Which Conservative Idiot Said This?

Anyone know which right wing hack is on Chicago radio in the morning? I have a couple of Chicago AM radio stations set in my car, and wound up hitting one of them while turning on the local NPR station. Someone was ranting about Rosie O’Donnell, complaining that she was claiming over 600,000 Iraqis have died during the war. The idiot on the radio was claiming that this was some number that liberal bloggers gave to Rosie and it is totally made up.

Actually this number comes not from liberal bloggers, but from a study in The Lancet estimating that 655,000 Iraqi civilians died during the war.

Initially conservatives claimed these numbers were untrue, but subsequent reviews, including from the Iraqi Minister of Defense’s science advisor, supported these findings.

This is an excellent example of the brainwashing of conservatives in this country. Facts come out which they don’t like, so first they claim that the facts are untrue. As these numbers hold up, they now tell their listeners that the numbers are made up by liberal bloggers, hoping that none will realize that the numbers are really from one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world.

Getting people to vote Republican means getting them to believe things which just are not true. This is just one tiny example of how it is done.

19 Comments

  1. 1
    citizen says:

    the bottem line is we are dominating in iraq only 3000 american dead in 4 years of gurrila fighting in a urban setting. the so called insergents havent won 1 major fight against our troops yet. we ousted a brutal dictator in two weeks. installed a gov the people voted on them twice. the percentage of iraqis who voted is more then the number of americans who vote,and we have been a democracy 4 400years. all theinsergents can do is put a bomb in a trash pile and kill 30 iraqis to wonund or kill 1or2 ofour soldiers. saddam was responsible 4 more then 600,000 deaths. no matter what u say ousting him could never be wrong even if we found no wmd. even if we left iraq we dont loose we dominate. the people of iraq need to go get it themselves when they can we will go

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Actually the study showed that the number of civilian deaths increased due to the war over baseline.

    The war has resulted in a civil war in Iraq, as well as strengthening al Qaeda, strengthing Iraq, and reducing the influence of the United States. While there is some benefit to removing Saddam, it was not done in a very smart way.

  3. 3
    markg8 says:

    I believe that study published in the Lancet was conducted at John Hopkins (over a year ago?) and Cheney/Rusmfeld and company were always willing to quote other studies done by the same people with the same metrics until of course they released this.

    As for the future of this war I’ve been posting the following wherever I find morons like Citizen commenting with his kind of tripe:

    It’s not patriotic to leave our soldiers in Iraq to fight and die for a Shiite theocracy. Whether this president or the next withdraws from Iraq there will be dancing in the streets of Baghdad. Shiites and Sunnis alike will celebrate their “victory” over the occupiers. That’s the only “victory” that’s going to be wow there. As soon as the aid money buyoffs run out the stooges who run the country, whether it’s Maliki or another set of Iranian backed goons will start making public anti-American utterances in order to hang onto their phony baloney jobs or more likely to keep themselves from being strung up from lamp posts if they don’t. They’ll tear up that godawful hydrocarbon law forced down their throats by Cheney in a New York minute.

    Why would they be so ungrateful? First of all because they’re Arabs and live in the ME. The US has been getting bad press in those parts for decades. Secondly because Bush 1 told them to overthrow Saddam in 1991 and then had coalition soldiers stand idly by, sometimes as Republican Guard troops moved right through their ranks to massacre them. Then we sanctioned the whole country into the poorhouse for over a decade for Saddam’s sins. Now we’ve invaded, occupied and destroyed their country. We locked them up without trial or recourse and tortured them. 4 million are displaced. 2 million outside the country. Probably a million have died. 53% in the last poll said they have a close friend or family member who has been killed or wounded by the violence. 69% say coalition troops make the security situation worse, not better. 71% say killing American soldiers is justifiable. A majority say the re may be a short term spike in violnce once we leave but they still want us out.

    Bush knows all that and it’s the reason he won’t withdraw. If he can just hang on til January ’09 someone else, be it a Repub or Dem, (and there’s no way it’s going to be a Repub if we’re still in Iraq) will be left holding the bag, taking the blame for his latest failure as has been the case his whole life.

  4. 4
    Ronhohn says:

    Citizen appears to be the typical neocon redneck moron.

    ONLY3,000 Americans dead? How many of them did ypu know?

