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Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

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Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#81

Post by einhverfr »

berntb wrote: post #77
einhverfr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?"

>> How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?" If you make a bad argument, admit it. Don't equate declaring a defence alliance with making threats of war, that is just stupid. (To the downvoting idiot: There is another comment in my history you can find and downvote.)

But Germany essentially went to war in WWI to defend their allies, who had suffered what was quite arguably an act of war, namely a terrorist attack on their dignitaries on foreign soil, and which the nationalities involved were, according to them, not very cooperative. Now if you argue that is not the same, then the US invasion of Afghanistan is also a US war of aggression.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#82

Post by andybak »

aric wrote: post #64
briandear wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you leave Pol Pot, Rwanda, the Soviet Union out of your statement. The US doesn't have a monopoly on killing people or supporting bad actors. I also see no criticism of the EU that has supported their share of dictators. The anti-American tripe that constantly gets brought up by people that have actually never lived under true oppression is just silly without applying context. You mention Hiroshima --…

I'm curious why you think acknowledging the US's ills is equivalent to overlooking the countless ills of many other extremely violent nations and despots. The difference between us, perhaps, is that I care about and acknowledge all aspects of global atrocities.

These debates always seem to descend into a pointless argument about moral equivalence that has both sides talking past each other.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#83

Post by eliasmacpherson »

sigzero wrote: post #80
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every major intelligence agency believed that Hussein had WMDs." Just because you write that sentence - does not make it so. [1] [1] http://www.salon.com/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

Salon...pfft. Salon makes it true? I don't think so.

same article in the guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/sep/07/turning...

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#84

Post by berntb »

einhverfr wrote: post #81
berntb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?" If you make a bad argument, admit it. Don't equate declaring a defence alliance with making threats of war, that is just stupid. (To the downvoting idiot: There is another comment in my history you can find and downvote.)

But Germany essentially went to war in WWI to defend their allies, who had suffered what was quite arguably an act of war, namely a terrorist attack on their dignitaries on foreign soil, and which the nationalities involved were, according to them, not very cooperative. Now if you argue that is not the same, then the US invasion of Afghanistan is also a US war of aggression.

I don't see any relevance. I showed your Poland argument wrong, re WWII.

Since you lack better arguments, you're going to make me drag up definitions for casus belli and discuss this a long time, I take it?

But I don't need to do discuss Afghanistan since I only showed there were logical inconsistencies in an argument.

Edit: Removed the rest, not relevant or interesting enough.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#86

Post by berntb »

berntb wrote: post #25
arcadeparade wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5. It was called genocide by both men who were in charge of it, both of whom resigned in protest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimate... I also find it interesting that many people who deny that this many people were killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion will have no problem believi…

>>Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5 Saddam wanted to get rid of the sanctions, it was in his direct interest to inflate the statistics. (There were reports of e.g. multiple funerals for a given dead child, too.) His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot.…

It is funny when you present an argument, like I did a few times here, to a bunch of True Believers which can't disprove it -- and they instead down vote you. :-)

You're funny enough to be worth the Karma, idealists. You do make me a bit sad.

Let me tell you how serious people, with at least a smattering of science education, think:

We know most of our opinions are wrong and that these positions will be updated repeatedly during life, so they are less and less wrong. The trick is to identify with the process of learning, not to identify with a certain position.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#87

Post by berntb »

gruseom wrote: post #75
berntb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5 Saddam wanted to get rid of the sanctions, it was in his direct interest to inflate the statistics. (There were reports of e.g. multiple funerals for a given dead child, too.) His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot.…

You can justify anything that way; just find somebody bad who's against it. The reason not to do something bad is that it's wrong. How a dictator feels about it is beside the point.

You misunderstand what I wrote, it seems? I argue trivial game theory.

If brutal dictators can get their way by hurting their own civilians, it will be very bad for a lot of civilians.

