Blue Crab Boulevard

Bull

Absolute Bull. A "study" supposedly "shows" that 665,000 "excess" deaths occurred in Iraq since the US invasion. Thats almost 15,500 every month above the expected death rate. Bull. Throw the flag on this one, folks. That the media is even reporting this crap shows a venomous partisan slant. The Washington Post should be ashamed they even printed this hackery. This would be almost 400 (article says 500 – even higher than my back of the envelope calcs) people PER DAY. Over the normal death rate?

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

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

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

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

This is utter and complete crap. Period. No thinking person can possibly believe these numbers. When have you EVER heard of that many people dying in one day in Iraq, much less every single day since the war began. For heaven's sake, think, people.

UPDATE: Others: Right Wing Nut House, OTB, Decision '08, Astute Bloggers, Gateway Pundit,

UPDATE: Political Pit Bull has some numbers that are even more pertinent to any discussion of this subject.

UPDATE: Confederate Yankee:

To buy these conclusions, you have to swallow the impossibility that Reuters, the Associated Press, UPI, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, Robert Fisk, al Manar, al Jazeera, and every other news conglomeration in Iraq are a willful part of the largest cover-up in human history, hiding three times of the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (214,000 according to wikipedia) over the course of three-plus years.

It’s patently absurd.

UPDATE: Game, set, match. The Iraqi government rejects the "study" as exagerated.

“This figure, which in reality has no basis, is exaggerated,” said Iraqi government spokesman Ali Debbagh.

“It is a figure which flies in the face of the most obvious truths,” he said, calling on research institutions to adopt precise and transparent criteria especially when the research concerns victim tolls.

Not that this will convince the TruthyTrolls™.

Insanity, Left Wing, Throw The Flag, War | Gaius October 10, 2006

By Straight8, October 11, 2006 @ 5:01 am

You might be surprised how many people will buy into this gross misreporting of casualties.
I can name (but I won’t) two relatives who believe most of what they read or see in the MSM.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 11, 2006 @ 7:37 am

Get used to it, pal. There is gonna be an almighty rain of bad Iraq press being dished out in the next few weeks, moreso because of what’s going on with NorKo. The Dems and their allies are going to hammer away on the “FAILURE! FAILURE! THROW THE REPUBS OUT!” meme, without doing anything resembling stating what they will do once they take control.

And from the way they’ve been merely reacting, instead of attacking, the RNC doesn’t look like they have any idea how to fight back. Blaming Clinton for Kim Jung Whackjob ain’t gonna cut it; they’ve got to paint a clear picture of what a Speaker of the House Pelosi, Ways and Means Chair Charlie Rangel, and Senate led by Reid would mean.

They just don’t seem capable of doing it.
By Ed, October 11, 2006 @ 7:59 am

Since they used accepted sampling methods, the same sampling methods used by the CDC and the WHO, how are they wrong? Just claiming that they’re wrong (The earth is flat!) because you don’t want your belief system challenged is not rational. Where’s the methodological error?
By jrw, October 11, 2006 @ 8:00 am

“utter and complete crap”…”hackery”…”venomous partisan slant”…? All great name callling, but not an argument. Studies are often inaccurate and this one has lots of potential for error, but perhaps you should deal with the issues and not assume anything you don’t want to hear is a lie. By the way, Straight*, the study doesn’t refer to casualties, it uses the word mortality, as in disease, epidemic, etc. Very different, but probably beneath your notice.
By Xanthippas, October 11, 2006 @ 8:03 am

Who knew bloggers were such statistical experts? Ohâ€¦waitâ€¦youâ€™re not.

Actually, this “crap” is a solidly researched, peer-reviewed study. You’re notions of the war in Iraq come from watching/reading the news. Here’s a qusetion for you: if an Iraqi dies and there’s no reporter present to write about it, does that mean he didn’t die? Or, is it possible there are countless deaths we’re unaware of?

The numbers are as solid as they can possibly be guys, given the state of things in Iraq. Itâ€™s wholly saddening to me to know that fellow Americans think that we can somehow erase the shame of having started this war by arguing down the numbers killed by it. Would this war still be worth it to you if the number was half that many? One-third? One-fourth? Are things better now than they were under Saddam, when we can confirm by the number dead in the morgue that 3,000 people die violently a month? Do you think Saddam killed 3,000 of his own people a month? Do you think the Iraqis appreciate of the freedom we have bestowed upon them, when they canâ€™t let their children go to school because someone will bomb them, or kidnap them, or force them to wear something?

There is a consistently disturbing trend among anyone who supported this stupid war to attempt to void reality by arguing it out of existence. It doesnâ€™t work that way. If reality is not in conformity with your opinion of the war and itâ€™s consequences, itâ€™s your opinion that needs revision.
By MrGone, October 11, 2006 @ 8:16 am

Saw this on Sully yesterday and I think it applies here:

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life”.

Leo Tolstoy
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 11, 2006 @ 9:10 am

Xanthippas? Where, precisely, do you come up with the claim that this is a “solidly researched, peer-reviewed” piece of work? You use that allegation as your launching point, but there is nothing in the cited article to back that up your assertion.

And do you even know what an “epidemiologist” actually is (no peeking in a dictionary, skippy), and why the “science” they used to come to these conclusions is fundementally flawed, considering the environment and circumstance they–once removed–claim to have observed?

To even BEGIN to give this thing credence, you have to start from the premise “war is a disease.” Because that is what epidemiology deals with. Sorry, but war ain’t the flu or an outbreak of breast cancer affecting a certain community. There are far more variables involved in what is happening in Iraq–human variables, probably the hardest to qualify, nevermind quantify.

Considering the small survey base that was extrapolated to come up with these findings, the first question that must be asked is: how many of those households queried were in areas controlled by the Kurds? Or was the tiny slice of Iraq used concentrated in, say, Baghad and Fallujah? Because before Saddam’s fall, it was the Kurds getting killed at sometimes wholesale rates, while the residents of the two cities I mentioned were comparatively free of the burden of Saddam’s tyranny.

