Re: NYTimes.com Article: Iraqi Family Ties Complicate American Efforts f

>>Her reaction was typical in a country where nearly
half of marriages are between first or second cousins,
a statistic that is one of the more important and
least understood differences between Iraq and America.
The extraordinarily strong family bonds complicate
virtually everything Americans are trying to do here,
from finding Saddam Hussein to changing women's status
to creating a liberal democracy.<<

Then someone in the article goes on to describe the
cousin marriages as 'unusual'--I guess they mean by
'world standards'. But I don't see an actual stat
here. I'd like to know how many of the marriages are
'first' cousin and how many are 'second' cousin. You
could get away with what this writer just did if 99%
of the cousin marriages are second cousin, so this is
not even a stat, let alone a useful one.

I'm going to ask a colleague about this.

C. Jannuzi
Fukui, Japan 


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