Right Wing Nut House

Counting civilian deaths in Iraq is a ghoulish business. Given the chaos in the country for much of the last 4 years and the breakdown of government record keeping, the job has devolved into a statistical morass where competing methodologies give entirely different totals.

At the center of the controversy have been two separate studies that were published in the respected British medical journal, The Lancet. The results from both studies were wildly at odds with other estimates and resulted in questions being raised about the methodology used to determine the findings.

What was always most controversial for me was the timing of these studies. In 2004, the first study was published on Friday, October 29 - a scant 4 days before the presidential election. The fact that the regular date for publication of The Lancet was the following week showed a monumental bias on the part of the Lancet and an eagerness to try and affect the election of an American president by dumping the results of this questionable study on the internet so close to election day. Whatever confidence people might place in the study’s conclusions was undermined by the obvious political agenda at work in using the numbers as a hammer to slam the administration of candidate George Bush.

Also, the raw data for that study was never made public as would normally be the case. Because of that, any peer review of the author’s methods and conclusions was out of the question - a curious way for a “scientist” to have their work vetted and affirmed.

The second study by the same research group was almost as bad. It was published on October 11 - less than a month before the midterms. If anything, its conclusions were even more controversial in that they purported to show upwards of 650,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Once again, the methodology was called into question. Once again bloggers with knowledge of statistical analysis tore into the findings and revealed them to be wild exaggerations at best. And just recently, the New England Journal of Medicine debunked the study’s findings once and for all by publishing a study showing that 151,000 Iraqis had perished from 2003-2006. Still a heartbreaking number but one that any fair minded person would agree is a damn sight less egregious than the 650,000 fantasy figure in the Lancet study.

Now we have evidence that there may indeed have been political motivations in doing the study and in reaching its controversial conclusions.

Half of the funding for the study came from the George Soros group the Open Society Institute:

A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros.

Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.

The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003.

“The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The Lancet study was commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and led by Les Roberts, an associate professor and epidemiologist at Columbia University. He reportedly opposed the war from the outset.

His team surveyed 1,849 homes at 47 sites across Iraq, asking people about births, deaths and migration in their households.

Professor John Tirman of MIT said this weekend that $46,000 (£23,000) of the approximate £50,000 cost of the study had come from Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Roberts said this weekend: “In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.”

My observation would be that the real figures are bad enough so why inflate them by using a methodology guaranteed to be closely scrutinized and found wanting? What the Soros study wanted to achieve was a political home run - a grand slam against the war that he hoped would cause such revulsion in the United States that it would sweep the Democrats to victory.

Soros may be a billionaire but he is a political dunce. (One need only look at the total failure of ACT and other Soros funded political ventures like Moveon.org who have done more harm than good to the anti-war cause.) Congressional Democratic candidates mostly ran on a war plank that referred vaguely to “changing course” in Iraq without much in the way of detail. And the only people who dared use the discredited Lancet numbers in debate were those on the far left.

The Democratic victory in 2006 was due to a wide variety of factors, not the least of which were caused by the Republicans themselves. Corruption, arrogance, profligate spending, and a sense that the GOP was a party of hypocrites when talking about “family values” what with a parade of Republicans caught in sex scandals were as much or more contributive to the Democratic landslide than the war in Iraq.

Essentially, Soros wasted his money.

Both sides of the political divide have moneymen with enormous influence. Richard Mellon Scaife, the Hunts, and a few others on the right probably give as much or more money to politicians and political groups as Soros and his crew.

But what makes Soros different is that he is trying to affect an extraordinarily radical change in this country that would lead to a loss of sovereignty and the realization of his dream of a one world government. To that end, he has proved himself as ruthless and conniving as any international criminal who threatens the security of the United States.

His network of activist groups, funding sources, think tanks, and do-gooder organizations are all working with this one purpose in mind. And he hasn’t been shy about stating his goals:

And since 2003, tearing down what he views as the “fascist” tyranny of the United States, as he has put it, is “the central focus of my life.”

Through networks of nongovernmental organizations, Soros intends to ruin the presidency of George W. Bush “by any legal means necessary” and knock America off its global pedestal. “His view of America is so negative,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman, who, like Gen. David Petraeus, has been a target of Soros’ electoral “philanthropy.” “The places he’s put his money are . . . so destructive that it unsettles me.” Soros’ aim seems to be to make the U.S. just another client state easily controlled by the United Nations and other one-world groups where he has lots of friends.

Best known among these groups is MoveOn.org, a previously small fringe-left group to which Soros has given $5 million since 2004. Bulked up by cash, the group now uses professional public relations tactics to undercut the Iraq War effort, with its latest a full-page New York Times ad that branded Gen. Petraeus “General Betray Us.”

