In today's Sydney Morning Herald Miranda Devine has a go at the Lancet study, writing
The British medical journal The Lancet published a paper last October (timed deliberately, its authors admit, before the US presidential election), estimating that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected if the war had not happened. Since then, this figure is constantly, unquestioningly cited as an article of faith.
And yet the research has been criticised enough by credible people to have doubt cast on what is, after all, only an estimate based on a sample of 998 Iraqi households, which even the researchers said was too small.
No, it hasn't been criticised by any credible people. All of the experts in the field that have been consulted agree that the study was sound. And no, the researchers did not say that the sample was too small. Devine seems to have made that bit up.
Devine continues:
When you read the fine print, the researchers found there was a 95 per cent chance the number of excess deaths lay between 8000 and 194,000. By choosing the midway point, they were being "conservative".A different figure comes from an independent team of researchers running the website Iraq Body Count, which counts only civilian deaths, and only those confirmed by press reports or hospital and morgue officials. Yesterday it was between 16,069 and 18,339.
Not all values in the confidence interval are equally likely. The ones in the middle are more likely and 100,000 is the most likely number. It's conservative because the estimate excludes the deaths in Falluja, so the true number is more likely to be greater than 100,000 than less. The number from the Iraq Body Count does not contradict the Lancet study in any way at all since it is measuring something different. Nobody expects every single death to be reported in the press.
Devine continues:
Can't the war critics see, even if mistakes have been made, that Iraq is on track to a brighter future and that is a cause worth supporting? Can't they see their unremitting negativity has consequences?
Can't the war supporters see that their wilful refusal to count the deaths of Iraqi civilians has consequences? Why won't war supporters accept responsibility for the deaths that their war has caused?
Can't newspapers give a simple test before they let people write about statisical arguemnts? Just ask if they can explain what is meant by a confidence interval. If they can't, the paper probably shouldn't publish their work.
Miranda's a sweetie with graduate qualifications in maths, I believe. She writes well and means better but has fallen in with a bad crowd, like the insuperable Paddy. (That was "insuperable", thank you).
It's a crowd with lotsa inyoface moral values, and strong faith that lies like der short fuhrer tells are all and only for the best. Miranda is better than that, I think Tim could at least offer her some deprogramming - but of course she'd have to want to change.
"people of goodwill could have reached different conclusions"
That's certainly true, but this Lancet study is quickly proving that those same people are equally good at making a**es of themselves.
War supporters (of which I'm one) need to realize that the war has indeed taken tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and it's time to start asking some hard questions about why things got so bad.
As for war opponents ... a study that compares deaths in the first 14 months of the war vs. the previous 14 months? PUH-LEASE! What about the Iran-Iraq war? The gassing of the Kurds? The suppression of the Shi'ite revolt? The various Ba'ath pary purges? This thing is going to have to drag out for a decade before it even gets close to Saddam's death toll. Argue against pre-emptive war if want but don't insult my intelligence by saying the Iraqi people and their neighbors won't be better off without Saddam.
"What about the Iran-Iraq war? The gassing of the Kurds? The suppression of the Shi'ite revolt? The various Ba'ath pary purges?"
What about them - they're still dead.
In order to justify the war on humanitarian grounds, you have to argue on the basis not of Saddam's past behaviour but on his likely future behaviour.
Most independent observers put the death toll attributable to the Saddam regime in its later years at no more than a coupel of thousand per year. Those killings would probably have continued had Saddam remained in power. But the absence of WMDs and the poor performance of the Iraqi military during the invasion shows that he no longer had the capacity to inflict the sort of massive harm he had in the past.
There were several attemtped coups against Saddam in the 1990's and there's every proababiltiy that Saddam or his successors would have been overthrown by a coup or a popular uprising in the next few years.
I have no intention of arguing against "pre-emptive war". I support military intervention agaisnt repressive regimes WHERE THE INTERVENTION IS LIKELY TO RESULT IN FEWER DEATHS THAN FAILING TO INTERVENE.
That's why I supported the US interventions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and why I opposed the invasion of Iraq.
