The Human Cost of War in Iraq

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jmccord @ Oct 19 2006, 01:59 AM) [snapback]334941[/snapback]</div>

Do you believe the study is well concieved and executed? If so, place yourself on a very short list. This study is damaging to those that wrote it in my opinion.

Please examine the # of data points they used and compare it to similar studies. Examine the extrapolations they used in their calculations......

You understand they are saying there has been killing and death that exceeds our Civil War, the WWII bombings in Germany, etc.

 

So who is more reputable: our doberman, or one of the premier epidemiological institutes in the country ?

Incidentally, this study is a follow-up by a separate group to one that came out a year or two ago, confirming the original conclusions -- but worse.

To answer OP's question: yes, I care. I also care about torture of innocents by US authorities.

 

Well I have to admit that I dismissed it when I first read it - the article I first read was pretty scathing on the methods they used and I believed it; plus the numbers are just so high. But since then I've read both sides of the debate and now give it more credibility. It truly is shocking.

 

Thanks for posting this whole report. I had read summaries of it. It is entirely credible. What is incredible is that there are so few mass protests against this insane war, as there were in the Vietnam era. How many billions of your dollars, how many dead American soldiers, how many dead Iraqi civilians does it take for people to wake up?

On a related note I saw a hopeful sign on the Long Island Expressway this morning. I small bumper sticker on a car reading "9/11 was an inside job". Good report, good sticker. Maybe things are looking up.

 

I care. But I suspect that most Americans do not. Or more precisely, I suspect that most Americans will allow themselves to be convinced by government propaganda that the "real" numbers are lower, and that the war was "necessary" and the deaths "unavoidable."

I do not care whether the precise numbers are correct. What cannot be disputed is that masive numbers of innocent civilians have been killed. And as for the "necessity" of the war, Iraq was never a terrorist threat to the U.S., and when it did employ WMDs against Iran and against the Kurds, those WMDs came from the U.S. and were used with the knowledge and tacit acceptance of the U.S., making the U.S. equally guilty with Iraq as an accessory before the fact.

On the other hand, the massive slaughter of civilians is business as usual for America. The Indians, the slave trade, the Civil War, the Mexican war, Dresden and the A-bombs in WW II, napalming of civilians in Vietnam, U.S. support for Pinochet in Chile, the dirty wars in Central America in the 80's, the invasion of Panama complete with the bombing of the poor neighborhoods of Panama City, the carpet bombing of Iraq in the first Gulf war, and now this present war. Terrorizing civilians into opposing their government never works, but has been an integral part of U.S. war-fighting strategey from the beginning.

And of course, supporters of the government have insisted that every one of these wars was necessary for American national security.

What they're actually necessary for is American economic and political ambitions.

 

"What they're actually necessary for is American economic and political ambitions"

Or, to be more accurate, the economic and political ambitions of the global oligarchy that actually runs the world.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 19 2006, 11:22 AM) [snapback]335046[/snapback]</div>

The Iraq war fails miserably as an economic argument. It's last saving grace, as it were, is to manipulate the US public in voting republican out of fear.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(EricGo @ Oct 19 2006, 11:34 AM) [snapback]335052[/snapback]</div>

As I have said, it is useless to think of what is good or bad "for the US".

Many corporations and individuals have made fortunes from the war in Iraq. The taxpayers and their children will foot the bill, as always.

 

Heh. That analysis is so absolutely terrible that even iraqbodycount.org has disavowed it as completely unbelievable.

It's been ripped apart by most of the respectable statisticians and polling analysts in almost every forum available.

Here's a link to iraqbodycount's press release on the subject

http://iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php

Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates

Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty

Summary

A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;

Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;

Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;

Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;

The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.

If these assertions are true, they further imply:

incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;

bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;

the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;

an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.



Their complete analysis of the study is available here:

http://reports.iraqbodycount.org/d/lancet_reality_checks.pdf

 

[Click here] for an article discussing the serious errors in the methods used for the Johns Hopkins report. Not that it'll change anyone's mind around here (as if!), but it gives a pretty good explanation of why and how the numbers are grossly inflated. Before you start pissing on it, try actually reading it - his second sentence says a lot: "Don't get me wrong, there have been far too many deaths in Iraq by anyone's measure; some of them have been friends of [his]."

