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Study: 655,000 Iraqis die because of war

 
 
Zippo
 
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 06:12 am
Study: 655,000 Iraqis die because of war

NEW YORK - A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.

The timing of the survey's release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it "politics."

In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.

"Deaths are occurring in
Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal.

An accurate count of Iraqi deaths has been difficult to obtain, but one respected group puts its rough estimate at closer to 50,000. And at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.

"They're almost certainly way too high," said Anthony Cordesman of the centre for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.

"This is not analysis, this is politics," Cordesman said.

The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study — that one was released just before the November 2004 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate....

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Type: Discussion • Score: 0 • Views: 518 • Replies: 10
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woiyo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 06:13 am
How many were killed by their own people?
0 Replies
 
cjhsa
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 06:36 am
How many by homicide bombers? IED's? Poisoning? Al Queda? Terrorists?
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Zippo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 06:46 am
There had never been a single terrorist attack on any civilians, in Iraq, before the US Invasion.

waiting to be proved wrong...
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cjhsa
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 07:08 am
Uh, Saddam gassed the Kurds...

Good day.
0 Replies
 
Zippo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 07:29 am
cjhsa wrote:
Uh, Saddam gassed the Kurds...

Good day.


Yep, Saddam was a brutal killer. However i'm talking about 'Iraqi insurgents' killing other Iraqi people. There had never been a terrorist attack by Iraqi insurgents on other Iraqi (Kurds/Sunni/Shi'ites) people, before the US invasion.

Unless you think the 'ousted' Saddam had killed the said 655,000 from his prison?

I'm not so sure about Iraq gassing the kurds either.

Quote:
Note excerpt from US Army War College report that no evidence exists to support US claims that Iraq used gas on the Kurds.

http://100777.com/node/648
0 Replies
 
CoastalRat
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 10:46 am
cjhsa wrote:
How many by homicide bombers? IED's? Poisoning? Al Queda? Terrorists?


Per this same report, about 70% of the deaths were caused by insurgents. (This per a report I caught on the radio a little while ago, so I can't vouch for the validity yet.)
0 Replies
 
Dartagnan
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 10:51 am
Is anyone disputing that insurgents are responsible for many of those deaths? The fact is that our invasion was supposed to be on the Iraqis' behalf...
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CoastalRat
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Oct, 2006 10:57 am
D, don't know if anyone is disputing it or not. CJ posed a question which I attempted to answer. I'm certainly not trying to make any particular point about anything.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 26 Mar, 2007 12:51 pm
Quote:
Ministers were told not to rubbish Iraq deaths study

Staff and agencies
Monday March 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Chief government advisers accepted as "robust" research that put the death toll from the Iraq war 10 times higher than any previous estimate, new documents have revealed.
The study, by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, prompted worldwide alarm when it was published in the Lancet medical journal in October last year.

It estimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the violence in the country. It has now emerged chief advisers warned ministers not to "rubbish" the report.

At the time, both the British and US governments were quick to dismiss the peer reviewed study. The Foreign Office said it was based on a "fairly small sample ...extrapolated across the country". Iraqi government data was more likely to be accurate, it added.

The US was more blunt. President George Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report."

However, according to papers obtained by the BBC World Service's Newshour programme under the Freedom of Information Act, senior officials warned the methods used in the survey were "robust" and "close to best practice".

The survey came up with its findings by comparing mortality rates before and after the invasion. Researchers surveyed 47 randomly-chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq, speaking to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800 people.

One of the documents obtained by the BBC is a memo by the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, dated October 13 2006, two days after the report was published.

"The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to 'best practice' in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq," he says.

Another item is an exchange of emails between officials in which one asks: "Are we really sure the report [in the Lancet] is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies."

Another replies: "We do not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate." Later in the same email, the same official writes: "However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones."

In a statement issued to Newshour, the government said: "The methodology has been used in other conflict situations, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"However, the Lancet figures are much higher than statistics from other sources, which only goes to show how estimates can vary enormously according to the method of collection.

"There is considerable debate amongst the scientific community over the accuracy of the figures."
Source
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Mon 26 Mar, 2007 01:30 pm
This is interesting--if so, then twice as many Iraqis have died in the four years since the invasion as died in the 25 years of Hussein's regime.
0 Replies
 
 

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