Shocking Tally of Iraq Civilian Causalities

[Taem]

Has anyone heard of the report done by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins University?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2...49,00.html

About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
The study, which was carried out in 33 randomly-chosen neighbourhoods of Iraq representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died of heart attacks, stroke and chronic illness. The risk of a violent death is now 58 times higher than it was before the invasion.

Last night the Lancet medical journal fast-tracked the survey to publication on its website after rapid, but extensive peer review and editing because, said Lancet editor Richard Horton, "of its importance to the evolving security situation in Iraq". But the findings raised important questions also for the governments of the United Sates and Britain who, said Dr Horton in a commentary, "must have considered the likely effects of their actions for civilians".

The research was led by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers who went to the 988 households in the survey were doctors and all those involved in the research on the ground, says the paper, risked their lives to collect the data. Householders were asked about births and deaths in the 14.6 months before the March 2003 invasion, and births and deaths in the 17.8 months afterwards.

When death certificates were not available, there were good reasons, say the authors. "We think it is unlikely that deaths were falsely recorded. Interviewers also believed that in the Iraqi culture it was unlikely for respondents to fabricate deaths," they write.

They found an increase in infant mortality from 29 to 57 deaths per 1,000 live births, which is consistent with the pattern in wars, where women are unable or unwilling to get to hospital to deliver babies, they say. The other increase was in violent death, which was reported in 15 of the 33 clusters studied and which was mostly attributed to airstrikes.

"Despite widespread Iraqi casualties, household interview data do not show evidence of widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the ground," write the researchers. Only three of the 61 deaths involved coalition soldiers killing Iraqis with small arms fire. In one case, a 56-year-old man might have been a combatant, they say, in the second a 72-year-old man was shot at a checkpoint and in the third, an armed guard was mistaken for a combatant and shot during a skirmish. In the second two cases, American soldiers apologised to the families.

"The remaining 58 killings (all attributed to US forces by interviewees) were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry," they write.

The biggest death toll recorded by the researchers was in Falluja, which registered two-thirds of the violent deaths they found. "In Falluja, 23 households of 52 visited were either temporarily or permanently abandoned. Neighbours interviewed described widespread death in most of the abandoned houses but could not give adequate details for inclusion in the survey," they write.

The researchers criticise the failure of the coalition authorities to attempt to assess for themselves the scale of the civilian casualties.

"US General Tommy Franks is widely quoted as saying 'we don't do body counts'," they write, but occupying armies have responsibilities under the Geneva convention."This survey shows that with modest funds, four weeks and seven Iraqi team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilan deaths could be obtained."

I was in my car yesterday listening to NPR news when this subject came up. Mind you that I'm aware of civilian causality rates in wartime and don't find the tally of 100,000+ civilians overly shocking so much as the total our government officials are claiming at a mere 25,000 civilian deaths:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php

It's ironic that the majority of the civilian causalities are being caused by air strikes meant to lower the civilian death toll. From what I heard in the broadcast, the mathmatical formula Leis used is very precise and highly regarded in the scientific community as the best means of conducting reports of this nature. Other than that, I don’t have much of an opinion on the subject, but thought I’d share this interesting article with the LL.

[vor_lord]

Has anyone heard of the report done by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins University?

I was in my car yesterday listening to NPR news when this subject came up. Mind you that I'm aware of civilian causality rates in wartime and don't find the tally of 100,000+ civilians overly shocking so much as the total our government officials are claiming at a mere 25,000 civilian deaths:

It's ironic that the majority of the civilian causalities are being caused by air strikes meant to lower the civilian death toll. From what I heard in the broadcast, the mathmatical formula Leis used is very precise and highly regarded in the scientific community as the best means of conducting reports of this nature. Other than that, I don’t have much of an opinion on the subject, but thought I’d share this interesting article with the LL.
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Ok, where is our resident statistician? Concillian?




