Lancet-1 study vindicated by NEJM/WHO study?

[BeAChooser]

I was suggesting a reason for the difference in proportion of violent deaths.

Well it turned out to be a bogus reason.

NEJM used IBC data for the most violent parts of Iraq.

Wrong. NEJM only used IBC for the RATIOS between areas they couldn't visit and areas that they did visit, and then applied those ratios to NEJM data in the areas they could visit to estimate rates in areas they couldn't visit. And then they even bumped the rates up by another 50% from that to account for underreporting. Nothing wrong with that. Sounds like a reasonable approach.

And what did the John Hopkins researchers do for those areas that they didn't visit (and remember the ONLY place they visited in Anbar was Falluja and even there they threw out data)? What did JH do, especially in their first study where they threw ALL the Falluja data out of the study? I'll tell you what they did ... they made a wild guess based on their own personal biases regarding Bush, the war and what they wanted their study to accomplish in the upcoming election.

Exactly how they used it? I don't know.

Why not? Their reports tells you exactly what they did and how they applied those ratios.

NEJM estimates a doubling of death rate after the invasion.

But they base both pre- and post-war mortality entirely on polling of people ... people who might have any number of reasons to misstate, misrepresent, misunderstand or misremember the facts. A pre-war mortality rate of 3 percent looks silly when put in the context of conditions known to exist in Iraq before the war. Remember ... Iraq was a country:

1) that had it's basic infrastructure and medical facilities severely damaged in the 1991 war,

2) that had a hellish brew of chemicals released/dumped into its air, ground and water before, during and following that war,

3) that was subjected to a decade of draconian sanctions that supposedly (at least according to many now populating the anti-war movement) kept Iraqis from getting vital medicines, food, clean water and other materials, and from repairing the damage to infrastructure, including hospitals,

4) that had severe limitations imposed on it with regards to the revenues it could get from oil (its chief product),

5) that was run by a dictator who stole much of what income Iraq did get and used it to rebuild his army, build more golden palaces, bribe UN and non-coalition officials, keep his illegal WMD programs alive and hide billions in secret accounts ... rather than help his citizens,

6) and that was run by a dictator who deliberately kept aid, repair funds, electricity and clean water from reaching large portions of the population in order to weaken those communities and provide a pretext for lifting sanctions.

Yet you expect us to believe it had a lower death rate than almost every country in the world, including the very richest ones with the best medical care, the cleanest living environments, rather benevolent governments and which had not suffered a major war on home territory in half a century.

Right.

Quote:
Really? The Iranians forced 9 and 10 year old boys into Iraqi mine fields in order to clear them for their soldiers. And who do you think has been behind many of bombings against civilian targets in Iraq and other terrorist attacks around the world?

BS

My mistake. 12 year olds.

http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/ahmadinejads-world "I cannot help but think of the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down that children as young as 12 could be used to clear mine fields, even against the objections of their parents. Before every mission, a small plastic key would be hung around each of the children’s necks. It was supposed to open for them the gates to paradise. “In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the mine fields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”[1] The children who thus rolled to their deaths formed part of the mass “Basij” movement that was called into being by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The Basij Mostazafan – the “mobilization of the oppressed” – consisted of short-term volunteer militias. Most of the Basij members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically and by the thousands to their own destruction. “The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies,” a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War has recalled, “It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander’s orders, everyone wanted to be first.”

http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA26206 "Basij volunteers, mainly children and youth, were sent to the Iraqi front with a "key to Paradise" hanging around their necks. These volunteers were sent to clear minefields or to serve as cannon fodder in mass attacks against Iraqi lines. Thousands of them found their deaths in suicide commando units. The Iranian regime glorifies the "martyrdom of the youngest Basij member Hossein Fahmideh," a 12 year old who, according to the regime, blew himself up under an Iraqi tank. Thus, Fahmideh became a national hero and a role model for Iranian youth - whom the regime encourages to defend the homeland and the values of the Islamic Revolution."

http://www.iran.org/tib/krt/missiledefense.htm "The ruling clerics demonstrated during the long war with Iraq a cynical disregard for the lives of their fellow citizens, wilfully sending 12 and 14-year old children off to die in the Iraqi mine-fields."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH01Ak01.html "the million deaths during the Iran-Iraq War, including perhaps 100,000 12-to-14-year-old children sent by the Khomeinists into the Iraqi minefields."

http://wps.cfc.forces.gc.ca/papers/amsc/amsc3/clark2.doc "CANADIAN FORCES COLLEGE, ADVANCED MILITARY STUDIES COURSE 3 ... snip ... THE CASE OF THE IRAN-IRAQ CONFLICT, BY COLONEL ROBERT CLARK... snip ... Iran went on the offensive and threw Iraq out of Iran. It did this by using human wave attacks over and over again. The Iraqi military was shocked and surprised by this tactic that employed children to clear mine fields, the Basij and the Pasdaran to storm Iraqi positions."

Britain, America's whore.

So you don't like Britain either? Why do you stay?

So about 1/3 of the increase is due to violence.

A percent of "increase" is not the same as the percent of the total amount. As indicated quite clearly in Table 2, 14% of the total excess deaths were due to violent causes. Period.

Quote:
"Science 20 April 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5823, p. 355 "Iraq Mortality Study Authors Release Data, but Only to Some, Jocelyn Kaiser"
Your claim was that they hadn't released the data. They have released the data.

Ok. I stand corrected ... at least as far as Lancet 2 is concerned. But it certainly took a while and some prompting to get that data released. And clearly some of the data needed to weigh the validity of their study has not been released. And clearly they have withheld the data they did release from the public and some people who quite clearly have adequate credentials but are just critical of the Lancet work. Certainly, the excuse they used to withhold the data from some is bogus since they themselves are guilty of that very excuse. Remember your concern about hypocrisy?

To claim the data indicates fraud, you have to argue that everyone who has received the data is willing to keep quiet.

No, but I have no doubt that there are many leftists on the anti-war side (especially in universities and health related organizations that are often populated by leftists) who are quite willing to overlook fundamental errors and problems with the Lancet data because they too are agenda driven. Why don't you try to deal with the specific objections that were raised?

Many surveys in Iraq get high response rates. Including NEJM.

But they get high rates (and none are as high as 98%) by making multiple trips to the same survey location if no one is home during earlier visits. Take the NEJM study for instance. It got a response rate of about 96%. BUT the article in their journal (N Engl J Med 2008; 358:484-93) notes that "of the households that did not respond, 0.7% were absent for an extended period of time.". In other words, they made multiple trips to the same location if no one answered the door. The John Hopkins researchers did not do that in their studies. They attempted a single contact. And as http://lancetiraq.blogspot.com/ notes, there has never been a 98%+ participation in a large, single contact survey in any country at any time on any topic. And response rates of 98%+ are NOT the norm in Iraq either, even with multiple contact surveys. If that doesn't make you suspicious about the JH results, probably nothing will.

It indicates that passive recording of deaths is not accurate in war zones.

Death certificates are not a passive recording mechanism. They are an active one with procedures in place to pass them up the governmental chain for proper tabulation. Also, the LATimes (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...5jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines ) said they "attempted to reach a comprehensive figure by obtaining statistics from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry and checking those numbers against a sampling of local health departments for possible undercounts." If what you say were true, their checks should have picked up substantial undercounting. Apparently it didn't.

 

[Mycroft]

Iraq's death rate is double that of Jordan, then.
Mind you, the CIA reckons that the death rate in Iraq has dropped compared to 2002. I don't know of any survey which has suggested that. So I'm still missing something.

For starters, life in Iraq previous to the US invasion was no picknick either. Iraq was under severe trade restrictions and Saddam was spending the oil for food money on palaces. Their infrastructure was failing even before we bombed it.

