[Vision2020] Civilian Death Toll In Iraq

[Ted Moffett]

All:

The data set offered by Iraqbodycount is worth an examination.  There are
actual incident by incident death counts exhaustively documented.  Minimum
and maximum civilian death tolls are given:

  50721 56219

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

Iraqbodycount offers a defense of their methods of obtaining their numbers:

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/

Discussion of the Lancet study from Iraqbodycount:

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14.php?PHPSESSID=2d77d564fcd14ef8a770afdcc7b36f73

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett




On 12/16/06, Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/16/06, g. crabtree <jampot at adelphia.net> wrote:
> > From Slate magazine (no friend to conservatives)
> >
> > 100,000 Dead-or 8,000How many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of
> the
> > war?
> > By Fred Kaplan
> > Posted Friday, Oct. 29, 2004, at 6:49 PM ET
> > The authors of a peer-reviewed study, conducted by a survey team from
> Johns
> > Hopkins University, claim that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died
> as a
> > result of the war. Yet a close look at the actual study, published
> online
> > today by the British medical journal the Lancet, reveals that this
> number is
> > so loose as to be meaningless.
> >
> > The report's authors derive this figure by estimating how many Iraqis
> died
> > in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting surveys on how
> > many died in a similar period after the invasion began (more on those
> > surveys later), and subtracting the difference. That difference-the
> number
> > of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period-signifies the war's toll.
> That
> > number is 98,000. But read the passage that cites the calculation more
> > fully:
> >
> >   We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000)
> during
> > the post-war period.
> >
> > Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what
> the
> > set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of
> you,
> > I'll spell it out in plain English-which, disturbingly, the study never
> > does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the
> war-caused
> > deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited
> in
> > plain language-98,000-is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly
> vast
> > range.)
> >
> > This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.
> >
> >
> >
> > You can read the rest of the article at http://www.slate.com/id/2108887/
>
> G --
>
> This is in reference to a mortality study done in 2004; a different
> study than the one done in 2006. The one in 2006 used a sample size of
> 4,000, spread across the country, had a 99.9% confidence interval, and
> required people claiming deaths in their families to produce death
> certificates. The main difference is in the number of cluster points
> (that is, physical locations where families were surveyed) used to
> survey families, which was limited by the fact that travel in Iraq is
> so difficult.
>
> Of course, if the US government was collecting numbers on civilian
> mortality, as they have in every conflict since World War II, we
> wouldn't have to rely on investigators from Johns Hopkins. But,
> peculiarly, they have decided that they just don't want to know how
> many civilians are dying in this war. One would think that that number
> would be relevant to someone.
>
> -- ACS
>
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