[Psudo]

Maybe it's just because the Filibuster Cartoons forum has slowed down a bit or maybe I haven't been online as much, but it seems like you don't hear as much about "the horrible slaughter in Iraq" anymore.

The Lancet study suggesting 650,000+ deaths has been widely discarded in favor of numbers ranging from 80,000 to 150,000. Still a horrible loss of life, but at a fifth the scale. IraqBodyCount.org, fierce detractors of the war in Iraq, have suggested of the study that "the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data."

General David Petraeus declared that the troop surge was reducing violence and initiating a trend toward stability, and an uproar of offense and outrage against him flooded the internet. Yet IBC's graph shows about 1/3rd as many Iraqi causalities in early '08 as in early '07 when the troop surge was announced, thus verifying Petraeus' word.

Perhaps I'm merely out of touch, but it seems to me that Iraq is no longer an issue because it is no longer a rhetorical tool for discrediting political conservatives. It is an unstable and violent region, but no longer appears to be a perpetual war zone or a new Viet Nam. It now looks like a troubled democracy, arguably an improvement over the stable despotism it was.

When it was useful as a sounding board for discrediting Bush, it was the top news story and flooding the forums. Now that it's in the range of ambiguous to a hard-won success, local cyclic life fills the headlines and forum threads. And the Republicans are running a war supporter for President.

If opposition to the war was ever more than a rhetorical tool for discrediting opposing politicians, why the quiet?

[Kjorteo]

For one thing, the debate is still far from over: one of Barack Obama's major campaign points is ending the war, one of John McCain's is is support for it, and groups like MoveOn have been quick to tar the latter for his "I wouldn't mind a hundred-year presence" comment.

I think in the case of average everyday Americans, though, it's just that the economy is quickly becoming more and more important. You can have philosophical debates with your friends all day about whether what we're doing way over there is right, but when you're done and come home at night, what are you going to eat for dinner if you've recently been laid off?

For many people, debating the causes (such as arguing whether the however many thousand per second we're spending in Iraq and the recession we're facing here could be related) is of secondary importance to just wanting to be able to make ends meet again.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

Maybe it's just because the Filibuster Cartoons forum has slowed down a bit or maybe I haven't been online as much, but it seems like you don't hear as much about "the horrible slaughter in Iraq" anymore.

The Lancet study suggesting 650,000+ deaths has been widely discarded in favor of numbers ranging from 80,000 to 150,000. Still a horrible loss of life, but at a fifth the scale. IraqBodyCount.org, fierce detractors of the war in Iraq, have suggested of the study that "the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data."

General David Petraeus declared that the troop surge was reducing violence and initiating a trend toward stability, and an uproar of offense and outrage against him flooded the internet. Yet IBC's graph shows about 1/3rd as many Iraqi causalities in early '08 as in early '07 when the troop surge was announced, thus verifying Petraeus' word.

Perhaps I'm merely out of touch, but it seems to me that Iraq is no longer an issue because it is no longer a rhetorical tool for discrediting political conservatives. It is an unstable and violent region, but no longer appears to be a perpetual war zone or a new Viet Nam. It now looks like a troubled democracy, arguably an improvement over the stable despotism it was.

When it was useful as a sounding board for discrediting Bush, it was the top news story and flooding the forums. Now that it's in the range of ambiguous to a hard-won success, local cyclic life fills the headlines and forum threads. And the Republicans are running a war supporter for President.

If opposition to the war was ever more than a rhetorical tool for discrediting opposing politicians, why the quiet?

Only 150,000? Well, that's OK then. Actually another recent study supported the two Lancet studies and put the number closer to a million. Regardless, it certainly puts Bush in some pretty select company as far as body counts go.

And the political conservatives have moved on, haven't they? Now that Iraq has been pacified, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, they're trotting out the same old lines about Iran--WMDs, terrorist connections, yadda yadda yadda.

So basically you've got a president--or a conservative movement, if you will--that is leaping from country to country in the Middle East and dreaming up excuses to invade them.

Fortunately, the era of the neo-con socialists looks like it will come to an end. Ironically not because of the mass slaughter they've precipitated, but because of their financial irresponsibility.

[dog77_1999]

Kjorteo wrote:

For one thing, the debate is still far from over: one of Barack Obama's major campaign points is ending the war, one of John McCain's is is support for it, and groups like MoveOn have been quick to tar the latter for his "I wouldn't mind a hundred-year presence" comment.

I think in the case of average everyday Americans, though, it's just that the economy is quickly becoming more and more important. You can have philosophical debates with your friends all day about whether what we're doing way over there is right, but when you're done and come home at night, what are you going to eat for dinner if you've recently been laid off?

For many people, debating the causes (such as arguing whether the however many thousand per second we're spending in Iraq and the recession we're facing here could be related) is of secondary importance to just wanting to be able to make ends meet again.

Food for thought, both Obama and McCain put an estimated withdraw date at 2013.

Right after their term in office. After all, nobody wants to look bad in the eyes of history.

But anyways, the economy has taken over the issue of Iraq. More people are concerned about what is happening over here than over there.

[Psudo]

Zipperfish wrote:

Only 150,000? Well, that's OK then.

You're the only one who has said so. Straw man.

Zipperfish wrote:

Actually another recent study supported the two Lancet studies and put the number closer to a million.

I've argued the methodology with you before. You eventually concluded:

Zipperfish wrote:

Well, Toro seems to have found a more recent study here:

WHO Estimates 151,000 Iraqis Dead

that m,ay be a superior study ot the Lancet, given methodology was similar but sample sizes were larger.

Has something changed?

Zipperfish wrote:

Regardless, it certainly puts Bush in some pretty select company as far as body counts go.

It's quite close to the number of civilians who died in the US Civil War, for example.

Zipperfish wrote:

Now that Iraq has been pacified, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, they're trotting out the same old lines about Iran--WMDs, terrorist connections, yadda yadda yadda.

First, a correction: a hundred thousand, not hundreds of thousands. You can question the moral relevance of the distinction, but it is still the more accurate wording.

And then a clarification: even among those who defend the invasion of Iraq (like me, for example) there is virtually no support for a troop invasion of Iran. We want to prevent their membership in the nuclear club, but by destroying their nuclear weapon facilities and leaving, like Israel did in Baghdad in '82. That's what Cheney meant when he joked "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." His casual flippancy is still wrong, but preventing psychotics like Ahmadinejad from attaining nuclear weapons still validates a bombing raid.

Personally, I don't think there will be any bombing or invasion of Iran. Everyone hates the idea; even those that judge that it may be necessary want to avoid it. It'll be handled diplomatically, with the believable threat of military force as a significant bargaining chip.

Kjorteo wrote:

For many people, debating the causes (such as arguing whether the however many thousand per second we're spending in Iraq and the recession we're facing here could be related) is of secondary importance to just wanting to be able to make ends meet again.

The rest of your post made good sense, but this section seems like you're confusing the shock of the scale of government economies with objection to war spending. X times $1,000/second is a lot of money. That proves nothing about the nature or morality or necessity of the war itself. We spent about $18,600 per second on Social Security in '07 compared with $2,500 per second on Iraq. Clearly, we care far more about our retirees than about Iraq. I could repeat the trick with Medicaid, Medicare, non-Iraq military, transportation, and interest on the national debt. Thousands per second is a lot, but "a lot" doesn't inherently mean "waste". You have to argue the worth of the war separately in order to compare it to how much is being spent on it.

If you wanted to use thousands of dollars per second to argue against the size of government generally, I'm far more inclined to agree with you.

[Zipperfish]

[

Psudo wrote:

that m,ay be a superior study ot the Lancet, given methodology was similar but sample sizes were larger.

