the number from 40,000-50,000 downward to 30,000, and you indirectly refuse to give me the information I need to access what your source wrote. Is there any reason I should not find this extremely suspect?

112. “You also make an elementary mistake, typical of someone unschooled in statistics, by referring to the study’s midpoint without citing its confidence interval.”
     Fascinating! Now you make ME the owner of YOUR elementary mistake! Interesting technique indeed! And what is THIS supposed to accomplish for your argument? Did you really think I would not point out that you, not I, are the one who referred to the study’s midpoint without citing its confidence interval? (I refer you to this statement of yours “The infant mortality figures contribute at least 40 – 50k ‘excess deaths’ to the midpoint result of the study, which you would know if you had actually read ‘Gerhausen’s’ [sic] criticism in any depth.” posted fevereiro 8, 2005 10:40 AM).
     For your information, I am far from “unschooled in statistics”, and am more than a little cognizant of the confidence interval and its significance.
     “I’m sure you are aware of how wide the confidence interval of this study is.”
     Why, how COULD I be, if I am “unschooled in statisics”?
     “You refer to its midpoint as if it were a known fact, rather than one outcome among a great many possibilities (I believe the low end estimate was 8,000.)”
     No, YOU referred to its midpoint as if it were a known fact. I merely played along with your original assertions.
     “Along those lines I will now answer the question you ignored upthread regarding Falluja.”
     Oh, I did not ignore it – far from it. In fact, I returned here to respond to what I found to be a very, very strange question given your obvious agenda of discrediting the study – strange since the exclusion of the outlier Falluja cluster is a clear indication that the authors did not intend to skew the results toward a higher casualty rate. Since I allowed myself to be distracted from the original purpose, I am glad you have brought this up.
     “Had the results from that cluster been included, the study would have reported 298,000 likely excess deaths.”
     Which would have skewed the results unrealistically since Falluja has experienced an extraordinary amount and magnitude of deadly and destructive violence at the hands of American forces. Thus, following standard practice, the authors excluded these data. Nothing unusual here.
     “Had the authors used this number (rather than alluding to it ominously again and again) the study would have been the object of ridicule.”
     Ah, I see! They did not exclude the data from the outlier cluster because that is standard practice in any statistical analysis, but only in order to prevent their truly ridiculous study from becoming obviously ridiculous. And their occasional references to the Falluja data in their report were not part of standard reporting practice for any such study, but “ominous allusions”.
     “But the authors chose to prune their guesswork so as to artificially hold their results within the realm of plausibility.”
     Well, thanks Argyll, for clarifying so very much in one post.

113. approximately half the excess deaths were women and children.
     The editorial actually says “most.” Including Falluja the number of violent deaths among men is 38, whereas total women children and elderly sum to 35. This conclusion is incoherent or deceptively represented. (see p.1860 of the summary)
     erroneously making me the owner of the halved infant mortality rate.
     You cited it with great authority, having presumably read the summary itself, and berated me for failing to address it. You, earlier: “they halved the increase in infant mortality to compensate for this possibility.” You also falsely claimed the deaths reported in the study were civilian.
     Heiko Gerhauser has a clearly declared pro-war agenda. That may not prove anything, but it puts his generally very questionable attacks on the study in perspective.
     And the Lancet editors and the author of the study have an anti-war agenda and have admitted as much in the editorial justifying the rushed peer review. It puts their study, its distorted findings and outright misrepresentations in perspective.
     Skewing the results unrealistically is what we are discussing here. The inclusion of Falluja would have underscored the vague character of the midpoint variable. The fact that one cluster among 33 is even capable of tripling the midpoint result should tell you something of its precision and usefulness.
     A more general point: again and again you refer with great authority to ‘standard practice’ for ‘studies of this type.’ How many other ‘studies of this type’ can you cite?
     My ‘agenda’ is partly to get UNICEF to defend its numbers for 2002. Their infant mortality statistics (also compiled by Richard Garfield) bolstered arguments for the war on humanitarian grounds. Garfield put sanctions related excess infant deaths at 300,000. John Pilger claimed sanctions killed 200 Iraqi children daily.

