Iraqi Study Hugely Biased By The Left

And the true facts about the biased study have, oddly enough (are you sitting down?) been purposely smothered by the so-called Mainstream Media (MSM). After all, have you heard or read about its debunking? I suspect not.

Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe writes:

. . . there was great interest when the Lancet published a study in October 2006, three weeks before the midterm US elections, reporting that 655,000 people had died in Iraq as a result of the US-led war.

But the truth, it turns out, is that the report was drenched with politics, and its jaw-dropping conclusions should have inspired anything but confidence.

Much of the funding for the study came from the Open Society Institute of leftist billionaire George Soros, a strident critic of the Iraq war who, as Munro and Cannon point out, "spent $30 million trying to defeat Bush in 2004."

Coauthors Burnham and Roberts were avowed opponents of the Iraq war, and submitted their report to The Lancet on the condition that it be published
before the election.

But because it served the interests of those eager to discredit the war as a moral catastrophe, common-sense standards were ignored. "In our view, the Hopkins study stands until someone knocks it down," editorialized the Baltimore Sun.

Now someone has, devastatingly. But will the debunking be trumpeted as loudly and clearly as the original report? Don't hold your breath.

Indeed! Though not widely publicized (imagine that), the DemocraticUnderground had to chime in with its two cents, and one of the very first comments attacks The Boston Globe itself -- you know, the same Boston Globe, in the city of Boston, both of which are bastions of horrendous Right Wing activity. Give me a damned break.

And of course, let's not forget the all-hallowed personal attacks:

6. We don't need no steenkin republicon propagandist chickenhawks
Jacoby is just another highly paid republicon chickenhawk propagandist.No cred. No talent. No relevance.

As I have written many times in this blog: never let facts, rationality, logic, common sense and proportion get in the way of a good fucked-up decision -- or, in this case, a fucked-up belief. Wouldn't you say there's a bit of a difference between 45K and 655K? I think I would.

BZ