http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2168496,00.html

someone needs to find this video.

that reminds me of the song Driller Killer

sick fucks...

It's funny, because oil is the one thing that Iraq has to fund itself. But when Bush says "we need to protect Iraq's oil infrastructure," people scream at the top of their lungs "SEE!?!?! TOLD YOU THIS WAR WAS ABOUT OIL!!!"

Wait, I thought this was about oil drills. Woopsie daisy.

The video is a fake, by the way. I'm too rushed to find a link, but it's actually a nepalese man, or something like that.

thats intense

The people who do this shit are among the most pathetic in the world.

and Liberals like Hail_The_Leaf bitch when we kill these assholes.......guess she could be living in a better country...like Iraq...the sandbox we call the middle east. What a total shithole.

No, I bitch when we invade other countries that have never harmed us and murder hundreds of thousands of innocent people so a few can profit from it. Then when they get sick of our foreign policy and some of the extermists living there bomb us, you bitch about it. By the way, since this is about a reporter who was murdered, you should look at how many reporters have been mudered since the start of this war, and see how many were at the hands of the U.S. compared with the psycho extermists over there.

I'll even make it easy for ya, it's 86 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq, (This is more than the number killed during 20 years of war in Vietnam or the civil war in Algeria) since March 2003, with the U.S. military responsible for 12% of those, armed groups - 35%, unidentified - 53%. (according to a report from 2005, the number is currently 93). So why are we killing reporters?

If reporters are filming insurgents from the insurgents side, then can we really blame the military if they're firing in that general direction and the reporter happens to catch a bullet?

And the vietnamese comparison for reporters killed conveniently leaves out a seriously important fact: there were barely any reporters in vietnam compared to Iraq. The first war, I think, that received widespread media coverage on the actual battleground was the first gulf war in the early 90's.

And stop saying 100,000's or Iraqis dead. It's not true. The lancet study (the only that's said, 100,000) said that it was 95% certain that the death toll was between 8,000 and 196,000. they chose 100,000 just because the number was in the middle. How... scientific.

PatMeebles said:

between 8,000 and 196,000.....

oh yeah, give a take ten thousand or so. cool.

HailTheLeaf said:


I guess that maybe those reporters should either keep their heads down or get the fuck outta the war zone. I doubt that these reporters were forced to go there. Also, if they get in the way of the firefights....too bad. When we were in Somalia, the asshole reporters from the Associated Press ran around the firefights taking pictures. If they get in the way...too bad. I wouldn't put the lives of my Marines in jeopardy to avoid shooting a dipshit with a camera who has no idea what he's doing. You're right....we Marines had NO RESPECT at all for dumbass reporters who flock to every war to conjure up some silly story for you to believe. Keep thinking the way you do, it's amusing for people who have been there to read. Too bad you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground. You just regurgitate whatever spew you read in your Liberal vomit webzines and "news" websites. When you understand the reality of anything, then post something worth reading....until then....just stop, because you make yourself look more and more like a dumbass with each post....but then again....so do I.

PatMeebles said:

Barely any reporters in Vietnam? you've gotta be kidding me, that war had more coverage in this country than the current war.



How do you know? I've heard 150,000. No one is keeping count because apparently dead people in other countries don't matter unless they're American. That statement was ment to be all inclusive anyways, not just Iraq, so I probably should've said millions...

PatMeebles said:

As I've already mentioned, John McLaughlin quoted the number as almost 120,000 some months ago, which means that there are figures above 100,000 besides the Lancet Study.

Aside from that, it is also a historical fact that death tolls in war are much more likely to be underestimated during the conflict than overestimated.

You guys are right about the reporters in the line of fire stuff, though.

HailTheLeaf said:

Your first claim is ludicrous. Nobody in the general public had any real knowledge and, therefore, scrutiny of the vietnam war until Walter Cronkite said anything about it. There just wasn't any serious widespread coverage like there was today.

And the Iraqi Bodycount site puts the toll around 30,000-40,000. But most of those casualties are caused by insurgents attacking their own people; not the US military. The ONLY study to ever put the Iraqi casualty number anywhere near 100,000 was the Lancet study, done by John Hopkins University. Any increase in that number is just because the study was done a while ago, so naturally anybody who uses that number would add on to it. Not to say they're just making up numbers like 120,000 or 150,000, but the Lancet study is the only one that would make it logical to make estimations that high today.

