Dr. Arnot said contrary to reports, U.S. military morale remains very high in Iraq, adding that the majority of Iraqi citizens he interviewed are happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein. His views reflect a recent Gallup poll finding that nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of Baghdad's 6.3 million citizens think ousting Saddam "was worth any hardships they have personally endured since the invasion."

only 2.2% said they keep AKs under their skirts to shoot the 1st GI they see.

However, Dr Arnot's study also shows difficulties with measuring Iraqi truthiness.  Each and every AK owner is known to a majority (happy) Iraqi.   But the happy Iraqis seem to remain happy when the AK owners shoot Americans, and indeed other Iraqis who object, and refuse to rat them out to Americans, or unhappy Iraqis.  This puzzlement results in many body bags and general Iraqi economy fucking.

Because of this dischotomy is establishing exactly WTF "Happy" means, and exactly WTF the Iraqi majority will DO, and not merely SAY, Dr Arnot decides to pack it in and go home, and get a beer, and advises Americans to do the same.   We suspect the data is meaningless, or that "happy" in Arabic means "engaged in a fire-fight".

Did Dr. Arnot and the Gallop poll interview the Iraqi citizens killed, severly maimed, and those who lost their houses and livelihoods and therefore unable to be polled because of the U.S. bombing or the retaliation against the U.S. military?

Osama sure looked "happy" in that video tape after 9/11 but I doubt that that was a good thing. My guess would be that the "happy" Iraqis are the ones we really need to worry about.

..., as estimated by the recent Johns Hopkins University study published in the British journal "Lancet", can't be asked to tender their views. Possibly they'd differ from the Gallup findings.

This Johns Hopkins study to estimate deaths used standard methodologies, well-accepted by the scientific establishment.

Full disclosure: I received my Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, and think it's a darn fine university.



-- Modified on 11/10/2006 12:53:54 PM

A little perspective is needed here.  Arnot made those statements about troop morale after he left Iraq in Oct. 2003.  Three years and tens of thousand killed and injured later I'd like to hear what the responses are.  And in that Gallup poll (which polled 3400 Iraqis) only 18% in Baghdad said the invasion has done more good than harm and only 3% said they are much better off today than before the invasion.

but where is the original article?  And exactly what could it say?  And where did the financing came from?

I'm wondering if this could be one of those studies that shows there is a high correlation between guns and gunshot injuries.

The original article is in Lancet, and there is a subscription firewall.

If it has tweaked your interest, you can purchase the original article online for $30 (see below website). Alternatively, any medical school library will carry the print version of the journal, which you can see for free. Typically, these libraries are open to the general public.

All funding sources will be indicated in the "Acknowledgments" (part of full disclosure), and the methodologies for determining these casuality estimates will be set out in the Experimental Methods section.

Lancet is at the very top of medical journals, equivalent to the "New England Journal of Medicine" or "Journal of the American Medical Assocation". Especially for such a controversial topic, the peer-review of this article would have been exhaustive.

Much like evolution, global warming etc., there is a point that you are forced to either trust reputable, expert scientists in the field or not.

but what piques my interest is how this would appear in a *medical* journal, as if *medical* credentials carried any authority w/r/t this subject.  In fact, I find it intriguing that the editor you cited wasn't more specific.

It sounds to me as if an economist might be more likely to get to the most accurate number; while actual cause of death is more likely a lawyer's issue (in that it involves judging evidence and causation).

Bluntly, I'm very suspicious of anybody who is either so dumb themselves, or thinks I'm so fucking dumb that I'm gonna pay for advice like that there is a high correlation between guns and gunshot wounds.

"Lancet is at the very top of medical journals, equivalent to the "New England Journal of Medicine" or "Journal of the American Medical Assocation". Especially for such a controversial topic, the peer-review of this article would have been exhaustive....Much like evolution, global warming etc., there is a point that you are forced to either trust reputable, expert scientists in the field or not."

So they believe that there's between 400K and 800K civilian deaths; and that 2/3s of those are intramural.   I'm assuming their talking violent deaths, and not increased disease, decreased nutrition, and other general stress factors that result from a fucked-up economy which is the result of the war.