Second, despite international news coverage and shock value, it's very hard to kill enough people with suicide bombings to make a statistical dent. The war has been won, what's left is a terrorist campaign.

It's entirely plausible that the death rate really is slightly less than it was before the war.

 

[a_unique_person]

There were very good grounds for invading Iraq, just like there are good grounds for invading North Korea or Zimbabwe and many other trash territories rules by despots; but of course only if you have a genuine desire to free oppressed peoples and know how to recognize them, and of course the real biggie; if you know how to execute the plan to the end. Obvious Bush & Co. are of the opinion that since the only Iraqis that they ever met had US college educations, they think all of them are just like us and read Jefferson in their spare time, not to mention yearning to worship Jesus.

Stupid. (not a reference to you; this time )

Maybe, but Zibabwe is perfectly safe, ( or at least Mugabe is), and he knows it. The US is not going to spend a trillion to save his people. And you have to wonder what the US and Iraq have got for the trillion, (could be two by time it is all over). All that, just for *one* knackered dictator.

 

[BeAChooser]

Hitler had research on nukes, ballistic missiles and the America Bomber.

And Saddam had research on nukes, chemical and biological weapons, long range missiles, cannon and UAVs, and on using terrorists to spread destruction to it's enemies.

Saddam wanted power most of all, and he didn't want the US taking it from him.

Then he should have just abided by the cease-fire agreements and cooperated with the inspectors. His oil billions would have bought him all the power any sane man could desire.

Saddam was still a lunatic, power hungry dictator, but given he was effectively restrained,

No, he was not. 9/11 changed the equation. Powell and company only reported that Saddam was constrained from MILITARY use of WMD and conventional forces against its neighbors. But the concern was that terrorists would get WMD and Saddam was seen to be cooperating with those terrorists. Furthermore, the containment box was about to be opened by the rest of the world. Saddam and the non-coalition nations were clearly thinking the sanctions and oversight were about to be removed. And had the inspectors issued a clean bill of health to Saddam (and now we know that had they done so, they would have been wrong), there would have been overwhelming pressure to remove the sanctions and oversight given the damage they were supposedly doing to innocent civilians in Iraq. And now we know that had they done that, Saddam would have been rearmed with chemical and biological weapons within a few years at most. And he still had plans to build nuclear weapons.

and the known consequences were that Iraq would descend into deadly chaos

Iraq was already descending into deadly chaos. Inspector David Kay said that the threat of al-qaeda (and I use that term loosely) obtaining WMD related information and materials from Iraq was higher than anyone imagined before the invasion in large part because Saddam was losing control of his country and those programs. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda were moving in and freely operating from locations like the capital, Baghdad. We know that a terrorist attack that could have killed tens of thousand in Jordan was planned and funded by terrorists who met in Baghdad well before the invasion. It may be that only reason that terrorist attack failed is that the invasion put the terrorist movements leaders on the run.

(Powell said it would 'shatter like a crystal', and opposed the invasion privately), the best outcome was the status quo.

Well clearly, both predictions were wrong. Iraq didn't shatter ... nearly the entire population came out to vote for a strong federal government even in the face of massive terrorists threats by those trying to prevent that. Kurds, Shiites and even Sunnis joined the military. The surge is working and now the death rate is on a steep decline. All ethnic blocks in Iraq are now working with us to defeat the remaining terrorist threat. And the mood in the country is rather upbeat for the long term ... both economically and politically. Iraq will be a friend of America (and the UK). It will be a properous country with substantial freedoms for its people.

Especially considering the war in Afghanistan. War on two fronts, anyone?

It is the nature of this war. Al-qaeda has a presence in dozens of countries so there will be dozens of fronts. It was important to close down the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and eliminate that country as a safe haven right after 9/11. After the camps fell, many of the terrorists in Afghanistan fled to Iraq and began to set up camps and a network there. The existence of WMD in Iraq, Saddam's apparent friendliness with the terrorist cause, and the danger in letting terrorists get control of a third of the world's oil was reason to deal with that country next. Granted, it was more difficult than most thought it would be (including me). But it needed to be done.

You may not have heard but since the surge is now working and Iraqi forces are successfully taking the reins, forces will be shifted back to Afghanistan to win that conflict. Afghanistan is about to become a real killing ground for al-Qaeda. Another of its top men was killed just the other day. And after Afghanistan is cleaned out, we may need to go somewhere else. It is the nature of this war. But in both countries we will have left behind a democratically based, western friendly, stable government with a more fundamentally sound economic structure. That is ultimately, the way to win the war against islamo fanatics and dictators everywhere.

One country can capriciously invade another, without good grounds for doing so,

There was nothing capricious about our invasion of either country. The Taliban was given every opportunity to cooperate and we had world-wide support for that operation. Iraq also was given months and months to cooperate with the inspectors and there is no question that Iraq violated the cease-fire agreement for a decade. There is also no question that Iraq never gave up its WMD ambitions or pursuit of long range weapons. The invasion only took place after it became clear Saddam was not cooperating and that further delay might be quite dangerous because of the presence of terrorists in that country. And many of those who sided with the non-coalition side and tried to prevent the invasion turn out to have been working behind the scenes with Saddam to profit from oil and military equipment sales once sanctions were lifted. They also didn't want the world looking in Saddam's files to see the extent of their duplicity.

(the whole WMD fiasco has seriously damaged America's standing)

Before we conclude that Iraq had no WMD and was an innocent party in this, there are a few questions you need to answer.

1) Explain the binary sarin shell that turned up as an IED after the invasion. Saddam's regime for years denied researching such weapons. When that was eventually proven a lie, his regime denied ever testing such weapons. When that too was proven a lie, they denied fielding such weapons and claimed to have destroyed all the shells they had produced. But that binary sarin shell used as an IED puts the lie to that, too. His own scientists told the ISG the program was considered VERY successful. Now why should we believe that Saddam, who lied about every other aspect of the program, destroyed the most dangerous and longest lasting chemical weapons his country produced when he had a country the size of Iraq and friendly neighbors to hide them in? The ISG eventually concluded "the existence of this binary weapon not only raises questions about the number of viable chemical weapons remaining in Iraq and raises the possibility that a larger number of binary, long-lasting chemical weapons still exist." So given the probabilities, where did that shell come from?

2) Audio tapes found in Iraq after the invasion have Saddam and his aides laughing about the UN's efforts to determine the size and scope of their WMD efforts. What was in the trucks that were seen moving to Syria before the war? Independent sources say those truck convoys were very carefully guarded. Some of the intel indicates those trucks came from areas that were believed to store WMD. Some of the sources say the materials were turned over to Syrians who then buried them. And the ISG said they have a credible source saying the contents were WMD related. We simply do not know what was in those trucks but there is no indication it was money, furniture or other treasures. Everything so far points to those trucks containing WMD related items. And there are also sources indicating that WMD materials were flown out of the country in the months before the invasion. And that Russians were involved in some of these transfers.

3) The ISG said there were clear indications that the Iraqi regime sanitized files, computers and facilities in locations they believe were associated with WMD. Why would they do that if the proof they'd abided by the cease fire ... the proof there were no WMD ... was in those materials. What were they hiding if not the existance and location of materials (weapons) they were not supposed to have produced or they were supposed to have destroyed? So tell us, why did they sanitize these sites?

4) The ISG found after the invasion that Iraq deliberately retained the scientists, seed stock and other vital materials and information so that once oversight and sanctions ended they could quickly reconstitute the full WMD arsenal. Had that happened, what would you have done? Complained to the UN? Now THAT is scary.

 

[Kestrel]

Al-qaeda has a presence in dozens of countries so there will be dozens of fronts. It was important to close down the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and eliminate that country as a safe haven right after 9/11. After the camps fell, many of the terrorists in Afghanistan fled to Iraq and began to set up camps and a network there.

