posted
Big deal on all the news outlets...sorry, you'll have to find your own link.
At any rate, there's some group using epidemiological research techniques who have estimated as many as 655,000 Iraqis have died violent deaths as a result of the war in Iraq and/or the insurgency.
There are few who actually buy into this number -- it's 10x the official estimates.
But the question is could these numbers be anywhere near true?
Some comparisons I saw made it seem extremely improbable.
Anyone have a link?
I had one, but it's gone now.
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posted
The news said this morning that 700 had been killed last week. I know that a British medical Association (I think - I'll check tomorrow) estimated the rise in mortality at 100,000 quite some time ago and the number have been getting steeper.
Mostly, and I can't say this firmly enough, whatever the numbers, it is about damn time we paid attention to it.
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posted
I saw the man who did the study on C-SPAN the other day. He was very convincing.
Still, does it really matter whether it's 100,000 or 655,000? What's the tip off point when the deaths become acceptable?
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posted
Hm... doesn't seem to be such a big deal since a quick glance at yahoo revealed nothing. (note: I didn' search so much as glanced at all the featured headlines)
Are the news outlets you refer to the o.0 leftists ones? You shouldn't read those. They'll poison your brain. That's the same reason I don't read NewsMax and cringe whenever Jay links from them.
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posted
I've seen it on C-SPAN, which is certainly nonpartisan. Also on the New York Times and Reuters. I know some conservatives feel that those are partisan, although I think that's a little paranoid.
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quote:Originally posted by Bob_Scopatz: At any rate, there's some group using epidemiological research techniques who have estimated as many as 655,000 Iraqis have died violent deaths as a result of the war in Iraq and/or the insurgency.
(Sorry if this seems like nitpicking...) I think the study said that it was about 655,000 more Iraqis dead (than usual) because of the war. Around 600,000 are supposed be (extra) violent deaths.
Here is a link that notes some questions that critics raise about the size.
(Summarizing from the link..) 600,000 in 40 months comes to around 22 extra dead bodies (from violent death) every hour . Other reports/body counts don't seem to match this.
Posts: 107 | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
Dasa has linked the story I originally read (and misremembered a bit).
That video from orlox is basically the same story.
Pixiest...I know you were trying to be funny, but I think this is serious business. One thing is to question the sources, but since I generally use BBC when posting on Hatrack these days, I think you are being somewhat snarky for no good reason.
The real question in these numbers is whether or not the method works. It's a "tried & true" method that works great for some things (stable populations in the US, for example), but does it work for a volatile situation like that in Iraq?
If their numbers are WAY OFF (as both the Iraqi and US governments insist), there should be some obvious flaw we can point to in the methodology. The authors make some pretty interesting points about the under-reporting and lack of medical treatment in Iraq that could contribute to a 10-fold difference between official and estimated counts.
Another possibility that occurred to me is misunderstanding how kinship relationships work in a particular culture. If you ask an American if a member of their immediate family has died due to X, they know generally who you mean. Or, if you ask about members of a household. But ask that in some cultures, and you'll be told about 2nd cousins as if they are brothers and sisters, close family friends counted as being in the household, and so on...
I wonder if there might be some multiple counting of the same death depending on how you design the clusters for the sample.
Also, the counter to these numbers that asks about where are all the dead bodies in the streets is an important one. I think the question is whether or not there would be any way to confirm or refute ANY estimate of deaths in that country right now.
And to be honest, I'm with kmboots. I think we need to pay attention because I don't think the people who are giving the official counts have proven their trustworthiness, so I do think it's worth paying attention to other sources just to see if there's another perspective out there.
Oh...and by the way...the 100,000 number and the more recent 655,000 number are from the same people/technique. Just more data (over more time) and more refinement in the sampling.
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posted
I'm pretty sure they saw the death certificates of everyone they counted. Wouldn't that cut down on multiple countings of the same death?
Also, I think there was a requirement that the person have lived in that household for three months prior to the death.
Edit: Here's the program I watched. For some reason firefox won't open it directly, but it's the last program on the page, the one with the John's Hopkins prof.
