[quote=Prime95;96378]My point was made in the context of U.S. law is what counts when it comes to applying the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

As to your questions: International rules are a beneficial restraint on unsavory actions. They serve as a warning that going to war without proper cause will have consequences. However, if a country's safety is on the line, then it has the right and in fact a duty to its citizens to take whatever actions it deems necessary, including going to war, whether the International community agrees or not. (NOTE: I'm not making any claims as to whether the Iraq war actually met those criteria).[/quote]

I agree with you on both counts. But who decides whether the Iraq war met those criteria?

[QUOTE=garo;96379]
it is more like 650,000.[/QUOTE]
When you cite that figure, it makes it absolutely impossible to take anything you write seriously.

Maybe he added a zero by mistake...

[quote=Prime95;96314]Global warming[/quote](I hope we're all in general agreement here that in this context, "global warming" is a catch-phrase for something like "the component of global warming that has been caused or exacerbated by human activities such as mechanical generation, and release to the atmosphere, of greenhouse gases, raising the equilibrium levels of such gases beyond the amounts naturally generated", not for something like "all global warming, whether byproduct of natural or of artificial processes".)
[quote]came up in this thread as one example of how the Bush administration is irrational. I don't think anyone here has argued that ignoring global warming is wise, they are arguing that there is a rational argument behind it. The argument may be weak, it may be very selfish, it may be short-sighted, but it is rational.[/quote]
... and an earlier quote:
[quote=Prime95]No, it's not. It is adopting a different rationality than yours.[/quote]

A) There has been systematic censure and distortion of scientific reports going to the President (and public) by Bush administration staff, with the consent of, or even direction by, President Bush (shown by his failure to condemn or end it after public exposure). Decisions based on such biased reports, rather than full reports of all scientific views, no longer deserve to be categorized as rational decisions because of the deliberate exclusion of one side of relevant facts, motivated by an irrational desire to make it appear that reality is consistent with a certain ideology.

B) I consider the welfare of human generations to be an essential consideration for important policy decisions such as our response to global warming. Bush's decisions appear to disregard that consideration. Therefore I categorize them as irrational, because they exclude rational consideration of the range of rational projections of future effects of global warming.

If he were ignoring [I]all[/I] considerations of long-term effects in his policy decisions, then I'd agree that he was merely short-sighted. But he does, seemingly, take into effect long-range future financial effects, and long-range effects of changes in global political power balances, in this and other policy areas, so I conclude that short-sightedness is not an adequate excuse, but that irrationality has to be accused.

But YMMV.

[quote=garo;96379]2) As brunoparaga pointed out, it is not just 3000 deaths, it is more like 650,000.[/quote]I missed seeing where brunoparga used the 650,000 figure, but that figure probably comes from last October's report by a team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists:

"Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 - washingtonpost.com" at [URL]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442_pf.html[/URL]

[CENTER]© 2006 The Washington Post Company[/CENTER]
[I](In the following, the [B]boldface is my own emphasis[/B]. -- cheesehead)[/I]
[quote=Washington Post]

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in [URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/iraq.html?nav=el"][COLOR=#0000ff]Iraq[/COLOR][/URL] since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

< snip >

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

< snip >

[B]Both this and the earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods.[/B] The technique, called "cluster sampling," is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters.

While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the methods. [B]The great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.[/B]

"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins physician and epidemiologist.

< snip >

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."

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey.

"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."

The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They visited 1,849 randomly selected households that had an average of seven members each. One person in each household was asked about deaths in the 14 months before the invasion and in the period after.

The interviewers asked for death certificates 87 percent of the time; [B]when they did, more than 90 percent of households produced certificates.[/B]
According to the survey results, Iraq's mortality rate in the year before the invasion was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people; in the post-invasion period it was 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The difference between these rates was used to calculate "excess deaths."

Of the 629 deaths reported, 87 percent occurred after the invasion. A little more than 75 percent of the dead were men, with a greater male preponderance after the invasion. For violent post-invasion deaths, the male-to-female ratio was 10-to-1, with most victims between 15 and 44 years old.

Gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of violent deaths, with car bombs and other explosions causing 14 percent, according to the survey results. Of the violent deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes, the respondents said.

[B]Burnham said that the estimate of Iraq's pre-invasion death rate -- 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people -- found in both of the Hopkins surveys was roughly the same estimate used by the CIA and the U.S. Census Bureau. He said he believes that attests to the accuracy of his team's results.[/B]

[B]He thinks further evidence of the survey's robustness is that the steepness of the upward trend it found in excess deaths in the last two years is roughly the same tendency found by other groups[/B] -- even though the actual numbers differ greatly.

