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When will Bush's presidency end?
2008 - Dems will impeach him as promised 14%  14%  [ 4 ]
January 2009 - at end of his second term 69%  69%  [ 20 ]
Feb 2009 - 2010 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
2010 - 2015 3%  3%  [ 1 ]
2015 - 2030 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Never - King George II will reign forever 14%  14%  [ 4 ]
Total votes : 29

benjimanbreeg
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11 Jan 2008, 4:54 pm

Averick wrote:
Now, please.

:lol:



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11 Jan 2008, 5:36 pm

Orwell wrote:
Would you like to refute the September 2007 study from ORB, completely independent of the Lancet? It wasn't right before an election, so you can't claim that bias.

Well, ORB (Opinion Business Research) didn't do the poll. In fact, none of ORB's employees have ever been anywhere near Iraq. They farmed the work out to IIACSS (Independent Institute for Administration & Civil Society Studies), who claim they had a 98% response rate during polling. Sorry; that's not even close to being credible.

Also, this statement from ORB themselves, indicating they'd mainly done their 'polling' only in heavily populated areas, where most casualties are likely to occur. It seems they freely admit to their own shabby polling methods:
Quote:
Iraq Casualties Poll Update

ORB to conduct additional interviews in rural Iraq.

We have received a lot of interest in the recent ‘casualties’ poll that we carried out in conjunction with our local partners in Iraq - IIACSS. Our survey was carried out throughout Iraq and looked at the incidence of civilian deaths since 2003 - together with Iraqi’s views on the displacement of people.

As with many other activities in Iraq polling has its own restraints and it is simply too dangerous for interviewers to operate in some areas. Meanwhile local authorities prevent interviewers from working in certain towns and districts. This means that we cannot gather opinion from the more volatile areas but, at the same time we have, so far, also limited coverage in rural districts. Both of these factors mean that any estimate of deaths will remain just that - an estimate.

While, for obvious reasons, we cannot boost our representation of people living in Iraq’s most violent areas we have decided - following feedback from readers of our poll - to conduct a more extensive survey of rural areas to see how this may impact on our estimate. We are in the process of conducting additional interviews in rural areas of Iraq. Once this data has been verified and merged with our current data set we will post it here on the ORB.



UncleBeer
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11 Jan 2008, 5:41 pm

Orwell wrote:
It wasn't right before an election, so you can't claim that bias.

The Lancet's statistical methodology is so flawed that their flagrant and clumsy attempts to affect the US elections don't even need to be considered. It's just more mud on their faces.



monty
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11 Jan 2008, 6:20 pm

UncleBeer wrote:
Of course it's sheer coincidence that the Lancet releases these 'studies' just before US congressional elections (and the previous study just days before the US presidential election).


Yes, I think you are right about that. The Lancet has a review policy for various types of articles that they publish, and I think it is highly unlikely that all the doctors and research scientists that serve as editors and reviewers decided to band together to give special treatment to these articles for political reasons.

I really have a hard time listening to all this criticism of the Lancet, because the study was not performed by the Lancet - it was carried out by a team at Johns Hopkins University.



Orwell
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11 Jan 2008, 7:11 pm

UncleBeer wrote:
Also, this statement from ORB themselves, indicating they'd mainly done their 'polling' only in heavily populated areas, where most casualties are likely to occur. It seems they freely admit to their own shabby polling methods:
Quote:
Iraq Casualties Poll Update

ORB to conduct additional interviews in rural Iraq.

We have received a lot of interest in the recent ‘casualties’ poll that we carried out in conjunction with our local partners in Iraq - IIACSS. Our survey was carried out throughout Iraq and looked at the incidence of civilian deaths since 2003 - together with Iraqi’s views on the displacement of people.

As with many other activities in Iraq polling has its own restraints and it is simply too dangerous for interviewers to operate in some areas. Meanwhile local authorities prevent interviewers from working in certain towns and districts. This means that we cannot gather opinion from the more volatile areas but, at the same time we have, so far, also limited coverage in rural districts. Both of these factors mean that any estimate of deaths will remain just that - an estimate.