114. If you are as expert in the field of statistics as you would like us to believe you are, then you know very well that it is a standard, practice to exclude an outlier when it is determined that it is not representative of the population as a whole. It is also standard to discuss the outlier group/cluster in reports on a study. By attributing nefarious motives for following standard practice you reveal a great deal about your own motives and agenda, and nothing at all about the motives and agenda of the authors of the study.
     “The fact that one cluster among 33 is even capable of tripling the midpoint result should tell you something of its precision and usefulness.”
     What absolute nonsense! This case is not that uncommon at all. If we did not know the reason for the high numbers for Falluja (they would be several times higher today) then you might – MIGHT – have a point. But we know enough about the overall picture to know very well that Falluja’s is an atypical situation, just as we know that Kurdistan’s is atypical in the opposite direction. In this case excluding the data from the calculations, and discussing the outlier in the report is exactly the right course to take.
     “My ‘agenda’ is partly to get UNICEF to defend its numbers for 2002.
     And you get UNICEF to defend its numbers for 2002 by ripping on a completely different study, and impugning the integrity of its authors in a blog comment section that no one from UNICEF probably reads? And how exactly is that supposed to get UNICEF to do anything at all?

115. The infant mortality figures are only a small part of the overall results, and if removed would not have a major effect on the study.
     You are going to have to help me here because this claim has no footnote and would seem to contradict the conclusions plainly expressed in the summary. Here’s an easy explanation for why you are wrong using one portion of the study that I’m certain you DID read: “removing half the increase in infant deaths and the fallujah data still produces a 37% increase in estimated mortality.” The reported increase in risk was ~50% (1.5 x) Leaving it unchanged would therefore yield around 26% difference. There are several other methods of arriving at similar figures including applying the raw sample size to the Iraqi population as described above.
     Death rates and causes of death in areas of armed conflict are very much public health issues.
     So is crime. So is poverty. I would not expect epidemiologists to be conducting an authoritative survey of Iraq’s economy, or its crime rate, for many of the same reasons.

116. “The methods that they used are certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting,” said Marc E. Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, which investigated the number of civilian deaths that occurred during the invasion. “These numbers seem to be inflated…I certainly think that 100,000 is a reach,” “

117. Argyll, I have made several requests to you that you 1) provide me with the material from Heiko Gerhauser based on which you made your original claim that 50% of the excess deaths estimated in the study were from infant mortality, 2) explain to me in a clear and straighforward way how you come by the (now revised) very high percentage for infant mortality. Hope springs eternal, so I am making these two requests yet another time.
     You now say that this conclusion is “plainly expressed in the summary”, so I will make one more request. Please direct me to the part of the article in which it is plainly expressed that 1/3 of the excess deaths are attributed to infant mortality. I thought I had looked pretty carefully at the article, but somehow I must have missed it.

118. Shirin, I have just cited simple arithmetic evidence not more than 5 minutes ago, using your own erroneous citation. I also asked you to back up your claim that infant mortality represented “only a small part of the overall results.” This seems to spring directly from your imagination. You have provided no footnote of any kind and I ask that you do so immediately.

119. I thought I had looked pretty carefully at the article
     This is a joke, right? You have claimed three things regarding the survey that are demonstrably false. First, that it measures civilian deaths (it does not.) Second, that the authors halved their infant mortality variable to reach their 100,000 figure (they did not.) Third, that infant mortality played a small part of the final figure (as shown above, it accounts for at least 26% of the tally, my bad on the initial figure but the I at least had the decency to retract that number!) You have also claimed that most of the dead have been women and children, although that conclusion is supported nowhere in the study and in fact is directly contradicted by the data on p.1860.
     You have cited not one authority or article in defense of your original and most important claim that US forces have killed many times more civilians than have insurgents, instead retreating into a blizzard of pompous and unconvincing appeals to academic authority (which authority is totally irrelevant, by the way.) Until YOU can prove to ME that US forces have killed more civilians than insurgents using ANY hard data whatsoever, I don’t think we have very much more to say to one another on this topic.

