A Study In Lies

Obama's Church Bulletin: Networks Run By Right-Wing Bigots

By Kathleen McKinley | January 9, 2008 - 19:03 ET

Remember in 2006 when many leftwingers shouted with horror regarding a study that had found over 600,000 Iraqi civilians dead since the war began? I heard this number ad nauseum from my leftwing friends.

The WashingtonPost included the number in this piece. Fox News quoted it with some skepticism. But CNN headlined it.

Turns out, Fox was right to be skeptical because it was a bunch of bull:

It's probably no coincidence that one of the authors — Roberts — just happened to oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein from his dictator's throne and has confessed he tried to influence the 2004 U.S. elections by timing the release of a previous study that made the war look much worse than it was.

Roberts also ran — unsuccessfully — as a Democrat for New York's 24th congressional district in 2006. He told the National Journal that "a combination of Iraq and (Hurricane) Katrina just put me over the top."
Meanwhile, "Burnham admitted that he set the same condition" on the second report.

IBDeditorials.com didn't believe the numbers from the start because they didn't jive with our government's numbers or the Iraqi government's numbers or even another anti-war group with causality numbers, which were 44,000 to 49,000. Higher than the government's, but a BIT less than over 600,000, If you want to call 550,000 a bit less.

Naturally anti-Bush and anti-war forces have thrown the higher numbers around as if they were indisputable fact, not fraud.
At least one media outlet, though, used its journalistic instincts to take a critical look at the study. The National Journal let Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon use that publication's Jan. 4 cover story to detail what they discovered after months of scrutiny.
Headlined "Data Bomb," the story identifies three problems:
• "Possible flaws in the design and execution of the study."
• "A lack of transparency in the data, which has raised suspicions of fraud."
The authors have refused to provide the data they used to reach their conclusions. Part of the reason might lie in what should be their professional shame for letting unsupervised Iraqis go into neighborhoods and ask survey questions.
• "Political preferences held by the authors and the funders, which include George Soros's Open Society Institute."
Almost half of the study's $100,000 price tag was paid for by "an outspoken billionaire who has repeatedly criticized the Iraq campaign and who spent $30 million trying to defeat Bush in 2004."
.......

Yet the wildly exaggerated 2006 Lancet study was not just accepted by the media, it was exalted. Why?
Again, the National Journal has the answer: "Probably because its findings fit an emerging narrative: Iraq was a horrific mess."
Of course the National Journal's expose will never get the same media attention that was heaped upon the original Lancet study. Its sober analysis does not fit the narrative.

Of course those false numbers will continue to be bantered about. The media won't correct it. The left will most certainly not. Why be honest when you can make the U.S. look bad in war?

Even the much lower numbers are a sad fact of war. I don't discount or dismiss them. But to use data and stand behind a false study in order to push a political agenda, using war at the time of war, is unforgivable.

—Kathleen McKinley is a blogger whose posts appear at Rightwing Sparkle.

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Rosie O'Donnell will be

January 9, 2008 - 19:12 ET by DaBird

Rosie O'Donnell will be retracting her "over 600,000 people have been killed in Iraq" statement in 3...2...1..................

Eh, maybe not.

Don't lose hope!! I heard

January 9, 2008 - 20:28 ET by motherbelt

Don't lose hope!! I heard she's working on her next poem for her blog!

My fly on her wall got me a preview:

I said 600,000
iraqis dead

all the fault
of bush
the warmonger.
and terrorist soldiers
genocidal maniacs

but now
it seems
that might be wrong
maybe only
10% of that

i screwed up
shot off my mouth
just like the MSNBC thing..

no big deal
oh well, what can you do....

That'll get her the Poet Laureate gig for sure.

delete double

January 9, 2008 - 20:00 ET by motherbelt

delete double

600k is much more exciting

January 9, 2008 - 22:47 ET by general company

Of course those false numbers will continue to be bantered about. The media won't correct it. The left will most certainly not. Why be honest when you can make the U.S. look bad in war?

