When one defends the Lancet study on the basis of its being “scientific,” when in fact the National Journal and the IBC rebuttals point out some serious problems with the Lancet study in following “scientific” procedures, the conclusion is obvious.
And as many commenters have already pointed out, sampling procedures are simply a short-cut for counting. Counting is always preferable.

In pursuit of an accurate picture, the U.S. health officials toured a hospital in Sarajevo. In the surgical ward, they saw many children in post-operative recovery — from bullet wounds in their legs. The “absurd” urban myths, apparently, had some truth to them. In the face of such exceptional horror, one of the Americans — Les Roberts — experienced an epiphany.”

Anyone dumb enough to go into a sectarian war zone and think that people aren’t doing horrible things to one another is also going to be stupid enough to think that throwing good science under the bus of good intentions is a good idea.

Well, we all know what the road to hell is paved with, don’t we.

Also from the link:
“Roberts already believed that jihadi attacks were, in part, driven by the international image of the United States. “The greatest threat to U.S. national security [is] the image that the United States is a violator of international laws and order and that there is no means other than violence to curb it,” Roberts wrote in a July 2005 article for Tirman’s center. When NJ asked Roberts about the risk that his estimate would incite more violence, his confidence seemed to waver for the only time during the interview. “This area of study is a minefield,” he said. “The people you are talking about are the same kind of people who deny the Holocaust.” Does it give him qualms that some of those people use his study to recruit suicide bombers? “It does,” he replied after a pause. “My guess is that I’ve provided data that can be narrowly cited to incite hatred. On the other hand, I think it’s worse to have our leaders downplaying the level of violence.”

It’s pretty obvious that some commenters here didn’t even read the linked article.

I agree: to hell with Big Oil and Big Coal, we need to go much more nuclear asap. To equal France in ratio of nuclear plants to populace, we need 200 more.

But in the meantime, Chris, surely you know that “soft science” China has decided that going full-throttle ahead with the construction of coal-fired electrictity plants to promote its retarded economic development is its solution to “climate change” – deciding, in effect, that not producing massive amounts of fossil fuel CO2 in this way would create more of a disaster to itself and citizens than producing it.

As a result, China has already taken the lead in fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and is still constructing one coal-fired plant at a rate of every 5-7 days, which will continue for about the next 7 years.

If you care about civilians and blowback, you might want to actually consider what will likely happen to civilians if underdeveloped countries are prevented from pursuing the “status-quo” fossil fuel energy development dependence which you disparage – just as China has considered it – and what the other side-effects might be to the rest of the World if the underdeveloped don’t develop.

Likewise, you apparently also oppose the “staus quo” partly because you have some kind of visceral dislike for Wal Mart [peace be upon it] and other Big Corporations=Marx’s “Big Industry”? Perhaps you might want to consider what Communism’s unscientific method did to the wellbeing of “civilians”, and what unscientific Marxist propaganda has done to you.

At the same time, you also must know that the Kyoto Protocols do exclude countries containing 5 billion of the Earth’s 6.5 billion people from having to follow them, so that the Protocols virtually can’t possibly work on a World-wide basis to stop net increases in fossil fuel CO2 emissions. The Protocols haven’t even worked where they’ve been applied in Europe.

And this particular major ipcc Protocol exclusion all by itself casts considerable doubt upon the ipcc’s own basic conclusions themselves: it looks like the ipcc doesn’t even believe its own disasterized conclusions, or else wants to bring about the allegedly disasterous fossil fuel CO2 emission increase it says it wants to avoid.

You might also want to wonder why the ipcc, according to its own statement, intentionally does not consider at all the “costs” of its alleged cure to its alleged disease.

Pre-scientific ages excluded, when has any of this kind of action ever been considered “scientific”, and why would anyone think it would benefit very many “civilians”, whether they are in developed or underdeveloped countries?

For years now we’ve been hammered with the claim that our presence is creating more terrorists and never has a word been said that Al Qaida’s actions are in any way relevant.

Yet, objectively, what we’ve seen on the ground, and from the very *beginning*, is that locals resent us far less than we’re told they ought to. Not love us, that’s not what I said, but motivated to rise up and kill themselves to get us out? No. Not often and certainly not over the longer term when tribal alliances with Al Qaida against a common enemy have become violent oppressions and the blow-back hasn’t been toward *us*, but toward Al Qaida.

Scientific rigor or lack thereof aside, it failed in its goal.

Answer: none, because every one of the insurgents is a civilian (i.e., not a member of the Iraqi Army).

So whether the number of dead Iraqis is 60,000 or the ridiculously high 600,000 of the Lancet study is irrelevant. If every one of those civilian casualties was in fact an insurgent, I for one say, “Great!”

The argument should therefore turn on the proportion of combatant-types. Merely citing deaths of “civilians” invites the conclusion that all the people we’re talking were grandmothers shopping in the markets, children flying kites, etc. and overlooks those who were aiming an RPG when sent to collect their 72 virgins.