So where exactly were the Al Qaeda camps in Iraq?

Were these camps inside or outside the region controlled by Baghdad?

 

[BeAChooser]

Comparing the threat of Iraq in 2003 to Germany in 1939 is rather silly. Iraq has a population of 27 million compared to 300 million in the US.

Even with a population of 78 million (back in 1939) compared to America's 130 million, Germany still could not have successfully invaded the US given the technology available at the time. The oceans were simply too big. It would probably be difficult for any country to successfully invade us, even now. So the claim that the reason we needed to invade Germany back in 1945 knowing tens of thousands of innocents were going to be killed during the invasion, because we might be invaded by Germany, is vacuous.

Even after an economic boom in Iraq, their GDP would still be a small fraction of ours.

Not the point. The issue is how long it would take for Iraq to rebuild an army that would seriously threaten its neighbors and destabilize the region. Germany did it in just a few years and with virtually no resources. Had the sanctions been removed, Saddam could easily have reconstituted most of his military and WMD in (I wager) 5 years. That would about now. Then what would you have done?

 

[BeAChooser]

\It's entirely plausible that the death rate really is slightly less than it was before the war.

Good point. If we looked at the excess death rate over say the last 3 months, we might get an entirely different picture ... one where the death rate in Iraq is now well below what it was before the invasion and well below what it might have been now had we not invaded. Curious that even though we are winning and the death is now looking better, the anti-war community still insists we cut and run, abandoning Iraq and possibly reopening the door to let the terrorists back it.

 

[Kestrel]

Even with a population of 78 million (back in 1939) compared to America's 130 million, Germany still could not have successfully invaded the US given the technology available at the time. The oceans were simply too big. It would probably be difficult for any country to successfully invade us, even now. So the claim that the reason we needed to invade Germany back in 1945 knowing tens of thousands of innocents were going to be killed during the invasion, because we might be invaded by Germany, is vacuous.

The comparisons made before the Iraq war involved Hitler and Chamberlain's response, not the possibility of Germany invading the USA.

Not the point. The issue is how long it would take for Iraq to rebuild an army that would seriously threaten its neighbors and destabilize the region. Germany did it in just a few years and with virtually no resources. Had the sanctions been removed, Saddam could easily have reconstituted most of his military and WMD in (I wager) 5 years. That would about now. Then what would you have done?

Before the Gulf War, Saddam believed that the US and our allies would not defend Kuwait. After he was crushed in the Gulf War, he knew different. If Saddam built up his army and started to act against his neighbors, we would threaten to use force. If Iraq didn't back down, then military force would be appropriate. Iraq at full strength would still be no match for the forces at our disposal.

Why do you assume that if we didn't conquer Iraq in 2003, we would have totally ignored Iraq's behavior in the future? Or that somehow the rest of the world would look the other way as Iraq built plutonium producing reactors or uranium enrichment facilities?

 

[BeAChooser]

And you have to wonder what the US and Iraq have got for the trillion, (could be two by time it is all over).

What do you care? You live in a country where everything if "free"?

Any discussion of the Iraq war costs should also mention potential benefits (which include avoided costs) because without weighing the costs against the benefits, choosing the right course of action is impossible. I believe a good case can be made that the few trillion dollars we end up spending in Iraq now and over the lifetime of injured soldiers may well save us from paying costs far in excess of that amount during that same time period.

First, let's consider the ordinary costs of the no-invasion option.

The supplementals for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terror as of March 27 2003 totaled $75 Billion dollars of which 30 billion had already been spent or committed. As Rumsfeld noted at the time, "If the Iraqi regime had agreed to voluntarily disarm and prevent a war, the costs of sustaining that military pressure through the rest of the fiscal year would have been in excess of $40 billion. So even without a war, the costs of disarming Iraq would have been significant." Call it $50 billion that we will have to add on to the figures that follow.

Without an invasion, it would have been necessary to continue containment of Saddam ... even beef that effort up hoping to preclude the possibility of terrorists acquiring WMD from him or someone in his regime. Three economics professors from Chicago looked at this and concluded an annual containment cost of $19 billion might have been expected after the decision not to invade. Converting that to expected present value by discounting future expenditures at 2 percent per year, and by a 3 percent annual probability that the Iraqi regime would change character an no longer require containment, they estimated a 20 year cost of containment of $380 billion.

Furthermore, they estimated that if just one large terrorist attack (a non-WMD one) occurred over a 20 year time frame as a result of letting Saddam and his sons stay in power (and I thinks that's an underestimate), those costs would rise to $430 billion in today's dollars. If leaving Saddam in place increased homeland security costs by only $10 billion a year (about 10% of current expenditures) in an effort to prevent such attacks, they calculated that the cost of the no invasion option would increase another $200 billion ... to $630 billion.

You can see where this is going.

Next, consider the fact that economists have calculated that 9/11 (a WMD-like attack) did nearly a trillion dollars in direct and indirect damages (not to mention killing 3000 people). Consider that we know that Saddam was working on weapons of mass destruction, intent on rebuilding those arsenals, still considered himself at war with the US since 1991 and was on speaking terms with the very terrorist group that attacked us on 9/11.

Even in the state that Iraq's weapons programs were after the invasion, the inspector who led the ISG effort, David Kay, said that Iraq was more dangerous than anyone had thought prior to the invasion with regard to terrorists acquiring WMD materials and knowledge from it. And if we hadn't invaded, it was a virtual certainty that the sanctions that the ISG found had stymied Iraq's efforts to rebuild its WMD arsenal would soon be gone, although our containment costs probably wouldn't. And, ironically, many on the anti-war side were the people calling for eliminating the sanctions before the war.

With sanctions removed and limits on oil sales gone, Saddam would have begun rebuilding his WMD arsenal. The ISG concluded that was his intention. And Iraq wouldn't have taken long to do it. Countries like France, Germany and Russia were eager to sell Iraq arms and new equipment for making arms. The ISG said that at the time of the invasion, Iraq still had the means to reconstitute mustard gas munitions within 6 months and build nerve gas munitions within about a year ... if the sanctions were removed. So by now it's likely Iraq would have rearmed.

I submit that it wouldn't have been long before terrorists acquired Iraqi WMD or the knowledge to make them from Iraq. Either Saddam would have sold or given them to terrorists (a possibility that based on recovered tapes was probably discussed internally), or some loose cannon in Iraq's munitions industry (that's what David Kay feared) would have done so ... for cash or ideology or because of threats to himself or loved ones. And if al-Qaeda had acquired WMD via this route, does anyone doubt they would eventually be used against the US or US interests?

So what would have been the cost of a WMD terrorist attack, if leaving Saddam in power resulted in even one? Another trillion dollars? Two trillion? And how many dead? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? On this basis alone, I think it's fair to suggest the cost of invading Iraq might pale in comparison to cost of having left Saddam in power.

And after such an attack, had we learned of Iraq's involvement, we'd surely have have to do something about Iraq then. Bomb it into the stoneage? Invade it? Either way, it would have been much more costly then than it was in 2003. Call it another trillion or two.

But there are still other avoided costs (i.e., benefits).

The professors mentioned above noted that "Since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979, Iraqi income per person has fallen by at least 75 percent." They concluded that war and forcible regime change might raise Iraqi welfare by 50 percent compared to containment – "an enormous gain." In areas mostly free of al-Qaeda terrorism, like Kurdistan, Iraq's economy is already blossoming. I think the professors underestimated what Iraq will look like in 20 years if we just stay the course.

And then add in the cost in human lives of leaving Saddam in place. The professors stated that "all told, the current regime has killed or caused the deaths of well over half a million Iraqis since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979. Under the policy of containment after the Gulf War, a reasonable estimate is that 200,000 or more Iraqis have died prematurely at the hands of the regime or as a direct consequence of its policies." They concluded that "if we discount future lost lives in the same way as future economic costs, and allowing for the same probability of peaceful regime change, then a policy of containment means another 200,000 to 600,000 dead Iraqis." And that's assuming that Saddam wouldn't get involved in yet another war of aggression where many hundred thousands of his people were killed along with considerable numbers of his adversary's people.

