Bush says report of 655,000 Iraqi dead not credible

[sabra]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/WAT006379.htm

Bush says report of 655,000 Iraqi dead not credible

WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Wednesday described as not credible a study showing 655,000 Iraqis had died in violence since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"I don't consider it a credible report," Bush said of a study by a team of American and Iraqi public health experts that calculated about 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent violence.

[tk2kewl]

1. Was he asked the obvious follow up question?

:shrug:

[coalition_unwilling]

56. Bush should be asked to define "the scientific method". Only after

he has successfully defined it (hypothesis, experiment, conclusion or revised hypothesis) can he be deemed credible on any matter regarding science.

[LiberalFighter]

57. Too bad they aren't smart enough to ask...

What should the numbers be??????? M*#@*#F*#@*#

[JoFerret]

67. So. What is the acceptable/ approved level?

.

[Virginia Dare]

2. Virginia Dare says Bush not credible...n/t

[underpants]

23. I second that

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

47. I'm with Ms. Dare

Bush is definitely not credible.

[EFerrari]

64. I have replicated your results. nt

[Poiuyt]

3. Well, after all, how can you believe anything done by that

hack institution, Johns Hopkins University?

[jayctravis]

32. I refuse to pay my credit card bill...

because the figures aren't credible!

[rhiannon55]

4. And Bush is an expert on what's credible and what's not...

rriigghhtt!

Fucking moron. :mad:

[kenny blankenship]

9. As the killer involved in the killing of Iraqis he's in touch w/ the dead

moreso than some British epiderma epidemocri epideelybop than some fucking Limey doctors. It's not that he's a dispassionate expert on statistical credibility, it's just that he savors each and every death as he offers it up to his God.

You want to know how many dead? Ask the guy who proudly killed them, as the centerpiece of his strategy for political control of America: George "Mass-Murderer" Bush

[leftchick]

5. hmm, whom to believe? The Respected JHU study?

Using the same methodology for the Darfur dead or the lying chimp who loves to kill people?

<snip>

Ironically enough, the same journalists who will question this study will accept without query the estimates for deaths in Darfur, e.g., which are generated by exactly the same techniques, and which are almost certainly not as solid.

The study concludes that an average of 470 Iraqis per day have likely died as a result of political violence since March 19, 2003, though the number could be as low as 350 per day if the margin of error skewed to the low side. United Nations estimates based on figures from Iraqi morgues are more like 100 per day.

I follow the violence in Iraq carefully and daily, and I find the results plausible.

http://www.juancole.com/

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. What counts as war related, or political violence?

If a hospital's last ambulance is blown up on Monday, so a heart-attack victim cannot be transported on Tuesday and dies because of it, does he count? No way. But is he a direct victim? Absolutely. If a person drinks contaminated water because the utilites have been out for two years, and dies of typhoid, is that person a victim of political violence? Does he get included in the government's numbers?

There's more ways of producing enemy casualties than by bullets or bombs.

[Botany]

17. Let me see

Done by John Hopkins.
funded by M.I.T..
published in Lancet.

bio of author

Dr. Gilbert M. Burnham is the co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins. He has extensive experience in emergency preparedness and response, particularly in humanitarian needs assessment, program planning, and evaluation that address the needs of vulnerable populations, and the development and implementation of training programs. He also has extensive experience in the development and evaluation of community-based health program planning and implementation, health information system development, management and analysis, and health system analysis. He has worked with numerous humanitarian and health development programs for multilateral and non-governmental organizations, regional health departments, ministries of health (national and district level), and communities in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. A major current activity is the reconstruction of health services in Afghanistan.

or should I buy the info from man who told me about the WMDs in Iraq?

[calimary]

6. He's correct about one thing. Yes. there is something MIGHTILY not

credible here. Or to be more accurate - someONE.

