#7814: — 10/28  at  04:19 PM
And they vote Bush to stop innocent babies from dying?
Jesus.

#7815: — 10/28  at  04:24 PM
And we did it in response to less than three thousand innocent American lives.

#7816: — 10/28  at  04:46 PM
If you were to tell me that Bush ate Arab babies whilst urinating on science text books, I'd be inclined to believe it, but that figure sounds awfully high.

Iraq has a population of around 20 million, which would mean that 1 in every 200 people in the entire country was killed by airstrikes? That seems implausible given that large swaths of the country haven't really even been focused on militarily (e.g. the Kurdish North).

It's basically beside the point, since the disgustingness of this administration doesn't rest on whether the figure is 5,000 or 100,000 civilians dead. But if 100,000 really is correct, that is absolutely, mind-bogglingly, flabberghasting.

#7818: — 10/28  at  04:54 PM
He argues that, from a public health perspective, whatever “planning did take place was grievously in error”.
"Whatever planning" indeed. Those Brits seem to have a way of devastation through understatement.

#7826: — 10/28  at  05:22 PM
Here's what the New Republic says:

" According to a Johns Hopkins press release, the study finds that "100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred."

****
Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery.

That's the claim, here's some evidence:


This figure is vastly higher than even the highest unofficial estimates. According to Jefferson Morley of The Washington Post, the Baghdad-based Iraqi Human Rights Organization has assessed that 30,000 civilians have died. The website Iraq Body Count has a high estimate of about 16,300 civilian casualties. This is how the Johns Hopkins-Columbia-Mustansiriya figure was derived:

Here's the bogus extrapolation:

The researchers conducted their survey in September 2004. They randomly selected 33 neighborhoods of 30 homes from across Iraq and interviewed the residents about the number and ages of the people living in each home. Over 7,800 Iraqis were included. Residents were questioned about the number of births and deaths that occurred in the household since January 2002. Information was also collected about the causes and circumstances of each death. When possible, the deaths were verified with a death certificate or other documentation.

The researchers compared the mortality rate among civilians in Iraq during the 14.6 months prior to the March 2003 invasion with the 17.8 month period following the invasion. The sample group reported 46 deaths prior to the March 2003 and 142 deaths following the invasion. The results were calculated twice, both with and without information from the city of Falluja. The researchers felt the excessive violence from combat in Falluja could skew the overall mortality rates. Excluding information from Falluja, they estimate that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred.

Essentially, the 100,000-deaths figure is reached extrapolating from that 7,800 sample to the estimated March 2003 population of 24.4 million Iraqis.

Here's the political bias, skewing the scientific results:

According to the AP, the survey's lead researcher, Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, decided when the Lancet article would be published, and influencing the election was undeniably a factor:


"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Associated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.

"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."

"This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said.

Typical dishonest science conducted by folks with an agenda.

#7827: — 10/28  at  05:24 PM
Hold on...you forgot to mention that the lead researcher said that "he wanted them released before the US election" (Wall Street Journal). Not to mention, http://www.iraqbodycount.com estimates that between 14-16 thousand Iraqis have died. I am not arguing whether or not it was right to go in there, it is awful that these people have died. I am simply pointing out that these numbers are rather high, and the research team may have had ulterior numbers when they reported these numbers.

#7829: — 10/28  at  05:46 PM
Americans dead from September 11, 2,900, maybe. Iraqi civilians dead....a lot more. We have decided we're worth more. Or, more accurately, Bush has. That is absolutely disgusting no matter what the numbers are.

#7831: — 10/28  at  05:56 PM
What do you say to the Senators who authorized the war (Hillary, Edwards, ahem, Kerry, Lieberman, Feinstein, et al)?

#7832: — 10/28  at  06:01 PM
Numbers do seem a bit high, but remember that the vast swaths that have not been bombed are generally the areas that aren't densely populated... Also IBC is known for being extremely conservative in their estimates. So it could be. Hardly matters; I think the line between "collateral damages" and "a hell of a lot of dead people" is crossed well before even the low estimates.