And here's some addition concerns of my own.

Even without acquiring WMD from Iraq, allowing al-Qaeda to continue to use Iraq as a safe haven as they were before the invasion could have had very significant and bad consequences for us in the WOT. We invaded Afghanistan because al-Qaeda ran camps there where tens of thousands of would be terrorists learned and honed their murderous skills. Well, even before we invaded Iraq, al-Qaeda was already moving into Iraq and setting up the same sorts of camps. There are also some indications that al-Qaeda were being trained at Iraqi facilities too. Helped by Iraqis. And that cooperation would likely have increased.

Like it or not, Iraq was a safe haven for terrorists and al-Qaeda took advantage of that. In fact, before we ever invaded al-Zarqawi met with al-Qaeda in Baghdad who he funded to carry out a mass casualty attack (that didn't apparently involve WMD of the sort used in munitions but would still have killed tens of thousands if successful). Had we not invaded, perhaps that plot would have been successful because then al-Zarqawi would have been able to continue oversight of the operation rather than spent his time running and hiding from Coalition forces Had we not invaded, what makes anyone think that one plot would have been the only plot instigated by al-Qaeda operating in Iraq against US interests or US citizens? And what would of been the cost in lives and dollars of that?

Then there is the fact that even if we hadn't invaded there would still have been the costs associated with fighting the WOT ... but now with some other locale as the battlefield. And perhaps that locale wouldn't be quite as advantageous as Iraq?

And what about the benefits of establishing a western friendly, terrorists unfriendly, economic powerhouse in the region ... one with control of a sizable fraction of the world's oil. The problem with the anti-war movement and, indeed, the media is they never want to honestly examine the potential benefits of winning in Iraq and the costs of having done nothing about Saddam. Nor do they want to look at the costs of losing now that we are in Iraq. And those costs could also be substantially more than the cost of remaining. If we lose, al-Qaeda may gain strength and respect, and decide to use the same tactic in other locales. We may end up fighting suicide bomb fanatics in dozens of countries. And there would surely be costs ... substantial costs ... in fighting that.

Or is the left's solution just to cut and run everywhere?

http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/070126/allie.jpg

 

[a_unique_person]

And Saddam had research on nukes, chemical and biological weapons, long range missiles, cannon and UAVs, and on using terrorists to spread destruction to it's enemies.

He didn't have the means of delivering, he had scrapped it all. The only question was, what little did he have left. The answer was nothing. The evidence before the war was that they couldn't actually find anything. The evidence provided by Powell to the UN was laughable, a fire truck was transformed into decontamination unit. That's how bad it was.

Then he should have just abided by the cease-fire agreements and cooperated with the inspectors. His oil billions would have bought him all the power any sane man could desire.

He more or less did. I think that's what had him puzzled.

No, he was not. 9/11 changed the equation. Powell and company only reported that Saddam was constrained from MILITARY use of WMD and conventional forces against its neighbors. But the concern was that terrorists would get WMD and Saddam was seen to be cooperating with those terrorists.

Could, might, perhaps. Not quite the reason to spend a trillion dollars and a million lives. Saddam was known to be not co-operating with the terrorists, they were not mutually compatible.

Furthermore, the containment box was about to be opened by the rest of the world. Saddam and the non-coalition nations were clearly thinking the sanctions and oversight were about to be removed. And had the inspectors issued a clean bill of health to Saddam (and now we know that had they done so, they would have been wrong), there would have been overwhelming pressure to remove the sanctions and oversight given the damage they were supposedly doing to innocent civilians in Iraq. And now we know that had they done that, Saddam would have been rearmed with chemical and biological weapons within a few years at most. And he still had plans to build nuclear weapons.

Plans, hopes, don't kill people. There was a difference between lifting the sanctions that targetted civilians, and those that would allow Saddam to re-arm.

Iraq was already descending into deadly chaos. Inspector David Kay said that the threat of al-qaeda (and I use that term loosely) obtaining WMD related information and materials from Iraq was higher than anyone imagined before the invasion in large part because Saddam was losing control of his country and those programs. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda were moving in and freely operating from locations like the capital, Baghdad. We know that a terrorist attack that could have killed tens of thousand in Jordan was planned and funded by terrorists who met in Baghdad well before the invasion. It may be that only reason that terrorist attack failed is that the invasion put the terrorist movements leaders on the run.

Once again, possibilities. The more immediate threat is Pakistan going down. They have functional nukes and terrorists operating there and they have backed these terrorists in the past. The Iraq war has served to destabilise Pakistan even more.

Well clearly, both predictions were wrong. Iraq didn't shatter ... nearly the entire population came out to vote for a strong federal government even in the face of massive terrorists threats by those trying to prevent that. Kurds, Shiites and even Sunnis joined the military. The surge is working and now the death rate is on a steep decline. All ethnic blocks in Iraq are now working with us to defeat the remaining terrorist threat. And the mood in the country is rather upbeat for the long term ... both economically and politically. Iraq will be a friend of America (and the UK). It will be a properous country with substantial freedoms for its people.

It shattered alright. The repeated surveys reveal a massive upsurge in violence between the groups. Iraq won't be a friend of the US and UK. I have no idea where you get that idea.

It is the nature of this war. Al-qaeda has a presence in dozens of countries so there will be dozens of fronts. It was important to close down the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and eliminate that country as a safe haven right after 9/11. After the camps fell, many of the terrorists in Afghanistan fled to Iraq and began to set up camps and a network there. The existence of WMD in Iraq, Saddam's apparent friendliness with the terrorist cause, and the danger in letting terrorists get control of a third of the world's oil was reason to deal with that country next. Granted, it was more difficult than most thought it would be (including me). But it needed to be done.

Saddam had no interest in Al Qaeda. Their aims are diametrically opposed to his.

You may not have heard but since the surge is now working and Iraqi forces are successfully taking the reins, forces will be shifted back to Afghanistan to win that conflict. Afghanistan is about to become a real killing ground for al-Qaeda. Another of its top men was killed just the other day. And after Afghanistan is cleaned out, we may need to go somewhere else. It is the nature of this war. But in both countries we will have left behind a democratically based, western friendly, stable government with a more fundamentally sound economic structure. That is ultimately, the way to win the war against islamo fanatics and dictators everywhere.

Yep there is a surge in Iraq, so Afghanistan becomes more unstable.

There was nothing capricious about our invasion of either country. The Taliban was given every opportunity to cooperate and we had world-wide support for that operation. Iraq also was given months and months to cooperate with the inspectors and there is no question that Iraq violated the cease-fire agreement for a decade. There is also no question that Iraq never gave up its WMD ambitions or pursuit of long range weapons. The invasion only took place after it became clear Saddam was not cooperating and that further delay might be quite dangerous because of the presence of terrorists in that country. And many of those who sided with the non-coalition side and tried to prevent the invasion turn out to have been working behind the scenes with Saddam to profit from oil and military equipment sales once sanctions were lifted. They also didn't want the world looking in Saddam's files to see the extent of their duplicity.

Capricious is the only way to describe the invasion of Iraq. It was done on false pretenses, it has cost far more in lives and money than was ever predicted. It was done without the resources required to ensure stability post invasion. The whole tawdry story has been told here many times. Rummy even said that they should invade Iraq because there was nothing worth bombing in Afghanistan. The whole rationale was lunatic. The American public was sold a story, and it didn't hold up. The polls pretty well reflect that. Dubya is the lamest of the lame ducks.

