NonParty Politics: Last week was better for Iraq

Scores killed in attack near Shia shrine, reports the Daily Telegraph of London.

A dual suicide bomb attack in central Iraq today killed up to 115 Shia Muslim pilgrims in a crowd of the faithful walking on foot to the holy city of Kerbala.

Two bombers carried out the co-ordinated attack near a rest tent set up to provide food for pilgrims in the town of Hilla, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, ahead of this weekend's holiday.

More than 150 were wounded in the attack.

Yet, other statistical figures have also been in the news:

The TimesOnline reports:

Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion?

The statistics made headlines all over the world when they were published in The Lancet in October last year. More than 650,000 Iraqis – one in 40 of the population – had died as a result of the American-led invasion in 2003. The vast majority of these “excess” deaths (deaths over and above what would have been expected in the absence of the occupation) were violent. The victims, both civilians and combatants, had fallen prey to airstrikes, car bombs and gunfire. Body counts in conflict zones are assumed to be ballpark – hospitals, record offices and mortuaries rarely operate smoothly in war – but this was ten times any other estimate. Iraq Body Count, an antiwar web-based charity that monitors news sources, put the civilian death toll for the same period at just under 50,000, broadly similar to that estimated by the United Nations Development Agency.

Iraq Body Count says there is “considerable cause for scepticism” and has complained that its figures had been misleadingly cited in the The Lancet as supporting evidence.

One critic is Professor Michael Spagat, an economist from Royal Holloway College, University of London. He and colleagues at Oxford University point to the possibility of “main street bias” – that people living near major thoroughfares are more at risk from car bombs and other urban menaces. Thus, the figures arrived at were likely to exceed the true number. The Lancet study authors initially told The Times that “there was no main street bias” and later amended their reply to “no evidence of a main street bias”.

Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the “three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports.

“The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,” contends Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. “They published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not actually follow the procedures that they stated.” The paper had “no scientific standing”. Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? “No.”

If you factor in politics, the heat increases. One of The Lancet authors, Dr Les Roberts, campaigned for a Democrat seat in the US House of Representatives and has spoken out against the war. Dr Richard Horton, editor of the The Lancet is also antiwar. He says: “I believe this paper was very thoroughly reviewed. Every piece of work we publish is criticised – and quite rightly too. No research is perfect. The best we can do is make sure we have as open, transparent and honest a debate as we can. Then we'll get as close to the truth as possible. That is why I was so disappointed many politicians rejected the findings of this paper before really thinking through the issues.”

Dr Richard Garfield, an American academic who had collaborated with the authors on an earlier study, declined to join this one because he did not think that the risk to the interviewers was justifiable. Together with Professor Hans Rosling and Dr Johan Von Schreeb at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Dr Garfield wrote to The Lancet to insist there must be a “substantial reporting error” because Burnham et al suggest that child deaths had dropped by two thirds since the invasion. The idea that war prevents children dying, Dr Garfield implies, points to something amiss.

Another critic is Dr Madelyn Hsaio-Rei Hicks, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who specialises in surveying communities in conflict. In her letter to The Lancet, she pointed out that it was unfeasible for the Iraqi interviewing team to have covered 40 households in a day, as claimed. She wrote: “Assuming continuous interviewing for ten hours despite 55C heat, this allows 15 minutes per interview, including walking between households, obtaining informed consent and death certificates.”

And the corpses? Professor Burnham says that, according to reports, mortuaries and cemeteries have run out of space. He says that the Iraqi team has asked for data to remain confidential because of “possible risks” to both interviewers and interviewees.

Amidst this bad news and conflicting news a number of Vermont towns seek to impeach Bush, pull U.S. troops, and Hagel may seek GOP nomination, wonders aloud about impeaching Bush

Vermont

BOSTON, March 6 (Reuters Life!) - More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

Sixteen Vermont towns passed a separate "soldiers home now" resolution calling on the White House, the U.S. Congress and Vermont's elected officials to withdraw troops from Iraq.

And in Esquire, Hagel said:

"The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."

Hot Air comments on Hagel:

There is some good news for Hagel. A prominent Baptist hinted today that Rudy’sradioactive because of the atomic jerkiness he displayed in dumping Donna Hanover at a press conference. And Ace relays a Radar story about the good ship McCain sinking fast, with aides heading for the lifeboats and St. John himself wondering what the hell happened

Rudy had better hope McCain doesn’t drop out. So long as he’s in the race, public attention remains focused on the two of them with Romney as a peripheral candidate. Once one of them sinks, Romney becomes the only viable alternative and suddenly his social con views start to look very attractive to the base. I wouldn’t be surprised if our two moderates focus their attacks on Mitt first in hopes of driving him out and then take their chances with each other. (I’m sure Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, and Newt wouldn’t mind either.)

Meanwhile, other drama unfolds, as Michelle Malkin notes in Townhall.com[abridged]:

The "Peace" Brigade vs. the Stryker Brigade

In Washington state this week, the peace brigade held a dress rehearsal at the Port of Tacoma -- where they showed support for our troops by taunting the Stryker Brigade and local police guarding against obstruction of the convoys headed to Iraq. More than 300 Stryker vehicles and other equipment are being moved from Fort Lewis to Iraq in support of the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division's upcoming deployment as part of the ongoing "surge" and counterinsurgency efforts. The Strykers are equipped with slat armor to protect the troops from rocket-propelled grenades.

Members of the anti-military mob shouted condescendingly at our volunteer soldiers rolling past them: "Free the troops!" "No justice, no peace!" "You don't have to go!" One lunatic with a bullhorn urged Stryker Brigade members to disobey their commanding officers and sneered: "Your sergeant is a douchebag!"

These same bullies staged obstructionist protests at the Port of Olympia in Washington last year -- blocking gates to prevent convoys from passing and attempting to tear down fencing following the arrival of a large military ship bound for Iraq. In April 2003, "peace" protesters waged similar attacks in Oakland, Calif., where they attempted to shut down a port involved in shipping military supplies to soldiers.

A mother of one of the Tacoma soldiers who rode silently past the spittle-spewers wrote to me earlier this week after seeing anti-war video of the mob scene uploaded on YouTube:

"The last big protest was at the Port of Olympia last year. The moonbats did damage to a fence around a yard that protects military equipment. The Strykers they were protesting that day were Strykers that were equipped with medical intervention equipment. The protesters were marching against medical supplies that our soldiers need desperately, and once again the very equipment that keeps our soldiers alive. It seems that there are two populations of people who hate Strykers: moonbats and insurgents."

The President does deserve blame for the initial mismanagement of the war, the faulty intelligence gathering, the poor choice of words he and his secondaries chose to utter in public, and the lack of consensus-building, among other things. It wasn't pretty, and we're still cleaning up the mess.

However, none of Bush's mistakes - and they are many - justify vicious attacks on the troops, nor should we taking cheap shots and low blows at the President or Vice President. At the end of the day, George W. Bush is the elected leader of our republic. As such, he deserves his due respect, as far as civility in discourse goes.

In so much as the troops go, I'll leave you with this: