Are you going to pretend that U.S security personnel would not have been involved during an attack on the U.S president?
yes, American secret service protect the President and are involved. what they didn't do however is beat the guy or threaten his life. which is what we are talking about.
U.S forces still control the Iraqi security forces, as I pointed out above. The man 'attacked' the U.S President and you are trying to pretend that U.S forces had nothing to do with his detention. I wonder who you think you're kidding?
you've proved nothing. Americans do not control Iraqi security forces.
if i recall correctly, the US did control the iraqi security forces at that time. control was not turned over until the end of bush's term or after obama took office.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
if i recall correctly, the US did control the iraqi security forces at that time. control was not turned over until the end of bush's term or after obama took office.
Surely the man concerned, whatever he had done, was entitled to basic human rights. The US security forces were present and 'in control' as the Iraqi security services obviously broke those human rights they could have intervened. Same goes for anyone else present.
if i recall correctly, the US did control the iraqi security forces at that time. control was not turned over until the end of bush's term or after obama took office.
Surely the man concerned, whatever he had done, was entitled to basic human rights. The US security forces were present and 'in control' as the Iraqi security services obviously broke those human rights they could have intervened. Same goes for anyone else present.
True. Although some people around here refuse to acknowledge that and like to pretend that Americans in Iraq are innocent. We are supposed to believe that all the problems we see in Iraq caused by the break-up and ransacking of their country by an outside force are the fault of the Iraqi's themselves.
When a U.S President has a shoe thrown at him and is wrestled to the ground, beaten, and dragged away and tortured, we are supposed to believe that Americans turned a blind eye and had nothing to do with it. Because the news media chose not to mention whether American security agents were, or were not, involved then we are supposed to assume that they weren't. Closing your eyes is the patriotic thing to do.
if i recall correctly, the US did control the iraqi security forces at that time. control was not turned over until the end of bush's term or after obama took office.
Surely the man concerned, whatever he had done, was entitled to basic human rights. The US security forces were present and 'in control' as the Iraqi security services obviously broke those human rights they could have intervened. Same goes for anyone else present.
True. Although some people around here refuse to acknowledge that and like to pretend that Americans in Iraq are innocent. We are supposed to believe that all the problems we see in Iraq caused by the break-up and ransacking of their country by an outside force are the fault of the Iraqi's themselves.
When a U.S President has a shoe thrown at him and is wrestled to the ground, beaten, and dragged away and tortured, we are supposed to believe that Americans turned a blind eye and had nothing to do with it. Because the news media chose not to mention whether American security agents were, or were not, involved then we are supposed to assume that they weren't. Closing your eyes is the patriotic thing to do.
show some proof that Americans had anything to do with him being beaten. I didnt think so
A Million Iraqi Dead?
The U.S. press buries the evidence
By Patrick McElwee
'The Iraq War was sold to Americans in part as an intervention that would benefit Iraqis, "liberating" them from the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein. In retrospect, after no weapons of mass destruction were found and the alleged links to Al-Qaeda were debunked, this supposed humanitarian mission became the central justification for the invasion. Today, it is a major pillar of what support remains among the U.S. public for continuing the occupation.
If Americans are to make informed judgments not only about the invasion of Iraq and whether the occupation should continue, but also about future wars our government may wish to start, then we need to have good information about the war's impact on Iraqis.
But the major U.S. press rarely considers a most basic measure of that impact: how many Iraqis have been killed. When they do mention the toll, they consistently ignore or malign two major statistical studies, the first conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet (10/11/06), and the other released by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (9/07). Both indicate that over a million Iraqis have now been killed. Yet an Associated Press poll in February (2/24/07) that asked Americans how many Iraqis have died received a median response of less than 10,000.
The Johns Hopkins study estimated that, as of July 2006, 655,000 Iraqis had been killed, about 600,000 of them violently and at least 30 percent directly by coalition forces. It updated an earlier study (Lancet, 10/29/04) that estimated that 100,000 Iraqis had died during the first year of the war. An extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins estimate of violent deaths done by Just Foreign Policy (9/18/07) currently stands at over 1.1 million.
Both Johns Hopkins estimates of Iraqi deaths have been largely ignored by the U.S. media, as FAIR has noted (FAIR Action Alert, 3/21/05, 3/21/07; FAIR Media Advisory, 12/16/05).
The media's neglect of these statistical studies is particularly striking when contrasted with their regular citation of similar studies whose results do not reflect badly on U.S. military policy. The Johns Hopkins studies employ the method accepted around the world to measure birth and death rates in the wake of natural and man-made disasters: a cluster survey. It is the same method that was used to estimate that 200,000 have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region (Science, 9/15/06). Yet, while the Darfur figure has been cited over 1,000 times by major U.S. press outlets just within the last year (e.g., AP, 12/6/07; New York Times, 12/6/07; Miami Herald, 12/5/07), the estimate for Iraq is ignored.
The Darfur figure is considered so uncontroversial that a source for the number is almost never given. Often, it is not even called an estimate; for example, Associated Press reported (12/5/07), "More than 200,000 people have died."
In contrast, when the Johns Hopkins figure on Iraqi deaths is provided, it is accompanied by criticism or strong disclaimers. A recent Associated Press article (12/3/07) reported that Iraqi civilian deaths are "estimated at more than 75,000, with one controversial study last year contending there were as many as 655,000." No major errors have been found in the Johns Hopkins study. It is "controversial" merely because its results are unacceptable.
The different treatment of death estimates in Darfur and Iraq reveals a pervasive bias in the U.S. media. Journalists question or outright ignore studies that reveal the humanitarian costs of U.S. military policy, while those estimates that reflect badly on official enemies, as in Darfur, take on the solidity of undisputed fact.
The same pattern emerged again in September 2007 when a respected British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), released a poll finding that 1.2 million Iraqis had been killed violently since the U.S. invasion. Given this poll's close agreement with Just Foreign Policy's extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins study (the Just Foreign Policy estimate is well within the margin of error of the ORB estimate), this provides compelling evidence that more than a million Iraqis have died. At least the possibility deserves to be reported and to be included when journalists give ranges of the estimates of Iraqi deaths.
However, with the exception of a story in the Los Angeles Times (9/14/07), a five-minute segment on National Public Radio (9/18/07) and one-paragraph briefs buried in Newsday (9/14/07), the Seattle Times (9/14/07) and the Houston Chronicle (9/14/07), major U.S. newsrooms did not report the ORB findings. They were not mentioned on any of the major TV networks or cable news channels.
Soon after the ORB poll was released, Just Foreign Policy sent out a media advisory (9/18/07) pointing out the agreement between the two independently reached results. A resulting exchange with an editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer provided an illuminating window into the attitude of many members of the U.S. media establishment. Deputy editorial director Kevin O'Brien responded:
'So one group with an ax to grind comes out with an estimate, based on an extrapolation favorable to its political position. Then another group with the very same ax to grind comes out with an estimate, also based on an extrapolation favorable to its political position. And, lo and behold, both of those politically interested groups estimate the same thing. And then they call that happy little coincidence "confirmation."
Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda.'
Just Foreign Policy is opposed to a continuation of the occupation of Iraq, so it may be fair to say we have a political "ax to grind" (though the extrapolation from the scientific Johns Hopkins study was done honestly and carefully). But ORB is neither left-wing nor anti-war; its clients include the British Conservative Party (which supports the war in Iraq), the Bank of Scotland and Morgan Stanley Bank. Its chair has worked with Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin and Ronald Reagan.
When we pointed out ORB's credentials, O'Brien replied:
'Even assuming the best of credentials and the most scientific of intentions, the fact remains that nothing your advocacy group or their polling firm is doing or has done can confirm any death toll. Estimation is not confirmation. Extrapolation is not confirmation.'
The editor's comments betrayed an extraordinarily anti-scientific attitude. To say "estimation is not confirmation" is to deny the possible usefulness of statistical studies, which are relied on in everything from opinion polls to public health. As one commenter noted, "If you don't believe in random sampling, next time the doctor orders a blood test, tell 'em to take it all." In this Orwellian world, the only facts that rank as such are those that have been "confirmed," presumably either by a direct eyewitness account from a Western reporter or by the U.S. government or the government it has set up in Iraq. In this world, an estimate of total Iraqi deaths is impossible.
After hundreds of people complained to the Plain Dealer, reader representative Ted Diadiun published a response (9/23/07) that defended the failure to report ORB's poll. In fact, he wrote that it would have been "irresponsible" to reveal its existence. Over a week after the poll was released, he wrote to readers, "Chances are that you are unaware of this poll, because it has not been taken seriously by most responsible media in this country."
Diadiun complained about the large discrepancy between the study's result and "confirmed reporting." But this is to be expected. The media in any country only report a fraction of all violent deaths. Demographer Patrick Ball has shown through work in Guatemala (State Violence in Guatemala, AAAS, 1999) that this is particularly true when there is an unusually high level of violence. In Iraq, the media are limited to small zones of safe passage. The organization Iraq Body Count, which compiles the tally of media-reported deaths most often cited by the press, themselves acknowledge on their website: "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media."
Diadiun objected that "scant" information about the poll's methodology was released, though the number of those interviewed face-to-face and detailed breakdowns of the responses were released. He also cited the concerns of the Associated Press's senior deputy international editor Steven Komarow about ORB's "agenda."
As stated, ORB is a firm whose long track record should give them the benefit of the doubt unless someone finds methodological or analytical mistakes in their work. It seems that simply asking the important question of how many Iraqis have been killed makes even an established group appear suspect. (According to Diadiun, the Associated Press's Komarow also believes the peer-reviewed Johns Hopkins study to have used "a technique that was not scientifically accepted"—those cluster samples that the Associated Press accepts so readily in Darfur and elsewhere.)
The same "agenda" concerns did not come up when ORB released a more positive poll (3/07) from Iraq earlier this year. While the poll showed that Iraqi satisfaction with the occupation had deteriorated badly and that most expected violence to decrease after a U.S. withdrawal, it also found that 49 percent of Iraqis said their life was better post-Saddam and only 26 percent said it was worse. This poll was reported in the U.S. by CNN (3/19/07), Fox News (3/19/07), the Washington Post (3/20/07), L.A. Times (3/20/07), USA Today (3/20/07), Chicago Tribune (3/20/07) and Sun-Times (3/19/07), Seattle Times (3/20/07), Fort Lau-derdale Sun-Sentinel (3/20/07) and Newsday (3/20/07).
The media clearly hold bearers of negative news about the occupation to a much different standard than those of news that can be positively spun.
In closing his note to readers, Diadiun quoted Plain Dealer deputy managing editor Daryl Kannberg:
'I would love to have reliable numbers to report, but the U.S. military isn't in that business and the Iraqi government is unwilling or unable. So we try to find the best, most reliable information we can find. Those are the numbers we use.'
The major press would gladly report numbers provided by governments about how many people they've killed, but independent statistical studies just can't be trusted.'
You see, in a free country such information would not be buried by the media. There is no genuine press freedom in America just as there is no press freedom in China. They just use different tactics, that's all.
You see, in a free country such information would not be buried by the media. There is no genuine press freedom in America just as there is no press freedom in China. They just use different tactics, that's all.
even after soul embarrassed you, you still don't get it. in China it would be a crime to be speak or write about such things. in America, the John Hopkins report was ALL over the news when it came out. as well as the false million dead number.
your little cut and paste party did nothing to prove a million people died. if the report said 50 million people died you would believe it. give it a rest
You see, in a free country such information would not be buried by the media. There is no genuine press freedom in America just as there is no press freedom in China. They just use different tactics, that's all.
even after soul embarrassed you, you still don't get it. in China it would be a crime to be speak or write about such things. in America, the John Hopkins report was ALL over the news when it came out. as well as the false million dead number.
your little cut and paste party did nothing to prove a million people died. if the report said 50 million people died you would believe it. give it a rest
where are you getting your figures to disprove this report? i have heard similar numbers of dead iraqis from several newspapers overseas. bottom line is none of us are over there so everything we hear is all speculation. it depends on what media you want to trust.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
You see, in a free country such information would not be buried by the media. There is no genuine press freedom in America just as there is no press freedom in China. They just use different tactics, that's all.
even after soul embarrassed you, you still don't get it. in China it would be a crime to be speak or write about such things. in America, the John Hopkins report was ALL over the news when it came out. as well as the false million dead number.
your little cut and paste party did nothing to prove a million people died. if the report said 50 million people died you would believe it. give it a rest
where are you getting your figures to disprove this report? i have heard similar numbers of dead iraqis from several newspapers overseas. bottom line is none of us are over there so everything we hear is all speculation. it depends on what media you want to trust.
what newspaper would that be?
the John Hopskins report, along with the million # are based on hypothetical surveys of not even 2000 households. I've spoken to several vets who laugh at this number. try common sense for one...a million dead people means a million dead bodies. where are they?
there are several outside sources that have the number much lower. they are backed up but hard evidence and boots on the ground. dont ask me to do the research for you. its out there.
doesnt anyone else find it odd that the million dead number has been thrown around for a few years now? its a powerful number and once its uttered, its sticks. as far as people like byrzine are concerned...a million people were killed on the day of the invasion. facts are not important, emotion and bias is what drives such stupidity.
1. How do you know that you are not reporting the same fatality multiple times?
For example if you were to ask people in the UK if they know anyone who has been involved in a traffic accident most would say they do. Applying your logic that means there are 60 million accidents every year.
Andrew M, London, UK
Les Roberts: That is an excellent question. To be recorded as a death in a household, the decedent had to have spent most of the nights during the 3 months before their death "sleeping under the same roof" with the household that was being interviewed. This may have made us undercount some deaths (soldiers killed during the 2003 invasion for example) but addressed your main concern that no two households could claim the same death event.
2. It seems the Lancet has been overrun by left-wing sixth formers.
The report has a flawed methodology and deceit is shown in the counting process. What is your reaction to that?
Ian, Whitwick, UK
LR: Almost every researcher who studies a health problem is opposed to that health problem. For example, few people who study measles empathize with the virus. Thus, given that war is an innately political issue, and that people examining the consequences of war are generally opposed to the war's conception and continuation, it is not surprising that projects like these are viewed as being highly political. That does not mean that the science is any less rigorous than a cluster survey looking at measles deaths. This study was the standard approach for measuring mortality in times of war, it went through a rigorous peer-review process and it probably could have been accepted into any of the journals that cover war and public health.
The Lancet is a rather traditional medical journal with a long history and is not seen as "left-wing" in the public health and medical communities. The types of different reports (medical trials, case reports, editorials) in the Lancet have been included for scores of years. The Lancet also has a long history of reporting about the adverse effects of war, and the world is a more gentle place for it.
3. Why is it so hard for people to believe the Lancet report?
I am an Iraqi and can assure you that the figure given is nearer to the truth than any given before or since.
S Kazwini, London, UK
LR: I think it is hard to accept these results for a couple of reasons. People do not see the bodies. While in the UK there are well over 1000 deaths a day, they do not see the bodies there either. Secondly, people feel that all those government officials and all those reporters must be detecting a big portion of the deaths. When in actuality during times of war, it is rare for even 20% to be detected. Finally, there has been so much media attention given to the surveillance-based numbers put out by the coalition forces, the Iraqi Government and a couple of corroborating groups, that a population-based number is a dramatic contrast.
4. Why do you think some people are trying to rubbish your reports, which use the same technique as used in other war zones for example in Kosovo?
Another group, which uses only English-language reports - Iraq Body Count - constantly rubbishes your reports. Again, why do you think that is?
Mark Webb, Dublin, Ireland
LR: I suspect there are many different groups with differing motives.
5. Can you explain, if your figures are correct, why 920 more people were dying each day than officially recorded by the Iraqi Ministry of Health - implying huge fraud and/or incompetence on their behalf?
Dan, Scotland
LR: It is really difficult to collect death information in a war zone! In 2002, in Katana Health Zone in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) there was a terrible meningitis outbreak, where the health zone was supported by the Belgian Government, and with perhaps the best disease surveillance network in the entire country. A survey by the NGO International Rescue Committee showed that only 7% of those meningitis deaths were recorded by the clinics and hospitals and government officials. Patrick Ball at Berkeley showed similar insensitivity by the press in Guatemala during the years of high violence in the 1980s. I do not think that very low reporting implies fraud.
6. As an analyst myself I would like to know how reliable the method itself actually is.
Les Roberts and his colleagues claim to have used the same method to estimate deaths in Iraq as is used to estimate deaths in natural disasters. Is there any evidence that the method is accurate? By this I mean a comparison of the number actual deaths after a natural disaster with estimates of the number of deaths.
Rickard Loe, Stockholm, Sweden
LR: That is a good question. There is a little evidence of which I am aware. Note that the 2004 and 2006 studies found similar results for the pre- and initial post-invasion period which at least implies reproducibility. I led a 30 cluster mortality survey in Kalima in the DRC in 2001. The relief organization Merlin did a nutritional survey and measured mortality in the same area and with a recall period that covered part of our survey. Both were cluster surveys, Merlin used a different technique to select houses and we obtained statistically identical results. In a couple of refugee settings, cluster surveys have produced similar estimates to grave monitoring.
In 1999, in Katana Health Zone in the Congo, I led a mortality survey where we walked a grid over the health zone and interviewed 41 clusters of 5 houses at 1km. spacings. In that survey, we estimated that 1,600 children had died of measles in the preceding half year. A couple of weeks later we did a standard immunization coverage survey (30 clusters of 7 children but selected totally proportional to population) that asked about measles deaths and we found an identical result.
I suspect that Demographic Health Surveys or the UNICEF MICS surveys (which are both retrospective cluster mortality approaches) have been calibrated against census data but I do not know when or where
7. My understanding is that this study reports ten times more deaths attributable to the war than other studies because this is the only one to use statistical methods to make inferences about the mortality rate across the whole population.
Other studies only record verifiable deaths, which one would expect to constitute only a small part of the total number. Am I correct?
Matthew, Appleton
even after soul embarrassed you, you still don't get it. in China it would be a crime to be speak or write about such things. in America, the John Hopkins report was ALL over the news when it came out. as well as the false million dead number.
your little cut and paste party did nothing to prove a million people died. if the report said 50 million people died you would believe it. give it a rest
where are you getting your figures to disprove this report? i have heard similar numbers of dead iraqis from several newspapers overseas. bottom line is none of us are over there so everything we hear is all speculation. it depends on what media you want to trust.
what newspaper would that be?
the John Hopskins report, along with the million # are based on hypothetical surveys of not even 2000 households. I've spoken to several vets who laugh at this number. try common sense for one...a million dead people means a million dead bodies. where are they?
there are several outside sources that have the number much lower. they are backed up but hard evidence and boots on the ground. dont ask me to do the research for you. its out there.
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
facts are not important, emotion and bias is what drives such stupidity.
...
I agree with this... 'Death Panels', Free Health Care for Illegal Immigrants and televised indoctrination into Socialism (and/or Fascism and/or Communism) speeches to our children are good examples of this.
Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
Hail, Hail!!!
facts are not important, emotion and bias is what drives such stupidity.
...
I agree with this... 'Death Panels', Free Health Care for Illegal Immigrants and televised indoctrination into Socialism (and/or Fascism and/or Communism) speeches to our children are good examples of this.
Some people on this message board dismiss the reports as 'hypothetical surveys', whilst respected scientists, researchers, epidemiologists, professors, and physicians have a different opinion:
'..The UK government[...]rejected the researchers' conclusions. In doing so, it did not mention the advice of the Ministry of Defence's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, who had called the study "robust" and its claimed methods "close to 'best practice' in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq", in an internal memo on the day the study was published, dated 13 October, 2006...
In a Democracy Now! interview , study co-author Les Roberts defended the methodology by noting that the method is the standard used in poor countries. He also said that the same method was used by the US government following wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Roberts also said that the US government's Smart Initiative program is spending millions of dollars per year teaching NGOs and UN workers how to use the same cluster method for estimating mortality rates.[78]
The article's authors defended their research, claiming that their work was the only active study of the death toll, and that this is more accurate than passively counting reported deaths.[22] They cited a number of factors that could lead to smaller figures from other sources; for example, the Islamic requirement that bodies be buried within 24 hours of death. They claim that the sources of bias in their study push the figure down.
An Oct. 11, 2006 Washington Post article[4] reports:
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."
In a letter to The Age, published Oct. 21, 2006, 27 epidemiologists and health professionals defended the methods of the study, writing that the study's "methodology is sound and its conclusions should be taken seriously."[5]
A Reuters article reports on other researchers, epidemiologists, professors, and physicians who have defended the study. For example; this quote from the article;
"Over the last 25 years, this sort of methodology has been used more and more often, especially by relief agencies in times of emergency," said Dr. David Rush, a professor and epidemiologist at Tufts University in Boston.[79]
Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology in the University of Oxford, described the 2006 report as "statistically valid" in an interview on BBC television.[80]
Dr. Ben Coghlan, an epidemiologist in Melbourne Australia, writes: "The US Congress should agree: in June this year [2006] they unanimously passed a bill outlining financial and political measures to promote relief, security and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The bill was based in part on the veracity of a survey conducted by the Burnet Institute (Melbourne) and the International Rescue Committee (New York) that found 3.9 million Congolese had perished because of the conflict. This survey used the same methodology as Burnham and his associates. It also passed the scrutiny of a UK parliamentary delegation and the European Union."[81] Burnham is one of the authors of both of the Lancet studies.
An October 16, 2006 MediaLens article quotes many health experts, epidemiologists, biostatistics experts, polling experts, etc. who approve of the Lancet study and methodology.[82] For example:
John Zogby, whose New York-based polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began, said: "The sampling is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets. It is what people in the statistics business do." ...
Professor Sheila Bird of the Biostatistics Unit at the Medical Research Council said: "They have enhanced the precision this time around and it is the only scientifically based estimate that we have got where proper sampling has been done and where we get a proper measure of certainty about these results."
In an October 31, 2006 MediaLens article, Lancet study co-author Les Roberts responded to several questions on the report, concluding that: "Of any high profile scientific report in recent history, ours might be the easiest to verify. If we are correct, in the morgues and graveyards of Iraq, most deaths during the occupation would have been due to violence. If Mr. Bush's '30,000 more or less' figure from last December is correct, less than 1 in 10 deaths has been from violence. Let us address the discomfort of Mr. Moore and millions of other Americans, not by uninformed speculation about epidemiological techniques, but by having the press travel the country and tell us how people are dying in Iraq."
i was going to answer jlew's question to me but byrnzie and i scott niblett already posted what i was going to post.
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
i was going to answer jlew's question to me but byrnzie and i scott niblett already posted what i was going to post.
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
Regarding the ORB report, the authors of the report admit that the figures are misleading. They state that the figures are an underestimation of the true numbers of Iraqi dead:
http://www.countercurrents.org/martin150907.htm 'For security reasons, no interviews were conducted in Al Anbar or Karbala provinces, or in the province of Irbil, where Kurdish authorities refused to allow field interviews. Since Anbar and Karbala are among the bloodiest battlefields of the war, and Irbil among the quietest, the exclusion of the three provinces would more likely to lead to an underestimation of the death toll than an exaggeration.'
...The survey found that 48 percent of the violent deaths were due to gunshot wounds, 20 percent to car bombs, 9 percent to aerial bombardment, 6 percent to other ordnance or explosions, and 6 percent to accidents.
The figure for aerial bombardments is particularly noteworthy since such deaths—numbering well over 100,000 according to the ORB study—go virtually unreported in the American media. This is doubtless because such killings are entirely the work of the US and British occupation forces, the only ones equipped with helicopters and warplanes.
The ORB survey found a far higher death rate than the figures released by Western media outlets, the US-established Iraqi government in Baghdad, or the United Nations. But it dovetails with the public health survey conducted last year by a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University and published in the British medical journal Lancet, which estimated the death toll (as of early 2006, nearly 18 months ago), at about 665,000.
The Lancet figures were denounced by the US and Iraqi governments and dismissed by the American media, and the ORB figures are likely to face the same fate. The study’s findings were reported only in passing in Friday’s daily newspapers, most prominently by the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe, not at all by the New York Times or Washington Post.
None of the network evening news broadcasts on Friday even mentioned the ORB report...'
i was going to answer jlew's question to me but byrnzie and i scott niblett already posted what i was going to post.
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
so we can believe the reputable sources that byrnzie and others posted....people that study this kind of thing, or we can believe what someone told jlew one time.
And so in Iraq today, the sun was shining, children were skipping through the fields. People nodded amicably to one another in the street and food was plentiful.
so we can believe the reputable sources that byrnzie and others posted....people that study this kind of thing, or we can believe what someone told jlew one time.
Some people enjoy burying their heads in the sand.
i was going to answer jlew's question to me but byrnzie and i scott niblett already posted what i was going to post.
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
doesnt anyone else find it odd that the million dead number has been thrown around for a few years now? its a powerful number and once its uttered, its sticks. as far as people like byrzine are concerned...a million people were killed on the day of the invasion. facts are not important, emotion and bias is what drives such stupidity.
yet no one has an answer for this? why has the number of dead been at one million for several years?
i was going to answer jlew's question to me but byrnzie and i scott niblett already posted what i was going to post.
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
so we can believe the reputable sources that byrnzie and others posted....people that study this kind of thing, or we can believe what someone told jlew one time.
i think i am going to just go ahead and agree with jlew, since he has done such extensive research and presented it in this thread to debunk the million dead reports. :roll:
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
i was going to answer jlew's question to me but byrnzie and i scott niblett already posted what i was going to post.
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
do your own research
i am still waiting for your evidence to dispute the lancet, et al. you've got nothing, so YOU do your own research please.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
i was going to answer jlew's question to me but byrnzie and i scott niblett already posted what i was going to post.
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
so we can believe the reputable sources that byrnzie and others posted....people that study this kind of thing, or we can believe what someone told jlew one time.
i think i am going to just go ahead and agree with jlew, since he has done such extensive research and presented it in this thread to debunk the million dead reports. :roll:
I have done extensive research. why do you want me to do it for you?
common sense alone debunks a million dead. I'll ask again...why has there been 1 million dead for 3+ years? seems odd that it holds steady at such a powerful number.
i am still waiting for your evidence to dispute the lancet, et al. you've got nothing, so YOU do your own research please.
the lancet report is a study based on 1800 households in Iraq. its not solid proof that hundreds of thousands or millions have died. its people like you suck it up as fact. hopefully you decide to read up on facts. but there is a reason why the phrase "ignorance is bliss" is popular.
doesnt anyone else find it odd that the million dead number has been thrown around for a few years now? its a powerful number and once its uttered, its sticks. as far as people like byrzine are concerned...a million people were killed on the day of the invasion. facts are not important, emotion and bias is what drives such stupidity.
yet no one has an answer for this? why has the number of dead been at one million for several years?
the issue with the number of casualties is that no one is keeping official records - or at least no one willing to report ... we must rely on fragments of information from aid groups ...
at the time i heard of one million dead and much more displaced - it was the best estimate out there produced from multiple sources ...
yet no one has an answer for this? why has the number of dead been at one million for several years?
the issue with the number of casualties is that no one is keeping official records - or at least no one willing to report ... we must rely on fragments of information from aid groups ...[/quote]
thats true. there are no hard facts of # of dead. yet people throw around the million number because of its impact. has a nice ring to it right? 80,500 dead, lets just round up to a million.
well, i didn't expect you to agree ... the number wasn't made up - it has been published ... if you disagree with the source - that's your prerogative but it's not true to say someone on this board just made up the number ...
well, i didn't expect you to agree ... the number wasn't made up - it has been published ... if you disagree with the source - that's your prerogative but it's not true to say someone on this board just made up the number ...
its a number with zero proof behind it. makes no difference that it was published.
Comments
beaten by whom? IRAQI security forces. not Americans.
yes, American secret service protect the President and are involved. what they didn't do however is beat the guy or threaten his life. which is what we are talking about.
why is this is so hard to comprehend?
you've proved nothing. Americans do not control Iraqi security forces.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Surely the man concerned, whatever he had done, was entitled to basic human rights. The US security forces were present and 'in control' as the Iraqi security services obviously broke those human rights they could have intervened. Same goes for anyone else present.
True. Although some people around here refuse to acknowledge that and like to pretend that Americans in Iraq are innocent. We are supposed to believe that all the problems we see in Iraq caused by the break-up and ransacking of their country by an outside force are the fault of the Iraqi's themselves.
When a U.S President has a shoe thrown at him and is wrestled to the ground, beaten, and dragged away and tortured, we are supposed to believe that Americans turned a blind eye and had nothing to do with it. Because the news media chose not to mention whether American security agents were, or were not, involved then we are supposed to assume that they weren't. Closing your eyes is the patriotic thing to do.
show some proof that Americans had anything to do with him being beaten. I didnt think so
A Million Iraqi Dead?
The U.S. press buries the evidence
By Patrick McElwee
'The Iraq War was sold to Americans in part as an intervention that would benefit Iraqis, "liberating" them from the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein. In retrospect, after no weapons of mass destruction were found and the alleged links to Al-Qaeda were debunked, this supposed humanitarian mission became the central justification for the invasion. Today, it is a major pillar of what support remains among the U.S. public for continuing the occupation.
If Americans are to make informed judgments not only about the invasion of Iraq and whether the occupation should continue, but also about future wars our government may wish to start, then we need to have good information about the war's impact on Iraqis.
But the major U.S. press rarely considers a most basic measure of that impact: how many Iraqis have been killed. When they do mention the toll, they consistently ignore or malign two major statistical studies, the first conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet (10/11/06), and the other released by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (9/07). Both indicate that over a million Iraqis have now been killed. Yet an Associated Press poll in February (2/24/07) that asked Americans how many Iraqis have died received a median response of less than 10,000.
The Johns Hopkins study estimated that, as of July 2006, 655,000 Iraqis had been killed, about 600,000 of them violently and at least 30 percent directly by coalition forces. It updated an earlier study (Lancet, 10/29/04) that estimated that 100,000 Iraqis had died during the first year of the war. An extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins estimate of violent deaths done by Just Foreign Policy (9/18/07) currently stands at over 1.1 million.
Both Johns Hopkins estimates of Iraqi deaths have been largely ignored by the U.S. media, as FAIR has noted (FAIR Action Alert, 3/21/05, 3/21/07; FAIR Media Advisory, 12/16/05).
The media's neglect of these statistical studies is particularly striking when contrasted with their regular citation of similar studies whose results do not reflect badly on U.S. military policy. The Johns Hopkins studies employ the method accepted around the world to measure birth and death rates in the wake of natural and man-made disasters: a cluster survey. It is the same method that was used to estimate that 200,000 have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region (Science, 9/15/06). Yet, while the Darfur figure has been cited over 1,000 times by major U.S. press outlets just within the last year (e.g., AP, 12/6/07; New York Times, 12/6/07; Miami Herald, 12/5/07), the estimate for Iraq is ignored.
The Darfur figure is considered so uncontroversial that a source for the number is almost never given. Often, it is not even called an estimate; for example, Associated Press reported (12/5/07), "More than 200,000 people have died."
In contrast, when the Johns Hopkins figure on Iraqi deaths is provided, it is accompanied by criticism or strong disclaimers. A recent Associated Press article (12/3/07) reported that Iraqi civilian deaths are "estimated at more than 75,000, with one controversial study last year contending there were as many as 655,000." No major errors have been found in the Johns Hopkins study. It is "controversial" merely because its results are unacceptable.
The different treatment of death estimates in Darfur and Iraq reveals a pervasive bias in the U.S. media. Journalists question or outright ignore studies that reveal the humanitarian costs of U.S. military policy, while those estimates that reflect badly on official enemies, as in Darfur, take on the solidity of undisputed fact.
The same pattern emerged again in September 2007 when a respected British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), released a poll finding that 1.2 million Iraqis had been killed violently since the U.S. invasion. Given this poll's close agreement with Just Foreign Policy's extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins study (the Just Foreign Policy estimate is well within the margin of error of the ORB estimate), this provides compelling evidence that more than a million Iraqis have died. At least the possibility deserves to be reported and to be included when journalists give ranges of the estimates of Iraqi deaths.
However, with the exception of a story in the Los Angeles Times (9/14/07), a five-minute segment on National Public Radio (9/18/07) and one-paragraph briefs buried in Newsday (9/14/07), the Seattle Times (9/14/07) and the Houston Chronicle (9/14/07), major U.S. newsrooms did not report the ORB findings. They were not mentioned on any of the major TV networks or cable news channels.
Soon after the ORB poll was released, Just Foreign Policy sent out a media advisory (9/18/07) pointing out the agreement between the two independently reached results. A resulting exchange with an editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer provided an illuminating window into the attitude of many members of the U.S. media establishment. Deputy editorial director Kevin O'Brien responded:
'So one group with an ax to grind comes out with an estimate, based on an extrapolation favorable to its political position. Then another group with the very same ax to grind comes out with an estimate, also based on an extrapolation favorable to its political position. And, lo and behold, both of those politically interested groups estimate the same thing. And then they call that happy little coincidence "confirmation."
Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda.'
Just Foreign Policy is opposed to a continuation of the occupation of Iraq, so it may be fair to say we have a political "ax to grind" (though the extrapolation from the scientific Johns Hopkins study was done honestly and carefully). But ORB is neither left-wing nor anti-war; its clients include the British Conservative Party (which supports the war in Iraq), the Bank of Scotland and Morgan Stanley Bank. Its chair has worked with Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin and Ronald Reagan.
When we pointed out ORB's credentials, O'Brien replied:
'Even assuming the best of credentials and the most scientific of intentions, the fact remains that nothing your advocacy group or their polling firm is doing or has done can confirm any death toll. Estimation is not confirmation. Extrapolation is not confirmation.'
The editor's comments betrayed an extraordinarily anti-scientific attitude. To say "estimation is not confirmation" is to deny the possible usefulness of statistical studies, which are relied on in everything from opinion polls to public health. As one commenter noted, "If you don't believe in random sampling, next time the doctor orders a blood test, tell 'em to take it all." In this Orwellian world, the only facts that rank as such are those that have been "confirmed," presumably either by a direct eyewitness account from a Western reporter or by the U.S. government or the government it has set up in Iraq. In this world, an estimate of total Iraqi deaths is impossible.
After hundreds of people complained to the Plain Dealer, reader representative Ted Diadiun published a response (9/23/07) that defended the failure to report ORB's poll. In fact, he wrote that it would have been "irresponsible" to reveal its existence. Over a week after the poll was released, he wrote to readers, "Chances are that you are unaware of this poll, because it has not been taken seriously by most responsible media in this country."
Diadiun complained about the large discrepancy between the study's result and "confirmed reporting." But this is to be expected. The media in any country only report a fraction of all violent deaths. Demographer Patrick Ball has shown through work in Guatemala (State Violence in Guatemala, AAAS, 1999) that this is particularly true when there is an unusually high level of violence. In Iraq, the media are limited to small zones of safe passage. The organization Iraq Body Count, which compiles the tally of media-reported deaths most often cited by the press, themselves acknowledge on their website: "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media."
Diadiun objected that "scant" information about the poll's methodology was released, though the number of those interviewed face-to-face and detailed breakdowns of the responses were released. He also cited the concerns of the Associated Press's senior deputy international editor Steven Komarow about ORB's "agenda."
As stated, ORB is a firm whose long track record should give them the benefit of the doubt unless someone finds methodological or analytical mistakes in their work. It seems that simply asking the important question of how many Iraqis have been killed makes even an established group appear suspect. (According to Diadiun, the Associated Press's Komarow also believes the peer-reviewed Johns Hopkins study to have used "a technique that was not scientifically accepted"—those cluster samples that the Associated Press accepts so readily in Darfur and elsewhere.)
The same "agenda" concerns did not come up when ORB released a more positive poll (3/07) from Iraq earlier this year. While the poll showed that Iraqi satisfaction with the occupation had deteriorated badly and that most expected violence to decrease after a U.S. withdrawal, it also found that 49 percent of Iraqis said their life was better post-Saddam and only 26 percent said it was worse. This poll was reported in the U.S. by CNN (3/19/07), Fox News (3/19/07), the Washington Post (3/20/07), L.A. Times (3/20/07), USA Today (3/20/07), Chicago Tribune (3/20/07) and Sun-Times (3/19/07), Seattle Times (3/20/07), Fort Lau-derdale Sun-Sentinel (3/20/07) and Newsday (3/20/07).
The media clearly hold bearers of negative news about the occupation to a much different standard than those of news that can be positively spun.
In closing his note to readers, Diadiun quoted Plain Dealer deputy managing editor Daryl Kannberg:
'I would love to have reliable numbers to report, but the U.S. military isn't in that business and the Iraqi government is unwilling or unable. So we try to find the best, most reliable information we can find. Those are the numbers we use.'
The major press would gladly report numbers provided by governments about how many people they've killed, but independent statistical studies just can't be trusted.'
even after soul embarrassed you, you still don't get it. in China it would be a crime to be speak or write about such things. in America, the John Hopkins report was ALL over the news when it came out. as well as the false million dead number.
your little cut and paste party did nothing to prove a million people died. if the report said 50 million people died you would believe it. give it a rest
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
what newspaper would that be?
the John Hopskins report, along with the million # are based on hypothetical surveys of not even 2000 households. I've spoken to several vets who laugh at this number. try common sense for one...a million dead people means a million dead bodies. where are they?
there are several outside sources that have the number much lower. they are backed up but hard evidence and boots on the ground. dont ask me to do the research for you. its out there.
LANCET REPORT CO-AUTHOR RESPONDS TO QUESTIONS
1. How do you know that you are not reporting the same fatality multiple times?
For example if you were to ask people in the UK if they know anyone who has been involved in a traffic accident most would say they do. Applying your logic that means there are 60 million accidents every year.
Andrew M, London, UK
Les Roberts: That is an excellent question. To be recorded as a death in a household, the decedent had to have spent most of the nights during the 3 months before their death "sleeping under the same roof" with the household that was being interviewed. This may have made us undercount some deaths (soldiers killed during the 2003 invasion for example) but addressed your main concern that no two households could claim the same death event.
2. It seems the Lancet has been overrun by left-wing sixth formers.
The report has a flawed methodology and deceit is shown in the counting process. What is your reaction to that?
Ian, Whitwick, UK
LR: Almost every researcher who studies a health problem is opposed to that health problem. For example, few people who study measles empathize with the virus. Thus, given that war is an innately political issue, and that people examining the consequences of war are generally opposed to the war's conception and continuation, it is not surprising that projects like these are viewed as being highly political. That does not mean that the science is any less rigorous than a cluster survey looking at measles deaths. This study was the standard approach for measuring mortality in times of war, it went through a rigorous peer-review process and it probably could have been accepted into any of the journals that cover war and public health.
The Lancet is a rather traditional medical journal with a long history and is not seen as "left-wing" in the public health and medical communities. The types of different reports (medical trials, case reports, editorials) in the Lancet have been included for scores of years. The Lancet also has a long history of reporting about the adverse effects of war, and the world is a more gentle place for it.
3. Why is it so hard for people to believe the Lancet report?
I am an Iraqi and can assure you that the figure given is nearer to the truth than any given before or since.
S Kazwini, London, UK
LR: I think it is hard to accept these results for a couple of reasons. People do not see the bodies. While in the UK there are well over 1000 deaths a day, they do not see the bodies there either. Secondly, people feel that all those government officials and all those reporters must be detecting a big portion of the deaths. When in actuality during times of war, it is rare for even 20% to be detected. Finally, there has been so much media attention given to the surveillance-based numbers put out by the coalition forces, the Iraqi Government and a couple of corroborating groups, that a population-based number is a dramatic contrast.
4. Why do you think some people are trying to rubbish your reports, which use the same technique as used in other war zones for example in Kosovo?
Another group, which uses only English-language reports - Iraq Body Count - constantly rubbishes your reports. Again, why do you think that is?
Mark Webb, Dublin, Ireland
LR: I suspect there are many different groups with differing motives.
5. Can you explain, if your figures are correct, why 920 more people were dying each day than officially recorded by the Iraqi Ministry of Health - implying huge fraud and/or incompetence on their behalf?
Dan, Scotland
LR: It is really difficult to collect death information in a war zone! In 2002, in Katana Health Zone in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) there was a terrible meningitis outbreak, where the health zone was supported by the Belgian Government, and with perhaps the best disease surveillance network in the entire country. A survey by the NGO International Rescue Committee showed that only 7% of those meningitis deaths were recorded by the clinics and hospitals and government officials. Patrick Ball at Berkeley showed similar insensitivity by the press in Guatemala during the years of high violence in the 1980s. I do not think that very low reporting implies fraud.
6. As an analyst myself I would like to know how reliable the method itself actually is.
Les Roberts and his colleagues claim to have used the same method to estimate deaths in Iraq as is used to estimate deaths in natural disasters. Is there any evidence that the method is accurate? By this I mean a comparison of the number actual deaths after a natural disaster with estimates of the number of deaths.
Rickard Loe, Stockholm, Sweden
LR: That is a good question. There is a little evidence of which I am aware. Note that the 2004 and 2006 studies found similar results for the pre- and initial post-invasion period which at least implies reproducibility. I led a 30 cluster mortality survey in Kalima in the DRC in 2001. The relief organization Merlin did a nutritional survey and measured mortality in the same area and with a recall period that covered part of our survey. Both were cluster surveys, Merlin used a different technique to select houses and we obtained statistically identical results. In a couple of refugee settings, cluster surveys have produced similar estimates to grave monitoring.
In 1999, in Katana Health Zone in the Congo, I led a mortality survey where we walked a grid over the health zone and interviewed 41 clusters of 5 houses at 1km. spacings. In that survey, we estimated that 1,600 children had died of measles in the preceding half year. A couple of weeks later we did a standard immunization coverage survey (30 clusters of 7 children but selected totally proportional to population) that asked about measles deaths and we found an identical result.
I suspect that Demographic Health Surveys or the UNICEF MICS surveys (which are both retrospective cluster mortality approaches) have been calibrated against census data but I do not know when or where
7. My understanding is that this study reports ten times more deaths attributable to the war than other studies because this is the only one to use statistical methods to make inferences about the mortality rate across the whole population.
Other studies only record verifiable deaths, which one would expect to constitute only a small part of the total number. Am I correct?
Matthew, Appleton
LR: Yes.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 734028.ece
Bodies pile up in morgues as Iraq spirals out of control
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32897
IRAQ: Baghdad Morgue Overflowing Daily
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I agree with this... 'Death Panels', Free Health Care for Illegal Immigrants and televised indoctrination into Socialism (and/or Fascism and/or Communism) speeches to our children are good examples of this.