BTW, thank you for having the honesty to admit that there were tens of thousands of casualties in the course of the invasion.Anyone who has read military history knows you can't have an extedned bombing campaign followed by extensive urban fighting without inflicting significant casualties.
Scott appears to be one of those rare people, an honest man who favors a particular policy but is willing to admit the truth of evidence he doesn't like.
Stay out of politics, Scott. You'd be eaten alive.
"In order to justify the war on humanitarian grounds, you have to argue on the basis not of Saddam's past behaviour but on his likely future behaviour."
But past behaviour is an indicator of likely future behaviour. Saddam's past behaviour identified him as an all-purpose murderous thug. Whether violently suppressing internal threats, invading two other countries for economic gain, or plotting to kill former President Bush, Saddam had established himself as a highly unpredictable, mass scale killer.
"There were several attemtped coups against Saddam in the 1990's and there's every proababiltiy that Saddam or his successors would have been overthrown by a coup or a popular uprising in the next few years."
There was not " every probability " that Saddam or his successors were going to be overthrown " in the next few years." Virtually all informed government, media and think tank observers of Iraq were in agreement that internal overthrow of Saddam's regime in the forseeable future was unlikely. Thirty-some continuous years in power was solid evidence of the staying power of Saddam.
As we're witnessing in Iraq now, an internal overthrow of Saddam and his sons would not have removed the Baathist power infrastructure that Saddam had spent 30 years cementing into all of Iraq's key institutions. The result would simply have been another Sunni strongman, prone to the same murderous domestic political strategy for consolidating and retaining power. Meaningful positive change resulting from a coup would only have flowed from a combined Kurdish-Shiite uprising that removed the Baathists. The chances of such an insurrection succeeding were virtually nil, as history has shown. Moreover, a bloody civil war, dwarfing the death toll we have in Iraq now, would almost be the outcome.
If we are going to dwell on past behaviour we should also remember the past behaviour of the US which supported Saddam while he was doing all these nasty things.
If the Yanks had supported a combined Kurdish-Shiite uprising sometime during the eighties that would have saved Iraqi lives. But the US is notoriously late for most important struggles (WWI and WWII anyone?)
Zoot:
It sometimes seems to escape notice that for the 12 years leading up to regime change, (from Gulf War 1 onward), the U.S. consistently and without exception worked to undermine and remove Saddam. The U.S. seems to take it up the back side from the Left for both supporting Saddam prior to Gulf War 1, and then for trying (and ultimately succeeding) in removing him. This double standard ensured the U.S. would be cast in the role of villain.
On the question of supporting a combined Shiite/Kurdish uprising in the late 80's, Saddam was still considered a U.S. ally at the time. This wasn't going to happen. Call it one of the uglier traits of Cold War geo-politics, supporting despicable regimes for strategic motives. Russia was guilty of the same sort of thing. The post Gulf War 1 uprising was the opportunity to oust Saddam, but Bush 1 didn't exploit this, for a variety of reasons.p>
I believe it should have been done, but would it have saved Iraqi lives? Maybe, maybe not. The insurgency being fought today in Iraq would likely have been fought in 1991. There are too many historical variables to now how regime change in 1991 would have played out.
Well, but we don't have to get too much into alternate histories here. The evidence right now supports the conclusion -- and really only the conclusion -- that the war greatly increased the number of Iraqi deaths compared to the recent past with Hussein in power.
Now, you can argue that if Hussein had remained in power, there would have been at some point a great uptick of deaths as some other large-scale horror like the gassing of Kurds or the Iran/Iraq war occurred. That's not a crazy thing to suggest, but it is a big leap, and the onus is on the person making that suggestion to provide some support for it. Iraq's army was hugely degraded by sanctions, as was amply demonstrated by the comparison between the first and second wars, and its not at all clear that there was enough coherent military force available to do such a thing -- and there certainly didn't seem to be any chemical weapons lying around to do it with.
I'm buggered why the 100 thousand figure gets people in such a lather. The USA military alone has had 1500 killed. Who is going to pretend that in a war where the most lethal army in history takes that many casualties, that those caught in the cross-fire and the cross-hairs aren't gonna number very much higher.
