The entire “context” then, hinges on the validity of the pre-war mortality rate. If you accept this number, then I’m told you accept that pre-war Iraq had a better mortality rate than any other country in the Middle East, even Israel.

Call long haired duped I guess.

Also, Iraq Body Count themselves shredded the idiotic number.

So, yes… I feel comfortable calling the 655,000 number a big whopper…

No, if you take the US death rate and apply it over three years to a 25 million people population like Iraq, you’d expect 650K total deaths, more or less. Even if Iraq’s death rate was the same as the US, and as the authors of this study state an additional 650K people died, that would mean a doubling of the death rate, which is not that hard to imagine given the issues Iraq has. But, I haven’t managed to find in any article yet exactly how many Iraqi’s would have been expected to die in a “normal” 3 year period (if Iraq under Hussein could ever be qualified as being “normal” with the mass graves and such).

Iraq, being a significantly younger nation – that is, one with a younger populace – than the US is expected to have a much lower death rate. The death rate found – not assumed, but found – by the researchers was in line with CIA estimates, the previous study, and other estimates for similar nations under similar situations.

You’d have discovered this if you’d read the study, rather than making stuff up to use to try to discredit it.

As a side note, I do have to admit I found your claim that I didn’t understand the world because I saw Iraq as no significant threat to be amusing, though.

Before the war, we had 5,000 people in Saudi Arabia to keep the threat contained. Did we have more people over there, on aircraft carriers, maybe? Let’s say it was 20,000 people, just to be safe.

Now, in order to keep us safe, we need 150,000. No, wait… we have 150,000, but it doesn’t seem like it’s enough to bring about stability.

And you’re saying that then, the threat is greater than it is now.

Ah, never mind, I’m sure you’ll brush this off as more liberal lies. I’m sure we had more people, and were spending more money, patrolling the no-fly zones before we invaded than we have occupying Iraq now.

National Center for Health Statistics US Death Rate for 2004

Indicates a death rate for the US of 816.7 per 100,000, or 8.16 per 1000. Are we to grant any credibility to a purported death rate for Iraq of 5.5 per 1000, that would put the US at a 48% higher death rate than that in Iraq under the loving mercies of Saddam? If it really is 13.3 per 1000 in Iraq, that’s 64% higher than in the US, which even if it is true doesn’t sound that high for a country with little to no medical infrastructure in the middle of a violent insurgency. In reality it’s probably less, and even if it isn’t it’s not that huge a difference in rates even without the armed insurrection going on, and one that would be easily explained by population demographics and medical/health care differences.

The people pushing this story are counting on no one taking the time to look at this carefully, which when you’re dealing with the MSM is probably a safe assumption, but c’mon, don’t piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining!

One of the money paragraphs:

—The Hopkins team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate in the year before the invasion at 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people, comparing it with their post-invasion average of 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people a year. The difference between these two rates is the rate of “excess deaths;” the deaths occurring from violence is how they get to the 600,000 number.

The entire “context” then, hinges on the validity of the pre-war mortality rate. If you accept this number, then I’m told you accept that pre-war Iraq had a better mortality rate than any other country in the Middle East, even Israel.

OK. ONe more money paragraph:

But back to that U.N. number, 100 deaths a day in August. The Hopkins study suggests that the number of deaths not just this August, but every month since March 2003, is five times larger. Given that the level of violence we are witnessing today is at or near its peak, and given that for periods of time between May 2003 and April 2004, the violence had not yet gotten out of control, in order to get to the Hopkins numbers, one would have to see even significantly higher numbers in recent months than 500 daily deaths to “average” out to 500 deaths overall.

Is it possible that the U.N. is not seeing four out of every five Iraqis who is dying, even today?

My last post of the day. Got stuff to do!!!

The leftists are a trip aren’t they Lorica? The same people who want to parse everything negative to them to the point of splitting hairs with a laser, as in “Abramoff didn’t give money to Democrats, he only told others to give money to Democrats,” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and “They only enriched uranium, we only told them not to enrich plutonium so they didn’t cheat!” are the ones who get all sloppy with their logic when it’s in their interest, “This isn’t about the war it’s about the deaths!”

Just more examples of the hypocrisy of the left, the people who believe in free speech for themselves but not for others. And these are the idiots who have the nerve to claim that the Republicans are bringing us closer to an Orwellian nightmare.

Here’s one more post on the topic. Iraq the Model has spoken on the subject. Good Stuff.

The average rightists dolt thinks mao killed 10 million…when it was really poverty and starvation due to his policies. But does it really matter? I think not.

Soooo Bush is reponsible for all the evil in the world due to his policies, but Mao isn’t. LOL And you think we are idiots???

Then there is this from your 2 separate posts:

Its 655,000 additional deaths. Determined by calculating the death rate before and after the invasion, in a study, not a survey.

Additional as in Not War Casualties?? Or Additional as in Extra War Casualties??? Hello?? Didn’t Longz just tell us that this was not about the war??? Sooo why do you individuals continue to say these causualties are due to the war, or is it additional casualties?? I agree with Sev, when you get to a point let us know.

And now this:

We all know Iraq is [edited. --ST] at this point…how [edited - ST] is besides the point, because the basic disagreement comes down to whether the war is un-[edited--ST]. If there’s nothing we can do to fix things (or if our presence makes it worse), it’s hard to argue that we should stay.

