56 comments and so far the only thing that is being repeatedly pointed out is the lack of understanding of statistical reasoning, when and when not and when, how to draw conclusions from statistical data.

But wouldn't it be better to use the space given to point out precisely where and how and to what extent the published account of these soldiers, who are after all first hand witnesses, is irreconcilable (to say the least) with the "official" story being put out by (or rather said: was instructed to) Petraeus and for example how it stands diametrically opposed to the blame it on Iran mantra.

citizen1:

It was a psyop/false flag of the post-Vietnam era by the politicians that sent a generation of young men to butcher and get butchered, in that the perpetrators attempted to drive a wedge between the anti-war activists and the Vets. They did this by claiming that the anti-war activists spat on the Vets, etc. The wedge was undoubtedly a tactical decision to ensure that a particular cluster of people never talk politics with one another. For instance: returning war vets and NRA types, and predominantly urban progressives/populists.

Why are you trying to incite a new wedge? To what ends? With a few minor exceptions, it's nonsense to blame the soldier grunts, and you know it.

* People enlist for many reasons, economics and skill-training being one of them.
* Many of them enlisted in the National Guard, which has now been contorted into a full-time combat military. They enlisted with the understanding that they'd be called mainly to assist the government in responding to natural disasters, etc. mainly for finite assignments domestically.
* The great majority of them are highly loyal to the US, willing to put themselves in harm's way.

The "Support Our Troops" propaganda, as well as the "Revile Our Troops" propaganda both serve Bush's wars of aggression & plunder. The former tries to deflect blame away from policy, the latter tries to drive a wedge between two groups that -- like it or not -- will be sitting down to talk in the next few years.

I heard something quite interesting on a radio program (Engines of Our Ingenuity) this morning, put on by a professor of mechanical engineering out of Houston: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2268.htm. "The Lucifer Effect"

"...The main lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment was how quickly good people -- even those with doctorates in psychology -- can collaborate in doing evil to others. The abuse at Abu Ghraib shook Zimbardo so badly that he recently published a book called The Lucifer Effect, Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. The next time we hear talk about a few bad apples, we might remember what Zimbardo learned, that bad apples are not always the problem. Sometimes it's the barrel that holds them."

Check out those last couple sentences very, very, very carefully.

Well here we are again talking about the evil that we condone from our elected Representatives. It seems unimagineable that a Representative, President, Vice President and all others, so blatantly neglect the duty of which they have sworn to perform without any accountability.

These soldiers are being held accountable and even murdered for the responsibility that they swore to uphold as Representatives of the U.S. Military. Isn't it ironic that everyone representing this country is held accountable except the Representatives elected by the People.

Although these Representatives have created crafty ways to escape punishment for there knowingly wrong doings, they will never escape the punishment of God.

Many are suffering as a result of these CEO's choice to invade Iraq. Now, the common people of the world must bring this evil to an end. We must, like all other representatives, hold all of the elected Representatives accountable and punish them to the fullest extent of the Law to which they swore to represent.

Auberon September 12th, 2007 12:38 pm

I'm going to call you an imbecile right to your face. The WHOLE WAR WAS A CONSPIRACY and, if you don't get that, you're a sub-imbecile... or. perhaps a troll?

How much longer until the conspiracy buffs that post here blame these deaths on Bush's trying to shut these guys up?

I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.

I am curious how Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, was "shot in the head"!

No I don't think George Bush did it or had anything to do with it directly. Are you defending Bush?

Now we are conspiracy "buffs". Not conspiracy theorists. We are enthusiastic about conspiracies. We can't get enough. Well, I have actually had enough of conspiracies. I wish they would end.

Let me be clear. Bush couldn't order a decent breakfast. He's a puppet. Nevertheless, I wouldn't put it past some of those "folks" in the military to take these guys out because they were not being perfectly loyal to the ill chosen master.

Pat Tillman was assassinated. Why would it be different with these guys?

well if you look at the star alignment on September 11 and a map of Dallas on November 22 you will see a pattern that proves...

war is never the answer

I would not put anything past this administration or the shadow group that pulls Bush's strings given their proven track record of LIES,DISTORTION,AND COVERUPS.We have to be suspect about every situation they're involved in which is a sad fact of reality.

J. P. Morgan, quotes about Conspiracy:
Capital must protect itself in every way... Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.

