knowlink

Update

2007-08-02T02:34:00.000-04:00

Hmm... seems the proclamations from the media and the Pentagon about a new low death toll in Iraq were a bit premature. Media outlets stating that July had the lowest US death toll in 8 months, have been quoting a figure of 73 US soldier deaths. According to the latest from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, July still has the lowest death toll in 8 months, but the margin has now been cut to 1 soldier. The toll is now believed to be 80. For comparison, January, February and March of this year had death counts respectively of 83, 81 and 81. The only reason the July looks good is because April (104), May (126) and June (101) were so bad. In fact if we look at death rate (deaths/day), 2007 has been the bloodiest year for US soldiers of the entire war (2003: 1.92/day, 2004: 2.32/day, 2005: 2.31/day, 2006: 2.25/day, 2007: 3.22/day). 2007 has nearly 1.4 times the death rate of 2004, the previous high, and nearly 1.7 times the rate of 2003, the low mark. Put another way: it took 19 months from the beginning of the war to reach 1000 US deaths, it took 13 months to go from 1000-2000 deaths, and 14 months to go from 2000-3000. If current trends continue it will be 10-11 months between 3000 and 4000 deaths.

US death rate in Iraq is not decreasing, it is increasing

2007-08-01T22:59:00.000-04:00

Although I rarely seem to get around to posting on this blog (I probably should call it: "not a blog" in the vein of George RR Martin), and no one reads it, I still think it’s valuable to post information here when I think it is relevant. This way if people stumble upon it in a Google search they will, perhaps, have found something of interest.

In any case, the post today has to do with US military deaths in Iraq. I wrote a post back in 2005 where I performed an analysis that showed that military deaths were on the rise. Now that almost two years have gone by since I performed that analysis I would like to ask the question: has the death rate of US soldiers continued to rise?

I was inspired to redo this analysis because the US military stated this week that the death toll for July was the lowest in eight months and then spun it to say that the security conditions are getting better. While the factual statement is true, when put into context, this spin is at best meaningless and at worst misleading.

So what is the real picture of US deaths? To answer this question I used data from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. I also use Iraq war “periods” to illustrate how death rates have changed based on certain well acknowledged conditions on the ground in Iraq. These periods are: 1) the invasion, March and April of 2003; 2) the beginning of the occupation and the establishment of the Coalition Authority, May 2003 to June 2004; 3) the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi Transitional Government, July 2004 to January 2005; 4) the election of the first Iraqi government, February 2005 to December 2005; 5) the second Parliamentary election and the ratification of the Iraqi Constitution, January 2006 to present. In the graph I plotted the average deaths per month throughout the entire period for the war, and performed several trend analyses.

Trends by period (thin solid lines): these show that with the exception of the invasion each period has gotten deadlier for US troops from the beginning of the period to the end. Also transitions between periods usually coincide with the drops in death rate, especially when the transitions involved elections. A possible explanation for these drops is the heavy security and use of strict curfews surrounding the elections. Of course, there may be other explanations for this phenomenon, but it is nevertheless thought provoking.

General trends (linear: heavy dot-dash, three factor polynomial: heavy dot): both general trends are shown for the occupation only and do not include the initial invasion. Both the linear and the three factor polynomial trends show an increasing rate of fatalities throughout the occupation period. The linear regression (R2 = 0.23, P = 0.00039; translation: the trend explains 23% of the variation in death rate and has a 99.9% probability of being a true description of the data) shows a change from 1.55 deaths per day at the beginning of the occupation to 3.02 deaths per day at the present time. I think this is an important point, because the media has focused on the fact the mean for July 2007 is consistent with averages for the years 2004 and 2005. As you can see there is a lot of variation in the death rate from month to month. A low death rate in a single month may be due to any number of factors that are not indicative of changes in the overall conditions of the war. Clearly the overall trend for the war is an increasing rate of US military deaths. The three factor polynomial is not significantly better in explaining the overall trend than the linear trend, but it does give a fairly good general description of changes in the overall death rate over time. The death rate of US soldiers rose sharply from the beginning of the occupation to June 2004 (mean 1.69/day) at which time it leveled off and remained fairly constant until August 2006 (mean 2.25/day). Since August 2006 death rate has again risen sharply (mean 3.12/day). These trends clearly show that the war has gotten increasingly deadly for US soldiers.

July trends (thin dot-dot-dash): one of the most interesting parts of this graph is that July 2007 has actually been the deadliest July on record for US troops. This may be coincidental, in that other Julys just happened to have lower death rates. It may also be caused by external factors that modify the death rate; July is the hottest month in Iraq, perhaps it’s too hot to fight? But I actually prefer a statistical explanation. Conditions on the ground (i.e. strength of insurgency, vulnerability of US troops, etc) may exist that cause an overall death rate. However, even with an overall rate there will still be an amount of variation from day to day and month to month. Conditions on the ground will also affect the variation in the death rate, just as they affect the mean. Interestingly, while the conditions that cause the mean death rate may be murky, conditions that cause variation in the death rate may be easier to spot. For example, we would expect death rates to vary substantially from the background rate when major battles occur. And indeed this occurs. The two high points for US military deaths during the occupation (the highest points in periods 2 and 3) correspond with the first and second battles of Fallujah (I should note that if these points are removed from the dataset the R2 for the linear trend rises to 0.42, in other words it explains 42% of the variation). These battles were the largest and bloodiest of the entire occupation. Since no other battles of this scale have occurred, we can make the reasonable expectation that in all other cases the variation in the death rate has remained fairly constant over time. If this is true then if we pick any two months that occurred during times with different mean death rates, we would in all likelihood find that the month with higher death rate also corresponded to the general time period with the higher death rate. In fact July 2007 has a higher death rate than 60% of all other months during the occupation, showing that it was a very deadly month indeed.

Conclusion: this analysis demonstrates 1) the strong overall trend has been for a steadily increasing death rate from the beginning of the occupation to the present, 2) the death rate for July is not out of character with this trend, and is therefore likely to not be indicative of a change in conditions on the ground. From this I can say that media hype and Pentagon optimism for July’s “lower” death rate are unfounded, and in fact may be deliberately misleading. To end, I sincerely hope that the July death rate is indicative of actual conditional changes in Iraq, and that the death rate for US soldier continues to drop. However, we cannot know whether this is true for several months or years. Until then I remain highly skeptical.

Been a long time.....

