There are people who engage the members of this site, not to facilitate common understanding, but in my opinion, to simply cause trouble. Most of the time it is apparent they are not even reading intelligent and well-referenced responses to their inane comments. Nor do they cite valid references themselves in retort - only more childish insults and inept sarcasm. Such folks are willfully ignorant, refusing to open their minds to any frank and open and honest intellectual exchange. And because they do not honestly engage, I have to consider them as little more than playground bullies who have little more than smoke and noise to their favor. I don't enjoy engaging these bully simpletons as it's quite difficult for me to get down to their level of personal abuse. So I rarely do. MTBrad - Ron is, as usual, on target - you totally wasted your time responding to such a person. But I'm happy you took that time because your response was well done and most informative. Thanks.

MTBrad, breatking through the social structure of the American Foreign Policy Mindset, IMO, tends to get tedious at times and becomes a waste of time. Your reply to Rudy about the deaths in Iraq falls on (Rudy's) deaf ears (albeit an exellent response). Argument for the sake of argument has the intended effect that one such as Rudy desires. Do you really think he read the piece that you presented? In any intelligent exchange of ideas, the "facts" as presented would leave little to discuss.

Trying to prove a point with a pointless opponent is futile. My stance is: avoid arguments with right wing trolls.

Speaking of Iraqi deaths, I suppose the 3 million Vietnamese killed during that horrible imperial era is a moot point to someone like Rudy. Where's the proof, he might "argue." The only important data is the 58K plus that have their names carved into a marble wall.

Thank you for your contribution, mtbrad.

R

"statements made by the President of Iran was not a "deliberate mistranslation" based on his other actions and words and the words of the statement itself." We need to address a few of your comments here. First, you can say that in your opinion you believe the statement was not deliberately mistranslated, but I doubt very much that you can empirically prove that it was not. Now I don't know you and you may have a tendancy to go around claiming things without any proof. Do you? Second, what other actions? Do you mean his pursuit of nuclear power and maybe, although not proven and at least ten years away, nuclear weapons? If so, which country are the 10,000 US nuclear weapons meant to destroy? Third, we just discussed the statement. Go back and read our conversation, I am not going to repeat myself. So, why is the government and the mainstream media purposely misleading you Rudy?