Read about Andrew Wilkie, the Australian intelligence officer who resigned and blew the whistle rather than stay in an organisation that he had lost faith in. He knew the proposed reasons as given to the public were a crock of lies, and he went public and said so. The WMD and intelligence was routinely doctored for political reasons, to build a sham to sell the public.

The invasion was not done to help the people of Iraq, that was the least of the reasons. It was just one more lie.

The reasons were.

1) Move troops out of Saudi, where they were destabilising the country.
2) Re-assert American prestige
3) Provide a strategic base for America in the region. The American Embassy is a small city in it's own right, it's the biggest in the world.
4) Oil
5) Israel.

 

[BeAChooser]

So where exactly were the Al Qaeda camps in Iraq?

Were these camps inside or outside the region controlled by Baghdad?

One set of camps was in Northern Iraq, admittedly outside the region directly controlled by Baghdad. But there is intel from sources suggesting that Iraqi intelligence was working directly with the camp, sending agents to it from time to time. Perhaps even helping fund it. My question is would you just have ignored the presence of that camp or done something about it had we not invaded. And if so, what? Remember, that bombing did not stop al-qaeda in Afghanistan from launching 9/11 a few years later.

But the problem in Iraq extended far beyond the camps in Northern Iraq. We know for a fact, because al-Qaeda terrorists were captured and admitted to it, that they were active in other parts of Iraq. We know, for instance, they met in Baghdad before the invasion to plan and fund a chemically laced bomb attack in Jordan that it was hoped would kill tens of thousands of people, including everyone in the US embassy in Amman. Nine men were eventually sentenced to death in this plot which was only broken up after the terrorists had smuggled the vehicles, explosives and chemicals into Jordan.

We know that the assassination of Lawrence Foley in 2002 was planned by al-Qaeda terrorists while they were in Baghdad. The Senate Intelligence Report stated "one of the two suspects in the Foley murder stated that al-Zarqawi directed and financed the operations before, during and after his stint in Baghdad between May and July 2002. The other suspect mentioned that weapons for their operations in Jordan had come from an unspecified place in Iraq. ... snip ... an associate of Foley's killer left Jordan to join al-Zarqawi in Iraq after the murder to obtain weapons and explosives for future operations. Both of the suspects [redacted] mentioned that one member of the al-Zarqawi network traveled repeatedly between regime-controlled Iraq and Syria after March 2002." Imagine ... al-Zarqawi not only received medical treatment in Baghdad after fleeing from Afghanistan, he then plotted the murder of an American diplomat while in Baghdad. All this in one of the most tightly controlled cities in the world. After the Foley killing, Jordan contacted Iraq and told them al-Zarqawi was in Iraq and asked them to extradite him. The Jordanian government says they got no response. King Abdallah, himself, told the press this in 2002. In short, Iraq ignored Jordan and let al-Zarqawi remain. It was after Jordan contacted Iraq that al-Zarqawi left Baghdad and moved to Northern Iraq. Hard to believe that Iraq didn't have a hand in this sudden move.

We know that Iraq established and trained suicide bombers. They were predominately non-Iraqi Arabs who came to Iraq from all over the Middle East and North Africa prior to the invasion. Suicide bomb jacket factories were discovered during the invasion ... in regime controlled territory.

According to http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp?ZoomFont=YES , a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer established a highly secretive relationship with islamo-fanatics, including al Qaeda. Those meetings go back to 1992. Reportedly, members of al Qaeda would even visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made personnel changes for fear the relationship would be discovered.

According to the same source, IIS' deputy director met with bin Laden multiple times. At one of these meetings, he offered bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. The CIA said a senior al Qaeda operative visited Baghdad and met with the Iraqi Vice President in 1998. The goal of the visit was to arrange coordination between Iraq and bin Laden and establish camps in an-Nasiriyah and Iraqi Kurdistan.

A CIA report states that at one point, Iraq captured an associate of al-Zarqawi on serious charges that the arresting officer said he was convinced were accurate. Yet, orders came from top people in the Iraqi government (the CIA said Saddam himself) to release the man.

There are also numerous sources indicating that Saddam's regime knowingly funded and trained terrorists in various facilities. Those terrorists included al-Qaeda. Centcom spokesman General Vincent Brooks said (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0304/06/se.01.html) on April 6, 2003: "There was a raid last night by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. What they raided was a training camp near Salman Pak....This raid occurred in response to information that had been gained by coalition forces from some foreign fighters we encountered from other countries, not Iraq. And we believe that this camp had been used to train these foreign fighters in terror tactics.... [T]hat's just one of a number of examples we've found where there is training activity happening inside of Iraq. It reinforces the likelihood of links between his regime and external terrorist organizations, clear links with common interests. Some of these fighters came from Sudan, some from Egypt, and some from other places, and we've killed a number of them and we've captured a number of them." They captured video of terrorists training at these camps against targets that were surely American.

We know for a fact that one of the 1993 WTC bombers fled to Iraq and was then put on the payroll of the government and supplied a house. There are also good reasons to believe that an Iraqi handler (in charge of special operations) met with Mohammed Atta, of 9/11 fame, on more than one occasion.

And long before the invasion ... in fact, long before 9/11, Saddam was remaking his image into that of a friend of the Islamists. In 1994, he began to play the "faith card" big time. He built schools that promoted mandatory Qur'an studies. He built training centers for imams. And don't forget the Saddam University of Islamic Studies. Iraq's radio stations began airing Qur'anic lessons. Alcohol was banned in restaurants. Even Baath party officials were required to take courses in the Qur'an. Murals of Saddam sprang up all over with him shown in prayer. He built three huge mosques and even had a Qur'an written in his own blood. And keep in mind that at the time of 9/11 and later, there were friendly contacts going on between Iraq and al-Qaeda officials.

Surely you know all this ...

 

[BeAChooser]

The comparisons made before the Iraq war involved Hitler and Chamberlain's response, not the possibility of Germany invading the USA.

Read post #42. That's the post I was responding to when I started comparing Hitler and Saddam.

Before the Gulf War, Saddam believed that the US and our allies would not defend Kuwait.

Untrue. Tariz Aziz, Saddam's left hand man, told USA Today after the 91 war (and he was still working for Saddam) that "We knew the United States would have a strong reaction against that. So we didn't have any false expectations the United States would sit and watch" the invasion. He told PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/aziz/2.html ) that "It was nonsense to think that the Americans would not attack us. In the early hours of the 2nd of August, the whole apparatus of the leadership took precautions for an American speedy immediate retaliation." He went on to say "So we had no illusions that the Americans will not retaliate against being in Kuwait because they knew that this was a conflict between the two of us-- Iraq and the United States." He told the NY Times that on 31 May 1991 that "We were expecting an American attack on the morning of the second of August."

Why do you assume that if we didn't conquer Iraq in 2003, we would have totally ignored Iraq's behavior in the future?

What would you have done given a newly rearmed Iraq with lots of WMD? democRATS in this country blanch at the thought of a few thousand American servicemen dying over a 5 year period. Doing anything effective against a WMD armed Iraq might have cost tens of thousands of serviceman lives. If we were lucky. We had a window of opportunity and thankfully Bush took it.

Or that somehow the rest of the world would look the other way as Iraq built plutonium producing reactors or uranium enrichment facilities?

Same thing they are doing in Iran. Essentially nothing. And that's with the US military stating they have hard evidence that Iran is building IEDs to kill American troops in Iraq and helping plan and fund operations against the Iraqi government and its troops. That's with Iran helping fund, train, equip terrorists in Lebanon and Gaza and directly supporting attacks on Israel during the recent conflict.

 

[FireGarden]

Well it turned out to be a bogus reason.

I'll wait for expert opinion.
The writers of the NEJM study are experts. And so are those that reviewed it. In a few months, other experts may have an opinion.