2006-11-04T02:31:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure nobody's readng this blog at the moment, but you all can do something this Tuesday. VOTE!..... and FILM it, then send that film to FIVE distinct media sources.

Do this to preserve democracy.

Gee, didn't see this one coming

2006-02-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

Well seems like the coverage of Cheney shooting incident has totally wiped out coverage of the NSA spying issue. Our media sucks.

Anyway, here's story that should come as no surprise to anyone. The Supreme Court is revisting abortion on Alito's first day.

Updates

2006-02-10T23:31:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, other commitments call and for a spell I will not be able to update this blog with the lengthy pieces I have been writing . I will be back at it as soon as I possibly can, but that may not be until March or later. I still hope to put up a few small posts, but that is also dependent on other commitments. In any case, I want to point out an encouraging article in the New York Times. Republicans are starting to balk at the White House's use wiretaps. There may be a Congressional investigation!

The plot to steal America: election fraud and the loss of Democracy in the US

2006-02-03T00:15:00.000-05:00

I have meant, for some time now, to put up a post on the possibility that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. Thanks to comments by rabbit, and a few emails from friends of mine, I have been spurred to do so. Because it's such a large topic I will likely devote a few more posts to the subject.

At this point many of you have probably heard that the election results coming from Ohio were highly suspicious. The suspicious nature of the election results are well covered in a Congressional Report commisioned by a Congressional Commitee headed by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan. I would highly reccomend that you read this report. You can also purchase a copy from many online retailers if you have a hard time reading PDFs. In general, the report outlines three time periods in which possible fraud and misconduct may have occured: 1) possible pre-election manipulation including improper allocation of voting equipment to minority areas, targeting minorities for legal challenges to their voting rights and misinformation campaigns, as well as denying access to provisional ballots; 2) manipulation on the day of the election including voter intimidation, registration irregularities due misconduct by election officials, machine irregularities (indicating possible voting machine manipulation) and spoiled ballots; 3) manipulation after the election to hide possible fraud including poor handling of the recount process (in many precints the recount was never even performed), delaying of the legal process asking for a recount and handling of voting machines after to the election possibly to erase evidence of tally manipulation. It is very interesting reading.

Now, there are explanations for many of these irregularities. For some "debunking" of pieces of the Conyers report see Mark Hertsgaard's article in Mother Jones. It is also worth the read. The main problem that he points out is that many of the examples given in the Conyers report for possible outright fraud are not well substantiated. However, he does note that many of the charges about the semi-legal manipulations by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell (who was also the cochair of the Bush campaign in Ohio), including voter roll purges, improper allocation of voting machines and improper denials of voter registration, are fully substantiated and may have had a large effect on the outcome of the election.

While the Conyer's report outlines the many avenues by which fraud may have been conduted in Ohio, in its narrowness of focus it misses a central point: election manipulation likely occured in every battleground state. In an excellent analysis of exit polls Steven Freeman, at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that the odds that exit poll results were as wrong as they were in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania are 662,000-to-one. Interestingly, eight other battle ground states all had skews similar to Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. Namely, all the polls predicted Kerry to get more votes than the final tally says he did.

Why were the exit polls so wrong? The only answer that has been given by Mitofsky International (the firm that conducted the polls) is that Republicans were less likely to acquiesce to being polled. What? This doesn't make any sense, and yet it is bandied about in the news media as if it's common sense. Hertsgaard, in his Mother Jones, article even makes a quip along these lines dismissing the exit poll numbers. Will someone please tell me why Republicans in eleven states decided, without consulting each other, to sytematically boycott exit pollsters? Is it that conservatives are private people who are part of the of the "silent majority," and liberals are a bunch of loudmouths ready to spout off the moment they are asked a question? Or is it rather some posthoc, patchwork, explanation for what is a real anomaly?

So what does this all mean? First, it is still unclear whether Bush stole the 2004 election in a technical sense, meaning through outright fraud. However, there are real and unexplained anomalies in the discrepancies between exit polls and election results, indicating that widespread vote-rigging may have occured. Also, it is abundantly clear that his operatives systematically manipulated the electoral process, through questionably legal but certainly unethical means, to maximize his chances of winning. This in itself is problematic, and the lengths to which the evelope was pushed suggests to me that if Bush operatives could get away with more clearly fraudulent activities, they would. If we add up the whole picture: Bush operatives willing to bend election law to the point of breaking it, Bush spying on and labeling dissenting US citizens as threats to US security (see Quakers), Bush's appointment of Supreme Court Justices friendly to Presidential power, and his general use of heavy bullying to silence critics all point to the fact that Bush and his handlers do not actually like Democracy. While I still believe that we are a long way from a Totalitarian state, the erosion of Democracy that we have witnessed during this administration's tenure is disquieting to say the least.

"It's just a goddamned piece of paper"

2006-01-24T21:31:00.000-05:00

Yes, the Bush administration is trying to tell us that spying on us will make us safer. With these types of statements, they attempt to distract us away from their full court press to increase presidential power. So along those lines...

Today, in a wide ranging internet search I found several very interesting tidbits of information: Bush, in an end of the year push to get Republicans to support the renewel of the Patriot Act and after facing some oppostion concerning its Constitutionality (yes, many Republicans still believe in the Constitution, and God bless them for it), actually said (screamed apparently)... wait for it... "stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!" Wow, did he just say that? Personally, I don't care if you're Democrat or Republican, pro-choice or pro-life, pro-government or pro-business, pro-war or pro-peace, this statement should shake you to the core. It should also unveil the real purpose behind Bush's ordering of NSA spying.

Another bit of info I came across was perhaps just as insidious. In the renewel of the Patriot Act, the same documant that prompted the above outburst from the Bush-man, there is a little known clause that allows for the creation of an actual Federal Police Force, with the power to conduct warantless arrests of any person conducting an "offense against the United States." That sounds like a substantial shift toward the police state, if you ask me. And, not that they didn't have plenty of other reasons but is that why there were Republicans balking at the Patriot Act renewel?

My conclusion, this President needs to be stopped, and impeached if neccessary. Otherwise, we can say goodbye to freedom.

And the Bush-man cometh

2006-01-23T02:32:00.000-05:00

This week we will be treated to a storm from the of Bush brigade on the NSA spying deal. Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of NSA, will give a speech Monday, Alberto Gonzalez will take his turn on Tuesday, and all that will be followed by a visit by Bush to the NSA on Wendesday. I will be very interested to see what they have to say. My bet: 9/11.

