Lives saved by invasion? (please help me prove this repub wrong)

I was searching a conservative site (no, I’m not a repub spy. Know your enemy). One of the people gave the following statistic. These are supposedly from CIA Factbook.

(Paraphrased) (The original post was stupidly sloppy)

Currently the death rate in Iraq is 5.37 deaths/1,000 population. Since they have 26,000,000 people that means 139,620 people died this year.

In 2000 it was 6.4 deaths/1,000 population. That meant 166,400 people died a year.

So over a period of three years 80, 340 people lived who wouldn’t have. Since that many Iraqis haven’t been killed in the war that means lives have been saved by the invasion.

Is this whole thing bogus? I’m wondering how it could be true. Do any of you know if developing countries often have their death rates drop fairly often in fairly large amounts? You know, natural progression. Or is it just bogus death per 1000 numbers? I checked the numbers and the current death rate.
Any help would be appreciated.

It's amazing how the Right just makes stuff up.

This was studied and published in The Lancet, one of the top medical journals:

http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf

If I recall correctly, all told, Iraqis were dying at a rate that's 50% - 250% higher than before the invasion - and that was 1994. It's probably much worse now.

Here's an article about that Lancet study. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338362,00.html

It is very hard to get a firm handle on how many have died in Iraq post-invasion, and of what causes, due to the reticence of the US command to release or even record such information. That study however does make a very good attempt to do so, as good as any I've seen.

Cool, thanks. Still, its better to know what the enemy is saying.

And it's good to know that you're not buying into their crap!

:hug: ~ ~ :hug:

....Stay off the wackjob wingnut sites and you won't be fed B.S.

At least 150,000, by most sane counts. The Pentagon officer in charge of damage assessments said publicly that 100,000 was a low end estimate, and that was six months ago. I forget the exact numbers, but there was a report compiled by the US government that said something to the effect that something like 3,000 Iraqis were killed in April by terrorism alone.

And in any event, those numbers are bogus at best. There have been many deaths in Iraq that were never formally reported, and even if they were there's no guarantee the CIA factbook is as truthful as it used to be.

Aristotle identified it as a Fallacy of Equivocation.


Here is another example that unravels the argument by being more specific.


1) 100,000 people were murdered in the US last year.

2) Therefore 35 million 9 hundred thousand people were NOT murdered
in the US last year.

Both sentences are true but 2)is irrelevant to the question of how
many murders IN FACT took place in the US last year.


I once baited a FReeper by pointing out the number of fallacies in
three replies to me. Six fallacies in three replies. Three fallacies
in one reply. He gave up after the third try.

Go here

http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/fallacies.htm

and study the categories of Material Fallacies it's your best
answer to RW propaganda. When you start citing Aristotle the
wind goes out of their sails pretty quick.