655,000

[Geggy]

LONDON (Reuters) - American and Iraqi public health experts have calculated that about 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent violence, far above previous estimates.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=&storyid=2006-10-11T123603Z_01_L11717456_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-DEATHS.xml&src=/ActiveBuddy

"Progress"....

[Geggy]

I don't understand how is this "spreading democracy"?

[Geggy]

Bush: September the 11th

Americans: oooooh... *golf claps* USA! USA! USA! USA!

[Geggy]

What's the update on the foley scandal? :lol

Stupid americans

[AChimp]

Enjoy talking to yourself, huh?

[ItalianStereotype]

geggy, I'd like to introduce you to a concept you may not have heard of before, but you SHOULD be VERY familiar with. it's called "FALSIFIED INFORMATION." statistics can be exaggerated and, in this case, quite obviously are.

and wasn't The Lancet the publication that posted the 145k deaths figure in order to influence our elections?

[mburbank]

I agree it wuld be very hard to nail down a bodycount.

Can we say, though, a shitload of Iraquis have died? Whatever the # is, it's kind of big when you are talking about who would not otherwie be dead.

[derrida]

statistics can be exaggerated and, in this case, quite obviously are.

care to expound?

[Archduke Tips]

Well... Dead people can't be persecuted. So I guess we liberated them.

[Preechr]

Freedom isn't free, baby.

[derrida]

why not dispense with the war on terror and accept a couple thousand dead westerners every few years?

[Big Papa Goat]

I don't think you grasp the full depth of Preechr's pathology derrida

[ItalianStereotype]

these numbers originally came from a "study" that was published by Lancet.com. the same group of people who originally said that the Iraqi War caused 100,000 deaths, which was totally untrue. the study that it was based off of purported that there were EXCESS deaths in Iraq, the number of which was at or around 100,000 that year. to claim that all of these deaths were caused by the US is idiotic.

secondly, there weren't even 100,000 excess deaths; rather the study showed that the confidence interval was 2,000 to 200,000 higher than what the author had used for pre-war deaths.

third, no deaths were actually measured (and I suspect that this was the case in this test as well). the author took as fact the hypothetical measurement of post war Iraqi deaths as compared to a ridiculously low balled pre war death count, one that was comparatively lower than the US death rate. and really, as there was no open exchange of information in Hussein's Iraq, nobody really knows the death rate of pre-war Iraq.

fourth, the methodology of both tests was completely unsound. the team claims that they were able to measure statistics in Fallujah, undoubtedly one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, but were unable to conduct the same tests in the more docile southern and northern provinces due to safety issues. bullshit.

I don't buy their shit for a second.

[mburbank]

I think this study encourages debate about this study, which to me is wholly beside the point.

Do your own study. Go back as many days, months or years as you want. Add up the number of dead, tortured bodies found each day. Then add a bunch more since you can assume some deaths go unreported or undiscovered.

however you do the math, whatever methodology you use, it adds up to a pretty horriffic number of dead bodies. And however you do the math, it's getting worse, not better.

[derrida]

Actually, fallujah wasnt included in the study because it was too much of an outlier with the rest of the data to give an accurate representation. if you actually read the study you'd know that the authors never worked in fallujah because the investigation was conducted by iraqi doctors. if you can't get this right how the fuck can i expect to believe anything else you say?

[mburbank]

110 Bodies Found in Baghdad in 24 Hours
Reuters

Wednesday 11 October 2006

Baghdad - Iraqi police found 50 bodies dumped across Baghdad on Tuesday, apparent victims of sectarian death squads, and a bombing at a bakery in the capital killed 10 people in the biggest single attack of the day.

The discovery of the bodies, many tortured and all shot, brought to at least 110 the number found in Baghdad in the past two days, an Interior Ministry official said.

[ItalianStereotype]

understand, derrida, that I wasn't talking about THIS STUDY. I was calling into question the validity of THIS STUDY based on PREVIOUS STUDIES. you were so anxious to try and look sooo witty that you didn't even want to bother with such slight details, apparently.

[Preechr]

I don't think you grasp the full depth of Preechr's pathology derrida

Y'know, I'm such a lovable guy in real life, it's sort of fun to be despised. Please elaborate. I'm always up to being proven a sicko.

[Big Papa Goat]

ah, I don't really despise you Preechr, I was just being facetious.
All I really meant is that I'm sure that when you said freedom isn't free you were talking about freedom for the rest of the world isn't free, not just freedom for Americans. Derrida seemed to think that you were just talking about freedom for Americans.
But I guess what I was kind of pointing out were the really deeply liberal views you have about things like the war in Iraq and the war on terror. As for the word pathology, I guess that was just what came to mind, there was a political scientist who used the term pneumapathology a lot to describe people who thought that all the problems of the world could be solved through the application of some ideology. Like I say though, I was just being facetious, I don't think you're really all that crazy.

[Preechr]

Ok then.

I was actually quoting the line Matt and Trey line from Team America: World Police. I love that movie.

America, Fuck Yeah.

[Preechr]

Additionally, I guess I would be best described as a pneumapathoholic, according to your definition; if, that is, you haven't left the bad parts out.

I don't, however, irrationally assume to know the exact ideology we should be living by in order to maintain that perfect society where all our probelms are solved through it's application. I'm working on it, though.

Care to pitch in?

[Preechr]

By the way... Since this is a Geggy thread and I usually don't post in these, did anybody else catch the new Southpark where Cartman used Geggyspeak to blame Kyle for 9/11?

Whenever that gets on Youtube, somebody needs to post that for him... Well, when it gets put out with subtitles anyways...

[Grislygus]

I saw it. I was hoping it would be more biting... Don't get me wrong, the Hardly boys was funny and all, it was just played out for too long. I would have loved for far more focus on the conspiracy theory part.

[mburbank]

I thought it was great, particularly the point where Bush is describing the details of his conspiracy and Kyle keeps going "Really???"

[derrida]

understand, derrida, that I wasn't talking about THIS STUDY. I was calling into question the validity of THIS STUDY based on PREVIOUS STUDIES. you were so anxious to try and look sooo witty that you didn't even want to bother with such slight details, apparently.

I was talking about the old study

but anyway, why not question this study based on, you know, this study?