#7833: PZ Myers — 10/28  at  06:11 PM
I recall getting into an anti-war argument with some warporn fan on usenet a while ago: he was seriously arguing that because our military technology was so efficient, there would be virtually no civilian casualties at all. All those cruise missiles lobbed into Baghdad were only hitting military targets.

His head was so far up his ass he had to have been looking at his computer screen through his nostrils.

#7834: — 10/28  at  06:21 PM
Does the fact that you oppose the war give you the right to exaggerate the number of civilian casualties?

Methinks not.

#7835: — 10/28  at  06:58 PM
Bob who knows the exact numbers? We've probably killed a minimum of 20,000 people, a large number of them women and children. And we've almost certainly injured tens of thousands to perhap 200,000. If the idea is to piss money away while killing arabs who had nothing to do with 9-11 then we're batting a thousand. By the end of this year we'll have spent about 200 billion dollars. Enough to pay for the Mercury through Apollo space prgrams and have enough left over to send every single welfare mother through four years of college and still cover all the hurricane damage in Florida.
If the idea is to make the nation safer from Al Qaeda we're striking out.

#7836: — 10/28  at  07:33 PM
Haliburton has been named as the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI this afternoon for impropeities in the contract award process. An unamed senior administration official is allagedly said to be spefically named. And the story below has broken that the Un Wepoans Inspector have confirmed that the container sin the video contrained HMX. Hard to say which headline will be on the front page tomorrow, but you better believe the B/C campaign is in serious trouble.


ABC News: Oct. 28, 2004 — The strongest evidence to date indicates that conventional explosives missing from Iraq's Al-Qaqaa installation disappeared after the United States had taken control of Iraq.

Barrels inside the Al-Qaqaa facility appear on videotape shot by ABC television affiliate KSTP of St. Paul, Minn., which had a crew embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when it passed through Al-Qaqaa on April 18, 2003 — nine days after Baghdad fell.



Discrepancy Found in Explosives Amounts


Alleged American Al Qaeda Warns of U.S. Attacks
Video Suggests Explosives Disappeared After U.S. Took Control
Person of the Week: Complete Coverage
Experts who have studied the images say the barrels on the tape contain the high explosive HMX, and the U.N. markings on the barrels are clear.

"I talked to a former inspector who's a colleague of mine, and he confirmed that, indeed, these pictures look just like what he remembers seeing inside those bunkers," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

The barrels were found inside sealed bunkers, which American soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency sealed the bunkers where the explosives were kept just before the war began.

"The seal's critical," Albright said. "The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."

After the bunkers were opened, the 101st was not ordered to secure the facility. A senior officer told ABC News the division would not have had nearly enough soldiers to do so.

It remains unclear how much HMX was at the facility, but what does seem clear is that the U.S. military opened the bunkers at Al-Qaqaa and left them unguarded. Since then, the material has disappeared.

ABC News' Martha Raddatz filed this report for World News Tonight.

#7839: — 10/28  at  09:03 PM
"Here’s the bogus extrapolation"

"Here’s the bogus extrapolation"

I think there's a difference between "shaky" and "bogus".

Yes, the sample population is way too small, and might have been biased by the fact that out-of-the-way rural villages are both less likely to be bombed and less likely to make it onto the list of towns it seems like the researchers were selecting from. Not demanding death certificates is a major weak point, but by looking at how many of the deaths that certificates *were* demanded for turned out to be fake, we can estimate how truthful the interviewees were being.

There are three reasons I can see that Iraq Body Count's casualty estimates are so much lower than Horton's. First of all, IBC only counts civilian deaths, whereas Horton included all deaths. Second of all, IBC counts deaths by reading reports in major news sources, and an incident must be reported by at least two different sources to be counted, which will naturally let some deaths slip by unnoticed. Third, IBC doesn't count injuries, so people who recieve injuries that only kill them later may not be counted.

Overall, IBC's main goal seems to be to report a reliable, conservative minimum *civilian* death toll, while Horton's is to provide a rough initial estimate of total casualties. I would guess that the actual body count is considerably higher than IBC's maximum, but much lower than Horton's estimate.

