Iraq, Afghanistan, WoT, have now cost 225,000 lives, $4.4 Trillion

[Godfather]

US wars leave 225,000 dead, cost $4.4 trillion: study

(AFP) – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON — US wars launched since the attacks of September 11, 2001 have left 225,000 dead and cost up to $4.4 trillion, according to a new study by university researchers.

The study published by Brown University this week focused on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and counter-terrorism campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, which came in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

The authors argued that governments almost always go to war underestimating the potential duration and costs of a conflict while overestimating "the political objectives that can be accomplished by the use of brute force."

The study said "an extremely conservative estimate" of the casualty toll was about 225,000 people killed and 365,000 wounded in the wars so far.

The number of soldiers killed comes to 31,741, including about 6,000 Americans, 1,200 allied troops, 9,900 Iraqis, 8,800 Afghans, 3,500 Pakistanis as well as 2,300 US private security contractors, it said.

The civilian toll was much higher, with an estimated 172,000 dead, including about 125,000 Iraqis, 35,000 Pakistanis and 12,000 Afghans, it said.

The study acknowledged that estimating the number of dead was difficult, particularly the toll for insurgents, putting the number at between 20,000 to 51,000 insurgents killed.

The report found that 168 reporters and 266 humanitarian workers were among the dead since the United States launched its "war on terror" after 9/11.

The wars also have triggered a massive flow of refugees and displaced persons, with more than 7.8 million displaced, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, it said.

The study estimated the financial cost of the wars at a minimum of $3.7 trillion and up to $4.4 trillion, which represents about a quarter of the country's current debt.

The researchers arrived at a much larger figure than the Pentagon's previous estimates, as they included spending by the Department of Homeland Security to counter terrorist threats, government projections for spending on wounded veterans through 2051 and war-related funds from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development.

The US government has previously cited the price tag for the wars at about one trillion dollars.

"Our estimate is larger because we include more than the direct Pentagon appropriation for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the larger global war on terror," said the study.

"Wars always cost more than what the Pentagon spends for the duration of the combat operation."

[Hal-9000]

trillions...that's a lot of zeros..

[Goofy]

How much did the university researchers waste on this study? :-k

[JoeyB]

The study said "an extremely conservative estimate" of the casualty toll was about 225,000 people killed and 365,000 wounded in the wars so far.

The civilian toll was much higher, with an estimated 172,000 dead, including about 125,000 Iraqis, 35,000 Pakistanis and 12,000 Afghans, it said.


That IS an extremely conservative estimate for the number of Iraqi dead, which is almost certainly many hundreds of thousands.

[AntZ]

How much did the university researchers waste on this study? :-k

Just enough to ensure they will get more funding for more bullshit studies! :bored:

[Deepsepia]

trillions...that's a lot of zeros..

It costs a lot to fight two wars on the other side of the planet.

Its also incredibly stupid. Afghanistan is about as far from the United States as a place can be.

There ought to be places where we say, "you know, I don't give a fuck what happens there", and Afghanistan would be #1 on that list.

[RBP]

It costs a lot to fight two wars on the other side of the planet.

Its also incredibly stupid. Afghanistan is about as far from the United States as a place can be.

There ought to be places where we say, "you know, I don't give a fuck what happens there", and Afghanistan would be #1 on that list.


I somehow think that people in the world trade center and everywhere else they launched attacks gave a fuck what happened there.

[Deepsepia]

I somehow think that people in the world trade center and everywhere else they launched attacks gave a fuck what happened there.

The 9/11 hijackers were Egyptians and Saudis. Some of them had passed through Afghanistan, briefly. None of the 9/11 attackers were Afghan, so far as we know the Taliban had no role in bin Laden's planning, and its unlikely that he told them anything about what he was up to.

Bin Laden, of course, was in Afghanistan. But he'd been other shit places-- Chad, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan meant nothing in particular to him. It was a convenient place, and then when it wasn't, Pakistan was a convenient place. Should we occupy Pakistan too? They've got ties to terrorism -- obviously. And they've got weapons of mass destruction, and they've sold nuclear technology on to all kinds of bad guys.

A policy of "let's occupy every piece of shit hell-hole on planet Earth, to make sure no one is planning anything there" is crazy. It won't work, it can't work, and it hasn't worked.

The next terrorist attack against the US, like the last one, is most likely being planned, today, by someone who's already in the US, and who has no connection at all to Afghanistan.

[RBP]

A policy of "let's occupy every piece of shit hell-hole on planet Earth, to make sure no one is planning anything there" is crazy. It won't work, it can't work, and it hasn't worked.

I didn't say that, but the notion that we had no business there is equally incorrect.

[Deepsepia]

I didn't say that, but the notion that we had no business there is equally incorrect.

I'd have had no problem with a strike to kill bin Laden. As we've just seen in Pakistan, you don't have to own the place to kill a bad guy.

A decade long adventure to "make Afghanistan and Iraq into better places" has wrecked our nation for no reason at all.

[Godfather]

Just enough to ensure they will get more funding for more bullshit studies! :bored:

Just to cause an argument... When or how do you propose wars be studied? Should historians just use the data governments release and make that history for future generations?

IMO this stuff has to be studied by independent bodies, and the sooner the better. :p

[JoeyB]

Just to cause an argument... When or how do you propose wars be studied? Should historians just use the data governments release and make that history for future generations?

