Feel the Love
More words from me ol' mate, scourge of anonymous epidemiologists and the best scanner operator in London, George Bidder.
I've highlighted his comments in red and uploaded the mp3 of the radio show here. The IBC-related stuff starts seven minutes into the recording. Enjoy:
Hey Martin – this is a transcript of David Edwards getting loved up and bigged up in an interview on a KDVS radio show on 10 April 2006 with host France Senecal.
I’ve uploaded an mp3 which should give you a laugh, but only transcribed the bits relating directly to IBC. I’ve added comments and asterisks to try and convey the emphasis (and make some points) but you really need to listen to the mp3 to feel the lurv.
They’ve just finished discussing how wonderful Les Roberts is and now turn their attention to IBC :
France Senecal: Right now though you’ve just released a Media Lens Alert, which is an exposé you send to your subscribers, and subscribing is free. You can go to Medialens.org and *really* be informed [not the word that I'd use...], in which you basically took the website Iraq Body Count to task as to their methodology. And you did a very simple study. It was amazing. Can you explain how you compared your notes and…
David Edwards: Yes. It was a very simple study. I’ll tell you how it started. We were doing a number of Alerts. There’d been this Independent summary of the year last year which identified all of these terrible killings of British troops, American troops, of suicide bombings and so on. And nowhere in any of the twelve months of the review was there any reference to mass killings of Iraqi civilians by US or British forces. So we thought this can’t be right [stifles laughter], so you know, where are we going to look? So we looked in Iraq Body Count, and we were absolutely astonished by what we found actually.
FS: Which is?
DE: We searched January to June 2005, and we sort of decided to look under incidents of 10-plus deaths of civilians, so 10 or more civilians killed. [I keep seeing this in the ML stuff, what is the significance of this number? Is their lucky number “10” or what?]
FS: Right.
DE: …a minimum of 10 or more in a particular incident. And in the first six months of 2005 there were 58 incidents of 10-plus deaths. Now, of these, one was attributed to coalition action.
FS: hmm [sounding concerned]
DE: …to a US air strike. 54 of those incidents of 10+ deaths were *clearly* attributed to the insurgency [David’s lying – the IBC almost never attributes deaths to “the insurgency”, it merely describes the circumstances of the killings. Even in IBC’s Dossier or in latest press release here: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr13.php, IBC attributes most deaths in 2005 to “unknown agents” which can mean almost anyone, including the coalition or its proxies. The attribution of all these deaths to “the insurgency” is his, not IBC’s.].
So, that seemed amazing. You know, Seymour Hersh reported in December that the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped half a million tons of bombs on Iraq [Fuck, they were busy if they dropped all those bombs in the “the first six months of 2005” he’s just chucking in some additional disinformation for good measure.]
A Pentagon official told Les Roberts last autumn, he said, we’ve dropped about 50,000 bombs [Again, when? Not in the period of Edwards’ “very simple study”]. What do you expect? [laughs for emphasis]
FS: Right. [sounding totally convinced]
DE: Of course there’s been lots of civilians killed. So you’ve had thousands of air strikes, and yet there was one example of 10+ deaths. [Repeating the message again, the two parts of this sentence have nothing to do with one another – there were not “thousands of air strikes” in the period Edwards was looking at with IBC. Edwards does not say, or appear to know, how many air strikes there were in the period he’s looking at, and the host isn’t going to ask here amazing guest.]
So we looked a bit closer. We looked from July 2005 to January 2006, and we found [sounding thoroughly astonished] six references to coalition helicopter attacks and air strikes killing civilians. In a six month period we found six references…
FS: You *know* that’s….
DE: Absolutely astonishing. [or is it amazing or incredible or, or]
FS: You know that’s a lie. [How? - I chuckled first time I listened because I thought she said a “lot” rather than “lie” and that the pause was because she wasn’t “on message”]
DE: Sorry? [Didn’t hear or was surprised to hear it called a “lie”]
FS: You know it has to be a lie.
DE: Well…
FS: Underreporting…
DE: Well, yes…I wouldn’t say liars, I just think there’s obviously a massive omission here. [note “obviously”]
FS: Ha ha, ok… [laughing knowingly]
DE: If you use your common sense, a massive gap here.