[E-Z-B]

7. Dubya's just in a "State of Denial"

[flyarm]

8. little lord pissy pants is a bold faced liar!!! liar liar liar liar liar!

oh yeah...i would believe this liar...not on my death bed!!..* is a filthy fucking murdering liar!!

oh and check the date of the second article..when little lord pissy pants stopped the iraqi's from counting their dead!!..yes our government closed down the Iraqi offices that were keeping records of the deaths of iraq citizens!


http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/10/20737/582

The study was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health by sending teams of Iraqi doctors across Iraq from May through July.

snip:
WASHINGTON -- 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.


little lord pissy pants never wanted the American people to know how many civilians we killed..or the world...

from my files.,.fly

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/AP_Iraq_to_stop_121003....

AP: Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead

Wed Dec 10,2003

By NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi Health Ministry officials ordered a halt to a count of civilian casualties from the war and told workers not to release figures already compiled, the head of the ministry's statistics department told The Associated Press on Wednesday.



The health minister, Dr. Khodeir Abbas, denied that he or the U.S.-led occupation authority had anything to do with the order, and said he didn't even know about the survey of deaths, which number in the thousands.



Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry's statistics department, said the order came from the ministry's director of planning, Dr. Nazar Shabandar, who told her it was on behalf of Abbas. She said the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversees the ministry, didn't like the idea of the count either.



"We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn't agree with it," she said, adding: "The CPA doesn't want this to be done."




fly

[calimary]

13. This reminds me of something I read here last night (apologies - I

forget where I saw it) that included an account of Iraqi civilians who say they buried their kids in their own yards because they were afraid to venture out to a professional mortuary. We will never know the true numbers of casualties. These studies only provide ballpark figures, and I'll bet, at that, they're on the low end.

This is an EPIC disaster. Of HISTORIC proportions. And that's just as is, now. There's not even a light at the end of the tunnel on this one. God knows how much carnage and wreckage there'll be by the time this is finally over - whichever decade that is. Yep, little junior's gonna go down in history alright. Alongside Hitler, Caligula, Attila the Hun, and other mass murderers and assorted two-legged blights on humanity.

[HereSince1628]

10. Wasn't that pubished in the LANCET????????????????

One of the English language's premier medical journals?

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. That was the original report, a couple years ago, that said it had

reached 100,000.

I believe this new report was just some ginned up numbers pulled out of the air by the clowns at JOHNS HOPKINS.

No reason to believe anything THEY say.

[alcibiades_mystery]

31. No, this is published in the Lancet as well

It is a follow-up on the last two years' reports.

[KatyaR]

68. Well, you know, science is just a bunch of hooey, anyway.

And mathematics is just sissy-boy learnin', too.

:banghead: :argh:

[flyarm]

16. yes and it was run by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

The study was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health by sending teams of Iraqi doctors across Iraq from May through July.

The Lancet, the respected British medical journal, will come out with this on Saturday.
The death toll is disgusting...!

how many dead before * is in Hitler's ballpark legitimately??
a million??

2 million??

12 million??

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/10/20737/582



understand this people...prior to * starting this war of murder..over 50% of Iraqi civilians were under the age of 15..

yes children...

so ...how many of the 655,000 that we have murdered ..have been children..

you may not sleep tonight ..but little lord pissy pants has no problem sleeping while sending our military kids to go murder children!

i fucking hate his guts!

FLY

[underpants]

22. (scowling) stupid liberal brainiacs think they know so much

:grr:

[HereSince1628]

27. Yeah, ain't it a barrel of tough pretzels when they actually do?

I hope the media chokes on this and coughs that furball right back in Bush's face.

[daleo]

12. A non-denial denial

He said he thinks it's not credible, not that it's not true.

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. It makes sense to me.

consider that non-credible is synonymous with in-credible and I, too, find the numbers to be fucking incredible-ly bad.

It took us 11 years to kill 3 million vietnamese - and here in just 3 years we've reached 660,000, so we are closing in on that kill rate real fast.

