Washblog

On Oct 12,1998, Sec. of Stae Madeline Albright was asked if she felt that 300,000 Iraqi children dead was an acceptable price for regime change. She said "...yes, I think it is worth the price." She didn't contest that number. If there were as many adult civilian deaths as children, then 600,000 civilians had been killed by '98.

In his 2004 book "A War Against Truth", Paul William Roberts said the Iraqi death toll from American warmaking in Iraq since 1991 was already more than a million.
There is no good reason to pretend that America has fought more than one war against Iraq--since 1991 we have engaged in warfare constantly, killing people by sickness as well as by bombs and rockets. I won't try to guess what the future holds for the people of Iraq, but plainly our acceding to the wish of the vast majority of Iraqis by quickly getting our troops out could hardly be worse than our staying.

by PeaceAction on Tue Oct 10, 2006 at 11:47:58 PM PST

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The Washington Post has now come out with the story. They're saying The Lancet online version should come out today. (I think registration will be required--I went through this once before, and it was a hassle.)

The Post reports that the death toll is about 655,000, of which 601,000 were due to violent deaths and 54,000 were due to disease and other causes.

Here's an excerpt from the Post article:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then -- a finding likely to be equally controversial.

Both this and the earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods. The technique, called "cluster sampling," is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters.

While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the methods. The great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.

"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins physician and epidemiologist.

A Defense Department spokesman did not comment directly on the estimate.

by DWE on Wed Oct 11, 2006 at 05:50:49 AM PST

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What a huge spiritual fuckup.  

by noemie maxwell on Wed Oct 11, 2006 at 09:59:32 AM PST

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In a world where a Republicans can "charge" Democrats with creating an October Surprise from the Foley scandal, we might reasonably discuss whether Iraq and the Democrats' reaction to it is actually a huge Left-Wing conspiracy.

Coming from the Far Left as I do, I have often heard the argument that Progressives should allow things to get worse to make the conflicts and hypocrisies in the system more obvious. I chose to work for Democrats.

And yet Democrats, by supporting Bush in his aptly-named "war on terror" may have conducted a bolder experiment than any socialist would have dared: not only allow things to get worse, but actively support those who are making them worse.

Because with this announcement and other pieces of news, two things are becoming clear. The first is that we would now be significantly better off with Saddam Hussein still in power.

Significantly.

We might - might - even come to a point very soon where we would have been better off with BOTH Saddam AND the Taliban still in power.

The Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have done absolutely everything wrong, at this point. First, of course, they have killed more Americans than 9/11 did. Second, both campaigns have strengthened and increased the violent tendencies of the two more dangerous and better-armed dictatorships next door - Pakistan and Iran, with Afghanistan policy being singular in its strengthening of ALL surrounding dictatorships.

Both campaigns have set back the cause of democracy in the countries attacked by years and decades in that "democracy" is now seen a synonymous with "weak and ineffective U.S.-backed regime which ignores the people once it gets power". Also, by allowing the drug trade to flourish, the Afghanistan campaign (the "good" campaign) has created the real potential for an ungovernable narco-state where major powers cannot actually deal with the real power-players in the country. Since they cannot admit that the main cash industry of the economy exists, the US, as in Colombia, will only serve to  keep the legitimate government and the economy it pretends to govern completely separate.

In Iraq, the US had backed a minority Sunni dictator (Saddam) because we correctly saw that Shia muslims were very likely to come under Iranian influence. Then we had an opportunity to engage with Shia Muslims in the South and potentially to make them a counter-weight to Iran's domination of Shia politics. Now we are having firefights with Iraqi Shia, and we don't even have a Sunni dictator to keep Iran at bay. So Iran will become more powerful. As if that isn't enough, we also back a rival faction Shia "government" that is quickly becoming known for corruption and violence.

Obviously the problem with Iraq's Sunni population cannot be overstated and naturally this destroys our reputation in the world of Sunni Arabs (the vast majority).

But there's more. Shia muslims are overwhelmingly in the Middle East - either Persian or Arab. The propoganda of the Wahabists, Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups has always featured jihad against Shia apostasy, leveling all kinds of charges at Shias. For most of the Muslim world, this makes no sense as there are no Shia in their countries. However, because the U.S. is so publically backing a corrupt and violent Shia government, the historical focus of Wahabiist radicals on Shia will no longer make their propoganda seem so strange to Muslims who have no experience with Shia.

