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Thursday, June 01, 2006
The Iraq Civil War worsens
Two news articles, besides all the ones on the massacre and coverup, show Iraq is getting even worse despite our most recent "turning point."
50 people died today in insurgent attacks while the SFGate reports insurgent attacks have hit a record 600 a week. To those tweakers of statistics that suggest that Washington D.C. is more dangerous than Iraq they are idiots. Sorry, they just are. First of all, they're dividing the killings that are concentrated in Baghdad by the population of the entire country. I could do the same thing for DC murders by taking their murder rate and dividing it by 300 million and get a similar appearance of decrease in murder rates. Yesterday, 50 people died in one day in a city of about 6 million people. If I were similarly guilty of dishonest statistical tweaking, I could say that would indicate a death rate of about 300 people per 100,000 a year (about 7-8 times higher than that in DC). Since it is a single timepoint, however, that would be unfair. More honest would be to base the death rate in Baghdad on the 300 people who have died this month in violence (we exclude the hundreds and hundreds of injuries on top of fatalities just to be extra nice) and the rate becomes 60 per 100,000 per year, still higher than any crime-ridden U.S. city (but sadly only about 50% more dangerous than D.C.). There is also the misrepresentation that D.C. crime is random, and that the people who die are just innocent schmoes walking down the street. That is rarely the case. In depth study of city crime rates indicate that most crimes are committed by criminals against other criminals, and random death from crime is pretty rare. However, the deaths in Baghdad are random suicide bombings and explosions from IEDs, in addition to death squads and insurgent executions of innocent civilians. An average Joe in DC has little to fear from the high homicide rate if they don't deal drugs or lack a criminal record. The average Joe in Baghdad risks execution by government death squads, execution by insurgents, death by suicide bomber, death by IED, death by US soldiers, and regular old death from criminals. This type of statistical fudging is incredibly dishonest, and just goes to show how far the conservatives will stoop to protect their state of cognitive dissonance. |
9 Comments:
You do respond more intelligently than any other liberal blogger that I am aware of.
If you object to comparing a country to a city, let's compare murder rates country to country:
Columbia: 62 per 100k
So. Africa: 50 per 100k
Venezuela: 31 per 100k
Iraq: 28 per 100k
where the Iraq number is from Rep King as per your link.
8:14 PM, June 01, 2006
Data is taken pre 2000 from UN sources.
Your data is no longer up to date and is from before the current civil war.
9:47 PM, June 01, 2006
Which data? If it was Rep. King's, then I would fall back to my calculation based on some 2005 numbers yielding 35 per 100K.
10:51 PM, June 01, 2006
The data you linked to is from 2000 for the murder rates for Columbia, South Africa etc, I believe in both instances things have chilled in those two countries (but is by no means low). The murder capital study is from the 2001 murder rates which are now lower. The data on Iraq's death rate post 2003 suggests death rate 2.5x the preinvasion death rate. It also suggests nearly 100k killed in the process of taking the country.
Finally the whole point of the post was that King fudged that statistic, so citing it back to me doesn't convince me of anything. First, you're comparing the murder rates for entire countries to cities, which always have higher rates than the country averages (the US is 4/100,000 as a whole compared to most of its cities with between 2-12x more murders). It's an apples to oranges comparison. Second, the statistic is objectively false. For one, people in DC don't have to hide in a green zone and wear bullet proof vests everywhere. Second, the statistics are fudged and underestimated, and false comparisons are being made. The King statistic is clearly using the entire population of the country to dilute out the death rate. TOTAL BS.
The murder rate statement from Wiki:
In 2004, the Associated Press completed a survey [29] of the morgues in Baghdad and surrounding provinces, to tally violent deaths since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. In Baghdad alone, they counted 4,279 such deaths in a city of 5.6 million; these deaths generally do not include combatants, [*NOTE: they are underestimates*] because they are typically not brought to morgues. This death rate translates to 76 killings per 100,000 people, compared to 39 in crime-ridden Bogotá, Colombia, 7.5 in New York City, 3.0 in Baghdad itself in 2002 (the year before the war), and the international average rate of 5.5.
Further, news reports indicate that since 2004, death rates among civilians may have as much as tripled.