120. http://www.haloscan.com/comments/bigpharaoh/110122135000285049/
     Here’s one gerhauser explanation of the study’s core finding of 60,000 violent deaths.
     http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/LancetIraq/lottlancet.html
     Here’s another.
     http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/LancetIraq/lottlancet.grey
     and another ‘60,000 violent deaths ex falluja’
     They’re everywhere. Want some more?

121. Samir Amin’s view of the Iraqi elections: http://www.misna.org/news.asp?lng=1&id=128574

122. Argyll, Feb 8, 2005: “The infant mortality figures contribute at least 40 – 50k ‘excess deaths’ to the midpoint result of the study, which you would know if you had actually read ‘Gerhausen’s’ [sic] criticism in any depth. Do your homework.”
     Argyll, Feb 11, 2005, 12:22 AM: “the proper number is not 40-50 but merely 30k surplus deaths resulting from their grievous undercount”
     Argyll, Feb. a11, 2005, 4:45 PM: “[infant mortality]it accounts for at least 26% of the tally” Note: 26% of 100,000 = 26,000.
     1) You cited writings from Heiko Gerhauser as evidence supporting your claim that “infant mortality figures contribute at least 40 – 50k ‘excess deaths’“.
     Yesterday, after ignoring for days my repeated requests for material specific to the infant mortality claim, you posted URL’s to material about 60,000 violent deaths. Still nothing at all about the 40-50k (or is it 30k? or is it 26k?) infant mortality claim. Did you honestly believe I would find material regarding 60,000 violent deaths a satisfactory reponse to a request for material substantiating your claim regarding infant mortality? Or did you think you could throw me off the trail with this red herring?
     Argyll: “They’re everywhere. Want some more?
     No, Argyll. I don’t want more red herrings. What I want is the material you cited to substantiate your claim that infant mortality contributed 50k (or is it 30k? or is it 26k?) of the excess deaths. But it is looking more and more as if that material simply does not exist.
     2) I asked you twice to provide me with a direct, straighforward, clear (as opposed to indirect, roundabout) explanation as to how you arrived at your (revised) claim that 30,000 (or is it 26,000?) of the estimated 100,000 excess deaths consisted of infant deaths. The best you could come up with is a reference to the item about halving the infant mortality rate differential, which is hardly direct, straighforward or clear, and comes off looking just a bit desperate. It is looking more and more as if you do not really have an explanation for your claim of the 30,000 (or 50,000, or is it 26,000) infant mortality claim.
     3) You claimed that the infant mortality contribution of 30,000 of the excess deaths is “plainly expressed” in the Lancet article, so I asked you to direct me to the place in the article where that occurs. If it IS “plainly expressed” in the article, it should be a simple matter for you to direct me at least to the correct page, yet your only response has been to deliver a series of insulting remarks – oh yes, and to revise the infant mortality number downward yet again to 26,000. It is becoming more and more obvious that nowhere in the article is there anything, plain or otherwise, to support your claim that the 100,000 estimate includes 26,000 (or 30,000, or 50,000) infant deaths.
     The longer this goes on the more you dodge and bob and weave and the more red herrings you throw onto the trail. Twice now you have revised downward your claim regardng the infant mortality portion, and you still cannot give a direct and clear explanation how you are arriving at your numbers, even though you claim expertise in statistics.
     And now, after days of making claims about the study which you obviously cannot substantiate, you try a major diversion away from the study altogether.
     The fact is that if you could have substantiated any of your claims about the contribution of infant mortality to the overall figure, you would have by now. It appears that Heiko Gerhauser never wrote anything about how the infant mortality rate contributed to the total. It is also clear that nowhere in the article is it expressed, plainly or otherwise, how much infant mortality contributed to the total figure. And you have made too many elementary mistakes to impress me as someone who has expertise in statistics.
     Finally, your claim that your agenda, here at least, is to get UNICEF to defend its 2002 numbers is so outlandish that it is impossible to understand why you made it. It is obvious that your agenda here is to say any crazy thing you can think of to discredit the study in Lancet and impugn the integrity of its authors.

123. It appears that Heiko Gerhauser never wrote anything about how the infant mortality rate contributed to the total.
     Well, I’ve just given you 3 links where he does that, but it seems you have difficulty reading English – perhaps it’s your second or third language?
     Now, again:
     Until YOU can prove to ME that US forces have killed more civilians than insurgents [the first of a great many unsubstantiated claims] using ANY hard data whatsoever, I don’t think we have very much more to say to one another on this topic.

124. Shirin: “It appears that Heiko Gerhauser never wrote anything about how the infant mortality rate contributed to the total.”
     Agyll: I’ve just given you 3 links where he does that…”
     Not according to the way you labeled the links:
     “Here’s one gerhauser explanation of the study’s core finding of 60,000 violent deaths.”
     “Here’s another.”
     “and another ‘60,000 violent deaths ex falluja’”
     I certainly read English well enough to know that 60,000 violent deaths is not the same thing as 50,000 out of 100,000 deaths due to infant mortality. I am sure the way you labeled those links was not an accident. If they contained information supporting your claim that 50,000 of the 100,000 excess deaths, why did you not label them as such?

125. All right, Argyll, I made two passes through each of the three pages you labeled as having to do with 60,000 violent deaths, and that you now claim all contain information in support of your assertion that 50,000 of the 100,000 estimated excess deaths were due to infant mortality. I read through each of Heiko Gerhauser’s posts on each page, then I looked at every reference to infant mortality. My English is quite good enough to ascertain that not one of those pages contains anything that refers to the number of excess deaths attributed to infant mortality.
     You claimed that 50,000 of the 100,000 excess deaths were attributed to infant mortality, and you cited Heiko Gerhausen as the source for that claim. Then you reduced the 50,000 to 30,000. Then you reduced the 30,000 to 26,000, yet you continued to insist that Heiko Gerhausen had written something somewhere that substantiates the 50,000. Rather inconsistent for someone who pretends to know what he is talking about, wouldn’t you say?
     You claimed that the fact that 30,000 of the 100,000 estimated excess deaths are due to infant mortality is “plainly expressed” in the Lancet article, yet my repeated requests for a specific reference to this “plain expression” – as little as page number would do – have not even been acknowledged.
     I have asked repeatedly for a clear, direct explanation of how you derived the 30,000 number (your first of two adownward revisions from your original claim of 50,000). This should be a piece of cake given your claim of expertise in statistics, yet you have been unable to come up with anything at all.
     It is becoming increasingly obvious with everaything you post here who it is that is making arguments they cannot substantiate. And the sad thing is that the more obvious it becomes that you have dug yourself into a hole, the more you keep on digging yourself in even deeper.

126. your assertion that 50,000 of the 100,000 estimated excess deaths
     False, I revised that downward, which does not affect the core issue at all. Your pettifoggery is becoming tiresome. Whether the number due to infant mortality is ~26,000 or ~35,000 as Gerhauser suggests, one thing it is NOT is “only a small part” of the final result. 60,000 violent deaths is the core finding, that is what we are discussing. Note again that the deaths in the study are not civilian. You seem unwilling to address this fact. Note that the study’s finding are that they are not mostly women and children. You seem unwilling to discuss this fact as well.
     You have not acknowledged a single one of numerous factual errors and misrepresentations on your own part. You also have failed to document any of your numerous hyperbolic claims. I don’t think you’ve offered me so much as one link or citation.

127. “Arguments from authority are no more useful than arguments from bald assertion: “no it is not” “you are clearly wrong” etc etc etc.”
     Nonsense.
     This takes the prize for unintended hilarity. Shirin answers the charge of “argument by assertion” with another bald assertion. No, “here’s why they don’t,” no effort of any kind to explain or validate her position. No, just “nonsense.”
     Shirin, just before I made my erroneous 40-50k claim that I later retracted and that you continue to milk for all it’s worth, you claimed the infant mortality rates hardly mattered at all. I have directed you to numerous threads explaining the significance of infant deaths. Care to point me to even one suggesting their insignificance? Or would you rather parade around all day making pompous demands?

128. 21 excess violent deaths extrapolates to 60,000.
     10.5 excess infant deaths extrapolates to 30,000 (10.5 to 21)
     It’s plainly expressed in the summary. I keep sending you to page 1860, you keep claiming not to have read it or understood it. The authors own explanatory comments clearly and unambiguously imply a result of 26% (a tiny fraction removed from the cited 30k.) This is all stated plainly in the report. You continue to ignore it. I expect you to ignore this post as well, and to rabbit on for half an hour about 50k infant deaths I long ago abandoned as incorrect.
     I can tell your pride is badly bruised, but please snap out of it. You are embarrassing yourself, badly.