It ran Sept. 10 in the New York Times, the same day Petraeus delivered his progress report on the surge in Iraq.

MoveOn.org previously put out ads depicting Bush as a Nazi, something that certainly echoes Soros’ sentiment.

“We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process,” he told this year’s Davos conference in Switzerland.

We can look upon his funding of the pre-election Lancet hit piece in 2006 as just more of the same. But the question of how to fight him is an entirely different matter.

The only way to legitimately go after Soros is by exposing his connections to groups and organizations that work against American interests and go so far as to advocate a loss of US sovereignty. It’s no accident that Soros groups fund illegal immigrant rallies and push for legislation that would destroy our borders. Nor is it surprising that Soros would fund politicians who seek to emasculate the American military and seek to tailor our foreign policy not to promote and protect American interests but rather to kowtow to the United Nations.

Thankfully, his is still a minority viewpoint and all the money in the world is not going to bring his loony ideas of a one world government any closer to reality. But he is still a very dangerous, unprincipled, ruthless man who is determined to succeed. The only question is what won’t he do to make his agenda a reality.

UPDATE: John Tirman comments

John Tirman, the executive director and a principle research scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies and the individual who commissioned the Lancet study denies any involvement by George Soros in the project:

I am reluctant to reply to this Soros Derangement Syndrome, but I will do so once for the benefit of the entire right-wing blogosphere. Yours is the first one I happened upon. Soros did not fund the Lancet 2 survey. MIT did. I commissioned the study. We did it with internal funds in October 05, with the hope of getting the results out by spring. Iraq being what it is, that proved impossibly dangerous, so there was a delay. The results were released when ready.

The Open Society Institute had no role whatsoever in the origination, conduct, or findings of the survey.

The new survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health shows 400,000 excess deaths, 150,000 by violence, since the U.S. invasion. Their numbers are probably low for violence, but the larger point remains—all surveys (Lancet 1 and 2, Iraq Health Ministry, and Opinion Business Research) show hundreds of thousands dead. The 4.5 million displaced, the 500,000 new widows, etc., underscore this catastrophe. We are trying to measure and understand it.

From the TimesOnline article quoted in the body of the post:

Professor John Tirman of MIT said this weekend that $46,000 (£23,000) of the approximate £50,000 cost of the study had come from Soros’s Open Society Institute.

How do you square his quote in the article with “The Open Society Institute had no role whatsoever in the origination, conduct, or findings of the survey…?” Yeah, but what about funding?

The good professor is saying that the OSI may have funded the survey but had no input into its findings. Why he couldn’t admit that in the comment is beyond me. Instead, he obfuscates the point by throwing up the strawman argument that OSI didn’t have any role in the findings - neglecting to mention that he told TOL that in fact, Soros partially funded the project (we must assume through MIT or perhaps a grant to the CIS - again Mr. Tirman is mute on the subject).

The problems with the Lancet 2 study were examined and found wanting by The National Journal - no bastion of right wing thinking by any means and one of the most respected political and government publications in the United States.

In fact, the Journal doesn’t just debunk the study. The Journal articile is an indictment - of Tirman, of Roberts, of the entire crew who tried to foist this propaganda on the American people.

The linked Journal article is long and extremely detailed. Not only are there problems with methodology that have been widely disseminated but I find it extraordinarily telling that, as with the first Lancet study, none of the underlying evidence has been released - as is customary and proper in order to allow peers to examine the evidence themselves and test whether the author’s conclusions can be duplicated:

Still, the authors have declined to provide the surveyors’ reports and forms that might bolster confidence in their findings. Customary scientific practice holds that an experiment must be transparent — and repeatable — to win credence. Submitting to that scientific method, the authors would make the unvarnished data available for inspection by other researchers. Because they did not do this, citing concerns about the security of the questioners and respondents, critics have raised the most basic question about this research: Was it verifiably undertaken as described in the two Lancet articles?

Tirman should not be wasting his time responding to me and my little blog. He should be responding to the National Journal. I would say that if what the Journal is writing is true (even half of it) Tirman is either a prevaricator of monstrous proportions or a self deluded ideologue who can’t recognize his own biases have clouded his academic and scientific judgement.

Given the deliberate obscurance of his comment, either is possible.

UPDATE II:

Bill Arnold points out in the comments that it is impossible to use the New England Journal of Medicine Study to “debunk” Lancet because the two studies cover totally different ground. Lancet deals with “excess” deaths while the NEJM study only deals with violence related deaths.