It's almost an insult to Centcom to suggest otherwise.
Jonathon:
Given that the Iraqi army was routed in very short order during both Gulf Wars, I'm not sure how relevant is your statement that " Iraq's army was hugely degraded by sanctions, as was amply demonstrated by the comparison between the first and second wars,....."
Iraq's military had been seriously eroded within the context of its capability to fight a modern war against another state. This erosion of capability did not have much effect on the army's ability to deter/defeat internal domestic threats. Despite sanctions, Saddam maintained a standing army of 300,000 to 400,000 until he was ousted.
Proof of this is the fact that Saddam was able to defeat simultaneous revolts by the Kurds and Shia in the aftermath of Gulf War 1, even though his army had just been badly mauled by the U.S. led coalition. In 1996, Republican Guard tanks rolled into the Kurdish enclave, attacked the city of Irbil and put down a budding Kurdish uprising orchestrated by the CIA and the Iraqi National Congress.
Whether Saddam retained any chemical weapons to potentially use against insurrectionists, had he been left in power, is meaningless as a factor that mitigates Saddam's future capacity to kill.
The 1988 Al Anfal ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurds resulted in the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Kurds. The gassing of Kurdish civilians at Halabja occurred during this genocide, however the vast majority of Kurds killed during Al Anfal were killed by conventional means (bullets and bombs). This was also the case with the crushing of the 1991 post Gulf War uprisings, which killed tens of thousands Kurds and Shia. If memory serves me correctly, Saddam didn't use chemical weapons during these conflicts.
Saddam had more than enough " coherent military force " to deal with internal threats, which was why, despite his tyrannical rule, there were so few attempts at revolt, and none of them had even a remote chance of succeeding. I also don't see how it's a " big leap " to suggest that Saddam would resort to, and be capable of, mass slaughter of insurrectionists, given his history.
"The evidence right now supports the conclusion -- and really only the conclusion -- that the war greatly increased the number of Iraqi deaths compared to the recent past with Hussein in power."
I guess that depends on how far back you decide to go when identifying the " recent past." Several hundred thousand Iraqi deaths (the figure varies wildly) have been attributed to the effect of sanctions. These deaths resulted from Saddam's determination to retain a WMD capability after Gulf War 1, and the failure of the U.N. and the U.S. to institute smart sanctions and the oil-for-food program in 1991.
Had Bush 1 continued on to Baghdad in 1991 and removed Saddam, most of these people would probably be alive today. However, as I mentioned in my first post, there are too many historical variables to "what if" whether more Iraqis would have died from the implementation of regime change in 1991, as opposed to actual regime change in 2003.
Any meaningful positive change in Iraq required the removal of not only Saddam, but his Baathist power structure as well. This was not going to be accomplished without a " great increase " in the death rate when compared to comparatively less murderous lull periods under Saddam, regardless of who brought about regime change. Moreover, the number of deaths would certainly have been much higher had the Iraqi people been forced to attempt this on their own, and with little likelihood of success.
The only position left for those who believe an increased death rate resulting from regime change nullified the net gain and benefit from regime change, is to maintain that the Iraqi people were better off being consigned to oblivion under continued Baathist dictatorship. In fact, using this criteria, one would also have to be against any attempts by the Iraqi people to oust Saddam on their own.
As for war opponents ... a study that compares deaths in the first 14 months of the war vs. the previous 14 months? PUH-LEASE! What about the Iran-Iraq war?
Generally regarded as a disaster for Iraq.
The gassing of the Kurds?
Generally regarded as a atrocity by the government of Iraq.
The suppression of the Shi'ite revolt?
Generally regarded as an ugly and brutish civil campaign in Iraq.
But the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US?
Oh, THAT's "liberation"...
The only position left for those who believe an increased death rate resulting from regime change nullified the net gain and benefit from regime change, is to maintain that the Iraqi people were better off being consigned to oblivion under continued Baathist dictatorship. In fact, using this criteria, one would also have to be against any attempts by the Iraqi people to oust Saddam on their own.
This is, of course, bullshit. It is like claiming that those objecting to a dentist pulling all your teeth out must be maintaining that an impacted wisdom tooth is a desirable thing, and that to object to getting all your teeth pulled out means you must object to the wisdom tooth being removed.
We do not object to Hussein being removed. We object to Hussein being removed at the cost of lying to the world, launching an illegal invasion, murdering over 100,000 people and a large power occupying for the indefinate future another sovereign nation.
It would have been better if Hussein had been removed by the people of Iraq. The option to encourage this with support from outside forces was always there; the choice to invade and occupy the country with American troops was not necessary.
Mr./Ms. 13:27:54:
Do you have an argument to go with your bad dentistry analogy? What do you specifically mean by " support from outside forces?" If you mean outside military support, that means armed conflict, which inevitably means excess deaths. The majority of Iraqis wanted Saddam removed. They were unable to accomplish that, had been unable to accomplish it for quite some time, and showed no indication of being capable of accomplishing it any time soon.
Your post is too irrational and nonsensical to merit any further response. I don't blame you for declining to provide your name.
<em>It sometimes seems to escape notice that for the 12 years leading up to regime change, (from Gulf War 1 onward), the U.S. consistently and without exception worked to undermine and remove Saddam.</em>
Not what I've heard Mike. Wasn't there something about US Corporations still doing business with Saddam? The name Bechtel springs to mind, but I am told there were others.
The apologists for the US cop it up the backside (lovely turn of phrase you have) because they didn't display any concern for the Iraqis in the eighties, when activists were pointing out that Saddam was a monster. Now they try to take the moral high ground by implying that the invasion saved lives. It didn't. Get over it.
Wer'e getting into the area of speculation and unsupported assertions here.
So I'll simply point out that the people arguing that Saddam remained a massive threat and would have retained power for decades also thought Saddam "obviously" had stockpiles of WMDs in 2003 and that the invasion and occupation would be an unqualified success.
Having expressed the view before the invasion that Saddam had no signifcant WMD capacity and that a brief and victorious US campaign would be followed by an extended and bloody occupation I'm quite happy to stand on my record.
Zoot:
Do you have any links concerning your claim that Bechtel did business with Iraq after Gulf War 1? The Internet provides numerous accounts of Bechtel threatening to use foreign companies it controlled to bypass the U.S. Senate's attempt to implement a sanctions bill against Iraq in 1988, for the Kurdish genocide. The Senate bill died, and sanctions were not imposed on Iraq until the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. I can't find a single article accusing Bechtel of violating these sanctions.
Several U.S. companies were caught trading with Iraq through foreign intermediaries during the sanctions period, and were fined by the U.S. government as a result. The Oil-For-Food investigation has identified several other U.S. companies guilty of the same thing. The value of the totality of this illicit trade was negligible. Your attempt to try and pass this off as substantive evidence that the U.S. wasn't working to undermine and remove Saddam is disingenuous nonsense.
"The apologists for the US cop it up the backside (lovely turn of phrase you have) because they didn't display any concern for the Iraqis in the eighties, when activists were pointing out that Saddam was a monster."
The Senate attempt to impose sanctions on Iraq was unanimous. While the Reagan White House successfully lobbied to kill the bill in the House, that does not change the fact that many influential U.S. politicians sought to punish Saddam in 1988 for the Kurdish genocide. Do me a favour, and try to find some news articles from any archive that describe protest marches by your " activists" over Halabja and Al Anfal. Good luck. You'll see articles involving Iraqis protesting the U.S Senate bill, but your " activists " were conspicuously absent from the streets in support of the Kurds.
"Now they try to take the moral high ground by implying that the invasion saved lives. It didn't. Get over it."
We'll never know if the invasion saved lives, because there was no certain means of determining how many Saddam might kill in the future if left in power, or how many Iraqis would die if they attempted another overthrow. I maintain that any attempt to remove the Baathists from power was highly likely to result in significant loss of life. My argument is based on what was most probable, taking into account Saddam's past history. You choose to emphasis the unlikely. You need to " get real," before telling me to " get over it."
Mike, in your analysis of the probabilities are you considering the quality as well as the quantity of the desired result "remove Baathists from power"? To meaningfully weight the possibilities of differing courses of action must be difficult, the more so given the certain hindsight that our western intelligence on Saddam and the gang has been so very wrong.