Has something changed?[/quote]

Yes, another study from Opinion Research Bureau in August 2007 (updated Januray 2008) that generally supports the numbers given by Lancet. They estimate just over one million deaths due to the war, using a similar method, I believe, to that of the Lancet studies. It's also worth noting that though the WHO study estimate just over 150,000 violent deaths, it also estimated some 400,000 total "excess" deaths due to the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Quote:

And then a clarification: even among those who defend the invasion of Iraq (like me, for example) there is virtually no support for a troop invasion of Iran. We want to prevent their membership in the nuclear club, but by destroying their nuclear weapon facilities and leaving, like Israel did in Baghdad in '82. That's what Cheney meant when he joked "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." His casual flippancy is still wrong, but preventing psychotics like Ahmadinejad from attaining nuclear weapons still validates a bombing raid.

Psychotic? Oh puh-leeze. Propaganda Rule Number 1: Portary the enemy as sub-human. I very much doubt that Ahmainejad is "psychotic." It would be very difficult to attain his position burdened with that kind of serious mental illness. He's said some pretty inflammatory things, no doubt about that. Probably on par with "bomb bom Iran."

Trying to attain the bomb seems a perfectly rational thing to do for Iran--not psychotic at all. It's clear that it's given North Korea a stronger position from which to bargain. Not that I support Iran having the bomb--I don't much care either way actually. Maybe it's because I grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation in the Cold War.

And that's if they are actually trying to build a bomb. Who says they are? The Americans?--well, their word isn't really good for much.

Quote:

Personally, I don't think there will be any bombing or invasion of Iran. Everyone hates the idea; even those that judge that it may be necessary want to avoid it. It'll be handled diplomatically, with the believable threat of military force as a significant bargaining chip.

I hope so, but to me it's deja vu from 2003.

[Psudo]

Zipperfish wrote:

Psudo wrote:

Zipperfish wrote:

that m,ay be a superior study ot the Lancet, given methodology was similar but sample sizes were larger.

Has something changed?

Yes, another study from Opinion Research Bureau in August 2007 (updated Januray 2008) that generally supports the numbers given by Lancet. They estimate just over one million deaths due to the war, using a similar method, I believe, to that of the Lancet studies.

I was aware of the ORB study, but not of what it changes. The WHO/IHM study still had a larger statistical sample, 9,345 interviews vs. 2,099 for ORB and 988 for Lancet '04, and 1,849 for Lancet '06. The WHO/IHM study had a larger sample than the other three combined. If you're going to trust poll-aproximation uniformly, why trust the smaller sample size?

Also, Lancet and ORB did not use the same methodology. Lancet used cluster sampling, whereas ORB did not. If they were strikingly similar (which they aren't), it still wouldn't scientifically verify Lancet's interesting new methodology by reproduction.

Lancet still depended on an unverifiable data collection system, wherein even the scientists involved were closed off from the data collection process. (I remember we discussed the man who collected the surveys last time.) Did ORB keep that part of Lancet's methodology? Or, less rhetorically, was ORB's data collection verifiable?

And, in the end, if you want to know how many legos are in the box it's still more accurate to count them than to approximate by any means.

IBC points out some logical oddities inherent with accepting the Lancet's results. They apply just as well to the ORB study. One that especially interests me is the scale of self-destructive fraud that would have to exist among the Iraqi populace to hide their own suffering and death from any records. Self-preservation is served by them exaggerating their suffering in order to bring international pressure in opposition to the war; if fraud exists to that extent, why assume it counters the Iraqi people's self-preservation?

But these are the same arguments as before. I still see no change except in the IBC graph and the popularity of discussing the issue.

Zipperfish wrote:

It's also worth noting that though the WHO study estimate just over 150,000 violent deaths, it also estimated some 400,000 total "excess" deaths due to the war.

Which brings up an interesting point: are the Americans to blame for Iraqi on Iraqi violence in the era? If some hypothetical mob of oppressed destroy a local tyrannical stooge of Saddam and his household, are those deaths counted as more murders on Bush's docket, more blood on his hands? What distinguishes an "excessive death" from a violent death or a death that would have happened anyway regardless of the war? Are those definitions consistent in the studies? The order of magnitude difference in results suggests not.

