Comments on Informed Comment: 2 GIs Killed, 2 Wounded; Bush Has own Interpretat...

With regard to the SOFA, I was struck by the expli...

2008-11-30T17:13:00.000-05:00

With regard to the SOFA, I was struck by the explicit exclusion of WMD's owned by the U.S. from the agreement. Not to be too paranoid, but is this because they are governed by a separate agreement, or is there something else going on here?

To Ripa :All your reasonning rest on the suppositi...

2008-11-27T08:40:00.000-05:00

To Ripa :

All your reasonning rest on the supposition that like in occidental societies, the over 65 years old widows live alone and become household chief after their husband dies of natural causes.

In many non occidental countries, this is not the case; on the contrary, an older mother would stay with one of her children (as long as their families weren't dispersed by the wars).

So IMO your reasonning doens't hold.

I was talking about US deaths in combat; there wer...

2008-11-27T00:52:00.000-05:00

I was talking about US deaths in combat; there were none in October in Iraq.

I think it might be interesting to use the results...

2008-11-26T06:34:00.000-05:00

I think it might be interesting to use the results of the Baghdad University survey in order to estimate the number of war victims from the number of widows.

You can proceed as follows: the CIA world factbook puts the population of Iraq at about 28 million; the survey data indicate that the average household size is about 7 persons; so, there are about 4 millions households in Iraq. If the survey is representavive, about 1 million of them (4 million times 40% times 2/3) are led by a widow.
It remains to be determined whether the husband of these women died because of the war.
This is clearly very uncertain. The CIA factbook says that in Iraq there are about 444,000 over-65 women, and only 397,000 over-65 men: this age range can account for about 50,000 widows whose husbands likely died of natural causes.
I can't find a data-supported way to extrapolate this number to the whole population; but over-65 widows should represent a large fraction (I'd say around 1/2; but will use 1/5, which appears a strong lower limit to me) of all the widows whose husband died of natural causes.
Using this 1/5 fraction, you get that 750,000 widows lost their husbands from non-natural (violent?) causes.
Since victims of violence include also women, children, and unmarried men, this 750,000 figure is obviously a lower limit.
Even if you account for the victims of Saddam (war against Iran; 1st Gulf war; internal repression: Tony Blair suggested a total of 300,000), I'd say that this survey gives a lot of support to the notion that the victims of the Iraq war are in the 0.5-1 million range.

I have to admit that I agree with the Bush Adminis...

2008-11-26T06:05:00.000-05:00

I have to admit that I agree with the Bush Administration on the meaning of the provision granting Iraq jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. servicemembers. The plain language of the agreement states that Iraq will have no jurisdiction until the joint council reaches a separate agreement (at some unspecified future date) that defines which crimes are included. A failure to reach such an agreement carries not consequences. I assume that, once Iraq signs this agreement and loses its leverage over the U.S., the U.S. will never agree to grant Iraq jurisdiction over any crime committed by a U.S. servicemember.

These 'unnamed officials' are indignant imperialis...

2008-11-26T03:59:00.000-05:00

These 'unnamed officials' are indignant imperialists and/or JINSA firsters. There is no possible misinterpretation of the wordiing for the 2011 deadline for the exit of ALL troops, nor for forbidding the launch of attacks from Iraqi soil.

So what if Bush had a looser interpretation? He is a dead duck, is he not?