Lancet: 600,000 killed by violence in Iraq since U.S. invaded; Update: Iraqis claim report is exaggerated
posted at 11:00 am on October 11, 2006 by Allahpundit
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Calling this study inaccurate is like accusing the left of playing dirty tricks with Foley: you’re probably right, but it’s largely besides the point. Granted, Lancet is known for scaremongering; granted, their previous body count was also released shortly before an election; granted, the actual number is an extreme outlier among other counts; granted, it appears the study doesn’t account for the number killed during the entirety of Saddam’s reign; granted, it fails to distinguish between Iraqi civilians, terrorists, army, and police; granted, it has a margin of error of about 180,000 people.
Whatever the actual number is (and it’s probably closer to Iraq Body Count’s figure than to Lancet’s), it’s much more than most of us expected and, at the moment, without a lot to show for it. The Commissar’s been working his way towards Sullivanland in his war/torture posts of late, but it’s hard to argue with the implications of this photo. A thousand words indeed.
Anyway. Moran does his best to debunk, although it worth’s noting that the two key criticisms of the previous study — that the sample was too limited and the margin of error too wide — are limited in this case. According to the Times, the sample wasn’t taken in areas where violence was “clustered,” it was taken in 47 different neighborhoods across the country. And whereas the low-end figure for the margin of error in the previous study was 8,000 (and the high end 194,000), in this case the low end is … 426,000 and change. That’s about the same number of Americans killed in World War II.
One question for Lancet, though. If 600,000 people have been killed, where are all the bodies?
By the way: the ammo dump fire yesterday in Baghdad was caused by a jihadi attack.
Update: According to the CIA Factbook by way of the Mudville Gazette, the average world death rate per 1,000 people is 8.67. The pre-invasion figure for Iraq used by Lancet was 5.5. Is that plausible? Does it count officially reported deaths or do Saddam-era “disappearances” count too? There are countries with lower death rates than 5.5 so it’s not absurd on its face.
Update: Jihadists are warning Iraqis to prepare for “the big battle of Baghdad.”
Update: This should be enough to finish off Republicans’ midterm election hopes, once and for all.
Update: Bush says the Lancet study’s methodology has been discredited. I don’t think that’s true.
Update: No way is it true says an Iraqi government spokesman.
Update: I said earlier I’d be interested to know where the 600,000 bodies are. Bob Owens isn’t as curious: he’ll settle for evidence of 600,000 death certificates being issued.
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What you don’t hear anyone, but Glenn Beck, mentioning this morning is that 70% of those deaths were caused by jihadis.
BirdEye on October 11, 2006 at 11:13 AM
If true then CAIR needs to update their website which lists the Muslim population as 1.5 billion. The counter should be going backwards considering all of the places that Muslims are killing Muslims.
LakeRuins on October 11, 2006 at 11:16 AM
How did he find that out?
Esthier on October 11, 2006 at 11:17 AM
Recall Congressman Peter King back in May;
So now the Leftists are going to parade around a big number that includes ALL deaths (from strokes, heart disease, cancer, etc., ad nauseum) and blame them all on George Bush? Sheesh.
Terp Mole on October 11, 2006 at 11:19 AM
Lake Ruins:
I like the idea of a counter. But to be fair, it should read, “Jihadis Left” above a descending numerical counter.
Esthier:
I believe Glenn got that figure by taking into account the numbers of militants/civilian deaths the coalition forces have reported at their hands. I was listening to that story as I was wondering why my check engine light came on on the drive into work, honestly, so I was slightly distrsacted.
BirdEye on October 11, 2006 at 11:36 AM
Allah, what’s sad is that NY Times article makes the AP look fair. Why no mention of this from the Times:
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 11:41 AM
Er, because I actually linked to the USA Today article in which Roberts admitted that the timing was deliberate instead?
Allahpundit on October 11, 2006 at 11:45 AM
Over a 4 year period, the death rate is probably lower than when the liberals favorite dictator was in power. Is this article written as good news?
roninacreage on October 11, 2006 at 11:50 AM
Oh, no prob. Just noticed you linked to the Times (busy posting myself), and thought that was a very important point for folks to understand about this group.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 11:50 AM
The numbers don’t surprise me after this past weekend. A reservist friend who has spent 2 tours in Iraq questimated the U.S. to Iraqi kill ratio at 1:100. That number quickly got my attention. My follow up question was, “What do you do with all the bodies?” His reply was simle. Nothing. The dead stay as they lay. The wounded are medically treated (both insurgent and civilian).
