[Lo]

Here is the link to the article cited by R. J. Clawson on page 17 of the Israel/Lebanon thread:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/world...th_toll_h.html


For those of you who do not or cannot subscribe to The Washington Post online here's a cut-n-paste of most of the article...the comments which accompany the article are too numerous to reprint here but they're well worth the sign-up and the time taken to read them all.


Is Iraq's Civilian Death Toll 'Horrible' -- Or Worse?

A report published last week in the British medical journal Lancet which found that more than 600,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq elicited a prompt dismissal from President Bush.

"I don't consider it a credible report," he said. "Neither does General (George) Casey (top U.S. commander in Iraq) and neither do Iraqi officials."

The president isn't the only one who has taken issue with the controversial findings of the study, the work of three epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins University. Iraq Body Count, an antiwar Web site in London that monitors reports of civilian casualties, praised the authors for their research, but suggested the astronomical estimate is hard to swallow.

The study has attracted news coverage around the world, with antiwar commentators touting its findings as "superb science," and Bush allies Tony Blair and John Howard echoing White House dismissals.

The IBC, while critical of the study, took care to emphasize that it does not defend the conduct of the war.

"Totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy," said the IBC researchers.

Estimates at Odds

Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, explained the dramatic difference in mortality estimates among researchers as the result of different methodology.

"Our total estimate is much higher than other mortality estimates because we used a population-based, active method for collecting mortality information rather than passive methods that depend on counting bodies or tabulated media reports of violent deaths," he said in a news release about the study. "Though the numbers differ, the trend in increasing numbers of deaths closely follows that measured by the U.S. Defense Department and the Iraq Body Count group."

Researchers working with John Hopkins doctors visited 1,849 households between May and July 2006 and interviewed residents about family deaths among the 12,801 people living in those homes. When they asked for death certificates to verify fatalities, they say they obtained them 92 percent of the time.

The directors of IBC contend that the researchers' findings, if true, imply several realities that are difficult to explain. They say the study implies that:


1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;

2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;

3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;

4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;

5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.

In order for all this to be true, the IBC said, one would have to assume massive fraud or incompetence by Iraqi government and health officials and an "abject failutre" of the media, among other things. Without dismissing the report entirely, the IBC qualified its implications as "extreme and improbable."

Defending the Data

But the study has its defenders. Two experts told The Washington Post's David Brown last week that they found the article's methodology to be sound. The British science site, Nature.com (by subscription), also found merit in the study, saying the death toll "withstands scrutiny."

"The numbers do add up," said Daniel Davies, a stockbroker and blogger for the Guardian. He argued that the sample of 1,849 households interviewed by Iraqi doctors working for the JHU research team was as large as that used by political pollsters.

"The question that this study was set up to answer was: as a result of the invasion, have things got better or worse in Iraq? And if they have got worse, have they got a little bit worse or a lot worse... The results speak for themselves," Davies wrote. "In the 18 months before the invasion, the sample reported 82 deaths, two of them from violence. In the 39 months since the invasion, the sample households had seen 547 deaths, 300 of them from violence."

No one disputes that Iraq has grown much more deadly. The question is how much.

A 2004 study by the same authors of the Lancet article estimated 98,000 violent deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion, a figure four times higher than the findings of a much larger survey done at approximately the same time by Norweigan researchers working for the United Nations. That study, the Iraqi Living Conditions Survey, estimated 23,743 civilian deaths in the first 13 months of the conflict.

In a telephone interview, Jon Pedersen, research director for the 2004 study, said several factors probably account for researchers' different findings.

One key issue is how researchers extrapolate from the deaths identified in their field research to a death toll for the whole country. Pedersen noted that the Lancet study is based on a pre-invasion mortality rate of 5.5 deaths per thousand people. The U.N., he said, used the figure of 9 deaths per thousand. Extrapolating from the lower pre-invasion mortality rate would yield a greater increase in post-invasion deaths, he noted. If the higher pre-invasion mortality rate is more accurate, then the deaths attributable to the war would be lower.

Another difficulty, he said, is doing accurate research under dangerous conditions. Pedersen wondered how tightly the study's authors could oversee the interviews as they were conducted throughout Iraq.

The JHU study, he noted, asked Iraqis only about mortality. The U.N. study asked Iraqis about many aspects of their living conditions. Pedersen said his study probably underestimated deaths caused by the war because the interviews did not focus on the issue, while the Lancet article probably overstated them because no other subject was discussed.

Pedersen said he thinks the Lancet numbers are "high, and probably way too high. I would accept something in the vicinity of 100,000 but 600,000 is too much."

"Regardless of the numbers that are possible," he added, "we are seeing a situation that is pretty horrible."

[Quincy Lehr]

Pederson's final comment is really the bottom line. Death tolls in times of war are tricky things, and I'm quite willing to say that I don't know. What is clear, however, is that the situation is a catastrophic fucking mess.

Quincy

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited October 19, 2006).]

[Alan Sullivan]

That Lancet report is politics, not science. It has been completely debunked. Thorough critique of the methodology here.

If you believe Lancet, you will not be "reality-based."

PS. Wars are "pretty horrible," yes. This business is going to get a lot more horrible, needlessly. Instead of 550k imaginary deaths in Iraq, there will probably be that many for real one day, in the US, thanks to the present dithering, handwringing, and hysterical partisan falsehoods.

And after that there will really be hell to pay in the Middle East.

Alan

[Quincy Lehr]

Alan--

The linked editorial raises important methodological concerns about the study, which is, after all an estimate, but I don't think it's an out-and-out debunking. In the first place, it strikes me that given the at best precarious control of U.S. and Iraqi puppet forces over the country, any estimates of the death rate based on government sources will be too low.

What I would want to know about the study (which has made the Irish papers, though not in great detail) is:

1. How statistically random was the sample, and
2. Given that Iraq ain't that congenial a place for Westerners and those working for them, how statistically random could it be?

I've got some basic familiarity with how statistics work (being a historian and all), but I'm not a statistician.

Sorry if I'm not being especially argumentative here, Lo, but it may well be that the situation is just too fucked-up to really get good numbers right now.

Hell, you look at a whole range of historical catastrophes, and death toll estimates vary widely.

Quincy

[Editing in--Alan added the link to the critique of the study's methodology subsequent to this post. I have not read through the latter link, and this post therefore does not reflect or respond to what it says. QRL]

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited October 19, 2006).]

[Alan Sullivan]

Agree with your last statement, Quincy, but the whole point of springing these bogus figures right now is to break America's will and drive it out of Iraq. What happens then? It won't be peace on Earth, that's for damn sure.

[Janet Kenny]

It isn't exactly Peace on Earth now.

Who makes these Dime weapons and who pays them?
Janet

[Quincy Lehr]

Alan--

One of the odd things about not living in the States is subsisting on very little American news, but rather reading about that time when Enda Kenny passed wind in the Dail while asking a pointed question about road gradation that left Bertie Ahern somewhat flustered on the front page. (Okay, okay, I do look at the New York Times online and pick up the International Herald-Tribune several times a week.)

But I really don't think these figures are going to "break the will" of the American public. A pretext for invasion that was totally bogus and a series of administration projections that were wildly wrong if not outright mendacious seem to be doing that job quite well on their own. Everything the Bushies (and, more or less, the "opposition" Democrats) told us about why the war would be a Good Thing is pretty much horse shit. A study that may well be flawed is relative small potatoes.

Quincy

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

What they fail to mention is they estimate about 30,000 of the deaths were from Coalition troops - the rest are from Iraqi internal fighting - they're killing their own population in religious power struggles.

When we began discussing the invasion when it was eminent, I commented this had the potential to be another Viet Nam, and was promptly pooh-poohed. The Soviets had this same damned problem in the Middle East, which we failed to consider. Anyone with the least bit ot tactical / strategic experience saw a long occupation from the beginning - it was not politic to mention it, though. The figment of a quick decisive victory in the minds of the American people was convenient.

There's no such thing as a polite war. The objective is either to destroy the enemy, or their will to fight. We're hesitant to do the former, because the casualty rate among non-participants would be even higher (it's impossible to tell the enemy from the non-combatants when the enemy refuses to cooperate and wear uniforms) and we're incapable of the latter when fighting an enemy who thinks they'll get to heaven by killing and dying.

And, of course, now we can't just pull out, because the enemy would see it as a victory, and encourage more aggression on their part.

This is going to continue for a long time, people.

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited October 19, 2006).]

[Lo]

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ has a pretty good response to the Lancet article here: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14/0.php

If you follow the pages through to the ending summary page, the last paragraph is heartbreakingly simple and yet, the truth it states is stunning in its simplicity.

......... totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.

Lo

P.S. to Janet...the DIME story is back on the other thread, I think....we've moved the Iraq story to this thread in order not to confuse the two. Just as a quick answer, however, it's not at all unusual or uncommon for ALL countries and all peoples to be continually inventing new weapons.....of all sorts - conventional, nuclear, chemical and biological.

It's what men do.

They get scared and they invent new and improved ways to kill one another in an attempt to allay their fears.

It doesn't work, it's never worked, but they do it anyhow....because to not do it would mean you would have to do one of two things....give up or find a better way.

Lo

[Daniel Haar]

Originally posted by Alan Sullivan:
Instead of 550k imaginary deaths in Iraq, there will probably be that many for real one day, in the US...

And after that there will really be hell to pay in the Middle East.

Alan

Which part of the Middle East? (I count about 16 countries.) Or will any bit do?