Could agree with you a little, Easy Times, if little Israel was not illegally armed with its atomic tipped rockets ready to fire.

There was a study done even in a Westralian university during the Cold War, called Balance of Power Theory, actually based partly on Bismarck's Realpolitik, which taught how to avoid war by not only stopping anyone arming in the first place, but if one country broke the code, to arrange that the opposition country be armed accordingly, as actually happened more recently when there was not a lot of kerfuffle from the UN when Pakistan became nuclear to match Pakistan, or was it the other way round.

So what should happen in scientific power balance theory in today's Middle East, is that because Israel and Iran are at each other's throats, Iran should be allowed to go atomic accordingly - then we might all be gladly surprised when peace joined the party, even agonised Iraq becoming part of it.

It would be a stiff test for America also, which if successful, might prove her to be much of the cause of the main trouble in the Middle East with her previously backing the autocratic aggressive side to suit her purpose as she did when she backed Saddam to attack Iran in 1981.

Ted

Spinning his backside off again, he wants us to believe the Iraq Body Count figure of 49,000.

Just how credible is this figure? Not credible at all. Collected from online newspaper reports.

1322 days have passed since the invasion of Iraq, so Ted expects us to believe that only 37 people have died per day in the war. That is significantly less than the deaths per day of Israels little 33 day incursion into Lebanon. (Without a civil war).

100 people died in Iraq yesterday.(according to newspaper reports)

Professor of epidemiology or web newspaper reports?

Oh the irony of it all!

Ted, are you guilty of Iraqi Holocaust denial?

Look mate, I'm prepared to go to 599,990.

- and that's my final offer.

I wonder why Ted is lying here why is it that he is not telling the whole story. His miss representing of the study seems to indicate to me that he is doing his usual shout louder routine whenever someone says something he doesn't like. What is also obvious is that he hasn’t read the study nor does he understand statistics nor have a good grasp on the methodology. That said he got a fine platform to rebuke it and that is because he doesn’t like it.
The great irony here is that many of the Holocaust deniers use a simular technic as Ted has to cast doubt on the Germans ability to kill Jews on such a scale.

Ted slams the Lancet study because the results are so unpalatable but read what experts in the field have to say about the statistical analysis used http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/061018_democracy_and_debate.php

Who are you going to believe, Ted or people who really know what they are talking about?

Note also the media (in this case UK) attitude to the findings - don't like it so ignore or downplay. Australian media coverage is just as bad.

Would the horrors of the holocaust be any less if historians concluded that Hitler exterminated not six million but 5 million?

TL You are unbelievably hypocritical and callous in your tactics.

It is wrong to discredit Israel's enemies by taking advantage of difficulties of determining exactly how many civilians die in conflicts (just like the neo Nazi’s do). Of course, TL mentions inexplicably the 450,000 UK folk that died in WW2 but conveniently forgets to mention, for instance, that of the 5.7 million Russian prisoners of war 3.3million died -not to mention the German’s siege of Leningrad which killed close to a million. The total death count of WW2 ran into millions and millions, not counting the Jewish people who perished. Israel's propagandists, betray their own agenda by only mentioning Israel’s allies in its war against Arabs.

I guess, Ted, you’d better go and look up your list of childish clichés that evoke emotion rather than good sense. You know the ones you like to dump on to people who think that instead of trying to justifying killing and warfare you should embrace principles of justice and spend your energy more sensibly.

It probably doesn’t matter to you Ted because you seem to be more interested in Israel’s future than Australia’s. You see there are Australian soldiers in Iraq and I support those men and women and trust that they will hold firm to the principles of justice we as a nation supposedly embrace. However, I do not support the Liberal’s support for the US invasion and I don't want our soldiers "nation building" agenda to be undermined by propagandists who stupidly talk of “fable” because of some petty statistical inexactitude. To use this to deny the pain and civilian losses the Iraqi people must be suffering is cruel. What are you trying to do escalate the conflict and misunderstanding of Australian involvement with this callous nonsense? What is this some childish payback for the holocaust deniers?