What the editor did not do, was drop the other shoe, and talk about how this actually could be changed, which would probably lead to other questions about their methods and assumptions.

For example, the vast majority, 70% of these deaths were Iraqis killing each other.   So how could that be affected?  

Write to them?   Get them into therapy?  Or perhaps  we should be employing our snipers differently, and taking pre-emptive shots at anybody with an AK shaped lump under their dress?  How could ANY of these issues be clarified with medical expertise?  I don't need an MD to tell me war is bad, and am not at all impressed by one who really thinks I'm so stupid I need him to help me figure it out.

What I'm wondering here is exactly how medical science can contribute anything to this particular issue.  I will grant that just about anything is likely to be better than Bush's insight, but my view would be that piling shit on top of more shit isn't likely to help anybody understand much of anything.

By analogy, I would be very grateful to a geologist's insight into earthquake mechanisms.   But if he wanted to bootstrap that respect into asking me to accept his authority about the social implications of automotive engineering, he becomes just another self-absorbed PITA.

some freak-ass Republican makes some wild-eyed nutso statement, and the Democrats convene a committee to dissect the issue, and they may or may not come up with something before the issue is overcome by events.

I doubt the usefulness of a public opinion poll here, because it simply does not address how small interest groups will interact to cause what results.

Just as small groups of criminals can indirectly shape a local economy, so can small groups of guerrillas shape local politics.   Most Vietnamese did not like the NVA any more than they liked the USA; but the NVA was much more effective in getting their cooperation for many reasons, and one obvious one is that they spoke the language.

It doesn't much matter if 90% of the Iraqis think we're fucking wonderful, if they don't also actively support us by ratting out the insurgents.

The problem here is that most of the insurgents are related by blood and history to the locals, whereas we are the infidels.  On top of that, lots of people have friends or relatives who were injured in a cross-fire, or their business was wrecked, or some other war-related casualty; and on an instinctive, emotional level, when they have to choose between the Americans and the insurgents, who do you think they will go with?

So IMHO, polls here are useless bullshit.  Statistics are the mathematics of ignorance, and only useful if you first accept that you don't understand WTF is going on.   And if we don't know WTF is going on here, maybe it's time to regroup and figure it out.

So waddya think is gonna happen?

You would think that a president could take a look at The Wall and figure some things out.   But I guess that sort of assumes he has a 3 digit IQ, ie is not a Republican.

...but on this occasion, you really need to read the actual article for a debate on its merits, not what you think it may or may not have said.

The article was written by faculty in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Historically, Schools of Public Health tackle mortality and morbidity caused by the "Four Horseman of the Apocalypse" (i.e., Pestilence, War, Famine and Death). Deaths resulting from war fall under their purview, largely because war tends to underlie the transmission of diseases and starvation. What happens to displaced persons fleeing from war zones are also studied by Schools of Public Health. Then too, the epidemiological techniques for studying deaths caused by disease are readily adapted to estimating mortality and morbidity from war-related injuries.

Nevertheless, I am disappointed that you would launch into an attack of their work, without having bothered to read the original study to see what it actually says. I think it's beneath you....frankly, I expect more.

I've read lots of statistics saying lots of different things when it comes to how the Iraqi people view the invasion and subsequent occupation of their country.

Actions speak louder than words though, and I'll believe what you DO alot faster than I'll believe what you SAY.

Having said that, here are a few points to ponder that REALLY give us the story about Iraqi attitiudes toward the US.....

First, if the Iraqis love us so much, and hate the insurgents, why aren't they busting their butts to rat out the insurgents hiding amonst them? You just don't hear much about that. Few though the insurgents may be in relation to the total population, it is impossible to me to believe that the neighbors on a given block can be completely unaware that the house next door is being used as a hideout for terrorists. Yet these insurgents by and large seem to be having little difficulty in hiding among the people that love us so much and hate them so much.

