Leninology, a Fisking.

I think I've done it.

I've worked out why Lenin can both be so coherent and intelligent and yet still come out with copmplete and utter balls.

Its to do with his in built opinions. Now see that Lenin is if not in favour of the Iraqi insurgency groups at least very anti-Coalition. Hence his latest nonsense.

Note how when a pro-West, anti-Taliban story comes out he gives it a thorough going over. He is sceptical, asks the right questions and comes to the conclusion that the story is of debateable merit and quite possibly a falsehood. But then he gets his hands on this, this and this he believes them all. Not a word of contention, no analysis. Nothing.

Why?

Particuarly when the stories are filled with the same sort of errors he picked up on in the Guardian story. Lets take a look.

This one first. Right, Lenin states the story in this repoirt as fact. Depite the following.
1. The story was assembled by "The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political faction in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet," Thats right, not from witnesses, cops, hospitals or any offical source. From a politcal faction. Now if you'll excuse me but I'm extremely dubious of a "statement" that comes not from offical sources but from an obviously partisan group. Much like Lenin was when it came to the Yanks, village locals and Afghan government in the Guardian article.
2. The facts contained within are not based on fact. They are part of a "statement" that is "alleging" that these numbers were killed. Lets review: a statement, not a report that is giving alleged figures rather than any hard facts.
3. No mention of who the people killed were. We are told that "more than 350 people have been killed by a US military operation in Baquba to hunt down al-Qaeda-affiliated members." But what type of people? Civilians? Al Quaeda members? The Swedish Olympic Mime team?
4. How do we really know how many were actually killed. According to the statement the "bodies [are] still under wreckage". So how do they know how many died?
So to put it all together we have an statement by a political faction that gives us an unstansiated figure alleging a specific numbers of deaths without the means to back up their claim and which gives no information relating to whether those who (ostensibly)* died were in fact legitimate targets.

How convincing.

*To clarify: I realise people died but I'm taking a critical eye to the numbers killed.

Next I turn to this report which Lenin used to claim US troops killed 26 people in a "homicide attack" (his words). Againa glance at the article reveals that Lenin is generalising wildly. The article tells us that the US claim all 26 were gunmen, in which case their deaths are legitimate, whilst even the locals say 8 civilians were killed (amongst the 26? instead of the 26? I don't know as it doesn't say). Obviously Lenin is misrepresenting the truth to fulfill his own agenda. Similarly the article contains a wild number of points against Lenin. Again I'll switch to numbering them.
1. First its reported that civilians claim the US troops were "firing wildly". Now there are a few points to be made here. First is that no residents were named which makes the provenance of tese angry accusations difficult. Secondly it assumes the civilians understand military actions in order to claim they were firing wildly. How do they know? Firing wildly might easily refer to engaging multiple targets that were scattered all around. Had the Septics really been firing wildly I think its safe to assume we'd have another Haditha rather than 8 civilians dead. Those weapons of theirs ae awful dangerous.
2. Unnamed residents are our only source for 8 civilian dead. Again there is no offical source involved. The fact that no wounded were mentioned is also suspicious as it is usually assumed that for ever person killed two are wounded. And indeed if so many were wounded or killed how is it that there is no (offical) statement from the mortuary, hospital or any of their workers?
3. All this information comes from Sadr city, a place that is "the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Al Sadr". In other words we are being asked to trust people who are anti-American in outlook and quite possibly highly politicised.
Again a recap. This story presents unnamed 'residents' from a highly anti-American area giving us a story with no hard evidence to back it up.

Finally Lenin linked to this biggie. This is by far the best piece of the lot but even here Lenin can't help himself. Lets perform the now familiar examination.
1. First of all is the total confusion. Were the Taliban there? Well Wali Khan says that "More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there" OK, so the Taliban weren't there. Mahmood Anwar on the other hand said "Very few Taliban were killed". Ah. So Taliban weren't killed. Except for very few who were. Maj. John Thomas on the other hadn says the fight started with a Taliban attack and ended with NATO bringing in helis as fire support. He also claims the civilians bodies were found amongst dead Taliban, in other words that the Taliban had been using human shields. I think we can fairly dismiss Wali Khan, Taliban rather obviously were there.
2. There is a serious discrepancy in the figures. Khan says more than 100, Anwar close to 100 and Thomas merely that it was "an order of magnitude less" than other officals have claimed. Now this obviously shows that no offical figure exists as we have been given two estimates and one possible correction without any actual figures. Therefore we must be sceptical about how many actually died. However equally we can see that a lot of people did die.
3. Lenin is presenting it as "one hundred civilians" killed (I'm quoting him). When in fact only one source, Mr. Khan, has actually said that. And he is a source that is obviously untrustworthy because of his failure to admit Taliban were there. Lenin is misrepresenting on a glorious scale. What if for instance I said that Britain killed 649 Argentinian civilians in the Falklands War? It would be wrong. 649 Argentine soldiers were killed. Now obviously this is an extreme example, all the Argentines were soldiers whilst not all the Afghans were Taliban, but I hope it serves to illustrate the danger of Lenin's mistake.
In conclusion Lenin is telling us 100 civilians died, something that the two more reputable sources do not say, a statement only backed up by a man who is a proven liar. Not only that he is not taking account of the fact that at least some of those killed were Taliban and that it is entirely possible that some to many of those civilians killed were in fact human shields.

It seems obvious that Lenin has made several mistakes and most importantly has relaxed his critical standards. The reaon for that relaxing seems obvious- because if he was critical he'd be unable to make his (ultimately incorrect) statements. Statements that owe everything to anti-Coalition bias. No matter your opinion on the Coalition and the wars there has to be the ability to look critically at anything, even if it seems to reinforce your own opinions.

If I read those three articles indeed my point would not be the deaths of civilians but rather that they reveal a striking power struggle between the local rulers and the Coalition/NATO. In both cases the Iraqi and Afghan PM are critical of the alliances that are supposed to be helping them, despite which the alliances are effectively taking little to no operational changes in response. Now this is a sweeping generalisation but reveals that there are frictions between Premiers, their people and the alliances. That is of far greater worth as a story that Lenin's lame attempt to slur the alliances as civilian killing imperialist scum.