tit for tat

i had this great post yesterday all typed out with links, quotes, and all the bells and whistles, about this article. i will attempt to re-create what was done yesterday (as blogger was being re-freaking-tarded at the very moment i tried to publish.) this is about the lancet's recently published study of the estimated number of iraq fatalities.

However, some attacked the timing of the new report's release as political, coming only three weeks before the US midterm elections.

that's fine. but whoever theses "some" are attacking the timing of the report's release, let me direct attention towards what our dear ol' jorge arbusto had to say about gas and taxes in his wednesday press conference (you know, the one i had to turn off due to nausea)

from the text of chimpy's talking (wednesday's press conference), right after he is asked if the thinks the republicans will maintain control of the congress (he said yes):

And the reason I say that is because I believe the two biggest issues in this campaign are, one, the economy. And the economy is growing. The national unemployment rate is 4.6 percent. We've just discovered, as the result of analyzing new data, that we added 6.6 million new jobs since August of 2003. Gas prices are down. Tax cuts are working

so my darlings, does this little pronouncement not seem equally well-timed as the lancet study? if you're going to accuse a scientific entity of releasing something three weeks before the mid-term elections for political reasons, please hold your monolithic ape (you know, the big talking monkey robot) accountable to the same standard!


anyway, the al jazeera article is pretty interesting; it goes into some detail as to how the 600k figure came about. but oh no, the lancet is a scientific entity, which means they have all this science-y stuff they talk about. and we all know, science-y stuff is arbusto's political enemy. this is kind of long, so i've cut out the parts we've already heard more than ten times.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Back on Iraq. A group of American and Iraqi health officials today released a report saying that 655,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war.
That figure is 20 times the figure that you cited in December, at 30,000. Do you care to amend or update your figure, and do you consider this a credible report?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I don't consider it a credible report. Neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials. No question, it's violent, but this report is one -- they put it out before, (I THINK RIGHT HERE HE WANTED TO SAY SOMETHING RELATED TO THE TIMING OF ITS RELEASE) it was pretty well -- the methodology was pretty well discredited. But I talk to people like General Casey and, of course, the Iraqi government put out a statement talking about the report.

there were other things about which i commented, but it's all lost within the depths of my computer (or my brain, whichever is more capable of holding stuff that didn't get posted.)