Lancet Statistics
Tech Central Station took a look at the breathtakingly biased, unscientific, and downright innumerate Lancet Article making BBC headlines. As our own BC pointed out to me, these same idiots were largely responsible for the “Lancet fiasco” that linked autism to vaccinations. First let’s take a look at the BBC spin.
A study published by the Lancet says the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the US-led invasion.
Now let’s see, if you go by the one-million people whose deaths are blamed on Saddam killed during his 25 years in power, you get an average of about 40,000 people killed a year. If you limit yourself to the approximately 750,000 he’s said to have executed you get an average of 30,000 a year, or if you ignore all those who had their bodies dumped on their family’s doorstep for a personal burial, focusing the discussion to the 400,000 in mass graves, you get 16,000 a year killed, all by our favorite mustachioed genocidal National Socialist. Unless Saddam had a way to “non-violently” kill all those people then a 58 fold jump would mean that either 3.5 million, 2.6 million, or 1.4 million Iraqis have died violently since we rolled in.
Yet all other current fatality estimates from the anti-war activists top out at 14,000 to 16,000 deaths, including those from every terrorist truck bombing. So are the anti-war activists over there missing at least 98% of violent deaths, even though they rush to each and every scene and jot down every wildly exaggerated claim, or is there another reason this research differs by two orders of magnitude (on violent deaths), and an order of magnitude overall, from every other estimate? (Two orders of magnitude is a hundredfold for those not mathematically inclined, like these researchers who somehow got published in “The Lancet”, possibly for no other reason than being pustulant partisan pea brains simultaneously staining the reputation of both science and medicine).
The Lancet admits the research is based on a small sample – under 1,000 homes – but says the findings are “convincing”.
“Convincing”? A poll of a thousand random people causes the researchers to conclude that somehow eighty-five thousand people died in a country full of cameras without anyone noticing; and the Lancet find the staggering discrepancy “convincing”?
The Iraq Body Count, a respected database run by a group of academics and peace activists, has put the number of reported civilian deaths at between 14,000-16,000.
Well screw all those peace activists out there taking down numbers, because a poll of 33 households and their neighbors (read the article) says the number is 100,000! Of those 33 chosen sites, 15 had suffered violence. Why not just poll 33 terrorist safe houses we targeted, from that sample extrapolate that every house in Iraq has been bombed, and make the number a cool million? Or just call people up and ask them how many family members were killed recently. If they say “83 infant daughters” write it down and go on. It’s all sooo easy when you can bury bias under heaps and bunches of more bias, layered over with invalid sampling (they only called people in the hot spots), and lightly frosted with a flawed methodology.
The use of self-reported pre-war fatality levels is fatally flawed, since Saddam, like Hitler, wiped out whole families and whole tribes. If you’d have conducted a phone poll of post-World War Two Europeans you’d have found that only a statistically insignificant number of Jews reported any deaths during the war. By the standards of this Lancet “research” that would prove the Holocaust was a big lie, while in reality it shows that dead families don’t answer their phones very often. That’s the grievous, staggering blunder in trying to use polling to calculate death rates of genocidal regimes, which is why no reputable scientist will try it.
Violent deaths were mainly attributed to coalition forces – and most individuals reportedly killed were women and children.
And that alone tells you the researchers were wildly biased, if not outright Ba’athist party members, or do all the AK-47 toting Iraqi males use magic spells to avoid getting shot? It’s always women and children, despite the fact that they aren’t the ones shooting back at us. This is an old communist ploy from the Vietnam War, perpetuated by John Kerry no less, which would have us believe that somehow our infantry feels it’s militarily important to take out the random toddler as opposed to the guy crouched behind the machine gun. Even regular (non-Ba’athist) Iraqis don’t buy this line, since they’ve seen our troops move the women and children out of the way during combat. Put another way, just about every child killed during the fighting gets their picture shown on all the big media outlets, like the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and CBS. You might remember the boy who lost his family and his arms during the heavy combat phase, or some of the kids killed in an attack on a wedding party. Do you remember the press photos of 181 other kids, not in total throughout the war, but killed every single day? That’s what this “research” is claiming, when you crunch the numbers.
Dr Les Roberts, who led the study, said: “Making conservative assumptions we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most of the violent deaths.”
Now isn’t that amazing, since we daily hear of dozens of Iraqis killed by suicide bombers. I guess the anti-American press must be missing the hundreds of women and children a day killed in US air strikes. A bit further on the article says
Lancet editor Richard Horton said: “With the admitted benefit of hindsight and from a purely public health perspective, it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error.”
This is the same editor who had to apologize in his earlier shameful sham retraction.
The Lancet medical journal published the sham science in 1998. Editor Dr Richard Horton now rushed out “regret” for the “fatally flawed” research he had endorsed. BBC Online News.
