[Vision2020] tony's worries for american women

[Pat Kraut]

I'd also like to know if they were killed by terriorists or US soldiers??
The Iraqis do know the difference ya know.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "g. crabtree" <jampot at adelphia.net>
To: "Andreas Schou" <ophite at gmail.com>
Cc: <vision2020 at moscow.com>; "Bookpeople of Moscow" <Bookpeople at moscow.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] tony's worries for american women


The first time around the guesstimate was 100,000 and now you'd like for us
to believe the number cooked up in the "more reliable study" is on the order
of 650,000? A difference of over half a million more people all because the
surveyors could travel with a bit less difficulty and were more stringent in
their requirements for proof? Or is it the two additional years? A quarter
of a million people per year is some mighty fine killin'. I'm sorry but I
don't care what your position on the war is, a person has to find something
fishy in such a major disparity in the figures. Unless, of course, the
numbers support preconceived notions and biases...

g
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andreas Schou" <ophite at gmail.com>
To: "g. crabtree" <jampot at adelphia.net>
Cc: "Tony" <tonytime at clearwire.net>; <vision2020 at moscow.com>; "Bookpeople of
Moscow" <Bookpeople at moscow.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 10:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] tony's worries for american women


> 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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