Monday, June 20, 2005

Open thread, Monday morning edition.


Whassup?

4 comments:

Lynne said...

Has anyone else seen this story?
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1661.htm

"U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005. The ongoing, underreporting of the dead in Iraq, is not accurate. The DoD is deliberately reducing the figures. A review of many foreign news sites show that actual deaths are far higher than the newly reduced ones. Iraqi civilian casualties are never reported but International Red Cross, Red Crescent and UN figures indicate that as of 1 January 2005, the numbers are just under 100,000."

I am SO ready for impeachment proceedings.

Lynne said...

I wish I had seen this before my previous post:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/6/20/24437/8204

OutEast said...

Reckon that article looks a bit dubious... I wouldn't take this seriously without evidence (not this vague "I've got evidence but can't show you...").

Also, I don't know where he got that 100,000 figure - it's only been a short while (about 5 or 6 weeks) since the United Nations Development Program released its report of their household survey done in Iraq last year, called the "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004". In this report they gave a figure of 24,000 deaths, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 18,000 to 29,000 deaths. While many may have died since then it's hard to see where they could have got any figures - let alone this figure... In fact the 100,000 figure looks suspiciously like the thoroughly debunked Lacet estimate.

OutEast said...

Sorry, forgot to source those figures: http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf