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@Shuma: I love how you use the Lancet report. That piece of Gak has been criticized and discarded by the UN, the AP, and many more. Every other major study on the subject puts the number at around 110,000, with the UN being the only exception and that is still only at 150,000. Don't use craptastic studies, just because they support your outrageous claims, when there are much more reliable and consistent studies.

JEB_Stuart wrote:And you need to do your own damn research before you make stupid claims like this. Millions have NOT died. Anyone with half a brain knows that....

Its certainly possible, the margins of error are very high in the case of all available information. Its unlikely for sure, but so is the notion that casualties have amounted to 100,000.

JEB_Stuart wrote:@Shuma: I love how you use the Lancet report. That piece of Gak has been criticized and discarded by the UN, the AP, and many more. Every other major study on the subject puts the number at around 110,000, with the UN being the only exception and that is still only at 150,000. Don't use craptastic studies, just because they support your outrageous claims, when there are much more reliable and consistent studies.

Of course it has, those same bodies continued to contend that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction for years. It's amazing how easy it is to dismiss things in light of actual evidence when you want to.

dogma wrote:The distinction between death by terrorist (a poor term at best in this instance) action, and death by the actions of US force is irrelevant in this instance. We started the war, and instigated the conflicts between the various political sects within the country.

True enough, but his numbers are still way off.

dogma wrote:Incidentally, while Shuma's numbers were on the high end of the estimates of the Iraq death toll, yours are simply from the opposite extreme. Lancet puts the numbers around 650,000, and the WHO places them near 151,000 (with 95% uncertainty). If we take the average of the various surveys taken, the number come out close to 300,000.

The WHO, www.Iraqbodycount.org, the UN, the AP, the Brookings Institution, and the New England Journal of Medicine all place the numbers in the 100,000 range, with none of them exceeding 155,00. That is way lower and more consistent then the Lancet study, which all of the aforementioned studies ignore or criticize.

dogma wrote:Its offensive for any given person to state that the death of 2000 people is irrelevant to their daily life? I mean, based on the number of people that die on a daily basis, even simply accounting for those who go due to human artifice, I'd say that for most people massive amounts of death are frequently dismissed every day. Death itself isn't something people care about, what makes you mad is the way in which certain deaths violate your notions of what it means to be civil, or proper.

Well considering that what is and isn't offensive is an opinion, yes it is. You can't decide what is and isn't offensive to me or anyone else, so anyone can make their own opinions on any subject.

The WHO, www.Iraqbodycount.org, the UN, the AP, the Brookings Institution, and the New England Journal of Medicine all place the numbers in the 100,000 range, with none of them exceeding 155,00. That is way lower and more consistent then the Lancet study, which all of the aforementioned studies ignore or criticize.

Those studies do not take into account death by sickness, malnourishment, water poisoning, and more standard injuries that during Iraqs period before the war could have easily been dealt with.

I'm just baffled as to the dismissal of 2000+ people dead as "something that occurs daily due to accidents and homicides and suicides".

Who said homicides and suicides? Thats actually inaccurate.

I think most people are missing the point. It's not the fact 2000+ died in the WTC, it's how and why they died.

No serial killer on this planet would get away with just life in prison for killing 2000+ people over lets say the course of 10 years (unless he is tried in a state with no DP of course but I believe NY has the DP).

So again, I am reading that one side doesn't think it's fair a terrorist, who I might add is not a citizen so technically a fair trial doesn't apply to him, should not be executed and the other side says "kill him, it's better than he deserves".

I'm just baffled as to the dismissal of 2000+ people dead as "something that occurs daily due to accidents and homicides and suicides".

I'm beginning to think the lot of you protested the execution of Tim McVey and his death toll was in the 100's, not 1000's. Sheesh.

JEB_Stuart wrote:The WHO, www.Iraqbodycount.org, the UN, the AP, the Brookings Institution, and the New England Journal of Medicine all place the numbers in the 100,000 range, with none of them exceeding 155,00. That is way lower and more consistent then the Lancet study, which all of the aforementioned studies ignore or criticize.

They all also have margins of uncertainty exceeding 90%. Meaning the actual death toll could be 90% higher, or lower, than the given number.

Incidentally, while all the various studies have criticized the Lancet methodology none of the criticisms have been particularly damning. They range from "that number is really high", which means nothing, to "there may have been a conflict of interests with respect to the nationality of the interviewers" which is valid, but not crippling.

The most popular criticism seems to be one of repercussions: that there were anywhere from 200,000-700,000 deaths without any official notification seeming unlikely. Until you realize that we're talking about Iraq, a nation which lacked a government for a significant period of time, and not England or the US. This is the line of reasoning favored by the Iraq Body Count Project, and it points out a significant flaw in their own methodology as much as that of Lancet, and ORB.

JEB_Stuart wrote:
Well considering that what is and isn't offensive is an opinion, yes it is. You can't decide what is and isn't offensive to me or anyone else, so anyone can make their own opinions on any subject.

No, but I can criticize the fact that you've taken offense, which is what I did.