This “report” is politics, not science. So again, you tell me exactly who the hell you’re saying performed a scrupulous peer review of these finding to authenticate their legitimacy before they made it into the public square?
By happy talk, October 11, 2006 @ 9:15 am

“When have you EVER heard of that many people dying in one day in Iraq, much less every single day since the war began.”

That’s right, we haven’t heard this before.
Maybe the MSM’s been too busy reporting the “good news” instead.

That said, the number seems too high.
By Kevin Allison, October 11, 2006 @ 9:22 am

Something from Someone Who Is There:

Calling Bob in Baghdad
Posted by Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent (09:41 am ET, 10/10/06)

I am very, very lucky. I am alive in a war zone. Most of the time I have running water and when I turn on the lights, a series of generators ensures that they come on. I don’t have to worry about saying goodbye to my family here in the morning and not knowing whether I’ll see them in the evening. I know I’m lucky because almost everyone I know in Baghdad has to worry constantly about those things.

Some readers and viewers think we journalists are exaggerating about the situation in Iraq. I can almost understand that because who would want to believe that things are this bad? Particularly when so many people here started out with such good intentions.

I’m more puzzled by comments that the violence isn’t any worse than any American city. Really? In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day? In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?

Almost unimaginable
Day-to-day life here for Iraqis is so far removed from the comfortable existence we live in the United States that it is almost literally unimaginable.

It’s almost impossible to describe what it feels like being stalled in traffic, your heart pounding, wondering if the vehicle in front of you is one of the three or four car bombs that will go off that day. Or seeing your husband show up at the door covered in blood after he was kidnapped and beaten.

I don’t know a single family here that hasn’t had a relative, neighbor or friend die violently. In places where there’s been all-out fighting going on, I’ve interviewed parents who buried their dead child in the yard because it was too dangerous to go to the morgue.

Imagine the worst day you’ve ever had in your life, add a regular dose of terror and you’ll begin to get an idea of what it’s like every day for a lot of people here.

Positive story weâ€™d love to tell
So I’m particularly intrigued by a comment by an American – I’m assuming he’s American – who is actually in Baghdad and believes we’re exaggerating.

“I am in Baghdad teaching the Iraqis and I have to let you know some realities the press doesn’t tell you,” wrote Bob in a comment to the Baghdad blog. He tells us those things are the schools or hospitals the U.S. military has built and that things are a lot better than the press says they are. I would really like to find Bob. I would be grateful if Bob would get in touch with us.

[Here is the original comment from "Bob" plus a link to the original posting: "I am in Baghdad teaching the Iraqis and I have to let you know some realities the press doesnt tell you. First there are some good things going on here. No one is talking about the schools that the US military has built or the hospitals and other good things going on here. Secondly I have had more than one student tell me that reporters who live in the IZ or green zone offer good money for blood and guts stories but not for positive news that is going on. The reporters here make this place much worse than it is in reality." And here is the link: "Naming a baby Ali or Omar? It matters" ]

Because if Bob is actually an American school teacher in an Iraqi classroom it’s a great story we have to do. It’s so wonderfully normal. I would bet though that Bob is teaching Iraqis in his capacity as a soldier or contractor and still has to walk into those buildings wearing body armor and a helmet or accompanied by a security detail.

Bob also tells us that he’s had more than one student tell him that “reporters who live in the IZ (International Zone) or Green Zone offer good money for blood and guts stories but not for positive news that is going on.”

Reporters don’t pay for stories. We know now that contractors tasked by the Department of Defense to put “good news stories” in Iraqi papers pay for stories but reporters don’t. Have I mentioned that very few reporters live in the Green Zone? Bob – let’s talk.

MAIN PAGE
By syn, October 11, 2006 @ 9:47 am

Didn’t the Lancet group lose credibility with the last ‘100,000 dead’ report?

NBC? Who can take seriously a news organization with Brian Williams as the anchor.

One thing is for sure, NBC has no idea what Isreal goes through on a daily basis.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 11, 2006 @ 10:05 am

Mr. Allison:
If you believe her claim, “Reporters don’t pay for stories,” you, sir, are an idiot.

I have worked with, and participated in, “paying off sources” who wouldn’t talk unless the wheel got greased. It could be something as simple as buying the source a meal, or getting a friendly cop to fix a ticket, but believing reporters and their sources are always pure of heart, as the crap you just dumped here implies, is just flatout asinine, especially considering how ingrained the idea of “blood money” is in the Middle East.

Next time, how about you say something, instead of citing some off-topic, inane, “moving the goalposts” game of redirection?
By K T Cat, October 11, 2006 @ 10:16 am

If you’re a global population nut like Al Gore, is any death really an excess death?
By George Orwell, October 11, 2006 @ 10:28 am

I agree with TC. I don’t believe this report, so it must not be factual. After all, my gut tells me it’s not true! I mean, a bunch of scientists? Who ever believes a bunch of scientists? Why, if we start believing them, we’ll have to believe that my computer works based on 1s and 0s and not by magic!

And, of course, because the article does not expressly state that it was peer reviewed, it must not have been (even though all findings in Lancet are peer reviewed – it’s Lancet policy). And don’t get me going on sample size. Why, they only used 27 different areas! That’s not enough! They should have counted every single body found throughout the country before they made any kind of statistical extrapolation.

You know, if you want to refute a finding, it would do to have some evidence to the contrary, not just a wish that it is so.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 10:34 am

Do you honestly believe that if this many people were actually dying we would not be hearing about it in the media? These people were discredited once before with a much lower body count. Now they come back with an even higher one. Even the people at Iraq Body Count are throwing the flag on this one.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 11, 2006 @ 11:17 am

And Georgie boy, if you want to actually dabate the issue, you ought to keep the smartassed crap in your pocket. Lancet’s been a dubious source for any politically-tinged “findings” recently; even the WaPo article cited held their number at arm’s distance.