Wrong. NEJM only used IBC for the RATIOS between areas

That's still using data.
L-1 did not guess. They left Fallujah out of the final figure.

Why not? Their reports tells you exactly what they did and how they applied those ratios.

Show me then.

But they base both pre- and post-war mortality entirely on polling of people ... people who might have any number of reasons to misstate, misrepresent, misunderstand or misremember the facts.

And experience shows that polling works better than a passive count. And, as I've said, L-1 and NEJM both estimate about 100,000 deaths for the relevant period. They disagree on the ratio of violent deaths. But the overall figure is a very strong match.

Coincidence?

A pre-war mortality rate of 3 percent looks silly when put in the context of conditions known to exist in Iraq before the war. Remember ... Iraq was a country:

Most reports give higher numbers, as we've established.
The writers of NEJM themselves say that they have probably undercounted. "In general, the underreporting of deaths is likely to be common in household surveys. The most serious concern is household dissolution after the death of a household member. Several demographic assessments have suggested that there has been an underreporting of deaths in the IFHS."

But the main thing is the increase in death rate.
NEJM estimates that it has doubled. L-2 estimated an increase by a factor of 2.4

Yet you expect us to believe it had a lower death rate than almost every country in the world, including the very richest ones with the best medical care, the cleanest living environments, rather benevolent governments and which had not suffered a major war on home territory in half a century.

Age is a huge factor. See my answer to Mycroft.

My mistake. 12 year olds.

I still say BS.
It would make more sense to send sheep. Or even a heavily reinforced remote control tractor.

So you don't like Britain either? Why do you stay?

I like Britain. I don't like the government.

A percent of "increase" is not the same as the percent of the total amount. As indicated quite clearly in Table 2, 14% of the total excess deaths were due to violent causes. Period.

The "increase" is the excess deaths.
But fine... Have 14%
14/100 of the excess deaths were due to violence. So how many deaths does that mean in total? -- excess and due to the invasion.

14x/100 = 150,000
What is x?

Your number will be larger than if you agreed to 1/3 and will make Bush look bad. And that will make you cry.

No, but I have no doubt that there are many leftists on the anti-war side (especially in universities and health related organizations that are often populated by leftists) who are quite willing to overlook fundamental errors and problems with the Lancet data because they too are agenda driven.

Oh wow!

Why don't you try to deal with the specific objections that were raised?

I've answered a few.
Some more are answered at Deltoid.
Perhaps you should pick the one point that best illustrates fraud... Then I would have less to choose from.

NEJM is a better study, with more resources. I see nothing in L-2 that indicates fraud.

But they get high rates (and none are as high as 98%) by making multiple trips to the same survey location if no one is home during earlier visits.

Whereas in Lancet-2 they picked a house then wisited the next until 40 had been surveyed. "Empty houses or
those that refused to participate were passed over until
40 households had been interviewed in all locations."

So no-one being home was not a factor.

NEJM says that "Only 0.4% of households declined to complete the questionnaire."

So, passing over those houses with no-one home, L-2 managed a 98% response. That's worse than NEJM.

Death certificates are not a passive recording mechanism.

Says who?
As I understand it, if you wait for the report of the death to reach you, then it is a passive system.

They are an active one with procedures in place to pass them up the governmental chain for proper tabulation.

I'm sure it's a very busy system with lots of work. But that's the not the meaning I was using.

Also, the LATimes (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...5jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines ) said they "attempted to reach a comprehensive figure by obtaining statistics from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry and checking those numbers against a sampling of local health departments for possible undercounts." If what you say were true, their checks should have picked up substantial undercounting. Apparently it didn't.

A pity they didn't give us the ratio of violent to non-violent deaths.

 

[FireGarden]

It's entirely plausible that the death rate really is slightly less than it was before the war.

It is entirely plausible. But does the best evidence suggest it?
Why does L-2 say the death rate went up by 2.4 times and NEJM say that it doubled?

Which surveys, which tried to measure the change rather than absolute value, say that the death rate went down? All the CIA has is a year-by-year sequence of stats on death rate. But, as we've seen, the absolute value varies quite a bit between the WHO, UNICEF, etc.

 

[FireGarden]

So where exactly were the Al Qaeda camps in Iraq?

Were these camps inside or outside the region controlled by Baghdad?

I was so surprised by the following article when linusrichard posted it a while back. I tried to get more response at JREF -- you know, quality control. But perhaps it was old to most people here.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

[...] Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

etc.
That's the Bush admin's attitude to WMDs.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
And Saddam had research on nukes, chemical and biological weapons, long range missiles, cannon and UAVs, and on using terrorists to spread destruction to it's enemies.

He didn't have the means of delivering, he had scrapped it all. The only question was, what little did he have left. The answer was nothing.

That's not what the ISG concluded at all. With regards to WMD, the ISG final report said they couldn't guarantee that they found all the WMD weapons and materials Saddam had before the war. Iraq is a big place and there might still be items hidden in that country. The ISG said "the existence of this binary weapon not only raises questions about the number of viable chemical weapons remaining in Iraq and raises the possibility that a larger number of binary, long-lasting chemical weapons still exist."

And at the time David Kay stepped down as head of the ISG, he told the press that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before the war. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme." We still don't know what the 50-75 vehicle, guarded truck convoys moving to Syria before the war contained.

In fact Duelfer, who replaced Kay as head of the ISG, stated after the ISG effort was finished that the "ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war." He said "Whether Syria received military items from Iraq for safekeeping or other reasons has yet to be determined" but "there was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation." But Duelfer said he was unable to complete that aspect of the probe because "the declining security situation limited and finally halted this investigation. The results remain inconclusive".

Furthermore, even with what they found, the ISG concluded that once sanctions were removed (and don't delude yourself into thinking they wouldn't have been had Iraq received a clean bill of health and we not invaded), Iraq would only have needed a few months to rebuild its mustard gas arsenal and perhaps a year to restock with nerve gas munitions. Plus Iraq retained the seed stock, knowledge and equipment needed to quickly restart its biological munitions program. Here's what Duelfer told Congress in 2004: "By 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in a period of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two. ... snip ... What is clear is that Saddam retained his notions of the use of force and had experience that demonstrated the utility of WMD. He was making progress in eroding sanctions and, had it not been for the events of 9-11-2001, things would have taken a different course for the Regime. Most senior members of the Regime and scientists assumed that the programs would begin in earnest when sanctions ended---and sanctions were eroding. ... snip ... A variety of questions about Iraqi WMD capabilities and intentions remain unanswered, even after extensive investigation by ISG. For example, we cannot yet definitively say whether or not WMD materials were transferred out of Iraq before the war. Neither can we definitively answer some questions about possible retained stocks." Not the picture you are trying to present.

When it comes to delivery systems, keep in mind that the threat we were concerned about is terrorism. You don't need ballistic missiles and aircraft to deliver such weapons. It isn't at all inconceivable that a small group of people could move a WMD designed for terrorism to another country ... even the US or Britain? Remember the tapes they found of Saddam and his staff discussing this? Sure, Saddam denied on the tape that Iraq would ever do that. Of course he knew he was being taped and we know he was a master of deniability ... having lied countless times about every aspect of his countries intent and involvement in WMD and terrorism. And you can hear his assistants on those tapes talking enthusiastically about the prospect of using third parties to attack the US with WMD.

And besides, we know that Iraq was still working on long range weaponry right before the war, despite their agreement not to do so. They found UAVs that had been tested to ranges far in excess of the allowed limit. The scientist who ran that program has admitted that he thought the actual intent of that program was to carry WMD. They found that Iraq was still working on missiles that exceeded the allowed ranges. They found documents in their files on how they might upgrade those missiles to produce really long range missiles ... missile capable of reaching Europe. And missile technology was the long pole in Iraq's ambitions. It was the technology that would have taken Iraq the longest time to complete. That's why Saddam's regime never stopped those programs ... why it was still actively building and testing them right up to the war and why the UN inspectors had to order that dozens of completed missiles be destroyed. Remove the sanctions and Iraq would have had that capability by NOW. And then what would you do if Saddam misbehaved?

