Have 600,000 Iraqis died violently since 2003?

could k

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Between May and July, 2006, we did a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality in Iraq. 50 clusters were randomly selected from 16 Governorates, with every cluster consisting of 40 households. Information on deaths from these households was gathered.

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Just yesterday I was engaged in a debate concerning the figure of 600,000 civilian casualties since the start of the war in Iraq. It looked absolutely fallacious so I employed deductive reasoning and mathematics to clear the air and dispell some of the blatant falsehoods being posited from various websites and news clips.Every site has vastly different figures ranging from, 3-5,000, 30-100,000, 16,000, 50-100,000, 600,000, 650,000, 13,000, and there was even one that said GWB has personally killed over a trillion people. Unequivocally, what linked them together was the popular and parroted phrase, "Studies have shown that," and "research indicates that," but they don't provide any sources. The few that do cite a source neglect to give any details on how they've ascertained those figures.Coalition forces have been Iraq for a little over 3 years, starting on March 20, 2003. That's 1305 days, (as of Oct 16, 2006), to accumulate a staggering innocent civilian death toll of 600,000 bodies of men, women, and children. That's 2,175 bodies a day-- not including US or insurgent casualties. I'd like to know how any nation, especially a wartorn nation in such a decrepit condition as Iraq is, how they could possibly handle an influx of over 2,175 bodies a day.What do they do with all the bodies? Burn them in heaps? Because that's the only possible way anyone could dispose of 2,175 bodies a day. Actually, worse still, you couldn't even employ a team of people to gather that many bodies and transport them on a daily basis.Conclusion: The figure of 600,000 civilian deaths since the start of the war is pure and unadulterated propaganda.

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

Uh.......... yyyyyyyeah. Next time I won't divide 1,305 into 600,000. Its of no consequence to the argument though. There is no way that 460 innocent people die a day due to coalition troops killing them. There would be countless images coming from Al-Jazeera who would seek to exploit that. There is no way that a team of people could round up that many bodies a day and dispose of them.

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

I know, I know.... You don't have to remind me. I've already bashed my head on to my computer desk over such a stupid error. I was so intent on getting the number that, one, I fudged the order and divided 1,305 into 600,000, and then payed no attention to the decimal or the zero placements. Monstrously stupid.

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

No, the purpose of the inquiry is to established the number of "civilian casualties" at the hands of US troops. That is the premise. Firebombing large areas daily? That's absurd. The US does not casually carpet bomb cities to hit a few insurgents. It just doesn't happen that way because no one wants that kind of scandal. The US in the beginning of war hit targeted areas that had been surveilled long in advance of any attack using precision-guided munitions. I have no doubt that some innocent people became collateral damage for numerous reasons. I'm not denying that. But the US took precautions to avoid that as much as possible by dropping leaflets in advance warning the people that missle strikes would be underway.After major operations ended, the use of planes laden with missles and bombs is considered rare, used on high value targets, such as was seen in the attack on Zarqawi. Now or days, its a tedious patrolling of streets and gathering intelligence for raids. If bodies aren't recovered then how can anyone reasonably account for their deaths? If there is nothing left of the bodies because they were incinerated, then how can the Lancet or anyone else account for even 20% of those whom have died at the hands of an irresponsible level of force? Furthermore, who comprises Lancet that they are privvy to all this information? Where are they compiling their data from? After reviewing the methodology of the "cluster method," while ingenious in its approach, it still would be fraught with innacuracies and is still reliant on a nation to have accurately annotated the mortality rate before and after the invasion.And if people are so certain that these individuals have died, where are all of the death certificates? As well, the study claims to include non-violent deaths, such as traffic accidents in their reports. I don't know what Shari'a has to say about that, but any journalist would be all over that. I mean, if this many innocent people are dying everyday in Iraq, why is no one reporting it? They report everytime a soldier stubs his toe, so who could resist reporting all these deaths everyday?I later saw a link that I've seen before, but have forgotten about since someone else has graciously posted it. Though Iraqbodycount.net would certainly be expected to be with error, for the simple fact that it claims to rely on its information coming from journalists, I am still impressed with its dedication to compile those figures. There is a very large disparity between the two studies, as much as an estimated 556,000 body count difference. That's enormous. And with the journalistic popularity of Iraq, I hardly see how 556,000 can go underreported, and still have a group claiming these people as legitimate deaths to be considered in empirical studies. It's a lie! We've already uncovered the AP and Reuters lying like dogs to invent a juicy story. And they are using this lie to further their political agenda. Why not the outrage on that?Here's the plain fact on the matter: This is a very unpopular war, and the constant spin of the media is one of inflation to cause the demoralization of the effort in hopes that it will be so unpopular, so as to be abandone the effort altogether. That agenda is so obvious if you would just read between the lines.Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : edit to add and fix typos

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

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

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Yes, the actual study cited. Home | MIT Center for International Studies"attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire."And an article coming from here criticises the integrity of the study and questions the political motivation of the inquiry. The premise is as far removed from empirical testing as it could get because its completely reliant on former statistics that could be fraught with innaccuracies and relies on cluster sampelings from a few homes to form an aggregate. That is not going to provide an accurate accounting. That won't even provide an accurate estimation because there are too many variables missing. Furthermore, the study makes innuendos that is an accounting of the mortality rate in Iraq, then the people using this figure to indict coalition forces as being culpable in the deaths of "innocent civilians" is misleading. And that's putting it nicely. Its an absolute slanderous lie at its worse.Its self-reputed to be accurate up to a 95% rate of certainty that the deaths were war related when it hasn't ascertained the figures empirically.Wikipedia has already written an article on it, entitled, "Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq." Under the "crticisms" portion of the article, it makes a good argument on why it is suspect to that criticism.

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

The Iraq Ministry of Health and the US and UK government all reject those figures, as stated in the Wikipedia article. (I'll explain more on that at the bottom of this page). I don't think you're understanding me. Those figures from the Lancet are being used incorrectly from various avenues to mean "civilian deaths" at the hands of "coalition forces." The indictment is that its figures do not come from sectarian violence, the insurgency, or anything else. This isn't true from reading the article which lists the categories of non-violent (which you can't very well attriubte to coalition forces- such as car accidents) and it even graphs violent crimes that are not from coaltion forces-- presumably from the insurgents. The highest casualties of their OWN people come from them. I wanted to copy and paste the graph, but its a PDF version.The point is, certain people are using this study to translate that 600,000 innocent civilians were either targeted or caught in the melee at the hands of coalition troops. That's simply not true, as we read from the report. That's not credible evidence. You can't just ask people if it was at the hands of coalition forces, because some Iraqi's may find the compulsion to lie in order to further stigmatize them. Imagine a homicide investigation in Manchester without the use of foresnsics to piece it together. I doubt the Manchester Police Dept would rest their investigation on only a testimony without actually attempting to corroborate the claim. Then how do you reconcile the 556,100 difference of body counts from one group to another? That's an enormous number of disparity, wouldn't you agree. Even though Iraqbodycounts.net are a self-avowed anti-war movement, I have to consider and be impressed by their dedication and their methodology. I think their methodology is rooted far more in accuracy than the Lancet is. And that's saying a lot of me, considering how opposed they are to the war. Let me relay the criticisms presented, then tell me if you think the Lancet investigation could be as accurate as 95% as it claims: The first time they published the results, the death toll was estimated at 100,000. This was peer reviewed and deemed unreliable. By the end of their second investigation, that number rose by 500,000.The report's authors derive this figure by estimating how many Iraqis died in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting surveys on how many died in a similar period after the invasion began (more on those surveys later), and subtracting the difference. That difference”the number of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period”signifies the war's toll. That number is 98,000. But read the passage that cites the calculation more fully:

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We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.

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Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English”which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language”98,000”is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)

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This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.

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Imagine reading a poll reporting that George W. Bush will win somewhere between 4 percent and 96 percent of the votes in this Tuesday's election. You would say that this is a useless poll and that something must have gone terribly wrong with the sampling. The same is true of the Lancet article: It's a useless study; something went terribly wrong with the sampling." -Fred Kaplan My son was messing with my computer 2 days ago and, (I don't know how he did it), but my toolbar is gone. I can't return to previous screens and I can't view the exact address of any given site without it. The best I can do, and have been doing for the last 2 days, is going to a search engine and copy and pasting the address. That's why I mentioned the article in Wikipedia but couldn't provise the actual link because I have no idea what the address is because I have no toolbar to view it.If you'd like to read the article, go to Wiki, type in "600,000 Iraqi mortality rate," (or something close to that), scroll down to the "criticism" portion of the article.I guess this is as good of a time as any to ask for some technical advice. How can I get my toolbar back? I set Ask.com as my main page, but after re-downloading it, it never gave me an option for a toolbar. My wife is an IT but she's out of town and I'm woefully inept to figure this out on my own.Any helpful hints?Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : add italics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nor does credulity validate it.

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

Precisely. Thank you.

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

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I'm not making things up about the study. What I am doing is:

1. Questioning the motivation of the experiment.
2. Questioning the accuracy of the research.
3. Asserting that certain special interest groups are using the figure of 600,000 inappropriately.

I have made my objections well known. Perhaps listing them in a very simple manner may help to sift through my meanings.

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What you may not know is that its not being used as a weapon. They dropped it to illuminate the surrounding area.

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It wasn't meant to be a euphamism. I meant what I said, however, I now retract my statement since I have found newer articles on the subject from reputable, non-partisan reports. Here's the article.Psychological operations employing the use of leaflets

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Please present your facts that the US conducts at least two air stikes a day.

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I stand corrected and retract my previous statement. "The 1,849 households that completed the surveys had 12,801 household members at the time of the survey; thus, the mean household size was 6.9 people... Survey teams asked for for death certificates in 545 (87%) reported deaths and these were present in 501 cases. The pattern of deaths in households with birth certificates was no different from those with certificates." I don't have a problem with statistical techniques used to quantify and ascertain figures of an unknown (x). I do, however, have a problem with the fact that out of 1,849 households, only 545 homes were asked to produce some sort of documentation about the family member(s) that allegedly died. Of that 545, 501 produced documentation. Had they asked every home and gained an 87% rate of verification, I would lend more credence to it.The other problem is that no other study conducted, studies from other reputable sources, have no where near the figure presented by the Lancet reort, and only the Lancet report. The most generous estimate does not exceed 50,000 total deaths. The lower figures would certainly seem consistent with news reports. As I pointed out, if over 400 people were dying daily and on average, there should be some evidence of that.Even taking into consideration where sectarian violence has caused the mass murder of, say, 40 Shiites or Sunnis in a given night, and those bodies are not found days, weeks, or months later than the actual time of death, even then the estimate of over 400 people a day, for 1,305 days straight, seems like grossly improportionate figure.

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Yeah, but you have to some sort of evidence, like a body, to know if somebody died or not.

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We have recovered thousands, and hundreds more are presumed dead. You can't just say because people are missing that they are automatically dead and throw them into your figure. Any number of things could have happened, such as they've been kidnapped and are being held hostage, they've fled Iraq or are living in a less hostile region, etc. What? When was I happy to accept conclusions of death sans corpus to fit my political agenda? I've always maintained that you need a body to prove death unless by some remarkable gathering of DNA evidence and other extenuating circumstances. If someone is missing you start an investigation. You don't just say, "Well, their dead. I know it. I can feel it may bones! While they may be true, and given the violent climate it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume their death, you can't just make an all-inclusive estimate.

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If there were really this many people, over 400 a day!, there would be bodies strewn all over the country.

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Yeah, but how can you account for them until you FIND them dead??? I know there is alot of people dead. That's the ugly face of war. As far as "my" talk radio stations, (that I already shared with you that I listened to sparingly), I don't just nod in approval to everything they say. The reality is that alot of progress was being made in Iraq until the last 4 months or so since its gotten really bad. You never seem to hear about those things because its under reported. The reality is probably somewhere in between. The Right wants you to think, "Mission Accomplished, Progress in Iraq, Stay the Course, WMD's, Al Qaeda losing strength." The Left wants you to believe, "America the Evil Empire, Abu Graib, Bush the Fascist, Death and Gore, Cindy Sheehan." Perhaps we need some moderation because the next civil war in America won't be North or South it'll be Left and Right. I've posted just the opposite from Iraqi sources, sources that were once under Saddam's control. It seems we have conflicting views. Again, the Right wants to paint the picture that your average Iraqi is glad that Saddam was overthrown and hopes the violence will quell. The Left wants yout to believe that all is lost and that the average Iraqi despises America and that if we just left, all would be well.The reality is that there are Iraqi's who hate the American presence. There are Iraqi's who once liked US presence during the overthrowing of Saddam, but their feelings are waning and they are tired of the war. Then there are those Iraqi's who want and need the US to finish the job so that Iraq can stand up on its own two feet. Excuse the irony, but wouldn't the opposite true of liberal pundits? Clearly you misunderstood me as WK pointed out. The dialogue we hear is what I already presented in mock-fashion. If over 400 people were dying every single day for 1,305 days, we would hear reports more closely akin to: "Sectarian violence kills 240 in Fallujah, Brittish and US forces exchange gun fire with insurgents killing 190."

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Its pretty to miss 400 dead bodies.

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Yeah, those are the bodies they found-- 'found' being the operative word. You couldn't possibly have thought that I was this deep in a vaccuum. How could I not pay attention to it when its everywhere? I did know about mass graves after Saddam. I didn't know people were burrying their dead on football fields or gardens. Yeah, that's it. They know they are incorrect but say it anyway...? Could it be that they believe they are correct in their assessments? I mean, even I know that somebody like Michael Moore actually believes in what he claims. Yes. Now I do see that. I'm just a pawn. Dammit that's it! Viva la revolucion!The main charges against the United States vary from region to region. I believe Europeans don't like us because we're supposed to be fat and arrogant. The ME doesn;t like us becuase we're supposed to be fat, arrogant, and immoral. And to be fair, who would know any differently after watching just one episode of Jerry Springer.Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : typoEdited by nemesis_juggernaut, : typo... again.

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

Oh, I have no doubt that the insurgents know very well the military's SOP's and rules of engagement and exploit that every chance they can-- such as you described. This is the type of underreporting that goes on. And that's why I've been saying that there is a clever spin on things to paint the false picture that coalition forces are out there indiscriminantly spraying the street in hail of gun fire. Whoa, hang on a minute. Your quote comes from another EvC member. My beliefs concerning the war closely model yours. If you'll read some of my posts on this topic, I'm very much a realist on the matter. I'm not a conspiracy theorist who thinks 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy perpetrated by Mossad to force the hand of America into 'killing Arabs' for them, nor do I believe half of the inflated stories that come from specific media outlets for their blatant misrepresentation on the facts about the war. Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : No reason given.

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