Aside from ignoring what I said, that just doesn't make sense. You said that Lancet got 100,000 because it was the average of 8,000 and 196,000; first of all, that math is incorrect, the average of those two numbers is 102,000. That means that the number must have been rounded down to the nearest ten thousand to become an even 100,000. However, the numbers I remember seeing on the McLaughlin group were rounded down to the nearest hundred, which would be an impossible determination had they used or built such approximations. That suggests that they did not use the Lancet Study, which means there must be numbers above 100,000 from other sources.

HailTheLeaf said:

I tried to find exact figures, but failed. Still, that statement is idiotic to say the least. Vietnam did have media coverage, it was broadcasted out of Japan over to the states. But there are alot more journalists today than there were during the 60's. More journalists means more coverage. There's more technology now than the 60's. More technology means more coverage.

I'll look again for numbers.

All that is true, since looking at the whole Vietnam era in hindsight and seeing all the video montages tricks people into thinking there's more coverage than there actually was at the time.

However, what she is saying is totally dead on as far as how many Americans are AWARE of that news coverage, which is equally necessary and important. In the Vietnam era, households converged around the network television news broadcasts like a family ritual, and when Walter Cronkite came on the air in 1968 and said that we can no longer ignore the difference between the unrelenting optimism of American leaders and the facts on the ground, people listened.

None of that would be possible today. Most people are so ignorant of the news and numb to outrage, even if the US were becoming a dictatorship and an anchor came on the air and reported it, the story would fade away among repetitive criticisms dismissing the anchor as a partisan.

Y'know, I tell Hail the Leaf to shut up when she is being ridiculous. How come conservatives who have the ability to think, like Pat Meebles, never tell complete idiots like Hoser to shut the fuck up?

There was much more footage of the actual fighting and the war in Vietnam broadcast into homes in this country than there has been of the Iraq war. In fact, I haven't seen one flag drapped coffin on tv yet...where are all those dead soldiers? If there are more reporters over there than why is there less news about it? Why does the American public still no nothing about what's going on over there? Where is all this heavy duty, entrenched reporting from Iraq filled with details?

70% of all that footage you are talking about was released after the war. Most war footage is. The American public doesn't want to see coffins with flags covering them. The American public doesn't want to see thier fellow countrymen being killed. The media gives the viewer what they want to see.

In the 60's, you had (taking an estimated guess here) 3 national stations broadcasting the war and 3-5 smaller local stations all broadcasting the war coverage in any given area of the country. The thing was, they were broadcasting the same bit of news. Today, you have (each with thier own correspondant) AP, CNN, ABC, NBC, FOX News... Just to name a few. There's also all the free lance reporters feeding stories to anyone that'll buy one.

Also understand that the Vietnam war was a bigger war. There was more fighting and it was a lot longer than Iraq.



Hate to tell ya, but very few people understood why we were in Vietnam until years after the war was over.

Man_of_the_Century said:

I don't think it's that the public doesn't want to see it, it's that the government doesn't want us to see it. People just might feel very differently about the war if they saw what was really going on. The news media feeds off of death, destruction and tragedy, they get a fucking huge boner whenever there's a hurricane or earthquake and a high death toll, so surely there's some other reason they aren't all over a bloody war.

Have you ever thought that maybe what you think is going on over there isn't what is happening? Not everyone in the media is corrupt with a fat bank account thatnks to the government. There are people like that, I'm not going to deny it. Despite popular belief, the government does not control everything.

You should also know that the fighting over there has died down. There's a few small fights here and there, and your daily car bomb, but nothing else to report. Thats why you don't see too much anymore.

They shouldn't broadcast it. The last thing any country in the middle of a war needs is a huge blow to their faith in the resolve of their country....unless of course you are HTL, because she feeds off all of this shit too.

Man_of_the_Century said:

But the government does benefit more from war deaths being concealed than they do from other deaths, which our culture feeds on for entertainment; she's got a good point there.

The goverment doesn't control everything, you're right, but there are countless systems in place that can help to reinforce their viewpoint.

For instance, you correctly said that another reason the media doesn't report the war deaths because the public doesn't want to hear about it, but if you think about it, that's quite a self-reinforcing cycle that benefits goverment policy. The goverment gets people behind a policy before going to war, then once the war has gotten going soldiers start dying, but no one reports extensively on that because the public doesn't want to hear that the policy they embraced caused so much death. So the public never has to think too much about the deaths, and continues to support the war. Since they support the war, they don't want to be reminded of the deaths. Since they don't want to be reminded of the deaths, they support the war. Not a goverment controlled cycle by any means, but it works out great for them, doesn't it?


