[extropy-chat] IRAQ: Weapons pipeline to Syria
Stephen Van_Sickle
sjvans at ameritech.net
Sun Oct 31 23:50:27 UTC 2004
--- BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> Probably correct. They reckoned that nobody would
> really believe
> 300,000 civilian dead.
So you agree that they dropped the outlier to make it
more believable? Do you find this exceptable in a
published scientific paper?
> OK, so how many civilian dead do you reckon there
> are?
I haven't the faintest idea. My point is, given the
published confidence interval of this study, neither
do they.
> Is 30,000 fine by you? Small enough to forget about,
> just collateral damage?
Not even one is fine by me. I am not naive enough to
believe that a war can be fought without civilians
being killed, though. One of the many, many, many
reasons war really sucks.
> When they decided not to include the areas in
> Fallujah it was because
> there was nobody left to interview. The houses were
> empty, bombed-out
> shells. People from neighbouring areas told them
> that many had died
> there, but they were unable to verify this, so they
> decided not to
> include these areas.
You contradict yourself. I thought you agreed that it
was because no one would believe 300,000. Problems
with the city being abandoned would be a legitimate
reason. I don't remember it from reading the paper,
but I will take your word for it. Still leaves that
C.I.
> "Why is it being left up to under-funded, small
> groups of individuals
> to get accurate counts? It is within their (the
> occupying forces')
> power to do so, but they refuse to because it is
> politically
> embarrassing."
Could be because it is politically embarrassing.
Could also be because they know it is impossible to
get a good count while the shooting still goes on.
I'm sure there are other reasons, good and bad. *I*
sure don't know which are the deciding reasons.
steve vs
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