You managed to totally avoid anything I questioned in the comment I put up here in response to a previous commenter. Per your comment about “they should have counted every single body…” that would actually be a good way to confirm deaths, now wouldn’t it? Walk into all the morgues and ask them how many stiffs they have processed since the start of the war and an equal timeframe before. That would provide a hard, documentable number, instead of this “sampling” by freelancers talking to random people crap

And for the “what the Hey?” of it: I could bury your anonymous troll butt with nose-bleed level, vitriolic snark if I ever decided to open up and you stood open and available.

But you’re just another smarmy troll, post something intellectually retarded while hiding from the fallout by not providing an e-mail or website (both of which are free, skippy) where you actually reside, sitting back feeling fat and happy about yourself.

Dude? I’ve been blowing away jerks like you since 1992 when I was modding BBS forums. I probably own modems older than you… they sure damn have higher IQs.
By MathMatics Major, October 11, 2006 @ 11:52 am

LETS DO SOME REAL MATH!!!

Invaded Iraq on 3/20/03
it’s now 10/11/06

that’s 3 years, 7months give or take a few day…

3*365+7*30 = 1305 days.

665,000estimated deats/1305days = 510 deaths/day

That’s 260 LESS than you freaks without calculators are brandishing. Man alive, I thought we had standardized tests these days to ensure all good Americans could do math…

Now, I challenge ya’ll rithmatic doer’s to dig up some stats on US deaths per day/month and some pre-war Iraq deaths per day/month.

The 665,000 figure isn’t all that outlandish when you do that…
By MrGone, October 11, 2006 @ 11:54 am

Gaius,

You are hearing about it. You just don’t like what you’re hearing.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 11:58 am

What I’m hearing, Mr. Gone, is a bunch of people trying to defend an unbelievably transparent political hit job.
By Steve, October 11, 2006 @ 12:05 pm

How do you know? Have you hung out in Iraq? I’m not sure I believe it either, but at least I have the intellectual honesty to reserve judgement w/o knowing the methods of this estimate – or the others that it conflicts with.

You just say “bull” w/o knowing how EITHER was collected. That’s not reasoning. It’s a reaction.
By MrGone, October 11, 2006 @ 12:24 pm

Gaius,

Perhaps. But what I’m hearing is a bunch of people trying to deny what may very well be the truth.

I have’nt seen any evidence that the Lancet is politically motivated. That claim was made last time but not substantiated. I think sometimes people have a hard time distinguishing between the spin and the facts. Many times, the spin wins and that is what is remembered. Then again, please show me a reputable rebuttal of either this or the original report that hasn’t itself been disproven and I’ll take a look.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 12:25 pm

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Because I am trained in math and critical thinking. This is nuts. If the pre-war death rate was 5/1000 annually (wiki) that should mean around 430,000 deaths naturally during the time span. This study purports that there are 665,000 deaths in excess of that number. Don't you think someone would have noticed? To accept these numbers you have to accept a monstrous conspiracy to cover up that many deaths by every, single media outlet and government in the world. This is absurd. This discussion is absurd. That people cannot even comprehend why the numbers are absurd is absurd.
By MrGone, October 11, 2006 @ 12:34 pm

Gaius,

I also am trained in math and critical analysis and do not seem to have the reservations about this that you do. For instance, we know that Bagdad is hitting 50-100 bodies a day. Now this is one city and only couting bodies they find. You have a hard time believing that if you can have that in one city then getting another 400/day in the rest of the country is unlikely? Keep in mind, they asked 87% of those questioned if they had death certificates and of those, 90% had them. Also keep in mind that it is traditional for the dead to be buried that day, before sundown, in a wooden casket. Also keep in mind that many of these deaths are sectarian and going public or to the authorities may be dangerous. Again, these numbers are stunning but not surprising.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 12:39 pm

Literally one in 24 dead and nobody has noticed this until now? The media just covers it all up, right? Get a freaking grip.
By MrGone, October 11, 2006 @ 12:45 pm

Gaius,

Couple this with the recent military data showing 100 attacks/day just against US troops.

BTW, the media doesn’t have access to most of Iraq so how would they know anyway.

The answer to your question is someone did notice, remember the earlier report of 100k. So it’s not that no one noticed, it’s more that no one cares or cares to see.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 12:53 pm

Again, that syudy was badly flawed and highly controversial. Take your argument and say 50-100 die daily in Baghdad. That sity houses about 30% of the country’s population. Split the difference and say 75/day. We still have to then account for 425/day in the remaining 70% of the population. (actually it would have to be 625/day to account for the increase since their last “study”). And nobody noticed? Where the hell do you think they are putting that many additionaldead?

Thanks for proving that five out of four people don’t understand fractions.
By MrGone, October 11, 2006 @ 1:03 pm

It’s not fractions, that’s the number of bodies they “find”. There could be 2-3 times that that are never found or never reported. BTW, Bagdad pop~5m, out of ~27m = ~18%, so make that 6 out of 4.

You state that the last study was badly flawed and highly controversial. Controversial yes, but this one actually confirms the last data. Please point me to an authoritative debunking of the first one, not some blogger, an actual critical analysis.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 1:07 pm

No point, you keep shifting away from hard data to “could be”. Can’t argue aaginst moving goalposts.
By MrGone, October 11, 2006 @ 1:28 pm

Good copout. So much for discussion. If there is any hard data, the military has it and isn’t sharing. So at this point, these reports are the best we have. If the administration really wants to prove it wrong, it can show the real data. Hmmm, that doesn’t seem to be happening. Wonder why.
By steve, October 11, 2006 @ 1:56 pm

Gaius – you keep saying that no one “notices”. What does that mean? Do you notice allt the people that you see when you’re out and about all day? Unless you’re a zombie, you do. So, how many people do you see each day? You might say “I don’t know – I would need to count to know that”. Bingo!