Well, he’s just done it again. The BBC does try to cover themselves by pointing out that all other estimates from the peace activists are staggeringly lower, without mentioning that their estimates are largely made up of victims of terrorist bombings on the one hand, and gun toting insurgent decapitation squads on the other. The Tech Central Station article sums up the politico-statistics quite nicely.
Have a look at those confidence levels. Yup, 95%. That is, a one in twenty chance that the effect simply does not exist. Look at the relative risk ratios (leave out Falluja; I don’t think anyone is really very surprised to see a higher mortality rate there): 1.1-2.3. It isn’t just that it is an absurdly wide one (note, a relative risk ratio of 1 would mean no effect whatsoever) it is that if this paper was written to generally accepted statistical standards it would never have been published. With a 95% confidence level a relative risk ratio of anything less than three is regarded as statistically insignificant. Just to clarify that, by “insignificant” no one is stating that it is not important to those people who undoubtedly have been killed during the War. What is being said is that we don’t have enough information to be able to say anything meaningful about it. “Statistically insignificant” means “we don’t know”.
In effect, what has been found in this paper is nothing. Nada. Zip.
Except of course that one of the two leading medical journals in the world has published a piece of shoddy research four days before the US elections with the obvious motive of influencing them. Sad, that, and my apologies as an Englishman that it should be one of my countrymen who did such a thing.
It’s more of the same bogus science and bogus statistics trotted out in unabashed support of a National Socialist dictator who used poison gas on kids. We’ve seen it during the 14 month “rush to war” (Roosevelt waited a whole day, wouldn’t ya know), during the war, and after the war.
Interestingly, a reporter walking into an Iraqi morgue can get hoodwinked with a thirty-fold exaggeration of casualties, since 450,000 Iraqis have likely died since we rolled into Baghdad just based on 18 months in a country of 25,374,691 people, a 68.2 year average life span, and a very rough look at their age distributions. Even the moonbats at Iraq Body Count have only come up with a maximum of 16,312 total deaths attributable to both sides in this war, and they count goats as civilians. The vast difference in these two numbers indicates that about 3.6% of Iraq deaths are attributable to the war, so for every person blown up by terrorists (which counts toward the IBC total) a morgue should contain 27 others who died of normal causes.
Perhaps instead of being shocked that a morgue is nearly full *gasp* the press should take a math class and realize that if a morgue isn’t pretty full then some idiot hospital planner built way too much morgue capacity for the given population. Note that during the last French heat wave, when an extra 13,000 or so people baked to death due to the wisdom of French socialist planning, the morgues overflowed and they stuffed croaked frogs in refrigerated food warehouses. Death rates in large populations are calculated just that closely, by either math or experience (we just filled up, so we need to build a few more spaces). But many in the press aren’t the brightest on the block, and you could certainly get them to cover some moonbat disaster story by merely pointing out that all the graves in your local cemetery are full.
The horror? The horror…
Or to more fully quote Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz.
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.
Categories: Idiotarians | 
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119 Comments »
First!
Sorry, It’s my first chance at getting one…..
Now for the meat…Being a lurker here for awhile now, I’m still amazed at how gullible the media can be.
I understand fully that the leftists in our country are more than willing to do or say anything to get the President out of office, and that they have kindred spirits in europe.
Hell, I work on a college campus and I am surrounded on a daily basis by these wingnuts. (Upcoming “Diversity Conference” on campus Nov 5-7).
But I have talked with a few of the more approachable ones here, and when they are not surrounded by thier friends and compatriots, they at least seem willing to concede that GWB has done some very good things.
I want to know from cB, et al… if they “truely” believe the crap they aspouse here, or is it just for effect?
Hard to wrap ones head around this…..for me anyways.
[Okay, first things first: You're off-topic.
Secondly, you're cutting & pasting. Bandwidth here costs $$$$, so that's severely frowned upon.
Third - and this is just a personal observation - you sound like an asshat.
A pretty inauspicious start, if you ask us.
Suggest you don't try that again, mmmmkay? -The Management]
How lovely, a spammer.
GAZE
I would rather follow the SS than the French method to Victory.
BTW Can I still call Godwyn’s law on this bozo?
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
you went and deleted the nice troll, and I was gonna feed him a load of nice green ecological conciousness in return!
Of course, Godwins Law dictated that he’d already lost the debate anyway.
from Juan Cole;
“Conclusion: The DiRita performance today was embarrassing to Bush. His Pentagon spokesman doesn’t know the difference between RDX and HMX and he hasn’t debriefed his chief witness, Maj. Pearson, so as to avoid being blindsided when the major says he never saw IAEA seals, that looters could have carted off tons of HMX quickly and easily, and that his unit was at al-Qaqaa before the date of the damning KSTP video!”
http://www.juancole.com/2004_10_01_juancole_archive.html#109906976577919924
what’s the warmongers take on this stuff, yo?
You can see how “ethical” and “scientifically sound” Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet, has been by going here, which is linked from here.