Man_of_the_Century said:

I heard this morning on CNN that six US soldiers died in Iraq in the last day.

ShadowSD said:

Didn't I say the median? And I already explained why anybody would say 120,000. It's because since the lancet study was done a while ago, of course people are going to add numbers to it. Can you name a single other study that is used as a source for 100,000? Does McLaughlin do his own death toll studies?

Two other things

1) Hoser only seems to go off when there're threads like this posted. If Hail the Leaf disappeared, I would bet that Hoser rants would drop by about 60%. And I also remember telling him to shut up before, but since the search function is disabled, I can't go through the whole site to find that thread.

2) If the general public was so stupid and sheep-like and didn't want to hear bad news, why would public opinion of the war be so low right now?

Here, I'll help you.....

PatMeebles: Shut up Hoser

Hoser: No you shut up , I'll eat your face little man.

PatMeebles: Nuh uh...

Hoser: I'm serious dude.

PatMeebles: .....

Hoser: Seriously

PatMeebles: Ok.

hoser said:

bahahahaha

PatMeebles said:

Hey, no one is forcing him to read my posts...and if the general public wasn't so stupid and sheep-like why did alot of them support the war to begin with?

Maybe it was because Saddam was dicking us around and playing games with weapons inspectors.

Take that cream pie!!!

If HLT is hot, I'll drill attack her too. 'Cept I won't be using a 3/8. "This.....may....hurt a little."

ShadowSD said:

You act like there are few people in the country that realize many good Americans are getting killed. You act like no one knows about it. Everyone does. They don't have to show bodies on the news, people still know hundreds, if not thousands of our boys are not coming home. If the government's plan was to cover up the amount of death that was going on over there, they did a horrible job. Like Pat said, there are not that many people that approve of the war.

I read about the 6 soldiers too. I did say that there were a few fights that break out here and there, there's just not constant fighting anymore.

PatMeebles said:

Median - The middle value in a list.

You only gave two numbers: 8,000 and 196,000. There is no middle value in a list of two numbers. So if what you're trying to say is that the although the mean of those numbers is 102,000, the median is 100,000. I don't see how that makes any sense.


PatMeebles said:

But they're going add numbers rounding accurately to the nearest hundred to a number that was only rounded to the nearest ten thousand? What would be the point of that? Statistically, it makes no sense.

Also, how come they are able to determine deaths down to the nearest hundred since the study, but at the time of the study, they could only guess within a margin of error of over ninety-thousand people? That's quite an overnight improvement in information gathering tactics, wouldn't you say?


PatMeebles said:

No, of course not, and unfortunately McLaughlin has not posted those numbers since we began debating this topic, so I haven't been able to post his source for you. But I will point out again that conservative Tony Blankley, who has argued pro-Bush and pro-war arguments every week for years, has NEVER taken issue with the veracity of the numbers McLaughlin has presented.

Man_of_the_Century said:

But I only repeated your premise; you said the reason there aren't more photos of flag draped coffins in the news is because the public doesn't want to see it, and I agreed with you (only pointing out how that can also indirectly benefit government policy). You weren't suggesting the public would be unaware about the deaths without those pictures in the news, just that they help to reinforce the topic and keep it in people's minds. I was saying the exact same thing.

It's true that the current approval ratings on the Iraq war show that people have become more aware of the numbers in recent months. That doesn't mean I don't see a problem with public opinion in the years before that, though; after all, four years is not a great reaction time.

ShadowSD said:

My mistake... I read that wrong.

Just because Tony Blankley doesn't object to something doesn't mean I can't, either. And even though the study doesn't say 100,000 (98,000 is what they actually said), that won't stop pundits from rounding to 100,000 either.

And then adding smaller numbers in the hundreds to that 100,000 estimate? How does that make any sense? Why would someone add a hundred deaths here and there to a number that already had a margin of error of at least 2000? It's so inconsistent, there would be absolutely no point in doing it.

And as far as the original Lancet number, what you're saying now is that Lancet averaged out 8,000 and 196,000 and came up with 98,000, which means their math is even worse than I previously indicated?

Well, that's liberal reasoning for you. I kid, I kid. Plus, 100,000 grabs for attention in the headlines.

I'm not suggesting that Lancet and the media aren't credible with their numbers, rather that the information you've heard which discredits those numbers has some pretty big logical holes.

Actually, the only argument is that they're CERTAIN with 95% CERTAINTY that the death toll is BETWEEN 8,000 AND 194,000 (I know I said 196,000 before. I rechecked and had to correct myself).

