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Title: Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit
Source:
The Independent
URL Source: http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/118356
Published: Feb 14, 2007
Author: Les Roberts
Post Date: 2007-02-14 09:58:38 by leveller
Keywords: None
Views: 36232
Comments: 457
The US and Britain have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide 14 February 2007 On both sides of the Atlantic, a process of spinning science is preventing a serious discussion about the state of affairs in Iraq. The government in Iraq claimed last month that since the 2003 invasion between 40,000 and 50,000 violent deaths have occurred. Few have pointed out the absurdity of this statement. There are three ways we know it is a gross underestimate. First, if it were true, including suicides, South Africa, Colombia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia have experienced higher violent death rates than Iraq over the past four years. If true, many North and South American cities and Sub-Saharan Africa have had a similar murder rate to that claimed in Iraq. For those of us who have been in Iraq, the suggestion that New Orleans is more violent seems simply ridiculous. Secondly, there have to be at least 120,000 and probably 140,000 deaths per year from natural causes in a country with the population of Iraq. The numerous stories we hear about overflowing morgues, the need for new cemeteries and new body collection brigades are not consistent with a 10 per cent rise in death rate above the baseline. And finally, there was a study, peer-reviewed and published in The Lancet, Europe's most prestigious medical journal, which put the death toll at 650,000 as of last July. The study, which I co-authored, was done by the standard cluster approach used by the UN to estimate mortality in dozens of countries each year. While the findings are imprecise, the lower range of possibilities suggested that the Iraq government was at least downplaying the number of dead by a factor of 10. There are several reasons why the governments involved in this conflict have been able to confuse the issue of Iraqi deaths. Our Lancet report involved sampling and statistical analysis, which is rather dry reading. Media reports always miss most deaths in times of war, so the estimate by the media-based monitoring system, http://Iraqbodycount.org (IBC) roughly corresponds with the Iraq government's figures. Repeated evaluations of deaths identified from sources independent of the press and the Ministry of Health show the IBC listing to be less than 10 per cent complete, but because it matches the reports of the governments involved, it is easily referenced. Several other estimates have placed the death toll far higher than the Iraqi government estimates, but those have received less press attention. When in 2005, a UN survey reported that 90 per cent of violent attacks in Scotland were not recorded by the police, no one, not even the police, disputed this finding. Representative surveys are the next best thing to a census for counting deaths, and nowhere but Iraq have partial tallies from morgues and hospitals been given such credence when representative survey results are available. The Pentagon will not release information about deaths induced or amounts of weaponry used in Iraq. On 9 January of this year, the embedded Fox News reporter Brit Hume went along for an air attack, and we learned that at least 25 targets were bombed that day with almost no reports of the damage appearing in the press. Saddam Hussein's surveillance network, which only captured one third of all deaths before the invasion, has certainly deteriorated even further. During last July, there were numerous televised clashes in Anbar, yet the system recorded exactly zero violent deaths from the province. The last Minister of Health to honestly assess the surveillance network, Dr Ala'din Alwan, admitted that it was not reporting from most of the country by August 2004. He was sacked months later after, among other things, reports appeared based on the limited government data suggesting that most violent deaths were associated with coalition forces. The consequences of downplaying the number of deaths in Iraq are profound for both the UK and the US. How can the Americans have a surge of troops to secure the population and promise success when the coalition cannot measure the level of security to within a factor of 10? How can the US and Britain pretend they understand the level of resentment in Iraq if they are not sure if, on average, one in 80 families have lost a household member, or one in seven, as our study suggests? If these two countries have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide, and have actively worked to mask this fact, how will they credibly be able to criticise Sudan or Zimbabwe or the next government that kills thousands of its own people? For longer than the US has been a nation, Britain has pushed us at our worst of moments to do the right thing. That time has come again with regard to Iraq. It is wrong to be the junior partner in an endeavour rigged to deny the next death induced, and to have spokespeople effectively respond to that death with disinterest and denial. Our nations' leaders are collectively expressing belligerence at a time when the populace knows they should be expressing contrition. If that cannot be corrected, Britain should end its role in this deteriorating misadventure. It is unlikely that any historians will record the occupation of Iraq in a favourable light. Britain followed the Americans into this débâcle. Wouldn't it be better to let history record that Britain led them out? The writer is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2268067.ece
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#342. To: BeAChooser (#277)
Strange. That doesn't mention missiles or using them to hit the US from Iraq. How foolish of me to assume that Bush meant a missile attack. Once again, BAC, your perspicacity has unearthed a subtlety that had heretofore escaped me. You and George W Bush really are masters of nuance. Here are some of the possible alternatives to missile attack that he could have intended to imply: "And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack [by canoe][by FedEx][by hot air balloon] [by carrier pigeon] in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given."
BAC is quite expert at splitting the hairs of language. If he has his way, there's no reading between the proverbial lines. On ElPee, that was normally accompanied with a "liar" label.
************ Iraqi Death Survey Part VI The effects of migration on the extrapolated numbers The data used to determine the number of clusters per Governorate, as well as the probability of a particular Administrative Region's selection within the Governorate, and to extrapolate to the final 600,000+ figure come from 2004 estimates of Iraqi population. There are several things to think about here. First of all, how accurate are 2004 population estimates likely to be, to begin with? Census data from the Saddam era has every reason to be suspect, and in so far as the 2004 estimates base calculations on pre-2003 census data, they are likely to be flawed. Moreover, independent estimates made in 2004 are likely to suffer from many of the same uncertainties present in this study, namely logistical difficulties in conducting surveys, imprecise administrative records and the like. There's simply no way to know how good these 2004 estimates are, and every reason to believe that they are rough estimates, at best. Be that as it may, and assuming for the moment that they are accurate, what effects do massive displacement since that time have on the extrapolated numbers? According to official reports , over 180,000 internally displaced refugees were reported just between the months of February and June of 2006. Undoubtedly those not registering pushes the number much higher. As I pointed out below, the survey methodology means that these displaced refugees had very little chance of being surveyed. But in addition to that, their migration is sure to skew the analysis of the data. The authors acknowledge as much in their paper: "The population data used for cluster selection were at least 2 years old, and if populations subsequently migrated from areas of high mortality to those with low mortality, the sample might have over-represented the high-mortality areas." Well, not just over-represented in sampling, but also over-estimated in projections. In addition, of course, emigration from Iraq entirely would cause the estimates to be overstated by a corresponding amount (if the population were only 22.5 million, rather than 25 million, for example, then the true extrapolated estimate would have to be revised downward by 10%) The authors, however, also make this very misleading statement about internal migration: "internal population movement would be less likely to affect results appreciably [than emigration from Iraq.]" Perhaps less likely, but the effect could be considerable: Consider the following simplified (and exaggerated) example: Suppose there are 2 regions, each with population = 1 million in 2004, and suppose that, from 2004 to 2006 one of the regions is subjected to extreme violence, while the other is not. Suppose that this causes 50% of the population (500,000) to move from the region of extreme violence to the region without. Now, suppose a survey is done in the two regions, where we find that the violent death toll in the war-torn region is 10 per 1000, while in the more peaceful region it is 2 per 1000 (in the latest 1 year period.) Assuming that the surveys are accurate, we would see that: Actual deaths in war-torn region: 10 per 1000 x 500,000 = 5,000 Extrapolated deaths in war-torn region: 10 per 1000 x 1,000,000 = 10,000 Actual deaths in more peaceful region: 2 per 1000 x 1,500,000 = 3,000 Extrapolated deaths in more peaceful region: 2 per 1000 x 1,000,000 = 2,000 Total actual deaths: 8,000 Total extrapolated deaths: 12,000 Difference: 4000 deaths or an over-estimate of 50%. Now, the true changes from 2004 to 2006 are liable to be far less than the 50% in the example. However, there is also the multiplier effect of overestimation in sampling combined with overestimation in extrapolation: Suppose that a city had a population of 50,000 in 2004, but due to a flare-up of violence, half the people left the city by 2006 (this is NOT at all unlikely, there are reports of entire cities becoming ghost towns overnight, due to the actions of the various militias and insurgent groups, see, for example, Fallujah.) Even though its actual 2006 population was 25,000, it would have twice the likelihood that it should have of being selected, based on its current population. And, given that it had suffered this tremendous out-migration, it would be far likelier to be in a very violent area, contributing higher than representative numbers, which in turn get multiplied by a higher than correct factor. On the other hand, if it were in a very violent area, it's quite possible that the survey teams would simply have decided that it was too risky to get there, and selected, at their whim, another, safer place (which, again, takes this survey completely out of the realm of statistical analysis, without doing a psychoanalysis of the survey teams, and attempting to massage the data in some way to compensate for their selection biases.) Again, the purpose of these analyses is not to show that the actual numbers are higher or lower than the survey's estimates, but rather to analyze the many flaws in both the methodology and interpretation of the survey which may lead it to be not especially meaningful. Update: BBC has more on Iraqi displacement estimates here. ************
********** Iraqi Death Survey, Final I had several more posts prepared, but why bother, when the Iraq Body Count website has done a much better, more thorough job than I could: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php Thanks to all who looked over my material. Notropis ************************
So lemme see.. it's your contention that the number of civilian deaths are being inflated ? What is your position regarding the deaths of soldiers and mercenaries..why are the casuality numbers for them not being reported?
Yawn. BAC, you ridiculous, dishonest, sociopathic moron, call me when you have a legitimate source for the pile of -- UTTERLY UNSUPPORTED SHIT -- you have been spewing for the past two days. Your unsupported word on the subject is nullity. If fact it's worse than nullity because you got busted for posting fake links last night - look on the thread above. Given that, it's probably more correct to say that your unsupported word is the word of a failed and transparent would be bullshit artist. Don't waste my time with your kook blogs and five year old NewsMax articles. And don't waste my time if your mental defect prevents you from being honest - which I truely suspect is the case. Take me off your ping list. I haven't got time for the mentally ill who can't even see the objection to their silly shit, much less respond to it. In closing, the lone kook blog you cite in support in your nutty spew above isn't a source. It's either a joke or a deliberate attempt to mislead.
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"John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the number 1 ranked school of Public Health in the world" - excellent point that bears being repeated - and its methodology for ascertaining mortality and disease figures in populations has been used in previous wars. From the updated John Hopkins report: "The mortality survey used well-established and scientifically proven methods for measuring mortality and disease in populations. These same survey methods were used to measure mortality during conflicts in the Congo, Kosovo, Sudan and other regions." For some people, the John Hopkins methodology is acceptable most of the time except when the aggressor in the war, in which mortality figures are being calculated, is our government.
Excuse me, it wasn't a single ridiculous and partisan kook blog you were relying upon to support your bullshit, it was two ridiculous and partisan kook blogs. Sorry. My mistake. But you everything I said above still holds. Don't bother me with your silly unsupported crap.
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just wanted you guys to see the photo of BAC that has now surfaced on the internet and is being circulated. BAC is on the left. thanks BAC for making it available.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Only if by "expert" you mean "clumsy."
BAC, maybe I wasn't clear in my posts above. The technical term for what you have been doing for the past three days is called "pulling facts and figures out of your ass". What you want to do is start a contest to see who can pull the most facts and figures out of their ass the fastest. This allows you to obfuscate important issues and advance your agenda in a dishonest manner - but you know this. Were I to pull enough facts and figures out of my ass, I could prove that I was Ron Brown and that I was still dead. And everyone knows this. Hence, nobody here is impressed with your tactic. Is that more clear?
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What boggles my mind is that in the WTC debate, BAC refuses to accept any information from a person with a doctorate in physics because he isn't a metallurgist. He refuses to accept eye witness testimony from firemen and cops because they are only firemen and cops and not trained explosive experts. Yet at the same time, in this debate, BAC accepts as gospel information from a blogger who appears to have no training whatsoever in epidemiology, and who's expertise appears to be that he collects old mathematics textbooks. Truly insane.
don't underestimate BAC. he is a very formidable opponent in any argument. (I should know - I'm the one who first started calling him BAC). BAC has NEVER lost an argument. He will not admit that he's wrong. He will always spam you with information even extremely detailed information. He will not quit arguing under any circumstances. Unless the other guy quits first. therefore, he always wins. no matter what. By the way BAC - that is a great photo of you above. wish I had badeye's picture.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Yes, I am very aware of BAC's MO. However, when he's forced to post opinions from a blog whose owner's expertise is that he collects old math books, he's lost the argument. It matters not that he will not or cannot accept that fact. It will be more than plain to anyone lurking on this thread that he's grasping at straws.
lol
It shouldn't be lost - for a single minute - that a key function of disinformationists such as BAC is to muddy the waters and damage the reputations of serious posters, for the benefit of any casual surfers or serious researchers who might look to these forums for ideas and/or material.
Any moment now, BAC will suggest another equally absurd alternative, and then obstinately argue that Bush really could have meant to suggest that means of delivery: tugboat, or cruiseship, or email, for instance. However, he has brought 350 post threads to 4um.
So who is paying BAC?
Good question. I doubt that we'll ever know.
I say nobody. BAC is only dangerous when he's on your side. Goldi figured that out. Kicked him off LP for being a kook. Sort of like kicking one of the monkeys out of the cage for chittering and flinging monkey dung. There was just something about him that drew her attention. Then he comes over here and alienates everyone in a couple of hours. Demonstrating how much he sucks as an advocate. So who's going to pay a boob like BAC when they can get a nice grad student who would actually convert people to the cause?
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
The issue BAC wants to avoid is that these were all killed at the hands of American War Crimes. The numbers matter little, whatever they are. He's sucking posters into the abyss of "details." (Disinformation tactic)
True enough, but maybe his employers don't bother to check his work.
Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is. ~George W. Bush BAC, what are you going to do about that imposter who is impersonating you and posting as BeAChooser?
Go on Diana ... quote EXACTLY what Bush (or any administration official) said that makes you think they said missiles could be launched from Iraq and hit the US in 45 minutes. That is what you very clearly claimed. If you can't, then I think you either misunderstood what was said or it is you were the one playing word games.
The problem with you and your friend, Halek, is you apparently can't be troubled to actually read what I posted. For example, didn't you see this? http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf It's a study by the UN Development program which found that the 2004 Lancet study was off by about a factor of 4. The UN found after the first year that there were 24,000 war-related deaths (18,000-29,000, with a 95% confidence level), which is approximately 1/4th the number of excess deaths the Les Roberts and his John Hopkins team claim they found with their survey. And the UN used similar techniques - clusters, etc. - but with a much larger data set. Didn't you see the citations to the UN and WHO studies done before the invasion that were blessed by the same journal that peer reviewed Les Robert's study? Didn't you see that they found much larger pre-war mortality rates than Les Robert's study came up with (7-8 per 1000 per year versus 5 per 1000 per year). Surely you aren't trying to dispute that fact because if you are then it shows you not only haven't read my posts you are very unfamiliar with the literature on this topic. That number is a key parameter in determining the excess deaths. If this number is actually closer to 7 or 8 then 5 or 5.5, then the number of excess deaths drops dramatically. You aren't fooling anyone with this tactic, Halek. You haven't addressed a single FACT I listed in post #123. Don't think that readers of this thread won't notice that. You don't like the blog I've been posting from most recently? Don't want to read it? Fine with me. I don't care. I'm not trying to convince you or the others posting on this thread. I know that's hopeless. But some of the forums lurkers may read what I post. Here's a nice summary the blog author did of what he found. I haven't found anything wrong with it: ************************ Update: Here's more from a real-life statistical researcher, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009108 Iraqi Death Survey Wrap-Up After re-reading the articles by Steven E. Moore, in the Wall Street Journal and Iraq Body Count, as well as perusing the comments on many other blogs, I've decided that one last post might be in order on this topic. I'll break my observations down into three broad topics: 1. The construction of the survey (I also add, here, that Iraq Body Count's criticism of the results of the study, based on what I would describe as face validity, seem to me to be very compelling. I won't address those issues, as I'm in no way competent to offer an analysis that could compete with that of Iraq Body Count.) 1. The construction of the survey: A) Steven Moore makes much of the fact that 47 clusters were used, and this is far too small, given the extremely non-uniform distribution of violent deaths in Iraq. He may well be right; he's certainly more experienced in surveying techniques than am I. Several opposing voices have pointed out that Mr. Moore himself has used only 75 clusters in similar situations, and others have used 150, or whatever. This sort of analysis quickly gets out of the realm of statistics and into polemics and name-calling. My problem with the number of clusters has to do with the assumed stratification of the population. This survey was, at the top level, a stratified survey. Iraq was divided into its Governorates, and the number of clusters chosen per Governorate was decided by population. Evidently, the authors had reason to believe that there might be significant differences in death rates between Governorates (which was confirmed by their own results.) Unfortunately, in all but two Governorates, three or fewer clusters were selected from that Governorate. In several cases, only a single cluster was selected. How can one possibly control for the possibility of getting a very unrepresentative cluster, when a sample of a single cluster is used? The authors say that they did comparisons between clusters and within clusters. Within clusters, I'll grant you. But between clusters? Evidently between clusters from different strata. This makes no sense. If you stratify a population, it is because you are assuming, a priori, that there may be significant differences between strata (Governorates.) You can't then turn around and compare between strata to attempt to identify, or compensate for, a single cluster as being representative or unrepresentative of that particular stratum. In the famous words of Kwame Nkrumah upon his removal by coup as the first President of Ghana, "You can't compare one thing." When a stratified sampling is used, it is common practice to use a large enough sample to get several draws (even if each draw consists of a cluster of individual samples) from each stratum. B) The method of selecting named main streets, followed by named cross streets is certainly not random, and quite possibly not representative. I don't know much about what proportion or which streets are named in Iraq. But I have had several experiences which lead me to question whether the distribution of officially named and recorded main streets and cross streets is uniform enough to use as a basis for a random selection procedure. How many streets are named? In rural America, where I now live, the answer is "almost all." But even ten years ago, the answer was "most in some places, none in others." The change came about due to the 911 emergency calling system. Here in my town of 300, the locals laugh that a UPS guy can find your house from the address, but none of the citizens could. My official address is XYZ 3rd St. (has been officially so named for about 8 years), but if I want to tell anyone where I live, I have to say "the old Hoffman house." I would suspect that much of Iraq still doesn't have streets (main or cross) that would be listed in an official directory. Back when I lived in Liberia, we conducted health and demographic surveys in conjunction with the national vaccination campaigns. I was just a foot soldier, working the villages of Grand Cape Mount County, and have no idea how the cluster selection process was done, but I can guarantee that it wasn't done by street name. Outside of Robertsport, there wasn't a named street in all of the county. At that time, I would guess that fewer than 50 communities in the entire nation had named streets, and that, even in the most advanced places, like Monrovia, fewer than 50% of the population lived on a named street, and those who did, were distinctly non-representative on many levels. On the urban side, the most densely populated part of Monrovia was an area called West Point. I lived there for about two months. I estimated the population at the time at about 30,000 -and there wasn't a single street, named or otherwise, in the entire slum. I'm thinking Sadr City, Baghdad looks a lot like West Point, Monrovia in that respect. My guess is that the systematic selection of only named cross streets to named main streets as listed in an official directory will systematically exclude broad segments of the Iraqi population, namely the rural, the urban poor, and the internally-displaced refugees. Whether this systematic bias skews the survey results up or down or is neutral, I don't know, nor does anyone else (if they did, then why the hell would anyone be doing the survey?) The fact is, that it's bad statistical methodology to use a systematic selection method that consistently biases against particular large demographics. Several posters to Tim Blair's blog (see link below) brought up a further problem with the selection process. Although it's a bit unclear from the description in the articles, it appears that all of the clusters were chosen from a named cross street, at a distance fairly close to a main street. The report says that "a house was chosen at random," but does not specify how that random starting place was selected, or what the maximum distance from the main street the starting point would be. They (the blog posters) suggest that violence might be concentrated nearer the main streets and that therefore the incidence of violent deaths would be higher close to a main street. Again, there's no way to know that, but, again, systematic bias is bad practice, and can lead to results far outside of the "margin of error" (which, of course, is constructed assuming an absolute absence of non-sampling, or "methodological," error.) 2. The conduct of the survey: Here's where my analysis gets a bit dicey, but I've got to point out what I see, and here's where my experience of many years as a statistics teacher, supervising and grading student projects, leads me to grave doubts about what the survey teams actually did and didn't do. A) The response rates reported by the teams, in terms of their success at finding a head of household or spouse at home and willing to participate are just amazingly, extremely, insanely, unbelievably high, especially given the fact that the teams never once paid a second visit to a household, due to the dangers they were facing, working in a war zone, and apparently worked throughout the day, rather than confining their visits to times when respondents would be likely to be home (see the time constraint concern, below.) The authors report that in 99%+ of the households, someone was at home. They also claim that in only one cluster were any empty households found among the 40 adjacent households surveyed. They phrase it so as to insinuate that they are minimizing the death estimates: "Households where all members were dead or had gone away were reported in only one cluster in Ninewa and these deaths are not included in this report." This quote has become a favorite among some blogs as showing that, in fact, the real numbers must be much higher than those in the survey, since any annihilated households have been discounted. It's definitely true that the phrase "were dead or had gone away" followed by the "these deaths" clearly implies that the researchers have reason to believe that the former occupants of the households in question were all dead (without explicitly stating so.) But what bothers me is the implication that vacant houses were supposedly encountered in only one cluster in all of Iraq, and, by insinuation, none vacated by emigration. With estimates of over a million recent emigrants from Iraq entirely, and up to that many again internally displaced persons (together pushing 7% of the total population of Iraq), one would have expected to see more, and more widely distributed, vacant houses -even if no entire households had been annihilated. The next question becomes, what's the difference between a "household where all members were dead or had gone away' and the"16 (0.9%) dwellings [where] residents were absent.' The latter evidently includes households where the surveyors believed that someone was still living, but no one was home when they knocked (or so I'm guessing.) In any event, the fact that 7% or more of Iraqis have vacated their homes (for other parts of Iraq, or other parts of the world, or Heaven,) and yet that less than 1% of the households surveyed found no one at home, is very suspicious to me. If nothing else, it calls into question the representativeness of the sampling. The <1% "not at home," even absent the contributing concerns, raises all kinds of red flags for me. B) Among those that were at home, only "15 (0.8%) households refused to participate." Given the purported methodology of the survey, this must also include any households where some members were home, but not the head of household or spouse, since we're guaranteed that the head of household or spouse were the only ones questioned. So we're left (combining A and B) with the astounding result that in more than 98% of the attempted contacts, the head of household or spouse was at home and willing to participate in the survey, and this, without a single call-back, since attempting a second contact with a household was deemed too dangerous for the survey teams. What makes these results doubly surprising is that the surveys must have been conducted throughout the day, in order to accomplish 40 surveys per day (see below.) So, somehow, a total of 15 or fewer "Dad's at work (or the Mosque or wherever), Mom's at the market" responses in over 1700 attempts. It's quite possible that 15+ years of teaching Introductory Statistics and similar courses has left me a bit jaded, but I know that I'd be calling these survey teams into my office, with some serious questions about what they actually did or did not do, before accepting any of their results. C) The time spent per survey belies the notion that great care was taken to insure the interviewees' comprehension of the questions and the interviewers' assurances of accuracy in the answers. According to the article, the survey teams "could typically complete a cluster of 40 households in 1 day." The survey teams reportedly consisted of 4 members each, two male and two female. It is not stated how or whether the teams split up in conducting the interviews. From what I've heard about Islamic culture, it would seem likely that they would not have gone out individually, given that some women might be reluctant to speak to a single man, and vice versa. So, if we assume that they split up into two pairs of one male, one female doctor each, then each pair was interviewing 20 households in a day. Even assuming 8 hours per day for fieldwork, this leaves less than 24 minutes per interview (less than because it takes some time to walk from house to house.) Based on my own experiences with face-to-face interviewing, this would be maybe 15 minutes for the actual survey questioning (there's always a cushion for formalities, pleasantries, getting settled and whatnot.) Somewhere in there, also, the interview teams had the time to reassure the interviewees of their honesty and good intentions, and double-check any questionalbe results. Read what the article claims went on at each interview: "The survey purpose was explained to the head of household or spouse, and oral consent was obtained. Participants were assured that no unique identifiers would be gathered. No incentives were provided. The survey listed current household members by sex, and asked who had lived in this household on January 1, 2002. The interviewers then asked about births, deaths, and in-migration and out-migration, and confirmed that the reported inflow and exit of residents explained the differences in composition between the start and end of the recall period. .... Deaths were recorded only if the decedent had lived in the household continuously for 3 months before the event. Additional probing was done to establish the cause and circumstances of deaths to the extent feasible, taking into account family sensitivities. At the conclusion of household interviews where deaths were reported, surveyors requested to see a copy of any death certificate and its presence was recorded. Where differences between the household account and the cause mentioned on the certificate existed, further discussions were sometimes needed to establish the primary cause of death." Now, it's tough to compare different cultures, but when I worked on the health surveys in Liberia, we'd figure on maybe 3 or 4 good interviews per day, by the time we were satisfied that the interviewees were understanding the questions correctly and we were understanding the answers correctly (and we always had at least one interviewer who was a native speaker of the dialect.) Canned political surveys in America tend to take over 5 minutes each, even though the interviewees pretty well know what to expect in terms of the questions, and the surveyors have no need to verify things like death certificates. So, 15 minutes or so per survey? I guess it's possible, since some might be very easy ("All six of us have lived here for many years, and no one has died"), but I'm suspicious whether the implied care was actually taken in the interview process. D) Due to safety concerns, the survey teams were apparently allowed great latitude in changing the pre-determined cluster to a more convenient one. In terms of statistical validity, this point is crucial. The article states: "Decisions on sampling sites were made by the field manager. The interview team were given the responsibility and authority to change to an alternate location if they perceived the level of insecurity or risk to be unacceptable." The authors give us no information about how often these changes were forced to be made, and absent that information, this survey is, simply, worthless. No amount of advanced statistical massaging can fix a sampling of convenience. So, did the violence in Iraq force one change, two changes, forty changes? We don't know. But what we do know is that there is a clear admission of selection bias in the sampling. Given the sectarian tensions in Iraq, even granting the alleged professionalism of the canvassing teams, it is impossible to tell the impact of these biases. The implication in the report is clearly that more deadly areas were underrepresented, but were more distant (possibly safe) areas also selected against because of the level of risk required to reach them? Were teams of Shia (resp. Sunii) doctors afraid to enter areas where they thought themselves unwelcome? Did coalition roadblocks or bombing campaigns lead to certain areas of the country being off-limits? I find it very troubling that while the authors of the article go out of their way to mention anecdotes like the fact that households where everyone was killed were not counted, and that some interviewees may have been afraid to admit that they have had family members killed, this essential bit of information ("how often were the survey teams forced to deviate from the pre-determined cluster, and what procedures did they implement to attempt to insure that an equally representative cluster was selected") was left out of both the article, and the appendices (at the versions I've found. I'd appreciate it greatly if someone could point me to this information, if it's published.) Once again, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that any deviations would lead the estimates to be low (this is clearly the authors' implication in their wording: "if they perceived the level of insecurity or risk to be unacceptable"), but any deviations of this sort remove the survey from the realm of statistical science, into the realm of conjecture, anecdote or advocacy. E) Given the freedom apparently allowed the survey teams to deviate from pre-selected cluster sites, and to determine the starting point for the cluster (on the street), as well as the above-mentioned concerns about veracity, the fact that there were only two survey teams involved in the entire survey, and that these teams had only two days of training, leads to the fact that any selection bias introduced by the survey teams will skew the results greatly, all in the same direction. If there were many teams, we might expect that some might be making selections that (consciously or unconsciously) minimize the reported number of deaths, while others might be making selections that maximize them, and others might be making selections that were essentially neutral. Given that there were only two teams, these biases have much less chance of canceling each other out, and much greater risk of increasing the actual margin for error. Dr. Donald Berry, the chairman of the Applied Statistics and Bioscience Department at the University of Texas-Austin, put it this way: "Selecting clusters and households that are representative and random is enormously difficult. Moreover, any bias on the part of the interviewers in the selection process would occur in every cluster and would therefore be magnified. The authors point out the possibility of bias, but they do not account for it in their report." (see link below) 3. The analysis of the results: Here's where the article is apparently on its most solid ground, but since none of the methodology involved in the analysis has been published, it's hard to say. I'm guessing that this would be what any peer review would concentrate on, and given the quality of statistical software, it's hard to make mistakes in statistical analysis. I'd be surprised if there were any grave flaws in analysis that I could uncover made by a PhD in statistics, which I definitely am not. As Mark Chu-Carrol notes at GoodMath/BadMath, it's surprisingly in this area where most of the attacks have concentrated, and, consequently why most of the attacks can be dismissed as failures on the critics' part to understand statistics. Be that as it may, the authors do provide enough detail for me to find one criticism in their analysis, which they themselves allude to, but attempt to minimize: "The population data used for cluster selection were at least 2 years old, and if populations subsequently migrated from areas of high mortality to those with low mortality, the sample might have over-represented the high-mortality areas." "[I]nternal population movement would be less likely to affect results appreciably [than emigration from Iraq.]" As I pointed out in an earlier post (Part VI), the effects of faulty population estimates (due to massive internal migration) can have considerable impact on the extrapolations, because they have essentially double impact -first in making some more violent areas more likely to be sampled than their current populations would warrant, and then again, in calculating the estimates, since the same inflated numbers would be used to multiply out the projected values. Supporters of this study have latched onto this criticism, accepting it (for the sake of the argument) and then pointing out that even still, it would only lower estimates by a few percent (even lowering it by 25% would still leave the estimates many times higher than others, after all), and so I was a bit hesitant to bring it up, as providing an opportunity to ignore the other concerns that, if valid, go to the heart of any legitimacy whatsoever for this study. But, since I noticed it, and it seems a true potential for error, I'm pointing it out, again. My purpose, throughout this critique, is not to claim that particular errors in the study would lead the reported results to be too high, or too low, or balance out. As I always tell my students, if you really knew the effect of a bias, there'd be no need to do the study to begin with. You could just use your amazing reasoning powers and puzzle out how many deaths there really have been in Iraq, due to the Coalition's actions, and then yell at everybody about how smart you are, and then they'd all believe you. My purpose is to point out the places where this study failed to use good statistical methodology, and to show up evidence that leads me to conclude that the survey teams' reports, themselves, are suspect. These suspicions (about the survey teams) are not necessarily grounds to deduce intentional bias. From personal experience, I know that many amateur data collectors under-report the difficulties they have in obtaining responses, believing that a higher non-response rate reflects negatively on their own skills, and over-report things like how many deaths they were able to validate by certificate for the same reason. Further, the less thorough the interview process, and I' ve pointed out how quickly they must have been conducted, the more the interviewers' biases influence the reported responses, even when the survey teams believe they are recording the results fairly. Finally, given the extremely high sectarian tensions in Iraq, it would seem unlikely that a mere two teams of 4 physicians each, given a high degree of selection autonomy, would produce unquestionably unbiased results under the hectic conditions they were experiencing in Iraq. Two final notes about those death certificates: 1. The authors, it seems to me, do a good job of explaining why we would expect to see a high discrepancy between the number of death certificates that family can produce, and the number of officially recorded deaths at the national level. What they do not address, is why no attempt was made to double-check the totals locally, at least in areas of less chaos. This would have provided a good check on the representativeness of their sample. Steven Moore makes a similar point, regarding basic demographic information (which a bunch of his critics in the blogs have misunderstood entirely.) Had the surveyors conducted a basic survey of demographic data per household (men, women, old, young, whatever), this could have been used to compare with the other population estimates to get a check on whether their particular clusters were, at least in these respects, representative. Instead, they were left, far too often, with no legitimate means of checking for representativeness of a particular cluster. 2. The question must be addressed as to whether there would be any incentive for Iraqis to falsify death certificates. I don't know the answer to this. But it is an important question. Given the corruption, chaos and confusion that is a fact of life in Iraq today, it would be very easy to forge death certificates, and if there is any market for such forged documents, we must assume that they exist in great numbers. Are coalition forces making cash payments for collateral deaths? Are families hiding members for their own safety by falsifying death records? I don't know the answer to these questions, but it would be foolish to accept the validity of the certificates without an analysis of the incentive to falsify them. Again, I speak from experience with West African nations, where the levels of corruption and confusion are probably not as high as currently in Iraq, but where, if there's a need for an official document, it can always be created, for the right price. ******************
I reckon this is just from someone's blog site==it seems they only copied this to their files for posterity lest PTB get it removed or something.....sorry that it isn't from the white house site--I don't have a url for them! :( For the record, I've retained the url for the site I found this at. Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17424- 2003Jul19.html White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes President Bush said twice in September that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes. (Larry Downing -- Reuters) By Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page A01 The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say. The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given." The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public "dossier" on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and against the wishes of British intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable. The White House embraced the claim, from a British dossier on Iraq, at the same time it began to promote the dossier's disputed claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa. Bush administration officials last week said the CIA was not consulted about the claim. A senior White House official did not dispute that account, saying presidential remarks such as radio addresses are typically "circulated at the staff level" within the White House only. Virtually all of the focus on whether Bush exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons ambitions has been on the credibility of a claim he made in the Jan. 28 State of the Union address about efforts to buy uranium in Africa. But an examination of other presidential remarks, which received little if any scrutiny by intelligence agencies, indicates Bush made more broad accusations on other intelligence matters related to Iraq. For example, the same Rose Garden speech and Sept. 28 radio address that mentioned the 45-minute accusation also included blunt assertions by Bush that "there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." This claim was highly disputed among intelligence experts; a group called Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish- controlled northern Iraq and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who could have been in Iraq, were both believed to have al Qaeda contacts but were not themselves part of al Qaeda. Bush was more qualified in his major Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati, mentioning al Qaeda members who got training and medical treatment from Iraq. The State of the Union address was also more hedged about whether al Qaeda members were in Iraq, saying "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda." Bush did not mention Iraq in his radio address yesterday. Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), delivering the Democratic radio address, suggested that the dispute over the uranium claim in the State of the Union "is about whether administration officials made a conscious and very troubling decision to create a false impression about the gravity and imminence of the threat that Iraq posed to America." Levin said there is evidence the uranium claim "was just one of many questionable statements and exaggerations by the intelligence community and administration officials in the buildup to the war." The 45-minute accusation is particularly noteworthy because of the furor it has caused in Britain, where the charge originated. A parliamentary inquiry determined earlier this month that the claim "did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source." The inquiry also concluded that "allegations of politically inspired meddling cannot credibly be established." As it turns out, the 45-minute charge was not true; though forbidden weapons may yet be found in Iraq, an adviser to the Bush administration on arms issues said last week that such weapons were not ready to be used on short notice. The 45-minute allegation did not appear in the major speeches Bush made about Iraq in Cincinnati in October or in his State of the Union address, both of which were made after consultation with the CIA. But the White House considered the 45-minute claim significant and drew attention to it the day the British dossier was released. Asked if there was a "smoking gun" in the British report, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on Sept. 24 highlighted that charge and the charge that Iraq sought uranium in Africa. "I think there was new information in there, particularly about the 45-minute threshold by which Saddam Hussein has got his biological and chemical weapons triggered to be launched," Fleischer said. "There was new information in there about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain uranium from African nations. That was new information." The White House use of the 45-minute charge is another indication of its determination to build a case against Hussein even without the participation of U.S. intelligence services. The controversy over the administration's use of intelligence has largely focused on claims made about the Iraqi nuclear program, particularly attempts to buy uranium in Africa. But the accusation that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack on a moment's notice was significant because it added urgency to the administration's argument that Hussein had to be dealt with quickly. Using the single-source British accusation appears to have violated the administration's own standard. In a briefing for reporters on Friday, a senior administration official, discussing the decision to remove from the Cincinnati speech an allegation that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger, said CIA Director George J. Tenet told the White House that "for a presidential speech, the standard ought to be higher than just relying upon one source. Oftentimes, a lot of these things that are embodied in this document are based on multiple sources. And in this case, that was a single source being cited, and he felt that that was not appropriate." The British parliamentary inquiry reported this month that the claim came from one source, and "it appears that no evidence was found which corroborated the information supplied by the source, although it was consistent with a pattern of evidence of Iraq's military capability over time. Neither are we aware that there was any corroborating evidence from allies through the intelligence- sharing machinery. It is also significant that the US did not refer to the claim publicly." The report said the investigators "have not seen a satisfactory answer" to why the government gave the claim such visibility. Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
****************** http://medpundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/iraqi-death-toll.html That Lancet Article: A survey researcher says that the Lancet's Iraqi death toll research is bogus, and explains just where the researchers deviated from the standards. Most shocking is his interaction with the lead researcher: Curious about the kind of people who would have the chutzpah to claim to a national audience that this kind of research was methodologically sound, I contacted Johns Hopkins University and was referred to Les Roberts, one of the primary authors of the study. Dr. Roberts defended his 47 cluster points, saying that this was standard. I'm not sure whose standards these are. Appendix A of the Johns Hopkins survey, for example, cites several other studies of mortality in war zones, and uses the citations to validate the group's use of cluster sampling. One study is by the International Rescue Committee in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which used 750 cluster points. Harvard's School of Public Health, in a 1992 survey of Iraq, used 271 cluster points. Another study in Kosovo cites the use of 50 cluster points, but this was for a population of just 1.6 million, compared to Iraq's 27 million. When I pointed out these numbers to Dr. Roberts, he said that the appendices were written by a student and should be ignored. Which led me to wonder what other sections of the survey should be ignored. It's the student's fault! Isn't it always? With so few cluster points, it is highly unlikely the Johns Hopkins survey is representative of the population in Iraq. However, there is a definitive method of establishing if it is. Recording the gender, age, education and other demographic characteristics of the respondents allows a researcher to compare his survey results to a known demographic instrument, such as a census. Dr. Roberts said that his team's surveyors did not ask demographic questions. I was so surprised to hear this that I emailed him later in the day to ask a second time if his team asked demographic questions and compared the results to the 1997 Iraqi census. Dr. Roberts replied that he had not even looked at the Iraqi census. And so, while the gender and the age of the deceased were recorded in the 2006 Johns Hopkins study, nobody, according to Dr. Roberts, recorded demographic information for the living survey respondents. This would be the first survey I have looked at in my 15 years of looking that did not ask demographic questions of its respondents. But don't take my word for it--try using Google to find a survey that does not ask demographic questions. Either Dr. Roberts and his colleagues didn't know how to set up a research survey correctly or they set it up deliberately to be inaccurate, knowing that few in the media or general public would know enough to challenge them. Or maybe they let the student design and carry out the whole study without supervision. Either way, it reflects badly on them. (By the way, my original post has been updated a few times with more links to questions about the survey.) UPDATE: More interesting background on the lead researcher, Dr. Les Roberts, via Tim Blair - he's a very active Democrat. Not that there's anything wrong with being a Democrat. It's just that it raises suspicion about the motives of both his methods and his timing in its publication. Wouldn't it be a different story altogether if the headline were not "Public Health Researcher Estimates Iraqi Death Toll at 650,000" but "Democratic Office Seeker Estimates Iraqi Death Toll..."? UPDATE II: Beware of politicians (and public health types) preaching morals. UPDATE III: There's also this interview with another author of the study, Gilbert Burnham: Burnham: This was a"cohort' study, which means we compared household deaths after the invasion with deaths before the invasion in the same households. The death rates for these comparison households was 5.5/1000/yr. What we did find for the households as a pre-invasion death rate was essential the same number as we found in 2004, the same number as the CIA gives and the estimate for Iraq by the US Census Bureau. Death rates are a function of many things - not just health of the population. One of the most important factors in the death rate is the number of elderly in the population. Iraq has few, and a death rate of 5.5/1000/yr in our calculation (5.3 for the CIA), the USA is 8 and Sweden is 11. This is an indication of how important the population structures are in determining death rates. (You might Google"population pyramid' and look at the census bureau site - fascinating stuff.) PajamasMedia: During the same period, Iraq is at war with Iran and itself. Public-health infrastructure was poor, although perhaps not as poor as today. Does it seem plausible to you that the baseline (or pre-war) mortality rate is accurate? Burnham: Yes as above. Yes as being the right number, and Yes as what we need it for - comparisons in the same households before the war. Not to mention when entire families are wiped out by a totalitarian government, no one is left to tell the tale. PajamasMedia: The Lancet Study comes up with a post-war mortality rate almost double that Saddam's Iraq. In fact, it is roughly equivalent to the mortality rate in Hungary is 13/1000. Does that rate seem plausible, given Hungary's superior infrastructure and almost 50 continous years of peace? Is it possible that both the pre- and post-war mortality rates are too low? Why not? Burnham: There are many old people in Hungary , 40% are over age 55 vs. 9.3% in Iraq over 55. That's the difference. Doesn't 9.3% sound like an awfully small percentage? What happened to all of those Iraqis who would be in late middle age and old age now? Did they emigrate? Or did something more nefarious happen to them? PajamasMedia: Historical comparisons might be helpful here. 650,000 violent deaths is about 150,000 more than the number of soldiers who died (violently and by disease) during the American Civil War, a conflict which involved a population larger than Iraq's, and lasted a year than the current conflict has been going on. There is nothing in Iraq that looks like Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, etc. What makes you believe that Iraq is deadlier than the American Civil War? Burnham: What we are reporting is cumulative deaths over a 40 month period throughout an area of 26.1 million, not a 1-2 day battle field event. Maybe he was tired or rushed when he read that question, but he certainly didn't answer it. *************
I'm surprised that Original_Intent has scolded you for appealing to authority. Why are you having trouble actually addressing the specific criticisms made in post #123? Because there isn't a way to spin those problems? Here, let me repeat those red flags, in case you missed them ... The 655,000 estimate is many, many times larger than any other estimate (and there are half a dozen others). That should raise a red flag. The report and peer reviewers ignored a major discrepancy between the pre-war mortality estimate derived by the John Hopkins team and the estimate derived by other organizations (such as the UN and WHO) in much larger studies. And these were estimates that the Lancet had endorsed as accurate previously. And this number is one of the key numbers used in determining excess deaths. That should raise a red flag. According to the report, 92 percent of those who claimed deaths in their families were able to provide death certificates to prove it. Therefore, if the study is statistically valid there should be death certificates available for 92 percent of the 655,000 estimated dead. But investigations by anti-Bush, anti-war media sources have not found evidence of anywhere near that number. What they found were numbers closer to those other, much lower estimates. That should raise a red flag. The author of the article and the studies has publically stated he disliked Bush and the war, released the study when he did to negatively influence the election against Bush and the GOP, and admitted that those he hired to conduct the study in Iraq "HATE" (that was his word) the Americans. That should raise a red flag. The Lancet, your premiere medical journal, not only failed in its *peer* review to question why specific numbers used in the study were so vastly different than numbers from previous, larger studies that they had previously blessed, they also reported the deaths as being comprised solely of civilians when the study made no such claim. It doesn't appear as if they even read the study. And they admitted that the peer review process was greatly abbreviated so that the results could be published in time to influence the election. That should raise a red flag. Then we have the behavior of the lead researchers and anti-war left in promoting the study. When interviewers completely misrepresented the results (for example, calling all the dead "civilians"), Les Roberts and others on his team made no effort to correct those falsehoods. And they went on to lie, both directly and by omission, about the methodology they used. That is indisputable. For example, here is what another of the John Hopkins researchers, Richard Garfield, told an interviewer. http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=440 "First of all, very few people refused or were unable to take part in the sample, to our surprise most people had death certificates and we were able to confirm most of the deaths we investigated." That is a LIE since the first study (which is what he was talking about) indicates they only confirmed 7% of them. And Les Roberts did the same thing in an interview . That should raise a red flag. In the interview URLed above, Garfield stated "And here you see that deaths recorded in the Baghdad morgue were, for a long period, around 200 per month." Get that? 200 a month, in one of the biggest and most violent regions in the country. And now Les Roberts is asking us to believe that 15,000 were dying each month in the country since the war began. That should raise a red flag. And by the way, Garfield is another of those who advocated mortality statistics before the war that are widely divergent from those derived using the Les Roberts study interviews. In fact, Richard Garfield said the most probable number of deaths of under-five children from August 1991 to June 2002 would be about 400,000. His *expert* opinion was that the rate in 2002 would was 9-10 percent compared to the Les Robert's estimate of 2.9 percent. So why didn't he address that disparity? That should raise a red flag. And the Lancet blessed and championed the conclusions of Garfield back in 2002. So why did they ignore the discrepancy during their peer review of Les Robert's study? That should raise a red flag. And there is more. There is NO physical evidence to support the claim that 655,000 Iraqis were killed from the beginning of the war to mid 2006. There are no bodies. There are not photos of mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter. There are no reporters saying they saw these bodies. There are not US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. That should raise a red flag. In fact, take Dahr Jamail as an example. He's viralently anti-American. He has close ties to the insurgents. Here is his website: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/ "Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself. His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource and he is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints. Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country." You go ahead and look on his website for any indication that 500, much less 100 Iraqis were dying every single day back in 2003 and 2004 when he first started reporting from Iraq which was during the period covered by not only the second but the first John Hopkins study. You won't find any indication. That should raise a red flag. Last year was arguably the most violent since the invasion. Yet even the Iraqis reported the number killed was on the order of 16,000 in that year ... an average of 45 a day. That certainly stands in sharp constrast to the John Hopkins researchers (and their proponents) who claim that more than 500 a day have died every day on average since the invasion began. That should raise a red flag. Then there are problems with specific numbers in the studies. For example, the number of dead their methodology gives in Fallujah is so staggering ... so ridiculous ... that even the John Hopkins researchers had to discard the data point. Yet in interviews, Les Roberts has responded as if the Fallujah data was accurate. For example, in an interview with Socialist Workers Online (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271), when asked why two thirds of all violent deaths were concentrated in this city, Les Roberts didn't respond "the data was wrong or atypical in Fallujah" as it states in his report. No, he answered the question as if he thought the data point was representative of what happened in Fallujah as a whole. He said "we think that our findings, if anything, underestimated the number of deaths because of the number of empty and destroyed houses. Some of the families probably fled, but many are probably dead. Of those families sticking around in Fallujah, a quarter lost a family member in the few months leading up to the interview." That should raise a red flag. And if you were paying attention, you would know that were I to take the time I could easily double the number of red flags based on the content of my last ten posts. Maybe I'll do that in the future. ROTFLOL!
Dawggone it.............this ain't from the white house files either, but maybe it will work......its from some organization.....I've also kept the url for this--just in case. As it relates to the comments at the bottom of this article, I thought about whacking them off--but then I thought, 'oh what the hell--at least these are known entities--its not like they write some blog on the world wide web! Media Matters for America Details False Claims Made by Bush Administration Regarding Iraq's WMDs Third Anniversary of Iraq War Serves as Grim Reminder of Falsehoods that Led to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq March 17, 2006 (Washington, DC) -- March 19th will mark the third anniversary of the Iraq War. The occasion is sure to spark coverage of the false Bush administration statements about the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath of the invasion. In response to assertions by media figures, including Bill O'Reilly, that President Bush's pre-war claims had been vindicated, Media Matters for America compiled several examples of claims made by Bush regarding Iraq's weapons capability. In each of these cases, his unequivocal assertions were not only found to have been false, but determined to not have been justified by the intelligence available at the time. Iraq's aluminum tubes were intended to enrich uranium In an October 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati, Bush told his audience, "Evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." The "evidence" he went on to cite included the claim that Iraq had "attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." More than three months later, in his 2003 State of the Union address, the president repeated this claim: "Our intelligence sources tell us that he [Hussein] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." But in contrast to Bush's firm statements, the various U.S. intelligence agencies disagreed over the purpose of the aluminum tubes -- a dispute that the president was well aware of. While the CIA concluded that the tubes were suitable to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs, both Department of Energy (DOE) experts and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had dissented from this view. These agencies' position that the tubes were "poorly suited" for uranium enrichment was included in the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided to Congress in October 2002. Prior to his October 7 speech, the CIA delivered to the president a one-page summary of the NIE's findings, which noted that DOE and INR believed the tubes were "intended for conventional weapons," rather than a nuclear bomb. Despite this disagreement, he and other administration officials went on to repeatedly cite the tubes as solid evidence that Iraq's nuclear program had been revived. Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." But months earlier, the CIA had voiced serious doubts about the basis for the uranium assertion and implored administration officials not to include it in Bush's speeches. Specifically, the agency sent two memos to the White House expressing such doubts. Further, then-CIA director George J. Tenet directly asked then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley not to use the claim. INR similarly responded in the October NIE that claims of Iraq seeking to purchase nuclear material from Africa were "highly dubious." These warnings led the administration to remove a uranium reference from the October 2002 Cincinnati speech. Nonetheless, they included the claim in the 2003 State of the Union. On July 22, 2003, Hadley took responsibility for the administration's use of the claim in Bush's State of the Union address. He acknowledged, "I should have asked that the 16 words be taken out." Iraq possessed stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons In an October 5, 2002, radio address, Bush asserted that "Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons." In his speech in Cincinnati two days later, he unequivocally declared that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." Months later, on March 6, 2003, the president further claimed that "Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents." But the intelligence did not justify the president's unequivocal claims. For example, a classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report published the in September 2002 had found "no reliable information" to substantiate the claim that Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons. Moreover, while the intelligence community believed Iraq possessed biological agents that could be quickly produced and weaponized, the October NIE made clear that the agencies lacked hard evidence to back up this assumption: "We had no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons, agents, or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal." Iraq's unmanned drones could attack enemies near and far In the year preceding the war, the president and other senior administration officials repeatedly emphasized the threat of Iraq mounting an attack on U.S. soil as a major rationale for war. In the October 7 speech, for example, Bush claimed that Iraq had a fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used to deliver chemical or biological weapons. "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," the president declared. But the ability of these drones to carry out such attacks was a matter of dispute among intelligence agencies. While the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had endorsed the view that the Iraqi UAVs could be used by Iraq to attack its neighbors and possibly the United States, analysts at the U.S. Air Force -- which controls the U.S. fleet of UAVs -- dissented from this view in the October 2002 NIE. They contended that the planes were unarmed reconnaissance drones -- a conclusion endorsed by analysts at the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. But months later, Bush continued to cite the UAVs as a threat to the United States. On February 6, 2003, he said, "Iraq has developed spray devices that could be used on unmanned aerial vehicles with ranges far beyond what is permitted by the Security Council. A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland." Iraq would mount unprovoked attack on U.S. Moreover, the president's broader claims suggesting Iraq's ability to attack the U.S. without provocation overlooked the intelligence community's unanimous conclusion that the likelihood of such an attack was minimal. The NIE stated that an Iraqi attack on the U.S. would likely only occur if "Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable." Moreover, the NIE classified the confidence level for this judgment as "low." INR went a step further, concluding that Hussein was "unlikely to conduct clandestine attacks against the U.S. homeland even if [his] regime's demise is imminent." As with the intelligence community's conflicted assessments concerning the purpose of the aluminum tubes, the president was directly informed in January 2003 of the widely-held view that Iraq was unlikely to consider attacking the U.S. unless attacked first. Despite having read the intelligence agencies' assessment of the threat, Bush said on February 25, 2003, "The risk of doing nothing, the risk of the security of this country being jeopardized at the hands of a madman with weapons of mass destruction, far exceeds the risks of any action we may be forced to take." In his 2003 State of the Union address, he continued to emphasize the risk of an unprovoked Iraqi attack. "The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country," he said in the speech. "The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it." Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes On September 26, 2002, President Bush repeated a claim put forth by British intelligence that "the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given." On September 28, he again made the claim in his weekly radio address. But the administration chose not to consult the CIA before making this assertion. If they had, however, they would have learned that two weeks earlier, the agency had objected to the claim that Iraq could mount an attack so quickly. In discussions with the British government, the CIA had noted that the claim was based on a single, unreliable source and had advised British intelligence to remove it from a dossier they had compiled on Iraq's weapons capability. Who is the liar? The above examples support the argument that in 2002 and 2003 the Bush administration often disregarded the misgivings among the intelligence community about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq. Whether senior Iraqi generals believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs does not change the fact that the many in the U.S. intelligence community doubted he did and that the Bush administration chose to ignore them. This is the argument that many have made: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV): In a November 1, 2005, floor statement, Reid referred to how the Bush administration "consistently and repeatedly manipulated the facts" in making the case for war. "Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate," Reid said. "But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the administration then that its claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities were false." Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL): In the "Additional Views" section of the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2004 report on prewar intelligence, Sen. Durbin, along with Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-NY) and Carl Levin (D-MI), described Bush's claims that Iraq could launch an attack in as little as 45 minutes as an example of how the administration "repeatedly overstated what the Intelligence Community assessed at the time." Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA): In a March 5, 2004, speech, Kennedy cited Bush's claims concerning the aluminum tubes. He responded: "In fact, as we now know, the intelligence community was far from unified on Iraq's nuclear threat. The administration attempted to conceal that fact by classifying the information and the dissents within the intelligence community until after the war, even while making dramatic and excessive public statements about the immediacy of the danger. ... The evidence so far leads to only one conclusion. What happened was not merely a failure of intelligence, but the result of manipulation and distortion of the intelligence and selective use of unreliable intelligence to justify a decision to go to war. The administration had made up its mind, and would not let stubborn facts stand in the way." Sen. John Kerry (D-MA): "The facts speak for themselves," Kerry said in a November 14, 2005, floor statement. "The White House has admitted that the president told Congress and the American public in the State of the Union address that Saddam was attempting to acquire fuel for nuclear weapons despite the fact that the CIA specifically told the Administration three times, in writing and verbally, not to use this intelligence. [...] This is not relying on faulty intelligence, as Democrats did; it is knowingly, and admittedly, misleading the American public on a key justification for going to war." Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT): In an October 24, 2005, floor statement, Leahy said, "We know that the key public justifications for the war -- to stop Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons and supporting al Qaeda -- were based on faulty intelligence and outright distortions and have been thoroughly discredited." Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean: In a July 12, 2003, CNN interview, Dean cited Bush's uranium claim as evidence that he misled the country into war with Iraq. "The big deal is not so much that we went to war over a deal between Iraq and Niger which didn't exist and that the administration knew ahead of time it didn't exist," he said. "The big deal is the credibility of the United States of America and the credibility of the president in telling the American people the truth and the rest of the world the truth." Former President Jimmy Carter: In his book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Simon & Schuster, November 2005), Carter wrote that the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq using "false and distorted claims after 9/11." More information can be found at http://www.mediamatters.org.
Your spam is showing, BAC! Whatever the number of civilians killed - they were all American War Crime casualties - add the wounded, crippled and orphaned. That's no small number; whatever it may be. Your parade of distracting details is on the brink of "un-interesting."
On September 26, 2002, President Bush repeated a claim put forth by British intelligence that "the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given." On September 28, he again made the claim in his weekly radio address. nice find
Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is. ~George W. Bush thanks BAC for posting. You're the only real celebrity who posts here. and thanks for letting Minerva have your picture (BAC's picture is in #350)
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
You-who, BeAChooser, your input is requested on another discussion thread.
It doesn't say that.
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Yawn. I could prove I was the king of Mars were I to pull facts out of my butt the way you are doing above. You are still posting the same stuff from the same kook blogs. You and hiding your misinterpretation of some other very questionable sources behind spam. If you you had a reputable and specific quote that supported your crap, you would post it with a reference and let it speak for itself. I know that. Everyone else on the site knows that, the lurkers know that and some drunk passed out in an alley in Outer Mongolia probably knows that too. Instead of doing this, you give us the same crap as before with ten pages of blater to window dress it. BAC, I can tell just how worthless your argument is by how long your post is. The longer the post, the more you have to hide and the more you are skating on bullshit. It always works that way with you. It NEVER varies. The BAC bullshit index moves in direct proportion to the length of the post. Goldi was right when she booted your ass for being a an irrational nut. You really are a kook.
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OK, here is what you've given us so far: 1. Links that were not what you claimed them to be which you tried to dishonesly fob off on us as "proof" of your kookery. 2. Either cherry picked quotes from studies that were not on point or allegations that studies not on point somehow supported your kookery - without the benefit of a supporting quote. 3. Lots and lots of links to one or two kook blogs which you have been told time and time again no rational person accepts as being of equal diginity with Johns Hopkins or even being legit. 4. Reams of long, black rambling, ranting, kooky paragraphs explaining how the SHIT above somehow proves up your kookery. Using what you have provided I can pull the following inferences: 1. You have nothing matching the dignity of the Johns Hopkins study with which to refute the Johns Hopkins study. 2. You don't like people considering the ramifications of the Johns Hopkins study. It bugs you. Thank you for sharing this. I will give it all the consideration I would give to the rant of any other dishonest kook.