IMO this stuff has to be studied by independent bodies, and the sooner the better. :p

Governments, working in their own best interest and rarely in the best interest of the people and certainly not in the best interest of enemy nations, can not be trusted. Governments historically lie about nearly everything, during and even after conflict. Independent, outside monitoring is therefore vital, so I second GF on this.

Also, this is why we need a free press and not a heavily consolidated corporate juggernaut, but that is another argument for another time.

[AntZ]

Just to cause an argument... When or how do you propose wars be studied? Should historians just use the data governments release and make that history for future generations?

IMO this stuff has to be studied by independent bodies, and the sooner the better. :p


First off, Brown University did not send their students or any other "independent" researchers into the war zones or tribal areas to count the dead and wounded! This is always the same, they take official numbers by the governments involved, the estimates from the media and groups opposed to the wars, and last but not least the made up numbers thrown around by the enemies involved. They take all those numbers and pad them based on the ideology of the professor overseeing the "study" and then sit back and enjoy the publicity they receive. There's a long history of this and so called "independent studies! That's why we rarely see the raw data sources!

[Deepsepia]

First off, Brown University did not send their students or any other "independent" researchers into the war zones or tribal areas to count the dead and wounded! This is always the same, they take official numbers by the governments involved, the estimates from the media and groups opposed to the wars, and last but not least the made up numbers thrown around by the enemies involved. They take all those numbers and pad them based on the ideology of the professor overseeing the "study" and then sit back and enjoy the publicity they receive. There's a long history of this and so called "independent studies! That's why we rarely see the raw data sources!

You seem not to have read the original post carefully.

The Brown University researchers' disagreement with the Pentagon is not on body count -- the Defense Department supplies no estimates of civilian casualties, so there is no "official estimate" with which they're disagreeing-- its on the financial cost of the war. On the subject of "body count", the low estimate of documented fatalities comes from "Iraq Body Count", at roughly 110,000. There have been some estimates (notably from the Lancet) which are much higher . . . these things are hard to say with precision, but the Brown number seems conservative.

The "Government's Numbers" can be found in

"The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11" (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fas.org%2Fsgp%2Fcrs%2Fnatsec% 2FRL33110.pdf&ei=pEMTTq7rI8fliAKioIDfDQ&usg=AFQjCNHjBPsvESRejCx5jQYT4wnzgrFYTw&sig2=2MkirOnuhoOWBVxjzajasw) from the Congressional Research Service

CRS put the cost at $1.4 Trillion, but they exclude several very large expenses which the Brown study includes

Here's how the Brown team gets to the $3.5 - $4.5 Trillion number

http://picload.org/image/lcidip/firefoxscreensna.jpg

As you can see, a huge cost in the Brown estimates are the costs of future care for injured veterans. If you're curious how they arrived at these numbers, you can read "Current and Projected Future Costs of Caring for Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars" (http://costsofwar.org/sites/default/files/articles/52/attachments/Bilmes%20Veterans%20Costs.pdf)

You can get the full report at Brown University's Watson School of International Affairs "Costs of War" website:
http://costsofwar.org/

[AntZ]

You seem not to have read the original post carefully.



Likewise!

I wasn't talking at all about the costs! I was talking about the numbers concerning deaths and wounded, and responding to a post on that subject ALONE! :roll:

[Deepsepia]

Likewise!

I wasn't talking at all about the costs! I was talking about the numbers concerning deaths and wounded, and responding to a post on that subject ALONE! :roll:

Your comment about the dead and wounded is also wrong.

If you read the Brown report, its based on the most solid data that there is.

And as I stated, the US Government itself doesn't provide comprehensive statistics on civilian casualties (after Vietnam "body count" is a dirty word at the Pentagon).

So unless you think "it doesn't matter how many people have died", then the folks who've worked to get a handle on this issue do everyone a service, right?

Or is it your contention that it doesn't matter?

Here are the "Costs of War" project's pages on

Afghan Casualties (http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-civilians)
Iraqi Casualties (http://costsofwar.org/article/iraqi-civilians)
Pakistani casualties (http://costsofwar.org/article/pakistani-civilians)

[AntZ]

Your comment about the dead and wounded is also wrong.

If you read the Brown report, its based on the most solid data that there is.

And as I stated, the US Government itself doesn't provide comprehensive statistics on civilian casualties (after Vietnam "body count" is a dirty word at the Pentagon).

So unless you think "it doesn't matter how many people have died", then the folks who've worked to get a handle on this issue do everyone a service, right?

Or is it your contention that it doesn't matter?

Here are the "Costs of War" project's pages on

Afghan Casualties (http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-civilians)
Iraqi Casualties (http://costsofwar.org/article/iraqi-civilians)
Pakistani casualties (http://costsofwar.org/article/pakistani-civilians)


Again you want to start an argument for nothing!



Your comment about the dead and wounded is also wrong.

Yeah! O.K.


First off, Brown University did not send their students or any other "independent" researchers into the war zones or tribal areas to count the dead and wounded! This is always the same, they take official numbers by the governments involved, the estimates from the media and groups opposed to the wars, and last but not least the made up numbers thrown around by the enemies involved. They take all those numbers and pad them based on the ideology of the professor overseeing the "study" and then sit back and enjoy the publicity they receive. There's a long history of this and so called "independent studies! That's why we rarely see the raw data sources!