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posted
I want for it to be roughly confirmed by other groups.
I would like for solid numbers to come out, since there's still the odd fellow who likes to think that the Iraqi people are doing better presently than they did under Saddam.
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posted
I am curious about this. Did a little bit of digging and found some interesting numbers that may or may not mean anything to anyone, depending on how much you're willing to trust the information gathering capabilities of the CIA.
Basically, the entire world has an average death rate of around 8 people for every 1000 people in any given year. Iraq's death rate kind of surprised me. 5.37 per 1000 people. The United States is at 8.26.
Also from the same site, the Iraqi population is rougly 25 million people. That means that about 150000 people per year die in Iraq. I am uncertain if these numbers include casualties caused by the war or not.
What I wonder is how many of these unrecorded deaths were non-combatants. As far as I know (since I can't find anything with a couple quick googles), the number of Iraqi rebels killed in combat is not very accurately recorded. I imagine that number could be quite high, and may explain some of the difference.
Ultimately, it seems like this particular survey was a little bit on the side of idiotic. I don't know much about it, but doing a survey doesn't seem like the best way in the world to come up with death tolls.
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posted
Seems like every day there's a report about a dozen people killed a roadside bombing, or a hundred bodies dumped all over Baghdad.
I know that all amounts to anecdotal evidence, and while I think 600,000 is unbelievably high, I think 100-150K is within the realm of possible, and 75K is more than likely.
Still, every number I listed is catastrophically high. I think blacwolv is right, at a certain point (which is what I'd think would be most hotly contested) it doesn't matter if it's a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand, you've crossed a threshhold of what someone is willing to accept as a price of war into an understanding that the cost is too high, and we don't seem to be the ones primarily paying it.
We crossed the 3,000 coalition casualty mark today. How many Iraqis are there that wish and pray that their casualty count was so low?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
From what I've read about this, it was a flawed study. The overall methodology was fine, but the focused groups of respondents skewed the results more than is scientifically acceptable. Slate has a nice article on it, which is important to me because they are typically not defending anything related to the Iraq war.
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posted
Lalo: Both the NYT and Reuters have been caught making up the news in the past few years. How many times have they done it and not gotten caught?
What they report is hardly "reality"
That being said, they're not as whacky as NewsMax.
Bob: I wasn't trying to be funny, I'm just skeptical. ESPECIALLY of things as politically loaded, Globally politically loaded, as the Iraq war.
You said it was a "big deal" on "All the news outlets" so I went to my favorite one and couldn't find it. (Btw, Yahoo is slanted left too, but it's still my favorite news outlet. It's based just around the corner here in the bay area.)
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quote: BAGHDAD, Iraq - The death toll in a surge of sectarian killings in Balad swelled to at least 91 on Monday, police and army officials said, while bombings in and near Baghdad killed as many as up to 10 people. Eleven more bodies were found dumped in the capital.
quote: Hm... doesn't seem to be such a big deal since a quick glance at yahoo revealed nothing. (note: I didn' search so much as glanced at all the featured headlines)
posted
I'm not arguing with you. I was just trying to make the point that, even on Yahoo, it is clear that Iraqis are being killed in huge numbers - even at the lowest estimate. And still we, as a country, don't seem to be bothered by this.
When 52(if I recall correctly) people were killed by the bombs in London last year, we were horrified and sad - and rightly so. Yet this happens in Iraq on an almost daily basis - because of our actions - and we barely notice. It should be front page news every day.
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posted
kmb: My point was it wasn't a "big deal" on all the news outlets.
We're not the ones setting off the bombs. We are not the religious nutjobs killing in the name of Allah. We are trying to stop them.
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You may not be able to get to the last two links without a subscription.
I am not an epidemiologist, but I can say that this is an extremely reputable journal and the research team is a reputable epidemiological team. The work has been peer reviewed and so it should not be easily dismissed.
The proceedure used to estimate the death toll is internationally recognized and we (the United States) accept as accurate death tolls for the Dafur and the Congo calculated using the same method.