Lord-Loss wrote:

I think that everyone needs to take a walk outside for a few minutes.

Im not taking a walk outside, Lie to Me is on in fifteen minutes

(Great show, I recommend it to all)

Lie to me? What is that?
I'm taking momdog aka the tiger, for walk after work before the rain comes in.

Lie to Me is a TV show. A crime TV show and the break has ended and its back on.

JEB_Stuart wrote:I say we give him a sex change, wrap him in pigskin and send him back to his own country....heh, martyr indeed...

Now thats a more appropriate and humane punishment I can get behind.

I critcize dogma for criticizing Jeb for taking offense.

Hell, I'm offended by a lot of the reactions here.

"Oh poor terrorist, he isn't going to get a fair trial because the President made a comment about him being hung".

feth that damn terrorist. He masterminded the deaths of 1'000's of people without remorse. He doesn't even deserve a trial.


I

Fateweaver wrote:I critcize dogma for criticizing Jeb for taking offense.

I

I criticize myself for not drinking enough before reading that. My head!

Giving him a trial is important. It shows EXACTLY why America is great, and the culture/ideology he's espousing is crap. That's also why whatever punishment is meted out should be humane and as far as possible, dignified. If he got executed, I wouldn't mind at all. However, I think locking him up makes more sense, because then you're not giving his side a martyr.

My point about motives is that American foreign policies do anger a lot of people. Whether that is justified isn't my point (I certainly don't condone any sort of violent action over it, let me be clear). Understanding that anger is important, as it can help America to deal with it. Dismissing it is not smart, I think.

Fateweaver wrote:
Hell, I'm offended by a lot of the reactions here.

"Oh poor terrorist, he isn't going to get a fair trial because the President made a comment about him being hung".

feth that damn terrorist. He masterminded the deaths of 1'000's of people without remorse. He doesn't even deserve a trial.

You realize that the appearance of a fair trial is one of the central elements of this little publicity stunt, right?

We are not angry, we just don't let people walk all over us.

dogma wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:
Hell, I'm offended by a lot of the reactions here.

"Oh poor terrorist, he isn't going to get a fair trial because the President made a comment about him being hung".

feth that damn terrorist. He masterminded the deaths of 1'000's of people without remorse. He doesn't even deserve a trial.

You realize that the appearance of a fair trial is one of the central elements of this little publicity stunt, right?

Others would say its just a distraction for that whole unemployment thing...

Da Boss wrote:Giving him a trial is important. It shows EXACTLY why America is great, and the culture/ideology he's espousing is crap. That's also why whatever punishment is meted out should be humane and as far as possible, dignified. If he got executed, I wouldn't mind at all. However, I think locking him up makes more sense, because then you're not giving his side a martyr.

My point about motives is that American foreign policies do anger a lot of people. Whether that is justified isn't my point (I certainly don't condone any sort of violent action over it, let me be clear). Understanding that anger is important, as it can help America to deal with it. Dismissing it is not smart, I think.

Then they better suck it the hell up.

This isn't foreign policy. He was arrested by American agents, he's being tried on American soil.

If he were being tried in Iraq and Obama was threatening to withdraw all funding for rebuilding the country or blocking all trade/aid to the country until they delivered a guilty verdict?

Then that would be foreign policy.

Our Overlord works in mysterious ways. I still say he is a pawn of Tzeentch (or perhaps Tzeentch itself).

Kanluwen wrote:

Da Boss wrote:Giving him a trial is important. It shows EXACTLY why America is great, and the culture/ideology he's espousing is crap. That's also why whatever punishment is meted out should be humane and as far as possible, dignified. If he got executed, I wouldn't mind at all. However, I think locking him up makes more sense, because then you're not giving his side a martyr.

My point about motives is that American foreign policies do anger a lot of people. Whether that is justified isn't my point (I certainly don't condone any sort of violent action over it, let me be clear). Understanding that anger is important, as it can help America to deal with it. Dismissing it is not smart, I think.

Then they better suck it the hell up.

This isn't foreign policy. He was arrested by American agents, he's being tried on American soil.

If he were being tried in Iraq and Obama was threatening to withdraw all funding for rebuilding the country or blocking all trade/aid to the country until they delivered a guilty verdict?

Then that would be foreign policy.

You're misunderstanding my post. The motives I was talking about were the motives for the original attack.

Except the "foreign policy motivations" doesn't hold up.

What was done to get Al Qaeda forces involved in Somalia?
Nothing.
What was done to get the original WTC bombing planned?
Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head.

The attack had been planned for a decade, at least. The earlier attempt was bungled, but still did damage.

But saying American foreign policy brought it about?
That's moronic.

That's not what I was saying. The people who enacted the crime brought it about. No one else. But they had reasons, and they probably thought they were pretty damn good ones.
But if you think those reasons had nothing to do with for example, america's support of Israel, which is widely hated throughout the arab world, I'd say you're taking a fairly narrow view. Perhaps I'm wrong, of course.