For a parallel, there would be very few kidnappings if no ransom was paid.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#88

Post by berntb »

gruseom wrote: post #65
berntb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, I can't see how that is relevant to the specific points I raised. (It isn't relevant to talk about someone else using the IBC data in a way IBC don't recommend. And there were lots of criticism before, see the first Lancet report. It is not good with a political motive either -- timing reports to influence an election.) 1. So you have no answer to the Iraq Body Count reality check and just ignore it? (E.g. where…

I'm not having the kind of argument with you that you seem to think I am. I looked at the articles you mentioned. Certainly their criticisms are devastating if, and only if, they are true and fair. Are they? I can't say. I don't have time to read the studies. If you have, and you've arrived at your beliefs based on factual analysis rather than ideology, that's good. My point about IBC was not intended to dispute what…

I might add that Iraq Body Count has a bit funny history.

First, they were criticized by the Bush administration for overcounting. Then by the extreme left for undercounting!

Now the Wikileaks report, which I linked, discuss this -- so the internal US data is out! They are a bit higher than the low counts, still far from the Lancet report.

No signs of the conspiracies needed to hide the missing effects discussed by the IBC reality check (link above).

This change the subject of the discussion.

The question now is: Did the Lancet report authors cheat? Or just the local interviewers? Their data was totally wrong and the authors defended it like a bear mother defends her cub.

If they are honest, you'd expect a mea culpa and discussion about why their data is wrong.

But we won't get any public discussion of the Wikileaks from them -- any more than they discussed the IBC reality check (see discussion above).

As I wrote above -- idealists lie. This is typical when dishonest people finally are disproved, they just stop discussing the subject.

(The Wikileaks show other embarrassing facts which should be a media scandal getting people sacked, it is hardly a planned leak.)

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#89

Post by macspoofing »

macspoofing wrote: post #47
beloch wrote: post #20

I still remember the chill that ran through relations between Canada and the U.S. after Paul Martin refused to join the war in Iraq (despite still be embroiled in the war in Afghanistan). U.S. pop culture mostly ignored Canada, as per usual, but what few mentions there were soon lumped Canada into the same boat as "French surrender-monkeys", again in spite of the fact that Canadian troops were fighting and dying in A…

It was actually Jean Christian who refused to go to Iraq

*Jean Chretien

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#90

Post by berntb »

gruseom wrote: post #65
berntb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, I can't see how that is relevant to the specific points I raised. (It isn't relevant to talk about someone else using the IBC data in a way IBC don't recommend. And there were lots of criticism before, see the first Lancet report. It is not good with a political motive either -- timing reports to influence an election.) 1. So you have no answer to the Iraq Body Count reality check and just ignore it? (E.g. where…

I'm not having the kind of argument with you that you seem to think I am. I looked at the articles you mentioned. Certainly their criticisms are devastating if, and only if, they are true and fair. Are they? I can't say. I don't have time to read the studies. If you have, and you've arrived at your beliefs based on factual analysis rather than ideology, that's good. My point about IBC was not intended to dispute what…

As a last note (and as a last chance for the pathetic down voters that lack better ways of arguing :-) ):

I Googled. There really is some guy that wrote a book and claims that the embarrassing Wikileaked internal US data is a conspiracy! :-)

He had an article up at one of the usual left extremist sites (alternet? zmag?). Sorry, should have written this when I read it.

He also ignored the obvious reality check from IBC and why the needed conspiracies to hide them isn't visible in the Wikileaks documents.

(E.g. where the Hell are all the dead buried?! How could they get most every doctor to keep quiet -- if the Lancet report is correct, any larger hospital morgue in Bagdad should see almost as many dead as the whole country's official statistics!? Why weren't death certificates given out (important in Iraq)? Where are the hundreds of thousands maimed -- and who made their prostheses?! Etc)

Also, I doubt there is discussion of why the Wikileaks lacked information of the conspiracies to influence the other measurements with larger data sets than Lancet. And the conspiracies needed to keep hiding e.g. data about all the maimed, predicted by the Lancet report, after US left. And so on, ad nauseam.

I doubt he covers the serious academic criticism.

And probably no discussion of the simple solution -- idealists lie... Hell, lots of researchers fake results just to get published.

I still predict you will like the book... :-)

What I learned from this discussion: The US extreme left/right are equally crazy.

I still chuckle when I think about your claim that all are in denial, except left extremists... Thanks for that.

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