#7840: — 10/28  at  09:25 PM
And, as I forgot to add: I generally reserve the word "bogus" for claims (http://www.epa.gov/clearskies/) that may be intentionally misleading (http://scienceinpolicy.org/cgi-bin/issues.py?title=clear_skies_initiative -- "What the Clear Skies Initiative will do to The Clean Air Act"). Horton's numbers are probably merely *wrong*.

#7842: Gordon the Magnificent — 10/28  at  10:03 PM
Whiny moonbat bitches.

You don't have the stomach for what we face.

#7844: PZ Myers — 10/28  at  10:23 PM
Eh. I'm going to assume it is an honest estimate that is at least derived from some real data, so I consider it a reasonable first approximation. I wouldn't be at all shocked if the estimate went down if more and more thoroughly vetted data were obtained, nor would I be surprised if it went up.

You know, a dozen guys stole a couple of planes and killed about 3,000 people in one day here. We've got a hundred thousand guys plus with thousands of big bombs working a country for months. Even assuming a far greater restraint and respect for life on our side (which is a perhaps foolishly charitable assumption after Abu Ghraib), there's a lot of potential for destruction there.

#7848: Hank Fox — 10/29  at  12:34 AM

Whiny moonbat bitches.

You don’t have the stomach for what we face.

Strident dullard.

You don't have the brains for understanding the desire for better choices next time.

Trackback: Iraqi Civilian Deaths Tracked on: Rhosgobel: Radagast's Home (67.18.73.162) at 2004 10 29 02:11:54
Pharyngula linked to a news article summarizing a recent Lancet article (requires free registration) that publishes the first scientific estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq due to the recent war. The paper compares death rates from before and af...

#7857: — 10/29  at  08:02 AM
It's funny when Republicans are asked a question on any of the real issues facing America today.

First, they ask "Well what are John Kerry's views?"

Then, they play the blame game:
- U.S. Intelligence
- Our allies
- Bush's own staff
- The Senate (actually, just Democratic senators)
- Clinton

Why can't they answer the damn question?

When will this president take responsibility for his actions?

What the hell is going on here?

#7858: — 10/29  at  08:26 AM
Juan Cole has a brief comment about the Lancet report on Iraqi casualties that's worth reading:

- Friday, October 29, 2004 -

The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, reports that the US and coalition forces (but mainly the US Air Force) has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians since the fall of Saddam on April 9, 2003. Previous estimates for civilian deaths since the beginning of the war ranged up to 16,000, with the number of Iraqi troops killed during the war itself put at about 6,000.

The troubling thing about these results is that they suggest that the US may soon catch up with Saddam Hussein in the number of civilians killed. How many deaths to blame on Saddam is controverial. He did after all start both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. But he also started suing for peace in the Iran-Iraq war after only a couple of years, and it was Khomeini who dragged the war out until 1988. But if we exclude deaths of soldiers, it is often alleged that Saddam killed 300,000 civilians. This allegation seems increasingly suspect. So far only 5000 or so persons have been found in mass graves. But if Roberts and Burnham are right, the US has already killed a third as many Iraqi civilians in 18 months as Saddam killed in 24 years.

The report is based on extensive household survey research in Iraq in September of 2004. Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham found that the vast majority of the deaths were the result of US aerial bombardment of Iraqi cities, which they found especially hard on "women and children." After excluding the Fallujah data (because Fallujah has seen such violence that it might skew the nationwide averages), they found that Iraqis were about 1.5 times more likely to die of violence during the past 18 months than they were in the year and a half before the war. Before the war, the death rate was 5 per thousand per year, and afterwards it was 7.9 per thousand per year (excluding Fallujah). My own figuring is that, given a population of 25 million, that yields 72,500 excess deaths per year, or at least 100,000 for the whole period since April 9, 2003.

The methodology of this study is very tight, but it does involve extrapolating from a small number and so could easily be substantially incorrect. But the methodology also is standard in such situations and was used in Bosnia and Kosovo.