[gratuitous]

14. At least he didn't bother to deny the number

After all, it has been the official policy of the United States and its wehrmacht not to count the collateral damage, civilian dead, or any other metric that would indicate what kind of misery we're inflicting on Iraq. While "at least we're better than Saddam" seems an awfully low measure of success, it now appears that whether the Iraqi people are better off now or were better off under Saddam has become a debatable point.

[htuttle]

19. Note, he gives no rationale whatsoever for WHY he says it's 'not credible'

I guess we're just supposed to accept the word of the King as the absolute truth, and that's that?

[Vinca]

21. Yeah - as if he's been truthful at any time in the past. nt

[rodeodance]

20. John Hopkins better hit back on this HARD!

[rodeodance]

24. Juan Cole analyzes the John Hopkins/Lancet study (earlier DU post)

Wed Oct-11-06 07:13 AM
Original message
Juan Cole analyzes the John Hopkins/Lancet study (655,000 Dead in Iraq)

http://www.juancole.com/2006/10/655000-dead-in-iraq-sin...

Quite long and detailed. Worth reading especially with all the spin coming out now.

snip>

This study is going to have a hard ride. In part it is because many of us in the information business are not statistically literate enough to judge the sampling techniques. Many will tend to dismiss the findings as implausible without a full appreciation of how low the margin of error is this time. Second, it is a projection, and all projections are subject to possible error, and journalists, being hardnosed people, are wary of them.

The New York Times report has already made a serious error, saying that deaths in the Saddam period were covered up. The families interviewed knew whether their loved ones were disappearing in 2001 and 2002 and had no reason to cover it up if they were. The survey established the baseline with a contemporary questionnaire. It wasn't depending on Iraqi government statistics.

Another reason for the hard ride is that the Republican Party and a significant fraction of the business elite in this country is very invested in the Iraq War, and they will try to discredit the study. Can you imagine the profits being made by the military-industrial complex on all this? Do they really want the US public to know the truth about what the weapons they produce have done to Iraqis? When you see someone waxing cynical about the study, ask yourself: Does this person know what a chi square is? And, who does this person work for, really?

snip>

I follow the violence in Iraq carefully and daily, and I find the results plausible.

First of all, Iraqi Muslims don't believe in embalming or open casket funerals days later. They believe that the body should be buried by sunset the day of death, in a plain wooden box. So there is no reason to expect them to take the body to the morgue. Although there are benefits to registering with the government for a death certificate, there are also disadvantages. Many families who have had someone killed believe that the government or the Americans were involved, and will have wanted to avoid drawing further attention to themselves by filling out state forms and giving their address.

Personally, I believe very large numbers of Iraqi families quietly bury their dead without telling the government of all people anything about it. Another large number of those killed is dumped in the Tigris river by their killers. A fisherman on the Tigris looking for lunch recently caught the corpse of a woman. The only remarkable thing about it is that he let it be known to the newspapers. I'm sure the Tigris fishermen throw back unwanted corpses every day.

snip>


much more

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2368807

[rodeodance]

26. Here is Juan Coles website with the article;

http://www.juancole.com/


Wednesday, October 11, 2006

655,000 Dead in Iraq since Bush Invasion

It is a big news day. Don't miss my interview with veteran Iraq reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, below.

Among other things, on Tuesday guerrillas blew up a bakery in Baghdad and killed and wounded a lot of people; police found over 50 bodies in the streets of the capital; guerillas claimed to have hit a US ammunition depot with mortar shells, setting off huge explosions that rocked Baghdad for hours but were not known to have killed anyone; and 5 US soldiers were reported killed in separate incidents.

But the big news is a big new Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet that suggests that the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.

A careful Johns Hopkins study has estimated that between 420,000 and 790,000 Iraqis have died as a result of war and political violence since the beginning of the US invasion in March, 2003.

Interesting conclusions are that we are wrong to focus so much on suicide car bombings. The real action is just shooting enemies down with bullets. Only 30 percent of the deaths have been caused by the US military, and that percentage has declined this year because of the sectarian war.

[rodeodance]

28. BIG NEWS:---Killing of twice as many as SH did in 25 years (Cole)

......But the big news is a big new Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet that suggests that the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years..........

