Comments on: Petraeus Betray Us?

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:45:04 +0000

Pat: I agree 100% with you. I came across the Lakoff article the next day and am now unapologetic about defending Moveon.org's strategy. By the way, note that I wrote about this a day later on teleread .

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:37:58 +0000

I am not disagreeing with anything you say. But the Lancet study cites a rate of excess mortality; it then extrapolates according to the population estimate. But the refugee count has been enormous. I'm not sure how reliable or up-to-date the mortality estimates are. Wikipedia provides estimates of Iraqi refugees :

As of 2007 over 3.9 million people, close to 16% of the Iraqi population, have become refugees. Of these, 2 million have fled Iraq for other countries, while approximately 1.9 million are refugees inside Iraq.[165] As of June 21, 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, and 2 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month.[166][167]

Those statistics suggest that 8% of the population is outside of Iraq. I have not seen any attempt by the Lancet study to figure that fact into it. If they haven't, that would suggest that the Lancet study may be off as much as 8%. Hey, this is good news if true. Then again, I have to assume that professional statisticians would factor that into their estimates. I just haven't seen any explanation.

By: Pat C.

Pat C. — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:01:39 +0000

Pray tell me how the MoveOn ad is more “insulting” or “over the top” than the hundreds of sneeringly sarcastic “Purple Heart” bandaids worn at the Republican National Convention. Or, in fact, ANY of the stunts pulled by the Swiftboaters?

By: Gary Denton

Gary Denton — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:12:52 +0000

The Iraqi body count is a count of deaths mentioned in English language media accounts. It severely undercounts the dead.

From just above the wiki section you link to:

The authors described the fact that their estimate is over ten times higher than other estimates, such as the Iraq Body Count project (IBC) estimate and U.S. Department of Defence estimates, as “not unexpected”, stating that this is a common occurrence in conflict situations. They stated, “Aside from Bosnia, we can find no conflict situation where passive surveillance recorded more than 20% of the deaths measured by population-based methods. In several outbreaks, disease and death recorded by facility-based methods underestimated events by a factor of ten or more when compared with population-based estimates. Between 1960 and 1990, newspaper accounts of political deaths in Guatemala correctly reported over 50% of deaths in years of low violence but less than 5% in years of highest violence.”

The second Lancet study is absolutely how you would do a study and the criticisms are overblown. There have been no criticisms that focus on the methodology that offers better ways to conduct the study.