FS: Yes!
DE: And so we wrote to Dahr Jamail for example and said what do you think of this? Do you want to have a look at this and tell us what you think? And he did. He looked at the same data and he said it does seem incredible. He said there is certainly a heavy bias towards counting deaths caused by suicide bombers as opposed to air strikes. [note the use of “certainly”]
So that’s how it all started. That’s really where it began [Does this mean that he is admitting that it all started with arriving at “certain” and “astonishing” conclusions based on no evidence but the non sequiturs above. Edwards needs to do some study on the “very simple study” into 2005 air strikes described above, wonder if he has read this: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/4.2.php ]
FS: And then you also found that once you published one of your Alerts and people started questioning, you found more *resistance* [Sounding shocked that anybody would dare resist being “taken to task” over these “certain” and “astonishing” – but also bogus – conclusions] in questioning them. And the people at Iraq Body Count themselves…
DE: Mmm..
FS: …were less than amenable to discussion about this topic.
DE: Yes, perhaps I should explain, that the way Iraq Body Count count their casualties is that they use two sources, two independent media sources who have to confirm a death before they consider it a definite death. But what it turns out is that, in for example in their Dossier of Civilian Casualties 2003-2005, they noted that just three press agencies, the Associated Press, Agence France Press and Reuters, provided one third of all their stories. So their tally is largely made up… [I’m actually surprised that he hasn’t spun that information because most of the ML shock troops believe that the figure is 100% from these sources.]
FS: Awww [sounding mildly disgusted]
DE: …of Western reports…
FS: There you go! [“Massive omission” mystery solved, obviously, even though unsubstantiated in the first place]
DE: Now, they’re operating in an incredibly fierce conflict zone. And what we sort of said to them is why do you not draw attention to the fact that you’re largely using Western press [As Edwards' clearly discovered from reading IBC’s own publication (see two paras above), which draws attention to it] who are notorious for suppressing crimes of Western powers. That’s something we’ve obviously discussed… [natch]
FS: Of course… [natch back]
DE: …endlessly and is documented that Western occupying countries, the media who are reporting on those wars are not likely to want to really tell the truth about the casualties that their armies are inflicting. And of course the country’s under occupation…so the military are making it extremely hard. There are also lots of reports coming from Iraq that Iraqi journalists have been threatened…
FS: Yes, yes!
DE: …and attacked when they’ve written stories containing evidence against the US military.
FS: Mmm hmm…
DE: And there’s stories of the Pentagon planting propaganda in Iraqi newspapers for money, that kind of thing. [Maybe so, but how would this affect IBC?]
FS: Of course.
DE: So we think, why aren’t you [IBC] really highlighting this issue, to make it clear to people that your figures are almost certain to be a major underestimate. [Highlighting the likelihood of undercounting in its FAQ and in many of its press releases isn’t enough for people who are too busy to read anything but the headline. The degree and specific causes of underestimate claimed by Edwards are not backed up, and therefore not “almost certain”, which probably explains why IBC does not highlight those in the way Edwards would like.]
And we were surprised by the response because they interpreted what we were doing as an attack [So does this enamoured radio host: “you’ve just released a Media Lens Alert… in which you basically took the website Iraq Body Count to task as to their methodology” – to which Edwards also does not disagree, because these “Alerts” were obviously a public and systematic attack on the reliability and supposed irresponsibility of IBC, which IBC, this host, and anyone being at all honest could immediately recognize as such.]
FS: Of course
DE: …which really wasn’t what we intended. [He doesn’t want to take any credit. The actual character and content of the “Alerts” and the bombardment by convinced emailers afterward and the tone and character of comments on the message board, supersedes any claimed “intent” and clearly shows that these were a systematic attack in which IBC is being “taken to task”.]
It was kind of a similar process that we’ve gone through with Les Roberts and the Lancet. We’ve taken criticisms from the media and said ‘what’s your response?’. [“Similar” being understood very loosely.]
FS: Right.
DE: And the Lancet team had replied, and we’d taken the discussion forward, but IBC haven’t been willing to respond.
[But the IBC did respond. “The Editors” just didn’t like the responses. IBC has since responded further, and in great detail, here: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/index.php. Where is the ML rebuttal - are they still waiting for more anonymous epidemiology?]
