April 25, 2006
Dear Editor,
In "Dead Reckoning: Counting Iraq's Civilian Dead" (By Adam Shemper, Mother Jones, May/June 2006 Issue), Adam Shemper writes: "This
tally is updated daily on his website, Iraqbodycount.net, which
Dardagan cofounded and runs with a team of 16 volunteers. The site,
also known as IBC, has been the only consistent record of the war’s
human toll, making it the go-to source for reporters, activists, and
even the Bush administration. (...)
There have been more than a
dozen independent surveys of civilian casualties, including a 2004
report in The Lancet that concluded 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been
killed, but IBC remains the most-cited source for casualty numbers.
When
asked for a figure last December, President Bush shrugged "30,000, more
or less"—a number very close to the one on IBC at the time. Afterward,
a CNN White House correspondent reported that Bush officials named
Iraqbodycount.net as the source of the president’s estimate. "I think
he surprised everyone by giving this figure," said John Sloboda, IBC’s
cofounder. (The president, however, misused the number, thinking it
included Iraqi military and police casualties.)" Just a few days ago Dahr Jamail and Jeff Pflueger wrote: "We
are, however, alarmed at their apparent lack of concern at the way
their information is being usurped by the pro-war camp to manipulate
public opinion and minimize the catastrophe the failed US occupation
has become for Iraqis. The authors of this piece submit that if, as it
claims, IBC is truly a humanitarian research project armed for greater
impact with an aggressive and sophisticated marketing system, it must
not allow its data to be misused and misrepresented for pro-war
propaganda campaigns.
If IBC cannot prevent the misuse of its
data, it would be better for it to remove its web site and counters
from the Internet permanently. It must then limit itself to objective
scholarly research of the English media without sophisticated marketing
paraphernalia." (Learning to Count: The Dead in Iraq, by Dahr Jamail and Jeff Pflueger, truthout, 13 April 2006) In February, Stephen Soldz wrote: "If
Western reporters, competing for scarce public attention, are loath to
accurately portray the extent of their ignorance about what is going on
in enormous chunks of Iraq, IBC has no excuse not to acknowledge,
openly and prominently, the resultant limits to their civilian death
tally. To not proclaim loudly that the IBC count is, by its nature,
likely a severe undercount of the true number of deaths, is to
participate in the culture of deceit and denial of the costs in
civilian lives and suffering that has plagued this alleged humanitarian
intervention from the beginning. If IBC does not understand this point,
then their efforts at promoting truth have now turned into its opposite
and should cease." (When Promoting Truth Obscures the Truth: More on Iraqi Body Count and Iraqi Deaths, by Stephen Soldz, ZNet, 5 February 2006)
About the "Lancet study" and the Iraqi civilian deaths, you and Mr. Shemper may be interested in the following.
On
29 October 2004, the British medical journal The Lancet published
'Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample
survey’:Making conservative assumptions, we think that
about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003
invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and
air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths.
(Interpretation)
Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. (Findings)
Source: Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey, The Lancet, Published online October 29,2004 This study reads:"The
researchers found that the majority of deaths were attributed to
violence, which were primarily the result of military actions by
Coalition forces. Most of those killed by Coalition forces were women
and children... Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be
caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those
deaths were due to air strikes and artillery." ('Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion', October 28, 2004) The Financial Times, on November 19, 2004 wrote: "This
survey technique has been criticised as flawed, but the sampling method
has been used by the same team in Darfur in Sudan and in the eastern
Congo and produced credible results. An official at the World Health
Organisation said the Iraq study 'is very much in the league that the
other studies are in ... You can't rubbish (the team) by saying they
are incompetent'". (Stephen Fidler, 'Lies, damned lies and statistics,'
Financial Times, November 19, 2004) The Chronicle of Higher Education on January 27, 2005 wrote "’Les
has used, and consistently uses, the best possible methodology,’ says
Bradley A. Woodruff, a medical epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. Indeed, the United Nations and the
State Department have cited mortality numbers compiled by Mr. Roberts
on previous conflicts as fact -- and have acted on those results. (...)
Mr. Roberts has studied mortality caused by war since 1992, having done
surveys in locations including Bosnia, Congo, and Rwanda. His three
surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee, a
nongovernmental humanitarian organization, in which he used methods
akin to those of his Iraq study, received a great deal of attention.
'Tony Blair and Colin Powell have quoted those results time and time
again without any question as to the precision or validity,’ he says." (Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored, by LILA GUTERMAN, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2005) According
to Les Roberts (Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee
Studies at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the
world’s top epidemiologists and lead author of the Lancet report) there
might be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?, By Les Roberts, AlterNet, February 8, 2006)
The
horror inflicted by our governments, with our money and in our name,
might be way far more horrifying. Dr Gideon Polya recently wrote: "AVOIDABLE
MORTALITY (technically, excess mortality) is the difference between the
actual mortality in a country and the mortality expected for a
peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics (i.e. with
the same birth rate and the same population age profile). Avoidable
mortality is a fundamental parameter to be considered in any sensible
discussion of human affairs – it is the bottom-line issue when
assessing the success or otherwise of societal, regional and global
policies. (...)
Ignoring mass mortality simply ensures its
continuance and denying past atrocities simply ensures their repetition
– history ignored yields history repeated. Thus the actuality of the
Jewish Holocaust (6 million deaths) was not formally acknowledged by
the Allies until 30 months before the end of World War 2 in Europe.
This tardiness in reportage must surely have contributed significantly
to this atrocity.
However, TODAY Mainstream Media are
comprehensively ignoring the horrendous magnitude of the avoidable
post-invasion deaths in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan (presently
totaling 2.3 million deaths) and the avoidable deaths in the First
World-dominated non-European World (presently 14.8 million deaths each
year)." (Layperson’s guide to counting Iraq deaths, by Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Magazine, 6 April 2006)
Underneath please find some interesting articles and studies about this issue.
Thank you for your time.
Kind regards, Gabriele Zamparini
Layperson’s guide to counting Iraq deaths, by Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Magazine, 6 April 2006
Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored, by LILA GUTERMAN, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2005
When Promoting Truth Obscures the Truth: More on Iraqi Body Count and Iraqi Deaths, by Stephen Soldz, ZNet, February 05, 2006
BURYING THE LANCET - PART 1
BURYING THE LANCET - PART 2
BURYING THE LANCET – Update
Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?, By Les Roberts, AlterNet, February 8, 2006
- Learning to Count: The Dead in Iraq, By Dahr Jamail and Jeff Pflueger
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