Why the wingers continue to support the war

Publius at Legal Fiction is one of my favorite bloggers. He writes some of the most incredibly intelligent thoughts on the web. He is in the profession of law and has a lawyer's mind.

Today Publius writes that the reason that those who previously supported the war but now express doubts CONTINUE TO CLAIM their initial position was correct is simply because they refuse to admit that LIBERALS who were against the war at the time WERE RIGHT.

In other words, the wingers' intense hatred of liberals will lead them to pursue a clearly incorrect course simply because liberals are against it.

Read the post.

The Liar-In-Chief is at it again

My "friends" on the wingnut right always challenge me to "prove that Bush lied." It's easy to do, of course, and here's another one:

Bush claims that only about 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the beginning of the US invasion. In last week's press conference, Bush was asked to comment on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study estimating the death toll to be about 655,000. Bush's response was that (get ready, here's the lie) "their methodology has been pretty well discredited."

Um, actually, no. Here some information from Altercation:

-The Washington Post interviewed Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years. He called the Johns Hopkins survey method "tried and true" and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

-Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, told the Post, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey.

-Frank Harrell Jr., chairman of the biostatistics department at Vanderbilt University, told the Associated Press the study incorporated "rigorous, well-justified analysis" of the data.

-Richard Garfield, a public health professor at Columbia University who works closely with a number of the authors of the report, told The Christian Science Monitor: "That's exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don't think there's anyone who's been involved in mortality research who thinks there's a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there's a better way to do it."

-The sampling "is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets," said John Zogby, whose polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began. "It is what people in the statistics business do." Zogby said similar survey methods have been used to estimate casualty figures in other conflicts, such as Darfur and the Congo.

If you tell lies, you are a liar.