Bush has used 9/11 for justification of every last detail of his "War on Terrorism," and frankly it's wearing a little thin. It still may work, however. A quote from Mitt Romney (found in the New York Times) illustrates why: "The eavesdropping is a big matter on the coasts for people who are inclined to dislike the president," Mr. Romney said. "The great majority of Americans think it is the president's first responsibility to protect the lives of the American citizens in an urgent setting where there is a threat of terrorism."

I find this to be a fascinating quote. I shall plumb it a little here. Essentially Mitt is saying that people living in the coastal zones, where the bulk of the US economy is located (57% of civilian income in 13% of the land area) and thus containing the most likely points of attack for terrorist organizations (experts predict continued terrorist focus on economic targets) are more concerned about the damage Bush is doing to the constitution than his fantasies about terrorists lurking around every corner. Shouldn't this tell us something?

The people most likely to be hurt directly by terrorism in this country are precisely the people who are least concerned about it. Strange, very strange.

So why does the rest of America continue to ignore the wisdom of there coastal brethren in favor of Bush's tired explainations? I think the answer lies in marketing. The Bush administration, through the hand of Karl Rove, has been expert at depicting every issue that might challange Bush's logic as black and white, as good against evil. But this is assertion, in itself, is nothing new and has been stated thousands of times before. The real question is why does this strategy work so well with middle America?

My belief is that this administration is taking advantage of a broad anti-intellectual movement within the US. This movement has, perhaps, been cultivated by the Ann Coulter's of world. But I believe it runs much deeper than that, and is more evidenced by the prevalence of Intelligent-Design than by New York Times reading latte-drinking liberal jokes. Unfortunately for those of us who are analytically inclined, nuanced arguments, no matter the message, may never reach this segment of society because they prfoundly distrust the form of our arguments.

How do we deal with this, when the way we speak leaves our arguments stillborn? Perhaps the answer lies in an as-yet-undefined hybrid between the straight-forward moralistic speech of the populist and the subtle mind of the intellectual. Perhaps we just need to use a bit more cunning, a baser form of intelligence.

Bush, spying and Presidential power

2006-01-17T12:56:00.000-05:00

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the ACLU are suing the Bush Administration over possible federal eavesdropping of 10 defense attorneys who were defending clients that were themselves under suspicion, including immigration and Guantanamo detainees. There is no direct evidence, at the moment, that these attorneys actually were spied on but all fit the profile of those that would have been. Part of the lawsuit would require the release of information that would demonstrate whether these individuals were in fact spied on. For more details see today’s New York Times article on the suit and today’s Democracy Now! program where Amy Goodman talks with Shayana Kadidal of CCR.

I would like to point out that this illegal activity of the Bush administration is not just about a breach of civil liberties. First, unlike Bush would have us believe giving up civil liberties does not equate to making us safer. Another article in today’s New York Times demonstrates that nearly all of the leads generated through NSA spying were dead ends. Thus another reason for having FISA oversight, if the government needs clear reasons for conducting surveillance then it’s more likely to pursue fruitful leads rather than unhelpful dragnets.

The second major issue here, pointed out eloquently in Al Gore’s speech, is Presidential power. We are at a point in this country where Presidential power has fewer checks than at almost any other time in our history. This goes against the fundamental principle of separation of powers, a principle that keeps us from sliding into dictatorship. Bush is purposely pushing at every edge of Presidential power. The more we give him the more he will take, and that is very dangerous.

See a video of Gore's speech

2006-01-16T18:43:00.000-05:00

See Al Gore's speech on the C-SPAN. The live stream is not the best quality, but it is good to hear it directly.

Al Gore Blasts Bush for Abuses of Power

2006-01-16T17:43:00.000-05:00

Below I am replicating a January 16th speech by Al Gore in its entirety. This is one of the most comprehensive speeches on the Bush administrations abuse of Presidential power that
I have yet seen. I believe that that our nation may be reaching an important turning point where we finally recogize that we are facing a Constitutional crisis of tremendous proportions. Further, I believe that the breaches performed by the Bush administration are impeachable offenses. I would also like to point you towards some very interesting comments by a former NSA analyst Russell Tice made on the January 3rd program of Democracy Now!

The contents of Al Gore's speech can also be found at the Drudge Report.

GORE BLASTS BUSH FOR 'DANGEROUS BREACH'Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C. Mon Jan 16 2006 12:40:14 ET

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint.

The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically - and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: "To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between President and Congress."

This is precisely the "disrespect" for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case.

It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

For example, the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer-even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.

This shameful exercise of power overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War and has been observed by every president since then - until now. These practices violate the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture, not to mention our own laws against torture.

The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.

Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons - registered a complaint to his home office about the senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: "This material is useless - we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful."

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?

The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution."

The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance.

For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it.

Similarly, the Executive Branch claimed that it could unilaterally imprison American citizens without giving them access to review by any tribunal. The Supreme Court disagreed, but the President engaged in legal maneuvers designed to prevent the Court from providing meaningful content to the rights of its citizens.

A conservative jurist on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Executive Branch's handling of one such case seemed to involve the sudden abandonment of principle "at substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts."

As a result of its unprecedented claim of new unilateral power, the Executive Branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk. The stakes for America's representative democracy are far higher than has been generally recognized.

These claims must be rejected and a healthy balance of power restored to our Republic. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of our democracy may well undergo a radical transformation.

For more than two centuries, America's freedoms have been preserved in part by our founders' wise decision to separate the aggregate power of our government into three co-equal branches, each of which serves to check and balance the power of the other two.

On more than a few occasions, the dynamic interaction among all three branches has resulted in collisions and temporary impasses that create what are invariably labeled "constitutional crises." These crises have often been dangerous and uncertain times for our Republic. But in each such case so far, we have found a resolution of the crisis by renewing our common agreement to live under the rule of law.

The principle alternative to democracy throughout history has been the consolidation of virtually all state power in the hands of a single strongman or small group who together exercise that power without the informed consent of the governed.

It was in revolt against just such a regime, after all, that America was founded. When Lincoln declared at the time of our greatest crisis that the ultimate question being decided in the Civil War was "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure," he was not only saving our union but also was recognizing the fact that democracies are rare in history. And when they fail, as did Athens and the Roman Republic upon whose designs our founders drew heavily, what emerges in their place is another strongman regime.

