But… but… but… the surge is WORKING! (Part leventy-zillion)

Ever notice the complete refusal of wingnuts to discuss the # of Iraqi deaths? The only time they’ll address the issue is to dispute the counting methodology (that are generally accepted elsewhere, in other conflicts). Yet, wingnuts NEVER provide their own, more reliable estimate.

It’s just one more topic of discussion that they would rather cut-and-run from. I’m guessing they avoid it because they would then have to demonstrate why the situation is now better than when Saddam was filling his ‘mass graves’. The same mass graves that they breathlessly used to justify the invasion.

Sure,I’ll discuss it.

Here we go, let’s do the math. Forget the methodology, let’s just use the one million figure as the estimated number of dead.

We will use the laws of mathematics to illustrate why it is an absolute lie.

March 20 – 2003 to March 20 2008 = 5 years = 365 days in a year = 365×5
so we take 365×5 = 1825 days so we take 1 million dead and we divide by 1825 days so we have 1 000 000 divided by 1825 days = 547.94 dead per day without letup, and with no variation in the death toll.

Any variation in the death toll will mean that the end figure of one million is incorrect, since if, in one week, the number of deaths was not 547.94 per day, then it stands to logic that mathematically, the end total of one million is not supported by the data provided.

According to your own specifications, we will use this “one million”
as a specific figure.

Let’s look at February 2008… so we take the figure of 547.94 (based on the above calculations) and we multiply that figure by 29 days so we get 547.94×29 = 15,890 dead in February 2008

Do the math yourself if you don’t believe me.

So according to you , in the last month, nearly sixteen thousand people died, and no one has reported it, no one knows anything about it, no one has reported major combat operations in the last month that would account for this and no one has reported where, and when, this happened.

No one was wounded, no one has seen the bodies, no one has reported overflowing morgues or overflowing graveyards.

Satellite recon over Iraq has never reported any combat of this magnitude, and no one in the media seems to know anything about it. Which villages? Which province?

Where are the eyewitnesses to this carnage? Are you telling me that sixteen thousand people died in the last month in Iraq, and not one person has seen or heard a thing?

It sounds like the kind of thing a hack science fiction writer would come up with after he has spent one too many nights on the turpentine.

That’s because the Lancet’s study has been revealed as hard core leftist propaganda.

The Lancet death toll was inflated by a factor of more than 10. What do you expect, considering that the study was funded by George Soros’s Open Society Institute?

The authors of the study, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts, admitted that they opposed removing Saddam Hussein from the outset and sent their report to the Lancet on the condition that it be published before the election. Roberts even tried running for Congress as a Democrat.

The data was collected by Riyadh Lafta, who would not let other researchers see his data, and who had been an official in Saddam Hussein’s ministry of health.

As Van Helsing says—Thanks to the epidemic of moonbattery, this sort of jackass is in a position to replace scientific research with treasonous lies.

And dutiful jackboots like meatbrain and his science fiction loving friends who don’t live in the real world- love these lies and propaganda and help spread it…

It’s so interesting to watch !

Sonnabend… so, any idea how many have actually died? As I said in my oomment, wingnuts are happy to dispute the numbers but they never have any better numbers for the total body count. That’s the part the wingnuts never address.

And while I agree that 500+/day is a lot, I think the Lancet study was a study of not just victims of violence, but also babies who died in hospitals because the hospitals have no supplies, etc. In that case, given what we know about the current Iraqi medical system (and the fact that the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed), it does seem plausible that people are also dying from causes that wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t invaded their country and then followed up with a rudderless occupation.

don’t you think? Anyway, I look forward to your numbers. I just assume Cao will cut-and-run as usual.

Cao,

I should have expected as little from you. Your idea of backing up your assertions is to link to another right-wing blog that basically plagarized an EDITORIAL that purports to debunk the study. Plus the author adds a couple of colorful names for the subjects of the EDITORIAL, probably so as not to look like so much of a plagarist.

Surely there is a more authoritative debunking of the study than the one on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, isn’t there?

To Sonnabend’s credit, at least he tries to use logic, data and math to make his case.

Here’s hoping this link works.

Winter Soldier

You claim one million casualties. There is a specific timeframe in which those casualties had to have occurred.

As one plus one equals two, so must a specific total of one million be made up of a total number of casualties to reach that figure.

So either the figure of one million is correct, in which case you will have to prove to me just where and when these casualties occurred.I am not talking about a survey that asked two thousand households, you claim a figure of one million, yet cannot provide the proof in terms of morbidity and mortality, backed by morgue figures.

Sonnabend proves only its own innumeracy. The idea that a specific death toll requires that a certain number of deaths must occur per day with no daily variation is utter nonsense. Sonnabend simply does not comprehend the concept of the mathematical average.

Meathead does not understand the simplicity of mathematics.In order to reach one million you must first have 999,999 and before that 999,998 and so on.

Where are the bodies.

Either that or the figure of one million is a guesstimate only and not accurate.

Of course not. The graph of casualties by month and year makes it clear that there was wide variability in the number of deaths per month. The average is just that — an average, not the exact invariable number of deaths per month.

Now its an “average”? An average of what?

Show me in which province and which area were there casualties in the last month of 16 000 people.

If 16 000 did not die, then the figure of one million is wrong.

You SPECIFICALLY claim that ONE MILLION have died.

Where and when did they die, and I expect you to prove to me that your figure is correct and can be corroborated by actual morbidity and mortality data.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Says 89,000. That is more than likely accurate.

Sunday 16 March: 26 dead

Baghdad: car bomb kills 1, Mansour; 5 bodies.

Diyala
Hwedir: 5 policemen die in clashes.
Khanaqeen: roadside bomb kills Kurd.
Muqdadiya: 2 bodies.

Ninewa
Mosul: gunmen kill 2 policemen; roadside bomb kills 1; 3 bodies -one beloning to 11-year-old boy.

Basra
Basra: 4 bodies.

Wassit
Kut: 2 bodies.

See, meatbrain? These are what are known in the blogging world as facts.

Try it sometime.

Oh and I like Al Bester more.

This is, of course, the same tactic used by Holocaust deniers. How fascinating that Sonnabend has chosen this course.

T

Thank you for proving my opinion of you to be correct. You ask for answers then hurl abuse when the answers are not what you wanted them to be.

Is Sonnabend truly claiming that only 26 people died of violent causes in all of Iraq on Sunday 16 March?

Yes.

Now prove otherwise.

Then, meaty, kindly enlighten us as to how many you think have died, and the consensus or methodology that you can use to prove or verify this assessment.

I am yet to see you you utilise one fact or other reality to prove your piont, instead you throw around emotive epithets like “holocaust denier”.

All your blogs are about abusing other bloggers, kender, me, Cao, all of them. All we ever see are screeching abuse and insults and epithets.

Are you so unmotivated and so inable to be creative that this is all you can do?

Is this all you are?

IBC admits that not every violent death in Iraq is reported by the media.

Were there sixteen thousands deaths in one month, it would have been reported. Satellites would have seen it…we have satellites that can take a photo of a license plate from a hundred miles up, and yet no one knows anything about a conflict that takes sixteen thousand lives in one month?

Do people die in war? Yes.
Do I deny that? No.
Were a great deal of these casualties caused by terrorists? Yes.
How many do I think have died? My guess would be 90,000 approx since 2003.
Do I think that the “one million” figure is a massive exaggeration? Yes.
Can that “one million” figure be verified? NO.
Is the IBC data more reliable? To me, yes.

Billy Joe, you asked for answers: I have tried to provide them. By the way, compare my answers and my tone to meaty’s, and ask yourself just which one makes the more sense.

Sorry, but your comment has been flagged by the spam filter running on this blog: this might be an error, in which case all apologies. Your comment will be presented to the blog admin who will be able to restore it immediately.
You may want to contact the blog admin via e-mail to notify him.

COWARD.

I posted a reply which you refused to publish.

Whats the matter…cant handle it?

Funny, you link to a post you created about Gribbit. You just proved my point.

This blog is about abusing the Wide Awakes and little else. And as for the delay, explain to me why it took you TWELVE HOURS to de spam those comments when the ones before it did not wind up in the spam filter

Note the timestamps, folks.

Ooops… I came back late to the game.

Well, Sonnabend has me convinced. This war has been totally worth it. Only 100,000 people have died (God knows how many injured) and we’re on the hook for at least $1 Trillion. There are definitely not any extra, uncounted bodies at the bottom of the Tigris river, in the desert or anywhere else in Iraq because they haven’t been reported in the media and the media, of course, has complete, unfettered, bullet-and-bomb-proof access to any corner of Iraq. Iraq’s strong central government also surely would have known about any extra bodies lying around since they exercise such extensive control of the country. 4 million Iraqi refugees? Success and not destabilizing at all!

I wonder how much longer the war is going to take? I wonder how much more it’ll cost? Maybe Sonnabend can tell us where the trees are that have money growing on them so that we’ll be able to continue to pay for the various no-bid contracts.

I can’t wait until we catch bin Laden in Iraq! It’s going to be awesome. bush will be vindicated and the war will turn out to not have been a catastrophic & rudderless boondoggle at all.

bin Laden has walked right into the $1 Trillion trap that bush has set for him! Well, he hasn’t exactly walked into it because otherwise we would have caught him already, but now is not a time to split hairs. We’re winning.

What’s ‘Wide Awakes’? Some confederacy of pajama-clad, cheeto-munching, tinfoil hat wearing fat dudes who go on (and on) about Crescent-shaped memorials? They sound like dumbasses who deserve to be abused for their stupidity and bed wetting.