edit: typo

[Occhidiangela]

Has anyone heard of the report done by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins University?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2...49,00.html
I was in my car yesterday listening to NPR news when this subject came up. Mind you that I'm aware of civilian causality rates in wartime and don't find the tally of 100,000+ civilians overly shocking so much as the total our government officials are claiming at a mere 25,000 civilian deaths:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php

It's ironic that the majority of the civilian causalities are being caused by air strikes meant to lower the civilian death toll. From what I heard in the broadcast, the mathmatical formula Leis used is very precise and highly regarded in the scientific community as the best means of conducting reports of this nature. Other than that, I don’t have much of an opinion on the subject, but thought I’d share this interesting article with the LL.
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Strange numbers. It doesn't pass muster with my "does it make sense" test due to what I know about Iraqi casualties induced by air operations, Apr-Oct 2004.

For example, a raid in the spring of 2004 killed 40+ foreign fighters who were at a way station between the Syrian border and Baghdad. A party/person/faction in Ar Ramadi, who may have had land or relatives or something lost in the raid, made a big public spectacle about "a wedding having been bombed" and the international media picked it up, Al Jazera running a bunch of footage of caskets draped in coloful cloth. Sorry, folks, but there was no wedding at that location/grid. (Day of the week was wrong in any case . . .) Our intrepid researcher, however, would probably add that 40+ to his civilian casualty list, even though it was new recruits to Al Douri's or Zarqawi's insurgency who were killed. If one such report of "civilian" casualties can dupe such a one has he, how reliable can the numbers be? I am unsure.

He runs into the profound challenge in his attempts at rational accounting in determining how, in a guerilla war, just what is and is not a non combatant. He appears to default to "it must be a non combatant unless proven otherwise." I am pretty sure he was not on the ground counting dead bodies. That assumption strikes me as requiring a large leap of faith, since as a logical tool it fails even a modest test. And Johns Hopkins endorses this fellow? Interesting. NPR editors have their own agenda.

The majority of Iraqi deaths in the past two years have come from the insurgency/bombs/shootings/kidnappings, etc. For example: it took a full war and a lot of IED's to kill about 2000 Americans and wound about 15,000. In the past six months, about 3600 Iraqis have been killed or wounded by IED's, suicide bombs, shootings, raids, gun battles, etc.

The profound rarity of bombs falling from on high I can attest to based on what I know from professional experience. Put a different way, unless people had been induced to stand in groups of 100 or more just before a bomb was dropped, enough ordnance has not been dropped to kill even a fraction of the number he claims.

Now, if the death toll included March 2003 to Sept 2003, which includes the large muscle movement fighting that went on for three months and that damnable "Shock and Awe" thing, the problem becomes that unless you have examined each casualty event for cause -- be it bomb, artillery, undisciplined fire, and a whole host of other ways to die, to include folks who were killed the the Fedayeen Saddam -- his total is hard to support. It is yet another estimate, like Mayor Nagin's estimate of 10,000 dead in New Orleans from Katrina. His analysis rests on a series of estimations.

"mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts."

Now, if he is attributing second and third order deaths (casualties = deaths or dead and wounded, I wonder?) to the alleged infrastructure problems in Iraq, some of which bombs probably caused, the cause stated of "air strikes" is pure bullsh**.

Why do I say that?

First off, there are options to dying from bad water that have nothing to do with bombs from the air, and secondly, the last two years have seen a sustained effort by the partisans of various sorts to deliberately sabotage public utilities. With bombs, from the ground. So, whose bomb "caused" the death of Achmed junior thanks to poisoned water, dead doctor, or a myriad of other related "causes."

The charaterization of "airstrikes as a cause" smells. I say this also due to what I know about what targets were explicity removed/prohibited from target lists, such as

Water plants
Electrical plants
Sewage plants
and all the usual Geneva prohibitions like hospitals

He may be on to something, and he is trying to fill in a grisly gap of knowledge about the impact the war has had on Iraq since March 2003: a daunting task.