A key factor in this research is that they looked at the overall mortality rate both prior to the 2003 invasion and following the invasion and they looked at causes of death in both time frames. The increase in mortality was due primarily to a rise in violent deaths, primarily gun shots.
The Bush administration estimates, which make no claim of accuracy and offer no statistical analysis or error bounds, appear to be reporting only deaths directly associated with US military action. This study documents a dramatic rise in violent deaths from all sources, not only those directly associate with the US military. What that study shows is the Iraq under the US coalition occupaction is a far more dangerous place to live than Iraq under was under Hussein.
Although it is unlikely that most of these 650,000 deaths are directly attributable to the coalition forces, this is no excuse. We (the US coalition) hava both a legal and moral responsibility for the situation in Iraq because we invaded and over threw the existing government. The increase in terror and violent crime which are the result of our invasion ARE OUR FAULT.
Conditions in Iraq since the US invasion are by every measurable standard far worse than they were under Saddam Hussein, and considering how truly terrible they were under Hussein that fact is unconscionable.
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quote:We're not the ones setting off the bombs. We are not the religious nutjobs killing in the name of Allah. We are trying to stop them.
First off, the study found that guns were the primary cause of increased mortality not bombs or IEDs.
Second, We (US and coalition forces) are setting off bombs and firing guns in Iraq. We just aren't the only ones doing it.
What this study proves is that number of people being killed by the violence of all kinds escalated dramatically following our invasion. An additional 650,000 ± 300,000 people have died who most likely would not have died had the political and military situation in Iraq continued to function as it did prior to our invasion.
In other words, before we invaded these nutjobs weren't setting off bombs in Iraq. We may be trying to stop them, but we aren't succeeding. In fact every thing points to the conclusion that we are making the situation worse.
Even if the ends do justify the means, good intensions can not justify the evil means when they do not acheive the desired ends. It doesn't matter whether we intended to build a peacefully open society in Iraq or not, we have failed. We brough down a brutal dictator and so far have managed to replace him with something far far worse.
Perhaps we shouldn't apologize for removing Hussein from power, but we absolutely should apologize for the chaos that has replaced his government.
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posted
Just for the record, 655,000 was the upper estimate. The lower one was 400,000.
Pixiest- Is the point where we start caring about the deaths between 100,000 and 655,000? How about between 100,000 and 400,000? What number of deaths do you consider unacceptable? What number of deaths do you think the American people consider unacceptable?
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quote:Originally posted by blacwolve: Just for the record, 655,000 was the upper estimate. The lower one was 400,000.
No! I read the paper. Here is a quote from the summary.
quote:Data from 1849 households that contained 12 801 individuals in 47 clusters was gathered. 1474 births and 629 deaths were reported during the observation period. Pre-invasion mortality rates were 5·5 per 1000 people per year (95% CI 4·3–7·1), compared with 13·3 per 1000 people per year (10·9–16·1) in the 40 months post-invasion. 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 cause being gunfire.
The numbers in brackets represent the 95% confidence interval. Based on this study, there is less than 5% probability that the actual excess mortality in Iraq post invasion is less than 392,979 or greater than 942,636. The most probably number is 645,965.
[ October 18, 2006, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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posted
Any death toll estimate to me implies that the number of kidnappings, rapes, what have you, is probably much higher.
I am not saying that this study is correct, but if so, if we guess that the deaths are just the tip of the iceberg, we may be looking at total social breakdown in some areas.
quote:It's a "tried & true" method that works great for some things (stable populations in the US, for example), but does it work for a volatile situation like that in Iraq?
It's a tried and true method in war zones in places like Africa.
quote:Another possibility that occurred to me is misunderstanding how kinship relationships work in a particular culture. If you ask an American if a member of their immediate family has died due to X, they know generally who you mean. Or, if you ask about members of a household. But ask that in some cultures, and you'll be told about 2nd cousins as if they are brothers and sisters, close family friends counted as being in the household, and so on...