You lowlifes have been saying that Iraq is in a civil war for a year now. We are still waiting. Or is it you just hoping it turns into a civil war. Yet we are the blood thirsty ones. Clue if you need some money let me know, and I can help you buy one. But then again, according to the “study” this isn’t about war deaths, just deaths in general. So why pick Iraq??? Why not pick Mexico? This whole study is a political hack job in the hopes to influence the elections.

The logic used by the left grows so tiresome. It’s not about the war, it’s about the deaths the war has caused. Drum Roll Please!!!! And the difference is???? You all come in here with your confused logic and blast out some stupidity then go look at me, I am so much smarter than everyone else. It is going to be so amazing to see your reaction once the Reps cement their majority come November. – Lorica

No. That’s not what we were saying. Please apologize for misstating what we’ve said. We have said repeatedly that every death is a tragedy, unfortunate, and we wish they didn’t happen. Utopia would be great. But the mark of a successful war is winning. This is why we consider WW2, WW1 and the civil war successes even though the very tragic loss of millions of lives. It is because we won. Good triumphed over evil. It’d be quite a different America and world if we said at a certain number of lives we give up and surrender. Now you can stop lying about us and stop cussing and start gaining perspective I hope.

Limited Reading comprehension, vocabulary, perspective. It’s always the liberals on this site with those tendencies… and not just this site. Read Think backwards Pr*gress for a sampling of studity

You really should see a shrink about this amazing fetish you have for straw men.

Its 655,000 additional deaths. Determined by calculating the death rate before and after the invasion, in a study, not a survey.

The “confidence intervals you could drive a truck through” hold that the minimum # of deaths is ~400K, maximim ~800K. It would be disingenuous to quote a figure at the high or low end, so the quote the figure in the middle. Even if the numbers are at the low end, that’s still 400K. Nothing disingenuous here.

“The average leftist dolt on the street thinks now that we’ve killed or that we + insurgents have killed 655,000 Iraqi civilians. Why? Because leftism has a problem with reality. Clarity is the enemy of the left. So is perspective…..”

The average rightists dolt thinks mao killed 10 million…when it was really poverty and starvation due to his policies. But does it really matter? I think not.

“The descrepancy is that the Liberal lap dog press and SP’s like longz are lumping in the piles of mass graves uncovered since the days of Hussein. If you subtract those out, some graves with as many as 4000+ bodies, knowing how long it went on and on, the 400,000 figure doesn’t leave enough to count the few that we’ve been responsiple for in the war.”

This isn’t even close to reality. I suspect that this came directly out of the posters ass. I mean, you really have to be an idiot to just make something ilke that up and post it because you wish it were true.

READ THE STUDY, bother to understand it, and you’ll see they didn’t do what you describe but did do a very good job picking representative clusters and extrapolating with care.

If you wish to refute the numbers, produce your own peer-reviewed study with data freely available to the public, as these folks have, or provide a reasoned critique of, not the methods, but the collection of data. (the methods are solid…the only issue is whether the data used is statistically valid – and noone has shown any reason it isn’t)

Sister said:
“I don’t measure the success or failure of a war in terms of number of casualties.”

If your only remaining justification for war is to free the Iraqi people from the brutalities of their dictator, then I would expect that there are a certain number of casualties that would have made the war “not worth it” … at least in terms of trying to prevent suffering.

No one is saying that these numbers mean we should cut and run… they are just one more reason why our invasion has not been succuesful based on the stated goals of our invasion.

We all know Iraq is [edited - ST] at this point…how [edited - ST] is besides the point, because the basic disagreement comes down to whether the war is un-[edited - ST]. If there’s nothing we can do to fix things (or if our presence makes it worse), it’s hard to argue that we should stay.

So chill out righties, you’ve already admitted in this thread that it doesn’t matter to you that 655,000 are dead…why dispute the number then? Oh, because it shows what a mistake this was in the first place? you’re just going to have to deal with that reality becoming more and more apparent, with more and more revelations and studies…

I’ve seen reference to this study being conducted in mid 05, which would make it 2 years, which by my initial calculations would result in about 420,000 expected deaths using the US rate, and before anyone starts screaming that 650 is higher than 420 take a look at the confidence bounds, and the lower one is around 450K.

This whole thing, like most of the things the left screams about, is a tempest in a teapot even if the study is accurate. And remember, the study lumps in all deaths, a dubious decision at best, and grossly overstates the deaths according to what the Iraqi’s themselves are saying.

In a country that is has massive insurgency, ongoing military operations, food and water distribution problems, no infrastructure (it had little enough before the war), and sweltering temperatures that promote disease, this all isn’t that surprising. Most countries out there outside the industrial world have significantly higher death rates than the US does.

Gosh darn statistics… Too bad the media can’t do their darn jobs and do what you just did. They become more IRRELEVANT everyday!!!!

HOWEVER, Sev wrote, “Even if this study is accurate, that means the Iraqi’s have double the death rate that the US has,”

Maybe I didn’t read things right but I thought the study was for a 3 year period. Your numbers are for a 1 year period. That means the U.S has a 50% higher death rate. No?

Oh. I just saw your second comment. You figured it out. Darn liberals and their methods of madness and accusations and attacks…. Us laymen can shred their arguments and trained journalists are snookered…

Sev wrote, “and yet they want to be in charge of government during what is arguably the most dangerous time in any of our lives. ”

Please don’t let that happen people. Vote for conservatives…. Conservatives are centrists on the political scale and have quite a bit more perspective than liberals.