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Member (Idle past 239 days) Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Have 600,000 Iraqis died violently since 2003? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wounded King Member (Idle past 287 days) Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
No, the purpose of the inquiry is to established the number of "civilian casualties" at the hands of US troops. That is the premise. Do you have anything at all to support this assertion? I know you don't because I have actually read the study. What is it you base your pronouncements on? Even just reading the material related to the study in this thread should be enough to show that your claim is wholly untrue. So instead of bitching that you can't find any source which gives...
any details on how they've ascertained those figures ...why not actually read the link this whole thread is based around which gives very specific details of their exact methodology for obtaining their figures. Conclusion: Whether or not the estimate in Lancet is accurate and reliable you don't know what the hell you are talking about. TTFN, WK
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Modulous Member (Idle past 239 days) Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
Other than basic incredulity, there is some reason to doubt the numbers.
For a start, the death certificates. If 92% of deaths have a death certificate produced then an additional 603,000 death certificates should have been issued by officials in Iraq. Surely then, this number would be noticed? Perhaps the record keeping is particularly poor right now - as the Lancet reports, morgue watching is lucky to catch 20% of deaths. This lends us to question under what criteria these death certificates are being issued. The Iraqi Ministry of Health only reports having issued about 50,000 death certificates. Most of the deaths were by gunshot, but many were by explosion. Explosions lead to casualties who would be taken to hospital - often three times more are injured than die. Surely the hospitals would be reporting more injuries than they actually are? The Lancet report estimates 150 of car bomb/IED deaths occur daily, yet hospitals are only reporting a handful. Another peculiar thing is that hospitals have only reported 60,000 wounded for all causes. This puts a question on the concept of three people being injured for every one that dies. I suppose this is potential evidence that the deaths/injury ratio is not standard *or* that official reporting figures are skewed. The state of affairs must be very bad for the official channels to have the discrepencies that it does — if war is known for anything it is ensuring that he state of affairs is very bad. Source of criticism figures: Iraq Body Count
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melatonin Member (Idle past 6463 days) Posts: 126 From: Cymru Joined: |
Even before the war, the process was poor at recording the numbers of death certificate issued, from the companion article...
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.
Home | MIT Center for International Studies
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ramoss Member (Idle past 866 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
I am curious.. is all areas of Iraq equally affected by the conflict, and if not, is that taken into account?
That is the big question.
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Modulous Member (Idle past 239 days) Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
I am curious.. is all areas of Iraq equally affected by the conflict, and if not, is that taken into account? That is the big question. If you look at page 8 of the other must read paper it gives you a map of the relative cost of war for the governates. Yes - the various areas of trouble and strife were all part of it...in a sense. The highest population areas were asked more frequently than the lowest one. It was cluster sampling so it was meant to get a picture of Iraq as a whole, not concentrate on 'bad' areas over 'good'. Province Mid-year 2004 population Number of clusters Edited by Modulous, : No reason given. Edited by Modulous, : adding table Edited by Modulous, : page nuber
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Modulous Member (Idle past 239 days) Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
thanks - I was just reading through that when I came back here - I thought it would be odd trying to rebut myself (again), so I'm glad someone else did it
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
quote: Do you have anything at all to support this assertion? 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.
Even just reading the material related to the study in this thread should be enough to show that your claim is wholly untrue. 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. "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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jar Member (Idle past 93 days) Posts: 34140 From: Texas!! Joined: |
If you read the very article you linked to in your message at the very top it has a link to the response from the author himself.
Here is what the author says about the piece you linked to:
"Further to my article of Friday on this subject. I'm afraid I mangled the statistical argument. My inadequate knowledge of the subject led me to make an argument that is incorrect. I stand by my contention that there is something fishy about this study (leaving aside the politically motivated timing of its publication, something the author has been clear about himself) yet have to admit that I have not found it, leaving me with nothing but personal prejudice upon which to stand my argument. I would also like to make clear that this subject was not "assigned" to me, the idea, research, argument and errors were all my own, as was my request for this clarification. Just in case you are wondering, being fact checked by the Pajamahaddin and being found in error does hurt and I hope that future writings will be, where necessary, so corrected." I repeat the significant statement: "leaving me with nothing but personal prejudice upon which to stand my argument." Personal prejudice. You can find his somewhat selfserving retraction at the bottom of this page Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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nwr Member Posts: 6484 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 8.7 |
"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."
I guess I'm a slow reader. Can you point out where that says "at the hands of US troops"? Maybe I'm misreading it, but it seems to me that the quoted statement very clearly includes deaths caused by the insurgents, and deaths caused by the general deterioration of living standards in a war torn country. Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber
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Modulous Member (Idle past 239 days) Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
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. Why not? This kind of sampling has been used before succesfully. Indeed, it was used to determine mortality rates in Iraq pre-war which agreed with other methods. While there maybe inaccuracies, the contention is that the other methods so far used are fraught with more inaccuracies which are documentable.
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. If you read the papers you will see that it stresses most of the deaths are from insurgency, a brewing civil war and possibly lawless murder. It states that only a small number are from coalition forces, and they only counted those cases where the people involved where very sure it was coalition troops and even then the study makes cautions about the figure.
quote: And look at table 2 where it says that only 31% of deaths are coalition attributed and 14% are air strikes. Of course, for those deaths the coalition are directly responsible for they should be held accountable for that. Likewise for those deaths for which they are indirectly responsible.
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. It is not self-reputed. The figures are derived from basic statistical sampling mathematics. The same mathematics that gives percentages of religious groups, percentages of people who are anti-evolution in the USA, percentage of people who voted Republican at the polls etc. The reason it states the deaths are war related is straightforward reasoning. There have been 655,000 more deaths than would normally be expected in Iraq since the war began. Not all of them are directly war related, but the vast majority are. Unless you can think of some other factor in the deaths of civilians in Iraq that coincides with the timing of the war?
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. Then please, sumarise and bring forward the argument to this thread. That is why I posted it, after all! Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
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FliesOnly Member (Idle past 4399 days) Posts: 797 From: Michigan Joined: |
nemesis_juggernaut writes: And this mentions "at the hands of US troops" where, exactly?
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." nemesis_juggernaut writes: Well, jar has already addressed the first half of this statement, so let me ask you something about the second half. What's wrong with releasing this sort of data prior to mid-term elections? Do you not think that the electorate should be informed? You would prefer to save this sort of bad news till after the elections? Wow, your integrity is outstanding to say the least. I've always hated this type of chicken shit cop-out. "Oh boo hoo, bad news was released by them stupid liberals prior to an election. How dare they try to fuck up our plans. Wah wah wah". Honestly, when do you think this sort of information should be released, if not in time to help voters decide?
And an article coming from here criticises the integrity of the study and questions the political motivation of the inquiry.
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
Why not? This kind of sampling has been used before succesfully. Indeed, it was used to determine mortality rates in Iraq pre-war which agreed with other methods. While there maybe inaccuracies, the contention is that the other methods so far used are fraught with more inaccuracies which are documentable. 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).
If you read the papers you will see that it stresses most of the deaths are from insurgency, a brewing civil war and possibly lawless murder. It states that only a small number are from coalition forces, and they only counted those cases where the people involved where very sure it was coalition troops and even then the study makes cautions about the figure. 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.
Households were asked what party was responsible for the killing of their household member. In many cases it was not clear. There was great difficulty in identifying which were criminal events. Only when the household was certain that the death was as a consequence of coalition actions was this recorded as such. 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.
It is not self-reputed. The figures are derived from basic statistical sampling mathematics. The same mathematics that gives percentages of religious groups, percentages of people who are anti-evolution in the USA, percentage of people who voted Republican at the polls etc. 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.
The reason it states the deaths are war related is straightforward reasoning. There have been 655,000 more deaths than would normally be expected in Iraq since the war began. Not all of them are directly war related, but the vast majority are. Unless you can think of some other factor in the deaths of civilians in Iraq that coincides with the timing of 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: We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period. 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.) This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board. 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
Then please, sumarise and bring forward the argument to this thread. That is why I posted it, after all! 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 "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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kuresu Member (Idle past 2767 days) Posts: 2544 From: boulder, colorado Joined: |
first things first.
if you're using IE, go to "view". In that list, at the top somewhere, you will see a heading titled "toolbars". click on it. you will see a second menu list drop down. a check by an item on that list means that that toolbar is on the screen. The one you're missing sounds like "standard buttons" and "address bar". make sure those have a check by them. on to the second thing--you've successfully shot down a straw man. You're claiming that the lancet report (as far as I can gather) is saying that these deaths are from coalition forces. Which they aren't. You then go on to prove that most of the deaths aren't from coalition forces. way to go. the only thing the lancet article is saying, at the very core, is that this war is costing a hell of a lot of lives, from the hands of coalition forces, IEDs, suicide bombers, and the lovely, if not here yet, civil war going on between the Shites and the Sunnis. It's saying that war is expensive in terms of human lives--well, duh! Want to help give back to the world community? Did you know that your computer can help? Join the newest TeamEvC Climate Modelling to help improve climate predictions for a better tomorrow.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1721 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
No, the purpose of the inquiry is to established the number of "civilian casualties" at the hands of US troops. No, it's not. Look, if you want to participate in these debates you really need to stop making up your own facts. It's really just that simple. Read the study.
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. Your naivete is so cute. People who are actually there know different. We're bombing areas with ignited white phosphorus. Do you know what that does to human flesh? I'm going to do you a favor and not describe it.
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. More made-up facts.
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. In fact, last year alone we were flying at least 2 air strikes per day. Seriously. You need to be relying on real facts, not made-up facts. What you imagine to be true about this war is not true.
If bodies aren't recovered then how can anyone reasonably account for their deaths? The methodology of the study has already been presented. I suggest you go back up and read it. What wasn't clear?
And if people are so certain that these individuals have died, where are all of the death certificates? NJ! There's a civil war going on! People are fleeing Iraq for their lives in the face of as many as 70 sectarian murders per day, or more. These aren't people who have the time to stop and file for death certificates on the way out. Do you just not get what's happening in Iraq, or what? This isn't a situation like "oh, did you hear, Ahmed's auntie was killed by an insurget last week." This is a situation more like "My name is Ahmed, and I'm the last survivor of a villiage of 200 people." Do you think Ahmed maybe has more pressing concerns than stopping to file for death certificates on the 199 people that lived in his villiage?
I mean, if this many innocent people are dying everyday in Iraq, why is no one reporting it? I guess I don't know what you're talking about. Every major media outlet picked up the Lancet study, so it is being reported. It's probably just that it's being reported on all those news outlets you ignore because you think they're liberal.
There is a very large disparity between the two studies, as much as an estimated 556,000 body count difference. That's enormous. Hrm, in fact it's a difference of about... 80%. Interesting - that's exactly what you would get if the lesser study was only counting the confirmable cases of death, which would be the 20% of toal deaths referred to earlier. The Iraq Body Count numbers, based on a methodology that we know would be off by 80%, actually confirm the Lancet study.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1721 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
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. Who, exactly, is doing that?
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