Been sitting here waiting for Americans to quit being embarrassed for being Americans. JH

Was talking to a person the other day about the war, when they told me what awful folks we were for "making war" I asked them about the millions that are now free because of our "making war". They said it isn't worth one American life to protect those sand ********. I suggested that many more have been saved by their sacrifice. They brought up the 600k we have killed. I told them,"your right: you should leave the USA as soon as possible"

"Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest". Mark Twain

Yeah, it is amazing how

January 10, 2008 - 14:09 ET by BD

Yeah, it is amazing how little analytical attention the 600,000 Deaths number received. None of the press asked the following questions.

1.) Since the accepted population of Iraq in 2000 was rough 27 Million spread through the country, a casualty count of 600,000 would indicate that one of every 45 Iraqis countrywide would have had to die in the space of three years. Preposterous.

2.) Since the population is seperated unequally throughout the country and some areas are relitively peaceful (Basra 1,700,000, Kurdistan 5,500,500) that further reduces the population base of the 600,000 casualties to draw from. this would place the avaialble population of Iraq for these casualties to roughly 19,800,800. If this population base was to have 600,000 casualties inflicted upon it, it would be one casualty for every 33 persons in the central Iraq area. Utterly preposterous.

3.) Since most estimate say that roughly 1.8 Million Iraqi's had sought refuge in neighboring countries that further reduces the population base of the 600,000 casualties to amongst 25,200,000. This would indicate that one of every 42 persons to die in the spac e of three years. Preposterous.

4.) Add both of these figures together and you will have 18,000,000 availabe. And if they suffered 600,000 casualties it oudl equate to one death for every 30 citizens. Absolutely utterly preposterous.

How was the count made?

January 9, 2008 - 19:54 ET by YaegerMeister

So lets count everyone who has died in Iraq since the invasion. That would include folks who died of old age or other causes. Maybe that number would come close to the NeoProg count.

That "estimate"

January 9, 2008 - 20:06 ET by oregon_jiim

That "estimate" (err gross exageration) was only off by a mere 1,000%. That is pretty accurate when you consider the source.

I hear that Republican made global warming is going kill 800 Trillion people....

"an endorsement of communism is an endorsement of slavery"

Goebbels would be proud

January 9, 2008 - 20:17 ET by PSPCpl

It is amazing to me how the MSM likes to vilify us on the right as being a bunch of Fascists. And yet, here they are engagning in the practice of the Big Lie as expounded upon and practiced by Herr Goebbels. I am sure that not only would he be proud, he would be in admiration of the MSM's handiwork.

Lancet -- that's 520 killed per day

January 9, 2008 - 20:27 ET by Gary Hall

Lancet -- that's 520 killed per day. I've noted a couple of times. Lancet's study (uh, excuse me - fraudulent crapola) came out about 3 years and 6 months after the beginning of the Iraq War. 655,000? Come out to about 520 killed per day.

Odd - I watch the news a lot and I never saw a single story suggesting that 520 people had been killed in a day. Imagine the media missing that story on 1,260 days in a row.

Did not a single MSM investigative reporter or researcher ever pull out a caluclator and consider the obvious?

PS -- Now on the other hand the BBC reported that over 4 1/2 million died in a conflict (with lots of genocide and the like) - the largest loss of life in a single conflict since WW II, which began next door to Rwanda in 1998, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Seeing as how President Clinton had promised "never again," I wonder how mad this Les Roberts quack was over millions more dying in Africa? Did he run out and fake a study blaming Clinton on 60 million being killed?

So I did a little research...

January 9, 2008 - 23:20 ET by timothe

and discovered that the deadliest single attack, as covered by the media, killed 135 people.

http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSIBO356540._CH_.2400

But wait, there's more:

I also found the "deadliest day" for the Iraqi people. 233 dead

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3053698

I have the same question that Gary has. Why exactly has no one simply done the math and questioned the many and varied loonies who quoted the 600,000 number? We at Newsbusters know why.

*crickets*

They don't want to do the

January 9, 2008 - 23:25 ET by Clear thinker

They don't want to do the math.

Rush Limbaugh stated that of the top 5 Republicans running for the presidency, only one was a true conservative. http://www.fred08.com/

Ooops

January 9, 2008 - 20:44 ET by acumen

Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued.

In 87% of cases where deaths were reported, the survey team asked to see death certificates, leading to the Lancet authors' statement that "92% of households had death certificates for deaths they reported". Assuming, as the authors do, that this is representative of the population as a whole, would imply that officials in Iraq have issued approximately 550,000 death certificates for violent deaths (92% of 601,000). Yet in June 2006, the total figure of post-war violent deaths known to the Iraqi Ministry of Health (MoH), combined with the Baghdad morgue, was approximately 50,000. If the Lancet estimate is correct then it follows that either (a) 500,000 documented violent deaths, for which certificates were issued, have somehow managed to completely disappear without a trace to Iraqi officials or the international media or (b) there is a vast, elaborate, and very successful, cover up of this massive number of bodies and their associated paper trail being carried out in Iraq.

Iraq Body Count News Release

Isn't it obvious?

January 9, 2008 - 20:55 ET by Tom1969ca

Yet the wildly exaggerated 2006 Lancet study was not just accepted by the media, it was exalted. Why?

The debate is over. There is an indisputable consensus that 655,000 have died in Iraq; anyone who disputes this is obviously on the payroll of the U.S. government.

~~~

The difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives believe liberals are wrong, while liberals believe conservatives are evil.

500,000 dead Iraqi's can not be wrong

January 9, 2008 - 21:19 ET by Lame Cherry

Somewhere in my archives I wrote an article refuting this. Perhaps I posted it on HuffPo and is one of the reasons I was banned from there.

In any event, I tallied deaths in a number of nations and found that what these Iraqi "statistics" mirror normal deaths from old age, sickness etc... which these people are skewing for propaganda.

One gets into big trouble mentioning this, but the communist "Jews" of Europe did the same thing after World War II to gain sympathy for the Israeli state by double counting dead, counting Jewish soldiers who fought in the war and immigrants who were counted as dead.
A modern example is in Kosovo where the propagada machine has been branding the Serbs as complete mass murderers. The problem is Serbs have been documenting on serbian.com that "dead" Muslims the UN has counted have been showing up voting in elections. (not like Democrat dead voters, but these people are alive)

So people need to use common sense in the dead of Iraq as normal populations do loose millions a year, the United States for example and China.

There is though a huge propaganda market for sympathy, power and money flouting record numbers of dead. One must remember the people issueing these numbers are IslamoCOMMUNISTS as that is what rules most of the Middle East in Ba'athists.
George Bush took the Saddam cash oil cow from these people and the European and American banking cartels. This is the basis of this propaganda from the leftists.

I apologize as here am I too busy to find my notes and do not really care about fake or skewed dead numbers as I settled it and moved onto the games being played now.

In all of it FOLLOW THE MONEY.

*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS

600,000 Iraqi dead? Higher!

January 9, 2008 - 21:31 ET by Galvanic

The actual number is six million. Wait, did I say million? I meant six billion!

600,000... the figure is

January 9, 2008 - 21:44 ET by Jack Bauer

600,000... the figure is remarkably similar to the number of Iraqi children allegedly "killed" by the U.N. sanctions maintained by the Clinton administration following Gulf War 1, beween 1991-2001.

Amazing co-incidence that. Truly amazing.

Another amazing co-incidence... this figure ALSO appeared in a study published in the Lancet...

Anaother amazing fact was the fact that these "claims" are what started the "oil for food" program. And we all know the veracity of that UN effort.

Check out my exclusive edit of BBC News America's interview with Mrs Clinton: It's news to me!

The first casualty of war is

January 9, 2008 - 21:41 ET by rbosque

The first casualty of war is always the truth.

The first casualty of war is

January 9, 2008 - 23:06 ET by zhombre

The first casualty of war is some poor bastard of flesh and blood who gets killed. Truth is the casualty of ideology. The people who believe Iraq is an illegal war and that Bush and Cheney are war criminals are not going to believe there were NOT 600,000 casualties. You will find moonbats repeating this number as incontrovertible, uncontested fact for the next 25 years and they will regard anybody who disagrees as a fool, madman or thug.

Um, hello?

January 10, 2008 - 09:30 ET by kenro85

Haven't you people ever heard of New Math? All answers are correct as long as you show your work. So

650000 / 1260 = 32

is perfectly correct.

}}---> New Math

January 10, 2008 - 09:34 ET by Cool Arrow

You don't even have to show your work. In the example you cited, the answer is 32 and it would be blue because that's how many Great Lakes there are.

Unless you feeel differently, of course.

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