Second, and even more egregious in my opinion. When Americans were being beheaded by Zarquawi and any other punk group wanting to make a name for themselves, bootleg DVDs were being made of the graphic beheadings of Americans. I don't know if you still can today (I suspect you can) but just a few years ago, vendors on the streets of Baghdad would get ahold of these bootleg DVD's and sell out every single copy they had within hours. I have long since lost the links to the story, but a simple Google search should easily locate news stories about how DVD's of Americans being beheaded sell like hotcakes on the streets of Baghdad (none from American media sources of course, this sort of story isn't interesting enough to run). Hm, somehow I doubt that it is only the insurgents among the American loving Iraqis who were snatching up such grisly fare as fast as they could get it.

Last but not least, I have siting on my desk a zippo style lighter that my sister brought home with her from her last tour in Iraq. It shows a relief of the two towers, and a tiny plane. When you light it, the plane glows red where it is impacting with one of the towers.

To hell with a shiny happy opinion poll where most of the respondents most likely gave the interviewer answers they thought the person wanted to hear. We are dealing with folks who commemorate 9/11 as a day of victory, who shelter and look the other way when it comes to insurgent activity in their neighborhood, and who will eagerly snatch up raw footage of an American's head being severed.

Now I'll return to the peanut gallery

Nice story about the lighter but what the hell does 9/11 have to with Iraq?

You don't need to be condescending.  Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.  You want "more", here it is [evilgrin]

Everybody's limit is resources; and both you & the b'more sun have cited this article that none of us have access to; and unfortunately none of us have $30 worth of interest.   Other priorities, ya know?

But the Sun article is entitled, "Learning about civilian casualties - and how we can reduce their number".   And it goes on about how they think Iraqi casualties are 4-800K; but nobody drops the other shoe, ie., is there anything about how anybody can reduce them?  Nobody says.  It's the $30 secret.

Of course, in statistics, assumptions are everything.  Bush's unstated assumptions lead to  30K; the Lancet's unstated assumptions lead to about 20X that.   The easy thing would be for people to state their assumptions.  The human thing would be for them to wrangle until there are more casualties.   De facto population control.

Now you make a very interesting comment about how authoritative Lancet is, and about trusting science - despite the fact that the article itself is not available, and we really don't know what they're saying.  The Sun may feel the same way, because they aren't saying either.

Personally, I think 600,000 is in the range of reasonable  estimates, but also entirely academic in the absence of any "so what" - ie., what does anybody propose to do about it?  You know, so what?

But MY question is, why would it appear in Lancet, of all places?   Why would a medical journal be any more credible (and worthy of blind trust) than say an economics or insurance journal?  The issue here seems to be the estimate of deaths, and I am (less than $30 worth of) curious why a medical journal would be regarded as an authority here on their reputation alone, any more than anybody else.

The inference in this context is pretty much a vague value judgment, that there are lots of deaths, and this is bad.  

Before I even open the article, I must ask myself, should I pay $30 for this information?   In fact, I am piqued that somebody might think this even NEEDED a study, and piqued that somebody probably took some money from somebody to come to this conclusion.  I am piqued that perhaps there might be money in this for ME.

In making the decision to pay $30 for this information or not, I have to ask myself, is Lancet or Johns Hopkins likely to have insight into preventing casualties that's worth paying for?   I really don't care about the number, for my money, a single unnecessary casualty is one too many, and arguing over the number is arguing about angels dancing on pinheads.  

The issue to me is, *why*?  And it it worth the money to pay MDs to study this?  Is medical training or insight going to tell us how to avoid war?  Or merely sanitize it?   If not, why would Lancet bother to publish?

How indeed could it be possible to peer-review what inevitably looks like a social judgment?   Maybe the group all agrees on these social issues, but are they any more authority on how conflict should be resolved than say eg John Kerry, or other Boston lawyers?  Or Joe 6-Pack, and other Nebraska truckers?

If we are going to trust them because they are reputable scientists, what could be the relevant science here?  

Are social values sciences?  Or are they merely an excuse for telling a redneck that if he watches NASCAR, his kids will drive too fast and possibly kill themselves?  See, that assumes that the kids can't control themselves; and while I've met MDs who can't imagine how a car can be controlled @ 150 mph, because that is their experience and based in their experience.  I know from my own experience that it takes only time and attention to teach the average bear to do exactly that, and one cannot and should not assume a car is uncontrollable at 150 mph; and whether we do that is indeed a social value judgment.