Zipperfish wrote:

Propaganda Rule Number 1: Portary the enemy as sub-human.

So true. Except psychotic (even literally, though I intended it figuratively) doesn't mean sub-human. It merely means dangerous. Isn't danger what you were suggesting with "So basically you've got a president--or a conservative movement, if you will--that is leaping from country to country in the Middle East and dreaming up excuses to invade them."?

Psychotic is popularly used to mean "without a conscience". I don't think Ahmadinejad lacks a conscience. I do think his following his conscience inherently deprives me of a reality compatible with mine. Namely, I oppose the destruction of the Israeli democracy by the Iranian theocracy. Thus, my conscience requires opposing his and vise-versa.

Zipperfish wrote:

And that's if they are actually trying to build a bomb. Who says they are? The Americans?

It's true, the only evidence for weapons is that they are refining uranium far beyond the purity needed for nuclear reactors without adequate explanation. Yet another reason to doubt there'll be any military confrontation with Iran.

Still, it's pretty weird behavior. If the international political landscape had less else going on, the international community would probably see the message instead of the messenger and be asking Iran more pressing questions.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

I was aware of the ORB study, but not of what it changes. The WHO/IHM study still had a larger statistical sample, 9,345 interviews vs. 2,099 for ORB and 988 for Lancet '04, and 1,849 for Lancet '06. The WHO/IHM study had a larger sample than the other three combined. If you're going to trust poll-aproximation uniformly, why trust the smaller sample size?

I guess there's two new facts of which I was unaware. One was the ORB study indicating that war casualites were up around a million, and another was the WGO study, where I noted that "excess deatrhs" were numbered at 400,000--which puts it in the general league of the Lancet study. To me, that means the Lancet study becomes less of an outlier.

Quote:

And, in the end, if you want to know how many legos are in the box it's still more accurate to count them than to approximate by any means.

Well, nobody bothered to count the legos in this case. And even if they did, I would still trust scientists more than govermment or military sources.

Quote:

IBC points out some logical oddities inherent with accepting the Lancet's results. They apply just as well to the ORB study. One that especially interests me is the scale of self-destructive fraud that would have to exist among the Iraqi populace to hide their own suffering and death from any records. Self-preservation is served by them exaggerating their suffering in order to bring international pressure in opposition to the war; if fraud exists to that extent, why assume it counters the Iraqi people's self-preservation?

Iraq Body Count determine their numbers by reading the newspapers. In their defence, they make no claim to mcuh scientific validity and readily admit their casualty totals are an underestimate. Their criticisms are valid, but until they devise adn execute a study that fixes those alleged shortcomings, you've got to use the most scientifically number you have.

Quote:

Which brings up an interesting point: are the Americans to blame for Iraqi on Iraqi violence in the era? If some hypothetical mob of oppressed destroy a local tyrannical stooge of Saddam and his household, are those deaths counted as more murders on Bush's docket, more blood on his hands? What distinguishes an "excessive death" from a violent death or a death that would have happened anyway regardless of the war? Are those definitions consistent in the studies? The order of magnitude difference in results suggests not.

Gioven that the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq, I'd say they certainly inherited responsiblity for the people of Iraq. "You break it, you buy it." It's really rather perverse to blame Saddam for the deaths after he was gone adn teh US was in power.

It's pretty clear to me that the US actually did a worse job than running Iraq than Saddam did, as far as the body count goes. I think the scale of death puts Bush up
in the big leagues as far as causing human mayhem and misery goes. Fine--people die in wars, but this was a war of aggression base don lies, so the moral culpability for Bush and for America is quite high. Nothing new there, though--it was the saem with Vietnam. I think that's sad.

Quote:

So true. Except psychotic (even literally, though I intended it figuratively) doesn't mean sub-human. It merely means dangerous. Isn't danger what you were suggesting with "So basically you've got a president--or a conservative movement, if you will--that is leaping from country to country in the Middle East and dreaming up excuses to invade them."?

