http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18363.htmIs the U.S. Responsible for a Million Iraqi Deaths?
By Patrick McElwee and Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
09/11/07 "ZNet" -- -- In October 2006 researchers from Johns Hopkins University published a peer-reviewed article in The Lancet, one of Europe's most important and respected medical journals, estimating that 650,000 Iraqis had been killed due to the U.S.-led invasion of their country, 601,000 violently. <1> The report was quickly marginalized in public debate in the United States.
The researchers' methods were not to blame. They used the method accepted around the world to measure demographics such as birth and death rates in the wake of natural and man-made disasters: a cluster survey. No one found substantive flaws in the way they conducted their research. Instead, their findings were dismissed because they asked the politically charged question of how many Iraqis have died, and the answer they found was unacceptably high.
Since the Lancet estimate was based on a survey completed in July 2006 and no new demographic studies have been conducted since, Just Foreign Policy has created an update of the Lancet estimate to account for the violent deaths that have occurred since, in an effort to put the question of the overall death toll back on the table. We did this by extrapolating from the Lancet estimate using a trend line derived from a database of deaths reported in the Western media, maintained by Iraq Body Count. <2> Our best estimate, which we update regularly, is that over a million Iraqis have been killed violently as a result of the invasion and occupation. <3>
The treatment of the Lancet study and its findings has really been exceptional. In other war zones, results from cluster surveys have become the standard estimate of deaths. The cluster survey-based estimate that 200,000 have died in Darfur, for example, is consistently cited as established fact by both the U.S. media and the Bush administration.
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Unfortunately, the debate over whether the U.S. military should end its occupation of Iraq remains largely uninformed by accurate estimates of Iraqi deaths, at least here in the United States. Worse, there seems to be a lack of interest in how many Iraqis have been killed even as many who oppose withdrawal warn of the deaths that would ensue if the troops left. As a result, the American public is completely uninformed as to how many Iraqis have been killed. An AP poll in February asked Americans how many Iraqis had died as a result of the war. The median response was just under 10,000. <12>
The best estimate indicates that more than a million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation. It is reasonable to suppose that if politicians and news media in the United States were forced to confront this reality, pressure for the end of the war would increase dramatically, and cavalier discussions of new military actions in Iran and Pakistan would be less likely.
Patrick McElwee is a policy analyst and Robert Naiman is a senior policy analyst at Just Foreign Policy, www.justforeignpolicy.org. Their counter of Iraqi deaths can be found at
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html.
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