This guy would fit in perfectly at Berzerkeley or in (Ye gods forbid) the Qerry team.
Rule of Thumb, If the BBC prints or says something, believe the opposite. That way you have a 95% of being right.
Mr Minority
Who the fuck is Juan Cole, and why should we care?
Tiny, HMX is a byproduct of making RDX. We use it in solid rocket engines. Got vinegar, fertilizer, and nitric acid? Got milk?
If we could only get people out of the publishing business, it wouldn’t be so tendentious. I say we develop software news generators. Couldn’t be worse.
Explain how you think TONS of HMX was carted off? You think the whacky iraqi insurgents hauled it off in wheelbarrows or something? Remember a convoy of trucks would have gotten a few air strikes on it.
Well Deathknyte, HMX is slightly denser than RDX, so you could fit like, tons of it in a wheelbarrow. Surely you could. Maybe they had 15,000 people each walk out with a 50 pound bag. Maybe they snorted it because it’s a white powder.
Maybe Mikey the Hutt snorted it when he was in Iraq making his “film”. It would explain the total lack of intelligence from him.
How did you guys get so far off thread?
I thought we were talking about Iraqi deaths and a Lancet fabrication?
Ah, yes, back to the Lancet.
Reading anything the Lancet or JAMA or the New England Journal of Medicine on any subject in the realm of sociology is kind of like asking a homeless person for tips on personal finance.
We should come up with a list of article titles that will immediately tip of Anti-Idiotarians as to the uselessness of their content.
You know, titles like:
“Hair care tips from Rastafarians”
“The French woman’s guide for avoiding razor burn”
“Nobel Peace Prize Winners Since 1990″
“Gun Control Measures That John Kerry Thinks Are Too Excessive.”
“Tort Reform That John Edwards Would Sponsor”
“Jews That Hitler Actually Liked”
“Jessie Jackson’s Guide to Personal Responsibility”
“Dan Rather’s Tips For Identifying Fraudulent Source Material”
“Saddam Hussein’s Altruistic Nature”
“Documentary versus Propaganda; Michael Moore Explains.”
“Cosmetic Tips and Tricks” by Helen Thomas
“How to Find Weapons of Mass Destruction” by Hans Blix
“In Search of Humility” by John F. Kerry
And after 11/03:
“How to win a presidential Campaign” by John F’in Kerry
I got as far as BBC (Big Bunch o’Commies), I knew right there it would be a bunch of shite as they say in jolly old England.
Hi 88, out campaigning for al-Qerry again I see. Dickhead.
hi all,
i had a quick look at the lancet article (thank you for the link, sir george).
first, i think that the first point about the numbers killed by saddam, though true, is potentially misleading in comparison with the lancet discussion, as set out above. let me explain: taking averages and then comparing is not very helpful. i made this point elsewhere, but the gist of it is that sir george uses AVERAGES to make his case. what we should consider is saddam’s actions at the MARGINS. the shiite rebellion following the end of the 1991 gulf war had casualty estimates of 40,000-300,000 killed. other years, deaths were noticeably less. it doesn’t lessen saddam’s guilt, but it puts a different complexion on what sir george has said. so sir george’s claims are consistent with a scenario that has iraq having relative stability and low predation by the state in the years immediately prior to the 2003 invasion. and with very high CURRENT death rates. this would be consistent with some iraqi claims that “things were less bad under saddam.” it would a question of looking at what saddam had done more recently rather than looking at the average over his regime (and then comparing this to the current situation).
second, sir george argues that the lancet estimates are nonsense. perhaps they are. they are estimates, after all. but the figures for the number of deaths under saddam’s regime are also estimates. we don’t know for sure how many died. i do not hear anyone use caution in approaching those figures. what statistical level of significance can be attributed to those estimates that we take as being true?
on that last point. so, there is a 1 in 20 chance that there is NO statistical relationship at all. ok. but how do we get from that claim to the claim that the study is complete rubbish and that the piece should not have been published at all? that is an argument by assertion. plenty of studies are published at 95% confidence intervals that are taken seriously enough. many people would accept a bet that had a 95% chance of paying off (that is an A grade, after all!) would we like 99%? of course, but we don’t have it here. we should be cautious about accepting it as the truth, but it would be wrong to dismiss it out of hand as the tech station article did.
on this point, reading the lancet article makes very clear that the authors have thought about the criticisms they were likely to get ahead of time, and the last part of the article deals with them, and the precautions they used. yes, randomly, they used a section of falluja. they also randomly used a section of sadr city that turned out to have little reported violence, and thus downplayed estimates of casualties and deaths.
what about american culpability? sir george’s point about the action of bombers etc., on iraqi people is well taken. i will reread the article to see if they take that issue on. one thing they appear to do: they include not only direct casualties caused by american action, but also the impact of the american presence in iraq. for example, more iraqi women are having their children at home because of the violence and their fear of violence. this raises the infant mortality rate. is it fair to claim that this is due to american actions?
a major bug up people’s noses appears to be that the paper claims that america is responsible for the deaths of a lot of people. i think you are persuasive that americans are not directly responsible for the deaths of 95% of the iraqis that the paper talks about. but indirectly, these deaths are being caused by the fact that we are there dealing with an insurgency that was created as a consequence of our invasion. whether we should give that the weight that the lancet study assumes is open to debate.