Basically, the idea that the number is just too high or someone would notice cuts 0 ice. This study is made or broken based on what they did (and what the conflicting studies did) to count deaths, period. No supposition or BS – from either side – means a damn thing. Do you know how the studies differ? Then it’s all BS. Both numbers are plausable – trying to disprove the study by pointing to implausability is irrelavent.
By Rich Gibson, October 11, 2006 @ 2:47 pm

I am saddened by the name calling that passes for argument amongst war supporters.

TC@LeatherPenguin is typical of the anti-science stance that conservatives have made into the default response to information with which they take issue.

Lancet is biased? Peer reviewed science is bogus? Simply on your assertion? No, I am sorry, but since the enlightenment the triumph of ‘Western’ culture has been reasoning, and science.

Sadly the triumph of the post Reagan era of conservatives has been to attack reason. It is strange, really, that ‘you folks’ would attack that which has made our country great.
By Kaos Klerik, October 11, 2006 @ 2:57 pm

Back in the 80’s Mitch Snyder, the homeless advocate, stated that 1 homeless person dies in America every 45 seconds. The media reported that without blinking. If that were true that would mean that over 700,000 homeless died every year. Estimates of the number of homeless ranged from 800,000 – 2 million. There is no way that number could be maintained if 1/3 to 7/8 of them died every year.

1 every 45 seconds = 80 per hour
80 x 24 x 365 = 700,800
By POS009, October 11, 2006 @ 3:20 pm

OMFreakin’G, TC@LeatherPenguin. you ask: “Where, precisely, do you come up with the claim that this is a â€œsolidly researched, peer-reviewedâ€ piece of work? You use that allegation as your launching point, but there is nothing in the cited article to back that up your assertion.”

If you don’t think the Lancet is a peer-reviewed research journal, and that JOHN FREAKIN’ HOPKINS is a bogus research institute, then you probably think the war was started on solid, fact-based intelligence, as well. Oh, yea, before I forget, I got an 80mpg H2 Hummer that I can sell you, too!!
By steve, October 11, 2006 @ 3:29 pm

“Back in the 80â€™s Mitch Snyder, the homeless advocate, stated that 1 homeless person dies in America every 45 seconds. The media reported that without blinking. If that were true that would mean that over 700,000 homeless died every year. Estimates of the number of homeless ranged from 800,000 – 2 million. There is no way that number could be maintained if 1/3 to 7/8 of them died every year.

1 every 45 seconds = 80 per hour
80 x 24 x 365 = 700,800 ”

So it’s equally valid to use a simple “smell test” level of analysis re: the numbers being killed in a war torn country where we have no idea what’s going on in MOSTof that country? You’re right – same as the US; someone would just NOTICE that this count is wrong….

You can’t suppose empiricism away – their methods are weak or not.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 11, 2006 @ 4:17 pm

Well, this is cute. Now I have two idiots calling me “anti-science,” and three deciding I’m a raving neo-con, because I questioned the methodology, and timing of the release, involved in this “study” found under the Lancet’s imprint. And properly assigning the Internet descriptive “troll” is considered name-calling?

As if the editors at the Lancet are completely removed from politics…. That the idea that modern members of academe are all completely following in rigorous scientific inquiry, and never allow personal, partisan political influences to come to bear, when they instigate, create, and then disseminate, their treatises….

What color is the sky in youse guys’ worlds? Are the moonbeams made of candy?

C’MON KIDS! At least bring your “A” game if you wanna play.
By JT, October 11, 2006 @ 5:12 pm

Quick quiz!

What is a chi square?

Anyone who knows the answer (without googling it) can question these findings.

Everyone else can just STFU.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 5:15 pm

It’s a test for statistical significance. I’m an engineer, okay?
By Rich Gibson, October 11, 2006 @ 5:30 pm

It is interesting that TC@LeatherPenguin needs to call people ‘idiots’ rather than argue the issues. You are engaged in fallacious arguements of the highest order, and quite frankly, your arguments are fundamentally anti-science.

With all seriousness I ask: why do you, and others who reason as you do, hate what has made our country great? Or to put it in your terms: Why do you hate America?

You did not ‘question’ the methodology of the study, your first response was “There is gonna be an almighty rain of bad Iraq press being dished out in the next few weeks, moreso because of whatâ€™s going on with NorKo. The Dems and their allies are going to hammer away on the â€œFAILURE! FAILURE! THROW THE REPUBS OUT!â€ meme, without doing anything resembling stating what they will do once they take control.”

Then you you charged that the study was not peer reviewed, based on what? On your assertion. And then you argue:

“and do you even know what an â€œepidemiologistâ€ actually is (no peeking in a dictionary, skippy), and why the â€œscienceâ€ they used to come to these conclusions is fundementally flawed, considering the environment and circumstance theyâ€“once removedâ€“claim to have observed?”

Your posts are specifically designed not to challenge a specific piece of research, or to offer a reasoned alternative, but to attack the idea of reason itself. Your attacks on the system of Peer Review are telling: it is only by delegitimizing the process of reason that you are able to have any chance in a debate.

And I ask, quite seriously, why do you hate America?
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 5:52 pm

The Iraqi government says the study is wrong.
By jim, October 11, 2006 @ 6:04 pm

Does the Iraqi government say why it’s wrong?

Because it may just be too embarassing for them to admit; like it is for our government too.

But hey, maybe it’s “only” 100,000 dead civilians. Personally I think 100,000 dead civilians is too many to be at peace with, let alone 600,000.
By Longhairedweirdo, October 11, 2006 @ 6:13 pm

Yeah, game, set and match! The Iraqi government, which would be seen as weak and unable to protect its citizenry, says that the report is exaggerated!