I have to wonder whether Murphy was shot in the front of the head or the back. That would give us a good clue about who shot him, since we now know that, according to the DoD, those headshots from behind are sectarian in nature, whereas the shots from the front are just regular-old shootings. Side of the head? No idea. Those probably don't count at all -- kind of like car bomb fatalities.

While this soldier wasn't one of those mentioned in the article, I'm posting this article to pay tribute and as an example of the sacrifice the military and their loved ones are paying for this STUPID!! war.......

Journey's end for a paralyzed soldier
By CAROL SMITH
P-I REPORTER

Capt. Drew Jensen almost lived long enough to see his fellow soldiers from the 3rd Stryker Brigade come home.

Jensen, a West Point graduate, was shot in the neck and paralyzed in May. On Friday, doctors and his family followed his wishes and turned off life support at the Puget Sound VA hospital.

"His wife, parents, brothers, extended families and friends will miss him beyond anything words can convey," said his wife, Stacia Jensen, in an e-mail statement.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/331161_drew11.html

Below is a link to an article entitled, "Cold War Aftermath," dated January 1, 2000. One wonders what the aftermath of the Iraq War will be.

http://socialismmarxdeleonforarealunion.org/Cold_War_Aftermath.html

as i have said time and again you don't need conspiracy theories with these cowardly thugs that run this administration they are so arrogant they break the law right out in the open and then laugh out loud about it. anyone that thinks that murderous behavior is beyond these punks is just naive and perhaps even worse brain dead.

"By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd."

this says it all right there. and that's the most important part of the quote; keeping the masses ignorant by keeping them arguing over nonsense.

Gay Marriage, Immigration, Abortion etc. Not just the issues in general, but everything extending to TV, sports, pop music etc etc. We're fed this tripe in order to distract us from the fact that we're being exploited and taken advantage of; ultimately controlled and manipulated by the powers that be. It's not simply that the smoke is so thick, as much as it is we're seemingly perfectly content or maybe demoralized/despondent enough to suck in the smoke, and continue being exploited.

The corperate media is just the "information" wing designed to perpetuate the myth of democracy/representation, and cloud the exploitation as much as possible. The media is also filtered from the top down (from the powers that be) on what issues we're going to talk about, and when we're going to talk about them. It's never really an important issue. Look at the Terry Shiavo fiasco. Britney Spears. Anna Nicole Smith. Flashy court case after court case. Who gives a damn.

The Germen people trusted Hitler and look what they got. They too din't believe in conspiereacy.

I wonder about SSGt Murphy, who shot him?

Three out of seven is really bucking the odds, hope the other four always wear clean skivvies. Like mom always told me, "Always wear clean underwear Kem, you never know when you might end up in a hospital".

May we be spared Auberon's boring questions in the future!

Except for friends and relatives and such, does it matter in the great scheme of things? A few more dead added to the list this week and next week they never existed. Accidents or bullets, bombs or suicide, pile them up, who cares? Semper fi their asses six feet under.

This is a basic math probability problem. Given 130,000+ troops and perhaps 1-5/day that are killed on average. What are the mathematical odds of it being 2 out of those 7? Very, very low.

Let's say there's 130,000 troops and 30/month die on average. Your odds are .0230769% per month of dying. If that group of 7 was chosen randomly, their odds would be about the same. Either they were in the worst combat duties imagineable, or something else has to account for a 28.57% die-off rate. It's like a thousandfold increase.

I'm a veteran of the Vietnam War. Had a brother who served in the Korean War (which hasn't officially ended yet). My political memory goes back to the 1952 presidential campaign and the McCarthy hearings. I remember duck-and-cover drills in elementary school during the Cold War Red-Scare period. I remember the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when we were perhaps never closer to nuclear annihilation.

Never closer till now, that is. I think this is the darkest period in U. S. history since perhaps the Civil War. We have a madman for president, his finger just a twitch away from the red button in that briefcase. And yet impeachment is somehow "off the table."

That's unconscionable--and any congressperson who takes that position is as responsible for the deaths and injuries in Iraq as President Bush and his neocon handlers are.

Enough.

i'd be surprised if they weren't taken out on purpose. to all those who still support bush, GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS!

I haven't read deeply into the Pat Tillman case, but if he really was murdered by "our side" to keep him from going public with his criticisms about the war, then I wouldn't be surprised to learn that dissenting soldiers are routinely murdered by our armed forces.

I think they'd like to do the same with dissenters stateside if they could get away with it and they soon may be able to.