What part of my statement was wrong? :roll:

Read it again over and over, and out loud!! Did I say that they get war dead counts only from the U.S.? They get the official numbers, what ever they are, from the U.S. and add them to the other sources!

Like the sites you just posted! Sites with an agenda! :lol: Exactly what I described above!

[Deepsepia]

What part of my statement was wrong? :roll:

This part


This is always the same, they take official numbers by the governments involved, the estimates from the media and groups opposed to the wars, and last but not least the made up numbers thrown around by the enemies involved. They take all those numbers and pad them based on the ideology of the professor overseeing the "study" and then sit back and enjoy the publicity they receive.

Your statement is wrong on many, easily verifiable counts

The Iraq Body Count numbers do not "take official numbers by the governments involved". Iraq produces some data from their hospitals, the ministry of health, and morgues, but its not the starting point for anyone's analysis, as its very spotty.

You might familiarize yourself with the "methodology" section of the Iraq Body Count project, here: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/about/methods/

And this part's wrong too



First off, Brown University did not send their students or any other "independent" researchers into the war zones or tribal areas to count the dead and wounded!


In fact, independent researchers have done surveys in Iraq to determine mortality.



METHODS:

Between May and July, 2006, we did a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality in Iraq. 50 clusters were randomly selected from 16 Governorates, with every cluster consisting of 40 households. Information on deaths from these households was gathered.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17055943



And this part's wrong too:


That's why we rarely see the raw data sources!

The Iraq Body Count's database is online, here:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

The Congressional Research Service prepared a report in 2008
"Iraqi Civilian Deaths Estimates" (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf) which gives a useful overview of who's been counting civilian casualties in Iraq, and how.

There is no question but that there are lots of questions. There's no question that many tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. And it seems to me that in evaluating a war that was ostensibly fought to "bring freedom and democracy to Iraq" it might be a good thing to know just how many Iraqi civilians died . . .

[Lambchop]

Too many. I do like watching the apache kill videos so I guess I'm a hypocrite in that respect.

[AntZ]

This part



Your statement is wrong on many, easily verifiable counts

The Iraq Body Count numbers do not "take official numbers by the governments involved". Iraq produces some data from their hospitals, the ministry of health, and morgues, but its not the starting point for anyone's analysis, as its very spotty.

You might familiarize yourself with the "methodology" section of the Iraq Body Count project, here: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/about/methods/

And this part's wrong too



In fact, independent researchers have done surveys in Iraq to determine mortality.




And this part's wrong too:


The Iraq Body Count's database is online, here:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

The Congressional Research Service prepared a report in 2008
"Iraqi Civilian Deaths Estimates" (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf) which gives a useful overview of who's been counting civilian casualties in Iraq, and how.

There is no question but that there are lots of questions. There's no question that many tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. And it seems to me that in evaluating a war that was ostensibly fought to "bring freedom and democracy to Iraq" it might be a good thing to know just how many Iraqi civilians died . . .

Again, you'll stop at nothing to try to prove yourself right by continuing to use spotty data! We know your bullshit, so save it for someone that doesn't know your games. Iraqi Civilian Deaths Estimates! Yup!

Quit being such a tool!

Now what bullshit do you have for the other wars? Quick, post links to Al Quedas websites! And as many other anti war sites as you can find! :roll:





Data sources

2.1 News media
2.2 NGO’s and “primary” sources
2.3 Official cumulative figures

:lol:

It's times like now that you make yourself look so foolish! We can all depend on the News Media! And "official" sources! Like the guys that covered up Osama's compound?

[Muddy]

Man, dont be so harsh homie.. You know they're gonna freak out on you.. :lol:

[AntZ]

Man, dont be so harsh homie.. You know they're gonna freak out on you.. :lol:

It's gets so old when he disrespects everyone by always saying they're WRONG. Then posts nonsense, dribble, and double talk bullshit!

[Muddy]

I try and take most stuff I see on a forum lightly.. Opinions and personality vary so wildly on the internet...

[AntZ]

What's the Story Behind 30,000 Iraqi Deaths?

By Sarah Sewall
Sunday, December 18, 2005



On Monday, President Bush directly answered a question about the total Iraqi death toll, including civilians, without issuing the familiar brusque dismissal. Instead, he offered his own estimate of "Iraqi citizens" killed since the invasion: "30,000, more or less." While the president did not parse that figure, he was clearly acknowledging that the number of civilians killed in Iraq matters. The president's response should liberate Americans to consider the number's meaning.

Granted, the source of the number remains a mystery. A White House spokesman says it didn't come from inside the government. But if it is not the U.S. government's job to make such a count, whose job is it?

Civilian casualty numbers can be hot potatoes. The newly liberated Iraqi ministry of health reported civilian deaths until the number appeared to become a political liability. Then, as the insurgency increasingly terrorized civilians, the Iraqi government resumed releasing civilian death tolls, but only of those deaths blamed on insurgents. A host of other actors -- the Red Cross, Iraqi hospitals, nongovernmental organizations, private contractors, reporters and medical researchers -- compile their own records of civilian deaths, though their methods, purposes and results vary enormously.