They have no reason to say it’s exaggerated unless it is! And Iraq is run by scientists, you know! Statisticians, every single one of them!
(end mode=sarcasm)

And Gaius, that the number is horrifying doesn’t mean it’s not true.

The earlier number, 100,000 is completely credible, because it included Iraqi soldiers killed in the invasion. The term “wholesale slaughter surely applied during those weeks of war where massive bombardments occurred and the US military hit any Iraqi defenders they saw with maximum force.

People have been noticing, for *years*. You just haven’t been listening, or thinking, you’ve been looking away from the horror.

Well, guess what? War is a stone cold, double down, hard ass bitch. Now you have an idea of what that really means.

The methodology used is sound. So, you see, you have two choices. You can accept that these numbers are pretty darn accurate, or you can hope that some terrible (and likely deliberate) distortion found its way into the data.

Those are the choices.

Well, I suppose there’s a third… hear that there’s a real chance that America has helped bring about that many deaths, and not care.

God damn, I’m so sick of the right wing right now.

If it’s big and ugly, it must be wrong, because there’s simply *no chance* that people could be acting honorably and telling the truth, unless it makes you happy.

If you don’t like it, it must be wrong.

How the hell can you people live with yourselves?
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 6:38 pm

I see we have the new talking point out to defuse the Iraqi government’s statement. Out of curiosity, how do you live with that level of hatred inside yourself?
By Rich Gibson, October 11, 2006 @ 6:45 pm

Gaius: I probably disagree with you , but I this case I’m not sure which talking point you are speaking of. I’m honestly curious to know so I can either accept your judgement, or respond to it.

As for levels of hatred, it appears to me that over the last 14 years in America that politically based hatred has been fairly evenly spread across ideologies.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 7:02 pm

THe “it’s too embarrassing to admit” meme.

Actually, I frankly see more hate coming from the left. I also don’t frequent the more extreme sites on either side.

My whole point of this post is there is something seriously out of whack with this number. From a logical standpoint, this does not work. One of the things they used to teach in engineering is ballparking numbers in your head so you’d know if an answer was wacky. I have no idea if they teach that anymore.

But hell, they need to.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 11, 2006 @ 9:54 pm

And as for me? I just like pulling hard as hell on “BushHaters” chains as hard as I can, every time I see them. They never–NEVER–want to admit that they are operating from a position that is farcical, and automatically consider ANY “news” that is potential ammo against the ChimpyMcHalliburtHitlerCo cabal as written in unimpeachable stone.

And they inevitably call me a “conservative,” which I, and anyone who knows me, consider a bonafide hoot.
By Rich Gibson, October 11, 2006 @ 10:22 pm

Regards Gaius,

I don’t want to create ‘talking points,’ since those are sort of by definition fake, regardless of the side.

With that said, we do know that release of civilian, and military, casualty figures during wartime has become highly politicized. We in the US have become more sensitized to casualty reports than in previous wars.

This has the benefit of maybe causing us to more carefully consider our actions before going to war, but it also has the detrimental effect of weakening our resolve to continue to fight in any given war. I am against the Iraq war, but if we as a people are going to enter into war than we should do it with the honesty to face the inevitible and near infinite tragedies thar war always creates, and not to be swayed with the inevitible tragedies occur.

Note: saying that war creates tragedy does not mean that the alternative to war is always good, simply that any war has very real, and very tragic costs that must be considered against any presumed benefit. And to be honest, my personal values are that the emotional and tragic costs of war are so high that we are _almost_ (but not always) better off avoiding war.

We did not honestly face the question of the cost of this war before hand, and part of the result is that every casualty report is somehow ‘new’ and a surprise. Obviously they shouldn’t be a surprise, but there you go.

This sense of surprise has made every casualty report, regardless of the accuracy of reporting, into a partisan issue.

In this environment, and knowing things that we do know about Iraq, it is totally plausible to me that the Iraqi officials could be totally under reporting casualty numbers. That doesn’t mean that they are, mind you, but it is plausible to consider the possibility.

Hell, we absolutely know that politicians, and people in power, in our own country frequently lie. I can’t assume that politicians in a war zone with minimal oversight are not going to lie. Again, are they lying in this case? It is certainly plausible.

So moving on to ballparking numbers…
Iraq had 26,074,906 people, in 2005, according to Wikipedia. 600,000 fatalities means one for about every 40 people. Does that seem unreasonably high to you?

An ‘extended family’ could be 20-40 people, or more. I know our reporting is suspect, but it seems reasonable to me that on average every extended family in Iraq has suffered a fatality. I accept that many people are in more than one extended family, you are in your own extended family, as well as in that of your spouse, but there are also reports of large numbers of family members being killed at one time.

Are these numbers right? I don’t know of course, but with respect, my ballparking is that it seems possible. Other people in the thread are working from other assumptions. You mentioned the 400,000 or so Iraqi’s who ’should’ have died based on the 5/1000 figure, and this is 600,000 in addition.

I have no problem, from a ballparking point of view, in imagining that a massive war, and insurgency, and terrorist playground, could lead to a 150% increase in deaths.

The other ballparking question is where are all of these people? Is it being covered up, etc? How could we have that many deaths and not hear about it? But again, if the normal state was 5 fatalities/1000, and that is now 12.5/1000 would anyone actually hear about it? A morgue that used to have 5 bodies a day now has 12-13, is that particularly newsworthy? Again, ballparking it that seems possible.

So, with respect Gaius, since I respect your views in this thread, I think the ballpark analysis is that it is possible. The question of course is how was their particular methodology, but since I havn’t read the study I can’t speak to that.

As to the issue of hate, with respect, the conservatives are in power right now and ‘they’ still feel the need to write books accusing liberals of ‘Treason’ and of being ‘Godless.’
It might be interesting to try to work out some sort of ‘hate index’ to judge political hate. It would be hard to do in any sort of objective fashion. Are political bombings and murders part of political hate? Or are they ’simply’ crimes? Do ‘you’ get to judge me because of the Weatherman Underground? Do I get to judge ‘you’ because of Oklahoma City? Anyway, an interesting question.
By Gaius, October 11, 2006 @ 10:59 pm

Let me just put it this way – the media has been Johnny on the spot to report casualties, publishing daily body counts. I think we can agree that is the case. The number reported in the study is orders of magnitude higher. Iraq Body Count has less than 1/10th of this number they are trowing around. Who is wrong? All reports – right across the board – put the violence highest in Baghdad. Official morgue records show much, much, much lower body counts. This same group said it was 100k two years ago, 665k today. Doesn’t that set off warning bells? Literally some 700 people every single day for two years above the expected death rate? Plausible? Really? They would be tripping over the bodies. If you accept the morgue counts from Baghdad (the UN does) then something like 89% of the casualties are happening outside of Baghdad in the areas that do not report anything like the violence in the capital. (very rough calc using this months figures which is unrealistic as hell).
I’m working from 24 million population and 7.4 million in Baghdad for the rough calcs I did. But this study makes no sense even if you plug in higher total population and lower Baghdad population.

Numbers do not add up – they just don’t pass a basic common sense test. Think about it.
By Longhairedweirdo, October 12, 2006 @ 12:39 am

Don’t flatter yourself Gaius. You’re not worth hatred. Contempt, yes, but only because you’re willing to look away from evil when it’s staring you in the face. You’d rather look away, than demand, and find, the truth.

The rest of what you’re seeing is anger. Because, you see, when I hear that six hundred thousand people have died due to a stupid war, it makes me angry. I know… some of us care about human beings, and that makes us “angry”, and occasionally mistaken for “hateful”.

How the hell could the Iraqi government know how well the study was done, unless they’d done one in parallel and got different results? Hint: rhymes with “they couldn’t”.

They have no information available to them to discredit the report. The question isn’t “are they BSing”, the question is “why?” and embarrassment, and the demonstration of their weakness, is a reasonable explanation. Can you find another one better? Great, come up with one, but before you try to claim they are *not* BSing, feel free to find a real, honest-to-goodness problem with the report that they know about.

By the way, if you’d *read* the report, you’d know that of the sampling they took, 80% of the deaths were confirmed with death certificates. Even if every single death that didn’t have a certificate was fabricated, we’d be looking at over half a million expected deaths.

Wake the hell up. 700 people a day, when there’s 25 million folks to take care of the bodies? That means if it takes ten people to take care of a body, there’s still three thousand times as many people as they need to keep the bodies out of the way. (700 x 10 = 7,000 x 1000 = 7mil, x 3 = 21.)

Do you notice everything going on around you, when it occupies less than one 3,000th of the people around you? Especially when it’s a day-to-day occurrance?

God… and you actually said they *numbers* don’t add up. And talked about being able to ballpark numbers, but couldn’t notice that 700 a day is less than 1/30,000th of the population, or that over 40 months, we’re talking about 4% of the population, a mere 1 in one thousand in a month.
By Rich Gibson, October 12, 2006 @ 1:21 am

Hi Gaius,

I don’t believe the media has been nearly as effective as you believe at reporting casualties. I think the press is mostly trapped in the green zone and so miss a great deal. I also believe that many deaths are going unreported. The report in the comments above of parents burying their children in the backyard because it was unsafe to leave their homes is one example. Granted arguing from anecdote is unpersuasive, but that informs my ballpark calculations.

‘MathMatics’ posted some numbers above, where he calculated about 510 deaths/day. Still a lot higher than other numbers we see, but 510 is not the 700 estimate you mention.

As for tripping over the bodies, I think we are agreed that approximately 468,000 people would have died at the expected rate (5 deaths/1000, times 26,000,000 people = 130,000 per year, times 3.57 years, 1305 days, is 468,000), or 358 per day.
(slightly lower of course if we assume 24,000,000 as our base, or make other adjustments-but like you I don’t think that changes the thrust of the argument much).

Assuming 510 per day additional fatalities, on top of an expected 358, just doesn’t push my ‘implausible’ button, nor does it push my ‘tripping over bodies’ button. Also, this is one of the approaches used to measure deaths in the Darfur conflict/genocide. The Sudan has 41,000,000 people, of course not all are in the Darfur region. Their conflict has continued for a similar time frame, with death estimates that are somewhat similar. A range from 50,000 or so up to 400,000.

Anyway, I don’t mean this to be a talking point, or to convince you that 600,000 extra people have died in Iraq versus 50,000 or 100,000, it is enough to present my personal view that these numbers are within the range of plausible deaths.

And with that said, and yes, this is arguably a bait and switch, I believe there is consensus that the Iraq Body Count numbers represent an absolute lower bound to the fatalities. In fact, they are bitterly criticized from the left for substantially understating their numbers, and their much lower figures of 44,000-48,000 are horrific to me. At a basic visceral level, the difference between the estimates of 44,000 and 600,00 people killed are immaterial to me, any of those numbers are horrible.

Of course the difference is important if, like schroedinger’s cat, you are one of the 556,000 people who are either dead, or alive, depending on the statistical methodology used

To put it into my perspective, substantially more innocent Iraqi’s have died in this war than we lost in Vietnam (I am not attempting a moral equivalence between American Soldier and Iraqi Civilian, just a numerical comparison). If one adjusts for relative sizes of population, _at least_ ten times as many Iraqi civilians have died compared wth Americans killed in Vietnam. I was not in Vietnam (as the joke goes, I had little league instead), but I, and our whole nation, were damaged by the losses we incurred. Imagine if we had lost 600,000 service members (ie. adjusting for the US being 10 or so times as populous as Iraq)?

