[Grovenet] If the facts don't fit, you must deny ! ! ! !

Thu Oct 12 15:51:13 PDT 2006

A couple of points that I heard made in the news:

1) The numbers didn't just come from the families. Once claims of deaths
were made, the investigators checked large samples to see if they were
backed by death certificates before accepting the numbers as reflecting
reality.  

2) According to the reports I heard on PBS yesterday, the question was "how
many people have died since 2003 on ANY cause?" Then they looked at the
historical death rate and subtracted that. That left deaths from all causes
but those which had acted before the invasion. It includes death from
starvation, stress-related deaths and the like as well a violent deaths.
Indeed, the report I heard said that about half of the deaths were from
"violent" causes. Those include deaths resulting from improvised bombs,
riots, etc., as well as combat deaths. They did note that the vast majority
of the excess deaths were among men of military service age. 

The President - and his supporters all over this country - continue to prove
the denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of allnutt
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 1:56 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] If the facts don't fit, you must deny ! ! ! !

What amazes me is that the numbers come from people in Iraq about Iraqi
deaths. Remember back during the first two years of this war when we were
'enlightened' about how great the war was going? There were many days when
the reports would be of a suicide bomber who got close to a market and
killed 3 people but wounded 12 or 15.  If we take the body counts from those
incidents it would be only 3 dead.  But say the wounded lived  for another
week or month before they succumbed to a slow loss of blood or an infection
or something as simple as trying to get up a flight of stairs while they
were still anemic but they fainted and then died.  The US wouldn't count
those as among the dead.  (Kind of like asking how many people die from
jumping off a cliff? Nobody dies from jumping off a cliff. But a lot of
people die from landing at the bottom.) But now along comes a statistician
knocking at an Iraqis door. They ask how many of your family died as a
result of the war in Iraq.  Well, if it was your dad who was wounded by the
suicide bomber at the market, and even if he lived a month but died some
slow lingering process, you would probably say he died from the fighting,
not from the infection he had troubles getting medicine to treat.

The bottom line is that the statisticians are telling us that to the Iraqi
people, they are of the opinion that their relatives are dying in great
numbers. Probably to the tune of between 392,000-942,000 with 95% accuracy.
Some people would put it in terms that 50,000 died from the fighting and the
rest of them died from something else, or at least Bush would.  Casey says
he has not seen a number higher than 50,000.  

Doesn't that seem amazingly low?  Look at the US casualties so far.   We
have about 2800 dead and around 20,000 wounded. And we are saving our
wounded soldiers at historically astounding numbers.  I can believe that the
Iraqis have the hospitals and technologies to save their wounded better than
we do.  For every report that said 3 were killed by a suicide bomber and 12
were wounded, at a time when the reports were also saying that Iraqi
hospitals were running out of medicine, out of sterile equipment, out of
blood donations, and out of personnel, how many of those 12 would be
expected to live?  We have had 23000 US personel with bullet and shrapnel
holes and that is not even counting the civilian contractors dead or
wounded, and yet we are expected to believe that only twice that many have
died as Iraqis?  To believe that we would have to believe that we are only
shooting 2 of them for every one of us that they shoot. That is not the
picture of the super efficient military !
 that we claim to be. 

If the surveyors had asked, how many of your relatives have died from a
direct shot from a US military person, then I might believe the answer would
be closer to 50,000.  But the question was how many of your relatives have
died because the US invaded Iraq?  That would include the 40-60 bodies a day
that have been turning up drilled and executed, even if we weren't the ones
drilling holes into their flesh and popping them off with a bullet to the
head.

The Iraqis are attributing around 600,000 deaths to our arrival and
continued presence.  Bush may want to only 'count' our direct hits but the
difference between the two numbers may explain why Bush says we need to stay
until we are good and ready to leave (when only Barney will look him in the
eye) and why 60-70% of Iraqis want us to go home sooner rather than later.

I can believe both numbers.  The Iraqis have the impression that we have
killed 600,000 of thier people.  Bush only wants credit for 50,000 and he
would like the rest to be called..... what???... figments of their relatives
imaginations? The issue that we will have to deal with after Bush is no
longer in office is not so much what was the exact number of people killed
due to the US presence in Iraq. It is what do the people of the region
believe was the number of people killed by our presence. Right now we aren't
winning any hearts and minds with our bikering about the number no matter
how many experts are convinced the methodologies are sound.

Katie

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bob Browning 
  To: Grovenet 
  Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 11:33 AM
  Subject: [Grovenet] If the facts don't fit, you must deny ! ! ! !

  http://tinyurl.com/y6ve84

  bob "read 'em and weep" browning

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