Of the publicly issued totals, Bush's "30,000, more or less" most closely tracks the numbers kept by the Iraq Body Count (IBC). This private group compiles reports from major international news outlets, the Red Cross and other sources. As of Friday, the group's Web site was reporting that between 27,383 and 30,892 civilians had been killed since the start of the war.

When IBC's figures were the most extravagant ones circulating, during the first year of the war, many in the U.S. military dismissed them as propaganda emanating from an antiwar group. Then the respected British medical journal the Lancet published an epidemiological study in November 2004, which concluded that perhaps 100,000 civilians had died since the invasion. That finding provoked much dispute. But suddenly, the IBC's numbers looked reasonable.

The Lancet study relied on a door-to-door survey of Iraqi households in 33 neighborhoods. The surveyors asked for details of deaths in the months before and after the invasion and found a significantly higher death rate after. But the approach was flawed. War is not like a pandemic; it comes in pockets. And the study itself qualified its conclusions, acknowledging that the figure could range enormously between 8,000 and 194,000.

IBC's methodology is imperfect, too. Media reports vary in flavor and rigor (IBC's sources range from al-Jazeera to Fox News), and even the best reporters in Iraq are working in difficult circumstances. IBC can't check anything independently. Therefore its numbers, and particularly its claims regarding the specific causes of the civilian deaths, remain suspect. Ironically, though, for all its antiwar bias, the IBC analysis suggests that fewer than 40 percent of all killings resulted from U.S. military actions -- including the major combat period. Maybe the number isn't so overwhelming after all?

Certainly, the number matters. First, it can help keep us honest about the costs of the wars we wage. In the Western thinking about just war we demand that a military intervention yield a good that outweighs war's inevitable harms. Civilian deaths alone cannot invalidate a war, but they aren't irrelevant either. They inform individual and national deliberations about the Iraq war -- particularly now that the invasion's rationale, stripped of all other explanations, hinges on the good it brings the Iraqi people. Imagine America being liberated from dictatorship by a foreign intervention that kills, say, 300,000 U.S. civilians. A sobering price, but one we might consider worth paying.

The number of civilian deaths also belongs in historical context. Considering that millions of innocents died in the world wars, hundreds of thousands in Vietnam and Korea, and tens and even hundreds of thousands in contemporary civil wars, Operation Iraqi Freedom looks astonishingly humane. The rest of the world may see us as trigger-happy cowboys, but the numbers suggest a different character.

The U.S. government ably quantifies many costs of war -- service members killed or wounded, financial burdens on taxpayers, strain on our military's equipment and readiness, Iraqi enemy fighters killed, impact on Iraq's infrastructure, and even civilians the insurgents kill. To refuse to acknowledge the full spectrum of civilian harm, including Iraqis mistakenly killed by their liberators or protectors, is to deny accountability.

By putting a number to civilian deaths, the president gives the military permission to learn from it. In modern war, civilian casualties have become almost as important as military results. U.S. forces have developed some novel ways of mitigating "collateral damage," spurred by the potential strategic impact of killing innocents as much as by humanitarian principles. Before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Bush said the United States would make every effort to minimize civilian casualties, and military leaders stress their intent to spare Iraqi civilians. Given this emphasis, you'd assume that the military and its civilian overseers would want to know how well they're succeeding. You'd be wrong.

Some peace activists believe that the military keeps a secret tally of civilian deaths, but this would actually be progress. The Pentagon swears it doesn't do non-U.S. body counts, yet it often produces them to describe battlefield successes. Military leaders argue that their priority should be fighting, not taking an inventory. Yet wartime commanders rely heavily on battle damage assessment -- inventory-taking in its highest art form -- to guide future operations. But those assessments focus on military effects -- enemy fighters killed, weapons captured, things blown up. Civilian casualties are recorded sporadically, if at all.

In practice, there is a hierarchy of counting: U.S. soldiers come first, the bad guys we kill come second, the innocent people the bad guys kill come third, and the innocent people we kill come last. In October, the Pentagon released an estimate that insurgents had killed or wounded 26,000 Iraqis -- soldiers, police and civilians -- since January.

To be fair, there are often real constraints. For one thing, the method and scale of harm varies greatly: deaths in discrete checkpoint incidents are easier to tally than casualties caused by indirect fires during offensive operations. Distinguishing between civilians and combatants can also be a challenge. Yet the single biggest impediment to operational analysis of civilian harm remains fear of "the number" -- fear that the body count would become the standard for judging the military's performance. The civilian death toll has literally been off the books, the issue no one has been willing to see.

The military cannot learn without looking inside the numbers, plumbing deeper to understand the causes of noncombatant deaths. The real value lies in dissecting them and considering, where U.S. forces killed civilians, whether alternative weaponry or actions might have made a difference.

This challenge is especially critical for ground forces, which are inflicting significant civilian harm for the first time since Vietnam. Today, the Army and Marine Corps could study scenarios in which civilians are particularly vulnerable -- checkpoints, artillery barrages and raids -- both to develop long-range alternatives or to do immediate fixes in the field. Only by grappling directly with civilian deaths can the military realize its intention of preventing them. This is the real power of the president's number.

Let's not expect the Pentagon or the president to keep a perfect score. Let's not quibble at the margins of a total that, by any honest admission, remains unfathomable. But if war is too important to be left to the generals, then war's effect on civilians is too important to be left to the pacifists. Welcome the president's acknowledgment of a civilian death toll. It can help the nation better match its capabilities to its intentions and reckon more honestly with a military force that is all too easy to use.