I think the results are probably an exaggeration. But they can't be so radically far off that the 16,000 deaths previously estimated can still be viewed as valid. I'd say we have to now revise the number up to at least many tens of thousand--which anyway makes sense. The 16,000 estimate comes from counting all deaths reported in the Western press, which everyone always knew was only a fraction of the true total. (I see deaths reported in al-Zaman every day that don't show up in the Western wire services).

The most important finding from my point of view is not the magnitude of civilian deaths, but the method of them. Roberts and Burnham find that US aerial bombardments are killing far more Iraqi civilians than had previously been suspected. This finding is also not a surprise to me. I can remember how, on a single day (August 12), US warplanes bombed the southern Shiite city of Kut, killing 84 persons, mainly civilians, in an attempt to get at Mahdi Army militiamen. These deaths were not widely reported in the US press, especially television. Kut is a small place and has been relatively quiet except when the US has been attacking Muqtada al-Sadr, who is popular among some segments of the population there. The toll in Sadr City or the Shiite slums of East Baghdad, or Najaf, or in al-Anbar province, must be enormous.

I personally believe that these aerial bombardments of civilian city quarters by a military occupier that has already conquered the country are a gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, governing the treatment of populations of occupied territories.

#7859: — 10/29  at  09:21 AM
I heard an interview with the lead researcher this morning. They had a sample size of 1000, and extrapolated up to the 20,000,000 Iraqi population. This means they assumed a scale factor of 20,000.

In other words, they found 5 deaths.

I have been against the war from the get-go, and remain so, but this study is quite frankly garbage and should be discarded.

The researcher said that their study originally included Fallujah, but it was discarded when it alone caused their estimate to triple (death rate after march '03/death rate before = 2.5 with Fallujah, 1.5 w/o)

(I see I'm repeating David's post a bit. Sorry...)

But really, how many civilians is ok? Haw many is too many? Surely less than 12,000 that is the most conservative estimate.

#7860: PZ Myers — 10/29  at  09:44 AM
Whoa...that doesn't necessarily mean it is garbage. Sampling and statistics can make reasonable extrapolations from small patterns of differences, and 1000 is a decent (but not stunning) sample size.


Why, if you are going to throw out this study because it uses a 20,000 fold scaling factor, you're going to have to throw out every single political poll in the current American election.

Oh, wait...I just shot my own argument in the foot, didn't I?

#7861: — 10/29  at  09:59 AM
Gentlemen:

Per Murdock:

but this study is quite frankly garbage and should be discarded.

See! Bob Flynn was close to truth, wasn't he?

P.S. This ain't a thread to belly-ache about the war! Whether the war is a good idea or not, doesn't have beans to do with whether these Lancet Brainiacs are honestly conducting "scientific surveys" or not. Clearly, they are not -- they have an unscientific agenga. And they were popped

#7862: — 10/29  at  10:16 AM
You're right that 1000 is a decent sample size for political polling (if we ignore the strong systematic biases and remember the margin of error). But it's different to sample a smallish set for an infrequent event (5/1000 qualifies, methingks). We end up with severe quantization error (the only possible values are multiples of 20,000), and strong sensitivity to individual answers (a political poll will never be greatly altered by the answer of a single respondent).

Let's say we polled 15,000 people in the US (to keep the numbers roughly even); If none of them knew 9/11 victims, we could hardly conclude it didn't happen. If one did, it wouldn't be true to say 20,000 people died.

Obviously finding 5 positives yields much better accuracy than finding only one, but the issues with sampling rare events, particulary ones with such a strong chance for systematic bias (i.e. the fallujah problem) requires a much higher standard than this provides.

Finally, the political polls have a MOE (based on sample size) on the order of 4%; if we take the MOE on this poll to be the same, the 95% confidence interval gives us a death rate somewhere between 900,000 and -700,000. The value is swamped by the error. (of course, the death rate can't be negative, bounded error, blah blah).

Bob - Let's not forget that I still think we've done a lot of unnecessary and unjustified killing.