Open letter to the Leftwingers

I addressed this to Michael in NY over at Americablog who wrote this piece. I saw the report that Iraqdeathwatch.org iraqbodycount.org put out and it inflamed me that this would now be the official number. 25,000 iraqi's dead. The study is based on media reports of deaths. So in essence, someone took a calculator and did a lexis search for "iraqi dead". Not to dis iraqdeathwatch.org iraqbodycount.org, They were one of the first links in my blogroll. They do a fine job of reporting how many deaths according to media reports there have been.

My contention with that number is that it is gotten from media reports. Well, I sent this over to Michael lets see if he does anything about it:

Dear Michael in NY,

I read your piece. Frankly I don't think that the left is winning the war on the war on Iraq because nobody on the left is telling the story the way it should be told. Frankly, 1700 deaths is nothing compared to vietnam. While we on the left can all agree that every life counts, the argument becomes disingenuous if we are the abortion party and the other side thinks abortions count as killings.

This is a war on rhetoric. And that war can only be won using rhetorical spin filled arguments that the right cannot contradict. The death toll in Iraq is a perfect example of how we have been loosin this rhetorical war.

The right hates the media. and the 25,000 number is based on media reports of iraqi deaths. Since the media is stuck in the green zone or if they are embedded they dont really have a chance to count bodies they refer to government agents to tell them these figures. The government in this case is the US Army Generals and we know how well we can trust them to tell us the truth about the situation in Iraq, let alone about casualties resulting from our bombs! So keeping the official number of Iraqi deaths according to the US Army is in their best interest.

Thus we should not believe media accounts of Iraqi death tolls if they are based in whole or in part on Army General's telling the media how many folks have died. Granted it would be much harder for the military to forget to mention an American death because eventually that would get out in the press. The family would get irate etc. I digress.

You must be aware that there is a scietific study that was reported by The Lancet. Way back in September that estimated the Iraqi tolla t over 100,000 lives. This number was reached through scientific means, and by asking Iraqi families how many folks died. In fact:
"We were shocked at the magnitude but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins study team.
This to me is a much more reliable number than whatever Iraqdeathwatch.org iraqbodycount.org reports. The reason is because of how these numbers are gotten.

Now there is a major difference between 25,000 and 121,000. And it is in the left's rhetorical interest to report the higher number all the time. It really baffles me that a whole anti-war movement isn't using scientifically gotten data to support their anti-war case. Instead the bloggers who spend much of their time deconstructing media lies, chooses a report based on media reports to make its case about how many Iraqi's have died.

I don't know about you Michael, but this needs to change. It needs to change among all the elements on the left and in the anti-war movement. It just simply makes no sense in trying to make a case against a war to use the lowest numbers you can find to build that case. So far the only person taking the Lancet's report seriously to this day is John McLaughlin where he proudly puts the graphic up every Sunday repeatedly with the citation directly below it.

So if its good enough for the guy who says "Bye Bye" Why shouldn't it be good enough for the rest of us in bloglandia?

It would be nice to see some big bloggers do something about the narrative on the left about how many people this war has claimed and Iraqis count too and perhaps one day when it is all over someone will come to the conclusion for what it is. This war is a genocide in the making.

And NO I don't wear a tinfoil hat. I just hate disinformation.

Thanks,
Jorge
http://mediaintrouble.blogspot.com

Look blogs and the left wing bloviators myself included are part of a political movement. And part of any political movement is spin. If the left can't spin better than the right, then we loose its that simple. Here is a basic simple scientific review of data from deaths in Iraq that trumps every single media report out there. Yet the left who is often so content in bashing the media for their lies, goes along with the lies on this one.

Ho Hum!

UPDATE: It is IraqBodyCount.org.