What's in a number? Accountability.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121700017_pf.html

[RBP]

1.75 Million died in 2008 of HIV/AIDS
1.34 Million died in 2008 of TB

"War" doesn't make the list, but it's all we seem to give a shit about

(World Health Organization)
http://i.imgur.com/xyQrr.jpg

[Deepsepia]

What's the Story Behind 30,000 Iraqi Deaths?

By Sarah Sewall
Sunday, December 18, 2005



On Monday, President Bush directly answered a question about the total Iraqi death toll, including civilians, without issuing the familiar brusque dismissal. Instead, he offered his own estimate of "Iraqi citizens" killed since the invasion: "30,000, more or less." While the president did not parse that figure, he was clearly acknowledging that the number of civilians killed in Iraq matters. The president's response should liberate Americans to consider the number's meaning.

Granted, the source of the number remains a mystery. A White House spokesman says it didn't come from inside the government. But if it is not the U.S. government's job to make such a count, whose job is it?

Civilian casualty numbers can be hot potatoes. The newly liberated Iraqi ministry of health reported civilian deaths until the number appeared to become a political liability. Then, as the insurgency increasingly terrorized civilians, the Iraqi government resumed releasing civilian death tolls, but only of those deaths blamed on insurgents. A host of other actors -- the Red Cross, Iraqi hospitals, nongovernmental organizations, private contractors, reporters and medical researchers -- compile their own records of civilian deaths, though their methods, purposes and results vary enormously.

Of the publicly issued totals, Bush's "30,000, more or less" most closely tracks the numbers kept by the Iraq Body Count (IBC). This private group compiles reports from major international news outlets, the Red Cross and other sources. As of Friday, the group's Web site was reporting that between 27,383 and 30,892 civilians had been killed since the start of the war.

Well, AnthemZ, nice to see you finding some data . . . from the source I already listed. Too bad you're looking at 2005, and today is . . . 2011, last I checked.

You've got President Bush accepting as authoritative the Iraq Body Count number-- in 2005, before the insurgency got hot. In 2005, they said 30,000 casualties, +/-.

Today, they say 110,000 . . . because another six years and some very severe fighting have occurred since 2005.

Moreover, the very article you post argues against what you've posted previously.

Earlier, you mock "independent scholars" for their efforts to calculate the Iraq death toll.

Of course, the article you post says precisely the opposite:



the number matters. First, it can help keep us honest about the costs of the wars we wage. In the Western thinking about just war we demand that a military intervention yield a good that outweighs war's inevitable harms. Civilian deaths alone cannot invalidate a war, but they aren't irrelevant either. They inform individual and national deliberations about the Iraq war -- particularly now that the invasion's rationale, stripped of all other explanations, hinges on the good it brings the Iraqi people.

[AntZ]

Well, AnthemZ, nice to see you finding some data . . . from the source I already listed. Too bad you're looking at 2005, and today is . . . 2011, last I checked.

You've got President Bush accepting as authoritative the Iraq Body Count number-- in 2005, before the insurgency got hot. In 2005, they said 30,000 casualties, +/-.

Today, they say 110,000 . . . because another six years and some very severe fighting have occurred since 2005.

Moreover, the very article you post argues against what you've posted previously.

Earlier, you mock "independent scholars" for their efforts to calculate the Iraq death toll.

Of course, the article you post says precisely the opposite:


Is that really the best you can do to try to cover your embarrassment? :roll:




Too bad you're looking at 2005, and today is . . . 2011, last I checked.

You've got President Bush accepting as authoritative the Iraq Body Count number-- in 2005, before the insurgency got hot. In 2005, they said 30,000 casualties, +/-.


So because you're so distracted by the point on your head, you miss the point of the article! I even highlighted it for you, but naturally you side step the information!

Typical!



The Iraq Body Count numbers do not "take official numbers by the governments involved". Iraq produces some data from their hospitals, the ministry of health, and morgues, but its not the starting point for anyone's analysis, as its very spotty.

You might familiarize yourself with the "methodology" section of the Iraq Body Count project, here: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/about/methods/

In fact they do take numbers by the governments involved, it's in their mission statement!

You were wrong there!

So I familiarized myself with their "methodology", and it exactly proves what I said at the beginning.

Even the right wingers at the Washington Post were forced to admit their bias and short comings. At least they are intellectually honest, sometimes!


IBC's methodology is imperfect, too. Media reports vary in flavor and rigor (IBC's sources range from al-Jazeera to Fox News), and even the best reporters in Iraq are working in difficult circumstances. IBC can't check anything independently. Therefore its numbers, and particularly its claims regarding the specific causes of the civilian deaths, remain suspect. Ironically, though, for all its antiwar bias, the IBC analysis suggests that fewer than 40 percent of all killings resulted from U.S. military actions -- including the major combat period. Maybe the number isn't so overwhelming after all?

But naturally you missed that and tried to turn the article into something that supports your argument.

Once again you try to play your childish games, and it fails every time!

[FBD]

:lol: Antz, you might as well try getting Obama to admit he's wrong

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/despite-white-protests-stimulus-still-cost-taxpayers-278000-job_576348.html

It'll just get ignored and the predetermined line of reasoning will get endlessly pushed.