According to the editor of the Lancet
quote:The Iraqi interviewers spoke fluent English as well as Arabic, and they were well trained to collect the information they were seeking. They asked permission from every family to use the data they wanted. And they chased down death certificates in over four out of five cases to make sure that they had a double check on the numbers and causes of death given to them by family members.
Which indicates that every possible measure was used to limit errors due to cultural difference or misrepresentation by family members. Since 4 out of 5 death certificates were located this would limit double counting to under 10% (assuming that all of the unverified deaths were double counted against another unverified death).
quote:Also, the counter to these numbers that asks about where are all the dead bodies in the streets is an important one.
I'm sorry but this is a red-herring. The deaths considered in this study were deaths which were reported by members of the family and 80% of which had verified death certificates. That means that all the deaths in the study are people who were most likely buried by their families not left lying in the streets. But lets assume that each body was left in the street for 6 days. 655,000 deaths amounts to ~ 630 deaths/day or 3750 bodies which might be on the roads on any given day. This is alot but not exactly enough to fill the streets with bodies.
I couldn't find numbers for the total miles of roads in Iraq so I did an estimate. The US has 8.2 million lane miles of roads (70% of that are rural road ways). If we assume Iraq has the same number of roads per square mile as the US (probably an underestimate since Iraq has double the population density of the US), we get a 390,000 miles of roads giving about 1 body per every 100 miles of road.
And that is if bodies spend an average of 6 days on the road before they get moved to a morgue.
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posted
How does a news outlet SLANT to one direction or the other? Are they just a little lefty? A little righty? It strikes me as a ridiculous claim to make. There's a +/- to be considered with the political leanings of a news outlet. Slanting one way or the other with a plus/minus pretty much means they slant both ways.
Yahoo is slanted left,
And I'm nowhere near convinced that the civilians being killed are being done so for wholly religious reasons, or at least not in the name of god. Baathists are killing Shiites, and the other way around. Bands of Shiites roam the streets to pick off civilians, and Sunni death squads are doing the same.
There's bigger issues at hand than Qu'ran thumping.
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posted
I hoping (probably naively) that post count isn't a real indicator of concern about an issue. I would hate to think that we are more that twice as concerned about tag on the playground than this.
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posted
I hate to say it but I think it is kmbboots. Looking around it's almost seems like we're not even at war.
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quote: I hoping (probably naively) that post count isn't a real indicator of concern about an issue. I would hate to think that we are more that twice as concerned about tag on the playground than this.
I think it may just be that people are both weary and wary of participating in another Iraq war thread. I've been reading with interest, but don't have anything to add beyond echoing how horrible it is. I can't get my head around the number of half a million people. That and the fact that my little brother is enlisting in the Army Special Forces this week kind of has me on Iraqi overload.
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quote:Originally posted by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged: I hate to say it but I think it is kmbboots. Looking around it's almost seems like we're not even at war.
Well then. Let's talk all war, all the time. All those who make posts not related to the war are irresponsible and should be beaten with porcupines.
posted
As an interesting exercise, assume that the violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion have been completely random. If that were the case, then the probability of a any individual being killed would be equal. With that assumption the ratio of US soldiers killed to Iraqis killed would be the same as the ratio of US soldiers in Iraq to Iraqis in Iraq.
The population in Iraq is 26,074,906. The US has, on average, had 120,000 troops in Iraq, numbers have gone up during the past year. Their have been 2273 US troups killed in combat in Iraq since March 19, 2003. If Iraqis had the same chance of being killed as US soldiers, we would expect 494,000 Iraqis violent deaths during the same period. This is interestingly in the range calculated by the study suggesting that in Iraq since the invasion there is not a significant difference between the chances of an Iraqi being violently killed and the chances of a US soldier being violently killed.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged: I hate to say it but I think it is kmbboots. Looking around it's almost seems like we're not even at war.
Well then. Let's talk all war, all the time. All those who make posts not related to the war are irresponsible and should be beaten with porcupines.
