The journal Lancet, that paragon of truthfulness and impartiality, recently 'reported' that at least 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the American invasion in 2003. I never put a pencil to the numbers, but Common Sense Political Thought has.
October has been considered by America's enemies to be the worst month for killing in Iraq since--well, ever. That in and of itself is hard to believe after the uncovering of just one of Saddam's mass graves, by the way.
Even if you take the number of deaths at face value given by the United Nations for the month of October 2006, and multiply it by the number of months that Coalition Forces have been in Iraq, it doesn't even come close to 655,000.
The Iraqi government is vehemently disputing the death figure trotted out by the United Nations. Even one death is too many, but what point could there be for the Oil-for-Food Alumni club to exaggerate the terrorist bloodbath in Iraq?
Oh, I can think of a few... ;-)
3 comments:
The un huh? that would be those liars and thievies that have ignore and stolen for the poorest of the poor.
May they all rot in hell
Hi, Frank! I knew that you were visiting my site on occasion, but hadn't realized that you had commented on the article.
We don't really know how many Iraqis have died as a result of the war; as you pointed out, even one needless death is too many. But in their zeal to find things with which to hammer the Bush Administration, far too many of our liberal friends jumped on the obviously flawed Lancet numbers without anything remotely resembling a critical eye. I spotted the problem immediately, simply because the 655,000 number was so obviously out of whack (it would have required an average of 504 deaths per day at the time the study was released) that it just jumped out at me. That our liberal friends didn't spot it can only be due to a desire not to see it.
We might have different ideas as to the correct way to proceed in Iraq at this point, but however we come to our conclusions, we need to proceed from facts, not fantasy.
By the way, the headlines in this morning's papers said that there had been 160 Iraqis killed by violence the previous day, the highest daily total ever.
But to have reached 655,000 would have required an average of 503 such deaths per day, every day, from the start of the invasion until the Lancet study was released.
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