There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents.

When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others.

But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.
There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, "The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to "last for the rest of our lives." So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

This same pattern has characterized the effort to silence dissenting views within the Executive Branch, to censor information that may be inconsistent with its stated ideological goals, and to demand conformity from all Executive Branch employees.

For example, CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases.

Ironically, that is exactly what happened to FBI officials in the 1960s who disagreed with J. Edgar Hoover's view that Dr. King was closely connected to Communists. The head of the FBI's domestic intelligence division said that his effort to tell the truth about King's innocence of the charge resulted in he and his colleagues becoming isolated and pressured. "It was evident that we had to change our ways or we would all be out on the street.... The men and I discussed how to get out of trouble. To be in trouble with Mr. Hoover was a serious matter. These men were trying to buy homes, mortgages on homes, children in school. They lived in fear of getting transferred, losing money on their homes, as they usually did. ... so they wanted another memorandum written to get us out of the trouble that we were in."

The Constitution's framers understood this dilemma as well, as Alexander Hamilton put it, "a power over a man's support is a power over his will." (Federalist No. 73)

Soon, there was no more difference of opinion within the FBI. The false accusation became the unanimous view. In exactly the same way, George Tenet's CIA eventually joined in endorsing a manifestly false view that there was a linkage between al Qaeda and the government of Iraq.

In the words of George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded.

Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend the Administration's eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that if it had conducted this program prior to 9/11, they would have found out the names of some of the hijackers.

Tragically, he apparently still doesn't know that the Administration did in fact have the names of at least 2 of the hijackers well before 9/11 and had available to them information that could have easily led to the identification of most of the other hijackers. And yet, because of incompetence in the handling of this information, it was never used to protect the American people.

It is often the case that an Executive Branch beguiled by the pursuit of unchecked power responds to its own mistakes by reflexively proposing that it be given still more power. Often, the request itself it used to mask accountability for mistakes in the use of power it already has.

Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. Many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this President means that the next President will have unchecked power as well. And the next President may be someone whose values and belief you do not trust. And this is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this President has done. If this President's attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes unquestioned, our constitutional design of checks and balances will be lost. And the next President or some future President will be able, in the name of national security, to restrict our liberties in a way the framers never would have thought possible.

The same instinct to expand its power and to establish dominance characterizes the relationship between this Administration and the courts and the Congress.

In a properly functioning system, the Judicial Branch would serve as the constitutional umpire to ensure that the branches of government observed their proper spheres of authority, observed civil liberties and adhered to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the unilateral executive has tried hard to thwart the ability of the judiciary to call balls and strikes by keeping controversies out of its hands - notably those challenging its ability to detain individuals without legal process -- by appointing judges who will be deferential to its exercise of power and by its support of assaults on the independence of the third branch.

The President's decision to ignore FISA was a direct assault on the power of the judges who sit on that court. Congress established the FISA court precisely to be a check on executive power to wiretap. Yet, to ensure that the court could not function as a check on executive power, the President simply did not take matters to it and did not let the court know that it was being bypassed.

The President's judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure that the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a longtime supporter of a powerful executive - a supporter of the so-called unitary executive, which is more properly called the unilateral executive. Whether you support his confirmation or not - and I do not - we must all agree that he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial deference to executive agency rulemaking.

And the Administration has supported the assault on judicial independence that has been conducted largely in Congress. That assault includes a threat by the Republican majority in the Senate to permanently change the rules to eliminate the right of the minority to engage in extended debate of the President's judicial nominees. The assault has extended to legislative efforts to curtail the jurisdiction of courts in matters ranging from habeas corpus to the pledge of allegiance. In short, the Administration has demonstrated its contempt for the judicial role and sought to evade judicial review of its actions at every turn.

But the most serious damage has been done to the legislative branch. The sharp decline of congressional power and autonomy in recent years has been almost as shocking as the efforts by the Executive Branch to attain a massive expansion of its power.

I was elected to Congress in 1976 and served eight years in the house, 8 years in the Senate and presided over the Senate for 8 years as Vice President. As a young man, I saw the Congress first hand as the son of a Senator. My father was elected to Congress in 1938, 10 years before I was born, and left the Senate in 1971.

The Congress we have today is unrecognizable compared to the one in which my father served. There are many distinguished Senators and Congressmen serving today. I am honored that some of them are here in this hall. But the legislative branch of government under its current leadership now operates as if it is entirely subservient to the Executive Branch.

Moreover, too many Members of the House and Senate now feel compelled to spend a majority of their time not in thoughtful debate of the issues, but raising money to purchase 30 second TV commercials.

There have now been two or three generations of congressmen who don't really know what an oversight hearing is. In the 70's and 80's, the oversight hearings in which my colleagues and I participated held the feet of the Executive Branch to the fire - no matter which party was in power. Yet oversight is almost unknown in the Congress today.

The role of authorization committees has declined into insignificance. The 13 annual appropriation bills are hardly ever actually passed anymore. Everything is lumped into a single giant measure that is not even available for Members of Congress to read before they vote on it.

Members of the minority party are now routinely excluded from conference committees, and amendments are routinely not allowed during floor consideration of legislation.

In the United States Senate, which used to pride itself on being the "greatest deliberative body in the world," meaningful debate is now a rarity. Even on the eve of the fateful vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd famously asked: "Why is this chamber empty?"

In the House of Representatives, the number who face a genuinely competitive election contest every two years is typically less than a dozen out of 435.

And too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to continued access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good side of those who have the money to give; and, in the case of the majority party, the whole process is largely controlled by the incumbent president and his political organization.

So the willingness of Congress to challenge the Administration is further limited when the same party controls both Congress and the Executive Branch.

The Executive Branch, time and again, has co-opted Congress' role, and often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of its own power.

Look for example at the Congressional role in "overseeing" this massive four year eavesdropping campaign that on its face seemed so clearly to violate the Bill of Rights. The President says he informed Congress, but what he really means is that he talked with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the top leaders of the House and Senate. This small group, in turn, claimed that they were not given the full facts, though at least one of the intelligence committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to VP Cheney and placed a copy in his own safe.

Though I sympathize with the awkward position in which these men and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program.

Moreover, in the Congress as a whole-both House and Senate-the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption.

The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg that threatens the integrity of the entire legislative branch of government.

It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by our Executive Branch which now threatens a radical transformation of the American system.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be.