So the message of Al-Qaeda is made even more broadly appealing. In fact, the Bush adminstration has largely dropped its ambition of democracy in Iraq, because it knows that the authoritarian forces of Islamo-fascism are so strong that it is probably only a military-economic dictatorship that can hold them back. And we've helped kill a half-million Muslims, which never makes you have friends.  

Turning to more practical, strategic matters, the oil in Iraq is under constant threat and is largely useless to anyone. We do not control it in that we cannot pump it reliably. No one else does, either, but that's not really a good answer. A war for oil could have been had on the cheap and much more easily. We already dominated Kurdistan and could easily have connected Kirkuk to a new country or territory of Kurdistan, and had that oil go straight to Turkey, our ally.
We could have controlled Basra by doing the reverse of what Saddam did - annexing part of Iraq to Kuwait, our ally. Militarily, this would have been a trifle compared to the present war and would have cut Saddam off from the means to finance large-scale military adventures.

In short, we are getting, in Iraq, to a point where having a dictator like Saddam in charge of the region we are struggling hardest to control would be something devoutly to be hoped for. Saddam would be a HUGE step up, given the present situation. Even Israel would probably be satisfied with a weakened, poorly-financed Saddam in place of what is in Iraq now, to the extent that Israel can EVER be satisfied with anything when it comes to their national security.

And now, with this article, we find out that when people say that we can't leave Iraq because "it would turn into a Darfur" the answer is "it already is a Darfur and in only three short years." AND any statistical projection would predict that three years of American occupation are likely to cause another half-million people to die unnecessarily. So, we can now very reasonably say that the most dire predictions associated with doing nothing, with abandoning Iraq in the most "irresponsible" way possible are about as bad as we anticipate three more years of occupation will be.

Except we would have spent about 750 Billion to a trillion dollars less (THAT is the kind of money that could really change things for the better) and, of course, we wouldn't have oceans of blood on our hands and have accomplised absolutely nothing positive.

This is what total failure looks like. As a society, it's hard to see, but we are beginning to. Without Democrats' (and citizens') supporting Bush we wouldn't have gotten here. Reason would have kept us from this dark place. So maybe it will come to be a terrible but useful social experiment. You accept a lie, invest everything in it, and finally you have to question not only the lie, but why you ever believed it in the first place.

Just a side note: the other piece of news that I thought was telling today is that only 33 of 12,000 FBI agents have any proficiency in Arabic. For the five years since 9/11 the FBI hasn't seen fit even to send some agents to Berlitz.  So even the government agencies who are tasked with taking the threat of Arab terrorism seriously are not even putting in the basic investigative tools to find that serious terrorist threat. Clearly this is because it doesn't exist. The administration has not acted in any way to indicate that they actually take the threat of terrorism seriously. Rather, it's completely clear that they are using a farcical notion of "terror" for political purposes.

by dlaw on Wed Oct 11, 2006 at 11:48:05 AM PST

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Can you believe this?  Over 600,000 people violently killed in just three years?  This is one nasty conflict, and most of that blood is on our hands.

We need to use this study to remind our "leaders" what their policies have done to the people of Iraq, and that we do not approve.

by Tahoma Activist on Wed Oct 11, 2006 at 02:28:48 PM PST

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This morning I received a copy of the Lancet article. It's called:

Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross sectional cluster sample survey

The authors are Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts.

Here are some excepts from the summary:

Background. An excess mortality of more than 100 000 deaths was reported in Iraq for the period March, 2003--September, 2004, attributed to the invasion of Iraq. Our aim ws to update this estimate.

Methods. Between May and July 2006, we did a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality  in Iraq. 50 clusters were randomly selected from 16 Governorates, witih every cluster consisting of 40 households. Information on deaths from these households was gathered.

Findings . . . We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654 965 (392 979-942 636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601 027 (426 369-793 663) were due to violence, the most common being gunfire.

Interpretation. The number of people dying in Iraq has continued to escalate. The proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006, although the actual numbers have increased every year. Gunfire remains the most common cause of death, although deaths from car bombing have increased.

The report notes that the "circumstances of a number of deaths from gunshots suggest assassinations or executions. Coalition forces have been reported as targeting all men of military age."

Here are the last two paragraphs from the study:

In Iraq, as with other conflicts, civilians bear the consequences of warfare. In the Vietnam war, 3 million civilians died; in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, conflict has been responsible for 3.8 million deaths; and an estimated 200 000 of a total population of 800 000 died in conflict with East Timor. Recent estimates are that 200 000 people have died in Darfur over the past 31 months. We estimate that almost 655 000 people--2.5% of the population in the study area--have died in Iraq. Although such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century, and should be of grave concern to everyone.