Do you realize that even as late as March of 2003, UNMOVIC was STILL seeking interviews with people and Iraq was preventing them. Blix noted that "There have been reports, denied from the Iraqi side, that proscribed activities are conducted underground." Denied by the Iraqi side. And the ISG did indeed discover proscribed underground labs after the invasion. Blix noted "the Iraqi side tried to persuade us that the Al Samoud 2 missiles they have declared fall within the permissible range set by the Security Council." Well they didn't and like I said, it turns out the Iraqis had plans for much longer range missiles in the works.

You claim they "scrapped it all". If they "scrapped it all" then why did the ISG discover a concerted effort to sanitize computers, files and facilities that were thought related to WMD before, during and even after the invasion? If they "scrapped it all", why did the ISG discover TONS of documents Iraq was not supposed to have hidden in the desert? The documents apparently even included highly detailed information on how to build nuclear weapons. If they "scrapped it all", why did the ISG discover the complete plans and critical components for making centrifuges? If they "scrapped it all", then tell us what was in trucks convoys that carried something to Syria right before the war? The truth is that your statement that the "scrapped it all" and had "nothing" is a lie.

Quote:
Then he should have just abided by the cease-fire agreements and cooperated with the inspectors. His oil billions would have bought him all the power any sane man could desire.

He more or less did. I think that's what had him puzzled.

And that's a lie as well, given the facts cited above.

Saddam was known to be not co-operating with the terrorists, they were not mutually compatible.

And that too is a lie, as the examples I've already cited (and they are by no means all the examples I could cite) prove.

There was a difference between lifting the sanctions that targetted civilians, and those that would allow Saddam to re-arm.

So you think that the West targeted the sanctions against civilians? Well that too is a lie ... about as bald-faced a lie as you could possibly make. It tells volumes about you. The truth is that legitimate request for import were not denied. The real problem is that Saddam kept trying to import equipment and materials for his WMD programs by ordering items that "might" have helped his people. That too is a fact acknowledged in the ISG final report. And we know that much of the aid that actually was allowed never actually made it to the people who needed it. Saddam diverted it for other uses.

The more immediate threat is Pakistan going down.

Be honest. You are no more interested in doing anything about Pakistan than you were about Iraq. This is just a debating tactic on your part. If we actually did something about Pakistan, you'd be complaining about that too.

They have functional nukes

Have the leaders of Pakistan actually used their WMD on any other countries or their own population? No. But Saddam did. Did the leaders of Pakistan cooperate with the coalition after 9/11 and have they been active in killing and capturing hundreds of al-Qaeda terrorists? The answer to both questions is yes. Saddam did neither. He applauded the actions of the 9/11 terrorists, apparently warned them in Afghanistan that a US response was coming their way, and allowed terrorists to operate in his capital against US forces.

The Iraq war has served to destabilise Pakistan even more.

Nonsense. Even before 9/11 Pakistan had major problems with its ethnic groups and with terrorists. What destabilized Pakistan was not Iraq but kicking the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan. Many of them fled to the mountains and backwaters of Pakistan. That happened BEFORE we invaded Iraq. And their PRESENCE is what has destabilized Pakistan even more than it already was.

It shattered alright. The repeated surveys reveal a massive upsurge in violence between the groups.

It didn't shatter. It has remained intact DESPITE that violence. And much of that violence was due to terrorist activity by al-Qaeda, trying to foment chaos. You blame us ... you should blame the responsible party. And that violence is now subsiding. But you still seem to want to cut and run ... even if that allows the violence to return. Which puts the lie to your real motivations in this matter.

Iraq won't be a friend of the US and UK. I have no idea where you get that idea.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39202 "Grateful Iraqis thank
America for sacrifice"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1518877/posts "Iraqi Kurds thank the United States for liberation in New T.V ads "

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=17352 "Iraqi President Thanks 'Heroes Who Came to Liberate Us"

http://badgersforward.blogspot.com/2007/11/iraqis-thank-ameircan-veterans_12.html "12 November 2007 ... snip ... 'Thank you for all your assistance to your friends in Iraq,' Rafe Al-Essawi, former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, told Vermont soldiers through an interpreter." ... snip ... "We have defeated al-Qaida in this very large province of Al Anbar as a result of our cooperation with your forces," Mamoon S. Rashid Al-Alwani, governor of Al Anbar, said through an interpreter. "This victory came as a result of our cooperation with your forces and our bloods have spilled together."

Saddam had no interest in Al Qaeda. Their aims are diametrically opposed to his.

Then why'd did his regime allow al-Qaeda to get medical assistance in Baghdad after the camps in Afghanistan fell? Why did he allow them to operate out of Baghdad in operations against us? Why did he personally order the release of al-Qaeda members when they were captured? Why did he have murals like this (http://www.nationalreview.com/images/mural3.jpg ) put up in his country? If their aims are "diametrically opposed"? You lie.

Yep there is a surge in Iraq, so Afghanistan becomes more unstable.

And you spin.

Capricious is the only way to describe the invasion of Iraq.

And you distort.

Dubya is the lamest of the lame ducks.

You aren't at all in touch with reality.

5) Israel.

Ah yes ... it ALWAYS comes down to Israel with folks of your persuasion, doesn't it.

 

[a_unique_person]

Ah yes ... it ALWAYS comes down to Israel with folks of your persuasion, doesn't it.

Typical response of people like you, you mean. That was Wilkie's list, not mine.

 

[Mycroft]

It is entirely plausible. But does the best evidence suggest it?
Why does L-2 say the death rate went up by 2.4 times and NEJM say that it doubled?

What's the best evidence? If you buy the NEJM then the number of violent deaths should be about 4000 a month every month. Where are these massacres taking place? It's not like this is a part of the world where we can't gather news. If these people can be called by a survey, then news certainly should be able to get out by media, but we're just not seeing anything like these numbers.

Which surveys, which tried to measure the change rather than absolute value, say that the death rate went down? All the CIA has is a year-by-year sequence of stats on death rate. But, as we've seen, the absolute value varies quite a bit between the WHO, UNICEF, etc.

I don't think any survey is the right way to gather data in these circumstances.

Think about it, you've been living under a dictator for 20 years who had a habit of killing his political enemies or turning them over for torture. Now your country is in the hands of a foreign invader, and you're alternatively told they're heroes to save the day, or worse than the dictator they deposed. On top of that, you're poised on the brink of what could be a very bloody civil war, with religious fanatics threatening to kill people for buying the wrong kind of falafel at the market and arming people with downs-syndrome with explosive belts. Ethnic militias are forming that could easily try to seize control the moment the US is gone, and satellite television is suggesting that could be as soon as the next US election.

In that environment, someone calls you on the phone and asks a bunch of nosey questions. What's your incentive to be truthful?

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Well it turned out to be a bogus reason.

I'll wait for expert opinion.

You don't need to wait for an expert to spoon feed you the fact that was bogus reasoning. You just have to have a little common sense and the ability to process 2 + 2. You claimed that the reason the NEJM study showed less deaths compared to the JH studies is that NEJM under-surveyed Anbar compared to the JH studies. But I easily proved that's not true. I proved that JH only surveyed Falluja in Anbar. I proved that they then tossed out most of that data anyway in their study. I proved that NEJM had far more clusters sampled in Anbar than JH did. And given the fact that at the time that NEJM ran its study, Falluja was quite peaceful and safe, there is no reason to doubt that NEJM also sampled Falluja but didn't toss out their data. And given the number of clusters NEJM sampled in Anbar compared to JH, it's also more than likely that they sampled other areas in Anbar. So I'm sorry but your reasoning was indeed bogus.

