Reply #31: Same story.

[MrJs1G]

Let's take some of your points, one by one.

Already affirming that you aren't going to reply to all of my points (I consider a concession a response), only to ones that you may have something you'd like to say -- and then base a conclusion off of these incomplete premises.

And is it just me who finds this statement facetious? "Some" of my points "one by one"? Suggesting that you're going to carefully explore points whose responses would only further your position (theoretically)?

Already starting off dishonest.

Okay, after reading through your response, some macro-points which I'd like you to address.

1. Why is that that WikiLeaks, the organization whose primary goal for existing reports the civilians killed much lower than that of Lancet? Have you ever considered that this Lancet study has special interests as opposed to an institution which would love nothing more than to reveal that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were indeed killed (indeed, the staunchly anti-war George Soros funded half of the funding for the Lancet Report: http://www.timesplus.co.uk/tto/news/?login=false&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Fnews%2Fuk%2F)

2. A large number of your points have nothing to do with the casualty figures, but about the nature of the casualties themselves. That's a different discussion, one that you yourself didn't initiate (in other words, it's irrelevant). Here's the claim you made which I responded to:

Hundreds of thousands of American military and Iraqi civilians dead

So please, hold yourself to your own standards when we're discussing such an important topic.

3. Please see post #9 above for my stance on the "blood for oil" point which you (and numerous others) espouse.

4. We're not supposed to be debating whether or not what the interpretation of these casualty figures should be, like you so arduously argue, but why these casualty figures are. A difference in hundreds of thousands of lives isn't an issue to be glossed over. You also seem to muddle objective casualty figures with your own interpretations of the casualty figures. I'll give examples below.

Okay, now onto your points.

I think we should certainly factor combatant deaths into the equation. Failure to do so frames the narrative that there is a good and evil continuum, and that the U.S. represents good, and everybody else fighting against them represents evil. This is an oversimplification of the entire Iraqi War insurgency.

This is a prime example of point #4. Here, you're responding to:

It mixes civilian deaths with combatant deaths, and makes no attempt to distinguish them. So even if the count was accurate, it would still be worthless. Combatant deaths are not something we should be worried about.

My point was about the *number* of casualties. Your point is about how these casualties should be interpreted.

The first example of how you fail to meet your own standards.

Albeit I've already admitted interpretations of the numbers are irrelevant, I'll take on your challenges, in spite of what we've initially agreed to talk about.

Well, yes, the US represents good intentions, does it not? It's established a fledgling democracy in Iraq. It's removed Saddam Hussein (and his intentions to acquire a WMD program in addition to having Iran on his back). It's freed the Iraqi people from the totalitarian grip of Saddam Hussein. It's nationalized Iraq's oil (to which the US has no monopoly on, by the way).

Equating this with Islamic terrorists whose main purpose is to extirpate those believing in a different version of Islam than them?

Makes total sense.

When Bremer deba'th-ified the entire Iraqi civil service, which was a complete and utter mistake, he put countless men on the unemployment line, many of whom would have fought alongside the United States if they hadn't been summarilly dismissed. Instead, these people turned bitter and joined the Iraqi insurgency. Better planning and foresight would have prevented this from happening, and many of these insurgents died in battle simply trying to find a way to get paid and feed their children. To simplify combatants deaths as unimportant is absurd and ignorant.

I agree with your premise -- that Bremer (and the entire Bush Administration, for that matter) was staggeringly incompetent. However, again, to state that the "only other way" of life for them is to make a living blowing themselves up, killing other people, and terrorizing the public seems to be a bit of an apology on their behalf.

One would assume that you would apply this same burden of proof to other wars, such as World War I and World War II? Do you actually think that casualty counts from those wars were based on an actual hand-count of bodies, rather than estimates and extrapolations based on historical anecdotes?

Well, for those like the Jews, yes. The Nazis took meticulous notes on how many Jews were exterminated, etc.

I wouldn't have a problem were it not for *method* of extrapolation. The Lancet Study was conducted by doctors who went door to door and asked for how many of their family members died, were wounded, etc and extrapolated from this that there were 600,000+ civilians killed. Which is why I quoted Natalie Solent.

Somehow, I doubt this occurred in WWI and WWII.

By the way, nice of you to return to the topic.

It does not matter WHO killed WHO.

Wait, so if subject A stabbed subject B's mother with a knife, making her unconscious, and subject B punched subject A and, by accident, knocked him unconscious, then subject B would be as morally culpable as subject A, who did the stabbing?

Disgusting principle you hold there.

This narrative frames the war as a neccessary evil; a conflict that the United States could not ignore. It assumes that these deaths were not preventable, and attempts to marginalize the true death tool

Now you're just yelling. You have a conclusion, but you don't demonstrate how you arrived there. How does "this narrative" frame the Iraq War as necessary? How does it assume these deaths aren't preventable?

Again, conclusions. No links, and no premises.

Furthermore, you should take what assuming these number dead and wounded imply. Taken from the anti-war, liberal Iraq Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks/

"The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.

If these assertions are true, they further imply:

* incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began
* bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
* the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
* an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy."

Keep trying to discredit Iraqi civilian deaths, if it makes you feel better. But there will be no whitewashing here at Democratic Underground.

The icing on the cake. You've already talked past yourself -- not only have you displayed dishonesty through your selectivity, but you further claim here that you've disproved my refutation of the Lancet Study (with points about the interpretations of the study and casualties, not the actual numbers themselves -- shocking!).

Moreover, are you truly read to defend Democratic Underground as a whole? Conspiracy nuts, included? Think before you post, not the other way around.

I absolutely despise comparing body counts, but it's a must, unfortunately, to counter the dis-information and misinformation regurgitated by the sanctimonious, faux intellectuals in this day and age.

And with that, I'd love to hear what you think the US should have done instead of what it shouldn't do. That is, offer an alternative (or concede that you would be willing to live with the ramifications and implications of pre-war Iraq). "Don't participate in terrorism" isn't an answer, by the way.