I lived in Massachusetts, so I feel your pain. I am told it's not too much different.

I was in Iraq two weeks ago. I spoke to people. I visited three cities, including a front city, and I made my way into a former secret police headquarters where government officials showed mt the torture cells of old.

You can see pictures here. It's a memorial now. It's hard to find (it's in a city near the Iranian border).

http://www.me.com/gallery/#100025

Here's a street sign (I like this picture):

http://www.me.com/gallery/#100017

And pictures from a city where the war is over since 2003:

http://www.me.com/gallery/#100028

I can tell from my own experience that America fought more necessary wars (or rather: participated out of necessity in unecessary wars). The invasion of Iraq was as necessary as the invasion of Germany and for the same reasons. (I also took pictures of a gallery of pictures of Kurdish poison gas victims. I didn't put them up yet.)

Perhaps that is one of the three necessary wars, I don't know your list.

As for the media, Fox and CNN and the others; I agree with you, but perhaps not for the reason you want me to. Fox and CNN never told anyone the things that I have seen outside the Green Zone. And few people know about Iraq's history under Saddam.

I was never in an army (but I applaud people who fight for my life and freedom), but I have been in two wars. One as a visitor trying to learn about the causes, and one as a target, studying in a university in northern Israel when a Lebanese militia switched from firing rockets at border towns for a few years to firing rockets into Haifa for a few weeks. (Nothing much happened. The entire north of the country was evacuated and leaflets were dropped in southern Lebanon before bombing raids urging them to do the same. Unfortunately they didn't. I assume Hizbullah wouldn't allow them to flee.)

And as I said I grew up in American-occupied territory.

So please don't tell me about which wars were "necessary" and which were not and America's morality unless you have some experience to add useful information to your opinion. I have seen what America's enemies do to people, and I have seen what America does to her enemies after victory. I have been there, in Germany and Iraq; and I have seen war, luckily from safe places because I tend to follow evacuation orders and don't drive towards the front line in a front city.

(A Peshmerga lieutenant told me not to tell people further south that I was Jewish. But as I said, I know what America's enemies do to people, and especially to Jews. So the warning was unecessary.)

Anything else?

Actually, you hear quite a lot of those "estimates", but for some reason the Iraqi government don't seem to acknowledge them.

A million deaths over 6 years would give you about 4000 bodies a week. In a country of 30 million that would be quite noticeable. The Nazis had to deal with similar numbers in the death camps. They used furnaces to get rid of them. Saddam used mass graves (found in 2003, a horrible sight).

Only the Bush regime seems to be capable of just vanishing that many bodies.

But that doesn't make the curious suspicious. They will still follow whatever estimate gives them the highest number, regardless of whether it can physically work or not.

Perhaps the fact that Fox and perhaps CNN don't tell you much about the "million dead Iraqi civilians", is because they did some fact-checking and noticed the physical impossibility of removing that many bodies. (In fact the Iraqi undertaking industry has been slowing down these past few years.) I agree that we cannot trust the media. But I can trust maths and what I see with my own eyes. And Iraqi cities are not filled with bodies. And the Americans do not have furnaces and there are no new mass graves. (If you are right and I am wrong, somebody will find the necessary mass graves in a few years. We'll see who was right then.)

It should also be obvious to you that the civilian casualties in Iraq are not caused by American troops. American military does not blow up mosques, Al-Qaeda (and other Sunni extremists) do. American military has nothing to do with Sunnis and Shiites murdering each other, they have done it for a thousand years. They just do it at a slower pace now that the occupation troops are interfering. ("Christian" American troops are neutral in the question that divides Shiites and Sunnis: who was caliph after Muhammed.)

I assume the studies were based on casualties per family, which works well in the west but is a funny method to find out anything in the middle east, where "family" is a rather different construct than what you may have in mind. You cannot assume that one death per family means that one person died for every X people alive. Families in Iraq are MUCH bigger than that. Plus in Anbar in the north-west, where Iraqi tribes and Americans are fighting Al-Qaeda, they have a clan system, which completely changes the family system again.

The Iraqi government, btw, is not an American puppet. In fact they are rather pro-Iranian. If they were as dishonest and corrupt as required by the theory that they cover up those deaths, they would surely use the opportunity to show the mass graves to the world and point the finger at America.

Any further questions?

You should have been in Albania during that time. Hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees camped there.

How did you deduce that there was no ethnic cleansing? Couldn't see the refugees?

America helped Britain defend herself and sent goods and weapons to Russia via Iran. That allowed the Russians to turn the war around. The Russians were first to arrive in Berlin while the British and Americans invaded via France. The two sides met at a river in east Germany (the Elbe).

Afterwards America (and Britain) stayed in Berlin and flew in food and equipment when the Russians blocked the city. For 40 years American, British, and French troops stayed in Berlin ready to defend the city should the Russians attack. (The idea that they might seems silly to you now, but in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Russia DID attack and invade several east-European countries.)

I played Baseball in the American barracks when I was a kid.

Plus America pumped money into Germany (and western Europe).

That's how they liberated us.

And yes, I am happy about every bomb that hit Germany and helped decide the war faster.

Millions of people were dying, with thousands dying for every day that Germany hadn't surrendered yet. It was similar with Japan, just their victims were Chinese rather than Jews, Poles, Russians, and others.

Got the numbers from the same source as you, Wikipedia. And they got it from the World Fact Book, which I bet you never bothered to check before you decided that my source was a "right wing troll stats" publication of some sorts.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html

Again, you are new here, you don't know the "law of the land". Finding a number somewhere and declaring the other guy a troll is not enough. You need to verify your sources.

Now I am not sure what the difference is between "public debt" and "external debt" and why one one is so much lower than the other. But I am sure you will claim that you know (even though you have obviously never seen the external debts numbers before).

Either way, using the source that is "what governments use" when you use it but becomes "right wing troll stats" when I use it says that Britains "external debt" is MUCH MUCH higher than America's. Do you have anything to say about that other than accuse me of trolling? (Which I am. But that doesn't mean that the CIA World Factbook suddenly becomes wrong.)

We have been through that.

You are still using an index used to determine social security as "average wage". They are NOT the same.

For example, the "average wage index" you are using includes part-time workers. The number for the UK you use measures only full-time workers. But I told you that before.

It's not "trolling" just because you don't want to understand it.

Actually, the Big Mac index is a common method to compare the value of money in different countries. You are not very familiar with economics, are you?

Maybe you don't travel much or have only ever lived in one country. But price makes a huge difference. With my Irish income I visiting Germany or Israel feels like visiting eastern Europe before 1989.

I won't refrain from using the same sources as you, even if you are ignorant of the numbers that can be found in them. I appreciate that you stepped on your own toes there when you declared your own source "right wing troll stats", but I assume you have learned your lesson now. (Check your sources before you attack someone over his. Make sure they are not the same sources.)

I am still waiting for you to give me a source for the immigration statistics you are referring to.

Please use stats that governments use, not troll stats, thanks.

BIG time.  SSA wages are cut off around $97k, so you are just averaging the low end of the totem poll.

That depends on what you are calling wage.  And it is apparent you are not representing the US wages accurately.  WHy?  WHy Lie if the UK is so much better?

It was faked.

That explains it. You see, I didn't know what the average wage index was, but I did know it wasn't the same as average wage. (But then I wouldn't call other people trolls based on my ignorance of what numbers mean. Leave that to the Brits?)

But I do think the number includes part-time workers. The British number on their statistics site specifically excluded them.

So what have we learned?

The average wages of British full-time workers is higher than the average wages of American full-time and part-time workers if we remove the surplus.

Note that US$97000 is not that much. With the current value of the dollar I make nearly that much!

He isn't lying.

He just doesn't know any better. His entire behaviour suggests to me that he thought that right-wingers are stupid and ignorant and that any who speak up are trolls. He figured it would be enough to cite a number, any number, to shut them up. He never knew what the numbers mean.

He might have encountered economic right-wingers before, but probably dismissed their facts and didn't learn anything.

They do.  And then not all earnings (Capital gains are not SSA taxed, so they are excluded as are interest income and other forms of income). SSA is simply where the tax is coming from, and that will change, but since the politicians want to maintain the illusion of a "retirement" account, it probably will never reflect the true wages in the US.

Capital gains would not be considered wages, I suppose.

But still, that average wage index thing seems to confuse people. I didn't know how it worked and some others mistook it for average wage. I find it impressive and embarrasing that people base major political positions on misunderstanding the average wage index!

Now we just have to figure out the difference between public debt and external debt and why the second is so much higher than the first in the case of Britain (and Ireland). I thought external debt was the part of public debt owed to agents external to the country (like foreign banks or foreign owners of government bonds), but that wouldn't work with the numbers provided by the World Factbook. Perhaps external debt includes private debt?

As for average wages, I sometimes find that when statistics seem to contradict what I see on the job market, I am looking at the wrong statistics (like average wage index instead of average wage). I often check American job Web sites and look in awe at what I would make in the US. (I do take into account the cost of health insurance and rent.)

The belief (religious such) that average wages are higher in Britain than in the US might be a helpful opiate for some, but it requires ignoring what I could make in the US and some acrobatic art with numbers to remain believable.

When I compare possibly salaries for jobs I could do, the idea that wages are higher in the UK (based on comparing British full-time workers' wages with a random number used for other purposes chosen from some US government agency) simply doesn't make me feel better.

It's better to be rich than to be right; especially when the wealth is real while the being right depends on the numbers I chose.

Leauki/Dr Guy

While what you guys said was very interesting and had a lot of useful information (that you for it), there was only one thing tht actually had me convinced this blogger was already getting off on the wrong foot.

Right off the back this person did not even bother to understand the article itself and began to make comments based on what he assumed the topic was about (and you know what they say about people who assume). After his very ignorant comment, he continued to use the "anit English" debate as a way to throw people off from his blunders. But in the process he completely missed the point of this article:

and

In other words, to compare the US to any other country and vise verse would be pointless because the US was meant to be what it is based on what the people wanted just like Germany, China, France, Great Britain, Russia, Iran, etc. are what they are based on it's people. To claim that Britain is somehow better does not make sense because this person is looking at things based on his perseption of how things should be rather than how they are and how they work fine based on the people in each country.

BTW, what made this person bring up a 2004 article to life when the last post was done in 2005? How does anyone even come across such an old article on this site? Google perhaps?

I don't think they are really blunders as such. I think that people like him are simply not used to digging deeper. They believe the first thing they are told by someone who is not (they think) the establishment. That's enough to make them feel as if they saw through the propaganda.

It is obvious our visitor didn't bother to find out what "average wage index" actually is before he used it to back up his opinion. It is also obvious, to me at least, that our other visitor (or were they the same?) read the number "one million" somewhere and never did do the maths to figure out if the number could be true.

The "not the establishment" part is important. Most people want to be both rebels and safe. People WANT to follow those who are "brave" enough to resist the establishment, follow those who are rebels and who outsmart the more powerful.

The rebels are those who protest on the streets. The establishment are those who walk among them, trying not to be identified as having an opinion not shared by the rebels.

I think that's where it comes from. It's a cheap way to tell yourself that you understand the world better than other people. But it collapses when you meet people who care and are capable of reading sources and have time to waste.

That too. But if we can make him understand that "average wage index" is not the same as "average wage", I think we have achieved something.

Plus I learned something. I finally understood how so many people believe that Europe is richer than the US. I was always wondering because their statements totally contradicted the numbers I knew. Now I know. They didn't dig deep enough and used numbers without knowing what they mean.

Well, he could have sat there and waited for the dollar to fall so an income in pound would be relatively higher; but I suspect Google or an old link.