At the conclusion of our 2004 study we urged that an independent body assess the excess mortality that we saw in iraq. This has not happened. We continue to believe that an independent international body to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and other humanitarian standards in conflict is urgently needed. With reliable data, those voices that speak out for civilians trapped in conflict might be able to lesson the tragic human cost of future wars.

by DWE on Wed Oct 11, 2006 at 02:56:18 PM PST

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I have a PDF of the article in The Lancet, and have placed it in my web-space.  Please don't download it unless you really need to, as I'm sure there are some copyright issues to deal with.

LINK

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever -- Larry Andersen
Blogging at Peace Tree Farm

by N in Seattle on Thu Oct 12, 2006 at 12:30:34 PM PST

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It's taken me a while to absorb the significance The Lancet study--I've been busy with a few other things.

Here are some things that stand out:

• The figure of 654,965 deaths represents roughly 2.5% of the total population of Iraq. In other words, the Johns Hopkins study suggests that about 2.5% of Iraqis have been killed by this war.
  
• In The Christian Science Monitor article I referenced elsewhere, Dr. Garfield, a public health professor at Columbia University, pointed out that 1.4% of our population died in the American Civil War. That is, the death rate in the Iraq war exceeds the death rate of our Civil War.
  
• Iraq is not on the verge of a civil war. It's not experiencing a low-level civil war. In Iraq, there is widespread civil war.
  
• A majority of violent deaths (56%) are caused by arms fire. Not air strikes, as in the first 18 months of the war. Not car bombs or roadside bombs. Small arms fire. People are shooting each other.
  
• During the study period, 31% were killed by coalition forces, 24% by "other" and 45% by "unknown." In the last year of the study period, the actual numbers of coalition-caused deaths have gone up, while the percentage (26) has gone down because the deaths by "other" are escalating (30%). Deaths by "unknown" are also escalating, but the percentage (44) is level.
  
• In other words, nearly half of the Iraqis in the sample don't know how their relatives died. Death by "other"--that is to say, Iraqis killing Iraqis--is escalating.
  
• By far the largest category of people getting killed in Iraq are males between the ages of 15-44. The deaths of males exceed that of females in every age category. For females, the age category with the highest death rate are girls under 15. No explanation is offered for this.

Those of us who warned our fellow citizens and our so-called leaders about invading Iraq knew this day might come: Iraq is in a state of widespread civil war, while our government is in a state of denial. Here's a poem I wrote on the first day of the war:

March 19, 2003

Today, we're told, is the day.
We're fixed before our sets,
The reason for war, we suspect.
It's time to make him pay.

To mention that others will pay
Is almost in poor taste,
The unregarded waste
Of abstract deaths. Pay

We surely will, though to say
With certainty how much,
How long, in such-and-such
A manner is fool's play.

No absolute power may
Be granted to lowly humans.
The pundits' presumed visions
Of the future are mere hay

To the wind. Leave or stay
Just as you please: the surprise,
The unexpected, the unsurmised
Are already on their way.

by DWE on Sat Oct 14, 2006 at 09:23:36 AM PST

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The website Iraq Body Count seems to also have a bit of a problem with the studies findings.

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

enjoy

by wally on Mon Oct 16, 2006 at 12:12:17 PM PST

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May be this is so surprising because it is a bunch of garbage.  

I read the study.

They assume a pre-invsion death rate in Iraq 35% lower than the death rate in the US.  If Iraq was that peaceful before we invaded, how do you explain the mass graves.  I think the data is processed using a false assuption.

Rather than use an independant study to verify their findings, they use their own earlier study based on the same faulty logic.  Where is any other information that indicates that this number of deaths is even a remote possibility.

The findings are extrapolated a thousand fold to get this number.

Lastly the Sunni are one of the most US hating factions in  Iraq.  Is it scientific or political to enlist the help of their University to collect unbiased data.

I'd say this study is a big exercise in numbers manipulation.  I'd say if it is true, where are all the extra bodies?

Politics

by wally on Fri Oct 13, 2006 at 09:19:49 AM PST

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Amy Hagopian had published in the PI an Op-Ed on The Lancet study and the work of public health professionals. Check it out.

by DWE on Thu Oct 19, 2006 at 02:17:13 PM PST

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