Reply #20: Fault.. [View All]

...in the Lancet number (the starting point for the Just Foreign Policy estimate) was found in spades

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks/

How ironic that Just Foreign Policy uses the nonsense Lancet number to scale the casualties determined by IraqBodyCount.org (which does a meticulous job of recording all reported deaths).

So let's recap just one of the problems found by IraqBodyCount.org and apply the same reasoning to a number of 1.1 million.

1.1 million implies an average of about 1,000 deaths per day, every day, and that somehow this goes unreported. By contrast, all world news agencies report that at the worst of the violence, deaths were around 3,000/month - 10% of the average implied by the 1.1 million number. And during the worst of it the killing was much worse than average. So you have to believe that only, say, 5% of deaths were reported. Nonsense.

If you read the rest of the IraqBodyCount.org analysis it becomes abundantly clear that the Lancet estimate is nonsense and the so Just Foreign Policy estimate must be wrong. Only the dishonest or ignorant would continue to trumpet those number numbers. I put Just Foreign Policy in the dishonest/disingenuous category. They know about IraqBodyCount.org and they willfully ignore a devastating argument against the Lancet number, while using IraqBodyCount.org numbers scaled by the discredited Lancet number to arrive at an inflated number of deaths! In fact the 1.1 million dead number implies that there have been 4.3 million casualties in country whose prewar population was 23 million, and that this level of devastation (rates greater than suffered by the major powers during WW1!) has somehow gone unreported. Easy enough to call BS.

Willful innumeracy in support of a political position is no virtue.