“but indirectly, these deaths are being caused by the fact that we are there dealing with an insurgency that was created as a consequence of our invasion. whether we should give that the weight that the lancet study assumes is open to debate.”
If we could have taken care of business in February of 1991,
those casualties wouldn’t have occured. Things would be much different. Too bad people like you were standing in the way.
cas, Saddam was killing Iraqis right up until the end of his regime. On top of that UNICEF says 5,000 children a month were dying of malnutrition, starvation, and other abuses under the Oil-For-Palaces program. That’s 60,000 a year due to what, exactly? Is it “violence” to starve villages? The UN protests that what Saddam did with his food was an internal matter, and their only responsibility was to see that he got the food.
Oh, and that 60,000 a year is higher than Saddam’s average.
I see Bin Laden is campaigning for Bush again. If Shrub had done his job , Bin Laden wouldn’t be around making tapes. Some terrorist fighter. Fuckin waste of what little clean air is left
LOL!
OBL is the be all, end all of terrorism? Watch and learn, lil buckaroo!
I guess 380 tons of weapons will disappear when you don’t bother to secure them.Goddamn oil was more important I guess.Good thing there were no WMD’s or they would be gone now too.Wow!But then again , they already there were no WMD’s before they got there
Go home, kiddo. You’re at least a week behind for news.
Considering that the 380 tons quote was bogus (more like 3 tons) and the fact that the UN atomic commisions precious seals were no longer on the premisis when our troops got there, I would say the missing material is now gracing a Sirian warehouse.
man,
There sure are some stoopid asshats deep-thinking trolls here!
They’re so lucky you guys don’t IP ban them like the guys over at Moorewatch.com– they wouldn’t have anywhere to troll at all. Then all they’d have was DU(mbass).com
As for the Lancet, what do you expect from an institution that has been unable to persuade Brits to simply brush their godamned teeth?
TN
I think it means ‘more killed by Madass than anyone wants to admit’, not by coalition forces…they die every day trying not to put a ding in a mosque, and trying to kill those inside whom regard death above life…. Logic, followed by compassion, says Madass had to be removed….be it from killing his own, or waiting until the coast was clear and making those WMD. His minions are just following suit, and must be eliminated for a free Iraq to exist..
http://www.goyk.com/flash.asp?path=734
……and I put $100 on the guys with body armor, night vision goggles, lasers, radio, satellite, and super-duper secrect stuff we don’t know about…to end these ‘insurgents’ ( read:murders.)
Brian, if you’d listen to OBL he was saying “throw Bush out”.
Your goals mesh well with OBL.
It’s ( sickly) funny how ‘the other side’ has no plan, except to try and hate Bush out of existence..not much of a strategy, but when you’re desperate……
Did Bush get Osama?
He had 3 years and 3000 reasons
He failed us
the plan: stay focused on the real nemesis.
Don’t claim ‘not to be concerned about them’
Don’t start a war that has nothing to do with those who did 9/11.
Good idea Sam.
Focus-nemesis-them-double negatives…what the FU** are you talking about”?
Sam-
Well, with over 5 billion 500 million square feet, he might have slipped by……( size of Afghanistan…)
All my grandma’s sayings hold true…..’what goes around, comes around’ …and ‘all good things come to those who wait’
He’s toast….he just hasn’t popped up yet..
Patience is a virtue.
I nosed around a bit and Sam isn’t such a bad egg.
Mr. Miller, hang around awhile and see if you hear a little sense to the rants and diatribe here.
LC Mikenchi-
Surely you don’t think all the posts here are rants and diatribes?! I consider most posts intelligent debate, with some pissed off-ness thrown in when trolls just don’t get it..
(Just trying to get your take on all this..)
LC2112
‘Patience is a virtue.’
Pity you weren’t saying that when Bush was Rushing to War? you poofy wee prick
Zetetic’s special friend…
Yeah, that 12 years of UN do-nothingness while passing resolution after resolution against Madass Insane sure was a rush to war. Remember the UN res. 1441? The one that called for ‘serious action’ if he didn’t comply? What moron on the planet would surmise that that meant anything but military intervention?
He was jerking the world around by it’s collecive wiennie, until the US finally said they would enforce 1441, even if the UN wasn’t happy….at something they already agreed to. They didn’t have the $ or the cahones to follow through. We did. Outcome:one less dictator killing his people and his neighbors…
(Not saying we’re doing a perfect job, but I think it’s been a while since a mass grave was created there, and a while since the screams of people being put into plastic shredders has been heard) We can’t be doing too bad then, ya’ think?