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One more thing. I've asked you to stop pinging me when you post the same shit and the same kook references time and time again. I told you I wasn't impressed the first time you tried this bamboozle. I told you the second time as well. I then told you the third time. Coming back with the same spam a 4th time won't have a different effect - and only kooks like you think that doing the same thing over and over will get you a different result. Don't bother to ping me if you are just going to whitewash the same shit for a 4th pass.
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I notice that you are a nut case and that you have the time to be on the web pretty much 24/7. Are you one of those kooks on disability? That would explain a lot.
Bunch of internet bums ... grand jury --- opium den ! ~ byeltsin
Yes it does raise a red flag.. that being that our media is controlled by none other than those who rule us.. Hmm well lemme see ...just a thought since we havent seen or the media permitted to take photos of caskets returning from Iraq other than one that was leaked.. are you then saying that the 3,000 plus number we are told died in Iraq shouldnt be believed? Then I guess there were only a few who actually died.. using this logic of yours..
The Pentagon's Secret Air War Over Iraq In statistics provided to Tomdispatch, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles." ... One weapon conspicuously left out of this total is rockets -- such as the 2.75-inch Hydra-70 rocket which can be outfitted with various warheads and is fired from fixed-wing aircraft and most helicopters. The number of rockets fired is withheld from the press so as, according to a CENTAF spokesman, not to "skew the tally and present an inaccurate picture of the air campaign." The number of rockets fired may be quite significant as, according to a 2005 press release issued by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who helped secure a $900 million Hydra contract from the Army for General Dynamics, "the widely used Hydra-70 rocket… has seen extensive use in Afghanistan and Iraq… [and] has become the world's most widely used helicopter-launched weapon system." ... The number of cannon rounds fired -- some models of the AC-130 gunship, for instance, have a Gatling gun that can fire up to 1,800 rounds in a single minute-- is also a closely guarded secret. The official reason given is that "special forces often use aircraft such as the AC-130" and since "their missions and operations are classified, so therefore these figures are not released." Repeated inquiries concerning another reporter's statistics on cannon rounds fired by CENTAF aircraft prompted the same official to emphatically state in an email: "WE DO NOT REPORT CANNON ROUNDS."... According to Roberts, who was last in Iraq in 2004 (where, he says, he personally witnessed "the shredding of entire blocks" in Baghdad's Sadr City by aerial cannon fire), "rocket and cannon fire could account for most coalition-attributed civilian deaths." He adds, "I find it disturbing that they will not release this [figure], but even more disturbing that they have not released such information to Congressmen who have requested it." ... Macdougall reported that the B-1B Lancer, the long- range bomber that carries the largest payload of weapons in the Air Force was, for the first time in over a year, again being employed in combat in Iraq. "These B-1 bombers were central to the raid. We're told they flew a ten-hour mission, and by the looks of their empty bomb bays, these planes dropped thousands of pounds of munitions. They bombed 25 targets deep inside Iraq," he said... I had a question for Lt. Col. Kennedy: Could he explain how CENTAF decided what was an acceptable level of civilian caualties it was willing to sacrifice for military aims? His answer: "Not in a sufficient manner that you would be happy with." ... During the Vietnam War, the United States conducted a clandestine air war in Cambodia, lied about it to the press, and hid it from the American public. In Iraq, the military has, these last years, engaged in a different kind of secretive air campaign, but their methods of keeping it a mystery appear to have certain similarities....
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest"The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons. The Iraqi regime is building the facilities necessary to make more biological and chemical weapons. And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given." George W. Bush
#343. To: leveller, Brian S, Christine, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, All (#342)
#344. To: ..., bluedogtnx, scrapper2, Burkeman1, Halek Fan, ALL (#297)
If the articles really suupported your argument, you would be waving the text in our faces and screaming for us to read them.
#345. To: ..., bluedogtxn, scrapper2, kiki, Halek Fan, Burkeman1, ALL (#299)
I think I will go with Johns Hopkins University
#346. To: BeAChooser (#344)
#347. To: BeAChooser (#345)
(Edited)
#348. To: Hayek Fan (#339)
(Edited)
Oh yeah, before I go. The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the number 1 ranked school of Public Health in the world. I find it hard to believe that they would risk this reputation in order to score political points and/or press an anti-war agenda.
#349. To: BeAChooser (#345)
#350. To: ..., Scrapper2, Diana (#349)
#351. To: SKYDRIFTER (#343)
BAC is quite expert
#352. To: BeAChooser (#345)
#353. To: scrapper2, Beachooser, all (#348)
#354. To: Hayek Fan, BeAChooser (#353)
What boggles my mind
#355. To: Red Jones (#354)
#356. To: leveller (#342)
"And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack [by canoe][by FedEx][by hot air balloon] [by carrier pigeon] in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given."
#357. To: Red Jones, Critter, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Diana, Kamala, All (#354)
#358. To: christine (#356)
"And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack [by canoe][by FedEx][by hot air balloon] [by carrier pigeon] in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given."
#359. To: SKYDRIFTER (#357)
key function of disinformationists such as BAC is to muddy the waters and damage the reputations of serious posters, for the benefit of any casual surfers or serious researchers who might look to these forums for ideas and/or material.
#360. To: leveller, Brian S, Christine, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, All (#359)
So who is paying BAC?
#361. To: SKYDRIFTER (#360)
So who is paying BAC?
#362. To: Zipporah, Brian S, Christine, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Diana, All (#346)
#363. To: Minerva (#361)
I say nobody. BAC is only dangerous when he's on your side.
(About the quote: Speaking on the war in Kosovo.)
#364. To: BAC, BeAChooser, All (#98)
#365. To: Diana, ALL (#336)
I won't knit pick with you, it's impossible because my nature is not dishonest enough for me to be able to stoop to your level playing word games.
#366. To: Hayek Fan, scrapper2, kiwi, Burkeman1, bluedogtxn, ..., Diana, ALL (#337)
You've posted links to blogs. Why is it that you have no links to professional, peer reviewed research? Because it's not out there.
2. The conduct of the survey
3. The analysis of the results
#367. To: Diana, ALL (#365)
#368. To: Hayek Fan, bluedogtxn, scrapper2, kiwi, Burkeman1, Diana, ..., ALL (#337)
Also, for those interested, in October 2006, Johns Hopkins reaffirmed the original study: "Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates. Mortality Trends Comparable to Estimates by Those Using Other Counting Methods
#369. To: Hayek Fan, Original_Intent, ALL (#339)
The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the number 1 ranked school of Public Health in the world. I find it hard to believe that they would risk this reputation in order to score political points and/or press an anti-war agenda.
#370. To: Diana, All (#367)
#371. To: beachooser, Critter, Christine, Brian S, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#369)
#372. To: rowdee (#370)
Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes
(About the quote: Speaking on the war in Kosovo.)
#373. To: BeAChooser, Minerva (#369)
#374. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#375. To: scrapper2 (#374)
One more for ya BAC, this was today. Yeh I know, it's only one, but I thought you'd like to see the handiwork of the Great Decider
#376. To: BeAChooser (#366)
It's a study by the UN Development program which found that the 2004 Lancet study was off by about a factor of 4.
#377. To: BeAChooser (#369)
(Edited)
#378. To: BeAChooser (#368)
#379. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#380. To: BeAChooser (#369)
#381. To: BeAChooser (#369)
There are not photos of mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter. There are no reporters saying they saw these bodies. There are not US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. That should raise a red flag.
#382. To: ... (#378)
Among the largest of America's "permanent" megabases in Iraq is Balad Air Base with the sorts of daily air-traffic pile-ups that you would normally see over Chicago's O'Hare Airport. And yet, as Tomdispatch.com has written numerous times over these last years, reporters in Iraq almost determinedly refuse to look up or report on the regular, if intermittent, application of American air power especially to heavily populated neighborhoods in Iraq's cities...
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