But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.

We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"-must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.

Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will."

The revolutionary departure on which the idea of America was based was the audacious belief that people can govern themselves and responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. This insight proceeded inevitably from the bedrock principle articulated by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke: "All just power is derived from the consent of the governed."

The intricate and carefully balanced constitutional system that is now in such danger was created with the full and widespread participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were, back in the day, widely-read newspaper essays, and they represented only one of twenty-four series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia.

Indeed, when the Convention had done its best, it was the people - in their various States - that refused to confirm the result until, at their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the document sent forward for ratification.

And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution.

And here there is cause for both concern and great hope. The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television - a distracting and absorbing medium which sees determined to entertain and sell more than it informs and educates.

Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is applicable in a new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements.

And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.

The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.

The Administration vigorously asserts its power to maintain the secrecy of its operations. After all, the other branches can't check an abuse of power if they don't know it is happening.

For example, when the Administration was attempting to persuade Congress to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the House and Senate raised concerns about the cost and design of the program. But, rather than engaging in open debate on the basis of factual data, the Administration withheld facts and prevented the Congress from hearing testimony that it sought from the principal administration expert who had compiled information showing in advance of the vote that indeed the true cost estimates were far higher than the numbers given to Congress by the President.

Deprived of that information, and believing the false numbers given to it instead, the Congress approved the program. Tragically, the entire initiative is now collapsing- all over the country- with the Administration making an appeal just this weekend to major insurance companies to volunteer to bail it out.

To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House who had no scientific training. And today one of the leading scientific experts on global warming in NASA has been ordered not to talk to members of the press and to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the Executive Branch can monitor and control his discussions of global warming.

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, "The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will."

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President. We have had a fresh demonstration of how an independent investigation by a special counsel with integrity can rebuild confidence in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, shown neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the Executive Branch has violated other laws.

Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the President.

Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of wrongdoing -- especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch authority in the sensitive areas of national security.

Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed.

Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.

Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.

It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.

I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I can feel it in this hall.

As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

END

Bush admits to 30,000 dead Iraqi's.

2005-12-13T19:57:00.000-05:00

The Bush Administration has finally admitted to a civilian death tally of 30,000. Interestingly, this number aligns perfectly with the IBC count, which as I've discussed earlier is the minimum possible count since all deaths recorded by the website are indisputable.

Some interesting "non-political" links

2005-12-12T02:34:00.000-05:00

I am interested in many things, and not all are directly politcal. All of the links in this post give food for thought so check them out.

For those of you who are interested in anything that's cartographic a good palce to look is the Cartography blog published by Canadian Cartography Association. I was especially intriqued by links to such areas as radical cartography and upside down maps. It really puts perspective on things.

Nano-technology: the Foresight Institute is a think tank. Its main purpose is to "educate society about the benefits and risks of nanotechnology." Check out for yourself whether their claim is true.

High school kids doing cool stuff. The CEDAR academy at Arcata High School in Arcata, California "is a project-based service learning program in which students use cutting-edge technology to create solutions to problems in their community."

Want to know some aspects of evolutionary theory? This site, called Neoteny
The multidisciplinary implications of heterochronic theory, touches in some of the central tenets of Evo Devo (Evolutionary Development). It's not a comprehensive at all evolutionary theory, but it's impressive nonetheless.

What's in a number: counting Iraqi dead

2005-11-27T18:36:00.000-05:00

I urge everyone to check out the October 28th, 2005 episode of This American Life called "What's in a Number." This episode tells the story about a number, specifically one controversial estimate of the amount of Iraqi deaths during the Iraq War. The following post is based on that story.

You may have heard, at some point, about a study (published in the British medical journal, The Lancet) estimating that, by September 2004, 100,000 Iraqis had died due to war related causes during the Iraq War. The number was published in the mainstream press just before the 2004 US presidential election. It was not widely reported in the US, especially on television (only NBC reported it), and when it was reported it was generally disparaged, sometimes scathingly (though some articles dealt with the study fairly). The main "authoritative" critic reffered to in the press was a man named Mark Garlasco, an analyst at Human Rights Watch, who stated "I certainly think that 100,000 is a reach." It turns out that Garlasco, while an expert in assessing specific types of war related damage, had not read the study and did not have the statistical training to comment even if he had (he has since essentially retracted his statements). In General, the criticisms included 1) saying the sampling was not random: that researchers were blocked from going to cerain areas and that they decided not to go to certain areas due the danger; 2) that they went to Fallujah (where the worst of the fighting has been) on purpose in order to inflate their numbers; 3) that those counted were not neccessarily civilians, but could be insurgents; 4) and finally that the 95% confidence interval for the 100,000 was so wide as to be meaningless (8,000-194,000).

It turns out that criticism 1 is simply untrue. Not only did the group, lead by a reasercher at John's Hopkins named Les Roberts, use a well known and highly reliable technique called cluster sampling, but they followed the randomly determined sampling proceedure despite all dangers.

As for criticism 2, the researchers went to Fallujah because it had been randomly selected, just like all the other samples. And even so they did not include it in their estimate because it was such an outlier (essentially it was off the charts in terms of the number of deaths). Thus, the 100,000 estimate was made without the counts from Fallujah. Certainly, no inflation there.

Criticism 3 is to some degree true because the researchers had no way of knowing whether the deaths they counted were from insurgents or not (freely admitted in the paper). Still, half of all deaths were women and children, and even if all the men were insurgents (an outrageous claim) then that would still leave 50,000 civilian deaths; which, it turns out, is 3 times the next highest estimate at the time (from Iraq Body Count, but see).

Criticism 4 is the only one that holds any water. A range of 8,000-194,000 does seem to be an extremely wide range. Fred Kaplan on slate.com stated (see), "this isn't an estimate. It's a dart board." However, not every number within that range is equally likely. In fact, it follows a bell curve, with 100,000 as the most likely number and 8,000 and 194,000 as the least. This is evidenced by the fact the with a confidence of 90% (rather than 95%) the lower limit of the estimate becomes 44,000. The main thing this interval says about the study is that getting accurate of counts of war dead is difficult when fighting is highly concentrated spatially (see map from the paper). Interestingly, this study only cost $40,000 dollars to conduct, and Les Roberts believes that with only a bit more money to conduct futher study he could increase the accuracy of the estimate by a substantial margin. In a war where a single bomb can cost hundreds of millions of dollars (and the pentagon has dropped more than 50,000 in this war) you think just a little bit of money would be filtered into attempting to understand its impact. But, apparently, the US military "doesn't do body counts."

