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Blair And Bush Hit By Friendly Fire

Posted March 26th, 2007 by Tom
in

Poor old Tony (and poor old Dubya).  Having bravely come out back in October 2006 pooh-poohing the estimate of 655,000 excess deaths since the Iraq invasion claimed in the Lancet report [PDF] (a pooh-poohing echoed wildly by the insanosphere over in the US) it must come as something of a shock to be on the receiving end of some friendly fire from the MOD today:

[T]he Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust".  source

Well, so far what we know - only a few people ever disagreed with that and they were discredited, insane or (usually) both.  Talking of which, here's the Prime Minister's Official Smokescreen from just after publication (12/10/2006).

more important was the view of the Iraqi government, which, as recently as October, had said that the Lancet report numbers method was far from the correct. The Iraqi health ministry was the place to get the relevant figures. The problem with this was that they were using an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample, from an area of Iraq which was not representative of the country as a whole. We had questioned that technique from the beginning and we continued to do so. The Lancet figure was a greater order of magnitude than of any other figure. It was not one we believed to be anywhere near accurate.  source

In short, a strong case of cognitive dissonance, given that the BBC's FoIA request now reveals that they were being told internally that the method was sound *at the time* (well, the day after, on the 13th).  We know Blair and the other inmates of the Fuhrerbunker are unscientific - the faith schools/evolution argument and the technical/engineering illiteracy over ID cards and NHS IT give it away - but this is cast-iron proof - one of the tests of good scientists is not discarding eye-opening results merely because to do so risks having your eyes opened.  Sadly, our Prime Minister is happy to lead the country with his eyes firmly shut to the consequences of his criminal folly.

Other bloggage:
Lenin's Tomb
New Uber-Blogger Craig Murray
D-Notice

Thanks for the link (even

On March 26th, 2007 D-Notice says:

Thanks for the link (even though I didn't actually say much in my post ;-) )!

Life is like a box of chocolates: too much makes you sick...

Re-run just now

On March 26th, 2007 frog says:

Re-run just now 0100 frogtime  on BBC Radio4 NOOS  .

1 ----- "655000 fig all exaggerated"  -- your beloved government

2------  MoD accepts "best statistical practice" was used  --- BBC.

I have no religious-type belief  in the 655,000 figure.

But who is disputing the number of people "displaced", ie,  One, two or three million running for their fucking lives ?

And Who is disputing that Madeleine Albright  actually said that " half a million dead kids are worth it " ?

Keep looking .

 

http://www.informationclearin

On March 26th, 2007 frog says:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17404.htm

 A Must watch . Short, too.

It begins with an iraqi woman with christian, shiite, and sunni members in her family ...

goes on to Tony Benn V John Bolton --- "you are a declining empire " ....

Not sure if I've posted this

On March 27th, 2007 lifesastumblingblock (not verified) says:

Not sure if I've posted this link before on the Lancet methodology used, if so here it is again.... If not, there it is anyway!

Excellent post and well

On March 27th, 2007 Bernie1 (not verified) says:

Excellent post and well spotted.

Somewhat buried on the BBC

On March 27th, 2007 Anonymous 0 (not verified) says:

Somewhat buried on the BBC news site but here it is:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6495753.stm

Do any of the well informed

On March 27th, 2007 BB says:

Do any of the well informed readers of Blairwatch have any links squirrelled away detailing the comprehensive trashing of the Lancet report by various scrotes, sorry, Cabinet ministers at the time of publishing? It would be a handy resource to pull out at elections, when such immoral apologists are trying to present themselves as full of humanity.

The BBC did well, and I

On March 27th, 2007 Tom Welsh says:

The BBC did well, and I would be even more pleased with them if the resulting coverage had not been so minuscule. It got about 5 minutes on Radio 4's PM program yesterday, which was as long as it took to state the bare facts of the matter. I wouldn't have minded so much if they hadn't then proceeded to spend about 20 minutes telling us that nothing new had arisen in the murder of Bob Woolmer.  Hmmmm.... the better part of a million dead Iraqis get 5 minutes, one dead Englishman gets 20.  Moreover, while many of us will be sad to hear of Woolmer's death, there is no story until the police have done their stuff. In the meantime, respect for Woolmer's family and friends as well as for the investigative process would seem to dictate keeping quiet about it. In the case of The Lancet's report, however, every single British subject is faced with incontrovertible proof that our government is run by lying slimeballs. Isn't that important?

For incisive analysis of

On March 29th, 2007 Anonymous (not verified) says:

For incisive analysis of media coverage of the first Lancet report, see below.  (Still relevant to the more recent report, although the coverage of that was better).

part 1:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050905_burying_the_lancet_part1.php

part 2:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_part2.php

Unlike any mainstream journalist, the authors of these pieces actually thought to get in touch with the report's main author and get detailed repsonses to media and government debunking.