Remember The Lancet Report On Casualties In Iraq?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in | | | — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Sure you do. It told us that casualties were over 650,000 and conveniently served to increase the tone and tenor of the critiques and attacks leveled at the American reconstruction effort in Iraq. "The reality-based community" was especially taken with the Lancet survey.

And as with a great many things "the reality-based community" is taken with, the Lancet survey turned out to be disastrously wrong. Key passage:

Officials at Iraq Body Count strongly opposed the Iraq war yet issued a detailed critique of the Lancet II study. Researchers wading into a field that is this fraught with danger have a responsibility not to be reckless with statistics, the group said. The numbers claimed by the Lancet study would, under the normal ratios of warfare, result in more than a million Iraqis wounded seriously enough to require medical treatment, according to this critique. Yet official sources in Iraq have not reported any such phenomenon. An Iraq Body Count analysis showed that the Lancet II numbers would have meant that 1,000 Iraqis were dying every day during the first half of 2006, "with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms." The February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque is widely credited with plunging Iraq into civil war, yet the Lancet II report posits the equivalent of five to 10 bombings of this magnitude in Iraq every day for three years.

"In the light of such extreme and improbable implications," the Iraq Body Count report stated, "a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data."

Will we have any response to all of this from "the reality-based community"? Probably not. Once the propaganda point is made and it permeates the public consciousness, our friends on the other side of the ideological divide don't really like to revisit the subject matter of that propaganda. Why mess up a convenient meme, after all?

Remember The Lancet Report On Casualties In Iraq? 11 Comments (0 topical, 11 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Ok by stefan j becket

So how many Iraqi civilians have died?

Reply To This — User Info — #1
You tell me. by Jeff Emanuel

How do you want to tabulate? Since Saddam took power? Since the US invaded? Since al Qaeda and sectarian fighters began killing civilians in earnest to prove some nebulous point to the world?

And who are you trying to stick with the responsibility? You see, in the reality based world, details actually matter -- as do facts.

Reply To This — User Info — #2
Doesn't matter by don11one

I was stationed in Turkey in the 70s when we "weren't there" because we'd agreed to pull out as part of the Cuban Missile Agreement. Write your congressman about the conditions and you'd get a letter back telling you you were hallucinating and get a stern talking to by the commander. That of course changed during the Iran hostage situation.

Having heard the news reports from different agencies and seen what really happens on the ground I won't believe any news reports coming out of the area, positive or negative. The facts are always manipulated to fit the agenda of the day.

To me the news isn't what's happening, but who's reporting what and why are they reporting it. And knowing what the area has been like since the days of Isaac and Ishmael why are we still so dependent on them and how do we change that. I've heard we're actually more dependent now than 20 years ago. Why?

Reply To This — User Info — #3
I find that interesting, given that.... by Jeff Emanuel

I've been one of the people reporting on the ground there whom, I assume, you are accusing of "manipulat[ing]...the facts...to fit the agenda of the day."

Reply To This — User Info — #4
This is one of the by Pastor Dan

nicest ways I've ever heard someone call someone else a liar.

"a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data."

Jeremiah 17:9.

Reply To This — User Info — #5
The financial backing for Lancet II by pagar

as shown by a sentence in the linked article ". I never asked [Lafta] about his political views." Tirman commissioned the Lancet II survey with $46,000 from George Soros's Open Society Institute and additional support from other funders."

No need to ask which side that report was intended to help or whether it was accurately done by unbaised producers.

Reply To This — User Info — #6
You know that number was an by Bellie

You know that number was an "estimate" that had a 95% confidence interval, funny how no one talks about that or the standard error that was reported in that article.

Reply To This — User Info — #7
So Lancet was wrong because its rival Iraq Body Count says so? by mannygraziano

By that logic, then Iraq Body Count was wrong in 2006 when Lancet challenged IBC methodology and victim count.

Give me a break.

Reply To This — User Info — #8
Read the whole National Journal report . . . by Pejman Yousefzadeh

And not just an excerpt summarizing things at the end. You're doubtless "reality-based." It should be fun for you.

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." --Friedrich Nietzsche

Reply To This — User Info — #9
I think the Iraqi's might have noticed if one in 25 died by Joliphant

Our left might not have been able to notice. Its kind of hard to count or do statistics while you are busy having grand mal seizures of BDS.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Reply To This — User Info — #10
Not just Leftists who need to be called to taks, Liberts too by ericd

It's not only Leftists who have been calling this War a "disaster."

There's also the Anti-War wing of the Libertarian movement. There's the Lew Rockwells, Justin Raimondos, Tom Knapps, and certainly the Ron Paul supporters. Even the Reason.com folks. They all need to be called to task.

There's been complete silence on that front.

Those of us who stuck with Bush, and have supported the War all along, need to ask them, "wuzz-up?" You all Anti-War Libertarians 've got some splainin' to do??

If you've got a Ron Paul-bot buddy or two, call them on the carpet. Flash those success with the Surge figures in their faces. And tell them to fess up!

Eric Dondero
www.mainstreamlibertarian.com

Reply To This — User Info — #11


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