http://www.gnn.tv/articles/3113/Democratic_Spin_Won_t_End_the_War_in_Iraq
This link above takes you to an interesting anecdote from Anthony Lappe of Guerrilla News Network:
"In early 2005, I attended a two-day conference organized by the labor union SEIU. The event gathered some of the nation’s leading young left-leaning activists, in particular those working in the media, with the goal of synergizing our efforts around core issues. Over the course of the weekend, the idea was to come up with five “top issues” we could all agree to focus on in the coming year. Wal-Mart was a big issue, as was the looming battle of the White House’s plan to privatize social security. To my dismay, Iraq was not one of them. I expressed my shock, pointing out that we were a nation at war and that as progressives it was not just a moral duty but a good tactical decision to oppose it. I noted the war was only going to worsen and American public opinion would turn on it and that we needed to get out in front of it. In addition, many soldiers and their families were turning away from Bush because of the war and that this represented a new opportunity for the left to connect with members of the armed services. While several participants thanked me for my comments in private, I was mostly met with blank stares. Between sessions, I found myself talking with a representative from MoveOn. I asked him why Iraq didn’t seem to be on the top of MoveOn’s list of issues at the time. His response sent a chill up my spine: 'Iraq is not a winner.' In contrast, he pointed out, Bush’s social security privatization program was unpopular and provided the left with a tangible opportunity for a much-needed political score. We need wins, he said, repeating a mantra I would hear throughout the weekend from several other participants."
Here's what Richard Garfield [http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1013/p01s04-woiq.html said about the 2006 study]:
<blockquote>I loved when President Bush said "their methodology has been pretty well discredited." That's exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don't think there's anyone who's been involved in mortality research who thinks there's a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there's a better way to do it.</blockquote>
If you call that being critical of the 2006 study, your dictionary must define "critical" very differently than mine does.
<blockquote>War critics who accept any of the three familiar assertions listed above are caught in a dangerous paradox. By suggesting that more troops would have helped create a stable Iraq, they betray a retrospective expectation that large numbers of Iraqis were going to resist."</blockquote>
And come to think of it, our war-planners betrayed the same expectation when they built that "Emerald City" and displayed the same incompetence by failing to roof it over.
...And then when I read this today, by Andrew Bacevich, author of <i>American Empire</i> and <i>The New American Militarism</i> and whose son was recently killed in Iraq --
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052807Z.shtml
-- I was struck by the parallel between these two passages: Yours --
<blockquote>Oh, he'd like to meet me and sit and talk with me. After all, he lost a cousin in this war and he's spending every waking hour of every day doing what he can to stop this war. I got a version of the big picture argument. They are taking small steps, and yes, Rhoda, there will be many of these small steps, to get to the ultimate goal, Democrat control of the government."</blockquote>
-- and his:
<blockquote>Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. [Senator John] Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me."</i>
Looks like they gotta keep the party going to keep the Party going.
Sheldon, you say of the Lancet 2006 study:
<i>"the researchers had used state-of-the-art survey techniques widely recognized as the best methodology for estimating deaths in other war zones previously."</i>
This is not quite true. Significant methodological compromises were made due to the dangers involved to the interviewers. For example, it used a "randomly selected main street" sampling technique rather than a completely random selection process (such as that used in the Iraq Living Conditions Survey, which produced a much lower estimate of Iraqi deaths for the overlapping period). The randomness of the sampling is everything for such surveys, so this was a major compromise, the effects of which are still to be determined.
According to the Lancet co-authors, details of the very brief doorstep interviews were recorded on scraps of paper which were later destroyed - again for safety reasons. The survey was courageous, but you could hardly call it "state-of-the-art". That would be spin. Richard Garfield (one of the co-authors of the earlier Lancet 2004 study) was critical of the later 2006 study, and thought the danger to which the survey's interviewers were exposed was too great to permit the useful conduct of such a survey.
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