Psychotic is popularly used to mean "without a conscience". I don't think Ahmadinejad lacks a conscience. I do think his following his conscience inherently deprives me of a reality compatible with mine. Namely, I oppose the destruction of the Israeli democracy by the Iranian theocracy. Thus, my conscience requires opposing his and vise-versa.

Psychotic does not mean "dangerous." Dangerous means dangerous. It does not mean "without conscience." (Psychopathic would be closer to that definition). Psychotic means someone who sufferes clear breaks from reality (hallucinations, etc) in such a way that it prevents the victim from adapting normally to society.

Psychotic/insane/madman yadda yadda yadda are just propaganda terms to reduce the enemy to sub-human terms. It's an age-old technique. Also, if you convince the population that the enemy is psychotic then you can do away with any talk of negotiations or diplomacy. You can feel justified in going straight to the war, on the justification that the enemy cannot be dealt with rationally. Propaganda 101.

Quote:

It's true, the only evidence for weapons is that they are refining uranium far beyond the purity needed for nuclear reactors without adequate explanation. Yet another reason to doubt there'll be any military confrontation with Iran.

Still, it's pretty weird behavior. If the international political landscape had less else going on, the international community would probably see the message instead of the messenger and be asking Iran more pressing questions.

No argument there. Again, it makes sense to me for Iran to try to obtain the bomb. If they had a few warheads it would be a strategic advantage for them, I think. I gather that the general population of Iran is not as conservative as the rulers, so there's hope there. I think China should be brought in to deal with Iran. They could lose some 25 or 50 billion in natrual gas if the US invades Iran. The US can't deal with it; they have no credibility right now.

[Streaker]

Psudo wrote:

Perhaps I'm merely out of touch

Bingo.

[Zipperfish]

Streaker wrote:

Psudo wrote:

Perhaps I'm merely out of touch

Bingo.

I don't think a one-word zinger quite stacks up to Psudo's argument, there, Streaker.

[Streaker]

Zipperfish wrote:

Streaker wrote:

Psudo wrote:

Perhaps I'm merely out of touch

Bingo.

I don't think a one-word zinger quite stacks up to Psudo's argument, there, Streaker.

I didn't see much of an argument there, zip, but rather a clumsy attempt to justify the occupation of Iraq and dismiss the mess that country has been left in.

[Zipperfish]

Streaker wrote:

I didn't see much of an argument there, zip, but rather a clumsy attempt to justify the occupation of Iraq and dismiss the mess that country has been left in.

I don't know--Psudo's handed me my ass on a plate a couple of times, but he's a pretty reasonable guy all around, and I appreciate being able to go toe-to-toe on the subject without it degrading into invective and vituperation.

It reminds me that reasonable people can disagree and move on, even on subjects they are passionate about.

[Streaker]

Zipperfish wrote:

Streaker wrote:

I didn't see much of an argument there, zip, but rather a clumsy attempt to justify the occupation of Iraq and dismiss the mess that country has been left in.

I don't know--Psudo's handed me my ass on a plate a couple of times, but he's a pretty reasonable guy all around, and I appreciate being able to go toe-to-toe on the subject without it degrading into invective and vituperation.

It reminds me that reasonable people can disagree and move on, even on subjects they are passionate about.

Admittedly it's a nice thing to be reminded of. Still, I'm left (nearly) speechless when someone comes along who argues that everything is just peachy in Iraq, no matter how polite they are about it.

[Kjorteo]

I couldn't possibly disagree more strongly with Psudo regarding Iraq either, but he's such an excellent debater that his different views make him somewhere around "noble worthy rival" status, at least to me. At the very least, there's no reason to get snippy and dismissive when he puts forward a perfectly rational argument, even if it's for a position you dislike.

[Streaker]

I'd suggest that there is little that is rational in attempting to justify what's happened in Iraq. Aside from that quibble, I can agree with you.