I am not trying to do ‘fuzzy math’ here, rather, I’m trying to lay out the emotional impact which I feel at the news from Iraq. I read ‘50 bodies found, most tortured, all shot’ and I think “wow, adjusting for population that is comparable to 500 Americans.”

This is an interesting analysis of the IBC figures, the original Lancet study that showed 100,000, and the UNDP study:
http://iraqmortality.org/iraq-mortality

I don’t think that site is particularly partisan, but let me know if you think otherwise.

Regards,
Rich
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 12, 2006 @ 7:12 am

Look, put away the damn abacuses for a minute. Whoever wants to defend Lancet’s number answer me this: You’re basic assertion seems to be that these numbers are legit, even though nobody seems to be able to locate these hundred of thousands of extra bodies, and the folks publishing the study say their margin for error ranges from from 426,369 to 793,663 (according to this NY Times report), and so you seeem to believe that:
the White House;
the Pentagon;
Iraq’s nascent government;
the UN;
everyone else keeping a body count,
are all suppressing this damning, higher-rate death data for their own personal or political reasons–aided and abetted by a pliant MSM–and it was left to the righteous Johns Hopkins eggheads to bring this damning indictment to light… do I got the original gist of this BS numbers fight right?

If so, explain to me how Al Jazeera (”You Tell Us Where and our Cameras are There!”), the Jihadis’ favorite outlet for displaying all manner of carnage blamed on the infidel occupation of Allah’s backyard, ALSO missed all these extra stiffs (if I’m to believe anything close to Lancet’s total exists)?
By Engineer, October 12, 2006 @ 8:50 am

They interviewed 1,840 random people and found over 500 dead (92% of those showed the death certificate). And if you think about they clearly couldnâ€™t interview at homes that donâ€™t exist anymoreâ€¦so 1 dead for every 4 randomly selected home. Thatâ€™s bad no matter how you look at it.

If you donâ€™t like that, consider this: Weâ€™ve dropped 240,000 cluster bombs. Weâ€™d be fools to think they didnâ€™t kill anyone. Add in gunfire and car bombs and 600,000 dead doesnâ€™t seem that big.
By Rich Gibson, October 12, 2006 @ 9:00 am

TC,

There are not hundreds of thousands of extra bodies just piled up, there is in alleged increase in the death toll from about 5/1000 to about 12/1000.

The US death rate is (according to the CIA fact book) about 8/1000.

Lowering the total from 600,000 to 400,000 would change that to about 10/1000, increasing to 800,000 would mean about 15/1000.

Again I must ask you, why do you hate the process of science? Counting, which you attack with your plea to ‘put away the damn abacuses,’ is not a particularly new technology. If you have an issue with the methodology of a particular study then please bring it up, but ad hominem attacks do no credit to your cause.

Rich
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 12, 2006 @ 10:51 am

Omar from Iraq the Model–who’s actually there, which none of the authors of this paper actually can claim (when it came to compiling the source data they used locals and had it forwarded; in some cases that’s called “hearsay evidence”); –says it is purely politically driven drivel. Since the document’s release I have not seen a flood of statisticians coming out in defense of these findings. In the MSM articles, nobody among the people reporters usually call to explain these kinds of stories (where for the most part, the reporters are oblivious to the credibility of anything scientific they are covering) seems to say they consider the report’s conclusions to be bulletproofly constructed and inarguably conclusive. Mainly, the defenders I’m finding are people commenting on friggin’ blogs.

Your arrival at my alleged “hatred” of the process of science comes from… what? Comments contained in one post’s thread. Where I question the idea that these guys are not grinding an axe, and juggled the numbers to their liking and then presented their “findings” as fact.I disputed this survey’s finding. I disputed the idea that “Lancet” is some white-robed oracle outfit with absolutely no dog in the political fight surrounding the testing grounds they cast their study around.

I’m not alone in that position. But in your eyes, my disputation paints me an anti-science Luddite. You’ve taken one single piece of perceived “data” and extrapolated from that to a firm conclusion; that’s a wild leap you’re taking there. Kinda flies in the face of the scientific process, wouldn’t you say?

And now we are here. It’s all amusing to me, because I never addressed the findings in the first comment I left in response to the original post; just said to Gaius there would probably be more media whacks in the RNC’s immediate future, and doubted they were capable of dealing with it. I’ve been playing in a politics playground since I was eight and my Father had me running errands for his Hibernian buddies and various union bosses. I got Democrat bonafides that were built into my DNA, babe.

But my voter reg card says “Independant” because I learned way back then, and had it confirmed as I grew up, that they are ALL corrupt, no matter what side of the aisle. I look at partisan politics as sport, Sport.

You and others here had the temerity to brand me after I commented on the conditions I see on the political playing field. I said “put away the damn abacuses” because I worked on Wall Street for over a decade and learned I could make numbers do anything I damn well wanted them to do, but they better be able to hold up to the smell test. My accountants would assure me they could always defend them, but that never stopped the CFTC from hassling me whenever we submitted stuff that was borderline funky.

These Lancet numbers stunk like a skunk the minute they showed up. Do all the calculations you feel like, but unless you can write up an algorithm that will tell me where all the damn bodies are buried, you’re just playing math-geek in a late night dorm room bull session games. Anyone can cook numbers; been there, done that. Reasonable people require not a math proof, but physical proof, when it comes to how many people are said to be dead.

This survey is just pulling numbers out of an anus, with some methodological malarkey applied as a defence trying to cover the stench.
By Longhairedweirdo, October 12, 2006 @ 11:28 am

TC:

Omar from Iraq the Modelâ€“whoâ€™s actually there, which none of the authors of this paper actually can claim (when it came to compiling the source data they used locals and had it forwarded; in some cases thatâ€™s called â€œhearsay evidenceâ€);

That kind of statement is why someone would call your attitude one of hatred towards science.

They asked local people to do surveys, and forward the raw survey data to them. That’s no more “hearsay evidence” than any other method of data compilation.