Quote:
Wrong. NEJM only used IBC for the RATIOS between areas

That's still using data.

But it's not directly using data which is you wanted to imply. They did not use the number of deaths in Anbar that IBC counted as the number of deaths in Anbar in their study. They only used the IBC data as a means of comparing the number of deaths in places they couldn't sample to the number of deaths in places they could so that they could rationally estimate the number of deaths in places where they couldn't sample from the number of deaths they found in places where they could sample. That's a rational approach to the problem.

L-1 did not guess. They left Fallujah out of the final figure.

Meaning that they included no Anbar data in their estimate of the death rate in Anbar. Which can only mean they guessed. Look at Figure 2 in the Lancet 1 report. It states that "Governorate rates are on a scale of 15 deaths per 1000 person-years, except for Anbar governorate, where deaths were more than ten times higher." I ask you, if they threw out Falluja from the final figure, how did they come up with that ten times higher rate for Anbar? Falluja was the only cluster in Anbar. They can only have guessed since their report presents no other means for calculating the number who died in the population of Anbar in those 18 months. It's as simple as that.

I think this instance also demonstrates their motivations in this study. You need only look at the way they sampled Anbar. They put one cluster in it ... in Falluja, a city of perhaps 300,000 in a province with over 1.2 million. They state in their report that "Falluja was probably the most violent city in Iraq at the time of the survey". So they planned to survey the most violent city in Iraq and use that data to represent the other 3/4ths of Anbar, where it presumably wasn't as violent. To me, that shows a desire to bump up the death rate estimated for Anbar.

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Why not? Their reports tells you exactly what they did and how they applied those ratios.

Show me then.

What? You can't read a 10 page report and look for where they mentioned the Iraq Body Count? I correctly summarized what they did with the IBC database.

And, as I've said, L-1 and NEJM both estimate about 100,000 deaths for the relevant period. They disagree on the ratio of violent deaths.

But the claimed cause of most of those deaths is very, very different. That makes one or the other result suspicious. Surely you aren't suggesting that people "polled" on the cause of death of a loved one would confuse violence with a disease or old age or misremember only a year or two later. And I thought you just got done telling us that polling is better than a passive count. By the way, in passive counts with death certificates, the cause of death is listed and determined by an expert.

The writers of NEJM themselves say that they have probably undercounted.

But they increased their death rate by a factor of 50% just to account for that undercounting. The data actually showed a 100,000, not a 150,000 violent deaths in the survey period.

But the main thing is the increase in death rate. NEJM estimates that it has doubled. L-2 estimated an increase by a factor of 2.4

You want to talk about the increase in death rate? Sure. The NEJM study indicates the violent death rate remained relatively constant over 3 different time periods after the invasion. But the Lancet 2 study showed the violent death rate steadily climbing after the invasion ... from 3.2/1000/year in the 2003/2004 time frame to over 12/1000/year in 2005-2006 time frame. Care to explain that discrepancy? Hummm?

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Yet you expect us to believe it had a lower death rate than almost every country in the world, including the very richest ones with the best medical care, the cleanest living environments, rather benevolent governments and which had not suffered a major war on home territory in half a century.

Age is a huge factor.

But infant and under-five mortality rate is as also a huge factor. You noted that 40% of Iraq's population is under 15. Well a third of those are under 5, an age range where death rates in Iraq are acknowledged to be far higher than in the United States. The problem is that the Lancet and NEJM's estimates of that pre-war death rate in Iraq are totally out of wack with everyone else. Not just a little different ... totally different. For example, a 2002 UNICEF study found an infant (<1) mortality rate of 102/1000. That's compared to JH's estimate of 29/1000. Presumably, NEJM's must be even lower given a pre-war mortality rate for the overall population of only 3/1000/year. In comparison, US infant mortality is about 7/1000 births.

But fine... Have 14%
14/100 of the excess deaths were due to violence. So how many deaths does that mean in total? -- excess and due to the invasion.

Well, let's see. NEJM says that the rate of excess violence related death was 1.67/1000/year (after bumping the survey results up 50% to account for possible undercounting). With a population estimated at about 27 million, over a 40 month period that works out to about 150,000, just as they said. But then again, that is entirely dependent on that ridiculous pre-war mortality rate of 3/1000/year.

Your number will be larger than if you agreed to 1/3 and will make Bush look bad. And that will make you cry.

I don't agree to 1/3rd because that's not what NEJM said they found. You just misinterpreted what they said.

I see nothing in L-2 that indicates fraud.

Then where are the death certificates they claimed to have seen? And how in the world did they manage to get a 98+% response rate on a single visit survey in a wartorn country?

Whereas in Lancet-2 they picked a house then wisited the next until 40 had been surveyed.

And got a 98+% response rate among those 40 houses. As you said, "wow".

"Empty houses or those that refused to participate were passed over until 40 households had been interviewed in all locations. So no-one being home was not a factor. ... snip ... So, passing over those houses with no-one home, L-2 managed a 98% response."

You are again misunderstanding what they are saying. The sentence in front of that sentence is the clue. It says that "In every cluster, queries were made about any household that had been present during the survey period that had ceased to exist because all members had died or left." So in the very next sentence when they refer to "Empty houses", they don't mean houses where no one happened to be home at the time, but houses that were literally empty and had no occupants at all. The proof that I'm right is found elsewhere in the report where they state that they surveyed "a final sample of 1849 households in 47 randomly selected clusters. In 16 (0.9%) dwellings, residents were absent; 15 (0.8%) households refused to participate." 47 clusters each containing 40 houses would be 1880 houses. To get 1849, you must subtract 16 where the residents were absent and 15 that refused to participate. So they did not pass by houses where no one was home until they visited a total of 40 homes. They supposedly recorded the ones where no one was home and included those houses in the 40 house total. You are wrong and the Lancet 2 response rate remains highly suspicious.

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Death certificates are not a passive recording mechanism.

Says who?

There's a body. An expert looks at it and hears a report from a cop or the family. Perhaps does an autopsy. Determines a cause of death. Procedures are in place requiring the expert to fill out forms and then pass those forms to higher authorities for recording. It is not a passive recording method. And so far you haven't demonstrated a case where with such a system in place only 10 percent of the deaths notices reach higher authorities. Furthermore, as noted, the LA Times in a number of instances checked the tallies that were recorded by the higher authorities by going to the local authorities who wrote the death certificates to make sure they matched. And they apparently did match.

 

[BeAChooser]

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In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

[...] Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

First of all, the Pentagon's strike against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the Clinton administration can hardly have been called a success. A similar strike against camps in Northern Iraq would likely have been just as *un*successful in preventing an attack. The only way to really deal with the problem was boots on the ground to close the camp permanently and kill it's inhabitants.

Second, recognize that Brian Williams and MSNBC who reported the story in this manner are part of the democRAT leaning mainstream media. They will tend to paint or spin anything in a manner unfavorable to a republican administration.

Third, consider that Roger Cressey was a Clinton administration apologist on numerous occasions. He's one that defended the Clinton administration from charges that they had passed on 13 different opportunities to capture Osama himself.

But most important, not attacking something for fear it would make it impossible to tackle the larger problem is a legitimate concern. The allies in WW2 let Germany bomb civilian and military targets in England that they knew were going to be attacked in advance because they'd broken German codes because there were larger issues at stake. The same is true here. A camp making ricin and cyanide weapons was a minor concern compared to a regime, with a history like that of Saddam's, who knew how to make nerve, biological and radiological weapons and might turn some of those finished products over to terrorists. And an attack of the sort that actually happened probably captured or killed far more terrorists than any planned operations of the Pentagon prior to the invasion.

By the way, did any real evidence turn up that they in fact developed Ricin and Cyanide weapons at this camp and they got used? Apparently not.