Where are the mounds of bodies to support his claim of this mass slaughter from the air?

Only the dead know for sure.

Occhi

EDIT:

PS: "

We think it is unlikely that deaths were falsely recorded. Interviewers also believed that in the Iraqi culture it was unlikely for respondents to fabricate deaths," they write.

That's an interesting assumption to make when making claims of the magnitude of the study's focus. Depends on who they talked to.

[Occhidiangela]

EVIL DOUBLE POST!

Occhi

[Garrin]

Very good rebuttle. I agree 100%

Many of the claims made were on enourmous leaps of faith.

And Air strikes are VERY far and few between since my deployment. (We had 1 500 pound bomb the entire deployment for my entire brigade sector. And hellfire missles from apache gunships and kiowa's was extremely limited. With only a handful of the strikes for the year. All in eastern baghdad btw.)

On the other hand, IED's, VBIED's (Car bombs), and other insurgent activity was constant, and while much of it was directed at American forces (ie. ME!), They missed their targets more often than hit it. Or specifically targeted soft Shia targets.

Huge holes in this report if you ask me.

[Occhidiangela]

Very good rebuttle.  I agree 100%

Many of the claims made were on enourmous leaps of faith.

And Air strikes are VERY far and few between since my deployment.  (We had 1 500 pound bomb the entire deployment for my entire brigade sector.  And hellfire missles from apache gunships and kiowa's was extremely limited.  With only a handful of the strikes for the year.  All in eastern baghdad btw.)

On the other hand, IED's, VBIED's (Car bombs), and other insurgent activity was constant, and while much of it was directed at American forces (ie. ME!), They missed their targets more often than hit it.  Or specifically targeted soft Shia targets. 

Huge holes in this report if you ask me.
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The sampling method can skew results if most of your sampling areas are high action areas like . . . Fallujah . . . and one then extrapolates from there. :P I hope they took that into account.

I'd like to see the original research and better understand his methodology.

Occhi

[whyBish]

The sampling method can skew results if most of your sampling areas are high action areas like . . . Fallujah . . . and one then extrapolates from there.  :P  I hope they took that into account. 

I'd like to see the original research and better understand his methodology.

Occhi
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Eh, I'd just ignore it. Sounds more like random number generation to me... and I'm baised against the war. Sounds just like the usual mistaking of precision with accuracy to me.

Even if we did know the exact number of civilian casualties (if that even has a universally accepted definition), what would knowing that number change?

[Chaerophon]

Even if we did know the exact number of civilian casualties (if that even has a universally accepted definition), what would knowing that number change?

If the number was that high, I like to think that it would change public sentiment. Bloodless war is a very popular fiction.

[eppie]

Just like everybody here I don't know the exact details. So I will not say you are wrong or something. However, why should I believe you and not the guy from the article. I think you as well are biased, I mean being actually there as a part of the army.
And as Al Jazeera claims things that turn out not to be true, I'm sure also US media is doing that (I don't see any reason why not). Probably the real number of casualties lies somewhere in between. (the "playing" with numbers by both sides in a war is something that always happens, so we also should not be too shocked I think).

Anyway, I will stop now, otherwise Dick Cheney will tell somebody from the press the fact that my wife is a secret agent , undercover in China.....

[Occhidiangela]

Just like everybody here I don't know the exact details. So I will not say you are wrong or something. However, why should I believe you and not the guy from the article. I think you as well are biased, I mean being actually there as a part of the army.
And as Al Jazeera claims things that turn out not to be true, I'm sure also US media is doing that (I don't see any reason why not). Probably the real number of casualties lies somewhere in between. (the "playing" with numbers by both sides in a war is something that always happens, so we also should not be too shocked I think).

Anyway, I will stop now, otherwise Dick Cheney will tell somebody from the press the fact that my wife is a secret agent , undercover in China.....
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eppie

I understand your latent mistrust of persons military, however, given that I accrued knowledge based on involvement in the exact process under critique, your assertion of bias is at best a misuse of the word, at worst, a charge that I am unable to look at this grisly matter without blinders on. I will assume the former. :)

I have a perspective and a detailed understanding of casualty rates induced by things falling from the sky. I am also attuned to how casualties are characterized, and the modern art of Information Warfare: using information for a political goal.

My understanding is admittedly incomplete (I, like the author of the study, was also NOT on the ground counting bodies one at a time) but is based on a six month sample of the air strikes he charges with direct causation, as well as how events are characterized by observers to fit their agenda. (Cheney or Zarqawi, Rummy or Berlusconi, Chalabi or Al Sistani, Sadr or Tony Blair: each has an agenda and tries to fit observed events/facts into it.)

The numbers don't add up based on my sample, not even close, however, my own "sample" is taken under the set of conditions that were true for six months of a thirty month war. I acknowledged that conditions and events changed over time.

Your charge of bias, or rather what appears to be behind that charge, is not only groundless, it seems to betray your own bias vis a vis Americans, and military persons. Do you make the assumption that everyone interviewed is telling an objective truth? Ask any cop about the reliability of eyewitnesses as measured by objectivity.

How do you conclude that I am biased, based on my comments in this thread, which include "I'd like to see the original research to better understand his methodology" and "he may be on to something." My having served in the military in the operation does not automatically make me biased, but it will, I freely admit, color my understanding, which I am wise enough to account for.

A US Marine Captain recently left the Corps to work for Al Jazeera. He was there, in Iraq. Is he doomed to be a biased reporter? Do you assume that he too is victim of a bias that he cannot control, nor overcome, due to the handicap of having served and operated in the military in Iraq?

Work with me here, eppie. No one is a victim of their experience if they keep an eye open to new understanding.

Chaer: the "bloodless war" myth is indeed one of the most ludicrous bits of fantasy floating about, though I wonder at who propogates it? The Silver Bullet Crowd in Washington have been spinning that yarn for a long time, most egregiously in the wake of Desert Storm (1991 PG War.) But I digress, it's a very sore spot with me.

FWIW: Have you read anything by Chris Hedges? He's a former war correspondent whose commentary on war is very much out of the ordinary, and wel worth reading by both military persons and pacifists.

Occhi

[eppie]

eppie

I understand your latent mistrust of persons military, however, given that I accrued knowledge based on involvement in the exact process under critique, your assertion of bias is at best a misuse of the word, at worst, a charge that I am unable to look at this grisly matter without blinders on.  I will assume the former.    :) 

No I don't mistrust anybody just because he or she belongs to a certain group. I'm just saying that in this discussion there are people that have certain reasons to bend the facts to what is better for them. So I'm not accusing you of being biased, lying or something else. I'm just pointing out that in the topic of "saying different numbers for a death count" somebody must be "not speaking the truth". And I can not, just because you are a fellow lurker, 100 % go with your story.

Remember earlier discussions about the reason to go to war to Iraq etc. My healthy mistrust of "people in power" actually turned out to give me an opinion that now turns out to be very close to truth. But don't worry that is just believe everything that is "in my street" I try to stay critical all the time.

So try to look at it from my perspective; why would you (if you were me) believe somebody like you more than for example the writer of the article.
At the same time I can also fully understand that you will not always take for granted what I say.

eppie

[Armin]

I'd like to see the original research and better understand his methodology.

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For you and anyone else interested to read the original article, I have the file as a .pdf (courtesy of our company subscription to the Lancet. :whistling: )

Drop me an email with your addy and I'll send you a copy.

[jahcs]

There was a story on the BBC a few months ago where a reporting team was a short distance from an insurgent bombing of an Iraqi police station.

