Bluesman

Wear your matching panties, too: your boyfriend LOVES that.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

timhaughton

You've subtly changed the nuance of the debate. Kudos. Your original assertion was that "unlawful use of force" was quite different from "international terrorism." I provided evidence to show that it was a widely held definition, showing that the US was indeed guilty of international terrorism. I've seen nothing to alter that. I've seen nothing to suggest that the definitions were not intended to be specific to individuals, or states for that matter, they were simply abstract definitions of terrorism.

Bluesman

Lambert is a troll, and is his own blog he says, 'I would suggest that [Kane] has proven that this confidence interval is wrong," indeed, "obviously so.' Then he went back to bashing those same critics (self included) while letting his acolytes do the heavy lifting in his comments section.

Kane patiently provided over 50 responses to those comments. For the most part, the critics pretend to be dispassionate defenders of proper statistical analysis. But occasionally a comment appears that really speaks for them such as, "David, thanks for your answer. In other words, mass carnage and slaughter. A vast crime against humanity, for which the occupiers are obliged to pay reparations." Or: "David, you're just window-dressing a problem . . . . There are clearly two types of town [sic] in Iraq – those being blown to **** by Americans, and those being only slightly blown to **** by Americans."

Kane was also repeatedly lambasted for allowing conservative blogger Michelle Malkin to post his paper, notwithstanding that he did the same for leftist blogger Tim Lambert.

Finally, Kane realized that responding to anybody who reads and comments on Deltoid is spitting into the wind. It's enough that he's done a great service in further exposing the truth about civilian casualties in Iraq and exposing a once-great medical journal that has abandoned accuracy for advocacy.

NEXT!

timhaughton

You can get matching pants for this? Why did noone tell me?

You fought bravely, Bluesman. It is with heavy heart that I must inform the WAB that Bluesman died of his injuries sustained in battle. Treat him as if he were dead.

One last parting shot, to remember him by:

Iraqanalysis.org » Mortality»Statistical methodology

Bluesman

BS, sweetheart; I own the field.

GAME.

SET.

Muthafukkin' MATCH, and you are PWNED!!!

timhaughton

Sshhh now. There's a good corpse.

Bluesman

You are the very worst kind of creature; you simply cannot play well with others. While we want to play chess, you insist that you can move your pawns like the horsies, your king like the castle-thingies, and your queen like an F-15. You will simply not acknowledge that you've been bested, that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, and you are just like the ancient dead guy Broken, another of your low-born class.

You're a hateful little carbuncle on the butt of the WAB, and I can't wait for the day when we finally see the back of you receding into the distance.

Wretch. Back on 'Dead-Guy Ignore'.

timhaughton

Does anyone have details for next of kin? Poor Bluesman, continued to foam at the mouth, even though he was throughly beaten, to a point where he could do nought but insult his adversary. Poor little guy. I hope he is at peace now.

God speed.

Ray

I don't know about you guys, but it seems to get interesting by the post.

In fact, the comments are so interesting that one finds those better than the substance of the links!

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

JAD_333

Ray, indeed.

Haughton's two main contentions are that the US is guilty of international terrorism and that Iraq fatalities since hostilities began is 1.2 million (orb reported survey). The first amounts to obsfucation of the popular understanding of what terrorism is. We know it to be violent sneak attacks against innocent civilians. To accuse the US of terrorism takes the word to a new level. Scholarly or judicial efforts to stretch the meaning to cover state on state military actions is a perversion of the word. Those not pleased with US invasion of Iraq can surely find a more appropriate word to fit their condemnation.

The death figure Haughton's sources would have us believe is that between 1,600-1,800 civilians have died every day of the Iraq occupation. Statisticians may be able to derive such a number from their surveys, but common sense backed by media reporting is at odds with it. Do we non-statisticians need to refute the number. No. Like the old saying, "a miss is as good as a mile" infers, if you're off, you're off. That said, the number of actual deaths is bad enough. Whether one number is worse than another matters perhaps to politicians. For my money, the number that matters is whether rate of deaths is up or down.

__________________
To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)

Parihaka

A series of rebuttals to the Lancet report can be read here

__________________
In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Parihaka

Oh heavens me what a cunning sod I must be.
You made assertions as to how the US was a terrorist state, then changed that to 'unlawful use of force' was the same as terrorism, then when I debunked that and asked what evidence you had for even unlawful use of force, you ignored that and asked me to prove where a state could legally make war, which I did, you then say I'm 'subtly chang(ing) the nuance of the debate" Heh heh heh heh..

Bluesman

What matters to ME, ole buddy, is that he's an ill-informed incendiary troll and master baiter. He hasn't got decent facts to back an indecent claim; he's a thumb-sucking juvenile that is here to scream invective and wipe excrement on the wall, like he was a brain-damaged oafish child - which he seems to enjoy playing that role.

So, as far as which number is correct being the esoterica of politicians' arguments, from my point-of-view, his intention was always absolutely clear: to attempt in his own lame way to bring disrepute on a worthy goal by falsely claiming that the cost is too high for the people that will ultimately benefit. This is a value judgement, and, as this low-rent noodge HAS no values, it was a clear attempt to influence those among us that don't know the facts into thinking he had a legimately-produced, universally-accepted set of facts observed by dispassionate scientific minds that proved the point. Well, he has no such thing.

I'm telling you, this guy is no more than a poor shadow of Broken's and lulldapull's bastard child.

Take my word for it: he will be as hard to find at the WAB as it would be going to an NRA Convention to find an al Qaeda supporter (who would likely be twice as clean, ten times as smart and only half as anti-American as THIS yutz.) He'll go too far, as wild-eyed maniacs always do when they're raving about whatever their pet psychosis happens to be, and get banned. I've got a GREAT record of predicting these flame-outs; he's our next one.

And none too soon, either.

S-2

"Something to let me know you can form a reasoned argument?"

Sir,

Parihaka offered you that opportunity by providing past links to the LANCET discussion here. Had you taken advantage, you'd found a further link taking you to a STRATPAGE discussion of the same, though far more detailed and vigorously debated from both sides.

It's fair to conclude that there are numerous flaws in the studies. That said, and with much for you to defend, all you offered was a wildly extrapolated number (silly wild-ass guess- SWAG) extracted from LANCET's 2006 baseline figure-without a substantive explanation. Instead a snide toss-off about a perceived insensitivity to Iraqi deaths.

Silly you. Instead of seizing the opportunity to study the underpinnings of our accumulated arguments against LANCET, reasonably and lucidly developed and then arguing accordingly, you've engaged in dissembling verbal fencing from the start, which has naturally led to multiple banishments.

There's no honor in resurrecting yourself if your only intention is to dissemble. Ultimately, even should you prove to be an unkillable virus, you'll be ignored. Until then, you're nothing but a wounded rat in the hands of some rather malicious kitties.

Have a lovely English day.

__________________
"This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski

S-2

"I'm guessing there aren't too many scientists or statisticians on here."

Perhaps more than you think. Again, though, the link would have exposed you both elsewhere here and on STRATPAGE to the analysis and you could then determine for yourself whether it meets your rigorous standards.

As a physicist and scientist, I'm certain you've faced numerous disproved hypotheses while pursuing academic "truth". LANCET is beside the point, though. There are sound, practical reasons why the methodology is flawed. Iraq is dangerous. So much so that this study was a pointless and premature exercise, IMHO, which proves nothing that's not already commonly accepted- that a great number of people have needlessly and brutally died.