While, for obvious reasons, we cannot boost our representation of people living in Iraq’s most violent areas we have decided - following feedback from readers of our poll - to conduct a more extensive survey of rural areas to see how this may impact on our estimate. We are in the process of conducting additional interviews in rural areas of Iraq. Once this data has been verified and merged with our current data set we will post it here on the ORB.

It seems to me that they are freely admitting to and attempting to address problems inherent in making good counts in such a situation such as Iraq. They haven't polled rural areas, but it also says they've avoided the most dangerous areas, so that could cause an undercount. Your attempted argument can be used just as easily in either direction and is therefore worthless. Obviously an exact count will never be made, as was never really made for Rwanda, or the Holocaust, or Darfur, but these are the best estimates we have, and are certainly better than listening to il duce make up numbers around 30,000 after which he mutters "more or less."


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richardbenson
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11 Jan 2008, 7:20 pm

Averick wrote:
Now, please.
agreed. i hope this is a lesson to all registerd voters that voting in a guy based on your religious views is never a good idea, didnt george say jesus was sitting on his shoulder and told him it was the right thing to do to invade iraq? :lol:


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benjimanbreeg
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11 Jan 2008, 9:33 pm

richardbenson wrote:
Averick wrote:
Now, please.
agreed. i hope this is a lesson to all registerd voters that voting in a guy based on your religious views is never a good idea, didnt george say jesus was sitting on his shoulder and told him it was the right thing to do to invade iraq? :lol:


Were they his exact words? :)



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12 Jan 2008, 1:36 am

Does anyone know why our troops are still in Iraq? Bush said we attacked to remove Saddam (which we did) and remove their WMDs (which they apparently didn't have). Yet the war continues. What exactly are our troops doing over there besides killing innocent Iraqis who are fighting for their freedom? There needs to be a damn good reason to justify the slaughtering of 650,000 to 1.2 million Iraqis.



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12 Jan 2008, 1:44 am

Bush Quotes:
"I've got God's shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot. I do a lot of crying in this job. I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count, as president." --George W. Bush, as quoted by author Robert Draper in Dead Certain http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm

"At the end of the session, Bush reportedly told the group, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’’ :lol: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1172948/posts



UncleBeer
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12 Jan 2008, 2:22 am

monty wrote:
UncleBeer wrote:
Of course it's sheer coincidence that the Lancet releases these 'studies' just before US congressional elections (and the previous study just days before the US presidential election).

Yes, I think you are right about that. The Lancet has a review policy for various types of articles that they publish, and I think it is highly unlikely that all the doctors and research scientists that serve as editors and reviewers decided to band together to give special treatment to these articles for political reasons.

I really have a hard time listening to all this criticism of the Lancet, because the study was not performed by the Lancet - it was carried out by a team at Johns Hopkins University.

Les Roberts, epidemiologist, sometimes-political candidate, and lead author of the 2004 Lancet / Johns Hopkins study says it best:
Quote:
"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."

So for you to say there was no political motive in the timing of the story's release is obviously not true.



UncleBeer
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12 Jan 2008, 2:32 am

Orwell wrote:
They haven't polled rural areas, but it also says they've avoided the most dangerous areas

What they're tacitly admitting is that they've published a wildly inaccurate guess. Hardly good or credible statistics.

They also freely admit to falling victim to a statistical flaw known as "Main Street bias":
Quote:
...the sampling methods used "will result in an over-estimation of the death toll in Iraq" because "by sampling only cross streets which are more accessible, you get an over-estimation of deaths."

These "scientists" do a great disservice to science when they cook their numbers to flog their political ideologies.



MissPickwickian
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12 Jan 2008, 6:51 am

Bush leave when he's supposed to. It was his creepy cabinet of crazies I was worried about until almost all of them resigned.


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richardbenson
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12 Jan 2008, 9:38 am

zendell wrote:
Bush Quotes:
“I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’’
thats ubelievable, and frightening :?


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The_Q
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12 Jan 2008, 9:38 am

ja wrote:
President Bush is the best president you are likely to see in for a long, long time.


My opinion of U.S. politicians (not Americans themselves) is pretty low, but c'mon!


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richardbenson
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12 Jan 2008, 9:40 am

yeah that guy obviously doesnt know what hes talking about..


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