129. “Your pettifoggery is becoming tiresome.”
     MY pettifoggery?! That is hilariously audacious coming from a master at pettifoggery and obfuscation, particularly when it is followed by this:
     “Whether the number due to infant mortality is ~26,000 or ~35,000 as Gerhauser suggests”
     First it was 50,000 (as I would know, if I would only do my homework as you ordered me to do, and read what some very prolific pro-war hack has written in various blog comment sections), then it was 30,000, then 26,000, and now you add a fourth completely different number to the mix to make it either ~26,000 or ~35,000. (AND you are now changing your original claim about Gerhauser and insisting that somewhere, evidently in some well-hidden blog comment section in the vastness of the web where no one but you will ever see it, he “suggests” that the number is either ~26,000 or ~35,000 as opposed to 50,000.)
     And throughout all this not once have you produced anything from Gerhausen that even remotely suggests any of these numbers, nor have you made even a semi-serious attempt to justify in any way even one, let alone all four of the distinct and different numbers you keep coming up with. Further, you continue to make very elementary mistakes that belie your claim to expertise in statistics.
     And this:
     “60,000 violent deaths is the core finding,
     that is what we are discussing.”
     No, that is NOT what we are discussing. What we have been discussing for days now is the contribution of infant mortality to the estimate of 100,000 excess deaths. I have been trying desperately to get you to substantiate any one of your constantly shifting claims, and this is simply your attempt to divert the topic away from the one we actually are discussing.
     And this:
     “Note again that the deaths in the study are not civilian. You seem unwilling to address this fact. ”
     Are you now claiming that none of the deaths in the study, including the women, non-infant children, and the either 50,000, or 30,000, or 26,000 or 35,000 infants are civilian?
     and this:
     “Note that the study’s finding are that they are not mostly women and children. You seem unwilling to discuss this fact as well.”
     Another attempt at diversion, I see. What’s to discuss? I have never claimed they are mostly women and children. YOU are the one who originally made that claim, albeit indirectly, when you insisted that half the deaths were attributed to infant mortality. I guess you weren’t thinking very carefully when you pulled that number out, were you? Even your constantly revised claims of 30,000, 26,000 and the new one of 35,000 could put the number of civilians over 50% of the total, depending on the contribution of women and non-infant child deaths (assuming, of course, you are not claiming that women and non-infant children are non-civilians).

130. “It’s plainly expressed in the summary.”
     Not all that plainly, apparently, since you are still unable to make up your mind whether it is 50,000, 30,000, 26,000 or 35,000, and will probably come up with a fifth different figure by tomorrow.

131. Even your constantly revised claims of 30,000, 26,000 and the new one of 35,000 could put the number of civilians over 50% of the total,
     My point re: infant mortality does not address the proportion of civilians represented in the tally [still unknown].
     It represented questions regarding the absolute magnitude of the reported midpoint figure, the variability of results and the demonstrated inaccuracy of the survey data itself.

132. Still trying to divert and obfuscate, I see.
     Whether your constantly shifting claims of 50,000, then 30,000, then 26,000, then either ~26,000 or ~35,000 infant deaths have been intended to “address the proportion of civilians represented in the tally”, they do so, albeit clearly inadvertently.
     As for “demonstrated inaccuracy”, so far you have demonstrated very little here pertaining to the study.

133. Speaking of being inaccurate – well, actually, just plain wrong – there is something I should have mentioned yesterday. I finally DID find one small statement in all I have read of the voluminous (and highly repetitive) writings of Heiko Gerhauser that COULD be interpreted as claiming, albeit indirectly, that the study includes 40,000 infant deaths. The problem is that Gerhauser’s statement is just plain wrong.
     It seems in one of his overwhelmingly numerous blog comments he actually stated (and here I present a direct copied and pasted quote, plus a link to the pertinent page – something you have never been able to do): “They tried to estimate excess mortality, and came up with a central estimate of around 60,000 violent deaths…plus an increase in infant mortality“. So, Gerhauser falsely implies here that infant mortality accounts for 40,000 deaths. If THIS is your elusive supporting material from Gerhauser, it isn’t merely weak, it is out and out false. Plus, it does not support your original 50,000 figure, or any of the other constantly changing figures you have variously presented as factual.

