(To Iraqis) Do you think Iraq is heading in the right direction?
Yes (Shia): 84%
Yes (Sunni): 6%

Do you approve of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq:
Yes (Shia): 41%
Yes (Sunni): 88%

Looks like we really are going to be caught in the middle of a civil war in which nobody likes us. Thanks, failed Republican foreign policy!

I guess the idea of 30% of people being blind to reality is more universal than I thought. We really aren’t so different after all.

(Too easy)

Number of Iraqis who had access to potable water before invasion: 13 million
Number of Iraqis who have access to potable water, according to the April 2006 SIGIR report: 8 million

Number of Iraqi physicians registered prior to the invasion: 34,000
Number of Iraqi physicians who have been murdered or fled the country since the invasion: 14,000

Infant mortality rate in Iraq: (Middle East average is 37, sub-Saharan Africa average is 105): 102

Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2004: 45
Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2006: 90

Amount requested by the President in his Fiscal Year 2007 budget for democracy promotion in Iraq: 0

Percent of Iraqis who say they are optimistic about their future: 30 percent

According to a recent World Public Opinion poll, percent of Iraqis who approve of a timeline for U.S. withdrawal: 70 percent

Number of Iraqi civilians killed in May, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 2,669

Number of Iraqi civilians killed in June, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 3,149

Civilian death toll in Iraq in June 2006: 100 per day

Percent of Iraq s professional class that has left the country since late 2003:40 percent

You have to wonder what it would have looked like if it were going badly.>>

The is all thanks to GOP ‘planning’.

WIKI–
Argumentum ad nauseam or argument from repetition or Argumentum ad infinitum is the false proof of a statement by (prolonged) repetition, possibly by different people. This logical fallacy is commonly used as a form of rhetoric by politicians, and it is one of the mechanisms of reinforcing urban legends. In its extreme form, it can also be a form of brainwashing. In common usage the statement “A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth” is often used to allude to the same concept, which self referentially has been attributed diversely to Lenin, Goebbels, Hitler and Stalin among others, when little evidence can be found to support most of these historical figures having said this.

Modern politics is fraught with examples of argumentum ad nauseam, and wide acceptance of many policies and perspectives is driven in part by the endless repetition of slogans. The exercise of argumentum ad nauseam can be widely observed in the distribution of “talking points,” which are collections of short phrases that are issued to members of modern political parties for recitation to achieve maximum message repetition.

This phrase is often misspelled “ad nauseum”.

I concede that the Saddam totals include ‘deaths attributed to Saddam’ – not just Iraq in isolation.
So the delta may not be as strong if we limited Saddam to Iraq only. But I seriously doubt Saddam killed more outside of Iraq than inside. There are many other angles to this argument and apples to apple is very hard to do, but it looks to me like it was worse under Saddam.

Dugger

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1193108.ece

The comprehensive numbers still suggest Iraq is better off now than under Saddam – even if you accept (which I don’t) the inflated 100K estimate for Iraq some are bandying about. And the death rate (or count) for US soldiers in this war is extremely low as comapred to previous wars/near wars.

And what I assert here, w/o context, does not constitute an argument for the war. No more than screaming about the body count w/o context makes a case against it.

Well your numbers on Iraq are still off. Check out the casualty count for Iraq alone in the I

You are missing something. Your figures do not include the incorporated areas within the county -over which the County sheriff’s office would not have reporting jurisdiction.

No, Bill, you just aren’t comprehending the full depths of Dugger’s dishonesty. It looks like you are getting your numbers from the LA County Sheriff’s webpage http://www.lacountymurders.com.

The numbers there only include crimes classified as murders which they define as follows:

A person commits the crime of murder if with intent to cause the death of another person, he causes the death of that person or of another person, or under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, he recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person other than himself, and thereby causes the death of another person. Murder may also be committed when a person commits or attempts to commit arson, burglary, escape, kidnapping, rape, robbery, sodomy or any other felony clearly dangerous to human life and, in the course of and in furtherance of the crime that he is committing or attempting to commit, or in immediate flight therefore, he, or another participant if there is any, causes the death of any person.”

The numbers do not include total homicides because homicides defined as follows:

“Criminal homicide may be classified as murder, manslaughter, or criminally negligent homicide. A person commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or with criminal negligence causes the death of another person. Homicides that are neither justifiable nor excusable are considered crimes.”

http://www.lacountymurders.com/whatis-articles.cfm

So essentially, Dugger is comparing ALL homicides in Los Angeles County, which include manslaughter and criminal negligence, against the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq the preponderance of which meet the legal definition of murder described above. If Dugger compared murder to murder, as opposed to murder to criminal homicide, he would get a different result. Which is, of course, why he prefers to compare apples and oranges.

2000 – 551
2001 – 587
2002 – 658
2003 – 498
2004 – 515
2005 – 433

(approximately 220 homicides have occured in L.A. County so far in 2006, a rate roughly equal to last year)

Avg. since 2000 – 540.33
Avg. since 2003 – 482

monthly avg (including current 2006 totals and assuming a 40 month time span so as to roughly equal the Iraq invasion) – 37

U.S. casualties in Iraq to date: 2559

yearly avg. – 715.14
monthly avg. – 63.97

Am I completely missing something, because even if you allow for the inclusion of civilian deaths in L.A. County while excluding civilian deaths in Iraq (for the whole country or just for Baghdad), the death total in Iraq for U.S. servicemen, on average, is still considerably higher.

I’m not sure how the full scale invasion of a non-aggressor nation already severly weakened by 12 years of sanctions can be compared to WWII, Korea, or Vietnam. Since Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” and stated flatly that the U.S. was “victorious” back in 2003, wouldn’t it be more accurate to call this a bloody occupation (the long predicted aftermath derided by those who insisted it would all cost only a billion or so and we would be showered with flowers and candy) and begin historical comparisons from there?

As for the 2 million deaths under Saddam, is that just executions or does it include wars like the one with Iran or the invasion of Kuwait? The most consistent estimates from outside sources (not Iraqi politicians) puts the number at around 300,000. Iraqi politicians apparently put the number closer to 1 million.

1. There are more homocides in L.A. county than there are military deaths in Iraq because there are over at least 100 times as many people living in L.A. County than there are servicemen in Iraq. This is pretty basic stuff you should have learned in middle school.

2. The “war” in Iraq cannot be compared with other wars because the U.S. is acting as a police, and not fighting a opposing country’s military. If the U.S. death toll was due to fighting the former Iraqi army, you would have a point. But for a peace-keeping operation, Iraq’s pretty damn dangerous.

(Wonder how many U.S. soldiers were killed in similar circumstances…)

Besides, I believe your collective  concern has zilch to do with deaths of US servicemen or Iraqis and everything to do with discrediting Bush.

Time for the old switcharoo:

Besides, I believe your collective  concern has zilch to do with “liberating” Iraqis and everything to do with making Bush look good.

Question your numbers (more than that died in the Iran/Iraq war alone). I have seeen totals from two to three million deaths that Saddam was responsible for over his lifetime. http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Saddam_the_Mass_Murderer) .

On the other, the Iraq total by IBC is about 40,000.
Saddam 24 years 2M = around 80,000 a year.

Latest war is about 12,000 per year.

That would be a delta of 28K per year if Saddam were still in power.

I also acknowledge estimates vary and methods of counting vary, but it clearly seems to me that the magnitude of difference suggests,as far as deaths are concerned, that the world is much better off with the current situation than with Saddam alive.

I still say perspective is required. The war may or may not be a bad idea, but it is not a bad idea, IMO, because of body count – which looks like it would be worse under Saddam.