The crazy part is that the Lancet (when sticking to actual MEDICINE) is actually a premier medical journal and a source of some groundbreaking research.
If they kept their noses out of what doesn’t concern them, then they’d have more credibility.
Pity you don’t have the balls to say that to his face. Or mine, for that matter.
Thanks for the backup, Spat, but I’z got me a dikshunary next to me for just these occasions.
But I think I can argue my way out of their paper bag arguments……
( Nice to see you’ve got my back, though !)
Clearly not Saddam, who was prepared to play out the long game that this war is set to become.
Didn”t Saddam used to be Donny Rumsfeld’s and Ronald (mommy) Reagan’s pal around the time when he was committing his worst excesses? What happened? Why did you guys forsake him?
Not much a friend Mr America.
I’d say Spatula has your back all right but from what I’ve heard behind you is where you don’t want him to be.
JBeez you bitch, quit hiding and get your fat pimpled ass back to the gloryhole. Hiding out on this blog and calling yourself “Zetetic’s Special Friend” won’t work, fat boy!
Now get back to work and start syphoning that “man chowder”!
Zetetic’s special butt buddy….
Yeah, Rummy and Reagan supported Madass Insane. But it was to keep the Soviets from taking over the middle east.( Remember Soviet Afghanistan? It would have been Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia next) We gave the guy weapons to fight them..the lesser of two evils kind of choice governments must make from time to time…He kept a bunch of them for future use, like against us. But we’re in there trying to correct the situation now. Unless you can say that YOU could have handled the last 25 years of middle eastern policy better than some of the most educated minds on the planet, STFU.
….and I’d still rather have Spat behind me than you. Here’s a dollar, buy a clue.
Damn boy!
I read some of that shit you posted and it shows that your syphilis is really kicking in.
It’s your own fault, moron. How many times have you been told to spit out all that “man starch” and not swallow it!
Face it morons when Saddam was gassing the Kurds America was his ally in the Axis of Wilful Ignorance? (motto We know the score but for appearance’s sake don’t ask don’t tell).
When you guys fell out of love with that guy with the big moustace (Uncle Sam loves the butch look) he didn’t seem to have the same desire or ability to kill as he did in the Reagan years.
The syphilis and “man starch” was directed at JBeez /Zetetic’s Special Bitch.
Damn!
Zetetic’s Special Bitch is being especially hilarious in his stupidity today.
It’s like watching someone crap there pants and not realize it.
I thought the “syphilis” crack was a joke but given this idiot’s thought processes, I’m not so sure.
I can’t wait to see what kind of laugher this moron posts next.
5330 Bent Tree Forest Dr,#712
Dallas, TX
Anytime, chickenshit. Let’s see whatcha got if you think you’re such a bad-ass, punk.
You want to have spat behind you. Well each to his own.
Anon, steady on you’re spraying your man starch all over the furum I hope you’re going to clean that up. Someone might slip and break their neck.
L$%^#^$&
So you can excuse your support for a murderous tyrant by saying it suited your interests at the time but simultaneously condemn his murderous actions. I bet you can smile and whistle at the same time too.
Now excuse me while I send this off to be processed by the Enigma machine. i don’t expect results back for some time.
Whoa, whoa, 2112, don’t go proliferating THAT moonbat meme. Saddam got about 1% of his materiel from the US. Russia was his major arms dealer,with France not far behind, if I remember right.
What you want me to call over and take your back? Dude you are a perverted sicko. If word gets out around Dallas you could be getting all kinds of trenchcoat wearing people turning up at your place. But that’s only if word gets around. And I’m not going to tell a soul. Promise.
Um, well France and the Soviets were supportin Saddam so I guess that makes it ok.
How charmingly pathetic.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Zetetic’s Special Bitch doesn’t disappoint!
His complete ignorance of history and global politics is astounding.
Lets see what the brain-damaged chimp posts next.
LC Ron-
No, I didn’t intend any moon battiness..I meant we supplied Iraq to fight Iran, which kept the whole mideast from becoming the southern wing of the CCCP….we allowed him to fight the Russians..I don’t think they were giving him squat, were they? (Maybe my 1st post wasn’t clear- I meant to say we didn’t want to arm him, but we had no choice. It was either give him arms, or let the ME become the southern wing of the CCCP..
hi sir george,
thanks for the reply. yes, i think we have to include the iraqis who died of malnutrition into the mix after 1991. that is a good point. i think we would also have to include the world’s culpability (and ours) in setting up and enforcing the sanctions as well. there is a very strong argument to be made for the necessity of the sanctions. whether or not you and i thought the sanctions were working or not, and given saddam’s response, one of the consequences of those actions was the death of those people.
What an entrance! Wow, what’s Elephant Man going to do next. I mean it doesn’t get much better than that.
Looks like I got the pompous little monkey upset.