    A government the people voted for – twice. How do you know what those people voted for? The majority knew nothing, or very little about a democracy. Thay may think they vated for another tribal chief. And why ins’t that supposed ‘democracy’ working?

    Saddam is responsible for 600,000 deaths – I’ll just use your number – but it took him 20 years. American efficiency has reached that numer in less than 4 years.

    Why should the Iraqis ‘go get it themselves’? If someone stopped by my house every day to clean it, why should I get up and do it myself as long as that someone is doing a good job, and giving money to my family menbers in addition to the work?

  5. 5
    Liberal Journal says:

    CItizen said, “even if we left iraq we dont loose we dominate.”

    So you’re saying we can leave then. And by dominate do you mean the oil companies will?

  6. 6
    citizen says:

    Yes our soldiers are dominating in iraq. i know saying only 3000 sounded cold hearted.Ididntmean it that way. As compared to our last gorrilla war were there were streches we lost 1000 a month. Im not a redneck by the way california aint the south now. But u socialists want to focus on climate change and universial health care. Go check the economies in countries with unv health care.lets focus on things that wont kill our economy. Even if we poured billions in changing the climate back will china will russia will india. NO, they will shoot past us in power.We need to get off the oil but security comes first. Back to iraq. the so called insergents are only winning this war in the blogisphere and 74% of the media.inturne 70% or so of U.S. citizens think were losing or in themiddle of a civil war.WE ARE NOT. I bet u get your stats from ex baathests and sunnies.We dont want to be there. they dont want us to be there any longer then we have to. until iraqis can fight we cant leave….. Lets get rid of al qieda in afganistan to let them re base in oil rich iraq. yea real smart. And i dont know anyone who died in iraq, but have one friend who was wonded.And 2 others who went. Our soldiers havent lost a major fight yet. the insergents control nothing. but u. And the democradic leadership in the house and senate. And if we went to war 4 oil were is it check the gas pumps bud.Sorry about the spelling i enjoy all of ur comments.

  7. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    Citizen,

    It looks like you have really drowned on the far right wing Kool Aide, including calling those who disagree with him socialists, and ignoring all objective information on both what is happening in Iraq to the views of virtually every scientist involved in studying climate change.

    Getting rid of al Qaeda in Afghanistan is the one sensible thing you have to say. Of course it was the Bush administration which abandoned Afghanistan before the mission was accomplished, allowing them to become stronger than they were before. It was also Bush’s incompetence which allowed bin Laden to escape when he was surrounded at Tora Bora. We needed to get rid of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and then everywhere else, not destabilize Iraq to give them a new training ground. The bigger problem is that most of the insurgents now fighting in Iraq aren’t al Qaeda, but are people who were radicalized against the United States by the war.

  8. 8
    citizen says:

    im not saying climate change dont exsists im saying weve only been able to accuratily guage earths temp 4 a century or so in the history of earth. dinosuars had nogreenhouse gasses and were wiped out naturally by climate change. most sciencists think were doing it. NOT ALL OF THEM. most sciencists want federal grant money from the gov.and the only 1 whose drinking kool aid is u. as far as the war goes all the facts side w bush. we though he had bio wep before the war he was breaking the ceace fire aggreament 4 years. Frankly if bush one or clinton would have done there job george w wouldnt have had to do this. even clinton had regime change as his policy 4 iraq. he didnt act.so u can blame bush 4 everything but you r wrong,just like reagan.all your week senetors like hillary and kerry gave bush the power to go to war now the political winds have shifted so has there opinions.how convenient.saddam was a mass killer res. for millions of deaths getting rid of him can never be a bad or wrong thing. thats one thing iraqis agree on. ex sunnies.wich is 28% of the population. i get my millions from the hundreds of thousands of bodies weve found in iraq as well as the mill people in the iran war and invation of kuwait.if the media would have acted this way during ww2 we would have lost that 1 too.

  9. 9
    Ron Chusid says:

    Citizen,

    The problem isn’t that regime change was a bad idea, but it was done the wrong way at the wrong time. Clinton would have liked regime change, but he didn’t go to war as Bush did. After 9/11 we had far more pressing issues than Saddam, and when action was taken it needed to be part of an international effort with a real plan for victory and stabilization of the country after Saddam was overthrown.

    There’s no doubt that Saddam was an evil man, but that is irrelevant. Plenty of people have been killed in North Korea and China, but we are not going to war against them. Going to war as Bush did was contrary to our national interests, strengthening al Qaeda and Iran in the region and strengthening North Korea and China internationally. The war has also considerably weakened the United States. It was one of the worst blunders ever.

    Your analogy to World War II is bunk. There was widespread support for the war as that was a war that made sense.

  10. 10
    citizen says:

    there is no easy way to remove saddam it still had 2 be done.if people in ww2 would have seen images of americans day to day dying or us losing the war the first couple years we wouldnt have been so supportive

  11. 11
    Ron Chusid says:

    Citizen,

    While perhaps no easy way, there were much better ways. This shouldn’t have been done after 9/11 when there were more important priorities. This should have been an international effort, and needed to include neighboring countries to be successful and avoid putting us in the middle of a civil war. They definately needed to go in with a real plan.

    During World War II, people knew soldiers were dying, in far greater numbers than in Iraq. It is not simply the deaths which limit support for this war, but the realization that the country was conned into going to war under false pretenses, and that our continued involvement there is not accomplishing anything.

    Bush’s plan seems to simply be to run out the clock and let the next President take the blame for the problems which will arise in Iraq. Americans will support a war if it means something, but not if this has come down to Bush’s reputation.

  12. 12
    citizen says:

    people knew people were dying but didnt see it.and if our soldiers made a mistake in ww2 we didnt here it. if a soldier makes a mistake in iraq hes purposily a killer of women and children. as kerry and murtha said. if we were united this whole time it would be ovr, but we will still be there a while. how maney democrocies were up and running in 5 years. 0. it will never look like our democracy but it will be better then saddam.but the gov needs to be stronger then all the militias in iraq. then we will leave.that takes time and exp in battle.

  13. 13
    Ron Chusid says:

    Citizen,

    “If we were united this whole time it would be ovr”

    No, that’s just an attempt to shift the blame for a failed policy. If anything, you have it backwards. Public opinion shifted against the war because it became obvious that this was a policy without a reasonable chance for success.

  14. 14
    citizen says:

    yes united. every time kerry a powerful senator and failed presidential canidate says our troops are killers in the night terrorizing women and children with no spacific evidence, al qieda says see, even a senator is saying they kill muslim women and children in cold blood.Gives them home made propiganda at the highest level.dems have a whole list of senators and congressmen who were 4 the war until election time 04.They knew they couldnt just give bush iraq. so they started ripping into it even though at the time the american people were in favor of bush and iraq.and its had this snow ball effect since then. with negitive effect on the war effort.no one was mislead all the facts are with bush.

  15. 15
    Ron Chusid says:

    Citizen,

    “every time kerry a powerful senator and failed presidential canidate says our troops are killers in the night terrorizing women and children”

    If you are going to resort to spreading such falsehoods your comments will no longer be accepted here. It was the Republicans who based their campaign on falsehoods and smears, including the one you are repeating here.

  16. 16
    citizen says:

    its on tape bud, killers in night was murtha, terrorizing women and children in the dark of night was a direct quote from john kerry. facts in tact . dont need to get mean though i respect your views. and reading your work.

  17. 17
    Ron Chusid says:

    No, that’s quite a distortion of what Kerry said.

    Such tactics of taking words out of context, with subtle misquotes to change the entire meaning, is quite typical of how Republicans have run their campaigns. I guess that is what you have to resort to whan the facts are against you and people will not vote for you if they see what you really stand for, as in 2006.

  18. 18
    citizen says:

    anyone can find 4 themselves what was said. we lost in 06. but we have dominated elections 4 16 years before that even when clinton was pres we had congress. at least 6 of his years. and we held it until a few months ago.all facts are with bush. we do well in elections. we will win again. 4 sure and u will win a few here and there too.

  19. 19
    Ron Chusid says:

    There is a major error in your logic when you compare pre-Bush party politics with present and future politics. There’s been a tremendous realignment in the parties as a result of the extremism and dishonesty of the Bush years.

    The Democratic Party is now a combination of long time Republicans as well as former independents and Repubicans such as myself who cannot support a political party which has harmed the country so much, and which sees through all the dishonesty current Republicans spread to try to get votes. Previous elections mean little when so many former independents and Republicans are now supporting the Democrats. If the Republicans continue their current course, they will be limited to the deep south and the few others who fall for their propaganda.

Leave a comment