Do me a favour, and try to find some news articles from any archive that describe protest marches by your " activists" over Halabja and Al Anfal.
And what were you doing about it at the time, Mike?
Mike,
The fact is that the US and UK still cozied up to Saddam after Halabja. The UK Telegraph denounced Labour backbenchers who brought up the issue in Parliament. Margaret Thatcher also told Labour politicians like Dennis Skinner who raised the Halabja massacre that Saddam, "was someone with whom we can do business". As Ian stipulates, there's also no record or Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon, or other war criminals now in the UK government protesting Iraqi government behavior at any time (until the 1990's, that is). Saddam Hussein only officially became designated a 'new Hitler' whe he invaded Kuweit.
No one mourns the loss of Saddam in Iraq, but its utter nonsense to claim that those who opposed the aggression (because it wasn't a war, just godfatherly aggression) wanted Saddam to remain in power. The fact is that the UK/US sanctions, which resembled a medievel siege and left hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq (sanctions that were 'worth the cost' according to Madeline Albright) actually strengthened the Hussein regime by making the people more dependent on him. Had the US not intervened to ensure Hussein remained in power in 1991, and had they not illegally (without UN authorization) imposed the sanctions and witheld more than 5.4 billion dollars of humanitarian aid to the country that Iraq had already paid for, its likely that the Iraqi's themselves would have overthrown the tyrant. Instead, the coalition bombed the civilian infrastructure virtually out of existence in 1991 and over the following 12 years, and also imposed sanctions that were genocidal in nature.
By the time the US/UK attacked Iraq in 2003, the country was by far the weakest in the region, literally held together with old yellowing scotch tape. They would not have attacked it had they thought in the least that it could defend itself. Although you don't want to believe it, our leaders - those in Australia, UK and US - lied through their teeth to legitimize their aggression. I read a number of books and articles published well before March 2003 which stated unequivocably that Iraq was a sitting duck: utterly defenseless. It had no air force or navy. Its airports and airstrips were in rubble. Its army was delapidated, relying on old Russian arms from the 1960's. Most of its artillery was in disrepair, having not been refurbished over the past 12 years. On top of that the civilian infrastructure - in part because of Saddam, but also because of what we in the 'democracies' had done - was in utter ruins.
Now I will hear you and defenders of preventive wars state that the 'costs of the Iraq invasion' are worth it. But, hard as it may be for you to believe, the conditions there are now worse than ever. There is little security; infant death mortality rate in Iraq is apparently now the second highest in the world. The country is ruined, as it has been bombed flat more-or-less by US/UK fighter aircraft. The number of civilian deaths is probably at least 50,000, but including Falluja (Grozny on the Euphrates as it is colloquiallay known) and other areas blown to smithereens by the Americans it may be more than 200,000.
There were, of course, three main reasons the neocons pushed Bush to attack the country: (1) Power and control over the oil of the country, especially as Saudi Arabia is a 'loose wheel' these days, (2) it provides a strategically close link to the oil and natural gas rich countries of the Caucasus region, and (3) the US government wanted to send the message that they will not permit anyone or anything to prevent continued American overconsumption. Human rights and democracy had nothing to do with it. Mike, I suggest you read some of the declassified UK files written by government planners in the 1960's. In their view of the world, human rights is immaterial and irrelevant. What is important is how the wealth of the world can be used to enrich western corporations, and how important this is to maintain an elite order. I have read these documents, and they are indeed chilling.
Ian:
If "We're getting into the area of speculation and unsupported assertions here," then what process were you utilizing to arrive at your " view before the invasion that Saddam had no signifcant WMD capacity and that a brief and victorious US campaign would be followed by an extended and bloody occupation...."?
Were you not engaging in speculation and unsupported assertions to make your prediction? All predictions are speculation. If you're going to reply (as I suspect you would) that your pre-war Iraq predictions were based on supported assertions, well I can claim exactly the same ground when making my statements about the future of an Iraq still ruled by Saddam in 2005.