[Hal-9000]

OK so let's assume 250 thousand dead and the money spent is accurate.
After 10 years, 4.4 trillion dollars and all those deaths...what has changed in Afghanistan?

I mean...has there been a tangible benefit to this war or was it as some suspected...a posturing move after 911 to lay some smack down on brown folk?

[JoeyB]

OK so let's assume 250 thousand dead and the money spent is accurate.
After 10 years, 4.4 trillion dollars and all those deaths...what has changed in Afghanistan?

I mean...has there been a tangible benefit to this war or was it as some suspected...a posturing move after 911 to lay some smack down on brown folk?

That's all it ever was, war for hate and oil. Also, a quarter million dead Iraqi civilians is still too low.

We destroyed that country. OK, it's leader was a douche, but it was also the most liberal Arab country at the time, women had respect and freedom far exceeding any other in the region, no real crime, good infrastructure. All gone.

It's bad that the infant mortality rates have soared since we invaded, as lack of health services, clean water, and even food has been at our hands.

We have not liberated a country, we set one back a hundred years. Shame.

[FBD]

[COLOR="blue"]
We destroyed that country. OK, it's leader was a douche, but it was also the most liberal Arab country at the time, women had respect and freedom far exceeding any other in the region, no real crime, good infrastructure. All gone

are you out of yer cotton pickin mind? Did you ever know what things were like there?

[Hugh_Janus]

I actually loled when I read that the annual cost of having air conditioning for army personnel in afghanistan was $20billion :lol:

[Deepsepia]

OK so let's assume 250 thousand dead and the money spent is accurate.
After 10 years, 4.4 trillion dollars and all those deaths...what has changed in Afghanistan?

I mean...has there been a tangible benefit to this war or was it as some suspected...a posturing move after 911 to lay some smack down on brown folk?

There was at least some justice in expelling the Taliban. We did have a legitimate "casus bellum" against them. They were harboring a guy who'd made war on the United States-- you can go to war over that.

The whole thing went South with two dramatic expansions of mission:

1) "Now that we've kicked out the Taliban, let's make Afghanistan a nice place"
2) "Now that Afghanistan's in great shape, let's do the same thing in Iraq"

That's called "mission creep", and when you see it, you should run. Its one of the hallmarks of a strategy that's doomed to failure. You start something for one reason, and then you find yourself chasing ten other things which no one mentioned going in.

Strategies that will work have defined goals, goals which can be achieved with the means at hand . . . not some vague "well, we'll get there and then we'll figure out what we have to do"

"Kill bin Laden" = a good, clear, defined goal
"Let's bring 'Freedom and democracy' to Afghanistan and Iraq" = recipe for a failure and endless war.

[Hal-9000]

I actually loled when I read that the annual cost of having air conditioning for army personnel in afghanistan was $20billion :lol:

and people die everyday of cancer and MS because we....just...don't...have ...enough funding for research

[Muddy]

and people die everyday of cancer and MS because we....just...don't...have ...enough funding for research

Is that it, or is it that the funding process that's in place is so corrupt...?

[Deepsepia]

Is that it, or is it that the funding process that's in place is so corrupt...?

The funding of medical research is not at all corrupt. We -- the US, Europe, Japan-- produce amazing results from healthcare research dollars.

Important to understand that research funding is a tiny fraction of our healthcare spend.

Our total healthcare spend in the US is around $2.6 Trillion. The NIH research budget is $31 billion.

In other words, Federally supported research is about %1.5 of our total healthcare bill. You could throw in foundation spending, spending by private companies-- the total research budget in the US is less that $100 billion a year . . . about %4 of the healthcare spend.

Researchers are paid very little. A young Phd research molecular biologist might get $85K; a postdoc would get less than that. They're not doing it for the money.

Here are the NIH stipends for Post-docs (these are people who already have Phds)

Postdoctoral
Years of Experience
0 $ 35,568
1 $ 37,476
2 $ 41,796
3 $ 43,428
4 $ 45,048
5 $ 46,992
6 $ 48,852
7 or more $ 51,036

http://www.molbio.princeton.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=107&limit=1&limitstart=4

There are plenty of jobs which don't require college, much less a Phd, which pay more . . .

[Hal-9000]

ahhh you know I'm naive.I look at world spending overall....

when you see a stat like Hugh pointed out and then hear that medical research still needs money....makes a fella think.

Yes I do think the system itself is to blame.Not corrupt, mismanaged may be a better word...

[Muddy]

The funding of medical research is not at all corrupt. We -- the US, Europe, Japan-- produce amazing results from healthcare research dollars.

Important to understand that research funding is a tiny fraction of our healthcare spend.






Yes I do think the system itself is to blame.Not corrupt, mismanaged may be a better word...

Maybe mismanaged would have been a better word... Like how donation dollars are spent..

[Deepsepia]

ahhh you know I'm naive.I look at world spending overall....

when you see a stat like Hugh pointed out and then hear that medical research still needs money....makes a fella think.

Yes I do think the system itself is to blame.Not corrupt, mismanaged may be a better word...

Its neither corrupt nor mismanaged. I've worked in the system for a long time.

Biological research is the very best deal the taxpayer gets. People with Phd's from the world's best institutions, working 70 hours weeks, for $50K a year -- and the fruits of their labors (eg the patents) belong to the taxpayer, or to the institution for which they work, not to them.