Speaking of bombs, one of the major findings of the study was that most of the violent deaths (43%) were due to bombing from coalition forces, while only 14% were confirmed to be from insurgents. This suggests that the very style of US warfare causes an immense amount of suffering.

The only other group that has attempted to count Iraqi dead is the Iraq Body Count (IBC) website. The current estimate is between 27,354-30,863. This group uses a passive data collection approach, by taking data from press reports. Interestingly, passive methods in human epidemiology studies (the best comparisons to the Lancet study, due to non-uniform spatial distributions) are notoriously inaccurate. IBC freely admits this and points out that its estimates should be seen as the minimum number of deaths, not as an actual number. Given this, studies that use direct and sound methods of counting, such as the Lancet study, should be supported and commended. Lastly, I would like to remind you that this study was conducted more than a year ago. In that time the IBC estimate has nearly doubled from 14,181-16,312 in October 2004 to 27,354-30,863 today. If we the take Lancet number as accurate, and we use a bit of extrapolation, that means that the number of Iraqi deaths at this point could be as much or more than 200,000. But despite the actual numbers, substantial no matter which way you count, deaths are deaths; deaths cause anger, and anger causes violence.

A caveat

2005-10-31T18:01:00.000-05:00

I realized that a death rate can be defined in two ways: it can be defined in an absolute sense as I did below, or it can be defined in a relative sense whereby it takes into account the number of troops on the ground. Interestingly, depending on what you do you will get different answers. USA today notes that the death rate for National Guards is going down [1], while the Spokesman-Review concurs with my findings [2, or google cache 3]. There are arguments for use of both of these deaths rates. I think the main question to ask is this: does more troops on the ground mean more military engagments? If the answer is yes then the relative death rate is probably more correct. If the answer is no then the absolute works fine. Regardless, the absolute numbers still tell an important story: more troops are being killed today than at the beginning of the occupation.

A last note, Iraq Body Count just published a set of statistics of civilian deaths in Iraq [4]. IBC makes all of its data available to the public, though these data require some cleaning. I would encourage people to do their own analysis with these data. Sometimes statistics new analyses reveal new information or better ways to present the old information.

An analysis of US soldier deaths in Iraq

2005-10-31T15:41:00.000-05:00

A comment:
Here is quick analysis that I did of US soldier deaths in Iraq. I am a scientist, but I do not work with these types of data, so there may be flaws. However, since this is not a scientific publication and my results are interesting I decided to post them. Data, such as the kind that I used in this analysis, are readily available on the web. Given we trust the source, individuals who have some statistical ability can analyze these data and reveal information that may not be widely available in the mainstream media.

The Analysis:
Media attention has recently focused on a grim milestone: the total number of deaths of US soldiers in Iraq has topped 2000. While this figure is well worth mention, one aspect that is mostly missing from media coverage is that the rate at which these deaths occur may be increasing.

I obtained monthly data on US military deaths from the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website [1] and fit a linear regression line to the data in order to extract an expected mean number of deaths per month. If the expected means show a rising trend then that can be interpreted as a rise in the death rate. For this analysis I removed March 2003 from the data because that month represents the first 12 days of the Iraq invasion (the deadliest 12 day period of the war). The invasion included hazards that were not present during the subsequent occupation, because the US military had not held ground before the invasion, and should not be compared with deaths from the rest of the occupation. Baghdad fell on April 9th 2003 so the occupation began after that date. Since the data I had available to me did not include daily figures I took a conservative approach and left the entire month of April in the dataset; doing so does not greatly influence the results.

What do the results say? The regression line I constructed explained 12% of the variation in the number of deaths. This means that the number of soldier deaths fluctuates greatly from month to month. Thus, trends are difficult to extract and should be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, the expected mean for the beginning of the occupation in April 2003 was 47 deaths per month, while the expected mean for October 2005 was 80 deaths per month for a difference of 33 deaths per month. These numbers indicate a 70% increase in the death rate of soldiers from the beginning of the occupation to the present. If reflective of a real trend, this means that the occupation of Iraq is becoming far more deadly for American soldiers.

Think tanks: conclusions pt. II

2005-07-31T01:30:00.000-04:00

I apologize for the lack of updates in recent days. Generally I will be unable to produce as much as I did a week ago. My intention is to make this a biweekly blog; meaning I hope to publish two posts at some time during the week. Due to a busy and somewhat unpredicatble schedule I won’t promise more than that. Thanks to those of you who are reading this blog and checking for updates.

Back to the subject of think tanks (this will be my last post on them, for now). One of the major questions that has arisen in my discussion of this topic is: how do we live in a world were think tanks are a dominant force in the intellectual landscape of politics? Some have proposed contributing money to think tanks that adhere to points of view alternate to those of the well funded conservative majority. In a sense, can we (alternative thinkers) outgun the corporate funded majority?

We may have to follow this track, at least in part. Ways to stay in the debate are good. Ultimately, however, if this is our only route of "attack" we are doomed to failure. Most effective think tanks will be beholden to those with the most money. Even excellent grassroots funding efforts are far shakier than the steady stream of corporate profits. While Howard Dean was able to raise a large amount of money in small donations and organizations like moveon.org have become small power houses, when we compare these phenomena to the loot that poured into Bush's reelection coffer the question has to be asked: is it possible to catch up?

The New America Foundation, a middle of the road and effective think tank which criticizes the role of corporate profits in think tanks, is itself supported by corporate monies (though to a much lesser degree and through many indirect sources). So are there any alternatives?

Not exactly, since we’ll never be able to match tactics, but we still may be able to influence the debate. There are intriguing projects like the Mainstream Media Project, which, through its guests on call program, has developed a network of experts of all sorts (academic, professional etc.) in order to connect them to radio or television broadcasts. Mainstream’s mission is multifaceted and I encourage you to check them out.

Further there are now many new “media sources” popping up on the web, many in the form of blogs but also in more traditional journalistic formats. My feeling is that as more and more of the populace enters the online world the chances for feeding alternate, as well as manipulating, sources of information increases. The battle for this medium is heating up and as long as ordinary people (us the participating audience) hold a place in this sphere we will be able to get our voice heard. I imagine a set of participatory knowledge centers, such as wikipedia, where people will be able to discuss and analyze what is happening in the world today.

Blog links

2005-07-22T20:49:00.000-04:00

Having received my first request to link to another blog I thought it timely add a blog link section. In general I will be happy to link to blogs that are well thought out and contain useful links and information. Calvin Jones’ blogs climatechangeaction.blogspot.com and climatechangeresources.blogspot.com collectively have the honor of being the first that I have linked. If you are interested in doing something about climate change please visit Calvin’s blogs.

Think tanks: conclusions pt. I

2005-07-22T12:07:00.000-04:00

Hopefully the last few posts have given you a taste of how think tanks can be used to promote economic gain for particular donors. How think tanks actually influence politics is subtle and not easilly encapsulated in few sentences. First, there is the "echo chamber" effect where media outlets and politicians begin to echo particular viewpoints that have been promoted by think tanks [1]. Second, the fact that think tanks can promote ideas that are not popular today allows them to lay the groundwork for the future defintion of particular debates. For example, if a think tank continually expounds that inheritence tax is in bad it will eventually become a legitimate point of view despite the factual merits of that point of view [1]. And lastly, this leads to the most subtle but powerful part that think tanks play in our political process: they add intellectual merit to specific points of view [1]. In other words, if a politician has a specific belief he or she will be far more likely to proclaim it (and get results) if that belief is backed up by "objective" research (for a detailed listing of think tank techniques [2]).

The very fact that think tanks are treated as institutions of objective thought makes them powerful forces. In "real" academic institutions (mostly univerisities, a subject in itself) members rise or fall by how well they can play to their peers; who presumably have enough training to spot problems with or bias in the data. Think tanks have no such check. Rather, their members rise and fall by their impact on public perception. How well they are able to influence public perception seems to be largely tied to the amount of funding they are provided [3], and how well they further the goals of the donors [4], rather than the quality of their research. This begs the question: are most think tanks simply highly refined advertising firms masquerading as academic institutions [5]?

At this time, and especially with the current administration, think tanks probably have far more influence on the political process than "real" academics. A great example of this is the Bush administration's amazing ability to come up with arguments against A) that global warming is happening [6] and B) that we should do anything about it if it is [7]. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists (nearly 100% of those people actually analyze the data) believe that climate change is happening and that it is human caused [8]. Further, some scientists are now saying that if our climate shifts beyond certain threshholds that it will precipitate a state shift that could make it difficult or impossible to switch back by simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions [9]. In other words, the entire scientific community, who uses peer reviewed research (and is thus as objective as humanly possible), is saying cut greenhouse gases now so that we can prevent a climatic state shift. Otherwise we're screwed.

But Bush ignores this plea, why? Because it hurts his pocketbook [10]. And where does he get the "research" to give legitimacy to his point of view? Think tanks. In a glaring example of self-interest ExxonMobil has been paying out enourmous sums of money (more than $8 million) to a slew of think tanks for one purpose: give amunition to those who don't want to do anything about global warming [11].

The whole aim of this post is to point out that many think tanks are not acedemic institutions that produce objective research. I'll conclude with these questions: can think tanks produce objective research? Are think tanks inevitable in this day and age? And if so, how do we deal with this situation? Do we have alternatives? I will discuss these questions in the next one or two posts, and then switch to a new topic.

Think tank influence pt. II

2005-07-20T14:11:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia: "Critics charge as another example that over the past three years Microsoft has funded about a dozen think tanks that have released papers attacking open-source software."

While the open-source movement is not something I am an expert on I do feel that it is an important part of society that is integral to the free exchange of information and ideas. Open-source code and software can allow people who would not be able to afford proprietary software to enter into the computing world. In his book, The World is Flat [1], Thomas Friedman notes that much of the developing world uses open-source platforms such as Linux. Also, much of the internet foundation is based on some of sort of open-source code. Philosophically, the open-source movement believes that many minds are better than few, thus allowing for rapid improvements to code or information, and that it is generally good for many to people to have access to programs, code and information because it allows for heightened community creativity. But due to the fact that open-source code is generally non-proprietary making money from it can be difficult. How a company does so depends on the details of the code in question. The operating system Linux is especially onerous to companies such as Microsoft who wants everyone in the world to use Windows. Because people by nature will tend to keep doing things that don't cost money, the only way to stop or hinder open-source movements is to create a legal framework that makes it difficult or impossible for open-source advocates to operate. Think tanks can generate the idealogical momentum to push such laws.

Apparently, Microsoft has funded at least fourteen think tanks to research open-source software and the movement in general, 5 of which are confirmed to use open-source software. Microsoft has spent at least $750,000 on this endeavor, and that's only the money that's been tracked down. It is not surprising to find that all fourteen of these think tanks have produced research that is negative toward open-source [2].

Some think tanks appear to bought out completely by Microsoft. According to United Press International, "several tank officials and analysts, who spoke to UPI on the condition of anonymity, said that the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, a small Arlington, Va.- based think tank that promotes free-market principles, receives a significant portion of its funding from the Microsoft Corp. The sources said that the think tank essentially lobbies in favor of issues important to Microsoft through op-ed pieces and policy briefs by tank officials [3]." Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (ADTI) fellows have written that open-source conflicts with intellectual property rights, and one fellow even went on to say that "Every day, an untold amount (sic) of employees beholden to strict employee/invention/intellectual property agreements, in their spare time (and even during work-hours) freely give away ideas, code, and products to open source projects[4]." This last statement raises the issue of who owns a person's creativity. Certainly if open-source content is being produced on company time then there's a direct conflict of interest, but is a person's spare time no longer their own but rather owned by the company they work for? It looks like the world is moving in that direction.

Microsoft has used these same tactics to defend itself against the anti-trust case held against it [3, 5]. In one glaring example, Microsoft paid a think tank called the Independent Institute to run full-page adds in newspapers supporting Microsoft's position in the case [5].

To wrap up, it appears that there is a direct attack the open-source movement by think tanks with funding from corporations who have direct involvement in the issue. Further, this whole process suggests to me that there is a direct attack being leveled at the whole idea of freedom of thought. In a perfect Microsoft world they would own all the thoughts of their employees and would be able to buy your thoughts as well.

Think tank influence pt. I

2005-07-18T22:38:00.000-04:00

First off, you might have noticed that I didn't cite many sources in the last post. In the interests of keeping good records and allow readers to fact check on their own I will now cite my sources starting with this post.

A little more on the ideological effect on the media and policy, according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) in the years between 1995 and 2003 roughly 50% of media citations of think tanks were from conservative groups, 36% from centrist groups and 14% from liberal groups [1]. Hmm...

Okay, another interesting bit about think tanks. Generally they are able to propel ideas that politicians won't embrace initially. A good example is the current debate over social security. The idea that social security needed severe overhaul originated from several conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute [2]. Until Bush took up the issue few politicians would touch it, but it has been bounced around in the think tank world for years.

Two other issues that think tanks have been deeply involved in recently are security issues (i.e. terrorism and the Iraq War) and the open source software movement. First, I'll mention what might seem to be a conflict of interest in a particular think tank: The RAND Corporation. RAND claims to be an impartial and objective producer of research on security issues. Looking at their website [3] leads me to believe that an attempt is made to do this, or at least appear to do so- I would encourage you to look their website and those of other think tanks, a few new links are posted on the sidebar. I would probably agree with much the analysis that RAND produces (depending of course on what world-view assumptions I am operating under, but more on that later). Nevertheless, RAND does have what could be considered a conflict of interest. How much of one, I'll let you decide.

RAND is one of the most influential think tanks on security issues in the world. Besides getting money from various big corporations and big oil RAND also has a connection with one of the biggest "defense contractors" (in quotes because they technically just buy and sell defense companies) in the world: the Carlyle group. Needless to say when war is on defense contractors make lots of money. So to the connection, Frank Carlucci (a former Secretary of Defense under Reagan) is on the board of trustees of RAND, and is also a chair on RANDs Middle East Public Policy Advisory Board [4]. Frank Carlucci is also a chairman for the Carlyle group [4, 5]. Hmm...

It's a little off subject, but I should note that the Carlyle group is a whole subject in itself (George Herbert Walker Bush is a member), but I'll save that for another time. If you are interested check out the video provided on indybay.org [5]. The video is narrated and subtitled in German, but since most of the interviews are in English it is completely understandable.

Since this post seems to be getting a bit long already I will save the other subject: think tanks and the open-source movement for another post.

Stay tuned for Think tank influence pt. II

1. http://media.eriposte.com/4-4.htm
2. http://www.socialsecurity.org/
3. http://www.rand.org/
4. http://www.hereinreality.com/news/rand.html
5. http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/04/1678405.php

A source for some of the last post:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Think_tank

What are think tanks?

2005-07-18T00:55:00.000-04:00

According to Wikipedia: "A think tank is a group of individuals dedicated to high-level synergistic research on a variety of subjects, usually in military laboratories, corporations, or other institutions. Usually this term refers specifically to organizations which support theorists and intellectuals who endeavor to produce analysis or policy recommendations." Here I discuss just the think tanks that "produce analysis or policy recommendations."

While some think tanks attempt impartiality in their research most do not. Think tanks are funded by private donors and private donors often fund think tanks that produce the types of "research" (and outcomes of that "research") that the donor is interested in. Because think tanks are not technically lobbying firms or affiliated with any political party they do not have to disclose who funds them. Having poked around a bit on some think tank web sites I've noticed a very interesting trend: those think tanks that attempt impartiality usually disclose their largest donors, whereas those that have very specific idealogies never do. This means that donors who want a specific outcome do not have to publically endorse the ideas that they want to put into place.

One of the buzzterms associated with think tanks is the "echo chamber." If findings of a think tank's research starts to be echoed by politicians or by the press then that think tank knows that it has done its job. In fact nearly all experts heard on mainstream radio or television today are working for some non-academic institute or another (think tanks) and much of the "facts" that are repeated on news programs by politicians and pundits (I would hope that journalists have findings of there own) orginate in think tanks. Probably all "experts" on FOX news are from think tanks. Even public and community supported media, such as Democracy Now! and NPR, use think tank fellows. So it seems obvious that these organizations have a lot of influence. This is not to say that good research doesn't come out of think tanks. Rather, I would reccomend that the particular affiliations of think tank fellows should be checked when trying to understand who's interests they might be promoting.

One interesting fact is that there are two times as many conservative think tanks as liberal think tanks and the conservative think tanks are by far the best funded. So if you think that there is a fair fight in terms of ideas, think again. Funding for liberal think tanks has increased rapidly in an attempt to play catch-up, but I do not know whether it increasing as rapidly as that for conservative organizations. Also of interest, in the 1970s there were only a handful of think tanks dedicated to policy analysis and political influence. Today there are over 300 think tanks devoted to politics of some sort or another. This is a rising trend.

In other posts I plan to give specific examples of think tank influence, talk about alternatives to think tanks and discuss questions like: are think tanks just money laundering operations for political lobbying? And, do we want a country where multiple think tanks on all sides of political issues duking it out?

Think Tanks

2005-07-17T19:48:00.000-04:00

Ok. So I've been doing this blog thing for a few hours now and I'm starting to get the hang of working with my template.

In thinking about how ideas are presented in the news media and how policy is shaped in this country I can't help but consider the importance of political think tanks. In that vein I have posted two links in the "Think Tank Links" section. I don't know much about how think tanks operate so I have decided to make this a running topic in my next few postings. As I discover information I will proceed with posting my opinions and analysis on the subject.

Suffice it say, think tanks are an integral part of our society and politcal process and many of the ideas that pour from the mouths of politicians usually have there roots in the political idea factories we call think tanks.

Links and such

2005-07-17T17:44:00.000-04:00

I have now posted a few links to sites where I get much of my news and news analysis. This leads me to some issues that I should discuss. First, I suppose I am what many would call a "liberal." I do have liberatarion leanings and I am by no means a drone that spouts one party line or another. I do believe that we should get our news from multiple sources. It encourages free thinking. To that end I attempt to read and consider ideas on several sides of any issue (note: I said "several" and not "both," as I believe there are usually multiple ways to view an issue and not just one or two). I will continue to post news and news analysis links as I find them. Please feel free to pass on your favorites.

Beginnings

2005-07-17T17:13:00.000-04:00

This is my first post on my first blog. We shall see where it leads. At the moment I have little direction. However, I do have a few ideas. First, I would like this to be a place where I can talk a bit about world issues and perhaps connect people to useful sources of information. Second, I hope that this can be a place where interesting ideas about how to exist in this world and move into the future can be exchanged. That's a tall order I know. So I will just start slow and see where things lead.