PJ Media

Mr. Oblivious, or should I say Mr. Oblivious?

You wrongly claim that they provided 500,000+ death certificates. Try reading again – they claim they verified 80% of those they sampled, and then extrapolated to the number for the entire country.

Since the raw data wasn’t included, and no one has questioned whether or not there was other data that was excluded or ignored, they could have major problems with their methodoligies.

For example, if I went into Los Angeles’ barrio, New York’s Harlem, Chicago’s “South Side”, Miami’s Liberty City, and Atlanta’s downtown area, I’m sure you would think crime in this country was out of control!

Taking samples without qualifying the samples invalidates the entire “survey”. The sheer volume of the estimate should cause everyone to question it. As to why they release these “studies” right before elections, the answer to that is obvious – it’s not to present it when people are interested, as PJM suggests, but to score partisan points for a political agenda. If it wasn’t partisan, why not release the results after a longer review period? Why not release them in 2007?

But even if you don’t want to attribute partisan motives to the authors, they still have many flaws with their data that people are ignoring. The number is inflated above that from normal/natural deaths in many ways. For one, one of the reason that the population of Iraq is that life expectency is shorter in Iraq. Before 2003, many older people were killed en masse by Saddam Hussein who would be alive today if not for the actions of a brave coalition.

Let’s look at some facts that the Lancet study ignored:

1) People would’ve died from other causes (not directly related to war) since 2003 – Saddam has left hundreds of thousands of bodies in mass graves over the years – you would have to subtract that from the total.

2) The 5.5/1000 mortality rate might agree with the CIA, or any other source, but is probably not correct. If the mortality rate in the U.S. is over 8, how can it be under 6 in a country with near-third-world conditions? The mortality rate assumption is a gaping flaw that would drastically alter the studies results.

3) The sample size is suspect – I’ve already covered that. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the areas surveyed were “cherry-picked” to provide data to support the premise.

4) The premise of the entire study was designed from the start with the goal of proving that many extra people died as the result of war – when you start off looking for deaths, you’re bound to tailor your data to support the conclusion you’re after – and I think they did a good job of that.

5) No one has looked at the political leanings of the people who worked on this – mentioning Harvard researchers doesn’t imply impartiality – 90% of professors are Liberal in views and in their politics.

If you want to believe this study, then go ahead – you were probably opposed to the war already, and have your Cindy Sheehan bumper sticker firmly pasted to your VW.

I, for one, and not fooled by this (or any other) bogus “study”.

It is suspect in its amount, in its timing, and its motivation, and its methodology.

The best part is that people will buy this crap as fact when there are thousands of reporters running around the country who aren’t seeing the 17,000+ EXTRA deaths every month.

The best thing that we could do is learn the lessons of Vietnam – we need to get behind our men and women of the Armed Forces and show the world a united people who are determined not to lose.

Imagine if the Republicans had released “studies” showing that there were no Nazi atrocities, and voted to defund the Americans. Imagine if Republicans had called for us to pull out our troops from Europe, since after all, the Nazis hadn’t attack us.

Do you speak German?

You’re welcome.