In a Democracy Now! interview , study co-author Les Roberts defended the methodology by noting that the method is the standard used in poor countries, that the same method was used by the US government following wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and that the US government's Smart Initiative program is spending millions of dollars per year teaching NGOs and UN workers how to use the same cluster method for estimating mortality rates. [52] The article's authors defended their research, claiming that their work was the only active study of the death toll, and that this is more accurate than passively counting reported deaths. [27] They cited a number of factors that could lead to smaller figures from other sources; for example, the Islamic requirement that bodies be buried within 24 hours of death. They claim that the sources of bias in their study push the figure down. An Oct. 11, 2006 Washington Post article [4] reports: Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have." In a letter to The Age, published Oct. 21, 2006, 27 epidemiologists and health professionals defended the methods of the study, writing that the study's "methodology is sound and its conclusions should be taken seriously." [53] A Reuters article reports on other researchers, epidemiologists, professors, and physicians who have defended the study. For example; this quote from the article; "Over the last 25 years, this sort of methodology has been used more and more often, especially by relief agencies in times of emergency," said Dr. David Rush, a professor and epidemiologist at Tufts University in Boston. [54] Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology in the University of Oxford, described the 2006 report as "statistically valid" in an interview on BBC television [55]. Dr. Ben Coghlan, an epidemiologist in Melbourne Australia, writes: "The US Congress should agree: in June this year [2006] they unanimously passed a bill outlining financial and political measures to promote relief, security and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The bill was based in part on the veracity of a survey conducted by the Burnet Institute (Melbourne) and the International Rescue Committee (New York) that found 3.9 million Congolese had perished because of the conflict. This survey used the same methodology as Burnham and his associates. It also passed the scrutiny of a UK parliamentary delegation and the European Union." [56] Burnham is one of the authors of both of the Lancet studies. October 19, 2006 Washington Post article [32] reports: "The numbers do add up," said Daniel Davies, a stockbroker and blogger for the Guardian. He argued that the sample of 1,849 households interviewed by Iraqi doctors working for the JHU research team was as large as that used by political pollsters. An October 16, 2006 MediaLens article quotes many health experts, epidemiologists, biostatistics experts, polling experts, etc. who approve of the Lancet study and methodology. [57] For example: John Zogby, whose New York-based polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began, said: "The sampling is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets. It is what people in the statistics business do." ... Professor Sheila Bird of the Biostatistics Unit at the Medical Research Council said: "They have enhanced the precision this time around and it is the only scientifically based estimate that we have got where proper sampling has been done and where we get a proper measure of certainty about these results." In an October 31, 2006 MediaLens article, Lancet study co-author Les Roberts responded to several questions on the report, concluding that: "Of any high profile scientific report in recent history, ours might be the easiest to verify. If we are correct, in the morgues and graveyards of Iraq, most deaths during the occupation would have been due to violence. If Mr. Bush's '30,000 more or less' figure from last December is correct, less than 1 in 10 deaths has been from violence. Let us address the discomfort of Mr. Moore and millions of other Americans, not by uninform. Some skeptics criticized the relatively broad 95% confidence intervals (CI95) due to the relatively small number of clusters. For instance, Fred Kaplan in an article on Slate.com described the confidence interval: "the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.) This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board." [11]" normal distribution normal distribution The authors responded by claiming that the phrase in parentheses in the above represents a poor understanding of the meaning of a statistical confidence interval because the central estimate of 98,000 was not chosen solely because it is "roughly at the halfway point". The probability distribution follows the normal distribution, with numbers near the central point estimate more likely to be accurate than numbers closer to either extreme. Roberts said, "this normal distribution indicates that we are 97.5% confident that more than 8,000 died, 90% confident more than 44,000 died and that the most likely death toll would be around 98,000,";[12] he said that many well-accepted statistics, such as the number killed under Saddam's regime or the number dead from the 2005 tsunami, have a similarly broad CI due to small but statistically adequate sample sizes." He also questioned Kaplan's motives and accused him of altering quoted text and for focusing on one aspect of the report. Lila Guterman, after writing a long article [13] in January 2005 in The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote a short article in the Columbia Journalism Review that stated: "I called about ten biostatisticians and mortality experts. Not one of them took issue with the study's methods or its conclusions. If anything, the scientists told me, the authors had been cautious in their estimates. With a quick call to a statistician, reporters would have found that the probability forms a bell curve — the likelihood is very small that the number of deaths fell at either extreme of the range. It was very likely to fall near the middle." [14] A Ministerial Statement written 17 November 2004, by the UK government stated "the Government does not accept its [the study's] central conclusion", because they were apparently inconsistent with figures published by the Iraq Ministry of Health, based on figures collected by hospitals, which said that "between 5 April 2004 and 5 October 2004, 3,853 civilians were killed and 15,517 were injured" .