Friday, August 01, 2008

Fruitcake Barrett: Who's a Holocaust Denier?

Check out this absurd post at Barrett's campaign website.

The Cap Times regularly informs its readers that the estimated number of Iraqi civilian deaths due to the US invasion and occupation is under 100,000. As of the most recent print edition, the number listed was 89,900. The sources listed are the Defense Department, iraqbodycount.org, and nationalpriorities.org.

The Lancet, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals, says the real number was over 650,000 back in 2006. That means that the real number, as of mid-2008, is well over a million. Combining that estimate with Australian physician Gideon Polya's historical study, we find that a total of 8.6 million Iraqis have been murdered by Anglo-American wars, interventions and sanctions since 1950.


You can probably guess where the Boy Wonder's going with this; the Capitol Times is a Holocaust-denying publication.

Never mind that almost everybody discounts the Lancet study. For starters, it was funded by George Soros. No other estimate has even been in the same ballpark:

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003. Iraq Body Count, which has been tracking confirmed deaths since the war began and has no incentive to undercount, estimates somewhere close to 90,000 civilians have died, and as others have pointed out, those "civilians" are disproportionately male and of fighting age; if these were legitimate "collateral damage" they would include a lot more women and children.

Barrett then goes off on the recent spate of bannings over at 9-11 Flogger, claiming that it's all a plot by Reprehensor and others to get rid of Muslims. Only a total fruitcake like Barrett could make the 9-11 Flogger folks look sensible.

He also posts an email from a Sara Lamadrid, who's one of the banned folks (but apparently not a Muslim) where they mention that one of the reasons for the mass banning was that a site called WTC Demolition had linked to a Holocaust Denier's video. Now I'd like to congratulate Rep for doing that, but in fact that was only the third reason he gave for his actions; the other two were that the WTC Demolition's feed from 9-11 Flogger called it anti-Islamic, and that there had been a (admittedly disgusting) post over there asking if Mindy Kleinberg's husband had really died on 9-11.

Sara lets us know where she stands on Holocaust Denial:

I want to be very careful in addressing the Holocaust Revision pretext for my banning at 911blogger. I don't consider myself a Holocaust Revisionist in the sense that I would reserve that term for serious historians, and I certainly have not put anywhere near the amount of time into researching WWII that I have into examining 9/11. On the other hand, I see a clear responsibility to support the work of serious historians such as David Cole.


Only serious historians like David Cole get to be called Holocast Revisionists? For the record, Cole has recanted his Holocaust Denial:

And just as I must set the record straight concerning my views, it is also incumbent on me to set the record straight regarding the video "documentaries" and media appearances I did from 1991 to 1994. These "documentaries" are merely videotaped garbage filled with self-hatred and pseudo-intellectual nonsense. My "media appearances" were nothing but an embarrassment. My glazed look, specious reasoning, and talking-in-circles during my talk show appearances would have hopefully alerted any astute viewers that this was a man not in touch with reality.


So if Ms Lamadrid would like to support the work of David Cole, she should be supporting his current views, not those he has since described as "videotaped garbage".