Have 600,000 Iraqis died violently since 2003?

Everyone understood you, what you said was very clear. You even provided a quote from the second paper by the relevant authors to emphasise what you meant. It just happened to be bullshit and now you are furiously backpedalling and dishing out the soft soap to reframe what you said as something more defensible. Wow, so it's like when I said that if you actually read the paper you would realise your position was bullshit you actually went and read the paper and discovered that indeed your position was bullshit. But for some reason rather than coming out and saying that you were wrong you are trying to pass it off as if you understood what the paper really said all the time and we just didn't understand you.TTFN,WK

I actually Firefox, but it turns out the format is similar so it did the trick perfectly. I really appreciate it. You have no idea how frustrating it was. Thank you, much. Serves that scarecrow right. Not exactly. I'm saying that the Lancet report is being misused as some sort of tool of vengence to equate to "civilian deaths at the hands of coalition forces," to further stigmatize the war effort. If you type that in to a search engine, blog after blog is misrepresenting the issue. But I also find it unfair to count non-violent deaths that do not pertain to either sectarian violence or collateral damage that incured due to US forces. As well, one has to ask whether or not insurgents, who are clear combatants, are not being grouped into the civilian deaths. And this especially because 'gunshot' is listed as the number one cause of death. A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many times higher than any previous estimate.A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here.A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here.Here's one that sounds reasonable: A new study by public health researchers estimates that up to 600,000 Iraqi people ” nearly 1 in 40 ” have died violently since the American-led invasion of the country in March 2003.Under the heading, "Interpretations," on the first page of the Lancet report, it states that the number of people in Iraq has escalated but that the deaths attributed to coalition forces have diminished. Yeah-- duh! -- is right. Of course war is expensive in terms of human lives. That goes without saying. But aside from the methodology of the report being called into question, the distortion that the figure 600,000 is representative of soley violent death, particularly at the hands of a careless coalition force, is what's so disturbing to me. My chief concern is the improbability of the accuracy of the report. All other figures are no where in the same ballpark, with as much as 450,000 disparity between them.

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"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." -Theodore Roosevelt

Why? If, say, US forces bomb a desalinization plant, and while a military installation is forced to surrender from the lack of water, several viliages lose their source of potable water, and hundreds of children and elderly die as a result?That's a non-violent death, but it's certainly the result of the war. Wars kill in many, many ways; it's not always bullets and bombs. Incredulity about the results doesn't impeach the methodology.

I looked at the first of these "objectionable" studies. Maybe I misread, but I sure cannot find where the Lancet report is being misused there.I am getting the impression that "stigmatize" applies here mainly to what you are posting.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

That political bodies that have a political interest in rejecting the figures reject the figures is not surprising. Especially when two of those political bodies have mislead the public about the issue before. a) This is not relevant to the veracity of the figures.b) Your response is in stark contrast to the original statement you have made in Message 14 where you said "No, the purpose of the inquiry is to established the number of "civilian casualties" at the hands of US troops. " Agreed - which is why I don't lend much credit to those particular figures, and why the report goes to lengths to express that the figures are difficult to corroborate and states that they are only based on witness testimony. It was discussed in the paper and in the OP. The methodologies that come to the lower count demonstratably underestimate the true casualty rate. In the recent past the most accurate those methods have been is to capture 20% of deaths. In some cases they only capture 5% of deaths. It was a different report, from a much earlier stage in the war, and is not under discussion here. The report we are exmamining has different numbers, it discusses the range within which the 95% covers. The lower bound in this report is about 450,000. It states that the chances of it being much different from the 655,000 drops off dramatically as you move only a short distance away from this figure. Either way, we don't argue by link here, you should be able to sumarize the argument presented there and bring it here.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

You say "I'm saying that the Lancet report is being misused as some sort of tool of vengence to equate to "civilian deaths at the hands of coalition forces," to further stigmatize the war effort. If you type that in to a search engine, blog after blog is misrepresenting the issue." And provide links, without supporting quotes. This link simply rehashes the news story. It doesn't discuss hands of coalition forces, stigmatization or any such thing. Why do you think it supports your previous statements?Indeed - it merely states what is said in the Lancet:

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The Lancet study, funded largely by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, said that while the percentage of deaths attributed to the U.S.-led coalition has decreased over the past year, coalition forces were involved in 31 percent of all violent deaths since March 2003. Most of the deaths in Iraq, particularly in the past two years, have been caused by insurgent, terrorist and sectarian violence.

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This one once againt hashes out the facts of the Lancet. It even offers up some counter-points.The other article seems to be the exact same article as this one. We need some details as to why the methodology is in question.
How is the 600,000 figure being distorted as being soley violent death, that's what the methodology has concluded. Since this is additional to the methodology issues, what distortions are you referring to? Who is saying anything about a careless coalition force? All that is being said is that 31% of deaths were attributed to the coalition.Why is the report improbable? I have addressed your "but that's lots of people" concern. The "How come nobody has noticed" concern is discussed. Address the rebuttals or provide another reason you find the figures improbable. Is it just incredulity? Indeed, a valid concern. Perhaps we should consider what percentage of Iraqi civilians are part of an insurgency and see how that might skew the results. This sounds like a more constructive avenue of debate.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Um, no! What the paper actually says is... So the proportion of deaths attributed to coalition forces has gone down but the actual number has gone up, exactly the opposite of what you claim.It is this sort of fundamental misunderstanding of very simple facts that makes people doubt the extent to which you understand the research you are supposed to be discussing.TTFN,WK

Who's making up facts? I'm pointing out anamolies. Its really just that simple. Yes, I know what white phosphorus is and its not nice if it comes in contact with your skin. What you may not know is that its not being used as a weapon. They dropped it to illuminate the surrounding area. At one time, white phosphorus grenades were used as an incendiary device, but that usage was outlawed a number of years ago. The US is not apart of that treaty, however, for reasons of posterity, they no longer use it as a weapon.

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But the US took precautions to avoid that as much as possible by dropping leaflets in advance warning the people that missle strikes would be underway.

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There is a unit of the Army commonly referred to as 'Psy-Ops' which is short for 'Psychological Operations.' There entire function within the US Army is to provide psychological deterrences to try and coerce potentially hostile enemy combatants to relinquish their arms and stop fighting. The idea is to disseminate either information or disinformation as a deterent.If you remember the Waco incident, similar tactics using 'mind games' were employed to coerce the Branch Dividians into submission. Please present your facts that the US conducts at least two air stikes a day. I find this figure hard to believe because its required to have gained hard intelligence on any suspected site before an operation of that scale is launched.

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If bodies aren't recovered then how can anyone reasonably account for their deaths?

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Because there has to be a baseline established first. They went to various homes and asked the family how their family member had died, an from it, garnered an algorithm. I already explained that a simple interview is not sufficient in establishing a trustworthy sample. This is why the Iraqi Ministry of Health is at odds with the findings because the IMH issues the actual death certificates. And according to the researchers of the Lancet study, they asked 545 (87%) households to provide some sort of proof that a person had lived and died in Iraq. From the ones that had certificates, to the ones that didn't, they established that there was a general concensus according to them. But all they did is multiply the samples since, as its been pointed out, that there is no way this team could have corroborated the deaths of 600,000 people. But the Iraqi Ministry of Health IS tasked to know and account for all the people that have died. The Lancet claims that the discrepency is attributed to the IMH not conducting full-scale investigations. "Our estimate of excess death is far higher than those reported in Iraq through passive surveillance measure. This discrepency is not unexpected. Data from passive surveillance is rarely complete, even is stable circumstances, and are even less complete during times of conflict, when access is restricted and fatal events could be intentionally hidden." Yeah, but you have to some sort of evidence, like a body, to know if somebody died or not. In fact, I don't expect any of these figures to be accurate. But the Lancet's figure is so vastly different, adding upwards of 550,000 extra deaths, deaths that they can't account for. This disparity is insuperable. No Crash, I don't expect Ahmed to stop on his way out. What I expect is for a team conducting an empirical test not to base their facts on the testimony of Ahmed alone. That's ridiculous. If there were really this many people, over 400 a day!, there would be bodies strewn all over the country. As evidenced by the reports, we hear of 1 to 20 a day in Iraq. That is too many! But over 400 everyday that isn't corroborated by anything legitimate cannot pass as a legitimate test, no matter how ingenious the method may be. Do you understand what I'm getting at? No, you don't understand. The media picked up on the Lancet because it helps support their effort. What I mean is, if over 400 people were dying on a daily basis, you wouldn't be hearing, "4 people were slain in an incident involving a roadside bomb in Anbar Province today due to the increasing sectarian violence. As well, 9 Iraqis were killed today when a US Apache helicopter unwittingly sent three hellfire rockets into a suspected insurgent stronghold." That's something along what a normal day sounds like in the news. If there were over 400 people being killed a day, the evidence of such wide-scale massacres would be more than evident. Its pretty to miss 400 dead bodies. Even if somebody made a concerted effort to hide half of the bodies, the rest would be found and would be reported. If it were really as bad as the Lancet portrays it, there is no one that would ret their jollies off more on a juicy story like that than the world media. Do you understand now?I have no doubt, whatsoever, that as much as 50,000 people have died as a direct result of the war. That's alot of people, and that's consistent with news reports. Especially when that figure dwarfs the 3,000 slain US troops. And that's mostly what we hear in the reports, is it not? Now, imagine, really imagine how much 600,000 is. According to the US Census of 2000, that figure is larger than the entire population of Metro Boston area!Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : edit to add link

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"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." -Theodore Roosevelt

I don't see how that's a response to my comment. You didn't "point out an anomaly", you made a statement about the study that was 100% false. Here it is again:

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No, the purpose of the inquiry is to established the number of "civilian casualties" at the hands of US troops.

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Absolutely false. What purpose does it serve your argument to say false things about the study? Nice euphamism. They're not bombing people with an illegal chemical weapon; they're "illuminating" them. Fascinating, but irrelevant. Let me be more direct. I'm challenging your "dropping leaflets in Iraq" claim. The last time we did that was during the Clinton years, warning Iraqis not to fire on airplanes enforcing the no-fly zone. We have not dropped any leaflets during this Iraq conflict. No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/app.4.2.b.php

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These reports have 25 air strikes per month to the end of August, giving 200 strikes; in September, 62; in October, 122; in November 120 (Military Confirms Surge in Airstrikes. Washington Post, December 24, 2005.); the December figure comes from the London Times which reports an "expected" 150 (US forces step up Iraq airstrikes. The Times (London), January 1, 2006. Total: 654

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654 airstrikes in 2005 is roughly 2 a day. As you can see, though, it increases through the year from about 1 strike per 2 days to more than 4 strikes per day in October, November, and December. These are the military's own figures as reported by the above sources. Firstly, in 92% of cases, researchers were able to obtain death certificates for reported victims.Indeed, the numbers are extrapolated from a sample. That's a basic statistical technique with a proven track record. There's not a single field of science or medicine that doesn't do that, and you accept statistical sampling in every single instance - except for this one, where you have a partisan axe to grind. Now, all of a sudden, you're not sure if it's appropriate to draw conclusions from the whole from a sample of it. Uh-huh. Color me not impressed.You don't like the conclusion, but you don't have any reason to assail the methodology. Since when? We invaded Iraq on the premise that Saddam was murdering thousands. How many of those bodies do you think we had ever recovered? We've only recovered maybe 1 in 20 since the invasion.Seems to me you were perfectly happy to accept conclusions of death sans corpus when it fit your political agenda. Now all of a sudden, you need the bodies right in front of you for proof? That's nonsense. Or, perhaps, buried all together quickly. You know, kind of a "mass grave." Gosh, where have I heard that term before?It really is a lot of dead people. I know it's hard for you to believe, since your talk radio stations keep telling you how much "progress" Iraq has made.But they're lying to you. Iraq is in the middle of a catastrophic civil war. 50,000 Iraqis flee the country each month. 50,000! Look, if you don't want to take my word for it, take the word of an actual Iraqi:

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For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc, seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that's about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush- especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers. So far, the only Iraqis I know pretending this number is outrageous are either out-of-touch Iraqis abroad who supported the war, or Iraqis inside of the country who are directly benefiting from the occupation ($) and likely living in the Green Zone.

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The chaos and lack of proper facilities is resulting in people being buried without a trip to the morgue or the hospital. During American military attacks on cities like Samarra and Fallujah, victims were buried in their gardens or in mass graves in football fields. Or has that been forgotten already?

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We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons - with so many different ways to die, is the number so far fetched?

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There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.

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Error: Blog Not Found | TypePadI guess I do hear that, like every day. What news are you listening to? I mean, you're not going to hear that on Laura Ingram or Sean Hannity, because they're trying to tell you how swimmingly things are going in Iraq. It's crucial to their propaganda that you believe Iraq is a success, that Bush actually succeeded there. If they were to actually tell you the truth, you would know that Bush's war plan failed in Iraq.I simply don't understand how you can say that this isn't being reported. Like I said, it's all over the "liberal media" that you ignore in favor of your conservative radio echo chambers. No wonder you don't see it. Evident in, say, 50,000 Iraqi refugees every month? Well, here's some: No webpage found at provided URL: http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b206/fastestsquirrel/MassGraves2.jpgand here's some more: No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.untiredwithloving.org/iraq_mass_grave.jpgCan't forget these: No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.pulseoftheworld.com/script/data/upimages/041013iraqgraves7.jpgDon't make me go on with this. You really can't imagine what could be done with 400 bodies a day? Even with an Iraqi herself telling you how absolutely nobody in Iraq doubts the Lancet study as being essentially accurate? The world media has been reporting this for 3 years. Where have you been? Why do you think people hate Americans, hate Bush so much?Don't you get it, yet? Everybody knows about this but you. It's been all over the news for years. The reason you don't know that is because you ignore the mainstream media - you think it's liberal so you don't pay attention to it. The reason you don't know about the mass graves - the ones after Saddam - or the 50,000 refugees per month is because people like Laura Ingram and Michael Medved are doing all they can to make sure you don't learn the truth. Part of that is that they never ever mention it themselves. Another part is the discrediting of the mainstream media as "liberal" so that you learn not to pay any attention to it.Can't you see how you've been used? Everything you say doesn't get reported has been reported for the past 3 years, mostly internationally. That's why nobody likes America anymore. Didn't you wonder about that, why we're so hated?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I think you misunderstood NJ's point. He was saying that that is what the news sounds like, but that if 400 people a day were dying the reports would be more like "80 civilians dead after being caught in crossfire as coalition troops battle insurgents. 100 die in indiscriminate airstrike".It may not be a particularly good point but it isn't the utterly ludicrous one you seemed to think he was making.TTFN,WK

Well, you do hear the numbers killed. Whether it is coalition gunfire is really not the issue. We were the ones that removed what governing bodies there were. Will the survivors, family and friends of those dying blame the other Iraqis or the US?For example, if you just google +iraq +bodies you get a whole string of such reports, 60 in Bagdad, 20 in Mosul, 16 tortured bodies from some unspecified location.The point is that lots of people have died and are dying. Whether it is 600,000 or 300,000 or just 100,000 it is a lot of folk.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Sure, but googling is an active news seeking behaviour. If one were to only get ones news , passively as it were, from one or two limited sources on radio and television then the sort of reports NJ suggested might be all you hear, giving the erroneous impression that there were only 14 war related fatalities that day simply because your news sources only considered those 14 to be particularly newsworthy.My point was that Crash was trying to disagree with NJ by saying that you did hear news of the type NJ suggested when NJ's argument was also that you heard that type of news. So in fact Crash was agreeing with NJ that the news only reported about 14 casualties a day.Perhaps Crash should have done what you just have and suggested or shown that in fact the news is reporting casualties in numbers considerably in excess of what NJ suggested and more in line with the figure suggested by the study.TTFN,WK

That would obviously be a consideration. But a man dying of a heart attack is hardly the fault of anyone other than the man-- unless of course the coalition is force-feeding him Big Mac's. Then I'd say, unquestionably, that they are culpable.

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My chief concern is the improbability of the accuracy of the report.

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Nor does credulity validate it.

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"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." -Theodore Roosevelt

Precisely. Thank you.

This is based on the assumption that Coalition forces kill most of the innocent Iraqis. Innocent being defined as men, women, and children who just happen to get caught in the crossfire or are collateral damage from a missle strike on a building.US forces err so much on the side of caution that in many cases it is detrimental to the mission, or scrubs the mission completly. For instance, my convoy was hit by a SAF (small arms fire) and RPG attack initiated by an IED. The shooters popped a rounds at us for a few seconds, threw down their rifles, then conducted retrograde (that means they ran, standard shoot, scoot and boogie). When the Apaches that were giving us cover closed in on the running individuals, they couldn't engage them because they had no weapons in had, even though they were shooting at us 2 minutes before. Insurgents use our ROE against us very effectively. Yes, someone might catch a stray bullet from our return fire, but it isn't mass casualties like your message seems to conclude.Now let me address targeting. If I do a targeting package on an individual, and there are any civilians (wife, children) that live in his house, calling in CAS (close air support) is immediately not an option. We get to go knock on his door and say hello. Most of the time we want to either detain or capture the individual for various reasons. Most raids take place in the wee hours of the morning. Alot of the time there isn't much of a fight because if someone breaks down your door at 200 in the morning looking like Darth Vader, you're going to be in too much shock to do anything meaningful. Yes, some raids don't go as planned and innocent people die, but every precaution is in place to prevent that. It doesn't meet the commanders intent if we simply kill the locals. Then the locals don't like us.Most of the civilians die from insurgent attacks or sectarian attacks that are instigated by insurgent activity. No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspxThat's a pretty good site to see who is killing civies. Most sites have statistics, but this one tries to do it in an analytical fashion.

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Next time I am too lazy, next time I am too tired, Next time I don't have enough[/url] time....