Five U.S. troops killed in Iraq

Hope&Anger

jlew24asu wrote:

the report bases 650,000 dead on a survey for 1849 households. that number is based on statistical assumptions. seems concrete to me.

You can't seriously object to it just because it's based on statistical assumptions? Every poll you read is based on statistical assumptions. A lot of the work the Census Bureau does is based on statistical assumptions -- and a lot more should be.

Statistical assumptions are based on science. Your rejection of them just reflects how scientifically illiterate we are as a nation.

Byrnzie

jlew24asu wrote:

the report bases 650,000 dead on a survey for 1849 households. that number is based on statistical assumptions. seems concrete to me.

This is an article concerning an earlier report from the same organization whose findings you are dismissing....

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2006/davies0206.html

Official and media criticism of Roberts’s work has focused on the size of his sample, 988 homes in 33 clusters distributed throughout the country, but other epidemiologists reject the notion that this is controversial.

Michael O’Toole, the director of the Center for International Health in Australia, says: “That’s a classical sample size. I just don’t see any evidence of significant exaggeration…. If anything, the deaths may have been higher because what they are unable to do is survey families where everyone has died.”

...Roberts has also compared his work in Iraq to other epidemiological studies: “In 1993, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control randomly called 613 households in Milwaukee and concluded that 403,000 people had developed Cryptosporidium in the largest outbreak ever recorded in the developed world, no one said that 613 households was not a big enough sample. It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces.”

The campaign to discredit Roberts, the Johns Hopkins team, and the Lancet used the same methods that the U.S. and British governments have employed consistently to protect their monopoly on “responsible” storytelling about the war. By dismissing the study’s findings out of hand, U.S. and British officials created the illusion that the authors were suspect or politically motivated and discouraged the media from taking them seriously. This worked disturbingly well. Even opponents of the war continue to cite much lower figures for civilian casualties and innocently attribute the bulk of them to Iraqi resistance forces or “terrorists.”

jlew24asu

Hope&Anger wrote:

ROTFL -- the Alabama department of homeland security has a picture of a terrorist training camp??? That is SO FUNNY!!!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- the people most afraid of terrorism live in places where it's least likely to occur.

I agree that alabama has pretty much a zero chance of getting attacked. but isnt an attack on our country an attack on all of us? thats how I see it anyway

Abuskedti

jlew24asu wrote:

I agree that alabama has pretty much a zero chance of getting attacked. but isnt an attack on our country an attack on all of us? thats how I see it anyway

Isn't an attack on Iraq an attack on all of us?
thats how I see it anyway

jlew24asu

Hope&Anger wrote:

You can't seriously object to it just because it's based on statistical assumptions? Every poll you read is based on statistical assumptions. A lot of the work the Census Bureau does is based on statistical assumptions -- and a lot more should be.

Statistical assumptions are based on science. Your rejection of them just reflects how scientifically illiterate we are as a nation.

we are talking about dead people. not a projected count on the poplulation.

jlew24asu

Abuskedti wrote:

Isn't an attack on Iraq an attack on all of us?
thats how I see it anyway

I'm not Iraqi.

Hope&Anger

jlew24asu wrote:

I agree that alabama has pretty much a zero chance of getting attacked. but isnt an attack on our country an attack on all of us? thats how I see it anyway

Yes, and I also think that the people in Alabama and Wyoming ought to defer to people in big cities about issues of counter-terrorism because people in big cities are much more threatened by the threat.

But people in Alabama and Wyoming DON'T feel the way you do. If they did, then their congressmen and senators wouldn't vote to lard their homeland security funds at the expense of NYC and LA and SF and Chicago.

You really aren't this naive, are you?

Byrnzie

jlew24asu wrote:

we are talking about dead people. not a projected count on the poplulation.

Did you even bother to read my previous post?

Jackhammer

stop thinking about nations, think about mankind.

Hope&Anger

jlew24asu wrote:

we are talking about dead people. not a projected count on the poplulation.

No, please, really.

