[extropy-chat] Who thinks the Bush admin lied over Iraq? Onwhatbasis?

Robert Lindauer robgobblin at aol.com
Fri Jul 15 17:14:16 UTC 2005


Mike Lorrey wrote:

>--- Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I also believe the Lancet study overestimated because they did not
>>>      
>>>
>>come
>>    
>>
>>>to a determination of how big the average Iraqi meant when you used
>>>      
>>>
>>the
>>    
>>
>>>term "family". Being a tribal culture, the Iraqi idea of "family" is
>>>      
>>>
>>a
>>    
>>
>>>whole lot larger than the nuclear family concept of the west. This
>>>could easily have introduced a magnitude of error into the study.
>>>      
>>>
>>I can too come up with many plausible reasons that could give a
>>higher or
>>lower result, depending on my current mood. Let's not throw things at
>>random. The standard deviation of the study was high enough that
>>there's already a couple of orders of magnitude of uncertainity (sp?)
>>
>>Still, it's the *only*, as far as I know, real study on the matter.
>>Apart from counts like iraqbodycounts.com that just look at the
>>press and then can be taken as a lower bound estimate. There are no
>>other numbers.
>>    
>>
>
>On the contrary, the Red Cross estimated 10,000 deaths from the start
>of hostilities through Feb 2004, so the above sites current count of 
>22,000-25,000 seems a little high, but not excessively so. As the Red
>Cross has several hundred people in-country and works closely to
>support the Red Crescent, which has thousands of people all over Iraq,
>I would trust their numbers.
>  
>

Why do you feel the need to provide appologetics services for the Bush 
administration without pay?

Robbie Lindauer





More information about the extropy-chat mailing list