[rodeodance]

30. The abstract for the study says:

....The abstract for the study says:


' Methods: Between May and July 2006 a national cluster survey was conducted in Iraq to assess deaths occurring during the period from January 1, 2002, through the time of survey in 2006. Information on deaths from 1,849 households containing 12,801 persons was collected. This survey followed a similar but smaller survey conducted in Iraq in 2004. Both surveys used standard methods for estimating deaths in conflict situations, using population-based methods.

Key Findings: Death rates were 5.5/1000/year pre-invasion, and overall, 13.2/1000/year for the 40 months post-invasion. We estimate that through July 2006, there have been 654,965 “excess deaths”—fatalities above the pre-invasion death rate—in Iraq as a consequence of the war. Of post-invasion deaths, 601,027 were due to violent causes. Non-violent deaths rose above the pre-invasion level only in 2006. Since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq’s population have died above what would have occurred without conflict.
The proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006, though the actual numbers have increased each year. Gunfire remains the most common reason for death, though deaths from car bombing have increased from 2005. Those killed are predominantly males aged 15-44 years. '



More on the techniques from the text:


' The surveyors from the School of Medicine of Al Mustansiria University in Baghdad conducted a national survey between May and July 2006. In this survey, sites were collected according to the population size and the geographic distribution in Iraq. The survey included 16 of the 18 governates in Iraq, with larger population areas having more sample sites. The sites were selected entirely at random, so all households had an equal chance of being included. The survey used a standard cluster survey method, which is a recommended method for measuring deaths in conflict situations. The survey team visited 50 randomly selected sites in Iraq, and at each site interviewed 40 households about deaths which had occurred from January 1, 2002, until the date of the interview in July 2006. We selected this time frame to compare results with our previous
......

[Delphinus]

25. Just like

Global Climate Change, the weapons inspectors in Iraq saying there weren't WMD, ditto Valerie Plame's husband, etc.

[Greeby]

29. I'm reminded of former House Democratic Whip David Bonior's quote

He was speaking of the sanctions when he said it, but it stills bears relevance, he dsecribed what was going on in Iraq as "Infanticide masquerading as policy"

[anotherdrew]

33. not credible? yeah, it may be too low! n/t

[BlueInPhilly]

34. I think Bushie might be right indeed -

number is really too low. (First thing that came to mind...)

THE NUMBER IS MUCH HIGHER THAN THAT!!!

[Strawman]

35. But the Baby Jesus spoke to him and said he has saved lives

And why do all those corpses hate America?

[smoogatz]

48. Bingo. All those dead Iraqi civilians have committed an act of

asymmetrical warfare against the U.S. By going and getting theirselves blowed up, they're just trying to make us look bad!!

[0007]

36. John Hopkins and its fuzzy math, 'eh?.......if the truth were known the4

numbers would probably be like a million.

And we wonder why the world hates us.

[Zorra]

37. The only stats that are credible to Bu*h are the fake ones that

he tells his cronies to make up.

Welcome to Bu*hworld, where delusion reigns supreme.

[BigDDem]

38. Well, Bush is the expert

on what's not credible.

[G_j]

39. recommended and please kick!

(not second page news)

[rodeodance]

41. k and R

[olshak]

40. The numbers

Personally, I don't care if the numbers are accurate or not.

My points:

1) The invasion of Iraq was illegal and justified by false information

2) Any civilian loss of life in Iraq, as well as the loss of any US military lives, are the responsibility of Mr. Bush

3) Mr. Bush should not only be impeached; he should be arrested, turned over to international authorities and tried for war crimes.

[G_j]

43. absolutely right

Mr. Bush should not only be impeached; he should be arrested, turned over to international authorities and tried for war crimes.