There was footage of shocked and saddened civilians. Then they cut to a man who picks up what looks to be a rusty piece of drainpipe or stovepipe and insists it is part of a missile fired by an attack helicopter that had begun orbiting the scene.

This incited the mob instantly began blaming the helicopter - which did not arrive on the scene until after the bombing. It was pulled from it's normal patrol to provide security for the bomb site. The BBC crew was trying to bring this to the attention of the Iraqi civilians. They didn't care. Many of them suddenly recalled eyewitness memories of the helicopter firing on the police station.
Mob mentality is a dangerous thing.

Also, what separates an insurgent death from a civilian death in the eyes of the media and the Iraqi populace? If an insurgent with an AK or RPG is killed you can bet other insurgents in the area will confiscate the dead person's weapons and equipment if possible. Suddenly that armed insurgent who moments before was actively fighting is now an unarmed civilian, caught in the crossfire at best, actively targeted by 'evil Americans' at worst.
That's just one benefit of not having a military uniform.

EDIT: I'd just like to add that I would bet the U.S. totals for casualties may be understated and the Iraqi totals are almost guaranteed to be overstated. Somewhere in the middle is where the truth probably lies.

EDITED EDIT: Oh, and one more thing that I would like to say anytime a discussion of Iraq comes up:

If the insurgents stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up we will go home sooner!

[Occhidiangela]

No I don't mistrust anybody just because he or she belongs to a certain group. I'm just saying that in this discussion there are people that have certain reasons to bend the facts to what is better for them. So I'm not accusing you of being biased, lying or something else. I'm just pointing out that in the topic of "saying different numbers for a death count" somebody must be "not speaking the truth". And I can not, just because you are a fellow lurker, 100 % go with your story.

Remember earlier discussions about the reason to go to war to Iraq etc. My healthy mistrust of "people in power" actually turned out to give me an opinion that now turns out to be very close to truth. But don't worry that is just believe everything that is "in my street" I try to stay critical all the time.

So try to look at it from my perspective; why would you (if you were me) believe somebody like you more than for example the writer of the article.
At the same time I can also fully understand that you will not always take for granted what I say.

eppie
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Understood. You are still uncomfortable with my less than liberal leanings in general. Got it.

What does that have to do with my professional experience ON THIS PARTICULAR TOPIC. There are a lot of things about this war, political and technical, where I am no better informed than you vis a vis facts, and so our background opinions will shape our impressions of what we can learn. On this specific topic, I have technical knowledge that I draw on to inform my judgment, and thus my concerns on the study's merits.

Occhi

[Occhidiangela]

EDITED EDIT:  Oh, and one more thing that I would like to say anytime a discussion of Iraq comes up:

If the insurgents stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up we will go home sooner!
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Consider who benefits by the US continuing to throw blood and treasure in to Iraq. Consider who doesn't. What chance is there that when one faction stops supporting various "insurgent" activity, a line has already formed to replace that support role? I'd say pretty high.

Occhi

[Minionman]

EDITED EDIT:  Oh, and one more thing that I would like to say anytime a discussion of Iraq comes up:

If the insurgents stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up we will go home sooner!
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The fighters in this case have the problem of one method tunnel vision, where they will try to solve a problem by throwing the same things at it again and again. I don't know about support networks and such, and who sends the money for what, but the thought process seems to be "U.S. bad (for whatever reason, different from person to person). Anything brought by U.S. bad. Bad must be blown up. Anything from U.s. must be blown up". Or maybe it's "I don't like U.S. I like commander. when he tells me to blow up U.S., I'll do it". I haven't done much besides here sometimes about a bombing, but from what I hear, this seems to be the thought process in people's heads.

The other example is blowing up power plants and such. It doesn't make any logical, big picture sense to blow up power plants and such, they are free infrastructure courtesy of the U.S. People who do attack them either haven't been thinking about whether doing something different would work better, or have some other end goals in mind.

edit: "other goals" could be something as simple as the someone wanting to look good by attacking the U.S., or some cons[piracy type thing, or something in between.