 

Daniel put it best:

"I do not care whether the precise numbers are correct. What cannot be disputed is that masive numbers of innocent civilians have been killed."

And remember, these are people living in a country which never did any harm to the US in any way.

 

Now you guys see why it's so hard to discern what is really going on. When I saw the controversy, I did what I usually do in this kind of situation, and went to wikipedia. Read about what they say under
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_survey...nvasion_of_Iraq and under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Body_Count and come to your own conclusion. I'm not saying there's a definitive answer, I'm saying you should judge for yourself.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Oct 19 2006, 11:22 AM) [snapback]335046[/snapback]</div>

America is and has always been a force for evil.

In part terrorizing civilians has been a part of wartime strategy - not that we started that policy mind you. You can go back a thousand years and witness what happened to innocent civilians. Ask the innocent Israeli civilian how they feel every day when they get on a public bus or go to a pizzeria or mall. Ask the Germans about the V1 and V2 rockets or the Japanese about the trans-pacific hot air balloon weapons - to name but a few weapons systems developed by other countries to terrorize innocent civilians.

Carpet bombing of Iraq - prove it. Unless you are defing carpet bombing in an unusual way I have not read of even one raid of a wing of b52's over bagdad.

And the US is reponsible for the gassing of the kurds? You think we pulled that trigger too - it was Bush again?

And most Americans are dupes? Or is it that the majority of Americans disagree with you when it comes down to real-life. You will have your chance at winning the day next month - good luck. Too bad the dems are making it an election of personal follies (ie, foley , not reid or jefferson) instead of an honest debate on what should be the policies of this country in our war on terror and the Iraq war. If the dems dont carry the day next month - its all but over for them.

I guess you would have stayed out of WWII and the Civil War? How about WWI - would you have sent the dough boys? Korea? Kuwait?

Whatever. I would never try to convince you otherwise. I enjoy reading your posts.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Oct 19 2006, 03:59 PM) [snapback]335225[/snapback]</div>

Believing your current theory of 655,000 dead since the beginning of the Iraq War...

that would be equal to over 600 deaths per day since we invaded about 3 years ago. true or false?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 20 2006, 12:29 PM) [snapback]335634[/snapback]</div>

Well, 3 1/2 years, which makes it > 500 deaths per day. Shocking isn't it?

I've been looking into this some more. Yesterday I talked to my ex-roommate, a published PhD in statistics, about this. Her opinion of the study is that the methods are sound, and the report is credible. She supported the Iraq invasion by the way - she and I had some big disagreements back then! Ok, anyway, I think one thing to look at when you're evaluating the credibility of something, is who is doing the talking. for example, in the IBC press report cited above, the authors are Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty; a "freelance researcher", psychologist, and guitarist. None have training in statistics (that I can tell from their own bios). The WSJ report cited above was authored by a conservative economist. On the other hand, Lancet is a peer-reviewed medical journal. Now, I'm not telling you who to believe; again, I'm saying you should make your own decision.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Oct 20 2006, 01:52 PM) [snapback]335650[/snapback]</div>

I do make my own decisions thanks.

I have decided to ignore this study - even your own # of 500 deaths per day - that would be MAJOR headline news from CNN and the NY Times every day. A really bad day there you have 50-80 or maybe even 1 hundred killed - NOT 500 - not close. I guess then the current authors will be on your list of "to be ignored studies if they author it"?

Seriously, that number of deaths would overwhelm a country that size in that short a time frame. And if the death toll was that great, why the relatively small # of American casualties??We nuked two cities and did not even kill even close to that amount, we carpet bombed Germany and did not even kill that many civilians - and we were trying to! Geeeez - if there was ever a study to throw directly into the mulch mill this is it (like the environmentally friendly approach there?).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 20 2006, 01:14 PM) [snapback]335663[/snapback]</div>

...yeah, I guess so.

You have chosen to ignore all posts from: dbermanmd.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Oct 20 2006, 02:23 PM) [snapback]335668[/snapback]</div>

Easier to ignore than face the facts.

one down, so many more to go :lol: