[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Counting The Dead in Iraq Counting The Dead in Iraq By David Hambling EmailMarch 20, 2008 | 3:07:00 PMCategories: Iraq's Insanity 17iraq600 There has been a flurry of media activity here in the UK covering the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, with newspapers, TV and radio all launching special series. One of the more analytical pieces is a feature in the the Guardian asking, "What is the real death toll in Iraq?" It makes a serious attempt to consider all the different conflicting figures and how they have been arrived at, including the WHO/Iraq Health Ministry study. Different methodologies were used, and these are discussed, especially the much-criticized Lancet study which showed 601,000 excess deaths from violence in Iraq: The estimates were explosive and were widely reported in the Middle East and around the world. They met instant dismissal from the White House and Downing Street. "I don't consider it a credible report," Bush told reporters. Blair's spokesman said the study's result "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". Sitting in his office in Camden in north London, where every surface is covered with wobbly piles of files, the Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, admits that the figure "seems crazy". "But the second study validated the first one. The pre-invasion mortality rate is the same in both, and the upward lines of the post-invasion rate are exactly the same", he says. He is particularly pleased by information unearthed last year by a Freedom of Information request by the BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones. This found that the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence described the methods used by the second survey as "close to best practice" and added that the "study design is robust". The adviser warned the government to be "cautious" about criticising the survey findings . Even the Lancet study's figure is by no means the highest: The British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB) asked 1,720 Iraqi adults last summer if they had lost family members by violence since 2003; 16% had lost one, and 5% two. Using the 2005 census total of 4,050,597 households in Iraq, this suggests 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion. Accounting for a standard margin of error, ORB says, "We believe the range is a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063." This is compared with the death toll during the Saddam years: Estimates of the Iraqi deaths caused by Saddam's regime amount to a maximum of one million over a 35-year period (100,000 Kurds in the Anfal campaign in the 1980s; 400,000 in the war against Iran; 100,000 Shias in the suppressed uprising of 1991; and an unknown number executed in his prisons and torture chambers). Averaged over his time in power, the annual rate does not exceed 29,000. This is all highly contentious to say the least -- and it shows the need for an accurate assessment of civilian casualties right from the outset. General Tommy Franks stated flatly that "We don't do body counts." But the vast and seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the estimate of 100,000 dead at one end and over a million at the other suggests that this was a mistake. An accurate, official figure is required, to prevent inflated claims on one hand -- and denials about the level of civilian suffering on the other.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: tom007, *WAR CRIMES* (#0)
It's a war crime, just not to have kept track. I recently read that this was the one thing we learned from the Vietnam War - don't count their dead. Or as Donald Rumsfeld put it "we don't do body counts".
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. That’s what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.”' Alan Dershowitz
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||