Concerning the mess on the floor, When you were told to spit out the “penis butter” instead of swallowing it, it was supposed to be in the trash can, not the floor you filthy little prig.
Clean up your own mess, King of the Cockholsters!
What an asshat. Zetetic’s Special Bitch can’t even make an original retort.
Let’s see if he/it can do better next time.
C’mon, you can’t be that inept.
Anon you’re such an American.
I take it Elephant Man that you are claiming to be the originator of the term asshat. I suspect though that you were simply the first person to hear it.
LC2112 is beginning to sound like a prosecution lawyer at his own trial.
Zetetic- please explain further. I didn’t realize anything I’ve posted was so goofy as to warrant your last comment..thanks.
This just in!
A photograph was discovered showing President Franklin Roosevelt And Prime Minister Winston Churchill “hanging out” and “chillin’” with soviet dictator and mass murderer Josef Stalin!
Why did the U.S. and Britain get into a Cold War with the Soviet Union when this photograph clearly shows they were pals?
There’s an evil conspiracy in there somewhere and I bet Rumsfeld is involved!
*guffaw*
Looks like Zetetic’s Special Bitch is starting to babble.
He’s reached phase two of moonbat meltdown:
Make ridiculous and somewhat incoherent charges against your opponents.
Liberal Thoughts for the Day:
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Minds are like parachutes – they only function when open.
Zetetic’s Special Bitch, You’re such a psuedo-intellectual poser.
Somehow, I think that’s the last phase he’ll reach for a while.
At least for today, anyway. (snicker)
Actually, Marci, they’re more like garbage cans – open one and watch the stench spill out.
Especially when it comes to liberals.
Zetetic- you’ve had time, please answer my last question…thank you.
Here’s what a few of the Leftists in the US Congress had to say about Sodamned Insane. Let’s see the little Marxists here wiggle their way around these profound statements, shall we?
(Note to trolls: Yeah, it’s a “Cut ‘n’ Paste”, but that’s just to save you fuckwidgets time clicking the link. Besides, we’re The Management?, so we make [and selectively enforce] the rules.
)
B.C.- you’re making it look the the whole D party are flip-floppers like Kerry…..me likey..
(puts on tinfoil hat)
But…but…but…What about that picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam?!?!?!?!?!
Never mind the global political situation or the context in which that photograph is taken! Be obtuse and it will all make sense!
It clearly shows ….er, uh, er….something!!!!!
YEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH! (emits Howard Dean scream)
(removes tinfoil hat)
And Mark, here’s a quote for you:
“Shit only flows out of a sewer when the pipes are open.”
B.C.- I think it’s “Shit only flows as long as the troll has it’s mouth open”…or something like that..
LC#2112, you didn’t think I was being crass, did you?
Just pop open that dickshunairry youse got and lookit ‘diatribe’, son.
(damn, your dating me)
Two out of three aint to bad.
Posts are the diatribe, comments the debate.
Just sayin’ y’all.
*too bad
Yeah, I know PIMF.
LC Mikenchi- well I guess a missing “o” doesn’t qualify as a diatribe….we’ll let it slide !
I just wanted to clarify that we really didnt give him very much, 2112-from a materiel standpoint, it appears that we hardly "took a side" with the pittance we gave him.
mentioned …and diatribe in the comments is the spice.
At the bottom of the linked article, another article is mentioned
“A One Sided Lancet”, by Sydney Smith–
The hippies-gone-to-seed embedded in the medical community are causing quite a noticeable rift. Fortunately, the operative word here is noticeable.
This is off topic but I wanted to highlight this. Can anyone confirm?:
“We are trying to break this absolutely true story nationwide, i.e., Fox News, C-Span, and hopefully the major networks. We are positive that John Kerry was one of those dishonorably dismissed from the Navy for collaborating with the Viet Cong after he was released from active duty but still in the Navy and for a totally unauthorized trip to Hanoi. He later got an “honorable” separation in 1978, some 12 years after joining the Navy, under President Carter’s “Amnesty Program” for draft dodgers, deserters, and other malcontents who fled to Canada and Holland, among other places, to avoid military service to our country.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1262686/posts
- BC – …. and then a fish named Wandadean happened just before the 87 billion vote….
Do Gooder – The genesis of that may be an entry that appeared in a thread on the Swiftboat Veterans For Truth site, but was soon withdrawn. Powerline mentioned it yesterday.
- OT response to question…
- Do Gooder: One original reference to that appears here…
- I’m in touch with a high ranking retired Navy Dept. Admin Official who knows the truth and has a plan to smoke the weasel from his hole. Havn’t heard from him yet today so I don’t know where its going yet. Developing…..
Do Gooder–
That has been the surmise for some time, so it wouldn’t be a big surprise. Instead of a regular certificate, Kerry has a letter from a board of officers saying he was discharged. This letter he shows on his website is dated during the Carter administration, long after Kerry should have been separated from the military. Carter was such a tool of communists, he gave amnesty to a whole bunch of people who should have ended up behind bars. Instead, these losers are in office, running for office, in our schools, and running our colleges.