-pH
No. But it really shouldn't be so easy for citizens to avoid knowing what the consequences of our actions are. It is our responsibility to know, for example, that 2,667 Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad alone last month* - not to mention the rest of the country. And it is our moral duty to be outraged about it.
quote:2,667 Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad alone last month.
If you extrapolate that number and assume that it was similar throughout Iraq for every month of the occupation (not necessarily accurate assumptions), you get an estimated 517,000 civilians killed in Iraq during the occupation.
These calculations don't really prove anything, but they do suggest that the numbers reported in the John's Hopkins study are the right order of magnitude while the official numbers from the US and Iraq governments are unrealistically low.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Check the front page on CNN, and look a little deeper for the Comission report that Baker was in charge of.
Bush commissioned a...commission, to look into options for basically what to do in Iraq. It won't be released until AFTER the midterms, but the New York Sun got a copy of it. Basically one option was to redeploy troops (withdraw), and the other was to settle the situation then get the hell out of there. The commission admitted that with both options, democracy in Iraq isn't happening any time soon.
During the US push to make Iraq a secure zone, violence in the last month (or since Ramadan started) has increased another 22% and US forces are at a total loss to solve the problem. Commanders in the area call the violence "disheartening." Gee, you think?
This on the heels of Bush threatening North Korea with....a tongue lashing. He said they'd face serious consequences. When asked to elaborate on how he'd retaliate, Bush said "You know, I'd just say it's a grave consequence."
Yet another in a long series of totally non-threatening remarks from our Rhetorical Speechmaker in Chief.
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posted
Lyrhawn, Is this the article to which you are referring?
I don't find it surprising that a commision would come to such conclusions. Many sensible people having been coming to the same conclusions since before the invasion. I will however find it very surprising if the Bush administration follows these recommendations.
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posted
I think part of the reason the post count is low is that there isn't anything we can do about it.
We can cast our vote in November, but until then, our outrage, while perhaps making us feel better about ourselves, is pretty useless.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
Yes Rabbit, that is what I was referring to, just wasn't sure where to look (and didn't care to take the time, to be honest).
Bush might not really have a choice in the matter. Republicans are starting to bail out, and they CAN put the screws to him. When this report comes out, it's going to drive down American support even further. He's running out of options.
What happens when the Congress passes a resolution that demands troops be withdrawn? It falls within their power under the War Powers thing. Bush can order troops wherever he wants, but Congress can call them home, it can revoke our war resolution, and they can cut off funding.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:2,667 Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad alone last month.
If you extrapolate that number and assume that it was similar throughout Iraq for every month of the occupation (not necessarily accurate assumptions), you get an estimated 517,000 civilians killed in Iraq during the occupation.
These calculations don't really prove anything, but they do suggest that the numbers reported in the John's Hopkins study are the right order of magnitude while the official numbers from the US and Iraq governments are unrealistically low.
lessee... Green Bay played 4 NFL games last month...which means it plays 48 NFL games per year. Half of them at home, and half of them away...so that means that Greenbay hosts 24 NFLgames per year. Green Bay has a population of ~100,000, and the US has a population of ~300,000,000. ie The US is ~3,000 Green Bays, so the US hosts ~72,000 NFL games per year. Admittedly imprecise, but enough to show that media reports of only 333 NFL games per year is an unbelievably low number.
Which is in the middle of the probability curve between 100thousand to 225thousand range which feels about correct to me. I'd find it mindbending if as many as half of all Iraqi civilian deaths were covered by an obvious paper trail such as that used by IraqBodyCount for their estimate of known deaths. And equally mindbending if less than a fifth of all Iraqi civilian deaths failed to produce any such paper trail.
Personally, I feel that just IraqBodyCount's numbers of ~47thousand to ~52thousand civilian deaths reported (as of today) to have gone well past an appalling figure a long time ago.
It is a long podcast, but provided me with a lot of information, and I was glad to hear about it again. I had heard about teh second study quoted, but I had heard there were questions about the methodology....after hearing about it in more detail, I believe the numbers are as close to correct as we will ever get.
Listen to the whole thing, it is worth it, and presents a balanced view, IMO.
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