For reference, a Phd molecular biologist, the kind of guy who, for example, finds new compounds to regrow nerve tissue, or to prevent cancers from metastasizing -- he makes about one half the money of the pharmacist who dispenses the drug he's discovered

There are many things to complain about in our medical spending, but research isn't one of them. Consider AIDs. 25 years ago, testing HIV+ was a death sentence. Today, its not a good thing to hear, but someone newly diagnosed with HIV has a giant formulary of drugs which will keep them alive-- the prospects are somewhat similar to someone newly diagnosed with diabetes. Its a pain, and you have to pay a lot of attention to medication, but with the drugs on hand, you can live a normal life.

Where'd those drugs come from, in 25 years? From the pharmacists who dispense them? Nope. From the docs who prescribe them? Nope. From --mostly Phd-- medical researchers who developed them.

Here's one other amazing bit of data most folks don't know: large integrated pharmaceutical companies spend more money on marketing drugs than they do on developing them . . .

[Muddy]

I heard one year of Avastia or some other cancer drug is like 80k for a treatment..

[Hal-9000]

Thanks Deep,

So how come we still see the commercials and have people canvass door to door for research money? How come we can't address cancer in a humane way rather than bombarding good cells with radiation and making people sick? Not to mention the insane cost of cancer drugs. And how come my best friend with MS can barely walk right now? (he's going to Poland in August for the Liberation procedure, and even that is said to only delay the symptoms at best..)

I would have to respectfully disagree with your point...if research is getting enough money then why are people still suffering and dying? I understand cures aren't found overnight but when a country can throw a billion dollars into a questionable war effort, and people are dying because they can't afford a heart transplant and the subsequent care, to me there is some gross mismanagement within the system.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Maybe mismanaged would have been a better word... Like how donation dollars are spent..

Yup, I would have to agree....just look at how much money Jerry Lewis has raised for Muscular Dystrophy of the last 40 years....and yet we are nowhere closer to a cure.

[Deepsepia]

Thanks Deep,

So how come we still see the commercials and have people canvass door to door for research money?


Because our budgets for research are so small, relative to the scale of the problem. Think about it: research is no more than %4 of our total health care spend (and that includes clinical testing-- if you actually mean "drug discovery" , then the number is less than %1.)



How come we can't address cancer in a humane way rather than bombarding good cells with radiation and making people sick? Not to mention the insane cost of cancer drugs. And how come my best friend with MS can barely walk right now? (he's going to Poland in August for the Liberation procedure, and even that is said to only delay the symptoms at best..)


Not because research is either mismanaged or corrupt, but because these things are very tough. "Cancer" is not one disease-- its a hundred different disease processes. Some cancers we've done terrifically well with. Childhood leukemia used to be %90 fatal, now its %90 survivable.

Research has in fact delivered precisely the kinds of treatments that you're asking about. Take non-hodgkins lymphoma, for example. That disease used to be treated by whole body radiation. 20 years ago, the first effectively monoclonal antibody treatment for a cancer, Rituxamab, was introduced by Idec Pharmaceuticals. No "chemo", no radiation . . . Rituxamab is narrowly focussed antibody that kills the cancer.

Unfortunately, most cancers don't express unique epitopes as does NHL. Some cancers are just easier targets than others. I have a lot of confidence that with our expanding knowledge, and more tecniques and tools, we'll get there. Bear in mind, we only sequenced the human genome in the last decade . . . we're at the very beginnings of "scientific mdicine". Most of the drugs in widespread used today were discovered by a pure "hit and miss" system of screening biologic compounds . . . today we are actually designing drugs to fit particular targets, but that's very, very new . . . and we only have a few thousand people in the entire world doing it.




I would have to respectfully disagree with your point...if research is getting enough money then why are people still suffering and dying? I understand cures aren't found overnight but when a country can throw a billion dollars into a questionable war effort, and people are dying because they can't afford a heart transplant and the subsequent care, to me there is some gross mismanagement within the system.

I didn't say that research was getting enough money. I said that research was neither corrupt nor mismanaged. Its very efficient.

Here's another bit of research news, very recent. Melanoma has long been known as a monstrous cancer. Once its gotten slighly bigger than an eraser, its fatal, and nasty. I can point to 30 years of research failures . . . not because anyone was stupid, not because anyone was corrupt-- smart people trying good ideas, and finding that they didn't work. And now . . .

http://picload.org/image/ligwri/firefoxscreensna.jpg

i can't stress enough how tough this research process was. People spent entire careers developing compounds, getting them into trials . . . and failing. Companies put millions in, and walked away in frustration. Bear in mind, from developing a new compound, to actually getting a convincing result in a clinical trial is a process of 7-10 years, minimum.

Our recent success with melanoma came after three decades with results like this

http://picload.org/image/ligwdo/firefoxscreensna.jpg

So when you say "where are the drugs"? The answer would be: if you want more drugs, you need more people doing fundamental biological research . . . they're not corrupt, they're not mismanaged-- but they are under-funded.

[Hal-9000]

ahh, then I didn't make myself clear....my intent was to say:

A country gets X-amount of dollars to budget each year.It appears that they put billions into a war effort (as evidenced by examples in this article)
yet the same country struggles with medical research costs.