Assumptions are everything in statistics, and in my experience, medical schools are just as vulnerable to making invalid assumptions as Joe 6-Pack and the RNC.  The issue is recognizing our limits.

As an aside, let's remember Eisenhower's advice that any dollar spent on weapons is ultimately a dollar taken from other priorities.   And of course that's true of everything.  Any dollar spent in a silly-assed study is a dollar that can't be spent on actually preventing causalties, or hobbying, or feeding the resulting kids, or whatever your priorities are; but who is the authority in this matter?  Is Lancet authoritative because it represents "reputable scientists"?   What is the relevant science?  

Or is it possible that a traveling salesman who knows how to sell sand to Arabs might actually be more authoritative about how to prevent casualties?

Now looking more closely at what we DO know, we see that the Lancet scientists say that 70% of the casualties were caused by insurgents.  Not germs or starvation, but insurgents.  We don't know if any insurgents were interviewed to determine their motives, but I would caution against assuming that any person really knows their own motives, let alone would tell you the truth about them.  

What could an MD possibly tell us about how to make an Iraqi insurgent more or less likely to cause a casualty?    To begin with, did these MDs actually speak Arabic?  or are they digesting statistics for us, and should they be trusted at digesting statistics over say economists?  

Is it a good bet that information is worth $30?  Or is this inevitably a social judgment that we will get from Fox, al-Jazeera, and our barbers, free of charge?

So what I'm talking about here is this issue of blind trust.   We have a nation who trusted Bush, because they like the way he talked; and it right now, doesn't look like it did them a whole lot of good.  

My question is, why should we blindly trust anybody, before we so much as know what they're saying?  I'm wondering here if we aren't careening from one side of the same mistake, to the other.

Now the other thing I find interesting is that you would see this line of questioning as an attack.   I suppose I may be a little jaded to cross-examination, but I find it's very efficient.   It's not so much that I believe in any particular position or set of facts, as I have more faith in procedure - particularly procedure that asks a lot of questions.

and that fact is more valuable than any opinion poll.

And she is precisely right, and it doesn't take a Lancet study to figure it out.   Cpl Bartel, dead 39 years ago today after 30 days in Quang Nam, would probably have told you, just as John Kerry told us, and many other participants, mostly NCOs and company grade of merely average intelligence and education.

Robert McNamara, and his successors could have figured it out, if they had done nothing more than either/or sat down and read Mao Tse-tung's "on protracted war", or listened to any barroom caucus of Vietnam vets.

The critical statistics are, what are people really doing?  What they say to some honkie pollster does not mean shit.  What they DO is important.   If enough of them are paying merchants to celebrate 9/11 on lighters, instead of any of the other choices they have, that's a pretty strong indicator that we are pissing into the wind here.

In fact, anybody could have seen this way in advance; that there would be Iraqis and neighbors happy to see us come, and others pissed; but that we would soon outlast our welcome; and we would, from the beginning, have to buy or force our way in every issue we were interested in, and we should have, from the very beginning, calculated carefully if the benefit was likely to be worth the cost.

None of this is rocket science; and yet we wonder why people don't trust their leadership.  It's because leadership is usually far too absorbed in themselves to be anything more than useless baggage, or indeed parasites.  It's not necessary; but it is the history.

These facts are the truth-tellers.  

On the flip side, I have contact with many Americans and Iraqis dedicated to the idea of democracy in the mideast.

What we should have considered from the beginning was how much we would bet - in lives, money and lost opportunities - about the outcome of that particular fight.

Faith may feel good, but hangovers don't.   Faith doesn't win fights - muscle, money and above all brains win fights.  It's too damn bad we use so little of our brains.

