Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War

[Chewbacca]

Shocking to consider if the estimate is even close to accurate.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6648889

LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there were 100,000 "excess deaths" in 18 months.

The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.

"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.

"The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing a lot of women and children," Roberts told Reuters.

The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which the Iraq war has been a major issue.

Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the researchers described what they found as shocking.

The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods.

Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as 6,370.

By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting, according to the Pentagon.

VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS

The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.

"What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban areas and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said.
Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military action in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians."

"We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so detrimental to civilians populations," he told Reuters in an interview.

The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each, recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths.

They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.

Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.

Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.

"Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes," Roberts added in the study.

Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed, edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the evolving security situation in Iraq.

"But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq -- in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre-emptive war," Horton said in an editorial.

[Chewbacca]

Here is another link with some more info on how the survey was conducted.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996596

[Azred]

I suppose none of the blame is to be laid at the doorstep of militant groups who house themselves next door to places like schools, hospitals, and homes in an effort to give themselves some human shields, right?
If more Iraqi people would rise up against the radical groups who do more damage to the country than we ever could then some of those deaths could be avoided.

Azred, we also can't blame those suicide bombers who detonate in the middle of crowds of civilians...nope this is obviously the work of Bush and his desire to cleanse the world of all things arabic. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Azred: I suppose none of the blame is to be laid at the doorstep of militant groups who house themselves next door to places like schools, hospitals, and homes in an effort to give themselves some human shields, right? If more Iraqi people would rise up against the radical groups who do more damage to the country than we ever could then some of those deaths could be avoided.

Its their home, and thier turf, and thier people. In some places like Fallujah-where the civilain death rate ( and the number of airstrikes) has been much higher than the average the insurgence have the support of alot of the very people you think should rise up against them.

But this is discussing the ripples in the pond, not the pebble thrown in which caused them.

[Aerich]

Well, it's hard to figure out casualty numbers in a war zone, and even harder to attribute deaths to what caused them. There could be just as many deaths from loss of infrastructure (transport of water, food, medical supplies) as there are from bombing. I really don't know.

100 000 seems on the high side. That said, even if it's as "low" as 20 000, that's still a lot of death.

The sample size makes me a little suspicious. 988 households surveyed (according to the article Chewbacca linked to) is actually not that many in a country of however many million people. For argument's sake, say that covers one hundred thousand citizens (100 per household surveyed). What's Iraq's population? 20 million? So the extrapolation is based on a sample size of maybe 0.5%. Moreover, there was actually only 30 locations surveyed. The margin of error for that study is likely quite high.

At any rate, war is nasty, regardless of the actual numbers. Bickering about the numbers is a side topic to the real issue. If American citizens have a problem with the Iraq situation, they should speak with their vote. There's not much that wringing of the hands can do.

[Azred]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: Its their home, and thier turf, and thier people. In some places like Fallujah-where the civilain death rate ( and the number of airstrikes) has been much higher than the average the insurgence have the support of alot of the very people you think should rise up against them.

Well, I suppose that makes it all right, then. I have news for the people who support the insurgents, though: the insurgents don't give a damn about the average people of Iraq, only in pursuing their own short-term power-grab goals.

[John D Harris]

There are innocents in a combat zone! Bombs and bullets do not discriminate, I've said all along that war is terrible and people die, it must not be entered into lightly, but when entered into it must be done with extreme predjudgedice(sp?).

[Lucern]

988 households surveyed (according to the article Chewbacca linked to) is actually not that many in a country of however many million people.

True enough Aerich, but I'll add something I learned from a social science stats class (very amateur I know lol). It's only 12 away from 1000, which is an acceptable number of individuals assuming a reasonably random sampling OR if they're proportioned by the percentages reflected in the population (city vs village, Sunni, Shi'i, and Kurd, man and woman, young and old) AND randomized within those groups. You aren't likely to fall victim to simple mathmatical anomalies assuming that your sample is as random as you hope. That being said, it probably falls into a 5% margin of error, as so much statistics do. By the way, I've often seen samples three times the size used for the whole of the United States. Practically, it can take researchers a lot of time to compile all of those answers and run the tests depending on how many variables (questions and personal info usually) there are.

However, one study is never enough to conclude anything by. There's a lot of room for error in statistics, so it's important to do more studies.

[ 10-30-2004, 02:54 PM: Message edited by: Lucern ]

[Gab]

100,000 seems like an awfully high estimate and probbaly has a margin of error. Regardless of the exact number , that's a shit load of deaths! Am I the only person here who thinks too many innocent people are dying in an unnecessary war, for a democracy that may be unacheivable? Also adding to the fact that we were mislead into this war to begin with (Saddam never had WMDs or posed any real threat to America), I can only conclude that this war is immoral and not worth the cost in lives.

[ 10-30-2004, 04:21 PM: Message edited by: Gab ]