Kaplan: Strike Two

For reasons Tim Lambert explains in detail, I think Matt is being far too generous to Fred Kaplan’s attempt to discredit the Lancet study, which doesn’t seem to be any better than his first. Particularly hackish is Kaplan’s argument that the study’s pre-war mortality rates are less credible than the UN’s–although the latter are based on pure guesswork!–because it’s implausible that Iraq would have a lower mortality rate than Western Europe or surrounding countries. As Lambert explains again, this is just false:

I went to the UN population page and looked up the death rates for every country neighbouring Iraq for 1995-2000. Here are the numbers: Iran 5.5 Jordan 4.6 Kuwait 1.8 Saudi Arabia 4.1 Syria 3.9 Turkey 6.6. All but one are less than or equal to 5.5. Remember, this is the same source that Kaplan used for the death rate for Iraq. Kaplan’s claim seems to have been made with a reckless disregard for the truth.

And, of course, this isn’t surprsing–what’s implausible is thinking that Western Europe’s superior medicince could make up for its vastly older populations. Kaplan is a fine writer on subjects he knows something about, but I really don’t see how his new article is any better than the old one–he still lacks even a basic grasp of the central facts he’s discussing.