[Jester]

"No one is a victim of their experience if they keep an eye open to new understanding."

Thanks for that gem, Occhi. I'll keep that one around. It's something we could all use a good reminding of every now and then.

-Jester

[Jester]

"If the insurgents stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up we will go home sooner!"

Methinks they might phrase that backwards:

"If you go home sooner, we will stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up!"

Which I think may lead to this problem going on for longer than it needs to, since each side is waiting for the other to stop. Strange, but it always seems to work that way. Israel and Palestine have been at it for about 60 years now.

-Jester

[jahcs]

"If the insurgents stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up we will go home sooner!"

Methinks they might phrase that backwards:

"If you go home sooner, we will stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up!"

Which I think may lead to this problem going on for longer than it needs to, since each side is waiting for the other to stop. Strange, but it always seems to work that way. Israel and Palestine have been at it for about 60 years now.

-Jester
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Our current leadership refuses to give up and IMHO I don't think we can afford to give up either.

[Occhidiangela]

"If the insurgents stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up we will go home sooner!"

Methinks they might phrase that backwards:

"If you go home sooner, we will stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up!"

Which I think may lead to this problem going on for longer than it needs to, since each side is waiting for the other to stop. Strange, but it always seems to work that way. Israel and Palestine have been at it for about 60 years now.

-Jester
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You may be right, but here's the risk problem, seen with a slightly wider angle lens. It is believed in Washington that departingh now leaves too big a power vacuum, which as it is filled will take the shape of a wider spread civil war than is going on now, or worse. More dead people, lots more dead people, on a weekly basis. Risk decision: do we risk a bigger war by pulling out and giving the various factions one less target to attack? Will the aggregate volume of attacks decrease if Americans simple go away? I don't think so, because the Sunni's have been disarmed, they are a minority, and there is a majority who are well armed with a grudge and a desire for power. Think Hutus, Rwanda, and what they did to Tutsis, for what some folks see as the future if Iraq, south and central, if America pulls out now.

Remember Colin Powell's cryptic comment about pottery shops? "If you break it, you own it?" Well, in "breaking" the power structure the US (and the coalition of the billing) took on ownership of the problems caused. Kofi Annan, for all that I think he's an incompetent, was right when he called the US "occupying power." That is the role America fell into when Kofi bailed out after the truck bomb hit the UN office building in Baghdad. Action talks and BS walks, so Kofi walked. Still, he was right on that matter.

The "transition authority until the power vacuum we created fills back up with something good enough" (aka occupying power) is obliged to try and keep a lid on the chaos. Good enough means, I think, NOT a spreading civil war. Defining something by what it is not is a hell of a way to run an insane asylum, eh?

Do you remember our conversation before the Iraq war started? Deciding to opt for war was a big risk, and some unknowns on the back side were (and they appear unresolved as of this writing)

Can you impose democracy at the point of a bayonet?

Is the creation of a second Ismalic Republic in the Persian Gulf (a likely outcome foreseen even then by rogues and others) an acceptable outcome, strategicaly for the US? For the global economy/community in general? (Second may be a different answer than the first.)

Can Iraq be expected to break asunder like Yugoslavia once the glue (Saddam, his will, his team) is removed?

At the time, I did not see how Al Qaeda in particular would capitalize on the chaos, though I fully expected Iran to capitalize on the power vacuum next door. They did.

The "on the ground question" you ask is too simplistic for the situation and the obligation (moral and legal) undertaken by "breaking" the power structure in the first place.

At least a foot and a fist in the tar baby, if not a couple of ears as well.

I wonder sometimes if GWB asks "Hmm, anyone know where a nearby briar patch is? Where are Brer Fox and Brer Bear when you need tham?"

Probably not. Probably sees the cracker barrel as half full. :whistling:

Occhi