Auberon, NO! Why would you think the conspiracy theoricists will soon (have already) come out of the woodwork! You don't perceive that this p-resident has been less than honest. People who 'cry wolf' too many times, are hard to believe, don't you know? Lose credibility once and it's hard to believe anything some people say!!

Too bad, but his own fault!

Paul Bramscher,

We have to be careful when using statistics. The domain and samples sizes are important.

In this particular scenario, the domain is the number of people riding in a vehicle that overturned, not the total number of troops. Probabilities work better with larger sample sizes; typically the number is at least 30.

To make a better prediction, we need: 1) The total number of people who were riding in vehicles that overturned, and 2) Is that number 30 or greater?

I am sure that we can alter the domain size by getting a better handle on the conditions; for instance, if we suspect that seat belts (or lack therof) contributed to the event, then the domain/sample size will be different.

mastershake:

Amen, brother.

It is rather clear that these few were "taken out" just as the embedded journalists in Iraq who dare to tell it like it is end up dead shortly thereafter. Wonder how many of the troops that come home in boxes are REALLY killed by Iraqis/insurgencies.

Not any wonder why many come home with psychological problems they can't articulate to the "normal folks" back home.

Paul:
I'm a bit of a statistician myself (a market researcher, and i work with probability on a daily basis). One thing about your analysis is that it assumes all 130,000 troops have an equal and independent chance of dying, which is not the case. Considering 1-Iraq is chaotic or 2-Only a certain portion of the soldiers actually perform combat missions where they'd be susceptable to/ dealing with gunfire.

You're point though is correct. Especially when the timing of all this is considered. My best bet is that these soldiers were specifically ordered into the most dangerous missions where there was a much higher probability of getting killed. This sounds more plausible, more possible, and much easier to cover up than the friendly fire scenario. All the military has to say is that Iraq is unpredictable and forget about the incident entirely. Pass those who question this off and marginalize them as conspiracy theorists.

The best master value the powers that be have come up with is to first define a reality for us, and then pass off most or all alternative realities and those who come up with them as conspiracy theorists.

This doesn't mean every "conspiracy theory" is true though. Many do get out of hand and are wrong.

mastershake,

I didn't assume that all 130,000+ have an equal chance. That is, I left open the possibility that the group of 7 had something very different about their combat duties, that perhaps they were not a good sample in some way.

As for the over-turning of the vehicle, it's hard to say there too. We initially got fictional information on Tillman and Lynch, a couple other high-profile cases. I'm keeping a pretty open mind on this one. We should keep our eyes open on the futures of the remaining 5.

"How much longer until the conspiracy buffs that post here blame these deaths on Bush's trying to shut these guys up?"

Yes, us crazy people who thought that the 'slam-dunk' case was pure fabrication; who knew that the innocent were being tortured before Abu Ghraib broke, and knew that the orders to do so came from senior officials, not from below; and us crazy people who were sure that the Pat Tillman killing was covered up . . . us nutcases who happened to be right 8 times out of 10 . . .as opposed to the Bushia, who have been right on absolutely zip . . .

Doesn't matter who killed them...if they hadn't been there, they would not have died. And, two kids would not be without dads. As are more than a few American kids and many Iraqi kids.

And how many of you have held a sign on a sidewalk in your town or city, a sign that reads: Bring Them Home Now?

How many of you understand the necrotically elegant connections between our invasion of Iraq, racism, global corporatization and keeping the big money in the hands of those with tiny hearts, 'scuse me, no hearts. Check out Arundahit Roy who was talking about the sinister network, oh I don't know, 5, 6, 7 years ago.

The Hopi tribe refer to The Evil Ones as powaqa...it means two hearts, it signifies that the Evil Ones can look in two directions at once...they are insidious.

Bush did conspire to kill these soldiers. He did it when he started the war.

Hey Paul, did you miss that one of the remainng five was shot in the head and hospitalized? That's three out of seven not two.

The word 'conspiracy' comes from Middle English; it means effectively to 'breathe together' ('spire' as in expire, / spirit).
___________________

We will never know the *full* extent of this (mis)government's conspiracies. But what matters most is the knowledge that they DO conspire, ~ regularly and often.

We know that these scheming devils don't conspire for anything which benefits the human race (as they could and should). Instead they conspire solely for that which harms the majority, and which they believe somehow helps them.

But because all they gain is ill-gotten, they will undoubtedly be cursed for an eternity for their disastrously malevolent behaviour. Even as they conspire against all that's good, -so in turn, 'the fates' even now conspire against them...

As the old German, (Logau) pithily once wrote: "The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceedingly small."

Or as Buddha might well have said: "We are not damned God, ~ only ever by our foolish, reckless selves."

Kem,

I didn't miss #3. The article says that Murphy's expected to survive. Our thoughts should go with him at this point.

I agree Paul, my thoughts have been on him ever since I read this report. What I mean is, he is one of the seven and someone sure tried to kill him, an ememy combatent or someone. I think he should be figured in those odds; he is very lucky to be alive and I also wonder if he was shot in the front, or in the back.

Conspiracy? Plots, true or false, are necessary things, to raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.

Dryden.

E=MC2 was a theory, a theory which proved to be a fact. A combination of plots and theories have also been proven to be factual. ___ Many times. Sometimes they are really dumb.

KEM PATRICK, you're getting weak. You need to balance it out. Your funniness is becoming short lived. Shoot in the back or the front? What does it matter? Two guys die out of 130,000 is by far no coincidence. I have always thought you were here to expose the truth. Don't make light of "conspiracy" , you of all people. Get back on track, set the public right, be a fact finder and set us right.

How many widows and orphans will we make in this Shell game?
- EXXON, BP, CHEVRON, UNICAL game...

I wounder if the others who put the word out in the newspaper about the war will be ordered on a certain patrol that will then have a covert secret service person drop a dime on them, to the so called insurgency.God I pray for their safety.

Sorry to say, but he went voluntarily to participate in an illegal and immoral war.

Some mayn blame Bush for it, but for me he made his own choice.

I doubt any formal conspiracy is at work, but as an old Army vet, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that grunts who are perceived to be "trouble makers" are given unpleasant assignments, which could easily shade into dangerous or deadly assignments. And of course, there are always a sprinkle of red-neck conservatives in the enlisted ranks who are capable of fragging a fellow soldier who they think is a traitor; all it takes is a wink and a nod from some Ollie North creep officer.

The fact that two of the seven are dead and a third is hospitalized with a gun shot to head certainly raises questions. Such a casualty rate is hundreds of times higher than the norm.

OK it were 2 of them.... but the same reasoning goes. Go kill yourself to make more money for Big Oil, for the Military Industrial Complex, and for Israel. Heckuva job boys! No sympathy

It's been very well-documented what happens to people who go against the wishes of the BFEE (Bush Family Evil Empire).....

What are you babbling about DAMON13, I was saying conspiracy theories could be correct and are good for society. Not all are. What was funny about that? You have a reading comp problem? Go back to the Bomb string and read the websites we gave you. And don't for a second tell me what to, or what not to write, you egotistical solipsist. Read em all, in six months come back and tell us if you are any smarter. ___ Sure hope so. Make it a year and do us all a favor.

It is very easy to believe those 3 guys were not accidentally killed. Remember how many people that did not support Bushco`s policies have lost their jobs and their careers have been ruined. Then on the other hand, worthless dummies that have supported his stupid ideas have gotten promoted, medals of freedom, etc. Human life does not mean anything to the Bushies or this "war" would not still be going on.

In addition Solipsist13, In my other blog, I stated that three out of seven was bucking the odds, something ain't right here even if two were killed in a truck rollover and not fragged or shot. In the front or back? That is a damn good question in my mind. Tillman was shot in the back. If only one of the seven was shot, I would wonder about it. In Vietnam most of the fragging was on young officers who were gung-ho idiots that thought they knew it all and were getting their trops killed.

CITIZEN1: Tell us "no sympathy" if it were one of your kids or a family member. Do that, ____ and I'd call you something other than citizen1.

Who elected Bush? Even if he stole Ohio and or Florida, he had enough votes and support to begin his idiotic war and our troops are not all maniacial killers. There are thousands of fine young people who are maimed for life or dying over there and they don't need to read shit like what you write about them. It's a sorry mess, but don't blame it on the enlisted troops that have been put into danger for no good reason. I heard that type of unnescessary crap when I returned from Vietnam and all I wanted to say with my limited vocabulary, was ___ "go F##k yourself".

This article is about how some men saw through their Commander in Chief's folly and got together to write "home" about it. But the horror of war has taken several of them from us, and they are mourned. George W. Bush's hands just got bloodier. He should be impeached!