I saw this on another board. A freeper trying to claims that the civilian casulties are actually really really low and how teh US should be commended for not killing more.
http://groups.msn.com/eXtremelyPolitics/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=278342&all_topics=0And the "Blog" that the freeper used as a "source"
http://www.logictimes.com/civilian.htmNow this freeper seems to be a testing ground for Con talking points. he's alway sbringing up talkign points that i thne see all the other cons using. SO I thought I would put what I noticed from hsi source down, just in case you guys run into this. At any rate, it shows how cons couldnt' care less if what they are posting is true. As long as it tells them what they want to hear.
"(The freeper) nostra-"Curtis, before you dismiss the information because a blog has it posted... check out the SOURCES in the data.... "
Gee, I had to keep from laughing when I saw you say this since this is something you have NEVER done for anyone else. In fact, you have repeatidly refused to do so, dismissing other people's sources time and time again without ever refuting anything they have they said or even reading the source.
So you asking others to do what you never do is...funny to say the least. Hyppocrasy as well.
But anyway. I actually DO often read other people's sources, including those of cons like you (in the few times you guys actually LIST a source...)
Indeed, I have found that your "sources" often provide the best refutation of what you trying to claim.
For instance, for a guy who goes on about "Fuzzy moral logic", this statement from the blogger was quite..indicative:"This perspective, of course, ignores the civilian carnage during the reign of Saddam Hussein"
Except that this itself is fuzzy moral logic.
First, it utilizes a sliding moral scale. Since the US has caused more deaths then Saddam duing his entire reign, then the deaths they cause aren't a problem. Of course using this logic, Saddam wasn't bad becuase his death toll was no where near Hitler's. And Hitler wasn't truly evil because the deathand destruction he cuased was miniscule next to the extinction event in the late Creataceous. Indeed, every serial killer would have to be let off the hook becuase obviously Dahmer or gacy or Biundy could never compete with state sanctioned genocide.
Taken to it's natural conclusion, this kind of 'Logic" becomes clearly absurd.
And second , it becomes even more absurd when you realize that Saddam's civilian casualities and the US's civillian casualties aren't necessarily comparable anyway. Saddam ruled for decades and his country was enagged in a protratced war with iran and it's own Kurdish insurection. Of course he is going to have a higher body count then a 2 year occupation. But then considering that most of the deaths have occured AFTER the actual invasion, there is no reason to think that the US figure won't become competitive as time goes on. Will we have to wait until then before we can say that the civilian deaths were a bad thing? What is the bare minimum of deaths before you can say that killing civilians is wrong?
Of course, that isn't the only flaw in this blogger's arguement. He simply LIES when it has to make a case. (Gee, that seems to be a habit with cons nowadays)
In the blog the Lancet study was cited where in an estimated 100,000 deaths had been attributed to the occupation. to counter this, the blogger cites the Iraqi Death Count. Now there is nothing wrong with the Iraqi death count site. I use it myself. BUT that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the Lancet study either. Becuase both are measuring different things.
The Iraqi Death count measure CONFIRMED deaths. Unless a causulty's death and it's relation to the occupation can be proven, they don't list them.
And that's fine but the Lancet study concentrated on two other things: Estimated deaths and cause of death.
As both Lancet, IBC and anybody else who has looked at this will tell you, getting reliable figures is hard to impossible. US bombings often meant that there were no identifiable bodies to count (or even enough to recognize as a body), The US military has said more then once they are not interested in keeping track of civilian deaths (and maintains that all deaths were insurrgents..even when the victims were clearly women and children). you have people like Allawi and others who make claims that NO ONE has died from US attacks and then you have the same problem reporters in Iraq face... anybody going into many of these areas to get this info become targets from both sides. You can be killed just for trying to get this information.
So at least twice, the Nostra's blogger source uses apples and oranges to suypport it's case.
And then it just lies..."two years of combat since the fall of Baghdad, much of it urban warfare, with less than 1,000 civilians killed as a result of U.S. action"
except it's own source for this figure, the Iraqi Body Count, doesn't back that up Thier figure is 24 times what the blogger says it is and makes it quite clear that the large porportion have been women and children and the majority have been from the direct actions of the US.
So it seems this blogger has made himself a microcosm for the Shrubbery. He makes logicly bad arguements, claims that intelligence says stuff that it doesn't, ommits information that contradicts what he wants you to beleive and just LIES..just like Shrub did to get us into iraq in the first place.
I guess that's why Nostra was so eager to swallow it.
I could go on but why bother? Cons don't care if what they say is true anyway. That they keep posting crap like this as "relaible sources" while ignoring anything they don't like proves that. But this should be a lesson to the rest of us...READ these sources and ask..does this make sense?"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3962969.stmhttp://www.iraqbodycount.net/databasehttp://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php
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