Whenever demographers count "live" people, they take samples and make statistical assumptions about them. Every sophisticated census bureau uses these techniques. Why wouldn't you use them to count dead people?

jlew24asu

Hope&Anger wrote:

Yes, and I also think that the people in Alabama and Wyoming ought to defer to people in big cities about issues of counter-terrorism because people in big cities are much more threatened by the threat.

But people in Alabama and Wyoming DON'T feel the way you do. If they did, then their congressmen and senators wouldn't vote to lard their homeland security funds at the expense of NYC and LA and SF and Chicago.

You really aren't this naive, are you?

homeland security funds are used for more then keeping islamic terroists from flying a plane into a higrise building.

a smart non naive guy like you should know that right?

Hope&Anger

jlew24asu wrote:

homeland security funds are used for more then keeping islamic terroists from flying a plane into a higrise building.

a smart non naive guy like you should know that right?

Yeah, homeland security funds are used to pay for a morgue in Bumblefuck, Great Midwest. Which is a fucked up thing to spend homeland security funds on. I mean, when the nation enthusiastically supported the creation of the homeland security department, do you think they knew they'd be paying for a morgue out in the middle of a cornfield? Is that how we ought to be protecting ourselves from terrorism?

jlew24asu

Hope&Anger wrote:

Yeah, homeland security funds are used to pay for a morgue in Bumblefuck, Great Midwest. Which is a fucked up thing to spend homeland security funds on. I mean, when the nation enthusiastically supported the creation of the homeland security department, do you think they knew they'd be paying for a morgue out in the middle of a cornfield? Is that how we ought to be protecting ourselves from terrorism?

how do you know exactly what its paying for? secondly, their is plenty of money to spend in the major cities. just like any other government program or dept there will be wasteful spending. you sound surprised.

Hope&Anger

jlew24asu wrote:

how do you know exactly what its paying for?

Because I live in Bumblefuck with a brand new morgue paid for with Homeland Security funds. And I voted against the stupid bastard who was responsible. But my Congressman did the bidding of Tom Delay and so now we have a nice shiny cold place to keep our dead people.

jlew24asu wrote:

secondly, their is plenty of money to spend in the major cities. just like any other government program or dept there will be wasteful spending. you sound surprised.

New York and DC -- you know, the locations of the previous attacks on the nation that were attacks on all of us -- didn't feel like there was plenty of money to go around.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/31/homeland.grants/index.html

In my mind, any money that the government spends on programs to protect the nation from being attacked my terrorists should be spent in major cities. While I'm sure that we all like our morgue here in the middle of the soybeans, that money would have been better spent protecting the ports. Or paying for more cops in Chicago.

This isn't waste -- this is just a dumb allocation of resources.

jlew24asu

Hope&Anger wrote:

Because I live in Bumblefuck with a brand new morgue paid for with Homeland Security funds. And I voted against the stupid bastard who was responsible. But my Congressman did the bidding of Tom Delay and so now we have a nice shiny cold place to keep our dead people.


New York and DC -- you know, the locations of the previous attacks on the nation that were attacks on all of us -- didn't feel like there was plenty of money to go around.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/31/homeland.grants/index.html

In my mind, any money that the government spends on programs to protect the nation from being attacked my terrorists should be spent in major cities. While I'm sure that we all like our morgue here in the middle of the soybeans, that money would have been better spent protecting the ports. Or paying for more cops in Chicago.

This isn't waste -- this is just a dumb allocation of resources.

I agree with you. except that last part.

waste = dumb allocation of resources.

hippiemom

jlew24asu wrote:

I'm not Iraqi.

Are you a human being?

Byrnzie

hippiemom wrote:

Are you a human being?

He's not a mere mortal. He's American.

jlew24asu

hippiemom wrote:

Are you a human being?

are we blind to the fact that we are at war? were the germans human beings in WWII? yes they were. are iraqis? yes they are.

Byrnzie

jlew24asu wrote:

are we blind to the fact that we are at war? were the germans human beings in WWII? yes they were. are iraqis? yes they are.

You are an occupying army fighting a civilian insurgence. So what's your point?

Puck78

jlew24asu wrote:

I'm not Iraqi.

this is the perfect example of a redneck behaviour: to think that just your backyard garden has importance, in all the world