An independent group of researchers and biostatisticians based in England produces the Iraq Body Count. It estimates that there have been 44,000 to 49,000 civilian deaths since the invasion. An Iraqi nongovernmental organization estimated 128,000 deaths between the invasion and July 2005.

The survey cost about $50,000 and was paid for by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies.[/quote]

BTW, if you find a death rate of 5.5 (or even 13.3) per 1000 (per year) suspiciously low, recall that Iraq, like many other nonwestern countries, has a population distribution much more skewed toward the young than the U.S. does. The average rates will rise as a larger percentage of Iraqis reach old age.

- - -

[quote=M29;96406]When you cite that figure, it makes it absolutely impossible to take anything you write seriously.[/quote]M29, read it (noting especially the parts I bolded) and weep. This is reality, not fantasy, not "spin", not propaganda.

- - -

Of course, conservatives (or liberals!) who've already chucked aside the scientific method, in favor of ideology, for determining truth may not be impressed by the bolded parts.

[quote=garo;96379]3) Clinton's lies during the Kosovo war did lead to deaths of many innocents. None were American. Perhaps this is why this is not cited. But then what about his lying over Somalia?[/quote]Please document these on my separate thread, "Comparison of crimes and transgressions by recent U.S. Presidents" at [URL]http://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=6975[/URL].

From iraqbodycount.org, which I doubt is a mouthpiece for the conservative agenda, see [url]http://iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php?PHPSESSID=3f544dca3a034b5b1e6b1d605302aa35[/url]

One random quote from their analysis:

[quote]However, our view is that there is considerable cause for scepticism regarding the estimates in the latest study, not least because of a very different conclusion reached by another random household survey[/quote]


But, heh, what would that Clinton-hater I refer to over-and-over again do? Pick the worst possible estimate and spread it as gospel. No self-respecting believer in the scientific method would do that. I think the evidence is growing and growing that some posters here are just like the Clinton-haters they despise so much.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;96411][QUOTE]M29, read it (noting especially the parts I bolded) and weep. This is reality, not fantasy, not "spin", not propaganda.[/quote]
[/QUOTE]Thank you for your opinion on what is fantasy and what is spin.

Having followed the various numbers since 2003, I consider myself somewhat informed. I think the Wikipedia article is neither fantasy nor spin.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_survey_of_mortality_before_and_after_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq[/url]

I will also point out that the first [i]Lancet[/i] was published on 29 October 2004, and the second on 11 October 2006, both immediately before federal elections.

And I note that 3000 US soldiers have not been killed in Iraq due to hostile action. I'm sure the toll will rise to 3000. Meanwhile, to imply otherwise is, well, is spin.

Personal disclaimer: My brother recently enlisted in the US Air Force. He is a doctor, aged 52. He is prepared to serve as a flight surgeon in Iraq.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;96231]I wasn't thinking of stem cell research when I wrote "biology". What I had in mind was creationism, or Intelligent Design. [I]Those[/I] are rejection of the scientific method.
[/QUOTE]
Bush is on record as saying that the matter should be up to the state and local school boards.

Now, if one thinks that the federal government should dictate what can and cannot be taught in schools, a lot of people will demand a louder voice in determining university curriculums.

The recent UN estimate was 34,000 Iraqi civilian deaths during the year 2006, based on reports from morgues, hospitals, and government agencies. (Note that this figure does not include the deaths of Iraqi military, Iraqi police, insurgent or militia forces.) The Lancet researchers claim that similar estimates from official sources during other wars rarely counted even 20% of the actual total, and in fact, the Iraq Body Count estimate itself was low by about a factor of 2 according to the other survey (ILCS) noted in George's post above. The Iraq Body Count folks point out that if the Lancet estimate is true, this would lead to some very disturbing conclusions and they therefore express skepticism. However, in spite of some serious questions about the methodology, I have yet to see criticism that explains how the Lancet data can be so far off, other than the suggestion that the original data itself was "cooked". On the other hand, the ILCS survey would also seem to indicate that the UN estimate, based on the same type of official sources as the Iraq Body Count, is probably a considerable underestimate, but it also suggests that the Lancet estimate is way too high. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the total Iraqi death toll, civilian plus military, has been around two or three hundred thousand so far, but I would have to see more data to have confidence in any actual numbers.

One thing I've been wondering in the wake of the grim (whichever set of estimates you tend to believe) body counts, which is not intended to let Bush et al off the hook, but I think still worth examining:

To what extent was sectarian violence inevitable in the wake of the passing of Hussein and the Baathist regime, irrespective of how that change of regime came about?

For instance, imagine that instead of the current situation, the U.S. had not invaded, and a few years down the road Saddam Hussein dies peacefully in his bed. A power struggle ensues, the Baathist coalition crumbles ... what then? Or do folks think the Baathists would have been able to retain power under a new leader?