<p>One quarter the JHU estimate of 600,000 or more</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10casualties.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10casualties.html</a></p>
<p>More telling was the way the original figures were created: Funded by George Soros and the study performed by a former Saddam official who refused to make the underlying data public. Yet, it was a nice big number and the media and those who were looking for a big number ate it up.</p>
<p>I read the original Lancet publication. If I had used a similar statistical treatment of the data in my dissertation, my doctorate committee would have banished me from the university. One of my practice partners is, unfortunately, a local anti-war/anti-capitalist messiah. He gave a few presentations of the Lancet article to small crowds of glassy-eyed undergrads at a local college. To help him prepare for his talks, he received a packet of info (from Move-On?) explaining how to defend the numbers. Interesting, and the organized effort is scarey.</p>
<p>As I said, more people have and will die as a result of General Betrayus’ ethnic cleansing between July-October 2007, than would have died of sectarian violence and Al-Qaeda. And, as I’ve also said, the number of people killed by George Bush is a small fraction of those killed by Bill Clinton in his genocide.</p>