Something has been bugging me about *'s 30,000 dead Iraqi quote

stop the bleeding

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Thu Dec-15-05 10:42 AM
Original message

Something has been bugging me about *'s 30,000 dead Iraqi quote

Edited on Thu Dec-15-05 11:05 AM by stop the bleeding

Last year I saw Amy Goodman speak at St. Pete College main campus with a few other notables like Andy Borowitz, Tom Robbins, and 2 other people that I forget their names one of them is a popular female brunette liberal. Anyway Amy's point of the day was how much true media coverage can one possibly get when your media is controlled/embedded with the DOD.

The White House said after shrub's speech the other day that those figures are estimates based on media accounts, not concrete stats.

Well the media keeps track of this stuff by articles like: 4 killed suicided attack or 5 civilians killed by roadside bomb ect.. basically in order for there to be an article there has to be a journalist there to record/report the numbers. Journalists that are being controlled by the DOD. Also lets remember the DOD efforts to put out their own stories (separate topic but illustrates the DOD desire to control this sector).

So the media is missing all of the other people who are killed and who get disposed of by unknown means like family burying the dead before people know about the death, dead lying in rubble from past attacks(Falluja), dead disposed of warring factions(10 Sunnis fond shot in the head on the side of road, or the next week it is Shiite) how many of these vendetta killings go on unreported.

Lets take into the account the Lancet Report/Journal that was put out last fall that had good educated estimates of 100,000 people killed. Now this report is very interesting because in how they arrived at the numbers.

Short summary, the DOD stopped reporting or collecting stats on the dead back in the 1st Gulf War, so the Lancet had developed a very reliable method of tracking the dead since then in other conflicts(Serbia, Bosnia ect)

What they do if I remember correctly is this: When they want to cover the an area they go to as many different parts of the cities within many parts of each province so that they can get a wide range of the demographics and general population of an area(like Iraq). They actually go into different neighborhoods and start interviewing families 1 by 1 and ask them who has been killed or is missing from the conflict and of course the people name names. Then the Lancet asks the families can you produce a birth certificate and in 75% of the cases they can. So the Lancet is establishing the amount of people who lived in an area before the invasion as opposed how many people are disappeared since the invasion. The process is much more complicated than how I explained it but you get the idea that the Lancet is doing some real ground work in getting data. This all by memory from an interview from a year ago on Democracy Now.

Here is the link to the summary: better explained...

Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey

Registration is quick and esay but if you don't want to jump through that hoop here is the summary, read the report if you want all of the goods.

Summary
Background
In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14�6 months before the invasion with the 17�8 months after it.

Methods
A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17�8 months after the invasion with the 14�6-month period preceding it.

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.

Published online October 29,2004 http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf

Now lets look at the 100,000

According to the Journal this did not take into account the Falluja numbers because they were so high and of the scale the stat collectors thought this was too odd to include. Fallujah has been raped again as well as other places.

Take into the account the amount af attacks and violence that has happened since this report.

Also think that the Lancet is a very respected body of research and this method has been used before and proved to be quite accurate.

Why is this not being inspected closer? The numbers are more like 130,000 - 230,000 if you ask me.

I know I have rushed through this, and if people want a better understanding they should go and read the report. Unfortunately this was typed at work.

I will try to update this later for clarity and links but I thought you all would want to chew on this.

Lastly remember I am not questioning shrub's numbers, I am sure they are accurate based on the sources he is reallying on, however those sources are not counting hardly any of the bodies, due to limited exposure from rules or safety issues.

Let me know what you all think.