[rodeodance]

42. needs one more REC to get to greatest

[RobertSeattle]

44. W sure likes that word "credible"

http://www.whitehouse.gov/query.html?col=colpics&ht=0&qp=&qs=&qc=&pw=630&ws=0&la=en&si=0&text=0&fs=&qt=credible&ex=&rq=0&oq=&text=0&qm=0&ql=&st=1&nh=10&lk=1&rf=1

[lovuian]

45. Well if Bush says it then god says it then it must be

Lying is not helping

[ChairmanAgnostic]

46. Bush is absolutely correct.

It was 658,321. Those lying MSM types just make up stuff to sell papers. If only they got the facts right. Maybe we need more legislation to stop that kind of reporting

[olshak]

50. Yep...

...and it's called getting rid of the First Amendment, which they got a very healthy start on a couple of weeks ago.

[The Count]

49. And OBL wasn't determined to strike in the US, global warming not true

Seemms to me like he takes it as a dare - "just gimme sone time, I'll get there!

[The Count]

51. "...and I applaud the willingness of the Iraqui people to sacrifice

themselves..." Rhandy ran the whole mindblowing quote.

[girl gone mad]

52. I was surprised to hear the anchors on CNN...

earlier today taking this study very seriously. They had someone on saying the methods were far more accurate than methods used in earlier studies. They mentioned that other surveys relied on eyewitness accounts reported in the media, but that a strong media presence only exists in about 5% of the country. They even said the methods used were the same used to very accurately predict election outcomes in the United States and the sample in the Iraq study was more than large enough to give a highly precise result.

[arikara]

53. How would he know

didn't one of them say the civilian dead wasn't a number they were concerned about? I seem to remember something like that spewing out of Darth Rummy.

[petepillow]

54. ...says the least credible pResident ever.

hmm, the top talking-head puppet said it's not true! welp, my brain is all washed and clean. pass the freedom toast!

[Occulus]

55. Um, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but

isn't The Lancet a highly respected medical journal, on a par with Nature and Science?

Aren't these usually considered fairly definitive sources? Aren't they all perr reviewed?

[IndianaGreen]

58. Here is the link to the earlier Lancet Report (100,000 dead Iraqis)

http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=424

Lancet Report on Iraqi Mortality

Read the report>>> http://www.epic-usa.org/Portals/1/Lancet_report_on_iraqi_mortality_before_and_after_2003.pdf

Detailed Summary

Findings

The risk of death was estimated to be 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.6-4.2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98000 more deaths than expected (8000-194000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8.1-419) than in the period before the war.

Interpretation

Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes.

Source: Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, Gilbert Burnham, summary, “Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey”, The Lancet, Vol 364, No 9445, 30 October 2004, www.thelancet.com

[stepnw1f]

59. This Confirms Bush is a Coward

He can't even face the fact that HE alone is responsible for that many deaths..... he knows it, but doesn't have the GUTS to face up to it publicly. He just denies Everything.

[gatlingforme]

60. coming from a very credible man--- BARF

[truthisfreedom]

61. oh, well it was only 654,999. sorry, mr. president, for the exaggeration.

[olddad56]

62. If Bush disagrees, that automatically gives it credibility with me.

[Ramsey]

63. Who would you trust?

GW Bush, who has lied about literally everything every time he opens his mouth, or The Lancet, one of the top academic medical journals in the world?


:shrug:

[EFerrari]

65. You're right. That's a tough one.

:)

[Tigress DEM]

66. *ush "We still gotta send in the hoggs."

"You see in NoLa we just sent in that firm that leaves the dead bodies out for the wild forrest pigs to handle things first before we start any counting. No sense in alarming American's with real numbers."

"If we get enough hoggs we can cut that number in half and bring 'em in for slaughter. Make a hell of a profit that way. See now that's inCredible and it's the only kind of credible that innerests me, cause if it's got profits then you can have innerest and that's good economy for 'mercka."

[Rex]

69. Whatever George.

Dam George, you could swim in that much blood. Go boating with daddy on a sea of blood. Feel better now George? Oh and George...you're a fucking war criminal, boo! Nothing you can do and nobody can change that for you. Daddy can't fix this one George. He's scared too.