Slightly off topic, but he also guestimated the number of foriegn fighters killed at 20%. He had specific stories of seeing two African men milling around their provence. A number of IEDs were detonated in the following days. A few weeks later, the two men were killed during operations.
I would question the validity of these statements from any other low level gung-ho reservist type. I’ve known this guy for 20 years (Eagle Scout, top of his class, etc.). He’s also an ER doc.
natesnake on October 11, 2006 at 11:56 AM
Half a million dead. Surely a small price to pay for “freedom”.
GregH on October 11, 2006 at 12:08 PM
I don’t question your reservist friend’s opinion natesnake, but why haven’t we heard that before? And in a country swarming with reporters, why aren’t they just stepping over these bodies that “stay as they lay”? By the way, the contention of people putting together these inflated counts base it on early burials not counted by Health Ministry/morgues. That is how they justify their insanely higher figures, but that contradicts the “stay as they lay” claim.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 12:10 PM
Half a million dead. Surely a small price to pay for “freedom”.
Psst. Whatever.
Everyone knows freedom is a buck oh five.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 12:12 PM
Here is a nice death rate chart, thanks to the CIA:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html
Have to wonder how accurate those lower death rate numbers are though. If based on “official statistics” from the government’s in question, then who the hell knows.
Wineaholic on October 11, 2006 at 12:18 PM
I don’t think the methodology has been discredited, but having read the Lancet study, it doesn’t seem they got a truly random sample, given the limitations they were operating under.
The human cost of the war in Iraq, and whether it’s worth it, is worth a debate. But it should be an honest debate, with good data. This Lancet study is not an example of such data.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 12:28 PM
That a tough question to brush off, isn’t it? If it was 100K two years ago and it’s 600K now, that’s approximately 700 deaths per day.
The report says that 31% of the deaths are attributable to Coalition forces. That means jihadis must be killing almost 500 people a day.
Doesn’t sound right, does it? Meanwhile, don’t nobody tell GregH that WWII killed 62 million people, or he’ll make us dig Hitler up and give him back his job.
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 12:30 PM
Glenn Beck was talking about this earlier this morning. He said that the key point NOT mentioned anywhere is that 70% of the deaths were caused by the terrorists. Assuming for a second that’s a reasonably accurate number (I’ve done no digging on it) it’s not surprising that the MSM wouldn’t share that data. It’s certainly relevant.
MT on October 11, 2006 at 12:31 PM
I need to read comment threads more carefully before chiming in… sorry for the retread!
MT on October 11, 2006 at 12:32 PM
Beck will be on this topic tonight on CNN…
MT on October 11, 2006 at 12:34 PM
It isn’t even data. It’s an opinion poll. Has this methodology ever been used to tally a casualty count before? I can just imagine what kind of numbers they’d get if they used that methodology for the Palis’ intifada. I’m guessing that we’d find Israel has killed at least 50 million of them.
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 12:34 PM
Oh, and I might be retarded (or just doing things on the too quick and dirty), but my rough calcuation for the “world” estimate (taking each CIA country category as an individual case and getting the average) is about 9.25. Maybe they controled for outliers/did a exponential distribution/suck at math. Or maybe I suck. Either way, just an interesting little fact I figured.
Wineaholic on October 11, 2006 at 12:35 PM
And 98% of those were innocent women and children, naturally…
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 12:35 PM
Oh, AllahPundit, I just realized either you misread or I wasn’t clear in my intial comment. I said “why no mention of this from the times:
I didn’t mean to imply that the excerpt was from the Times and I was questioning why YOU didn’t mention it. The excerpt is from the AP (which was what I linked to, saying that the NYT made them look fair), and my question was why the Times didn’t mention it, not why you didn’t. Just reread my original comment and your response and realized there was obviously some confusion there.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 12:37 PM
That’s still only half of what the Lancet is reporting.
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 12:38 PM
Pablo:
That’s one big point I think a lot of people are overlooking too Pablo.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 12:39 PM
Not to defend the Lancet piece, but the purpose of the survey was to gather information on deaths, not opinions. The survey found information on a few hundred deaths, and extrapolated that to the 600,000 figure they are claiming using a variety of statistical
tricksmethods.Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 12:45 PM
Their data was a product of interviews.
From the report (PDF File):
It sounds a lot like the methodology used in Jenin. But the numbers don’t come close to the official numbers which means that half a million families didn’t bother officialy reporting the deaths, which makes no sense.
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 12:53 PM
It’s pretty standard methodology for that type of report, but I’ve never been a fan of data extrapolation. Or statistics, for that matter.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 12:57 PM
I’ve gotta go with Pablo on this one Slublog… other counts rely on morgue data and Health Ministry data, not interviews which amount to nothing more than opinion polling.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 1:02 PM
One thing I have noticed is that for some reason, the report does not contain the questions asked or the survey used.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 1:05 PM
Interviews do not necessarily equal opinions.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 1:06 PM
Casualness is never appropriate when dealing with the dead.
Respectful of the subject, we’re still reminded that there “are lies, damned lies and statistics”, which are what anyone wants to make them, for whatever purpose. Aside from methodology and data, so much more needs to be considered, least of all the source and desired outcome.
Also, libs never give a rat’s a-s about the millions who died, and continue to, from the hands of communist and other dictators - I’d ask GregH why but his mom must have caught him again. He surfaces, throws a little ‘bomb’ and then vanishes to watch (like in “Being There”) - his m.o.
Entelechy on October 11, 2006 at 1:27 PM
RightWinged,
I can’t defend those numbers. I was not there. His guestimate was relative to the times he was there, places he stayed, and unscientific observation. And as Pablo pointed out, if my friend’s guestimate is accurate, that’s still half of the Lancet report.
natesnake on October 11, 2006 at 1:28 PM
RightWinged,
The “stay as they lay” phrase was entirely his. It made sense to me that little effort was given by U.S. forces to gather bodies after a fight. He was specific that the wounded were treated (he treated some in the field).
natesnake on October 11, 2006 at 1:32 PM
Nor do they produce data, necessarily or otherwise.
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 1:35 PM
Geez AP you are a regular defeatist now. Thank God the only man who matters at this point, Bush, is not one.
We have known for some time that this war would be a “long, hard slog” and we have known for even longer that the US is undefeatable on the battefield, only defeatable in the media and public opinion polls. You are now one of the people contributing to this self-fulfilling prophecy of defeatism.
kaltes on October 11, 2006 at 1:36 PM
“Whatever the actual number is (and it’s probably closer to Iraq Body Count’s figure than to Lancet’s), it’s much more than most of us expected”
You’re kidding Allah, right? 50,000 killed in this war is unbelievably low. I remember most estimates were for 100,000 or more killed during the intial invasion. To think less than 50,000 would be killed during war is an embarrassment. Are you really saying you thought that less than that would have been killed during this war? If so, what in the world did you think the number would be?
Capitalist Infidel on October 11, 2006 at 1:43 PM
Natesnake, again I’m not second guessing what your friend said or believes. Obviously everyone experiences something different as each area is different. My point was just that if we have well over half a million staying as they lay in a country swarming with media, I believe we’d hear about it. Could be wrong, but that’s just my take. I suppose it’s possible that your friend has been in some of the higher violence neighborhoods where battles are ongoing and that would account for this apparent discrepancy. I’m just going simply on the fact that other actual estimates based on morgue and Health Ministry data show around 50k, obviously a huge difference. And of course as has been mentioned, this group produced a study on the eve of the 04 election and admitted it was politically timed.
I just think there is nothing here but a political move, plain and simple. Why is it no other count has come even close to this? The Political Pitbull notes the campaign donations, etc. etc. This is just crap and I think actually a waste of everyone’s time… Give it a day or two and the media and Dems will have released something else. Can you guys imagine what we’re in for in the next few weeks from the desparate party of no ideas who realizes that if they lose this election they are essentially finished.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 1:48 PM
“You’re kidding AP”? I hope you’re kidding Cap Inf… Cite these “most estimates” of 100k? I’m pretty sure the only group with that estimate was the group responsible for today’s bogus “study”, but I could be wrong.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 1:53 PM
Iraqi Health Ministry says 2,660 civilians killed in Sept. This is about 1/10 of what this other bogus “study” would have us believe. Even of those civilians killed, I’d question the numbers because a while back the UN filed a report on those statistics, but they actually included ALL civilian deaths, not just violent ones. But either way, it’s interesting that this comes out the same day. Guess which one will get more media play?