So, Baghdad is about 25 times more dangerous than before the invasion. It is about twice as dangerous as DC, only including fatalities. Now remember, people in DC are usually getting killed by gunfire, usually by people they know, in mostly non-random crimes. Killings in Iraq involve suicide bombs, IEDs, and insurgent raids that kill many people, but for every fatality dozens are often maimed or crippled by explosions or stray fire. It is random, it creates many more casualties than fatalities, and it is completely different from city violence in our country. If we were to examine casualty rates between cities like Baghdad and DC, the numbers would be even more extremely different. Further, DC itself has inflated rates because the relatively small population of the city (550k) receives an influx of 3 million people per day from the greater metropolitan area so to be fair, the rates in those cities should reflect the actual biomass of people living, partying and buying drugs there, rather than the relatively small number of residents.
Apples to oranges, oranges to rodents, and rodents to kimchi. That's the nature of these bullshit comparisons. Enough already.
12:18 AM, June 02, 2006
The Lancet study is an outlier. If you read far enough into the Lancet article to find their error estimates, its clear that its authors didn't have any faith in the numbers either.
I don't find Wikipedia a reliable source on politics and I note that they offer no sources for many of the suspicious numbers you quote. (Where are they going to get pre-war estimates of Iraq deaths? Do they think Saddam kept accurate records of mass burials?) But, since their numbers generally support my side I won't argue with it either.
(By the way, if you don't have more recent numbers, what is the point in criticizing my South Africa numbers for being from the most recent year that I found?)
In 2000, did you see any newspapers devote the front page day after day to every report of death in South Africa? No, you didn't. The focus on every incident in Iraq now merely indicates media hysteria and BDS.
4:14 PM, June 04, 2006
Blah fucking blah blah blah.
Anyone who suggests DC is as or more dangerous than Baghdad is a de facto retard. That you continue to defend such an untenable position is disgusting.
The lancet study gave a conservative figure of 100k. Just because you don't understand the meaning of a confidence interval doesn't mean the authors are "unsure" of the data.
Suspicious numbers? You can't find the sources? Too hard to go to the bottom of the page and follow links? Sorry, I did violate the gnu license by not linking directly to the article. Fixed.
We don't write about South Africa because we don't have troops there dumbass. Newpapers aren't just international obituaries.
All of your arguments are fatuous at best. Nitpicking at the edge of my much better arguments that are unassailable.
Take note give up readers. This is why arguing with conservatives is pointless. There is no amount of evidence or data that will change their minds, if some crackpot conservative says it, it's true, forever and ever. No matter how obviously false every single thing in the world shows it to be. The argument that DC is as dangerous as Baghdad is just stupid, stupid, stupid.
12:28 AM, June 05, 2006
"Just because you don't understand the meaning of a confidence interval doesn't mean the authors are "unsure" of the data."
You didn't read the article, did you?
"You can't find the sources? Too hard to go to the bottom of the page and follow links?"
You are claiming that Saddam released accurate number for people dumped in mass graves and that those numbers are in those footnotes?
"We don't write about South Africa because we don't have troops there dumbass."
Maybe you are too young to remember when South Africa was a top story. And no we didn't have troops there then either.
3:04 AM, June 05, 2006
I did read the article. No one understands confidence intervals, I don't feel like explaining them. It's beside the point anyway. The authors, who previously were used by the United States and the UN to provide estimates of genocide in Sudan using the same methods, came up with the conservative estimate of 100k, excluding fallujah, since the numbers weren't reliable.
South Africa was in the news when we were fighting apartheid and trying to make Reagan sanction the country. If you remember, congress had to pass an embargo over Reagan's veto because it was very important for that racist prick to keep the white SA government in power. Yet another proud moment for the Republican party. If you think SA still deserves parity with Iraq, you sir, are smoking crack.
Then, as I knew, absolutely knew you would, you brought Saddam back into it. Because when the bullshit is exposed, all the rightwingers can say is "but, but, but Saddam..."
Whatever, Saddam was a nasty bastard, but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Baghdad is not safer than DC! It is not, not, not, not, not safer! This is the claim being made by the rightwingers, and refuted here. Nice straw man.
5:41 PM, June 05, 2006
Jim’s last post was really over the top. If it was insulting but advanced the debate that would be one thing, but it did not. Instead he accused the good Rev.Dr. of having not read an article and of being too young to know his history. This is simply impertinent. Fuck him.
I say it’s time to Give Up on Jim.
-JE
8:27 PM, June 06, 2006
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