Hail, Hail!!!
haha. zing!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_sur ... casualties
'..The UK government[...]rejected the researchers' conclusions. In doing so, it did not mention the advice of the Ministry of Defence's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, who had called the study "robust" and its claimed methods "close to 'best practice' in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq", in an internal memo on the day the study was published, dated 13 October, 2006...
In a Democracy Now! interview , study co-author Les Roberts defended the methodology by noting that the method is the standard used in poor countries. He also said that the same method was used by the US government following wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Roberts also said that the US government's Smart Initiative program is spending millions of dollars per year teaching NGOs and UN workers how to use the same cluster method for estimating mortality rates.[78]
The article's authors defended their research, claiming that their work was the only active study of the death toll, and that this is more accurate than passively counting reported deaths.[22] They cited a number of factors that could lead to smaller figures from other sources; for example, the Islamic requirement that bodies be buried within 24 hours of death. They claim that the sources of bias in their study push the figure down.
An Oct. 11, 2006 Washington Post article[4] reports:
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."
In a letter to The Age, published Oct. 21, 2006, 27 epidemiologists and health professionals defended the methods of the study, writing that the study's "methodology is sound and its conclusions should be taken seriously."[5]
A Reuters article reports on other researchers, epidemiologists, professors, and physicians who have defended the study. For example; this quote from the article;
"Over the last 25 years, this sort of methodology has been used more and more often, especially by relief agencies in times of emergency," said Dr. David Rush, a professor and epidemiologist at Tufts University in Boston.[79]
Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology in the University of Oxford, described the 2006 report as "statistically valid" in an interview on BBC television.[80]
Dr. Ben Coghlan, an epidemiologist in Melbourne Australia, writes: "The US Congress should agree: in June this year [2006] they unanimously passed a bill outlining financial and political measures to promote relief, security and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The bill was based in part on the veracity of a survey conducted by the Burnet Institute (Melbourne) and the International Rescue Committee (New York) that found 3.9 million Congolese had perished because of the conflict. This survey used the same methodology as Burnham and his associates. It also passed the scrutiny of a UK parliamentary delegation and the European Union."[81] Burnham is one of the authors of both of the Lancet studies.
An October 16, 2006 MediaLens article quotes many health experts, epidemiologists, biostatistics experts, polling experts, etc. who approve of the Lancet study and methodology.[82] For example:
John Zogby, whose New York-based polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began, said: "The sampling is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets. It is what people in the statistics business do." ...
Professor Sheila Bird of the Biostatistics Unit at the Medical Research Council said: "They have enhanced the precision this time around and it is the only scientifically based estimate that we have got where proper sampling has been done and where we get a proper measure of certainty about these results."
In an October 31, 2006 MediaLens article, Lancet study co-author Les Roberts responded to several questions on the report, concluding that: "Of any high profile scientific report in recent history, ours might be the easiest to verify. If we are correct, in the morgues and graveyards of Iraq, most deaths during the occupation would have been due to violence. If Mr. Bush's '30,000 more or less' figure from last December is correct, less than 1 in 10 deaths has been from violence. Let us address the discomfort of Mr. Moore and millions of other Americans, not by uninformed speculation about epidemiological techniques, but by having the press travel the country and tell us how people are dying in Iraq."
jlew don't tell me to research stuff, i remember what i read. where are your facts to dispute these reputable sources? aside from talking to vets you have presented nothing thus far to dispute these numbers or suggest otherwise.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Regarding the ORB report, the authors of the report admit that the figures are misleading. They state that the figures are an underestimation of the true numbers of Iraqi dead:
http://www.countercurrents.org/martin150907.htm
'For security reasons, no interviews were conducted in Al Anbar or Karbala provinces, or in the province of Irbil, where Kurdish authorities refused to allow field interviews. Since Anbar and Karbala are among the bloodiest battlefields of the war, and Irbil among the quietest, the exclusion of the three provinces would more likely to lead to an underestimation of the death toll than an exaggeration.'
...The survey found that 48 percent of the violent deaths were due to gunshot wounds, 20 percent to car bombs, 9 percent to aerial bombardment, 6 percent to other ordnance or explosions, and 6 percent to accidents.
The figure for aerial bombardments is particularly noteworthy since such deaths—numbering well over 100,000 according to the ORB study—go virtually unreported in the American media. This is doubtless because such killings are entirely the work of the US and British occupation forces, the only ones equipped with helicopters and warplanes.
The ORB survey found a far higher death rate than the figures released by Western media outlets, the US-established Iraqi government in Baghdad, or the United Nations. But it dovetails with the public health survey conducted last year by a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University and published in the British medical journal Lancet, which estimated the death toll (as of early 2006, nearly 18 months ago), at about 665,000.
The Lancet figures were denounced by the US and Iraqi governments and dismissed by the American media, and the ORB figures are likely to face the same fate. The study’s findings were reported only in passing in Friday’s daily newspapers, most prominently by the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe, not at all by the New York Times or Washington Post.
None of the network evening news broadcasts on Friday even mentioned the ORB report...'
Some people enjoy burying their heads in the sand.
do your own research
yet no one has an answer for this? why has the number of dead been at one million for several years?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I have done extensive research. why do you want me to do it for you?
common sense alone debunks a million dead. I'll ask again...why has there been 1 million dead for 3+ years? seems odd that it holds steady at such a powerful number.
the lancet report is a study based on 1800 households in Iraq. its not solid proof that hundreds of thousands or millions have died. its people like you suck it up as fact. hopefully you decide to read up on facts. but there is a reason why the phrase "ignorance is bliss" is popular.
the issue with the number of casualties is that no one is keeping official records - or at least no one willing to report ... we must rely on fragments of information from aid groups ...
at the time i heard of one million dead and much more displaced - it was the best estimate out there produced from multiple sources ...
the issue with the number of casualties is that no one is keeping official records - or at least no one willing to report ... we must rely on fragments of information from aid groups ...[/quote]
thats true. there are no hard facts of # of dead. yet people throw around the million number because of its impact. has a nice ring to it right? 80,500 dead, lets just round up to a million.
no its not.
well, i didn't expect you to agree ... the number wasn't made up - it has been published ... if you disagree with the source - that's your prerogative but it's not true to say someone on this board just made up the number ...
its a number with zero proof behind it. makes no difference that it was published.