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 2:01 PM
Kaltes is right, AP … you’re letting a lot of this stuff get to you. To quote the character Charles De Mar from that epic 80’s film, “buck up, little camper”.
thirteen28 on October 11, 2006 at 2:05 PM
RightWinged,
I completely agree with you on all points. The Lancet number is definately cooked.
Me personally, it is not beyond the realm of reason that many poor people collect their dead and bury them without notice to the morgue or Health Ministry.
I think the actual number is higher than 50k but definately not 600k.
natesnake on October 11, 2006 at 2:12 PM
Nor do they produce data, necessarily or otherwise.
Sure they do. Qualitative data is gathered through interviews, focus groups and other methods. It can actually be some of the most useful data gathered during a research project.
Again, I’m not trying to defend the Lancet study, which I think is flawed, but simply pointing out that it is possible to gather the data they published using interviews. All they had to do was go into the house and ask the people whether they have had any relatives die, and how those relatives died. Such data would not be an opinion.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 2:18 PM
I know your debate is with someone else Slublog, but I had to comment on that… That last statement is our issue I believe. While it may not be “opinion” by definition, it’s much closer to opinion than data. What if the family, like most Iraqis, is angry with how things are going and blames us. They may choose to say that they had 10 family members die even if only 1 or none did. Get it? This isn’t data, this is for all intents and purposes “opinion”, just not by the standard definition. Data can be collected based on survey questions when it’s acceptable to do so, but not when we’re talking about a death count. What if they went just to very anti-American neighborhoods? I wonder if they went to Kurdistan? Get what I’m saying?
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 2:22 PM
I do see what you’re saying, but your argument rests on the assumption that enough Iraqis are liars to sway the final result. I don’t think that assumption is fair or warranted.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 2:24 PM
Rightwinged, I’m sure you watched a little tv before the war right? I remember general McCaffrey on msnbc saying that at least 3,000 soldiers would be killed and at least 100,000 civilians in the initial invasion itself. Granted, most of the “estimates” were from liberals. Geeze, I remember, I think it was Garafalo, who said at least 1,000,000 civilians would die in the initial invasion. To have 50,000 casualities after 3.5 years is astonishingly low. I sure would like to read Allah’s prediction in February or March of 2003. I guess some thought we could have a bloodless war.
Capitalist Infidel on October 11, 2006 at 2:29 PM
Ok, doing a little google search I found this
Those predictions vary wildly, anywhere from 100 to 5,000 American military casualties, and between 1,000 and 100,000 Iraqi military and civilian casualties.
And this
Yet plenty of others do, and their predictions vary widely. A confidential United Nations study, leaked in December and widely quoted by antiwar activists, estimates a staggering half million deaths.
Capitalist Infidel on October 11, 2006 at 3:03 PM
Again, that’s a prediction (future) Cap Inf, not based on data. What you should take away from that Salon link was this:
The fact is, only one group, to my knowledge, has claimed the 100,000 dead, and it was today’s group two years ago. All others were just repeating that number which was addmitted to be politically timed. Again, you can talk all about how you think there have been more, but unless you can debunk all other studies showing fewer than 50,000, there’s nothing really to say. The fact is if we were REALLY fighting this thing, we’d have only a couple hundred of our own dead and maybe then 600,000 Iraqis. Instead our dead are due to us trying so hard not to kill their civilians or offend anyone by firing at a Mosque, etc.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 3:13 PM
The flip side of that means that to accept this data, you must assume that only 1 in 12 deaths were reported and/or processed through a mortuary/morgue. 550,000 unreported deaths? I doubt that. And again, where are the bodies? If they can find the families who buried these people without bothering to get a death certificate, they can find the graves they buried them in.
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 3:13 PM
Instead our dead are due to us trying so hard not to kill their civilians or offend anyone by firing at a Mosque, etc.
Most of our dead are from no other action than “driving around in Iraq”.
Lehuster on October 11, 2006 at 3:14 PM
You all still seem under the very mistaken impression that I believe this study’s numbers.
Slublog on October 11, 2006 at 3:15 PM
And if we were building parking lots rather than nations it wouldn’t be happening. That’s my point. I’m not advocating indescriminate bombing, but our decision to fight this war “nicely” is what is responsible for most of the deaths of Americans.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 3:21 PM
Nope, just laying out what you would have to believe in order to believe these numbers are true. Good methodology should produce accurate results. This is not good methodology.
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 3:21 PM
Heh, a leftist idiot that posts on a board I watch posted this number with a statement like, “600,000 dead in Iraq and no one is held accountable.” To which I wanted to reply, “No, there are people being held accountable it’s just not the person you want it to be.”
The left will try to spin this number to mean that our troops have killed 600,000 people. The details of who those 600,000 were, whether that number is actually accurate, who killed them, and other such details won’t matter to them. They will only see Bush = 600,000 dead people. End of story.
Benaiah on October 11, 2006 at 3:35 PM
This is like a dog chasing after its tail. The results are not at all satisfactory.
I could state that several guys, or a few guys, and women have died from either natural causes, unnatural causes, or an act of God, and that is about as accurate as what we are being offered today. File as inaccurate political posturing.
DannoJyd on October 11, 2006 at 3:39 PM
Here’s a bit of context on The Lancet: Lancet Editor: Certified Moonbat
Pablo on October 11, 2006 at 3:57 PM
From the Yahoo News release of the story
“Our total estimate is much higher than other mortality estimates because we used a population-based, active method for collecting mortality information rather than passive methods that depend on counting bodies or tabulated media reports of violent deaths,” Burnham said.
Translation: “We came up with a much better method of counting how many people died than the passe` method of counting how many people died.”
What those non-descriptive words in the quote mean is that they aren’t ever going to produce the details of how they extrapolated their “data”. Most likely a computer model. But all computer models are programmed applying predefined criteria which might as well be called presumptions. If the presumptions are wrong, so is the concluding data. But that’s no problem for Lancet, it’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
Freelancer on October 11, 2006 at 4:16 PM
This will be a good thread tomorrow. Blair hammered on this thing for months after it came out in 2004.
By the way Allah, are you bi-polar? You seem especially sensitive to propaganda that hasn’t yet been answered and you’re taking news reports at face value more often these days.
The Apologist on October 11, 2006 at 4:22 PM
AP: You say “this should be enough to finish off” the GOP for this election cycle.
The headline is “Army: Troops to Stay in Iraq Until 2010″
If that weren’t a candidate for this year’s most dishonest headline, I might agree with you. But the first three paragraphs of the story say:
Sure, if no one reads anything but the headline, it creates an awful impression. If anyone reads the actual story, which is about contingency plans the Pentagon always has in its back pockets, they will be convinced anew of the mendacity of the Associated Press.
Athanasius on October 11, 2006 at 5:32 PM
I have to agree with Athanasius on this one AP… I hope when you say “This should be enough to finish off Republicans’ midterm election hopes”, you mean because enough Americans are stupid and buy the lying headline, and that you aren’t yourself buying in to that crap. As Athanasius said, it’s just necessary planning being spun by the media on the eve of an election. Would people prefer that we didn’t plan for all scenarios? That’s what they constantly accuse Bush of. I agree, this stands to hurt the GOP in the upcoming elections, but I hope you only point that out because there are enough idiots and headline readers out there to not understand the real non-story here.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 5:54 PM
Allahpundit, what if the democrats take back neither the Senate, nor the House in this election year where everything is reportedly going their way? Will it then be time to write off the Democratic Party as a party of relevance, or shall we blame it on the Bush/Cheney/Haliburton/Rove/Libby/Rice/VRWC diety for accomplishing the impossible?
Blame it on my advanced years, but I can read, and interpret when ‘facts’ are being skewed, and there are less ‘facts’ being reported this year than in any previous year that I can recall.
DannoJyd on October 11, 2006 at 6:40 PM
My take (if you care) Dannojyd on that issue, is that the Democratic Party is all but completely finished if they don’t take at least one house this election.
RightWinged on October 11, 2006 at 6:45 PM
A few random comments. I track military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of my job - and no, I won’t be providing any additional bonafides, so you can ignore this if you want to.
- There are relatively few journalists in the AO, other than in the Green Zone. Most commanders refuse to accept imbeds after all the problems they have caused. The independent journos are limited to how much risk they want to take (remember Danny Pearl). The MSM guys hide in the Green Zone and hire
Al Quedalocal stringers.- We do, indeed, leave the bodies for the locals to clean up. We are very careful to rescue and treat any wounded, regardless of type(ours/theirs/innocents). The Iraqis issue relatively few death certificates because the Islamic tradition is to bury the dead within 24 hours and without autopsies. If a body is not claimed by the family, it is buried anyway.
- Unfortunately, Arabs tend to lie (or rather say what they think the questioner wants to hear), so relying on interviews to come up with accurate death counts is stupid.
- I don’t think that the media reports of civilian deaths in Iraq are accurate, since they concentrate only on Bagdad or large body counts. The Iraq Ministy of Health numbers are actually pretty good because they rely on raw counts from the hospitals.
- We are running around 1:100 kill rate in Iraq and 1:200 in Afghanistan. Everytime the bad guys come out to fight, we win.
- No one in the Army (at least at my level) believed we would draw down significantly this year or next. 2010 has always been the plan.
- If the American people vote for the cut-and-run ticket, you can count on enlistment/reinlistment rates going down.
old_dawg on October 11, 2006 at 11:08 PM
Allah baby. Much as I love your stuff, you’re wrong. 650,000 over 3.5 years is 530/day. That’s simply not credible. It’s politically-motivated nonsense. Do the math.
Martin on October 11, 2006 at 11:25 PM
Rightwinged, I don’t even know how to respond, you completely missed the point of my first comment. Please re-read it. Allah stated in the post that he thought that 50,000 was more than anyone had originally predicted. In reality 50,000 killed is amazingly low. I was just showing what others were predicting before the war to prove my point.
Capitalist Infidel on October 11, 2006 at 11:49 PM
Perhaps I’m still missing it Capitalist Infidel… Are you saying that clearly more than 50,000 have been killed simply because pre-war predictions said so? That is what I’ve taken away from your comments.
Wait, just glancing back… are you accepting the majority of tallies that say around 50k, but saying that AP ignored the initial predictions by saying essentially that the 50k was more than anyone expected, when clearly a lot of people (especially anti-war folks) were predicting much higher? Upon a second read, it could be my misunderstanding of what you were initially trying to say. I was getting the impression that you were trying to say that the count was much higher than the 50k. By the way, I may actually not be making any sense at this point because I’m practically asleep at this point.
RightWinged on October 12, 2006 at 12:29 AM
The Lancet report is politically motivated junk science. I think we’re all mostly agreed upon that (except, perhaps, for the useful idiots on the left).
GregH probably disagrees.Being one of the useful idiots on the left, he makes such pithy (but ignorant) comments like “[h]alf a million dead. Surely a small price to pay for “freedom,”
The anti-war movement can only succeed (and has traditionally operated) from a so-called “moral high ground,” were corpses are used as capes that the useful idiots drape around their shoulders in high moral theater.
They attempt to “shame” America into not fighting or not fighting to win by attempting use US casualties to convert bulk of America into supporting their political cause.
Which is why they ALWAYS use a display such as “The Empty Boots,” a pair for each of the fallen in an attempt to “shock” the body politic into “cutting and running” from a war we’ve already won.
This is why they try to assign the laurel of “absolute moral authority” to Cindy Sheehan, as if “Mother Sheehan” is the ONLY person who can judge or approve of the war.
GregH and the rest of the leftist useful idiots don’t give a damn about casualties, ours or theirs. Dead bodies are nothing but tools to obtain a political agenda to these ghouls. And that agenda is really nothing other than treasonous.
georgej on October 12, 2006 at 2:22 AM
Rightwinged, BINGO! My whole point was what was predicted before the war started. Allah said this:
Whatever the actual number is (and it’s probably closer to Iraq Body Count’s figure than to Lancet’s), it’s much more than most of us expected
I believe just about everyone (except Allah) EXPECTED at least 50,000 civilian deaths. Most left wing lunatics were predicting more than that during the initial invasion. Here we are 3.5 years after that initial invasion and we have an astonishingly low civilian casualty count.
Capitalist Infidel on October 12, 2006 at 12:33 PM