It's not just foreign policy of course, there's also the effect of american culture on other cultures, the way it seems to "swallow up" traditional values and so on, which really drives certain people nuts.

Note, I'm not saying this as an attack on america, or saying those policies are wrong, or that they somehow lessen the guilt of the perpetrators. That's not my point at all. I'm simply saying dismissing them as completely insane is closing yourself off to the reasons.

Oh no, I'm not dismissing them as completely insane.

I'm dismissing them as moronic, traditionalist views held by weathered old dinosaurs who refuse to let the last vestiges of their power that they gathered to them by lying through their teeth to a population that set its moral compass by religion exclusively and preferred isolationism(except when it makes the upper portion of the population--the clerics, the ministers, etc filthy rich) to actually advancing themselves while retaining their own culture.

Yeah, western civilization does seem to "swallow up" traditional values. But only because most of the areas where you get such extreme culture shock go from being completely isolated to being drenched in a brand new experience. It's called culture shock. It's the same as if you were to take a pothead from Texas to Amsterdam--they'd go nuts in their newfound freedom.

Okay, so you understand my post. I think you were thinking that I thought this made their actions in some way defensible? I don't, but I think understanding why is important.

Frazzled wrote:
Others would say its just a distraction for that whole unemployment thing...

I might do the same if this hadn't been a Democratic issue long before the financial crisis. I'd call it fortuitous coincidence more than anything else.

Besides, it isn't as though this will change the opinion of anyone paying attention to politics. Its neither significant enough to distract, nor unexpected enough to pull support from the moderate right who are more likely, on the whole, to support military trials for suspected terrorists.

It is something he'll claim as an accomplishment in the next election, that's for sure.

BluntmanDC wrote:welcome to the U.S.A 1900 style, brutallity doesn't make you look civilised no matter what the reason, excecuting someone who who beleives they will go to a wonderful heaven for what the have done isn't a punishment, its a prize. life imprisionment in solitary confinment is a far more terrifing and real punishment.

How can one punishment simultaneously be more "brutal" than another while being preferred by the person being punished?

Aesthetics?

Fateweaver wrote:Our Overlord works in mysterious ways. I still say he is a pawn of Tzeentch (or perhaps Tzeentch itself).

Why don't you ask him?

Kanluwen wrote:
But saying American foreign policy brought it about?
That's moronic.

It really isn't. Its to be expected that reprisal would come out of the continued support of regimes like the one in Egypt, and the presence of military assets in a largely hostile (in the popular sense) Saudi Arabia. I mean really, if these states need our help to stay in power why should we expect that the attitude of the populace reflects that of their government?

There's a difference between considering the terrorist attacks the deserved response to our actions, and calling them the natural result of our foreign policy. The latter is true, the former is not.

Except those "largely hostile" areas aren't.

The average Saudi Arabian doesn't have issues with America. Nor does the average Egyptian.

The issue is that those countries have large, open religious communities with outspoken hardliners who aren't even FROM the country in question who help drive public opinion.

Kanluwen wrote:Except those "largely hostile" areas aren't.

The average Saudi Arabian doesn't have issues with America.

The Saudis cooperate with us because we buy large chunks of their oil, and because we shielded them from Saddam. They can get away with this because they sit at the top of a royalist, rentier state. And because we overlook the cultural mores which they depend on for power, even if we consider them reprehensible.

Also, keep in mind that Saudi Arabia is by far the leading financial supporter of Islamic terrorism, though not through official state channels.

Kanluwen wrote:
Nor does the average Egyptian.

You should do some research into the last 50 years of Egyptian history before you say that; particularly Mubarak's government, and its involvement with the US. The upper tiers of Egyptian society tend to sympathize with the US, or at least regard it with indifference. But the lower classes generally view the West with hostility due to America's support of Mubarak, and its involvement in brokering peace with Israel.

Not everyone adapts to change. Just look at how much fire and brimstone is attached to the word socialism in the US.

Kanluwen wrote:
The issue is that those countries have large, open religious communities with outspoken hardliners who aren't even FROM the country in question who help drive public opinion.

You do realize that the majority of Al-Qaeda's leadership is made up of Egyptian nationals, correct? The outspoken hardliners often tend to cross borders, but there are certain nations which tend to be develop more at home. Egypt and Saudi Arabia being two of the most significant ones.

The notion that all hardliners are not nationals of the state in which they work is largely misguided. It isn't as though these people all grow up in one nation, and then without fail move to another.

hurp a durp, Dogma comes up with largely false statements espoused over and over and over again by French intelligence agencies.

You do realize that the majority of Al-Qaeda's leadership is made up of ANY FANATIC WHO COMES IN WANTING TO DOWN THE WEST?

You do, also, realize that the "hardliners" of each nation are, without fail, people who have suddenly appeared in the country after rabblerousing in another, yes?

Or does that fact conveniently stay out of your way while making up garbage?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/us/19detain.html?_r=1&bl

Somebody explain again to me why this is being taken from the military and being put before a civilian court?
I really love Holders statement that, "Failure is not an option."


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think this guy has it nailed:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6725916.html