I've highlighted his comments in red and uploaded the mp3 of the radio show here. The IBC-related stuff starts seven minutes into the recording. Enjoy:
Hey Martin – this is a transcript of David Edwards getting loved up and bigged up in an interview on a KDVS radio show on 10 April 2006 with host France Senecal.
I’ve uploaded an mp3 which should give you a laugh, but only transcribed the bits relating directly to IBC. I’ve added comments and asterisks to try and convey the emphasis (and make some points) but you really need to listen to the mp3 to feel the lurv.
They’ve just finished discussing how wonderful Les Roberts is and now turn their attention to IBC :
France Senecal: Right now though you’ve just released a Media Lens Alert, which is an exposé you send to your subscribers, and subscribing is free. You can go to Medialens.org and *really* be informed [not the word that I'd use...], in which you basically took the website Iraq Body Count to task as to their methodology. And you did a very simple study. It was amazing. Can you explain how you compared your notes and…
David Edwards: Yes. It was a very simple study. I’ll tell you how it started. We were doing a number of Alerts. There’d been this Independent summary of the year last year which identified all of these terrible killings of British troops, American troops, of suicide bombings and so on. And nowhere in any of the twelve months of the review was there any reference to mass killings of Iraqi civilians by US or British forces. So we thought this can’t be right [stifles laughter], so you know, where are we going to look? So we looked in Iraq Body Count, and we were absolutely astonished by what we found actually.
FS: Which is?
DE: We searched January to June 2005, and we sort of decided to look under incidents of 10-plus deaths of civilians, so 10 or more civilians killed. [I keep seeing this in the ML stuff, what is the significance of this number? Is their lucky number “10” or what?]
FS: Right.
DE: …a minimum of 10 or more in a particular incident. And in the first six months of 2005 there were 58 incidents of 10-plus deaths. Now, of these, one was attributed to coalition action.
FS: hmm [sounding concerned]
DE: …to a US air strike. 54 of those incidents of 10+ deaths were *clearly* attributed to the insurgency [David’s lying – the IBC almost never attributes deaths to “the insurgency”, it merely describes the circumstances of the killings. Even in IBC’s Dossier or in latest press release here: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr13.php, IBC attributes most deaths in 2005 to “unknown agents” which can mean almost anyone, including the coalition or its proxies. The attribution of all these deaths to “the insurgency” is his, not IBC’s.].
So, that seemed amazing. You know, Seymour Hersh reported in December that the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped half a million tons of bombs on Iraq [Fuck, they were busy if they dropped all those bombs in the “the first six months of 2005” he’s just chucking in some additional disinformation for good measure.]
A Pentagon official told Les Roberts last autumn, he said, we’ve dropped about 50,000 bombs [Again, when? Not in the period of Edwards’ “very simple study”]. What do you expect? [laughs for emphasis]
FS: Right. [sounding totally convinced]
DE: Of course there’s been lots of civilians killed. So you’ve had thousands of air strikes, and yet there was one example of 10+ deaths. [Repeating the message again, the two parts of this sentence have nothing to do with one another – there were not “thousands of air strikes” in the period Edwards was looking at with IBC. Edwards does not say, or appear to know, how many air strikes there were in the period he’s looking at, and the host isn’t going to ask here amazing guest.]
So we looked a bit closer. We looked from July 2005 to January 2006, and we found [sounding thoroughly astonished] six references to coalition helicopter attacks and air strikes killing civilians. In a six month period we found six references…
FS: You *know* that’s….
DE: Absolutely astonishing. [or is it amazing or incredible or, or]
FS: You know that’s a lie. [How? - I chuckled first time I listened because I thought she said a “lot” rather than “lie” and that the pause was because she wasn’t “on message”]
DE: Sorry? [Didn’t hear or was surprised to hear it called a “lie”]
FS: You know it has to be a lie.
DE: Well…
FS: Underreporting…
DE: Well, yes…I wouldn’t say liars, I just think there’s obviously a massive omission here. [note “obviously”]
FS: Ha ha, ok… [laughing knowingly]
DE: If you use your common sense, a massive gap here.
FS: Yes!
