. . . there was great interest when the Lancet published a study in October 2006, three weeks before the midterm US elections, reporting that 655,000 people had died in Iraq as a result of the US-led war.
But the truth, it turns out, is that the report was drenched with politics, and its jaw-dropping conclusions should have inspired anything but confidence.
Much of the funding for the study came from the Open Society Institute of leftist billionaire George Soros, a strident critic of the Iraq war who, as Munro and Cannon point out, “spent $30 million trying to defeat Bush in 2004.”
Coauthors Burnham and Roberts were avowed opponents of the Iraq war, and submitted their report to The Lancet on the condition that it be published
before the election.But because it served the interests of those eager to discredit the war as a moral catastrophe, common-sense standards were ignored. “In our view, the Hopkins study stands until someone knocks it down,” editorialized the Baltimore Sun.
Now someone has, devastatingly. But will the debunking be trumpeted as loudly and clearly as the original report? Don’t hold your breath.
Jacoby is just another highly paid republicon chickenhawk propagandist.No cred. No talent. No relevance.
Yah, the Soros funded story is a complete joke.
Just a BIT of a slight difference. All the Lefty blogs are writing: “when they start talking about body counts they’re already losing the argument.”
Well, no, the point IS: the entire thrust was nothing more than an attempt to discredit ANY aspect of America.
Lies. Then ignorance. Then coverups of lies, then purposeful NON-COVERAGE of the truth.
And have you heard The Left’s NEWEST bleat? THEY think the media is RIGHT WING DRIVEN.
How do you possibly compete with such absolute ignorance and stupidity?
BZ
It will be interesting to see the mudslinging during the general election…One major problem might creep up though.
If there is no change in three months, there will be war again
If that happens, the election might spin dramatically left in a hurry.
Sorry the link is:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/if-there-is-no-change-in-three-months-there-will-be-war-again-774847.html
The Lancet study stunk to high heaven when done – not only was their methodology a fraud, but their counting was a fraud, too. And what the Left would never address is that even *with* those numbers it did *not* describe a ‘civil war’.
The levels of fraud and deceit in making, publishing, pushing and then spinning those numbers by the Left put Piltdown Man to shame. Pretty much in the Velikovsky planetary pinball mode, which *still* to this day, has adherents that have zero comprehension of gravity and orbital mechanics.
The Lancet demolished its entire reputation with that study.
The memes that have not proven out as bad as the media wanted them to be are: deaths, famine, refugees and sectarian violence. The pre-war first 6 months death predictions from the Left were astronomical. Ditto the long-term, multi-year famine that never showed up. And the tens of millions of refugees that left UN camps *empty* with the highest number in a UN camp being 20. Sectarian violence has never been as high as the Left wanted it to be… consider that every, single household has an AK-47, if not also having rifles and handguns. A ‘civil war’ with that level of automatic weapons would finally get the modern era up to the US standards of a Civil War.
Didn’t happen.
ANY OF THEM.
What we have had is nearly a replay of the Philippine-American war counter-insurgency experience with almost the *exact same* troop levels and a far *lower* casualty rate working itself out in almost exactly the *same* amount of time going through the *same* methodologies and stumbling blocks. America doesn’t do COIN like an imperial power which is why the armed forces need to re-adjust methodology between main force combat and counter-insurgency as they require two different mindsets.
Not that the Left or the MSM or, indeed, many on the Right, will ever, not once, bother to examine *that*. In their blissful ignorance driven by ideology they have forgetten the proud and tough history of the US where the force of building only trumps the force of destruction when you can protect such building and get those doing the building to defend it for themselves. And in playing up the deaths necessary to *do that* those on the Left and, distressingly, on the Right who play up the violence have written off our founding views on the equality of man and our basic trust that given a chance to govern from the bottom up and allow free people to defy authority, that good can come of it. When the Mosques had to change their tunes in Anbar, Diyala and elsewhere, it was not at US or Iraqi government mandate: it was their people telling the imams to STFU and STFD and *help* or they would no longer have a following and might find themselves ridden out on the Iraqi equivalent of a rail… tarred and feathered. Amazing how tribe trumps religion – that *worked* while very other concept of ‘outreach’ has failed in the Middle East.
The Founders win, the two party, Left/Right ideologues lose. Again. As we aren’t bothering to learn our history, we are doomed to repeat that of humankind, which has seen republics and democracies come and go. Perhaps it is time to put the 1960’s experience into perspective… before it kills us in its vitriol that now seeps into all parts of society. If we can’t learn the lessons of war and how to make peace, we can never hold and keep peace. Sadly, no one wants to learn those lessons and soon, very soon, we will not have peace to hold or keep.
Bushwack: ah yes, the brilliance and benefits of dealing with TRIBES, just as he stated.
AJ: one reason we simply we not “pacify” Iraq or bring “democracy” (meaning, OUR style of democracy) to a region cleaved into tribes and only held together by iron fists — something the US possesses not.
BZ
The left has concrete minds.
Completely mixed up and permanently set.