The mismanagement I'm referring to is not within the research areas themselves, it's occurs at a higher level before appropriations are made.

[Deepsepia]

ahh, then I didn't make myself clear....my intent was to say:

A country gets X-amount of dollars to budget each year.It appears that they put billions into a war effort (as evidenced by examples in this article)
yet the same country struggles with medical research costs.

The mismanagement I'm referring to is not within the research areas themselves, it's occurs at a higher level before appropriations are made.

Oh, national priorities. . . yes, I agree absolutely.

Our priorities are nuts.

If your target is "lost years of life" of your citizens -- the threat posed by al Qaeda doesn't even show up. Flu, pneumonia, cancer . . . vastly more significant threats to the lives of Americans.

In answer to your question re: MS. MS and other autoimmune diseases are very tough targets, because the immune system is attacking the body itself. That's being caused by some defect in the immune response, some memory-T cell population that is directing your immune response against "self".

The choices of what to do about this aren't easy. If you could identify "who's pointing the artillery at 'self' (nerve sheaths in the case of MS)" then you could fix it. But we don't, today, know where the immune system is storing its "record" of "not self cell characteristics". They are individual cells T cells, some circulating, some in lymph nodes. In theory, if we could separate out the ones that are "seeing the wrong enemy", you could fix MS without harm to the individual. Trouble is, we don't have an ability to target individual T cells in this way.

If you nuke the immune system, you'll fix the MS, but you need your immune system. So for folks with MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, lupus and other auto immune diseases, we don't have more than a "balancing act". At a theoretical level, if you had an identical twin or perfectly matched bone marrow donor, its possible that one could nuke the immune system of an MS patient, and "grow" them a new immune system from a transplant. No one's going to try this, though, because this would be riskier than MS itself.

There are some promising avenues of research, but they're all early days . . .

[Hal-9000]

Yeah the procedure my friend is having is simply to open arteries in his neck...some patients report that this alleviates symptoms for months or even years.
But as you know, it's the mylen or nerve sheath that's actually breaking down.

He has to raise over 10000 dollars for the trip and the procedure...what he doesn't know is that myself and a few old high school friends have started a fund for him (he's way too proud to accept charity) and the friend that will be traveling with him is going to present the donations in about a month...that's a different story tho.

The sad part is like you have mentioned...they understand the breakdown but don't know how to address or fix the auto immune system......yet.

[Deepsepia]

Yeah the procedure my friend is having is simply to open arteries in his neck...some patients report that this alleviates symptoms for months or even years.
But as you know, it's the mylen or nerve sheath that's actually breaking down.

He has to raise over 10000 dollars for the trip and the procedure...what he doesn't know is that myself and a few old high school friends have started a fund for him (he's way too proud to accept charity) and the friend that will be traveling with him is going to present the donations in about a month...that's a different story tho.

The sad part is like you have mentioned...they understand the breakdown but don't know how to address or fix the auto immune system......yet.

I wish I had some useful thoughts.

I've an old friend with MS. His "solution" was to move out to West Virginia, and to live a very mellow life. He was convinced that stress caused the MS to get worse.

He's done well, had to be on steroids a few times, but otherwise doing fine, but that doesn't prove anything-- its a very variable disease.

For someone who's got bad problems with MS, there are some drugs that may be worth trying. The trouble with them is that the drugs themselves range from the somewhat to the "quite" dangerous, so you need a very experienced doc to help you make the call "is it worth the gamble".

When they work, they do work. If it were me, and I was getting worse with MS, this is the avenue I'd be exploring.

[Hal-9000]

I wish I had some useful thoughts.

I've an old friend with MS. His "solution" was to move out to West Virginia, and to live a very mellow life. He was convinced that stress caused the MS to get worse.

He's done well, had to be on steroids a few times, but otherwise doing fine, but that doesn't prove anything-- its a very variable disease.

For someone who's got bad problems with MS, there are some drugs that may be worth trying. The trouble with them is that the drugs themselves range from the somewhat to the "quite" dangerous, so you need a very experienced doc to help you make the call "is it worth the gamble".

When they work, they do work. If it were me, and I was getting worse with MS, this is the avenue I'd be exploring.

He tried an experimental daily injection....they found it made some people aggressive to the point they were hitting their partners.He's tried a few subsidized treatments, none seem to work.

He's found that a good diet and rest seem to help the most and stress is a factor too, so he avoids conflict as much as he can.MS fascinates me because of what you mention...each patient has their own timelines, symptoms and things that work.There doesn't seem to be a commonality in terms of the cause, not hereditary, not geographical and not because of someone let's say coming into contact with paint fumes daily for 20 years...yet all patients eventually travel the same road of degradation that may lead to an early death.

[Deepsepia]

There doesn't seem to be a commonality in terms of the cause, not hereditary, not geographical and not because of someone let's say coming into contact with paint fumes daily for 20 years...yet all patients eventually travel the same road of degradation that may lead to an early death.

There are some hints. It seems to affect white people living in cloudy places more than black or latinos living in sunny places. More common in women in men. More common in an identical twin if their twin has MS -- but peculiarly, even if your twin has it, you're still only %30 likely to get it, at most.

So its got a genetic component, almost certainly. And its also got an environmental component. Not easy to disentangle that . . . genuinely complex.