[Vision2020] tony's worries for american women

[Sunil Ramalingam]

Gary,

Why didn't our government keep track of these deaths from the beginning?

Sunil


>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>
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] tony's worries for american women
>Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:35:32 -0800
>
>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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