> Michael Pugliese wrote:
>
> > CB simpletons
>
> I doubt you mean Carrie Bradshaw - do you mean Charles Brown? Charles
> is not a simpleton, and you shouldn't call him one on this list. I
> don't want to see this kind of invective here.
He most likely meant by 'CB' the Chicago Boyz who launched the most partisan attacks against the Lancet article (http://www.chicagoboyz.net/). Still, I always thought Ronald Reagan was about as good an economist as anyone UofC churned out.
Next, and not related to Chicago Boyz: Hoist on my own offshoot thread's petard (somewhat), I would have thought my call for basic 'social science' might have led to a discussion of, among other things, the supposed importance of US military retention and recruitment rates. For example, did the wave of patriotism post 9-11 lead to the US military recruiting volunteers at higher rates? Or did the prospect of violent death at the hand of Islamist freedom fighters and IEDs cool such enthusiasm (if it ever existed)? Or is it really the case that the Army has its traditional problem of not finding enough bodies for transport and combat arms units, regardless? And does the military have its traditional problem of not retaining most enlisted who realise just how crappy military life is for most enlisted after about a year or two living crappily in the military?
I will point out about the Lancet article a few things that would lead me to both praise it but also be critical of it. One, Lancet might be a respected set of medical journals, but not all of its articles are medical science research reports (though they might be articles that are still related in some way to medical science). Some are even rushed through the peer review process to publication, as the article in question was. Two, I think the stats of the article in question are pretty good (having read the various debates about particular points, I'm satisfied the sampling generalizes to the whole population). I would say the results are pretty solid, considering the conclusions must be drawn forth from an analysis of survey results. However, three, with some irony to me anyway, epidemiological studies on exess mortality based on a selective cluster survey in a war zone (in a country that was already a war zone with an embargo on it as well) is mostly not medical science but rather pure, non-experimental social science. There does seem to be quite a good chance that, if the study erred, it erred on the low side in measuring and estimating nationwide excess mortality in invaded and occupied Iraq.
I couldn't follow the analysis about just who or what actions were responsible for the different categories of death--for example, there seemed to be a lack of clarity about why 'aerial bombardment' killed so many women and children (and not US military sniper fire or M1 Abrams tanks). Perhaps I just didn't read it very well, or perhaps the article lacks readability in places. And wasn't it positively bracing to read the articles calling for the Occupation to be more careful where they are dropping all those bombs!
F
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