[15] Some critics have said that The Lancet study authors were unable to visit certain randomly selected sample areas. In an interview on the radio program "This American Life," however, the authors of the study say that they never substituted different, more accessible, areas, and that every place that was randomly selected at the beginning of the study was surveyed in full, despite the risk of death to the surveyors. Critics of the Lancet study have pointed out other difficulties in obtaining accurate statistics in a war zone. The authors of the study readily acknowledge this point and note the problems in the paper; for example they state that "there can be a dramatic clustering of deaths in wars where many die from bombings". They also said that the data their projections were based on were of "limited precision" because the quality of the information depended on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study.[16][17] Fred Kaplan argued in Slate that the study's prewar mortality rate estimate of 5 deaths per 1000 is erroneously low because Iraq's mortality rate in the period from 1980-1991 were all higher, ranging from 6.8 to 8.1, so that the study's conclusions were overstated because of this discrepancy.[18] Kaplan's pre-war mortality estimates were based on the findings of Beth DaPonte, whose 1980-1990 numbers came from United Nations figures; most of Daponte's estimates of Iraqi casualties from Desert Storm and its aftermath are higher than those of other researchers [19] The results of the study were politically sensitive, since a heavy death toll could raise questions regarding the humanitarian justifications on the eve of a contested US presidential election. Critics objected to the timing of the report, claiming it was hastily prepared and published despite what they perceived as its poor quality in order to sway the U.S. electorate. On this topic, Les Roberts stated "I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election. My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq. I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives."[20][17] He replied to criticisms by Professor John Allen Paulos of the Temple University Math Department of "an expedient rush to publish" with Dear Dr. Paulos, I read your note below with some sadness. FYI, there was a rush to publish as I have said in every major interview I have given. A) I have done over 20 mortality surveys in recent years and have never taken more than a week to produce and release a report (because people dying is important) until this article. Thus, this was the least rushed mortality result I have ever produced. B) We finished the survey on the 20 Sept. If this had not come out until mid-Nov. or later, in the politicized lens of Baghdad (where the chief of police does not allow his name to be made public and where all the newly trained Iraqi soldiers I saw had bandannas to hide their faces to avoid their families being murdered…) this would have been seen as the researchers covering up for the Bush White House until after the election and I am convinced my Iraqi co-investigators would have been killed. Given that Kerry and Bush had the same attitude about invading and similar plans for how to proceed, I never thought it would influence the election and the investigators never discussed it with each other or briefed any political player. C) if you have information about how and why people in New Orleans were dying today, would you rush to release it? The Falluja downfall happened just one week after the study came out and whether you believe the 500 or the 1600 or the 3600 estimates of associated Iraqi deaths, that alone was probably more than will occur from this moment on due to Katrina. So, we rushed to get it out, I do not understand why the ‘study's scientific neutrality' is influenced or the likelihood that the sample was valid, the analysis fair… What does neutrality mean? Do people who publish about malaria deaths need to be neutral about malaria? Yours in confusion and disgust, Les Roberts[21] On the contrary, Roberts views critics of his study as motivated more by politics than by science; "It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces."[22] [edit] Lancet publications related to criticisms * November 20, 2004. Criticism and suggestions by peer reviewer Sheila M Bird, MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge CB2 2SR, UK, chair of the Royal Statistical Society's Working Party on Performance Monitoring in the Public Services. Calls scientific method "generally well described and readily repeatable", but says "[p]articular attention is needed to the methodology for randomly selecting the location(s) of cluster(s) within governorates. Roberts and colleagues describe this rather too succinctly". Suggests additional information be included so that more precise multipliers (to obtain the final estimate) can be applied. Discusses an example hypothetical circumstance incorporating said information, regarding airstrike deaths and collateral damage, under which over-counting could occur due to population density variances among cluster representations.[23] * March 26, 2005. Criticism by Stephen Apfelroth, Department of Pathology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Criticizes "several questionable sampling techniques that should have been more thoroughly examined before publication" and lists several flaws, including a "fatal" one, that "In such a situation, multiple random sample points are required within each geographic region, not one per 739000 individuals."[24] * March 26, 2005. Response by L Roberts et al to Apfelroth. Acknowledges flaws, but says "the key public-health findings of this study are robust despite this imprecision. These findings include: a higher death rate after the invasion; a 58-fold increase in death from violence, making it the main cause of death; and most violent deaths being caused by air-strikes from Coalition Forces. Whether the true death toll is 90000 or 150000, these three findings give ample guidance towards understanding what must happen to reduce civilian deaths. ...Before publication, the article was critically reviewed by many leading authorities in statistics and public health and their suggestions were incorporated into the paper. The death toll estimated by our study is indeed imprecise, and those interested in international law and historical records should not be content with our study. We encourage Apfelroth and others to improve on our efforts. In the interim, we feel this study, as well as the only other published sample survey we know of on the subject, point to violence from the Coalition Forces as the main cause of death and remind us that the number of Iraqi deaths is certainly many times higher than reported by passive surveillance methods or in press accounts."[25] [edit] Other responses to criticism The Chronicle of Higher Education also wrote an article discussing the differences in the survey's reception in the popular press over how it was received in the scientific community. [13] Epidemiologist Klim McPherson writes in the March 12, 2005 British Medical Journal [26]: "The government rejected this survey and its estimates as unreliable; in part absurdly because statistical extrapolation from samples was thought invalid. Imprecise they are, but to a known extent. These are unique estimates from a dispassionate survey conducted in the most dangerous of epidemiological conditions. Hence the estimates, as far as they can go, are unlikely to be biased, even allowing for the reinstatement of Falluja. To confuse imprecision with bias is unjustified." An October 12, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article [28] reported: "Six hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just, it's not credible," Bush said, and he dismissed the methodology as "pretty well discredited." In December [2005], Bush estimated that 30,000 Iraqis had died in the war. Asked at the news conference what he thinks the number is now, Bush said: "I stand by the figure a lot of innocent people have lost their life." At a separate Pentagon briefing, Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that the figure "seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I've not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don't give it that much credibility at all." The Iraq Body Count project (IBC), who compiles a database of reported civilian deaths, has criticised the Lancet's estimate of 601,000 violent deaths [29] out of the Lancet estimate of 654,965 total excess deaths related to the war. The IBC argues that the Lancet estimate is suspect "because of a very different conclusion reached by another random household survey, the Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004 (ILCS), using a comparable method but a considerably better-distributed and much larger sample." IBC also enumerates several "shocking implications" which would be true if the Lancet report were accurate, e.g. "Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued" and claims that these "extreme and improbable implications" and "utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas" are some of several reasons why they doubt the study's estimates. IBC states that these consequences would constitute "extreme notions". [30] Jon Pedersen of the Fafo Institute [31] and research director for the ILCS survey, which estimated approximately 24,000 (95% CI 18,000-29,000) war-related deaths in Iraq up to April 2004, expressed reservations about the low pre-war mortality rate used in the Lancet study and about the ability of its authors to oversee the interviews properly as they were conducted throughout Iraq. Petersen has been quoted saying he thinks the Lancet numbers are "high, and probably way too high. I would accept something in the vicinity of 100,000 but 600,000 is too much." [32] Both Iraq Body Count and Lancet authors have noted that the ILCS estimate of 24,000 was roughly twice the Iraq Body Count figure for the same period [33]. The "100,000" figure Petersen gives in the quote above is roughly double IBC's October 2006 figures, which would make it consistent with his own ILCS estimate scaled-up according to the IBC timeline. Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels, was quoted in an interview for Nature.com saying that Burnham's team have published "inflated" numbers that "discredit" the process of estimating death counts. "Why are they doing this?" she asks. "It's because of the elections."[34]. However, another interviewer a week later paints a more measured picture of her criticisms: "She has some methodological concerns about the paper, including the use of local people — who might have opposed the occupation — as interviewers. She also points out that the result does not fit with any she has recorded in 15 years of studying conflict zones. Even in Darfur, where armed groups have wiped out whole villages, she says that researchers have not recorded the 500 predominately violent deaths per day that the Johns Hopkins team estimates are occurring in Iraq. But overall Guha-Sapir says the paper contains the best data yet on the mortality rate in Iraq." [35] Fred Kaplan of Slate criticized the first Lancet study and has again raised concerns about the second.[36],[37] Kaplan argues that the second study has made some improvements over the first, such as "a larger sample, more fastidious attention to data-gathering procedures, a narrower range of uncertainty", and writes that "this methodology is entirely proper if the sample was truly representative of the entire population—i.e., as long as those households were really randomly selected." He cites the low pre-war mortality estimate and the "main street bias" critique as two reasons for doubting that the sample in this study was truly random. And he concludes saying that the question of the war's human toll is "a question that the Lancet study doesn't really answer". The survey was sponsored by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA (authors L Roberts PhD, G Burnham MD) and the Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, Al-Mustansiriya University, Baghdad, Iraq. Roberts' team was chosen for their experience in estimating total mortality in war zones, for example his estimate of 1.7 million deaths due to the war in the Congo[5] which not only met with widespread acceptance and no challenge when published in 2000,[6] but resulted and was cited in a U.N. Security Council resolution that all foreign armies must leave Congo, a United Nations request for $140 million in aid, and the US State Department pledging an additional $10 million in aid. Similar studies have been accepted uncritically as estimates of wartime mortality in Darfur[7] and Bosnia. Roberts' regular technique is to estimate total mortality by personal surveys of a sample of the households in the area under study; this method being chosen in order to avoid the under-counting inherent in using only reported deaths in areas so chaotic that many deaths are unreported, and to include those deaths not directly attributable to violence but nevertheless the result of the conflict through indirect means, such as contamination of water supply or unavailability of medical care. The baseline mortality rate calculated from the interviewees' reports for the period prior to the conflict is subtracted from that reported during the conflict, to estimate the excess mortality which may be attributed to the presence of the conflict, directly or indirectly. This technique has been accepted uncritically in the previous mortality surveys discussed above.

And as I said the statements made by the President of Iran was not a "deliberate mistranslation" based on his other actions and words and the words of the statement itself. It can only be construed one way and one way only.  The UN may not be threatening Israel, but Iran is by its' leaders choice of words. 

The Lancet study, as I said, is discredited because the math doesn't add up - the numbers supposedly come from March 03, not 1991 when sanctions were originally imposed. Second, the methodology is questionable. Going around and asking people their opinion of the number dead is hardly accurate.  Apparently though it works for propaganda purposes with the lefties. 

Rudy, my point was that the phrase "wipe Israel off the map" is a deliberate manipulation of translation to make it appear that Iran is threatening Israel with military or nuclear attack, which they have not done. You have acknowledged the difference in the translation and are now claiming that stating the Nation-State of Israel in its present geographical size must be deconstructed inorder to bring peace to the middle east as somehow a threat to the people of Israel. How so? Is the UN also threatening Israel when it also claims that Israel must give back some of its territories in order to bring peace to the ME? Rudy you also failed to explain to me how the Lancet study of Iraqi civilian deaths was 'discredited'. You don't get to sneak bogus statements such as this quite so easily. As per your hatred of the Iranian people, anyone promoting the Bush admin. war mongering propaganda and inflating the threat of Iran is a hater of the Iranin people by defalt for two reasons. First, if the propaganda becomes ubiquitously accepted then it will be used to legitimate an invasion or attack on Iran, which will kill hudreds of thousands of Iranians. Second, US bellocose towards dictators and tyrants only makes them stronger by validating their control. By sabber rattling Iran, or North Korea or Iraq for ten years, the US only strengthens the hold of the dictators, which hurts any chance of internal, self-determined overthrow. Walt K. you are going to have to offer a bit more specificity as to our nonsense. To simply dismiss indepth comments with "you guys make absolutely no sense" is kind of a cop out, don't you think? Where did we not answer the questions posed? Ron I agree that the average Joe thing does apply, but can we simply dismiss it as a social structure and not attempt to break through the fog that is the 'American' foreign policy mindset? This is one thing that the great Chalmers Johnson article you linked does, it attempts to show how the ridiculous is ridiculous (to paraphrase the late Molly Ivans). Chalmers always brings it back down to a level of what should be common sense. Of course the repeated demonizing of the president of Iran and the main stream medias love affair with aggressive US foriegn policy counter act any level of common sense in the 'average joe' who is too busy to dig up a competent analysis such as Chalmers.

You guys make absolutely no sense.  You're upset that the Iranian President is being shown?  Not only that, you didn't answer any of the questions posed of your lunacy.

mtbrad, I agree. A face to go along with threat adds a persona that one can relate to...sort of like the idea that Jesus was a blue eyed blonde.

Or how about the use of words to re-establish the demon(s) we all need to fear...it used to be "commies." Now it's "terrorists." It is all fear based psyops...works fine, lasts long time...ad nauseum.

As an example, fill in the name of Joe (from Victor's post above) with Rudy...as such:

As the average Rudy, I am getting the feeling that Iran is really stepping up its efforts to directly confront the USA, to challenge our mighty military to a showdown, to show the world who's really boss. But we (Americans) have great patience, a good heart, and wish only for a peaceful resolution to all the conflict. If only Iran would listen to us. If only Iran would put down their weapons and destroy all their nukes.

And, to continue, the average Rudy -- in an undaunted defense of the US's FOB (forward observation base), Israel -- might be heard saying (again, from Victor's post):

In the end they will regret that they ever threatened us!

And we all lived happily ever after.

Where do you get "hatred for the Iranian people" from? In "speaking for the Iranian government," I'm sure you can go through the past 28 years worth of news and find plenty of evidence that the official Iranian position has been calling for the destruction of Israel. What do you think "deconstruction of the Jewish state" means let alone blaming Israel for the ME's problems? I'm sure the ME would be a bastion of tolerance if only the Jews were eliminated. Despense with the crap about true democracy and Israel. The lone free society in the midst of the dictatorships of Syria, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lybia, Egypt, and others is hardly the problem.

Rudy I'm not sure who you are but I doubt very much that you can speak for all Iranians or even the rulers of Iran- "they don't think any Jew should govern Jerusalem let alone Israel". You might want to limit your insights to your own and stop making statements about what you think others believe. Khamenei said "There is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the deconstruction of the Jewish state." Once again, you try and spin words and misquote to make your point. Funny how the haters of the Iranian people always depend on misquotes and propaganda. How would you solve the ME problem without getting rid of the religious state of Israel and building a true democracy? I never said that "Ahmadinejad is really a nice guy and his Holocaust denial conference and anti-Jewish cartoon contest were just a big laugh." Again, you might want to stick to things I actually said or if you have your own ideas don't claim them as mine. This shows exactly the process of propaganda that the MSM relies on to program people, such as our good freind Rudy here, into thinking that this man is the representation of evil in the world. Through misquotes and constant demonizing the polity is conviced that our domestic problems stem from this man. That single men have so much power that we need to kill thousands of innocent lives, including our own soldiers, to stop the threat from this man. The whole thing is ridiculous if you think about it.

Yes Brad your right (sarcasm), Ahmadinejad is really a nice guy and his Holocaust denial conference and anti-Jewish cartoon contest were just a big laugh. Let me guess, you're going to say there was a mistranslation, right? Well tell me then, when they talk of wiping the "regime in Jerusalem off the map," who do you think they're talking about? Whether it be the old Khomeni quote, or the one a few months ago, seeing that the "regimes" in Jerusalem are not the same 20 some odd years apart, the quote can only mean one thing. You're forgetting, they don't think any Jew should govern Jerusalem let alone Israel. "And just in case anybody claims that Mr. Ahmadinejad was misquoted when he threatened to wipe Israel off the map, the indictment quotes 10 other statements by the Iranian president in which he says much the same thing. It also quotes Supreme Leader Khamenei: "There is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state." http://www.nysun.com/article/47756?page_no=2

You are going to have to do some homework Rudy. Go and do some research on the president of Iran saying he was going to "wipe Israel off the map". Then come back and we can talk about why Fox news would lie to you and claim that he said things he did not.

Um, of course the leader is going to be shown. Who do you want to be shown, some guy on the street who isn't making policy, or in the case of Iran, threatening to "wipe Israel off the map"?

You guys also notice how the media loves to show pictures of Ahmadenijad [sp?]. The media pics one figure head to represent the 'evil' of the enemy. They never showed the president of Iran prior to this, in fact most citizens probably had no idea that Iran had a president, more less who he was or what he looked like. This is standard operating procedure for every imperialist war. The discourse is that this is a personification of the enemy and it is much more affective than an abstract nation. They even do this in Iraq, they are always trying to name the 'head' of the insurgents and show pictures of him. I guess so that we can visualize and focus our hatred and rage against him. We did this during the Spanish American war, the Vietnam war, WWI, WWII, Wars in CA, First Gulf war, War on Terror... The pattern is quite obvious. I wonder why a person is much more effective than a nation, and how the left can learn from this?

Victor, you are not off topic at all. It is right on as it all boils down to capitalism and imperialism.

I agree wholeheartedly with what you (cynically) said:

As average Joe, I am getting the feeling that Iran is really stepping up its efforts to directly confront the USA, to challenge our mighty military to a showdown, to show the world who's really boss. But we have great patience, a good heart, and wish only for a peaceful resolution to all the conflict. If only Iran would listen to us. If only Iran would put down their weapons and destroy all their nukes.

So true and thanks to the monster (Big Sam) propaganda machine (which, among others, is our pro-war corporate media) the general masses come out with exactly the idea that you presented. Fear is the weapon!

I found a very interesting and recent article by Chalmers Johnson that I would highly recommend (and very much on topic) at:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/IB01Aa01.html

One interesting point made by Mr. Johnson in the article that clarifies is the following:

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The US attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.

...a brief but clear confirmation of present US financial economic problems.

Good reading!

R

 

 

By the way, and I hope this is not too far off topic, many in the last month have predicted a significant rise in the level of warnings and accusations over Iran by the dominant media throughout the rest of January and through February. Well, they are certainly cranking it up. I just noticed these lead headlines on the CNN site: Iran role suspected in brazen Iraq attack Signs Iran may be spoiling for a fight How the U.S. could punish Iran Senators warn of drift toward war with Iran As average Joe, I am getting the feeling that Iran is really stepping up its efforts to directly confront the USA, to challenge our mighty military to a showdown, to show the world who's really boss. But we have great patience, a good heart, and wish only for a peaceful resolution to all the conflict. If only Iran would listen to us. If only Iran would put down their weapons and destroy all their nukes. I am so frightened! I hide my family in our little bomb shelter every night. Who knows when we will see an Iranian tank column rolling down our street! Iranians are such a serious threat to world peace, and who knows when they might decide to actually INVADE us? It could be any moment! Do YOU want to be ruled by a group of mullahs? Then our only choice, though it would be difficult and made with great regret, is to bomb the shit out of those bastards before they bomb us! Bomb them 24 hours a day, day in and day out. Destroy their will to live. Kill them. Kill their women and children. Destroy their infrastructure, bomb their hospitals and schools (where they hide all their terrorists). Place harsh ecomomic sanctions on them denying their children food and proper medical supplies. Make sure we use cluster bombs, phosphorus and depleted uranium to make them REALLY suffer the way they want to make us suffer. Nuke their nuclear facilities and destroy all their weapons of mass destruction (so a few thousand civilians get in the way - it's nothing more than collateral damage, to be expected in any war). In the end they will regret that they ever threatened us!

You could've explained the difference between policies entwined with "elite special interests" and a fanciful "oil cabal" -- not even Street talks about that -- as clearly as you did without patronizing Rudy by saying, Maybe that's "above your intellect."

Yes,think about it. 400 a day you said. You sound shocked. You should be shocked. It's ghastly. Especially when your son or daughter is doing it. Beyond belief, you feel. So let it sink in. Want to try to do something about it?

Discredited Lancet report you claim? How so? Social scientifically speaking the 'report's'[sic] (it's actually called a study) methodology are completely sound. If you have a document source that claims otherwise I would love to see it. I have been doing some research on the acceptability of studies that have used the same methods and the results are quite substantially in favor of the study. Including the Bush admins. acceptance of the same authors study of Darfur, and studies in the Congo and Bosnia using the same methods. Professional epidemiologists and statisticians overwhelmingly accept the methods and results of the study, that went through a scientific peer review process. The 650,000 Iraqi civilian death number is actually on the conservative side and the actual number is more than likely closer to one million. If you include the one million that the US goverment acknowledged from the sanctions and you have a cool two million dead Iraqi civilians due to the Bush families obsession with Irqi oil. As for the conspiricy notion you present, you obviously know nothing about politics. It's more about quid pro quo's between elite special interests than about the machinations of an oil cabal. That requires an understanding of political networks though and that maybe above your intellect.

700,000 dead Iraqis? Where do you get your numbers - from the discredited Lancet report? That's over 400 dead per day. That's pretty sick that you're willing to exploit the dead you supposedly support just for the sake of propaganda. You don't seem to have the petro/oil thing down either. You're suggesting that the dozen or so oil companies, with their hundreds of directors have in their pockets, not only the 435 congressman and the President, but also the governments that also have troops in Iraq. That is incredibly conspiratorial of you. Do you honestly believe that that governments of the middle east don't need to reform? Finally, with your plea for direct democracy, who are implicitly saying the Constitution should be thrown out. Is this true? How do you suggest things be run at a macro level, i.e., the state and national levels? Do you really thing that 300 million Americans could vote daily on the tasks undertaken in Washington?