While reviewing the data on U.S. military casualties in Iraq, I noticed a clear trend emerge. Long before the president’s change in strategy we call the surge, those men and women that have volunteered to protect us began to die at a higher rate. Why? What happened in March 2006?
The primary elections were held and campaigning for the November 2006 elections began in earnest. The Democratic Party chose to base their strategy around the Iraq war, using every means possible to cast it in a negative light. The terrorists, emboldened by this strategy, were able to convince neighboring countries to supply them with better, more powerful weapons, killing our service personnel at an ever increasing rate.
In April of this year, Speaker Pelosi chose to ignore her proper role in government, traveling to terrorist sponsor Syria and negotiating directly with the terrorists. Once again, U.S. deaths increased.
It is past time for politicians to understand that their words carry more weight than the Cindy Sheehan’s of the world. It is time for them to keep the rhetoric behind closed doors. They have sacrificed enough of our men and women in their lust for power.
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How about this assumption. The democrats could care less how many soldiers lives it takes to get them back into power. That’s what I think. What are a few hundred deaths to gain power once again. They are unamerican Americans
Liberals care as much about our soldiers as they do about aborted babies in or partially out of the womb.
Does the graph show a death “rate” or does it show a total number of deaths? Additionally, there are a number of other spikes in deaths which don’t seem to correspond to elections or trips to Syria. How do you explain those?
Is it any surprise that our enemies, emboldened by liberal US polititians and liberal media types, are able obtain better weapons and personal to use them?
There were always enought terriorist types around, now our own liberals neighbors have convinced them they are right and can win.
You write this article as if you think the politicians involved actually care. Apparently your should think again, because it is obvious the Dems do not care, and most likely celebrate damage to our military in private.
Dude, it does look like there is a correlation between the current up-trend in deaths and the Democrat control of Congress. Whether or not that correlation is causative, or coincidental is another matter.
I’m not sure I understand your question, Dude. The totals are per month, increasing after the primaries, hence the term “higher rate”.
As for the spikes, I don’t focus on spikes, just trends. It’s fairly easy to read them. You have the initial invasion, then a period where the terrorists had success, the military’s response working to slow them, then the Dems support increasing their ability to kill our soldiers.
I was a bit surprised at the clarity.
BigJ,
Duhmoose hit on the real nature of my concern.
As to the specifics of my questions, the Y axis of the graph lacks a clear units definition. Since it’s just a number, I’ll assume it’s a total # of deaths. A death “rate” would be more like deaths/1000 troops (for example).
The spikes can’t just be disregarded because they aren’t convenient either. If you’re making a political point with statistics you must explain them as anomalies, if in fact, that’s what they are. Not trying to be nitpicky, but just like words mean things, numbers also mean things. Wiggle room with numbers is not nearly as abundant as it is with words.
You leave out a very important piece of the puzzle.
If what you say is true then the insurgency is so powerful they can step it up when and where they want to at will against the mightiest fighting force the world has ever seen. Thats even more dangerous to our men and women in the shooting gallery of Iraq.
Rastus, I gotta admit, I think that they do care. I think that they don’t really believe that their words do embolden the terrorists, that they think it is a Repub talking point. If just one person looks at that chart and lowers their rhetoric, I will be happy. Our soldiers deserve our politicians full support, keep the arguments behind closed doors.
Dude, the rate per month is the stat, not the rate per/1000. It is difficult to capture the actual number of troops in the country at any one time, given the extensions, travels, decreases, etc. Gut feeling is that it wouldn’t change the expression but I don’t know.
Spikes aren’t disregarded, they certainly affect the analysis. I used a sixth-order polynomial regression for clarity.
gregg, you miss the entire point when you use sarcasm. The point is that the terrorists aren’t so powerful that they can step it up when they want to. In fact, it is our own politicians that allow them to regroup and let other nations resupply them.
That is the answer to Dude’s concern about causation. The data point to a clear causative relationship.
BigJ,
My gut would tell me that Democrats are emboldening terrorists. On that I would certainly agree with you. But the graph doesn’t prove a causative relationship, no matter how much you and I might like it to do so.
#13 cont’d…
Given that the surge was an increase in total number of troops, might it not also logically follow that the total number of deaths would increase proportionally to the total number of troops present?
Yes, but again, you have to look at the whole. The “surge” hasn’t even been completed. Not even close. Troop levels began to increase slightly in March, remember all of the complaints about how long it was taking? It will not be complete until July.
When looking at trend data in statistics, any one data point need not be explained. In fact, it is fairly well regarded in statistics that if there is a point that is more than 1.5 standard deviations from a reasonable polynomial regression, it should be regarded as anomalous unless otherwise stated. The most interesting thing about the data set is how well it fits the regression line. If the deaths were really the result of random insurgents like the media woiuld have you believe, it should be very random. The regularity of it suggests a driving mechanism, basically some sort of coordinating affect. In other words, smooth data usually means it is either falsified, or there is some system at work. In this case that system would be cooperating, large scale, terrorist networks.
I disagree. Yes the politicians create a good environment for the insurgents. But, they have the ability to step it up despite our best efforts. This has to be demoralizing for our guys. They walk around loaded down with equipment and armor in 120 degree heat and some dude in a robe walks by and blows himself and the soldier up.
The surge has just put more troops walking down the street with more opportunities to get blown up.
To fight this insurgency you have to cut off the supply lines (Iran and Syria) and starve these guys out of their holes. Not walk around and fall into the holes.
Looks like they’ve spiked every year around Mar/Apr and November. Wonder why that would be?
And Gregg, again, shows what you know. Morale in the field in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been very, very high. That’s because we are dealing with professionals here, not a bunch of whiney @$$ed crybaby liberals and poser conservatives.
Never said our guys arent the best. Our leaders are what doomed this mission. They are put in a no win situation. Thank God my kids are too young to be sent to die in Iraq for worthless, good for nothing Iraqis who wont even fight for themselves.
gregg, there are so many errors in your comment that it’s difficult to respond to.
When Nancy Pelosi went to Syria, she gave them cedibility and increased their willingness to supply the terrorists. We need our politicians to be united or at least present a united front in public. Argue in back rooms all you want.
gregg says:
That is totally false. There are more Iraqis dying by far than US. Fighting for their country.
jolly, I agree on Pelosi.
The Iraqis dying arent fighting the insurgents. They are getting blown up at the markets or standing in line for a job.
We just need to agree to disagree. We are just amusing Smacktool at this point.
As often as I disagree with Gregg, he does know what is necessary to win in Iraq.
I believe, as I think Gregg does, that we should leave Iraq, right after we stomp the ever living crap out of the insurgency. The sooner we get to it, the sooner we can get our boys home.
For anyone that does not already know; War is an ugly, dirty, nasty business. The object is to kill people and break things and there is not any room for nice.
We seem to care more about the opinion of radical muslims who will never like us no matter what, and of far left wing liberals who will never agree with us no matter what, than we do about our men in harms warm.
#23 I nominate you ” person in charge of the war” go kick butt, bomb the every lovin out of em.
Something about posting graphs on LST.
Drives these engineers and numbers-crunchers berserk, every time.
:>)
#25 Shannon,
Yup. The thing that still hasn’t been explained to my satisfaction is causative effect. Global warming chuckleheads regularly try to point out a causative effect between industrial activity and natural warming cycles of the earth. I see trying to show a causative effect between Democrat’s politics and the number of American casualties in Iraq as somewhat analogous to that. And yes, that does drive me berserk.
26 Dude, Causation in reality is almost impossible to prove in a situation like this. You would have to get confessions from the terrorist as to the motivation for stepping up activities. However the correlation is interesting. If we are still in this position closer to the election, when it is a tough on Iraq Republican vs a Let’s get out Democrat, we may be able to draw a stronger conclusion.
dude says:
Perhaps because you didn’t “see” what I was trying to do. I was playing with XML in Office 2007, which I just installed, a reader sent me a story on a very moving thing that is going on at the pentagon and I was looking at the icasualties site. I see an XML button for the deaths, d/l’d it and put it into Excel, than graph it as a line chart, just to learn. It immediately stood out.
I then did a couple of other things but couldn’t get past that correlation/causation, whatever the heck you want to call it, it is there. I follow politics, especially the war and there is no other single thing that could explain that. You can look at individual data points all day long but that isn’t what analysts should do. Engineers, perhaps, depending upon the task, but not analysts.
Take any set or subset of data (public policy related) that you can imagine, then fit a trend to it and you will rarely see this type of correlation.
Do you have a sample set that the global warming alarmists have used that has these same characteristics? I’d like to see them if you do.
I’d like to see the same graph at the next presidential election…
gregg says:
Good point. He might have more pictures of me at work. Still haven’t figured out how he go them.
Correlation is not causation, plain and simple. That the graph shows correlation I can plainly see. To say that Democrats are the cause of it is nothing more than conjecture. It’s conjecture that I happen to agree with, but it’s conjecture nonetheless.
Duhmoose is correct that true causation would be difficult (if not impossible) to establish in a situation like this. That being the case, regardless of whether or not I agree with the premise, I object to the selective use of statistics (which BTW do not look at the “big picture”) to “prove” a political point whether I agree with it or not.
You said it yourself earlier, knowing how many troops are there at any given time is nearly impossible. That is information that is valuable context within which the data you present should be viewed. Without that, you aren’t seeing the “big picture”. That’s just one piece of the puzzle that’s missing. There are many others, including how many Iranians and Syrians are in Iraq at any given time. You’re trying to describe the entire elephant to me after having thoroughly examined the end 6″ of his trunk.
Give me a bit on the global warming graphs. I’ll see what I can find.
OK BigJ. Click here. Clearly you can see that since the early 1900s, mean global temperature has increased fairly steadily until ~1940. Then another increase is evident from ~1965 through the present. One could easily and accurately correlate industrial activity with those increases. One could also try to assign causation to said trends and use that as a basis to tax industry based on the size of their “carbon footprint” (sound familiar?). Or one could step back and say, “hmmm… maybe there’s more than I’m seeing here” (ummm… can you say natural climate cycles?) before using it as a hammer to smack one’s political opponents over the head. Using a flawed causation argument to advocate a certain public policy isn’t a good idea, is it?
Link is not available, couldn’t see the graph.
But, have they? Where?
shannon says:
I personally think that the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees” was originally written about either an engineer or a cost accountant. Still haven’t decided which.
I see the forest quite well. Painting a picture of a forest using only two or three of the most prominent trees makes a pretty poor picture.
BigJ… please. For a guy that says he follows follows politics and accuses engineers of not seeing the forest for the trees to feign ignorance on this? BTW, the link works just fine for me. But here it is again:
http://geology.com/news/images/global-warming-graph.jpg
OK, I’ll play your silly little game:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/sandstrom3.html
Lew Rockwell!!! You quoted Lew Rockwell???
The Dude
That is like getting into a fight and leading with your chin.
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.asp
Who cares what the source of the quote is? BigJ feigns ignorance that there are people out there claiming correlation between industry and global warming. That’s not only leading with your chin, it’s falling down to the canvas on your way out of the corner.
Easy big fella, I was just making an observation.
But just to stir the pot. I believe Jolly’s cause correlation in Iraq is spot on.
I would liken it to when certain people stick their heads into a discussion here on LST the verbal rhetoric and bomb throwing escalates. The moderator (that be me) gets
p!$$3d and heads roll.
There are times when things are going quietly along and I stick my head in the door and those same people decide to ratchet up their crap just to get my goat. Doesn’t work but it makes them feel good.
I can chart it on a graph that even a dumb trucker can understand.
I’ve never been one of those people, but yup, I’ve seen that myself. As for me, when I know I’m right I don’t back down.
dude says:
Um, I never “feigned” anything. Your link brings up an error message. And you still haven’t shown me the data sets. Nice try though.
And, BTW, how did this get turned into a global warming issue? I don’t think that global warming is man-made, so, I’m sorta at a loss.
Okay, I found your graph by searching the site. It has an annual and 5 year mean, is that the one? Looks like the y axis is from -.5 through +.7. No idea what it is.
BJ,
It isn’t a global warming issue, nor did I ever say it was. It’s an issue of you trying to make correlation = causation. It never will, no matter how much you want it to.
The point about man made global warming is that that’s exactly what the advocates of that brand of flawed thinking do. They attempt to make correlation = causation. It doesn’t work for them and it doesn’t work for you. If I accept your premise, and not the man made global warming crowd’s, then I would be guilty of (dare I say it?) double standards. Nice try though.
Sorry, I’ve given you a discrete data set, 100% of the population and provided indicators as to why the trend has occurred. I asked if you could provide a similar set of data for comparison and you choose a completely irrelevant subject. You could never capture the entire population, the measuring devices themselves have changed throughout the small recording period and you have not given indicators of where the man made warming is theorized to have begun.
No double standards here. It’s that forest thing.
Not at all. It’s you trying to make:
correlation = causation
to support your argument. That might work for your less critical readers, but it doesn’t work for me. When you use faulty logic I will take you to task over it every time.
Here’s the nature of my dispute with this BigJ:
[my bold]
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/skepticism/blfaq_fall_correlation.htm
You have not satisfied the test described in the bolded section. You simply don’t have reliable evidence of your assertion. With that, I will let this matter go and agree to disagree with you.