The events you describe could have, and should have been anticipated from the beginning.   Every West Point cadet, every mid, knows the quote from Sun Tzu, that the wise general wins without fighting.   WHAT THE FUCK happened to the brains GW Bush was going to hire?!  And now here we are, 4 years later, with holes in 20K Americans and untold Iraqis, and who knows how many dollars pissed into the sand, sitting here with our collective thumb up our collective ass, wondering, WTF, over?

It should be crystal clear to us that this was never about Iraq.  It has always been about controlling Washington DC and your tax dollar.

that is, we're sending an army to save them from themselves.

Considering Saddam (and all the fireworks) we should expect that most of them are going to be happy to see us - or at least happy that we stopped shooting.

But you're talking about inserting an army of teenagers into a foreign culture; armed to the teeth, and don't speak the language, don't have any common values, etc., and you're making them the police.  I don't care how able and well-intentioned they are, we're sending them unprepared right into a kill zone.

Mohammed the Camel-Jock may hate both Saddam and the imams; he may like Pepsi, and the fact that he makes a ton of money off the Americans.  But there are a few people in his family that don't, and a few people who got hurt, and the family is going to be divided about it.

And it's going to come down to family and cultural loyalties:  who is Mohammed going to stand with in the end?  Is he going to just toss his family over and go with the Americans, and rat out his brother-in-law or cousin, who is likely to be shot evading arrest?   Or is he going to let it go?  What would you do?  Can you blame him?

What's amazing is that with all the brains we're supposed to have in DC, people are so busy shouting and thumping their chests that they don't see this.   And that's the reason fellows like Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and Pat Robertson should be fucking drawn and quartered - IMHO, they are the sorts of people who are responsible for the financial, intellectual and moral corruption that has put holes in 20K Americans.

Slow down, I never said 9/11 had anything to with Iraq (eye roll).

The story is about ATTITUDE. If the people who love us so much are buying lighters and trinkets that celebrate 9/11 as a day of victory - WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU????

In the words of my dear old Grandad, it tells me that "somethin just ain't right".

It was obvious and there were generals and others who predicted exactly what would transpire in post-Saddam Iraq and their plans and expertise were rejected by Bush administration.

To get a full understanding of the arrogance and sheer stupidity of how this war was planned and conducted I highly recommend the book Fiasco by Thomas Ricks.

Got any links that might support what you're claiming?

For example, ol' Dr. Arnot is not exactly a statistician, or otherwise demonstrated any experience in how to create an accurate public opinion poll.  He did write a diet book (http://www.amazon.com/Arnots-Revolutionary-Weight-Control-Program/dp/0316051675)
and he's on TV, so clearly he must know how to do everything.

I'd also like to see the link to that recent Gallup poll.  Since Gallop hasn't polled Iraqis recently as far as I know.

as has been pointed out, we already have the useful information, ie, the history and a short tour of the Baghdad flea markets.  The local merchants know exactly what their customers are buying.

Iraqi woman blogging from Bagdad.  She has said that the figure of 600,000 Iraqis dead is quite believable.

I think if more discontent Iraqis are killed, we could soon get those polls up to 95%.

I think you've hit on something there.

Once there are only 10 Iraqis left, we should be able to make 6 of them happy.  Then a majority of the Iraqis will support us!

But I've mentioned this as a basic limitation of military action - you have to define your goal.  

Classic manuever warfare assumes the goal is the destruction of the opposing armed forces, and that any political goals will flow from that, at the discretion of diplomats.

It doesn't talk about the armed forces providing any sort of political, social or police role to effect political change, social or cultural "conversion" within a nation.  Armies aren't equipped to act as social workers; and I doubt that a corps of American social workers would be effective in Iraq in any case.

What we have walked ourselves into is more along the lines of what Mao described, or what we saw in Vietnam.  Even if 90% of the locals approve our politics AND religion, they are not going to abandon their families to have our program jammed down their throat.  Cultural change takes GENERATIONS; and I'm not sure we speed it up by setting off a 3 way civil war, and then standing around like bozos with our thumb up our ass, wondering why we're taking casualties.

You can argue that we're doing population control more credibly than arguing that we're convincing Iraqis that democracy is the way to go.   Anybody who doesn't realize the resentment that an occupying foreign army breeds is totally tone-deaf.