134. Plus, it does not support your original 50,000 figure
     Right, which I long ago abandoned. Two whole days ago. It was hard to get over, admittedly. I cried for a while. But somehow I managed to pull through.
     So, Gerhauser falsely implies here that infant mortality accounts for 40,000 deaths.
     Actually, Gerhauser backs into 3500 deaths (it is expressed elsewhere as 3k deaths) per 1 in the study. The jump from 10.5 to 21 infant deaths represents approximately 35k according to him. This doesnt square 100% with the portion of commentary I cited 3 or 4 times above, but it’s quite close and I could certainly be missing something. You certainly haven’t helped me figure out exactly what.
     I’m fascinated that you should consider a difference of 4,000 or even 9,000 deaths incredibly important given the core claims of the study. But somehow it is pettifogging to find strange the study’s rushed peer review, mischaracterization of its results, implication that 9 out of every 10 dead Iraqi civilian escaped the attention of any hospital, morgue or newspaper. Also a number containing figures that completely contradict results reported earlier by one of the same scientists. We can’t all have such an eye for detail, I guess.
     The results from Fallujah imply 200,000 people died in that city alone as a consequence of the war. Do you honestly believe this to have occurred? This is delusional.

135. “which I long ago abandoned. Two whole days ago.”
     Yes, and have replaced it with a bewildering series of new numbers which inexplicably change on a regular basis.
     “Actually, Gerhauser backs into 3500 deaths”
     May I assume here you meant to write 35,000? So, at first you insisted that Gerhauser made it clear that it was 50,000 infant deaths, but you never produced a word from Gerhauser to substantiate that. Then no, it was actually 30,000, and still not a word to substantiate it. Soon after that it was 26,000, and still nothing to substantiate it. Then, Gerhauser was actually “suggesting” either ~26,000 or ~35,000, but stil nothing – not a syllable – from Gerhauser to substantiate it. And now you are claiming that Gerhauser “backs into” 35,000, but of course not a word from Gerhauser to substantiate this brand new claim? And you appear to believe all this makes you look authoritative and credible.
     “I’m fascinated that you should consider a difference of 4,000 or even 9,000 deaths…”
     I am fascinated that you should consider that your constantly shifting claims combined with your complete failure to produce a single syllable from your alleged sourcea, or provide a convincing explanation for your ever changing numbers does a thing for your credibility.
     And you continue to ignore the suggestion that when you find yourself in a hole the first thing you should do is stop digging.

136. “The results from Fallujah imply 200,000 people died in that city alone as a consequence of the war.”
     You WILL just keep on digging and digging and digging, won’t you?
     And here is yet one more very elementary mistake that belies your claim of expertise in statistics.
     No, that is not what the results from Falluja imply – not at all. 200,000 is the number obtained by extrapolating the Falluja results to the entire population of Iraq, not to the population of Falluja. And it really doesn’t take any knowledge at all of statistics to see that. All it takes is a small grain of common sense.
     Keep digging, Argyll.

137. 200,000 is the number obtained by extrapolating the Falluja results to the entire population of Iraq
     In what language does this have meaning? 200,000 is an absolute tally, not an average! It derives from the population of the cluster, and applies to the cluster from which the sample was drawn, meaning the province containing Fallujah, and only that province. It does not imply the 200,000 deaths were spread evenly across Iraq (!). It (obviously) means they were local to that cluster. It implies that 1/4 the population of that cluster died. That’s how they can exclude the cluster,and that’s why when they exclude the cluster 200,000 deaths drop off. Your point is incoherent.
     And you appear to believe all this makes you look authoritative and credible.
     I do not care in the slightest how authoritative I appear to random strangers, least of all you. My authority and credibility are irrelevant to the facts. I am interested in knowing exactly how many civilians have died in the recent war in Iraq; you seem interested in something else.

138. btw Shirin, the way Heiko guesses at 3500 is by dividing the sample size of 7868 people into the total population of Iraq. It appears you have not understood what I have been saying. At risk of inducing some kind of autistic episode, this makes for around 3200 for every excess death described in the survey. That would make the infant death number around 33,000 +/- . It could also be 33,001. or 33,002. It could be higher , it could be lower. I know this must be maddening.

139. Here Shirin, I’ll get you started:
     “Oh so now you’re saying 32,000 ! Well which is it, 32,000 or 33,000? Perhaps it’s 50,000?…”
     etc etc etc. Let me know when you have something interesting to say, or even a tiny bit informative, fresh or helpful since I know courteous & to the point are not in your repertoire.

140. plus a link to the pertinent page – something you have never been able to do):
     Shirin fails to notice that I cited this very page way back on february 11! Seems like just yesterday, when actually it’s the day before yesterday.
     Shirin, how many other of my links have you chosen to ignore?

141. “Shirin fails to notice that I cited this very page way back on february 11”
     Not at all. That is how I found the bit I quoted – by going to the URL you posted. I also went to the other two.
     “Shirin, how many other of my links have you chosen to ignore?”
     I have ignored none of the three URL’s you finally posted after repeated requests from me for both quotes and links. I looked at the pages despite the fact that you indicated that they contained information about a subject other than the one we were discussing. I found none of them in the least enlightening, as they just wasted my time with the same bits Gerhauser has posted just about everywhere, and I searched in vain for anything that would confirm your claims.

142. Argyll, I am far more interested in how the authors of the study derived their figures than I am in how Heiko Gerhauser, who is by his own admission not an epidemiologist, derived his.
     And how DID I know you would come up with yet more different figures for infant mortality! From 50,000 to 30,000 to 26,000 to 35,000 to either ~26,000 or ~35,000, and now 33,000.
     Keep digging, Argyll, keep digging.

143. “I am far more interested in how the authors of the study derived their figures”
     Hah! Then why the demands for more links to more comments threads? Your initial claim regarded civilians; the study does not count civilians. It makes no attempt to distinguish civilians form non civilians. So your initial comment remains wrong, and this entire idiotic sidebar is irrelevant.
     Shirin: According to the only scientific study done to date, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians had been killed as of Summer, 2004, most of them as a result of U.S. air strikes, and around half of them women and children.
     This entire comment is wrong on every particular. No effort was made in this study to distinguish civilians from non civilians. And the midpoint figure is in all likelihood inflated by a phony pickup in infant mortality. You have shown me nothing to contradict any of these facts, fixating on utterly trivial inconsistencies, one of which was acknowledged days ago. Instead of showing me new facts, you have wasted days demanding and then ignoring links to old threads. You have not made any effort at all to prove any of your many outlandish pronouncements, including this gem:
     anyone who cares to take a few minutes to compile the information can easily give you ten times that many “distinct incidents” involving U.S. bombs, and/or machine guns, and/or other weapons with a far higher “average yield”.
     Well, if its so easy, let’s have your data! You’ve had more than “a few minutes,” you’ve had over a week! The Lancet study doesnt count, unfortunately, because it doesnt count civilian deaths. So to what data are you referring here? Any study at all? Any web pages I can read? Any OTHER threads I can check out? Help me out — pretend you actually care about convincing me of anything, instead of soothing your bruised self image with ineffectual digs at my epidemiological ‘credentials.’

144. The funny thing about Shirin’s fixation on ‘expert testimony’ is that is self-invalidating. Her own understanding of the Lancet’s result is using her logic questionable, since she herself is not an epidemiologist.
     This is the problem with posing arguments from authority. They are valid only as far as they evaluate opinion, otherwise they are quite plainly ‘ipse dixit’ or argumentum ad verecundiam fallacies.

145. Because the authors of the study are recognized as preeminent experts in the field, and have a proven track record in other conflicts.
     I don’t blame Shirin for attempting to distance herself from this transparent fib.
     The National Review of Medicine:
     “The Lancet, the world’s oldest medical journal, has turned its hand to something quite new in medical research

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