DE: And so we wrote to Dahr Jamail for example and said what do you think of this? Do you want to have a look at this and tell us what you think? And he did. He looked at the same data and he said it does seem incredible. He said there is certainly a heavy bias towards counting deaths caused by suicide bombers as opposed to air strikes. [note the use of “certainly”]
So that’s how it all started. That’s really where it began [Does this mean that he is admitting that it all started with arriving at “certain” and “astonishing” conclusions based on no evidence but the non sequiturs above. Edwards needs to do some study on the “very simple study” into 2005 air strikes described above, wonder if he has read this: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/4.2.php ]
FS: And then you also found that once you published one of your Alerts and people started questioning, you found more *resistance* [Sounding shocked that anybody would dare resist being “taken to task” over these “certain” and “astonishing” – but also bogus – conclusions] in questioning them. And the people at Iraq Body Count themselves…
DE: Mmm..
FS: …were less than amenable to discussion about this topic.
DE: Yes, perhaps I should explain, that the way Iraq Body Count count their casualties is that they use two sources, two independent media sources who have to confirm a death before they consider it a definite death. But what it turns out is that, in for example in their Dossier of Civilian Casualties 2003-2005, they noted that just three press agencies, the Associated Press, Agence France Press and Reuters, provided one third of all their stories. So their tally is largely made up… [I’m actually surprised that he hasn’t spun that information because most of the ML shock troops believe that the figure is 100% from these sources.]
FS: Awww [sounding mildly disgusted]
DE: …of Western reports…
FS: There you go! [“Massive omission” mystery solved, obviously, even though unsubstantiated in the first place]
DE: Now, they’re operating in an incredibly fierce conflict zone. And what we sort of said to them is why do you not draw attention to the fact that you’re largely using Western press [As Edwards' clearly discovered from reading IBC’s own publication (see two paras above), which draws attention to it] who are notorious for suppressing crimes of Western powers. That’s something we’ve obviously discussed… [natch]
FS: Of course… [natch back]
DE: …endlessly and is documented that Western occupying countries, the media who are reporting on those wars are not likely to want to really tell the truth about the casualties that their armies are inflicting. And of course the country’s under occupation…so the military are making it extremely hard. There are also lots of reports coming from Iraq that Iraqi journalists have been threatened…
FS: Yes, yes!
DE: …and attacked when they’ve written stories containing evidence against the US military.
FS: Mmm hmm…
DE: And there’s stories of the Pentagon planting propaganda in Iraqi newspapers for money, that kind of thing. [Maybe so, but how would this affect IBC?]
FS: Of course.
DE: So we think, why aren’t you [IBC] really highlighting this issue, to make it clear to people that your figures are almost certain to be a major underestimate. [Highlighting the likelihood of undercounting in its FAQ and in many of its press releases isn’t enough for people who are too busy to read anything but the headline. The degree and specific causes of underestimate claimed by Edwards are not backed up, and therefore not “almost certain”, which probably explains why IBC does not highlight those in the way Edwards would like.]
And we were surprised by the response because they interpreted what we were doing as an attack [So does this enamoured radio host: “you’ve just released a Media Lens Alert… in which you basically took the website Iraq Body Count to task as to their methodology” – to which Edwards also does not disagree, because these “Alerts” were obviously a public and systematic attack on the reliability and supposed irresponsibility of IBC, which IBC, this host, and anyone being at all honest could immediately recognize as such.]
FS: Of course
DE: …which really wasn’t what we intended. [He doesn’t want to take any credit. The actual character and content of the “Alerts” and the bombardment by convinced emailers afterward and the tone and character of comments on the message board, supersedes any claimed “intent” and clearly shows that these were a systematic attack in which IBC is being “taken to task”.]
It was kind of a similar process that we’ve gone through with Les Roberts and the Lancet. We’ve taken criticisms from the media and said ‘what’s your response?’. [“Similar” being understood very loosely.]
FS: Right.
DE: And the Lancet team had replied, and we’d taken the discussion forward, but IBC haven’t been willing to respond.
[But the IBC did respond. “The Editors” just didn’t like the responses. IBC has since responded further, and in great detail, here: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/index.php. Where is the ML rebuttal - are they still waiting for more anonymous epidemiology?]
posted by g33kThug at 5:30 PM
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