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Pious Perverts
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Title: BeAChooser Bozo Count at 40 Plus and Counting - A Possible Site Record
Source: Minerva
URL Source: http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=45820&Disp=409#C409
Published: Feb 19, 2007
Author: Minerva
Post Date: 2007-02-19 21:59:28 by Minerva
Keywords: None
Views: 23770
Comments: 375

Last night I took a guess at Beachy's bozo count. Today he spilled the beans and indicated that the number I guessed, between 40 and 50, was substantially correct.

Beachy Spills the Beans

What does this mean? Well .... it means he is a piss poor excuse for excuse for an advocate. Nobody takes him serious. This is probably why Goldi booted him.

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  

Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 190.

#7. To: Minerva, christine, zipporah (#0)

It is pretty fucking sad that this, of all forums, has come to this 'back and forth sniping tripe'.

Brian S  posted on  2007-02-19   22:24:07 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

It is pretty fucking sad that this, of all forums, has come to this 'back and forth sniping tripe'.

Yea - Freeper like mentality by people who hate being exposed to anything not part of the echo chamber they want to live in.

Anyone who places anyone on bozo for non harassment reasons on a forum is an intellectual coward.

Destro  posted on  2007-02-20   0:26:29 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Anyone who places anyone on bozo for non harassment reasons on a forum is an intellectual coward.

There is no intellect present in an exceedingly dishonest poster with a very questionable agenda.

You should know better than that. And his behavior IS a form of harassment, he twists the words of other posters, will not debate honestly, constantly infers others are stupid, etc. He's a classic narcissist, therefore impossible to reason with or get along with.

Diana  posted on  2007-02-20   5:36:11 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

He's a classic narcissist, therefore impossible to reason with or get along with.

I don't think he can be reasoned with either. He hasn't posted for as long as he has to be swayed from his opinions of 9/11 just because someone finally posts something that should make him think, "hey, maybe these kooks are right after all about 9/11." I doubt that will ever happen. Nevertheless to leave his stuff posted without any rebuttal makes it look like he has won the argument to a lurker, which is not a good idea. Calling him names only helps his side of the argument for an impartial lurker.

RickyJ  posted on  2007-02-20   5:49:57 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

This is a good example of how he operates.He said few Iraqis are dying because there is no hard evidence for all those killed (typical BAC spin/logic).

I wrote this post to him after he made the claim that there are few photographs, videos or death certificates of dead Iraqis:

******

"Uh....

Perhaps you haven't heard, but often in wartime when people are killed, their deaths are not always documented by photograpshs, film, video or even by death certificates.

In fact quite often they are killed and their bodies are quietly buried in mass graves where they aren't discovered until some time later. I'm surprised you aren't aware of this practice."

******

And this is what he wrote in response to that post:

******

"It appears that you are accusing the US military of doing that. It would take quite a few people to gather up and bury the roughly 600,000 bodies that are missing. For which there is absolutely no physical evidence of them dying. So how many US soldiers are you accusing of this atrocity, Diana? A thousand? Ten thousand? Surely by now ALL the soldiers in Iraq are aware this is going on. Do you accuse all our soldiers who are in Iraq and have served in Iraq of this genocide and coverup, Diana? Is that really your position?"

******

You see what he is doing here? If you go through his post carefully, you can see how many inflammatory accusations he is making. A person has to decide whether they are willing to put up with that kind of dishonest and potentially harmful behavior.

Diana  posted on  2007-02-20   6:40:54 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Perhaps you haven't heard, but often in wartime when people are killed, their deaths are not always documented by photograpshs, film, video or even by death certificates.

Les Roberts Answers Your Questions

Juan Cole: 655,000 Dead in Iraq since Bush Invasion

"Not to mention that for substantial periods of time since 2003 it has been dangerous in about half the country just to move around, much less to move around with dead bodies.

There is heavy fighting almost every day at Ramadi in al-Anbar province, among guerrillas, townspeople, tribes, Marines and Iraqi police and army. We almost never get a report of these skirmishes and we almost never are told about Iraqi casualties in Ramadi. Does 1 person a day die there of political violence? Is it more like 4? 10? What about Samarra? Tikrit? No one is saying. Since they aren't, on what basis do we say that the Lancet study is impossible?

There are about 90 major towns and cities in Iraq. If we subtract Baghdad, where about 100 a day die, that still leaves 89. If an average of 4 or so are killed in each of those 89, then the study's results are correct. Of course, 4 is an average. Cities in areas dominated by the guerrilla movement will have more than 4 killed daily, sleepy Kurdish towns will have no one killed.

If 470 were dying every day, what would that look like?

West Baghdad is roughly 10% of the Iraqi population. It is certainly generating 47 dead a day. Same for Sadr City, same proportions. So to argue against the study you have to assume that Baquba, Hilla, Kirkuk, Kut, Amara, Samarra, etc., are not producing deaths at the same rate as the two halves of Baghad. But it is perfectly plausible that rough places like Kut and Amara, with their displaced Marsh Arab populations, are keeping up their end. Four dead a day in Kut or Amara at the hands of militiamen or politicized tribesmen? Is that really hard to believe? Have you been reading this column the last three years?

Or let's take the city of Basra, which is also roughly 10% of the Iraqi population. Proportionally speaking, you'd expect on the order of 40 persons to be dying of political violence there every day. We don't see 40 persons from Basra reported dead in the wire services on a daily basis.

But last May, the government authorities in Basra came out and admitted that security had collapsed in the city and that for the previous month, one person had been assassinated every hour. Now, that is 24 dead a day, just from political assassination. Apparently these persons were being killed in faction fighting among Shiite militias and Marsh Arab tribes. We never saw any of those 24 deaths a day reported in the Western press. And we never see any deaths from Basra reported in the wire services on a daily basis even now. Has security improved since May? No one seems even to be reporting on it, yes or no.

So if 24 Iraqis can be shot down every day in Basra for a month (or for many months?) and no one notices, the Lancet results are perfectly plausible.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-20   7:11:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Les Roberts Answers Your Questions

Juan Cole: 655,000 Dead in Iraq since Bush Invasion

Readers ... note that not one of the following verifiable facts and concerns about the Les Roberts study is addressed in Mr Coles article:

*********************

1. The 655,000 estimate is many, many times larger than any other estimate out there (and there are about half a dozen others). Those other estimates were more like 50,000 at the time the John Hopkins study was published. Are they all wrong and only John Hopkins right? Even various anti-war groups such as Human Rights Watch and IraqBodyCount have indicated the John Hopkins' figures are outlandish. So why are FD4UMers so voraciously defending JH's estimates?

2. The report and the peer reviewer of the report (the Lancet) ignored a major discrepancy between the pre-war mortality estimate derived by the John Hopkins team and the estimates derived by other organizations such as the UN and WHO. The UN and WHO, in largers studies, came up with rates between 7-8 per 1000 per year compared to the John Hopkins rate of 5-5.5 per 1000 per year. And these larger rates were estimates that the Lancet had previously endorsed as accurate. This pre-war mortality number is one of the key numbers used in determining excess deaths. If it were as high as the UN and WHO found, then the number of excess deaths would be far less, perhaps a tenth as much.

3. A recent UN Development Program study, http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf, states that there were 24,000 war-related deaths (18,000-29,000, with a 95% confidence level) during the time covered by the Hopkins report. This is approximately ONE-FOURTH the number of excess deaths that Les Roberts' 2004 John Hopkins study found. And the UN used similar techniques - clusters, etc. - but with a much larger data set than John Hopkins. Why is there no mention of this study in the lastest John Hopkin's report (which claims its results verify the first JH report)? Why was this discrepancy not addressed by the Lancet *peer* reviewers?

4. According to the latest John Hopkins report, 92 percent of those who claimed deaths in their families (501 out of 545) were able to provide death certificates to prove it. Therefore, if the study is statistically valid, there should be death certificates available for about 92 percent of the total 655,000 estimated dead. But investigations by media sources that are not friendly to the Bush administration or the war have not found evidence of anywhere near that number. The Los Angeles Times, for example, in a comprehensive investigation found less than 50,000 certificates. Even if that investigation were off a factor of two, there is still a huge discrepancy. To take the Johns Hopkins results seriously, you have to believe that the Iraqi government recorded deaths occurring since the invasion with an accuracy of 92 percent, but then suppressed the bulk of those deaths when releasing official figures, with no one blowing the whistle. And you have to believe that all those dead bodies went unnoticed by the mainstream media and everyone else trying to keep track of the war casualties. Alternatively, you have to believe that the Iraqi government only issues death certificates for a small percentage of deaths, but this random sample happened to get 92 percent by pure chance.

5. A principle author of both John Hopkins studies, Les Roberts, has publically stated he disliked Bush (not unexpected given that he is an active democRAT) and the war. He has admitted that he released the study when he did to negatively influence the election against Bush and the GOP. And he has admitted that most of those he hired to conduct the study in Iraq "HATE" (that was his word) the Americans. None of that is a good basis for conducting a non-partisan study.

6. Nor is the behavior of the Lancet. They've not only failed to ask important questions during their *peer* reviews, they admit they greatly abbreviated that peer review process for the 2004 report so the results could be published in time to influence the 2004 election. They also reported on their own website in 2004, that the deaths estimated by John Hopkins were comprised solely of civilians. But the study made no such claim. In fact, it clearly states that the investigators did not ask those interviewed if the dead were civilians, Saddam military or insurgents. Which leads one to wonder if the Lancet actually read the report they claimed to review.

7. When media interviewers of the lead researchers completely misrepresented the results (for example, calling all the dead "civilians"), those researchers (one being Les Robert) made no effort to correct those falsehoods. And they went on to lie, both directly and by omission, about the methodology they used. This is indisputable. For example, here is what another of the John Hopkins researchers, Richard Garfield, told an interviewer: "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 the deaths. And Les Roberts did the exact same thing in another interview.

8. In the Garfield interview mentioned above, he stated "And here you see that deaths recorded in the Baghdad morgue were, for a long period, around 200 per month." Let me repeat that figure ... 200 A MONTH, in one of the most populated and most violent regions in the country during the time in question. And now Les Roberts is asking us to believe that 15,000 (on average) were dying each month in the country since the war began. How could Garfield not have questions about this new estimate given his previous statement?

9. Richard Garfield is another of those who advocated mortality statistics before the war that are widely divergent from those derived using the Les Roberts/John Hopkins 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. That is compared to the Les Robert's estimate of 2.9 percent. So why didn't Roberts or Garfield address this disparity? And note that 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 Roberts' study?

10. There is NO physical evidence whatsoever to support the claim that 655,000 Iraqis were killed from the beginning of the war to mid 2006. There are no killing fields filled with bodies or mass graves. There are no photos of these mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter or the funerals afterwords. There are no reporters, of ANY nationality, saying they saw these bodies or the slaughter. There are no US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. There is NO physical evidence.

11. Dahr Jamail is an example of the above. He is viralently anti-American. He has close ties to the insurgents and arabs. So look on his website ( http://dahrjamailiraq.com/) for any indication that 500, much less 100 Iraqis were dying every single day on average 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.

12. 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.

13. But the discrepancy is even worse than that. As noted by the author of this blog, http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2006_10_08_archive.html#116069912405842066, "The claim is 654,965 excess deaths caused by the war from March 2003 through July 2006. That's 40 months, or 1200 days, so an average of 546 deaths per day. To get an average of 546 deaths per day means that there must have been either many hundreds of days with 1000 or more deaths per day (example: 200 days with 1000 deaths = 200,000 dead leaves 1000 days with an average of 450 deaths), or tens of days with at least 10,000 or more deaths per day (example: 20 days with 10,000 deaths = 200,000 dead leaves 1180 days with an average of 381 deaths). So, where are the news accounts of tens of days with 10,000 or more deaths?"

14. The number of dead the John Hopkins methodology gives in Fallujah is so staggering 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 (note who he uses to get his message out), 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, instead 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." Then why didn't they keep the Fallujah data point?

15. John Hopkins claims "We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654,965 (392,979 - 942,636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601,027 (426,369 - 793,663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gun fire." But during World War II, the Allied air forces carpet bombed German cities, using high explosives and incendiaries, and according to The United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report killed an estimated 305,000. So are we to believe that with gun fire rather than bombs, twice as many Iraqis have been killed in the last 3 years, as died in all Germany during WW2 due to strategic bombing of cities which completely flattened entire cities? Likewise, Japan had about 2 million citizens killed (about 2.7 percent of their population), both military and civilian. Many Japanese cities were firebombed during that war (for example, Tokyo had 100,000 people killed in just one raid). Two cities were attacked with nuclear weapons. And yet Les Roberts and his crew want us to believe that just as large a percentage have died in Iraq ... where the Coalition has gone out of its way to avoid civilian deaths?

****************

Number 4 is particularly damning.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-20   12:04:10 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

There is heavy fighting almost every day at Ramadi in al-Anbar province, among guerrillas, townspeople, tribes, Marines and Iraqi police and army. We almost never get a report of these skirmishes and we almost never are told about Iraqi casualties in Ramadi. Does 1 person a day die there of political violence? Is it more like 4? 10? What about Samarra? Tikrit? No one is saying. Since they aren't, on what basis do we say that the Lancet study is impossible?

There are about 90 major towns and cities in Iraq. If we subtract Baghdad, where about 100 a day die, that still leaves 89. If an average of 4 or so are killed in each of those 89, then the study's results are correct. Of course, 4 is an average. Cities in areas dominated by the guerrilla movement will have more than 4 killed daily, sleepy Kurdish towns will have no one killed.

If 470 were dying every day, what would that look like?

West Baghdad is roughly 10% of the Iraqi population. It is certainly generating 47 dead a day. Same for Sadr City, same proportions. So to argue against the study you have to assume that Baquba, Hilla, Kirkuk, Kut, Amara, Samarra, etc., are not producing deaths at the same rate as the two halves of Baghad. But it is perfectly plausible that rough places like Kut and Amara, with their displaced Marsh Arab populations, are keeping up their end. Four dead a day in Kut or Amara at the hands of militiamen or politicized tribesmen? Is that really hard to believe? Have you been reading this column the last three years?

The Los Angeles Times, for example, in a comprehensive investigation found less than 50,000 certificates.

In that same article, The Los Angeles times explicitly stated that 50,000 is a gross undercount and excluded entire sections of the country.

And since we've been over this many times already, you are intentionally trying to deceive and mislead.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-21   1:04:56 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

There are about 90 major towns and cities in Iraq.

Are the people in these 90 major towns and cities different than the people John Hopkins surveyed as being typical of them? Why didn't they go to morgues, hospitals and the health ministry to get a death certificate issued like the ones in the study? Or did they go but then ask those organizations to wipe their records of the fact? Please, resolve this question for me AGAviator since you seem so knowledgeable about the situation in Iraq.

In that same article, The Los Angeles times explicitly stated that 50,000 is a gross undercount and excluded entire sections of the country.

True, the LATimes article says "Iraqi officials involved in compiling the statistics say violent deaths in some regions have been grossly undercounted, notably in the troubled province of Al Anbar in the west." But somehow I doubt they meant their data was off by a factor of ten (or more). A factor of two or three, possibly ... but not a factor of ten. You would think that the LATimes would have mentioned something like that. Wouldn't you?

If you read the John Hopkins report (you've done that, right?), you will find that it claims Al Anbar was surveyed with 3 clusters (compared to Baghdad's 12) out of a total of 47. If the number of clusters is representative of population (it should be), we can conclude that Baghdad has about 25 percent of the population. Anbar would have then 2.5 percent of the population. So now you must be claiming that hundreds of deaths (300?) have been occurring in Anbar every day, on average, since the war began. Let's look at the reasonableness of that. What is the population of Anbar? If Iraq is about 27 million total, Anbar must have had a population of about 680,000 (call it 700,000). Now 300 deaths a day for 39 months (the time between the beginning of the war and July of last year) would total about 351,000. Wow ... are you suggesting that HALF the population of Anbar died during that time?!!! And that's gone unnoticed by the media? ROTFLOL!

Indeed, those are regions where officials probably don't like Americans or the Iraqi government. What better way to embarrass both than to report death of that magnitude? But they haven't done that, have they. Why not? Why are there no pictures or video of this slaughter coming out of those areas? We know the insurgents have photographic equipment and access to the media. Why aren't they using it? Showing this supposed slaughter would probably have more effect than any thousand successful bombings in getting the US out of the country. So why no pictures? Why no video?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-21   21:23:13 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Are the people in these 90 major towns and cities different than the people John Hopkins surveyed as being typical of them? Why didn't they go to morgues, hospitals and the health ministry to get a death certificate issued like the ones in the study? Or did they go but then ask those organizations to wipe their records of the fact? Please, resolve this question for me AGAviator since you seem so knowledgeable about the situation in Iraq.

There are some very good reasons for not going to morgues and hospitals: (1) You can get killed in the process of moving around the country, and (2) You can have your dead kin accused of being a terrorist which will result in some serious problems for you and your own surviving family.

Furthermore, to answer your ghoulish preoccupation with "Where are the bodies, where are the death cerfificates" the Cole article cites a common practice of throwing corpses into the Tigris river and other bodies of water. It happens day in and day out.

So do you expect the majority of bodies disposed of in the Tigris River to show up and get identified as bodies, and given a death certificate?

In that same article, The Los Angeles times explicitly stated that 50,000 is a gross undercount and excluded entire sections of the country.

True, the LATimes article says "Iraqi officials involved in compiling the statistics say violent deaths in some regions have been grossly undercounted, notably in the troubled province of Al Anbar in the west." But somehow I doubt they meant their data was off by a factor of ten (or more). A factor of two or three, possibly ... but not a factor of ten. You would think that the LATimes would have mentioned something like that. Wouldn't you?

No I don't. That is arm-waving and speculation on your part.

Now here is the article

Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since...

Iraqi officials involved in compiling the statistics say violent deaths in some regions have been grossly undercounted, notably in the troubled province of Al Anbar in the west. Health workers there are unable to compile the data because of violence, security crackdowns, electrical shortages and failing telephone networks.

The Health Ministry acknowledged the undercount. In addition, the ministry said its figures exclude the three northern provinces of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan because Kurdish officials do not provide death toll figures to the government in Baghdad...

However, samples obtained from local health departments in other provinces show an undercount that brings the total well beyond 50,000.

The figure also does not include deaths outside Baghdad in the first year of the invasion.

The morgue records show a predominantly civilian toll; the hospital records gathered by the Health Ministry do not distinguish between civilians, combatants and security forces. ...

"Everything has increased," said one official in the Health Ministry who didn't want to be identified for security reasons. "Bombings have increased, shootings have increased." ...

So you intrepret "Many more," "serious lapses in reporting," "grossly undercounted," "exclude the three northern provinces," "does not include deaths outside Baghdad," "everything has increased," and "well beyond" as meaning "not more than double."

Nobody else will.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-22   0:14:42 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

"Are the people in these 90 major towns and cities different than the people John Hopkins surveyed as being typical of them? Why didn't they go to morgues, hospitals and the health ministry to get a death certificate issued like the ones in the study? Or did they go but then ask those organizations to wipe their records of the fact? Please, resolve this question for me AGAviator since you seem so knowledgeable about the situation in Iraq."

There are some very good reasons for not going to morgues and hospitals: (1) You can get killed in the process of moving around the country, and (2) You can have your dead kin accused of being a terrorist which will result in some serious problems for you and your own surviving family.

Then why did all the folks in the John Hopkins study do that? Did John Hopkins *random* sample just happen to pick a group who did when most of the rest of the country didn't? Or are you suggesting that those who don' t go to morgues, etc can still get death certificates that John Hopkins would accept as legitimate proof? Who issues those death certificate? The LA Times didn't mention any other source for them other than morgues, hospitals and the health ministry. Perhaps the folks in the John Hopkins' study simply create their own? ROTFLOL!

"True, the LATimes article says "Iraqi officials involved in compiling the statistics say violent deaths in some regions have been grossly undercounted, notably in the troubled province of Al Anbar in the west." But somehow I doubt they meant their data was off by a factor of ten (or more). A factor of two or three, possibly ... but not a factor of ten. You would think that the LATimes would have mentioned something like that. Wouldn't you?"

No I don't.

Really? You really think that the highly liberal, anti-Bush, anti-war LA Times wouldn't mention that the death toll is off by a factor of 10 if it were? Really? ROTFLOL!

Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since...

That doesn't help your case either, since the second John Hopkins' study *confirmed* the results of the first which claimed that 98,000 died in the first 18 months after the war began. Thus the majority of the deaths in the 655,000 death study had to have occured after that "chaotic first year".

The Health Ministry acknowledged the undercount. In addition, the ministry said its figures exclude the three northern provinces of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan because Kurdish officials do not provide death toll figures to the government in Baghdad...

But Kurdistan has been very peaceful compared to the rest of Iraq. Surely you aren't claiming that the death rate in Kurdistan is any higher than in Baghdad. If not, then again, the number undercounted can't be much more than the baseline count. You are still missing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bodies, death certificates and eyewitness reports.

By the way, the liberal, anti-war, mainstream media won't tell the public this, but Kurdistan is a real success story. They are doing quite well right now compared to under Saddam.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-22   19:11:49 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Did John Hopkins *random* sample just happen to pick a group who did when most of the rest of the country didn't? Or are you suggesting that those who don't go to morgues, etc can still get death certificates?

Another one of your trademarked diverisons. The survey asked if they had death certificates. They did not ask if they had death certificates from a morgue or a hospital that happened to be contacted by the LA Times.

Perhaps the folks in the John Hopkins' study simply create their own? ROTFLOL!

Seems like "ROTFLOL" is your code for "I'm starting to have difficulties really explaining my position."

The survey said most of their respondents had death certificates. The LA Times said it was difficult to summarize, collate and count the number of death certificates issued, at official reporting levels.

Really? You really think that the highly liberal, anti-Bush, anti-war LA Times wouldn't mention that the death toll is off by a factor of 10 if it were? Really? ROTFLOL!

A completely bullshit argument you're pulling out of thin air. The LA Times like any reputable publication does not claim to know what it has just said it does not know.

If they knew they were off by a factor of ten, they would have had the real number to begin with.

You really like to make this crap up as you go along, don't you?

Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since...

That doesn't help your case either, since the second John Hopkins' study *confirmed* the results of the first which claimed that 98,000 died in the first 18 months after the war began.

False. They confirmed their number with a 2nd sample, which corroborated the first. They didn't try to prove their number with official statistics which they explicitly noted were difficult to come by.

But Kurdistan has been very peaceful compared to the rest of Iraq.

Not during the first year in Mosul and Kirkuk. There is also Anbar province and possibly Basra which are worse.

You are still missing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bodies, death certificates and eyewitness reports.

That has already been discussed. You keep spamming the same old stuff. Four bodies a day x 90 municipalities, plus deaths in the countryside not associated with those municipalities, easily brings the total past 600,000.

By the way, the liberal, anti-war, mainstream media won't tell the public this, but Kurdistan is a real success story. They are doing quite well right now compared to under Saddam.

Many Kurds are mercenaries in the employ of the US government, and their government is also letting Israeli money and military operatives have free rein in return for a future chunk of their oil reserves should they be able to pull off secession.

There's Big Oil money around there too, because Kurdistan sits on top of 2% of the world's proven oil reserves. Kurdistan is a welfare project for Big Oil and Israeli shysters all being financed by the American taxpayer.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-23   0:33:19 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

"Did John Hopkins *random* sample just happen to pick a group who did when most of the rest of the country didn't? Or are you suggesting that those who don't go to morgues, etc can still get death certificates?"

Another one of your trademarked diverisons. The survey asked if they had death certificates. They did not ask if they had death certificates from a morgue or a hospital that happened to be contacted by the LA Times.

But the LA Times only mentioned morgues, hospitals and the health ministry as being sources of death certificates. So I ask you ... what other sources are there? Does the John Hopkins report mention any other sources? No. So what sources are you claiming exist. Oh that's right ... your *theory* is that the morgues, etc did issue the 655,000 certificates but just forgot to make a note of them. ROTFLOL!

The LA Times like any reputable publication does not claim to know what it has just said it does not know.

Reputable? ROTFLOL! Do you know why they call it the LASlime?

"That doesn't help your case either, since the second John Hopkins' study *confirmed* the results of the first which claimed that 98,000 died in the first 18 months after the war began."

False. They confirmed their number with a 2nd sample, which corroborated the first.

Not false. That's exactly what I said. The second study confirmed the results of the first study ... so the second study must have concluded that 98,000 (or so) died in the first 18 months after the war. So your theory that the reason they couldn't find the death certificates of 600,000 is that "many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion" does not help your case. You can't use the first year of the war to explain why so many death certificates are missing.

But Kurdistan has been very peaceful compared to the rest of Iraq.

Not during the first year in Mosul and Kirkuk.

But those areas were supposedly counted in the first John Hopkins study during the first year. You are still missing half a million death certificates.

There is also Anbar province and possibly Basra which are worse.

No, I already addressed the problem with assuming that most of the deaths occurred in Anbar. You'd have to have killed half the population of the region to explain the John Hopkins estimate and SURELY that would have gotten the attention of the world media.

And the Basra statistics from John Hopkins' study have the same problem. Basra is also only 2.5 percent of the population. In fact, even at 1 per hour death rates you and Juan Cole are now claiming you can't make the John Hopkins' estimate make sense. Consider ...

39 months times 30 days times 24 hours time 1/hour = 28,080.

That's it ... 28,000. And you'd have to claim THIS is one of the most violent areas of the country every day since the beginning of the war. Just to get 28,000 deaths.

When are you going to understand that the John Hopkins study is fundamentally flawed?

Kurdistan is a welfare project for Big Oil and Israeli shysters all being financed by the American taxpayer.

Probably never...

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-23   12:51:24 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

But the LA Times only mentioned morgues, hospitals and the health ministry as being sources of death certificates. So I ask you ... what other sources are there? Does the John Hopkins report mention any other sources? No. So what sources are you claiming exist. Oh that's right ... your *theory* is that the morgues, etc did issue the 655,000 certificates but just forgot to make a note of them. ROTFLOL!

Clearly you don't understand the meaning of

"Grossly undercounted," and

"Serious lapses in recording deaths," and

"Continued spotty reporting," and

"Unable to compile the data,"

The LA Times like any reputable publication does not claim to know what it has just said it does not know.

Reputable? ROTFLOL! Do you know why they call it the LASlime?

A pretty lame attempt to weasel out of my incisive answer with an ad hominem.

You said the LA Times would have stated if they were off by a factor of ten.

I said that if the LA Times knew how much they were off, then they'd have the real number to begin with.

Then you try to change the subject.

And you fancy yourself a *debater.*

Not false. That's exactly what I said. The second study confirmed the results of the first study ... so the second study must have concluded that 98,000 (or so) died in the first 18 months after the war. So your theory that the reason they couldn't find the death certificates of 600,000 is that "many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion" does not help your case. You can't use the first year of the war to explain why so many death certificates are missing.

I use "gross undercounts," serious lapses in recording deaths," "continued spotty reporting," and "unable to compile the data," to explain why the LA Times could not get a summary of the death certificates at a top level

And that does not equate to those death certificates being *missing.*

t those areas were supposedly counted in the first John Hopkins study during the first year. You are still missing half a million death certificates.

No I am not missing them.

I know this is your last, best hope to try to obfuscate the results of the survey, but handing out a death certificate, and keeping track of the total number of death certificates handed out, are two completely different actions. Especially in a chaotic war zone, which Iraq is.

You'd have to have killed half the population of the region to explain the John Hopkins estimate and SURELY that would have gotten the attention of the world media.

Anbar is off-limits to the world media. And this really is all you have to say once one strips away the bullshit.

You claim there couldn't have been 655,000 excess deaths in Iraq because the media is picking on poor little George Bush. That's really the only agrument you have to offer.

Consider ... 39 months times 30 days times 24 hours time 1/hour = 28,080.

Consider...4 bodies per day average, x 89 municipalities, plus Baghdad, plus deaths in the country, in a country the size of California with a population of 36 million and a normal death rate of over 100,000 per year, most of which is off- limits and very dangerous to anyone including the media.

And yet you keep on harping on a non-existent "problem" of where the bodies are - as if they aren't scattered all over the country.

When are you going to understand that the John Hopkins study is fundamentally flawed?

When are you going to understand the war was based on lies, its supporters adamantly keep information about it from the world and from American citizens, there has been more than $1 Trillion spent on it, there have been tens of thousands of missions both in the air and on the ground, it has been going on for more nearly 4 years - yet you would have everyone believe that hardly any one ever has died as a result of it.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-24   0:25:54 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

there has been more than $1 Trillion spent on it

By the way ... this is another bit of misinformation. Shall we discuss that topic too?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-24   21:16:03 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Given the stated purpose of the survey, any questions about missing and dead persons were quite secondary to that stated purpose.

That doesn't make the results from that question inaccurate.

What gives an indication of inaccuracy is when a study claims that 92 percent of those claiming deaths during its interviews were able to a death certificates as proof ... yet the number of death certificates issued by those who issue such things appears to be a small fraction

Again.

"Issuing" a death certificate, and "compiling" hundreds of miles away in Baghdad the number of death certificates that were issued, are two separate and distinct processes. And your source clearly and explicitly states many times its number is not in the least representative of the number of death certificates or the number of deaths.

Furthermore, at the end of the day the bottom line is: How many people have died in this war, and how many of them are noncombatants.

The Administration, and people like you, are doing everything they can to distract attention from this bottom line.

However there are plenty of people in Iraq who have been killed who never got death certificates, and who don't have relatives who would say they have been murdered. These deaths are over and above any numbers within the confidence ranage of the survey.

So your attempted obfuscation about the minutiae of the survey do not address the fact that there is a population that the survey did not count, over and above whatever number the survey did count.

Debunked Here

By Patrick Cockburn, AGAIN?

"Nobody is dying in Iraq because the media hates Bush" AGAIN?

Let me try again. You claimed that the reason the LATimes couldn't find the death certificates of some 550,000 Iraqis is that "many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion".

No I didn't. That is just one of several factors, which I have set out many times.

But the source whose estimate you are trying to defend as credible, John Hopkins, only claims that 100,000 died in that first 18 months. That is a small fraction of the 550,000 that are missing.

The surveys did not cover identical time periods, and the first survey had a confidence interval where its authors opined that 100,000 seemed to be a reasonable minimum.

Simply put, chaos in the first year cannot explain the missing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of death certificates that MUST exist

Diversion and straw man. There are a number of reasons why the authorities in Baghdad could not ***COMPILE*** - read the article, then look up the word - the number of death certificates.

But not to the insurgency's media. And don't claim they aren't using the media. They could easily document the death of the half of Anbar's population that would be necessary to make the John Hopkins' study results believable.

The insurgency does not play by your rules.

If you want them to, become a jihadist, go join them, and tell them to! ROTFLOL!!!

So go ahead and ignore what that 28,000 figure says about the theory you tried to pushed that Anbar and Basra can explain the John Hopkins estimate.

Nobody said 28,000 except you. I'm saying 4 bodies per day x 89 municipalities plus Baghdad.

Now your NEW theory is that EVERY city in Iraq has been seeing 120 killings every month since the beginning of the war ... regardless of the total lack of evidence supporting that claim. This just gets lamer and lamer.

I never had an *OLD* theory. My theory is that hundreds of thousands of excess deaths have occurred, both as direct results of the war, and as indirect results of the social chaos caused by the war.

Now for your "lamer and lamer" claims.

The war has cost more than $1 Trillion, it has gone on for more than 3 1/2 years, the Americans have had more than 4,000 killed and more than 30,000 wounded when "contractors" are added to the count. That's a total of 34,000 casualties on "our" side. There have been tens of thousands, possibly more than 100,000, missions, over 3 1/2 years.

Assuming for the sake of argument silliness your claim that the 50,000 death certificates may have been low by a factor of 2, that would mean 100,000 Iraqi excess deaths from all causes against known American casualties of 34,000. In other words, the greatest, most powerful, military machine in history can only kill fewer than 3 people for every one of their own who gets hurt or killed. And even fewer than 3 people when the excess deaths not caused by combat are filtered out. Then the number becomes more like 1 of theirs killed, to one of ours wounded or killed.

And you would allege "we are winning?" ROTFLOL yourself!!!

Furthermore, continuing the same argument silliness, the $1 Trillion cost equates to $10 million for each excess death, and even more than that when the excess deaths not caused by combat are filtered out. Then the number becomes more like $30 million for each of theirs killed.

And you would allege "we are winning?" ROTFLOL yourself!!!

You must be really comfortable in the ME because your arguments shift just like the desert sands. ROTFLOL!

No, that would be your distortions of my statements. ROTFLOL! yourself.

There has been more than $1 Trillion spent on it

By the way ... this is another bit of misinformation.

False.

The supplemental appropriations for Iraq alone are well past half a trillion and that is cold hard cash spent in the current years. Then there are the costs from the regular budget, and last but not least the huge unpaid liabilities that are not counted because of the government's fly-by-night accounting which would send any business executive to Federal prison if he reported results the same way.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-24   22:09:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

And your source clearly and explicitly states many times its number is not in the least representative of the number of death certificates or the number of deaths.

Where does the LA Times explicitly use the words "many times"? It doesn't.

Furthermore, at the end of the day the bottom line is: How many people have died in this war, and how many of them are noncombatants.

Of course, people have died in this war. But the truth won't be found on a foundation of lies. The John Hopkins' studies are lies. Which is why you are having so much difficulty with what I'm pointing out about those studies and its authors.

You claimed that the reason the LATimes couldn't find the death certificates of some 550,000 Iraqis is that "many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion".

No I didn't. That is just one of several factors,

You most certainly did suggest that was a primary factor. Don't try and deny that.

"But the source whose estimate you are trying to defend as credible, John Hopkins, only claims that 100,000 died in that first 18 months. That is a small fraction of the 550,000 that are missing."

The surveys did not cover identical time periods,

FALSE. The second survey includes the period of the first survey and the second survey stated it's results validated the results of the first survey.

and the first survey had a confidence interval where its authors opined that 100,000 seemed to be a reasonable minimum.

FALSE FALSE FALSE. The minimum of the 95% confidence range was 8,000.

"Simply put, chaos in the first year cannot explain the missing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of death certificates that MUST exist"

Diversion and straw man.

No, it's an argument that strikes at the heart of your claim the John Hopkins survey is believable. Which is why you are clearly having so much trouble dealing with it. Which is why you keep putting forward one explanation after another only to discover each explanation does not explain. You can't explain the missing death certificates by claiming the first year was chaos. You can't explain them by claiming most of the deaths occurred in Anbar. Or Basra. Now you are finding it necessary to claim that every major city in Iraq has been more violent on a daily basis since the beginning of the war than the media has even noted for only a few short specific periods in only a couple of cities. Your excuses are getting sillier and sillier.

"But not to the insurgency's media. And don't claim they aren't using the media. They could easily document the death of the half of Anbar's population that would be necessary to make the John Hopkins' study results believable."

The insurgency does not play by your rules.

See what I mean about getting sillier and sillier? You now want us to believe that insurgents wouldn't use what is clearly the most powerful leverage possible to get America out of Iraq. Do you honestly believe the world would stand for our remaining if the insurgents showed proof that we'd committed genocide in Anbar by killing HALF of its population? Of course not ... so it defies reason that had that occurred the insurgents wouldn't be making use of evidence of such a crime now.

So go ahead and ignore what that 28,000 figure says about the theory you tried to pushed that Anbar and Basra can explain the John Hopkins estimate.

Nobody said 28,000 except you.

Actually, after finding your Anbar suggestion didn't hold water, you offered Basra as an explanation, claiming that 1 person per hour was dying (based solely on ONE comment by ONE person a year ago). I simply showed that even if we assumed 1 death an hour for the entire time since the invasion, it would only amount to 28,000 ... proving how ridiculous your Basra excuse was.

I'm saying 4 bodies per day x 89 municipalities plus Baghdad.

No, after your Anbar and Basra arguments collapsed, you moved on to claiming (without any proof) that 4 bodies per day had been dying in 90 cities in Iraq every day, day in and day out, since the beginning of the invasion. If that were true, you could account for perhaps 400,000 deaths. But its ALL based on nothing but speculation. You still don't have the death certificates. You still don' t have ANY proof of that many bodies. And you still haven't explained how John Hopkins just happened to pick a group of people for their survey of whom 92 percent could supply death certificates on demand.

"Now your NEW theory is that EVERY city in Iraq has been seeing 120 killings every month since the beginning of the war ... regardless of the total lack of evidence supporting that claim. This just gets lamer and lamer."

I never had an *OLD* theory.

Sure you did. We all watched your theory evolve on this very thread, AGAviator. It's no use claiming otherwise. All one has to do is reread this read to see that I'm right.

The war has cost more than $1 Trillion,

No, it has not. This figure is just as bogus as John Hopkins' death estimate. For one, it totally over looks the positive financial benefits of invading and winning in Iraq. It is NET cost/benefit that will matter in the long run.

Assuming for the sake of argument silliness your claim that the 50,000 death certificates may have been low by a factor of 2, that would mean 100,000 Iraqi excess deaths from all causes against known American casualties of 34,000. In other words, the greatest, most powerful, military machine in history can only kill fewer than 3 people for every one of their own who gets hurt or killed.

Lamer and lamer. Now you make the FALSE claim that the American military directly killed those 100,000 Iraqis. The truth is that most of the deaths in Iraq are directly a result of terrorist, insurgent and secular violence. Iraqi on Iraqi violence. Even the John Hopkins' researchers have said as much.

The supplemental appropriations for Iraq alone are well past half a trillion

No, the supplemental appropriations for the WOT as a whole are past half a trillion dollars. Not for just Iraq.

http://www.senate.gov/~budget/republican/hearingarchive/testimonies/2007/2007-02-06Kosiak.pdf " The Global War on Terror (GWOT): Costs, Cost Growth and Estimating Funding Requirements Testimony, Before the United States Senate Committee on the Budget, Steven M. Kosiak, Vice President for Budget Studies, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 6, 2007 ... snip ... Since fiscal year (FY) 2001, Congress has appropriated about $502 billion for the GWOT. This includes some $463 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD) and $39 billion for other departments and agencies. Military operations, reconstruction and other assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan account for, respectively, some $345-375 billion and $100 billion of this total. The remaining roughly $25-55 billion has been used to fund a variety of other programs and activities, including classified programs, Army and Marine Corps restructuring and some homeland security activities (Operation Noble Eagle)."

If you can't even get that right, how reliable can you be about anything else?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-25   23:53:27 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

The John Hopkins' studies are lies.

Really?

You, BeAChooser would testify before Congress that the Johns Hopkins' studies "are lies?"

No? And why is that BeAChooser? Perhaps because you are not invited? And why is that? I'll give you the reason - because your laymanBot opinions and the opinions of Mr. neocon Kaplan from Slate and the opinions of the LA Times, Washington Post, Fox News news reporters and all the bloggers you have quoted, ARE NOT CONSIDERED EXPERT BECAUSE NONE OF YOU ARE EXPERTS on anything except the science of bushbotulism - ie. how to deny, obstruct, and cover your a** . That's your specialty.

Let me tell you who was invited to testify before Congress on Dec. 11, 2006 -it was the 2 co-authors of the Lancet study, Dr. Gilbert Burnham, MD, and Dr. Les Roberts.

Do you think these 2 men would "lie" to Congress? These are medical professionals, they're not war mongering professionals like Bibi Netanyahu. Drs. Burnham and Roberts actually had to attend college and pass board exams.

Read this testimony, BAC. You might learn something about "expert testimony."

Monday, December 11, 2006

"Kucinich-Paul Congressional Hearing on Civilian Casualties in Iraq"

http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/kucinich-paul-congressional-hearing- on.html

scrapper2  posted on  2007-02-26   0:41:36 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

You, BeAChooser would testify before Congress that the Johns Hopkins' studies "are lies?"

Be happy to, scrapper.

"Let me tell you who was invited to testify before Congress on Dec. 11, 2006 -it was the 2 co-authors of the Lancet study, Dr. Gilbert Burnham, MD, and Dr. Les Roberts."

Do you think these 2 men would "lie" to Congress?

Yes. Too bad none of those on the Congressional staffs were smart enough (or honest enough, themselves) to prompt their Congressperson to ask Burnham and Roberts about that 92% claim. Now THAT would have been interesting.

"Kucinich-Paul Congressional Hearing on Civilian Casualties in Iraq"

Kucinich? Ron Paul? ROTFLOL! Now there's two with no agenda to promote. (sarcasm)

http://www.juancole.com/2006/12/kucinich-paul-congressional-hearing-on.html

You want an example of those of Burnham and Roberts LYING to Congress, scrapper? Here, from own your source:

DR. BURNHAM - "And then at the end of that survey where there was a death in the household, we asked, "By the way, do you have a death certificate?" And in 91 percent of households where this was asked, the households had death certificates. So we're confident that people were not making up deaths that didn't occur."

Where are the missing death certificates?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-26   11:48:54 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Where are the missing death certificates?

With so many deaths, maybe the medical examiner is a little bit backlogged.

BeALoser  posted on  2007-02-26   13:52:45 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

BAC: Where are the missing death certificates?

BeALoser: With so many deaths, maybe the medical examiner is a little bit backlogged.

And also please see the information in my msg #111. Islam requires burial within 24 hours. If a physician cannot be reached easily within that time frame for a death certificate to be issued, the loved one is buried without a certificate in a place other than a grave yard.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-02-26   14:05:09 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

If a physician cannot be reached easily within that time frame for a death certificate to be issued, the loved one is buried without a certificate in a place other than a grave yard.

Are you saying they can't get buried in grave yards without death certificates?

Seems reasonable to prevent people from burying individuals they're guilty of killing themselves.

AGAviator  posted on  2007-02-27   8:17:49 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

a. Are you saying they can't get buried in grave yards without death certificates?

b. Seems reasonable to prevent people from burying individuals they're guilty of killing themselves.

a. Yes, that is what Dr. Roberts told me is a requirement in Iraq.

b. Good observation.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-02-27   11:32:19 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

a. Yes, that is what Dr. Roberts told me is a requirement in Iraq.

Prove it. Post the email you sent him and post the email he sent back.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-27   12:44:48 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Prove it. Post the email you sent him and post the email he sent back.

I cut and pasted Dr. Roberts' email response to me in message #142.

The grave yard death certificate procedure is addressed in his point b.

I cut and pasted what is for public consumption in my correspondence with Dr. Roberts.

P.S. Let me make this very clear to you, oozer, and I'll do so in no uncertain terms - my personal and professional information is confidential, strictly off limits, especially to a self-revealed lunatic like yourself so don't try to "trick" me into revealing my email address or my name or whatever you are sniffing around for. I told you what I asked him and I gave you his response.

Eat it.

ROTFLOL!

scrapper2  posted on  2007-02-27   13:11:18 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

I cut and pasted Dr. Roberts' email response to me in message #142.

And for that I thank you. But I would like to see specifically how you worded the question you ask him, since you claimed to have passed on MY questions.

Maybe you could just pass on this, and see what he has to say:

******************

1. The 655,000 estimate is many, many times larger than any other estimate out there (and there are about half a dozen others). Those other estimates were more like 50,000 at the time the John Hopkins study was published. Are they all wrong and only John Hopkins right? Even various anti-war groups such as Human Rights Watch and IraqBodyCount have indicated the John Hopkins' figures are outlandish. So why are FD4UMers so voraciously defending JH's estimates?

2. The report and the peer reviewer of the report (the Lancet) ignored a major discrepancy between the pre-war mortality estimate derived by the John Hopkins team and the estimates derived by other organizations such as the UN and WHO. The UN and WHO, in largers studies, came up with rates between 7-8 per 1000 per year compared to the John Hopkins rate of 5-5.5 per 1000 per year. And these larger rates were estimates that the Lancet had previously endorsed as accurate. This pre-war mortality number is one of the key numbers used in determining excess deaths. If it were as high as the UN and WHO found, then the number of excess deaths would be far less, perhaps a tenth as much.

3. A recent UN Development Program study, http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/PDF/Analytical%20Report%20-%20English.pdf, states that there were 24,000 war-related deaths (18,000-29,000, with a 95% confidence level) during the time covered by the Hopkins report. This is approximately ONE-FOURTH the number of excess deaths that Les Roberts' 2004 John Hopkins study found. And the UN used similar techniques - clusters, etc. - but with a much larger data set than John Hopkins. Why is there no mention of this study in the lastest John Hopkin's report (which claims its results verify the first JH report)? Why was this discrepancy not addressed by the Lancet *peer* reviewers?

4. According to the latest John Hopkins report, 92 percent of those who claimed deaths in their families (501 out of 545) were able to provide death certificates to prove it. Therefore, if the study is statistically valid, there should be death certificates available for about 92 percent of the total 655,000 estimated dead. But investigations by media sources that are not friendly to the Bush administration or the war have not found evidence of anywhere near that number. The Los Angeles Times, for example, in a comprehensive investigation found less than 50,000 certificates. Even if that investigation were off a factor of two, there is still a huge discrepancy. To take the Johns Hopkins results seriously, you have to believe that the Iraqi government recorded deaths occurring since the invasion with an accuracy of 92 percent, but then suppressed the bulk of those deaths when releasing official figures, with no one blowing the whistle. And you have to believe that all those dead bodies went unnoticed by the mainstream media and everyone else trying to keep track of the war casualties. Alternatively, you have to believe that the Iraqi government only issues death certificates for a small percentage of deaths, but this random sample happened to get 92 percent by pure chance.

5. A principle author of both John Hopkins studies, Les Roberts, has publically stated he disliked Bush (not unexpected given that he is an active democRAT) and the war. He has admitted that he released the study when he did to negatively influence the election against Bush and the GOP. And he has admitted that most of those he hired to conduct the study in Iraq "HATE" (that was his word) the Americans. None of that is a good basis for conducting a non-partisan study.

6. Nor is the behavior of the Lancet. They've not only failed to ask important questions during their *peer* reviews, they admit they greatly abbreviated that peer review process for the 2004 report so the results could be published in time to influence the 2004 election. They also reported on their own website in 2004, that the deaths estimated by John Hopkins were comprised solely of civilians. But the study made no such claim. In fact, it clearly states that the investigators did not ask those interviewed if the dead were civilians, Saddam military or insurgents. Which leads one to wonder if the Lancet actually read the report they claimed to review.

7. When media interviewers of the lead researchers completely misrepresented the results (for example, calling all the dead "civilians"), those researchers (one being Les Robert) made no effort to correct those falsehoods. And they went on to lie, both directly and by omission, about the methodology they used. This is indisputable. For example, here is what another of the John Hopkins researchers, Richard Garfield, told an interviewer: "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 the deaths. And Les Roberts did the exact same thing in another interview.

8. In the Garfield interview mentioned above, he stated "And here you see that deaths recorded in the Baghdad morgue were, for a long period, around 200 per month." Let me repeat that figure ... 200 A MONTH, in one of the most populated and most violent regions in the country during the time in question. And now Les Roberts is asking us to believe that 15,000 (on average) were dying each month in the country since the war began. How could Garfield not have questions about this new estimate given his previous statement?

9. Richard Garfield is another of those who advocated mortality statistics before the war that are widely divergent from those derived using the Les Roberts/John Hopkins 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. That is compared to the Les Robert's estimate of 2.9 percent. So why didn't Roberts or Garfield address this disparity? And note that 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 Roberts' study?

10. There is NO physical evidence whatsoever to support the claim that 655,000 Iraqis were killed from the beginning of the war to mid 2006. There are no killing fields filled with bodies or mass graves. There are no photos of these mountains of bodies. There are no videos of this slaughter or the funerals afterwords. There are no reporters, of ANY nationality, saying they saw these bodies or the slaughter. There are no US or foreign soldiers providing evidence of such a slaughter. There is NO physical evidence.

11. Dahr Jamail is an example of the above. He is viralently anti-American. He has close ties to the insurgents and arabs. So look on his website ( http://dahrjamailiraq.com/) for any indication that 500, much less 100 Iraqis were dying every single day on average 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.

12. 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.

13. But the discrepancy is even worse than that. As noted by the author of this blog, http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2006_10_08_archive.html#116069912405842066, "The claim is 654,965 excess deaths caused by the war from March 2003 through July 2006. That's 40 months, or 1200 days, so an average of 546 deaths per day. To get an average of 546 deaths per day means that there must have been either many hundreds of days with 1000 or more deaths per day (example: 200 days with 1000 deaths = 200,000 dead leaves 1000 days with an average of 450 deaths), or tens of days with at least 10,000 or more deaths per day (example: 20 days with 10,000 deaths = 200,000 dead leaves 1180 days with an average of 381 deaths). So, where are the news accounts of tens of days with 10,000 or more deaths?"

14. The number of dead the John Hopkins methodology gives in Fallujah is so staggering 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 (note who he uses to get his message out), 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, instead 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." Then why didn't they keep the Fallujah data point?

15. John Hopkins claims "We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654,965 (392,979 - 942,636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601,027 (426,369 - 793,663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gun fire." But during World War II, the Allied air forces carpet bombed German cities, using high explosives and incendiaries, and according to The United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report killed an estimated 305,000. So are we to believe that with gun fire rather than bombs, twice as many Iraqis have been killed in the last 3 years, as died in all Germany during WW2 due to strategic bombing of cities which completely flattened entire cities? Likewise, Japan had about 2 million citizens killed (about 2.7 percent of their population), both military and civilian. Many Japanese cities were firebombed during that war (for example, Tokyo had 100,000 people killed in just one raid). Two cities were attacked with nuclear weapons. And yet Les Roberts and his crew want us to believe that just as large a percentage have died in Iraq ... where the Coalition has gone out of its way to avoid civilian deaths?

****************

He can number his responses to match the numbering above.

The grave yard death certificate procedure is addressed in his point b.

But do we believe what is just another claim? Does he have any documentary proof of it? For example, did he verify that the doctors who supposedly signed the death certificates provided as proof did indeed sign them?

.S. Let me make this very clear to you, oozer, and I'll do so in no uncertain terms - my personal and professional information is confidential,

I have no interest at all in your personal and professional information. I just ask you to post the text of the email you sent to "Les" so we can see exactly what he was responding to in his email to you. Now why would you have a problem doing that?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-27   13:27:52 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

I have no interest at all in your personal and professional information. I just ask you to post the text of the email you sent to "Les" so we can see exactly what he was responding to in his email to you. Now why would you have a problem doing that?

a. It's Dr. Roberts to you, oozer, not Les. Please refer to Dr. Roberts with the respect and courtesy that his academic credentials demand.

b. I told you what I asked him and I cut and pasted his reply in message #142. What do you think he was responding to, but the question I asked him ie. about death certificates and why his team's numbers differed from that of the LA Times.

Do Dr. Roberts' remarks seem like he was responding to a question about his hair color or shoe size?

c. You know what oozer, I'm not your servant, that's my "problem" with doing anything further for you. So no, I'm not going back into my email folder to cut and paste the exact wording of my message to Dr. Roberts. And no, I am not going to make a pest of myself by contacting Dr. Roberts yet again with more of your idiotic questions. Buy a clue, BAC, you are not worth his time and attention, nor mine either, frankly. You have worn out my patience reserves. I can barely be civil to you now.

I have responded to you thusfar only because I hated to see you throw dust on the credibility of the JH's study and also because a significant number of 4um posters, whose opinions I respect, have expended THEIR energies and time on rebutting you on this particular thread. Get it, BAC? It's for THEIR benefit, not yours, that I contacted Dr. Roberts the first time.

d. BAC, you have buried yourself. In the course of this discussion thread you have revealed yourself to be a sad little specimen of troll.

Didn't they teach you at Troll School to keep your questions simple and few in number and your posts short?

e. However, while on the subject of other 4um posters' benefit, here's the link to an 8 minute audio clip of a Randi Rhodes' interview with Dr. Roberts. It is excellent and I recommend it to all for your listening pleaure.

Randi Rhodes starts off the interview with a sound bite from the doofusinchief about his take on findings of the JH's study. Then the interview moves on to the internationally respected credentialed professional, Dr. Roberts.

Once you hear this interview, I guarantee there will be no question in your minds as to the crediblity of Dr. Roberts in contrast to the vacuousness of the other side.

Enjoy!

http://www.info rmationclearinghouse.info/article15275.htm

"Randi Rhodes Interviews Dr. Les Roberts; co-author of the Johns Hopkins Iraq Mortality Study" 10/11/06

scrapper2  posted on  2007-02-27   14:37:19 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

Please refer to Dr. Roberts with the respect and courtesy that his academic credentials demand.

Does a liar deserve respect? Because I think that's what *Dr* Roberts may really be where this issue is concerned ... a liar who fabricated a result to fit a pre-conceived agenda. Or who at least allowed others to fabricate claims because they happened to fit his pre-conceived agenda.

Does a democRAT deserve respect? (Les Roberts ran as a Democrat for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 in New York's 24th Congressional District.)

b. I told you what I asked him and I cut and pasted his reply in message #142.

Then he chose to basically ignore the issue. Because what he did amounts to nothing more than waving his hand and expect it all to go away. But it's not going to go away, scrapper. Offer some PROOF that Iraqi doctors operate/operated in the way he and you now claim explains the missing death certificates.

The bottom line is that NONE of the explanations offered by AGAviator, you or *Dr* Roberts deals satisfactorily with the suspicious fact that 92 percent of Roberts' supposedly *random* sample were able to provide death certificates when death certificates seem to be in terribly short supply in Iraq when others look at the issue.

The bottom line is that you have offered NO PROOF that the death rate throughout Iraq is at the levels claimed. It is simply absurd to claim that a slaughter has occurred in Iraq on a greater scale than occurred in even Nazi Germany during the allied bombing campaign of WW2, yet today's liberal US media, foreign media and insurgent media have all simply missed documenting it. It is absurd to claim we've killed as many Iraqis as died in Japan during WW2 ... when we firebombed and nuked Japanese cities with total impunity and without ANY concern for civilian lives.

The bottom line is that it is simply absurd to claim a coverup of this proportion amongst those who are or have served in the US military in Iraq ... in this day and age where secrets can hardly be kept by half a dozen much less half a million. This assertion is just as silly as claiming thousands and thousands of structural engineers, demolition experts and other professionals with training and experience in steel, impact, fire, concrete, buckling, seismology and macro-world physics from around the world are "morons" who have missed what a theologian, philosopher or poet claims is OBVIOUSLY a controlled demolition.

The bottom line is that you folks have so far chosen to simply ignore the many other contrary facts and logic problems I listed about the studies. For example, why do the pre-war mortality rates computed by equally reputable sources in larger studies differ so markedly from those obtained by John Hopkins in their studies? That difference alone could explain the disparity between JH's ridiculous estimates and those of everyone else who has estimated deaths during the conflict.

The bottom line is that you folks can't explain why the mainstream media (who by all appearances is not friendly to this war, Bush or the GOP) recently blasted the news across the airwaves that a 100 were tragically dying a day in Iraq as if that had never happened before yet ignored the 550 Iraqis that Les Roberts and his group now claim have been dying on average every single day since day one of the invasion? How can the media have simply ignored the 10,000 Iraqis that statistically had to have died in a given day many times during that period if the John Hopkins' study is to be credible?

The bottom line is that the mainstream media has been woefully derelict (due to rank partisanship) in asking Roberts and the other John Hopkins researchers to explain these tough questions about what looks to me and many others like a partisan hack job. Just like they were woefully derelict in pursuing the many crimes committed by the Clinton administration.

But you are certainly free to be taken in by Roberts and the mainstream media.

Randi Rhodes' interview with Dr. Roberts.

Randi Rhodes of Air America. You have to be kidding, scrapper. ROTFLOL!

Go to Randi's website (http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/ )and you will find this statement: "The only real scientific study of civilian casualties in Iraq is at 654,965 as of July 2006." You see the problem? It's a LIE. After interviewing Les Roberts, how can Randi Rhodes be unaware that the John Hopkins researchers did not say the 654,965 dead were all civilians? And the title of the article linked to that statement ... "Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates" is also a deception. Because the only earlier study affirmed by the lastest study is the earlier one done also by Les Roberts, which had its own serious problems (not the least of which was claims about death certificates). What is not mentioned is that the latest estimate is wildly at variance with half a dozen or so OTHER estimates. Sorry ... but clearly neither Randi Rhodes or John Hopkins is interested in spreading truth. They BOTH have an agenda.

Folks, here's a very telling statement by Les Roberts during an interview with Joseph Choonara in 2005: "As far as I’m concerned the exact number of dead is not so important. It is many tens of thousands. Whether it’s 80,000 or 140,000 dead, it’s just not acceptable." Those aren't the word of a scientist sure of his figures. Those are the words of someone with an agenda. Turns out he's a democRAT with an agenda. Not to be trusted.

Once you hear this interview, I guarantee there will be no question in your minds as to the crediblity of Dr. Roberts in contrast to the vacuousness of the other side.

Here is some more vacuousness for you to ignore, scrapper.

************

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr14/0.php

Iraq Body Count Press Release 16 October 2006

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Introduction

There has been enormous interest and debate over the newly published Lancet Iraqi mortality estimate of 655,000 excess deaths since the invasion, 601,000 of them from violence (and including combatants with civilians). Even the latter estimate is some 12 times larger than the IBC count of violent civilian deaths reported in the international news media, which stands at something under 50,000 for the same period (although the IBC figure for this period is likely to considerably increase with the addition of as yet unprocessed data). The new Lancet estimate is also almost the same degree higher than any official records from Iraq. This contrast has provoked numerous requests for comment, and these are our first observations.

The researchers, and in particular their Iraqi colleagues who carried out the survey, should be commended for undertaking it under dangerous circumstances and with minimal resources. Efforts like theirs have consistently highlighted that much more could be done by official bodies, such as the US and UK governments, to assess the human suffering that has resulted from the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

However, our view is that there is considerable cause for scepticism regarding the estimates in the latest study, not least because of a very different conclusion reached by another random household survey, the ILCS, using a comparable method but a considerably better-distributed and much larger sample. This latter study gave a much lower estimate for violent deaths up until April 2004, despite that period being associated with the smallest number of observed deaths in the latest Lancet study.

Additionally, claims that the two Lancet studies confirm each other's estimates are overstated. Both the violent and non-violent post-invasion death estimates are actually quite different in the two studies.

What emerges most clearly from this study is that a multi-methodological approach and much better resourced work is required. Substantially more deaths have occurred than have been recorded so far, but their number still remains highly uncertain.

We also take the view that far more recognition should be accorded the many other courageous people in Iraq, be they Iraqi or international journalists, hospital, morgue, and other officials, or relief workers, who are endeavouring to keep the world informed on the country's plight. Far too many have had to pay the highest possible price for their efforts. Ignorance of this catastrophic war would be far less endemic if their day-by-day contribution were consistently given the exposure it merits. The daily toll on civilian lives resulting from the Iraq war should be front-page news in the countries that instigated it, not inside-page news.

The Lancet estimate

In October 2004 the Lancet published a random cluster sample survey estimating that 98,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion up to that point (an 18-month period), and that 57,600 of these deaths were from violence. The October 2006 study comes from the same research team and provides an estimate for the 40-month period from March 2003 to June 2006 of 655,000 excess deaths, 601,000 of them from violence. The data presented do not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths. Since IBC's work is confined to violent civilian deaths, we make no further comment on Lancet's non-violent death estimates.

The Lancet researchers visited 47 neighbourhoods and conducted interviews in 40 adjoining households in each neighbourhood. About 1,800 households containing 12,000 Iraqis were surveyed. These households reported a total of 302 violent deaths, each of which has been multiplied by two thousand to provide an estimate of how many of Iraq's estimated 26,000,000 population would have died if this proportion of deaths were representative of the country as a whole.

The study's central estimate of 601,000 violent deaths is exceptionally high. Even its lower bound 95% confidence interval of 426,000 violent deaths is shockingly large. If numbers of this magnitude are anywhere near the truth, then they reveal a disaster far greater than most could have conceived, and one which appears inconsistent with a considerable amount of other information that has emerged over the last three and a half years. Before any firm conclusions are drawn on the basis of this study, five important (and extremely anomalous) implications of the data presented by the Lancet authors require examination.

************

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr14/1.php

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Implication one:

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

Between January and June 2006, there were 91 violent deaths recorded by the Lancet survey. This would correspond to over 180,000 deaths in the first 6 months of 2006, and an average rate of 1,000 per day. The daily death rate over the same period based on UN reports (which sum Baghdad morgue and Ministry of Health data) is 80 violent deaths per day. Cumulated media reports provide a somewhat lower figure.

If the Lancet extrapolation is sound, this would imply a further 920 violent deaths every day (1000 minus 80) which have been recorded by neither officials nor the media. As these are averages, some days would see many more deaths, and others substantially fewer, but in either case, all of them would remain unnoticed.

If we consider the Lancet's June 2005 – June 2006 period, whose violent toll it estimates at 330,000, then daily estimates become lower but would still require 768 unrecorded violent deaths for every 67 that are recorded. The IBC database shows that the average number of people killed in any one violent attack is five. Therefore it would require about 150 unreported, average-size, violent assaults per day to account for 768 deaths.

It is unlikely that incidents of this scale would be so consistently missed by the various media in Iraq. Although IBC technically requires only two sources for every corroborated death in its database, we actually collect, archive and analyse every unique report we can find about each incident before it is added to our database. For larger incidents the number of reports can run into the dozens, including news published in English in the original and others, mostly the Iraqi press, published in translation. In IBC's news archive for August 2006 the average-size attack leaving 5 civilians killed has a median number of 6 reports on it.

If, as our data suggest, smaller incidents are the ones that are most likely to be under-reported, then the number of "hidden" assaults implied by this study could be far greater. For instance, if the average number of people killed in each such assault were two, then the number of unreported deadly assaults would have to rise to 380 per day.

One possible way of explaining such a very large number of small-scale unreported assaults is to suppose that many of these are the result of "secret" killings which have resulted from abduction, execution by gunfire, or beheading. But 42% of the 330,000 Lancet-estimated violent deaths in this final 13-month period are ascribed to "explosives/ordnance", car bombs, or air strikes, all of which carry a fairly heavy and hardly 'secret' toll (and will generally create at least 3 times as many wounded).

The Lancet's 2005-2006 data generates an Iraqi average daily death toll of 350 from these explosions and air strikes, of which deaths only a small fraction are officially recorded or reported. More specifically, Lancet data suggests large numbers of deadly car bombings occurring on a daily basis, of which only a small fraction are ever reported (and whose victims, including injured, fail to be recorded by hospitals).

Lancet estimates 150 people to have died from car bombs alone, on average, every day during June 2005-June 2006. IBC's database of deadly car bomb incidents shows they kill 7-8 people on average. Lancet's estimate corresponds to about 20 car bombs per day, all but one or two of which fail to be reported by the media. Yet car bombs fall well within the earlier-mentioned category of incidents which average 6 unique reports on them.

'Baghdad-weighting' of media reports, even if applicable to car bombs, is unlikely to account for this level of under-reporting, as half of the car bombs IBC has recorded have been outside Baghdad. The Pentagon, which has every reason to highlight the lethality of car bombs to Iraqis, records, on average, two to three car-bombings per day throughout Iraq, including those hitting only its own forces or causing no casualties, for the period in question.

************

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr14/2.php

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Implication two:

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

It may be argued that deaths often fail to be reported to authorities or registered by them (although information supplied by the Lancet authors themselves casts doubt on this argument - see Implication four below). However, people suffering injuries usually make strenuous efforts to receive appropriate treatment, or if they are severely incapacitated, others see to it that they do so.

It is a long-established finding that around three times as many people are injured in modern wars as are killed in them. This is borne out in Iraq in statistics gathered by the Iraqi Ministry of Health (MoH). Their casualty monitoring centre was set up in Spring 2004 to allow the Ministry to allocate resources in response to conflict-related violence across Iraq (excluding the Kurdish-administered regions). The system is claimed to be manned 24 hours a day, with hospitals phoning the Ministry in Baghdad on a daily basis (when necessary) to report on dead and wounded from conflict-related violence,

The MoH has reported 2.9 wounded for each person killed in the period from mid-2004 to mid-2006. An almost identical ratio was confirmed in IBC's independent analysis of media-derived data for the first two years after the invasion.

If 600,000 people have died violent deaths, then the 3:1 ratio implies that 1,800,000 Iraqis have by now been wounded. This would correspond to 1 in every 15 Iraqis.

Of course, death/injury ratios vary according to the weapons being used. Bombs and air strikes leave more wounded than does gunfire, but even the latter may cause widespread injury when it is indiscriminate, as it often is in gun-battles or in "defensive" fire by US troops who come under attack. By far the lowest proportion of injured are produced in the execution of captives, whether by guns or other means.

We might therefore calculate a much more conservative estimate of wounded associated with the Lancet findings, based on the different proportions of weaponry reported in Table 4 of the Lancet paper. We assume 3 wounded for every explosive- or air strike-caused death, but only 1 wounded for every 2 gunfire deaths, and no wounded from the "unknown" and "accident" categories.

This yields a revised Lancet-based estimate of 800,000 wounded over the equivalent period for which the MoH has been collecting this information centrally. In that same two-year period the official total of wounded treated in Iraqi hospitals is recorded as 59,372.

Whether hospitals can provide a comprehensive tally of violent deaths or not, their knowledge of seriously injured should be much more complete.

Accepting the Lancet estimate would entail concluding that at least 740,000 wounded Iraqis (90% of the total) were not treated or, if treated, not recorded in any way, throughout a 2-year period beginning in mid-2004. It may be that many injured anti-occupation combatants have avoided hospitals to prevent identification or arrest, but they are hardly likely to account for more than a small fraction of this discrepancy. It would further imply that approaching 90% of Lancet's deaths are also of combatants.

In fact, even if one considers only the victims of car bombs as estimated in Lancet (who are a relatively small subset, and would have no reason to avoid - if they even had the capacity to do so - detection by authorities), then the 220,000 injured which would credibly accompany Lancet's estimates would far outstrip the 60,000 whom hospitals have recorded treating for injuries from all causes. This would be despite the existence of an ongoing, albeit imperfect, monitoring system specifically designed for such war-related casualty monitoring, one which emergency health service providers should have strong interest in maintaining in order to receive the necessary resources from the Health Ministry.

*************

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr14/3.php

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Implication three:

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

Of the 287 violent post-invasion deaths recorded by the Lancet authors where the age and sex was known, 235 (82%) were adult males between 15 and 59 years old. Extrapolating to the population as a whole would mean that around 470,000 men in this age group have been killed violently, i.e. one in 15 (7%) of adult males aged 15 to 59.

But that figure, horrific enough on its own, is only the national average. According to all accounts, including Lancet's, the intensity of violence differs widely across Iraq. The Lancet authors estimate at least a 5-fold difference in levels of violence between the lowest and the highest of the 16 Iraqi provinces sampled. In the provinces containing the highest violence - with a total population of 6.4 million – the Lancet-derived proportion of men killed would begin at one in 10, and rise from there (the study did not publish sufficient data to deduce what the maxima might be). This level of adult male decimation would not just apply to a few badly affected areas, but vast swathes of central Iraq representing around a quarter of the Iraq's population.

***************

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr14/4.php

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Implication four:

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

In 87% of cases where deaths were reported, the survey team asked to see death certificates, leading to the Lancet authors' statement that "92% of households had death certificates for deaths they reported". Assuming, as the authors do, that this is representative of the population as a whole, would imply that officials in Iraq have issued approximately 550,000 death certificates for violent deaths (92% of 601,000). Yet in June 2006, the total figure of post-war violent deaths known to the Iraqi Ministry of Health (MoH), combined with the Baghdad morgue, was approximately 50,000.

If the Lancet estimate is correct then it follows that either (a) 500,000 documented violent deaths, for which certificates were issued, have somehow managed to completely disappear without a trace to Iraqi officials or the international media or (b) there is a vast, elaborate, and very successful, cover up of this massive number of bodies and their associated paper trail being carried out in Iraq.

A "suspicion" of option (b) is offered as one possible explanation in the supplementary notes to the Lancet report, but is not addressed in any detail. Option (a), however, is argued for explicitly. The authors write that:

"Even with the death certificate system, only about one-third of deaths were captured by the government's surveillance system in the years before the current war, according to informed sources in Iraq. At a death rate of 5/1,000/year, in a population of 24 million, the government should have reported 120,000 deaths annually. In 2002, the government documented less than 40,000 from all sources. The ministry's numbers are not likely to be more complete or accurate today."

The above statement provides the sole evidentiary basis for the Lancet authors to dismiss as "expected" the factor-of-ten discrepancy between their estimates and statistics collected by the official monitoring system as it exists in Iraq. No one argues that Iraq's official figures are complete, including its officials. But could their coverage be so bad as to amount to no more than a small fraction of deaths, as suggested above?

Two points need to be made here. First, despite the confidence with which the Lancet authors make the assertion, the natural death rate of 5/1,000/year is not an established fact for Iraq in 2002. It is one estimate, a projection or extrapolation from some smaller set of known data. It may be correct, or it may not be, and there can be considerable room for debate on the matter.

Second, the figure of 40,000 claimed as the number of deaths recorded by the MoH in 2002 is false. No specific citation is offered by the Lancet authors for this figure other than a vague attribution to "informed sources in Iraq". But official Iraqi figures for 2002, forwarded to IBC courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, show that the Ministry registered 84,025 deaths from all causes in that year. This excluded deaths in the Kurdish-administered regions, which contain 12% or more of the population.

Thus, the actual MoH figure for 2002, even while excluding Kurdistan, stands at 70% of the estimate of 120,000 that, per the Lancet authors, "should have been recorded" nation-wide in 2002. It may (or may not, given its post-2004 casualty monitoring system) be true that the "ministry's numbers are not likely to be more complete or accurate today". But if their completeness is even remotely similar to 2002 (the Ministry's equivalent 2005 figures record 115,785 deaths, an average of 320 per day), then we are still left with a vast and completely unexplained chasm between the actual official figures, what may reasonably be assumed about their past completeness based on documentary evidence, and the violent death estimate offered in this new Lancet report.

***********

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr14/5.php

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Implication five:

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

According to Lancet calculations, Coalition forces killed 32,000 Iraqis from late March 2003 to the end of April 2004. This is a period that included the large-scale invasion in which 20,000 air strikes rained 30,000 bombs on a largely urbanized country along with an untold quantity of artillery, as well as an additional 240,000 cluster bombs. This type of assault was then repeated on a smaller but still significant scale in Falluja. All available evidence points to a significant and progressive reduction in Coalition military operations overall since the first year of the invasion.

Yet, according to Lancet estimates, the number of Iraqis killed by the Coalition rose to 70,000 in year two (May 2004 – May 2005), and rose yet again in the third year (June 2005 – June 2006) to 86,000, nearly three times more than in year 1.

When looking at US air strikes, the picture becomes even more puzzling. This data is comprised of 40 deaths:

* 1 killed in January 2002-March 2003 (estimate: 2,000 killed);
* 6 killed in March 2003-April 2004 (estimate: 12,000 killed);
* 13 killed in May 2004-May 2005 (estimate: 26,000 killed);
* 20 killed in June 2005-June 2006 (estimate: 40,000 killed).

Those who keenly recall the reported carnage associated with the invasion in 2003 will scarcely credit the notion that similar events but of a much greater scale and extent have continued unremarked and unrecorded, including by locals, in a nation at the level of education and urbanisation of Iraq. Iraq is not an undeveloped society where tiny, self-sufficient communities live in isolation and ignorance of each other.

Six thousand civilians were reported killed by Coalition forces in the first three weeks of the invasion, i.e., 285 per day. The Lancet estimate of 86,000 Iraqis killed by Coalition forces in the 13 months from 2005-2006 averages 217 per day over a much longer, relentlessly sustained period. And as shocking as such a secret toll would be, it is claimed to constitute only 26% of the even greater carnage inflicted by anti-Coalition or unattributable bombs and bullets, which it is claimed killed 330,000 Iraqis in this period, also almost always without being noticed by anyone but the victims.

******************

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr14/6.php

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Concluding remarks

Could five such shocking implications be true? If they were true, they would need to be the result of a combination of the following factors:

* incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
* bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
* the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
* an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

We would hope that, before accepting such extreme notions, serious consideration is given to the possibility that the population estimates derived from the Lancet study are flawed. The most likely source of such a flaw is some bias in the sampling methodology such that violent deaths were vastly over-represented in the sample. The precise potential nature of such bias is not clear at this point (it could, for example, involve problems in the application of a statistical method originally designed for studying the spread of disease in a population to direct and ongoing violence-related phenomena). But to dismiss the possibility of such bias out of hand is surely both irresponsible and unwise.

All that has been firmly documented as a result of the Lancet study is that some 300 post-invasion violent deaths occurred among the members of the households interviewed. This information, and the demographic and causative breakdowns presented in the study, are significant additions to the detailed knowledge that is painstakingly being accumulated about the individual victims of this conflict, and the tragedies that have befallen them. These 300 may be added to the roster of some 50,000 others for whom this level of detailed knowledge is available. In some - but still far too few - cases we know the name, ages, occupation, and exact circumstances of death. Information presented at this level of detail is the only way to arrive at once-for-all certainty, in a way that does justice to the victims, honours their memory, and provides the closure that only a full list, or census, can do satisfactorily.

Do the American people need to believe that 600,000 Iraqis have been killed before they can turn to their leaders and say "enough is enough"? The number of certain civilian deaths that has been documented to a basic standard of corroboration by "passive surveillance methods" surely already provides all the necessary evidence to deem this invasion and occupation an utter failure at all levels.

On 9/11 3,000 people were violently killed in attacks on the USA. Those events etched themselves into the soul of every American, and reverberated around the world. In December 2005 President George Bush acknowledged 30,000 known Iraqi violent deaths in a country one tenth the size of the USA. That is already a death toll 100 times greater in its impact on the Iraqi nation than 9/11 was on the USA. That there are more deaths that have not yet come to light is certain, but if a change in policy is needed, the catastrophic roll-call of the already known dead is more than ample justification for that change.

Note for press and media. The Lancet researchers documented 300 violent deaths. Iraq has reached such a sorry state that IBC records 300 deaths every few days. Although comment of the sort offered here is sometimes necessary, it diverts our energies away from the main work to which we are committed, and to which still far too few are contributing. In light of this we regret that, at the current time, we have extremely limited capacity to undertake interviews with individual members of the press or media, and may be unable to deal with urgent requests. Full permission is granted to cite from this release, with appropriate attribution.

*****************

Give it up, folks. The John Hopkins' report is CLEARLY bogus.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-02-28   12:03:02 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

The bottom line is that

The bottom line is that even if there's only been 50,000 civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined - that's more than the combined deaths from all terrorist events WORDLWIDE SINCE 1968. Source: http://www.tkb.org/IncidentRegionModule.jsp

Think about that one. How is this justified??? ESPECIALLY given that we have NO PROOF that the invasion of Iraq was justified for any reason, as there is NO PROOF of WMD's or that they were implicit in 9/11. And the MANY unanswered questions concerning 9/11 point to an "inside job".

You mentioned the casualties in WW2... Seems to me that governments are responsible for more civilian deaths than "terrorists"... So who are the real terrorists???

Smirk is a Satanist asshole, and if you want to pledge your allegiance to him, you certainly have that right. Silly serf.

Go back and reread my post # 163, then watch this...

And this...

Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits.

BAC, THE BOTTOM LINE IS I'm not putting you on BOZO, BUT "I'M DONE WITH YOUR SATANIST ASS (as evidenced by your fruits)... I WILL NOT REPLY TO YOU AGAIN.

innieway  posted on  2007-02-28   13:33:01 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

BAC, THE BOTTOM LINE IS I'm not putting you on BOZO, BUT "I'M DONE WITH YOUR SATANIST ASS (as evidenced by your fruits)... I WILL NOT REPLY TO YOU AGAIN.

right on

christine  posted on  2007-02-28   19:21:54 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  

        There are no replies to Comment # 190.

End Trace Mode for Comment # 190.

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