Mr. Arnold is correct and I have stricken that observation from the post.

Watching the debate aftermath on Fox last Thursday and listening to the focus group give their reasons for why Fred Thompson won the debate, I had something of an epiphany.

Each member of the focus group gave their personal opinion of why they thought Fred won and then, almost as an afterthought, most of them threw in the bit about it being “too late” for Fred to win, as if mouthing the conventional MSM wisdom about Fred it made them seem “smarter” - at least in their own eyes.

My epiphany was that they really didn’t believe that. No rational person could say after two primaries that it was “too late” for anything or for anybody. This goes double for the GOP race since even the most cynical analyst would have to conclude that the race is still wide open.

Why would otherwise rational people regurgitate what they believe is the dominant media narrative about any candidate - especially after the utter, complete, total, meltdown of punditry with regard to New Hampshire? The fact is, Frank Luntz wasn’t asking those members of his focus group to give their opinion. He was asking them to be pundits on live television. In that respect, the whole purpose of the focus group was defeated and what we were left with were ordinary people trying to imitate their favorite talking head on TV. Those good citizens, if pressed, would not be able to tell you why it was too late for Thompson. And it they did they would simply echo what they had heard or read previously.

My reading is that television (and to a lesser extent radio and print media) punditry is a hugely competitive business. And you don’t get ahead by being right. You get ahead by being one step ahead of everybody else in analyzing what will happen tomorrow. In that sense, obituaries are a natural. All it takes is a few well known writers or commentators to start the idea and before long, the whole baying pack have picked up the scent and the conventional wisdom becomes set in stone.

Now there is no doubt that Fred Thompson’s campaign suffered through nearly 3 months of running in place - uninspiring, unfocused, even aimless at times. And prior to that, the media, like little children on a long car trip, got antsy about the candidate’s entry into the race. In short, the pundits were writing Thompson’s obituary before he ever got in and then once running, discovered that there really wasn’t much to write or talk about. Thompson’s low key appearances where he talked about a future in peril due to our profligate spending and inability to deal with entitlements was not playing well with the voters and as a result, his poll numbers tanked.

But the campaign changed in the middle of December and has been much more focused in delivering its message. The candidate himself has become more active and the people in Iowa seemed to respond.

But when do you throw conventional wisdom in the trash and start over? For pundits, they guard CW as if it were the crown jewels because bound up in that blather is their reputation, their self esteem, their raison d’etre. Only a political earthquake (or the intrusion of a New Hampshire like reality) can dislodge the punditocracy from their cherished talking points.

Well, there is a political earthquake going on in South Carolina and I believe that conventional wisdom is about to be turned on its head. In the two days since the GOP debate, Fred Thompson has been drawing enthusiastic, overflow crowds all over South Carolina. The candidate himself has not only been energized but I believe he has finally found a theme that resonates with all factions in the party; this election will decide the fate of the Republican party and what kind of party do you want? Do you want it to be the party of Huckster? The party of Rudy? The party of McCain? The party of interloper Romney?

Limbaugh had it right. When Thompson made that impassioned plea for the Reagan coalition and called out Huckabee for his liberalism, it was almost “orgasmic” for many conservatives. And more importantly for Thompson, the campaign may very well have turned then and there.

This gathering in Mount Pleasant was typical of the kinds of crowds that have been turning out since the debate.

Are those the crowds of a candidate at 9% in the polls?

It’s difficult for me to separate myself from my cheerleading tendencies and give a dispassionate analysis of where the Thompson campaign stands in South Carolina. But if those crowds continue to turn out and even grow, it would be hard to dismiss the idea that Fred is back in the hunt and regardless of what McCain does in Michigan, has a decent shot at the gold there.

And conventional wisdom will just have to adjust itself to that fact.

UPDATE

Very smartly, I think, the campaign is trying to cash in on the building momentum by continuing their fundraising effort. Now they’re looking to raise a cool million by midnight tomorrow night. As of this morning at 7:30 central, they’re at $871,000.

Fred has enough for a very good ad buy and would probably use the extra cash to maximize his ground game in South Carolina. Use the handy form below and help Fred go the distance.

Hillary Clinton touring a Las Vegas neighborhood yesterday:

Clinton said unscrupulous lending leads to bad mortgages, which lead to foreclosures, which lead to people with nowhere to go and vacant neighborhoods that can go rapidly downhill.

First of all, what’s wrong with this picture?

We have the evil lender.

We have the heartless bank.

We have “bad mortgages.”

Which lead to heartless capitalists foreclosing on the poor, unsuspecting homeowners.

There’s something missing in all of that and I will bet you only a conservative could find it.

(Answer below the fold)
(more…)

Well, you guys have done it again.

Our Blogburst for Fred is once again rolling like a juggernaut, raising gobs of cash for Fred’s run for the gold in South Carolina.

We flew by the original goal of $540,000 around 24 hours ago and have just kept going, aided by Fred’s remarkable performance in the debate last night. As of 2:30 central time, the total is at $710,000, climbing toward a revised goal made by the campaign this morning of $750,000.

If successful, we will have helped the campaign raise $330,000 in less than 48 hours.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the more than 100 donors who have given nearly $9,000 through this website over the last two blogbursts. I am proud that you have been so generous in your support of Fred’s campaign.

For those of you who haven’t yet given, did you see the debate last night? Conservatives have a candidate they can call their own without feeling uneasy or unsure about him. And judging by the crowds Fred is pulling in today, I sense a groundswell building that, if the campaign can take advantage of it, will propel Fred into contention in South Carolina very quickly.

What are you waiting for? Help Fred Thompson win in South Carolina by donating right now. It’s easy. And I guarantee you’ll feel good afterwards.

And while your at it, go here and sign up as a Friend of Fred and get all the inside news on the campaign.

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The votes are in from last week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “The Freddys Seven” by Soccer Dad. Finishing in the runner up spot was “America Derangement Syndrome — Or, Yes, You Can Call Them Unpatriotic” by Bookworm Room.

Topping the list in the Non Council category was “Exploding Myths” by Treppenwitz.

If you would like to participate in the weekly Watchers vote, go here and follow instructions.

More than any other forum, this debate in South Carolina revealed the growing divisions in the Republican party and highlighted the extraordinarily difficult task that confronts the future nominee.

Here is the conumdrum facing the GOP; an awakened social conservative wing whose emergence frightens the Republican establishment and the smaller but influential libertarian conservative faction. A fiscal conservative wing of the party, bruised and battered by 8 years of non-conservative governance supporting McCain and Romney mostly by default given the alternative offered of big government conservative Huckabee. And foreign policy hawks - neocons as well as traditional conservatives - who like McCain but dislike his immigration stand.

Romney is the only frontrunner who can lay claim to even partially bridging the gaps in the old GOP coalition that has brought Republicans victory so often for the last 30 years. But social conservatives don’t trust his recent conversions to their anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage cause while others simply view him as too canned, too packaged - not “authentic” enough to lead.

Is it any wonder that many conservatives of all stripes have looked at Fred Thompson as the only viable candidate who could pull the factions together? And many of us have waited for months for Fred to stand up and accept the challenge to bring the coalition back from the dead.

I have been critical of Thompson in the past (who hasn’t) for running an unfocused campaign. But tonight, he was magnificent. When Fred talks about the future of the party he becomes animated, passionate, and most importantly, makes good sense. His answers to almost every question were thoughtful, measured, and exuded a competence that only perhaps Mitt Romney has ever matched. Here is a serious man thinking deeply about serious issues. No half cocked chest beating on foreign policy questions like those given by Huckabee. No talking points economic blather like that given by Mitt Romney. Fred’s answers penetrated to the heart of the matter and revealed rather than obscured his positions.

Is it too late for Fred? Judging by the Luntz focus group who gave Fred an overwhelming victory in the debate it may be premature to say he is too far behind and doesn’t have enough time to rally. But there is no doubt it will be an uphill climb. Money is tight. The perception is constantly being fed by the media that Fred is through. The conventional wisdom says that Thompson doesn’t have the heart or desire to be in it for the long haul.

I would only say in response that in my 35 years of watching politics, I have never seen a race so wide open. There is no front runner. Any one of 5 candidates can still compete for the prize. To dismiss any one of them is foolhardy.

And given that Fred has been left for dead, a victory in South Carolina - so radically unexpected and shocking - could very well propel Thompson into Florida and Super Tuesday beyond with enough momentum for him to emerge on February 6 as one of the two candidates with a chance at the nomination.

Fred Thompson’s campaign is once again at a critical juncture and again I am showing my support for the candidate of my choice by organizing a Blogburst in hopes that we can raise the funds necessary for Fred’s campaign to be competitive.

This time, it’s South Carolina where Fred is staking all in hopes of a breakthrough victory. A clinical analysis of the GOP race for President shows that it is still anyone’s ballgame. Rasmussen’s most recent 4 day rolling average has Fred in 4th at 12%, ahead of Giuliani and just 9 points out of the lead held by Mike Huckabee at 22%.

But Thompson desperately needs to win in South Carolina in order to continue to be a viable candidate. And there are several factors at play in the Palmetto State that makes a Thompson win a realistic goal:

1. Romney has dropped out of the running in SC, having pulled his ads and is transferring staff in order to ambush John McCain in Michigan.

2. That leaves only three candidates with a realistic shot at winning in SC; Huckabee, McCain, and Thompson. Amazingly, none of the three candidates will have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to financing. This levels the playing field considerably.

3. SC voters have made it clear that opposition to illegal immigration is one of the top issues in the state. Looking at the three candidates above, who do you think has the most consistent, conservative record on immigration?

4. Outside factors may play a role in the dynamics of the race. McCain may very well be grievously wounded by a Romney win in Michigan - a state he won in 2000. There would be little time for McCain to right himself following a loss there what with the SC primary 4 days later.

In short, a Thompson win in SC is not only possible but within reach - if Fred has the money for media buys to get his message to the people.

I realize that many bloggers who support Fred have been hitting their readers hard for donations recently - especially since Fred’s campaign has set as a goal raising $540,000 by tomorrow in order to finance his ad campaign. As of Thursday morning, the effort has realized $420,000 towards that goal.

My hope is that once again, speaking with one voice and calling on our readers to dig deep, we can duplicate our success from December’s blogburst, putting Fred way over the top and give the campaign a rocket powered boost into South Carolina and beyond.

We’ve done it before and we can do it again. If you’re a blogger, please participate in this Blogburst for Fred by asking your readers to donate. If you haven’t already, join Jim Lynch’s The Marblehead Regiment and add your blog to his blogroll.

Man the oars and start pulling for Fred. The hour is late and the need is great. Time to pony up if we want to see a true conservative in the White House next November.

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My latest Pajamas Media column is up and it deals with Hillary’s surprise win last night in the New Hampshire primary.

A sample:

Living in this little internet cocoon being bombarded by the daily spin of pundits, prognosticators, “experts,” and the campaigns themselves, it is quite easy to fall for a buzz that everyone – and I mean everyone – was touting.

I have been following politics for 35 years and cannot recall such a universal, all encompassing and ultimately, totally overblown media frenzy about a candidate that turned out to be so extraordinarily wrong. There’s a lesson there for us somewhere but frankly, I am too stunned to see it at the moment. Political pros were even swept up in Obamania and fell victim to being in love with the sound of their own voices pouring superlatives and encomiums on the senator from Illinois.

MMMMMMMM…Lunch!

Well, it could have been worse. I could have gone with Edwards for second place like I did in Iowa.

The capacity of the American voter to surprise, delight, and madden was on full display last night in Hillary Clinton’s win. It reminds all of us the lessons that socialists, communists, and liberals have never learned; there is an infinite capacity in human beings to defy expectations and act in their own interest without regard for the opinions or diktats of “experts.” The human mind and spirit are still unknowable - despite the efforts of “scientific socialism” to try and convince us to the contrary.

I knew that the Obama boomlet was media inspired and yet I ended up being seduced, stripped, and finally screwed by my own hubris. Perhaps only diehard supporters of Hillary actually believed she could carry it off but that’s no excuse to have joined the Greek chorus in lamenting her imminent demise or Obama’s inevitability. I could have held off until after, you know, people actually like voted.

But no, that would have put me behind the curve - left behind like roadkill on the internet punditry highway. And now, the whole world knows I’m an idiot. Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post linked to my article on Hillary’s exit from the campaign and the quote he uses from my article holds me up to some well deserved ridicule.

Oh well - live and learn and then live some more. There have been times that I have been right in my prognostication - something I rarely crow about. So when the crow comes back to roost on my dinner table in situations like this, there’s only one thing to say:

PLEASE PASS THE GREY POUPON…

Join me for a very special 2 hour edition of The Rick Moran Show as we look at the results from New Hampshire and their impact on the race for the presidency. The show will air from 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM Central time,

Joining me in the first hour will be National Political Correspondent for The American Thinker Rich Baehr. Rich is one of the best in the business and will give us a clear, penetrating look both at the results from New Hampshire and the road ahead for the candidates.

Joining me for the final hour will by my friend and employer at American Thinker, that illustrious publication’s Editor in Chief Tom Lifson. Tom and I will touch on New Hampshire but use the primary results as a springboard to take a tour d’horizon look at American politics.

You won’t want to miss this live broadcast. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available about 1/2 hour after the show ends.

You can call in and talk to Rich or Tom by dialing (718) 664-9764.

UPDATE

A remarkable show for a remarkable night. Rich was fantastic and Tom and I had a fascinating conversation about everything from “change” to China.

You can stream the show on the player below or go to the link above for downloading.