[extropy-chat] IRAQ: Weapons pipeline to Syria

[Stephen Van_Sickle]

--- 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