ON TOPIC–
I have been trying to find an article I read a few years ago without any luck, but didn’t the Lancet blame the US for leaving Saddam in power after the Kurds were gassed? As in, it wasn’t Saddam’s fault the Kurds were gassed, it was ours? Now they are saying we have increased the death rate in Iraq? (No, you dummies, you aren’t actually supposed to kill people in a war, just knock them around a little. /sarc off.)
cas, blaming the rules laid down in oil for food for the starvation of Iraqis is like blaming the toy list from the Red Cross for the lack of Toys for Tots on Christmas after a pack of robbers looted the warehouse.
Oil for Food was flawed because: 1) The French, Russians, and others were selling weapons to Saddam instead of food and medicine to Iraqi civilians; and 2) Because Saddam was siphoning off cash even before it went to the Russians and French for his Swis accounts.
How would lossening the rules make them STOP looting and embezzling?
Let us know when you get back to reality, cas.
I guess the editors of Punch had to go somewhere when Punch folded.
hi eric,
thanks for the reply. the issue, as i see it, isn’t whether i thought the sanctions program was working or not. my reply was made in answer to sir george’s claim that we should include the casualties from malnutrition due to saddam’s actions to siphon resources. i agree, we should. but if you do do so, than we must also realize that the sanctions themselves had a role to play in this action. no sanctions, than saddam could still have starved his population, but it is less likely to happen (since he is not forced to siphon funds in this way). yes, i agree that we couldn’t stand by and ignore the situation, but let us recognize that our actions have a role to play in the deaths of people in iraq.
the question is: is the costs we are imposing on iraq and the iraqi people offset by the benefits we perceive our actions to be causing? and what is relevant to that calculus is whether or not we could expect the carnage we have now to be matched by the present and future benefits of getting rid of saddam versus what we would have had, if saddam was still in power. in that decision, the only thing that matters if the present and the future. the past is “sunk costs”–irretrivable. they no longer enter the equation.
I guess the editors of Punch had to go somewhere when Punch folded.
ON TOPIC
100,000 dead civilians in the last 18 months in Iraq doesn’t quite sound like liberation.
Asshat, did you even read the post? Are you even capable of reading the post?
But, the lancet piece is based on the more accurate household survey!
Sure it wasn’t based on the one that stupidly claims you’re 10% of the population, latté boy?
I wonder how many of that “100,000″ were insurgents/baathists?
The left has a penchant for counting the insurgents/baathists in Iraq as “civilian freedom fighters” and I wouldn’t be surprised if they counted them in their civilian body count to pad the numbers for “shock value”.
actus… Try this with a group of kids and see if you get away with it:
You have a bag with 100 jelly beans. You give one kid 2, the second kid 4, and the third kid 94.
Now use the third kid as a sample. Ask him to count his jelly beans. If he hasn’t eaten any, he should have 94.
Now use that kid as a sample and claim that since that kid is “typical” of the group, you gave away a total of 282 jelly beans.
Then see how long it takes the other two kids to start screaming about it
.
This is exactly what the writers that Lancet published did.
Elephant Man-
The question is answered: The claims are totally inflated; Never before has a military done so much to limit civilian casualities- that’s a bonus of high technology. But the pricks hide within population centers. Compare this to say, WWII…how many civilians and soldiers died? Look at now….we are condemned because we accidently kill 2 honest, hard-working people. What they don’t mention is the 117 terrorist dickweeds that went down too. Good God, of course our hearts bleed for any innocent lives lost, but the enemy wants to play that way.
So be it…
We will try our damndest to kill only those resposible, but it’s WAR, sometimes innocent people suffer and die. We can’t be perfect, but we sure as hell do it better than any other country….so far we haven’t carpet bombed any cities, we haven’t use chem/bio remedies, and we haven’t used battle field nukes. We have this much power, and we don’t use it….don’t they get it?!
( I know the answer is ‘NO’; They kill because we are not the same as them, even our ability to ‘kill ‘em all’ is no deterent to someone who worships death.)
‘This is exactly what the writers that Lancet published did.
Posted by mamapajamas at October 30, 2004 04:43 PM’
Are you saying surveys are wrong?
Lord Spatula:
“Sure it wasn’t based on the one that stupidly claims you’re 10% of the population, latt‚ boy?”
Did no one get the joke? the household employment survey, that supposedly was a better measure because it captured people mowing lawns, etc, and then when it showed huge declines the right stopped talking about its ‘entreprenurial quality’?
and then along comes the Lancet’s survey of, well, households.
Ok it was a stretch.
Spat why do you tease me so? you know there aren’t many of us and you still won’t join me for a latte (i can’t even do the accent on the ‘e’ — that got my heart and my pants thumping).
Oh, we got what you were saying, all right. We just don’t think you’re very funny.
Folks, I swear I’m not editing his stuff. I’m not capable of making him sound this stupid…
‘I’m not capable of making him sound this stupid…’
I’m feeling i’m going to be denied again.
Actus, we love the household survey because it shows Bush as having added about 3.5 million or more jobs since he took office. Down 3 million at one point, then up by 3.5 million after a gain of 7.5, or something like that.
Keep checking the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the latest.
George Turner:
‘Actus, we love the household survey because it shows Bush as having added about 3.5 million or more jobs since he took office’
Thanks for letting us know how you pick your surveys. Too bad there isn’t one showing 10 million more jobs for you to get down on your knees and love real hard.
Since you often find yourself in denial after having your ass handed to you in here, I don’t see why you should feel surprised. (snicker)
Given that Clinton’s recession (you do remember your honey-boy Clinton, right?) plus 9/11 cost us those 3.5 million jobs, yeah – we’re fairly well pleased with 7.5 million since then.
Sticks in your craw, we know. That makes us happy, too. (snicker)
Hi there,
What these Lancet people conveniently ignore is that fact that insurgents/terrorists will frequently hide among women and children and inside mosques, rather than fighting like brave men. So I say, the death of women and children i their own fault.
‘Given that Clinton’s recession (you do remember your honey-boy Clinton, right?) plus 9/11 cost us those 3.5 million jobs, yeah – we’re fairly well pleased with 7.5 million since then.’
I absolutely remember him. I couldn’t believe he allowed the asset price inflation of the 90′s. Assface.
actus re: “Are you saying surveys are wrong?”
It doesn’t matter HOW the survey was taken. What matters is that Falluja was used as a “typical” city when it most certainly isn’t.
That figute of 100k is so off based that it is filed under ficton.
Go back to your Glory Hole Actus Shrubbed…
What a Maroon….
OK, nobody has mentioned it, but the subject is ‘Comment on Lancet Statistics’….
We all know that there are 3 types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics….
Statistics are almost real, but can prove any theory, given enough leeway. Usually statistics show themselves, but soon give way to underlying truths. No need to worry though, the Internet can dispell unsound theories quickly…and at the speed of keyboard, which is an iddy biddy portion of the speed of light…slow human digits and all……
The only political poll that really matters, statistically, is on Nov. 2
more from da forces, yo!
Captain Josh Rushing
He says that his personal values say that you should admit mistakes. He believes that there?s a culture now that says that you never admit a mistake. Says that culture goes all the way to the White House, citing the second debate when Bush couldn?t think of a single mistake. ?I find that kind of hubris disturbing, and I think the rest of the world finds it a little arrogant- even beyond arrogant, even delusional at some point.?
But Tiny,
You may find it disturbing, but I can’t quite think of any mistakes off the top of my head, either. Give me some time and maybe I’ll come up with one.
The little dictator doesn’t realize a couple of things.
Captain Rushing is entitled to his opinion, but it’s an opinion, not fact.
I’ll break out an old saw but it’s appropriate.
“Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.”
Also, we don’t give a rat’s ass whether France er, “the rest of the world” finds that hubris disturbing.
Go on back to your hole and come back with something substantial next time.
The ol cap’n doesnt know anything about the basic realities of public office,eh?
I was at a Halloween party last night and actually heard this “58 times more likely” number brought up – by one of my fellow grad students! We are physics Ph.D. students. WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS DUMB.
The really amazing thing was that these two Ph.D. students were discussing the evils of W, one of them commented that Iraqi civilians were 58 times more likely to die now than before the war, the other commented that 100,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war, the first one says, “oh, isn’t that awful,” and the conversation continues on its merry way. THEY NEVER EVEN STOP TO THINK THAT THEIR NUMBERS CONFLICT WITH EACH OTHER. (never mind that 100,000 dead Iraqis is way off as well) Unbelievable.
Lies dam lies and statistics…
Sounds like crap to me.
Cut it up with occams razor
LC NeilV-
I didn’t get if you were agreeing with me, or insulting me… I meant that statistics, depending on how they are calculated, can prove any side right.( I took ‘probability and statistics’ class many moons ago and understand how deceptive statistics can be, depending on which calculation method is used..) That’s why they can be considered the most dangerous of all lies…
Do I make anymore sense now? ( If not, please explain..)
Peace. Out.
I don’t think that was the real “Zetetic”. BC or Spats would know for sure.
/trying to forestall any potential “friendly fire” when we’re all on tenterhooks as it is!
Is it November 3 yet??? I dunno if I can take much more of this… Mark Steyn said on the radio the other day that he’s going to need an IV drip of Glenlivet to get through Election Day!!!
/head back under pillow
LC#2112, you’re right: Statistics can be tweaked to “prove” anything at first glance. The trick is to look at the source of the statistics and determine what they actually mean in their proper context.