But the average of 8,000 and 194,000 is 101,000, not 98,000. So the math is still wrong.

(It also contradicts your earlier statement about how pundits round up to 100,000 to grab for attention in the headlines, because in this case they would be rounding down from 101,000.)

No, they were rounding up from 98,000. 98,000 is the amount that the study came up with.

Your original quote that started this whole argument was that they chose that figure "just because the number was in the middle. How... scientific"

Once again, how is 98,000 the middle of 8,000 and 194,000?

Is it more likely you have incorrect information from Bush loyalists attempting to discredit high death tolls, or that I need to buy calculators for John Hopkins University and every media source who reported their data because none of them understand basic arithmetic?

The original article I cited said "roughly in the middle." Sorry I didn't quote it directly. The fact that they're 95% certain it's between 8,000 and 194,000 still stands.

As the article also states, imagine if during the election, people said that Bush would definitely receieve somewhere between 8% and 94% of the vote.

I have to wonder what the statistical basis is for "roughly in the middle". Did they put a bunch of the middle numbers on a picture of a jackass and play pin the tail on the donkey, or is there some scientific basis they actually used that's being glossed over by the article? I would bet the second one. Which suggests to a reasonable person that the article glosses over one bit of reasoning, it might also gloss over the scientific basis for other aspects of the study as well.

Also, if the study was biased as far as hoping to inflate the numbers more than they actually were, wouldn't a number they pick that's "roughly in the middle" be HIGHER than the middle (more than 101,000) instead of lower (98,000)?

Although I have to admit, if Stephen Colbert was here, he'd no doubt remind us that math has a liberal bias.

Who knows. I'm just saying that if they were more certain of a specific number, they wouldn't have to put a 95% 8,000-194,000 as a result. If they had a higher certainty it was at 100,000, they would've put a 95% 90,000-110,000, and then there wouldn't be any controversy.

OK Pat, I just asked a couple statistical questions of my father, who is a mass media communications professor with a Stanford PhD and expertise in statistics, and I can now say for a fact that the article you cited doesn't know what it's talking about, because the methods it criticized are inherent to statistical study:

1. Percentages and raw numbers are two different things. The analogy with Bush getting between 8% and 94% of the vote makes the reader say "well margins of error are only like 4% for most polls, so that means Lancet's study must be garbage!" In fact, the article's reasoning is not only faulty but deceitful in presenting that false analogy. Why? Well, 4% of the number of people who voted in the last election is over 4,000,000 people (which is way higher a raw number than the disparity between the high and low numbers used by Lancet).

2. Your suggestion that Lancet came up with 98,000 after coming up with 8,000 and 194,000 is WRONG, and CANNOT BE TRUE. In all statistical study, the middle number is determined first, and the low and high numbers come afterwards; in otherwords, the low and high are determined based on the middle number, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

3. The middle number is ALWAYS the most accurate one. Also, the higher the confidence number, the further the low and high numbers MUST BE from the middle. Those two sentences right there do away with the main arguments criticizing Lancet.

4. I asked if the middle number could be "roughly in the middle" of the high and low (as the article says). ABSOLUTELY NOT. The number has to be EXACTLY in the middle of the high and low, that's how the high and low are determined. Therefore, the article's assertion that 98,000 was the middle, 8,000 was the low, and 194,000 the high GUARANTEES that at least one of the numbers in the article is incorrect.


More importantly, all this suggests that the article was purposefully deceitful, trying to discredit the Lancet Study for using standard statistical methods, banking that most readers would be too unfamiliar with those methods to see through their deception.

1) Saying something is definitely in between 8,000 and 194,000, or in between 8% and 94%, is total unreliable garbage in terms of finding the final results, regardless of whether it's raw numbers or percentages. Regardless of which number came first, the fact is the certainty of it within a range is completely unreliable, too.

2) The reason why the numbers are in such a high range is when the people did the study, they surveyed people from certain areas, then assumed that the rest of the country was exactly the same. In other words, they assumed that the entire Kurdish North was exactly the same in terms of violence as Falluja. That's a ludicrous way of doing studies. Should I assume that the entirety of Massachusetts is as violent as Roxbury? Westborough is as violent as Springfield? Ridiculous.

3) Of course there would be a higher range if you want the certainty to be greater. But you have to have some point where you say "ok, maybe this range is too great." If their certainty was in a range of 30,000, there wouldn't be nearly as much criticism.