â€“says it is purely politically driven drivel. Since the documentâ€™s release I have not seen a flood of statisticians coming out in defense of these findings. In the MSM articles, nobody among the people reporters usually call to explain these kinds of stories (where for the most part, the reporters are oblivious to the credibility of anything scientific they are covering) seems to say they consider the reportâ€™s conclusions to be bulletproofly constructed and inarguably conclusive.

1) people aren’t flooding out to talk about this because the media doesn’t think people care. Exempli gratia, you are willing to insist this must be wrong in some way, and aren’t willing to dig in to find the truth.

2) No statistician is going to call another’s work “bulletproof” without going over *everything*. Every statistician who has read the articles has said the methodology is sound.

Mainly, the defenders Iâ€™m finding are people commenting on frigginâ€™ blogs.

And attention in the blogsphere has never driven a story that the mainstream media ignored, right?
By melior, October 12, 2006 @ 11:44 am

Thankfully for science, the “argument from incredulity” you present is not given much credence by real peer-reviewed journals.

You may, however, have a strong chance of being accepted as a fellow at the Discovery Institute for Intelligent Design. Apply today!
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 12, 2006 @ 11:46 am

Oh, and Engineer? Lancet’s number is higher than the toll after Bomber Command dropped nearly a million tons of stuff, indiscriminately, leveling entire cities, on Europe during WWII.

So no, those cluster bombs don’t come close to a mitigating factor.
By Gaius, October 12, 2006 @ 12:06 pm

But then proof by insult is also not accepted.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 12, 2006 @ 12:28 pm

The pullquote used for your reasoning to explain my “hatred of science” branding is patently ridiculous. “He find the methods questionable; therefore, He despises Science in its entirety.” It’s as lame as your little Latin EG. Good God, you’re probably college educated, aren’t you? And never were forced to plant your ass in a Rhetoric 101 class.

“2) No statistician is going to call anotherâ€™s work â€œbulletproofâ€ without going over *everything*.”

Which goes back to my original question which has drawn me further into this circle jerk of a comment thread than I ever expected: Who were the “peers” that did the review;accepted it as solidly constructed, and signed off on the report’s release. Supposedly, those folks DID go over *everything*. Just ’cause Lancet claimed it happened don’t mean it’s true. Let’s hear who signed off on this thing.

Or maybe Lancet’s reviewers are akin to Jason Leopold’s “sources” in his reportage of Karl Rove’s signed and sealed “Plamegate” indictment.

“And attention in the blogsphere has never driven a story that the mainstream media ignored, right?”

Dude, I just checked Memeorandum. The only mention was this piece from Jane Galt. She, too, thinks the numbers are bunk.

The blogs have already written this off and gone looking for better material than this farcical bit of partisan fluff.
By MathMatics Major, October 12, 2006 @ 12:39 pm

TC, how many people (civilian and military) died in WWII???? How long was WWII? What was the pre, current ans post war mortality rate? Don’t bring up WWII to support your claim here because if you look into the 62million people(3% of the worlds population) killed world wide due to WWII then you’ll see 4% of the iraqi population killed in the last 3 years 7 months is not a crazy number.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 12, 2006 @ 12:47 pm

Triple M? the period I cited was 1940-1945. And mostly involved one country getting the bejeezus beat out of them, Germany.

Now, I got a squash I grew in my yard that’s kinda more orange than green sitting here; does that make it a citrus fruit?

///////////
slashies rule the world!
By Black Jack, October 12, 2006 @ 1:22 pm

Gaius, given the number of defenders and their hysterical pronouncements here, an outside observer could easily conclude that Bill Clinton wrote the silly report, and that Sandy Burgler stands ready to verify the conclusions, as soon as he looks at the data in his socks.

Next Lancet could shift focus to Lebanon. A good follow-up survey could include asking “Green Helmet Man” how many ambulances were necessary to transport all those cadavers around the war ravaged countryside so they could be photographed over and over again at different locations. You know, just to perk up the totals and compensate for any unintentional oversights.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 12, 2006 @ 5:45 pm

Guys? Dolls? Longhaired Hippies?

Let’s all breath through our bellybuttons,
deep and earnestly,
and say, “Ohhmmm… WTF?”
And grab a single malt and a flagon of beer.
By John, October 13, 2006 @ 8:42 am

I know that TC@LP doesn’t like math, but here’s some more just for fun:

US Deaths (in the continental 48 states):
2,450,149.2159 deaths per year in 9,631,420 sq km
0.254 per sq km per year

Iraqi Deaths:
166,250 deaths per year in 437,072 sq km (665,000 over 4 years)
0.380 per sq km per year

That’s a 67 percent increase in geographic density over the United States, a first world country at peace within our borders. I don’t even see a funeral procession very often, and we handle the dead bodies just fine. In a country experiencing open war, this isn’t surprising, and it doesn’t mean that they would be “tripping over” the bodies.
By Drewski, October 15, 2006 @ 1:34 pm

Have any of you got the idea that LeatherPenquin is actually a red herring and he is only stirring up anger to keep us talking and keep the study “controversial” — official GOP/NRA/oil industry tactics. Plants like these are everywhere — usually spotted by their arrogant incoherance — don’t feed them and they will die off.
By Gaius, October 15, 2006 @ 1:37 pm

No, Drew, TC is just TC.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, October 20, 2006 @ 4:07 pm

Drewski?
Sorry, I went on vacation… that what us evil bastards guys that created their own dime do.

Anyway, short answer: “NO.” I live on Staten Island, NY. The only frickin’ place in the city where Repubs have any stones….

And I regularly throw rocks at the little guido I refer to as my “Congressional robot,” while my Wife asks, “”You know this guy… and you rip him right to his face?”
ME: He’s a big boy; he can take it.”
HER: “What if he gets pissed?”
ME: “He walkies into my world and I got better guns.”