"So I'll simply point out that the people arguing that Saddam remained a massive threat and would have retained power for decades also thought Saddam "obviously" had stockpiles of WMDs in 2003 and that the invasion and occupation would be an unqualified success."
Saddam had in fact retained power for decades. And the invasion was, certainly by military standards, an " unqualified success," (I think I'm safe to conclude that, since it also forms part of your smug " I got it right " summary of your pre-invasion prediction) even though the occupation was not.Those who supported regime change are not accurately depicted by this uniformity of opinion contained in your all encompassing generalization. I didn't believe Saddam retained huge stockpiles of WMD at the time of regime change, but I was convinced, based on overwhelming evidence derived from UN inspections, that Saddam was still holding stocks of anthrax and VX in bulk agent form. At the same time, I've also believed that those who opposed regime change had a valid argument to make as to whether Saddam posed a significant threat to the U.S. in a post 9/11 world. I disagreed with elements of this argument, and supported regime change, but it was still a reasonable, valid argument to make.
Of course, I could play the same game with you, Ian, and point out that many who opposed regime change in Afghanistan predicted hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians killed from combat, disease, and famine, along with thousands of U.S. and coalition troops killed by the undefeatable Taliban Mujahideen.
"And what were you doing about it at the time, Mike?"
Not that it's of any particular interest to anyone, but I was a young man, engaged in a demanding career, without the time or the inclination at that stage of my life to keep myself very well informed of world events. That certainly isn't the case today, but having still never attended a protest rally for any cause, I'm not going to claim I would have engaged in such a protest in 1988 had I been politically active at the time.
But that's not really the point, is it Ian? I never claimed to be one of Zoot's " activists," did I? I could ask you the same question, and I expect you'd tell me that you were leading one man protest marches on behalf of the Kurds back then.
Jemima:
I'm not sure I entirely follow your thinking here. Are you questioning the desirability of removing the Baathists from power? If you could clarify your post for me, I can try to give you a decent reply. I don't have any disagreement with your point that western intelligence bodies were " very wrong " concerning much of the intelligence involving Saddam, primarily on the WMD issue.
Jeff:
Where to start?
You're covering a lot of historical ground here. Some of what you've said is true, some of it is highly debatable, and some of it is incorrect (propaganda, to be accurate).
I agree that the U.S. and the U.K. still " cozied up" to Saddam after the Al Anfal campaign against the Kurds. I've mentioned this in an earlier comment in this thread. It was Cold War geo-politics at its worst. I've also pointed out that the U.S. Senate unanimously pushed a bill to impose sanctions on Iraq at the time, but Reagan mustered enough support to ensure the bill didn't pass. Not all American politicians were willing to let Saddam go unpunished.
I don't see any merit to your argument that it was " likely that the Iraqi's themselves would have overthrown the tyrant.", were it not for the crippling effect of sanctions. Again, I've addressed this in an earlier post. The Kurds and Shia had their greatest opportunity in the immediate aftermath of Gulf War 1, after the Iraqi army had just suffered a thorough thrashing. The Kurds and Shia failed miserably, not for lack of courage, but because of a lack of military capability. Why would you believe that a non-sanctions period would have enabled the Iraqi people to acquire the means to overthrow Saddam? They were not capable prior to 1991, when there were no sanctions in place. The Kurds were able to establish an autonomous enclave in the north after Gulf War 1, protected by American and British air cover, but were unable to exploit this further. When they acted up in 1996, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Saddam's army defeated them handily.
Jonathon earlier made the same argument as you have, concerning the state of Iraq's conventional military. I don't really see the need to say anything more than I did in my reply to Jonathon. Iraq's army was not capable of projecting power outside its borders to any significant extent. That didn't have a bearing on the army's ability to prevent or put down insurrection, as history has shown. Moreover, the Bush administration's case for war wasn't based on the threat posed by Iraq's conventional forces, but on the threat posed by its WMD capabilities, and the threat posed by an Iraq that would eventually re-arm once sanctions were inevitably completely lifted.
"Had the US not intervened to ensure Hussein remained in power in 1991, and had they not illegally (without UN authorization) imposed the sanctions and witheld more than 5.4 billion dollars of humanitarian aid to the country that Iraq had already paid for, its likely that the Iraqi's themselves would have overthrown the tyrant."
The U.S. didn't intervene on Saddam's behalf, they failed to intervene in the post war uprising on the side of the Kurds and Shia. I've said before that the U.S. should not only have intervened, but continued on to Baghdad. The Arab members of the coalition, as well as many non-Arab members, were not going to support this. Do you have any references for your claim that sanctions were illegally imposed, without UN authorization? This is news to me. Unless I'm missing something, the sanctions imposed on Iraq were mandated by the UN. I've never seen this questioned before, but I'm open to hearing your evidence.
Jeff, how is it possible for the U.S. to have destroyed Iraq in the manner you claim? Here are some highly contradictory statements from you on this subject:
"Instead, the coalition bombed the civilian infrastructure virtually out of existence in 1991 and over the following 12 years,.."
"By the time the US/UK attacked Iraq in 2003, the country was by far the weakest in the region, literally held together with old yellowing scotch tape."
"On top of that the civilian infrastructure - in part because of Saddam, but also because of what we in the 'democracies' had done - was in utter ruins."
"But, hard as it may be for you to believe, the conditions there are now worse than ever. There is little security; infant death mortality rate in Iraq is apparently now the second highest in the world. The country is ruined, as it has been bombed flat more-or-less by US/UK fighter aircraft."
I've seen this tactic used many times by those who opposed regime change, usually by the most stridently and virulently anti-American of these individuals. Jeff, if Iraq's infrastructure was " in ruins," and "bombed... virtually out of existence," before regime change, then it would be impossible for the U.S. to have " ruined " it through invasion and regime change. You can't destroy something that's already been destroyed. Was Iraq's infrastructure " destroyed " by sanctions and bombing before regime change, or " destroyed " by bombing after regime change? You can't have both Jeff, but that's exactly what you're trying to do.
I'd also like to point out that your claim that Iraq has " been bombed flat more-or-less by US/UK fighter aircraft," is fiction, beyond gross exaggeration. We're not going to agree on much if you try to pass off this type of propaganda. This simply did not happen. Some areas of Iraq were certainly heavily bombed, such as Fallujah. However, many areas of the country were not bombed at all, or received minimal targeted bombing by individual ordnance.
We may well have " 50,000 civilian deaths " resulting from regime change, and that is an absolutely horrific outcome. I don't see your figure of " more than 200,000 " being remotely close to the actual figure.
"infant death mortality rate in Iraq is apparently now the second highest in the world."
Can I see your source for this? I'm skeptical.
I'm not aware of the 1960's UK documents you refer to. It seems quite a stretch, to put it mildly, that these documents serve as a blueprint for world domination today.
The reasons you provide as motives for the invasion of Iraq are ridiculous. Sorry, I can't be diplomatic on this one. I have to admit, reason number 2, " it provides a strategically close link to the oil and natural gas rich countries of the Caucasus region, .." is another first timer for me. You might want to have a look at a map of the region before defending this one. Besides, I thought this was the conspiracy theory you folks came up with as the sinister underlying reason why Afghanistan was invaded?
There are numerous arguments which refute the suggestion that regime change was motivated by oil. I'm not going to muddy up this thread any further by going into detail. If you want to discuss this in greater depth, I'd be happy to do it by way of e-mail, Jeff. Just let me know, thanks.
<<Were you not engaging in speculation and unsupported assertions to make your prediction? All predictions are speculation. If you're going to reply (as I suspect you would) that your pre-war Iraq predictions were based on supported assertions, well I can claim exactly the same ground when making my statements about the future of an Iraq still ruled by Saddam in 2005.>>
When we talk about what is going to happen tomorrow or what would have happened today had past events worked out differently then obviously we're engaging in speculation.
The "we" in my statement was intedned to be inclusive and took in my initial post.
But not all speculation is equal - anyone speculating that Saddam would have undergone a religious conversion, surrendered power voluntarily and lived out his days doing good works or that his hold on power woudl be cut short by the arrival of a Vogon Constructor fleet could reasoanbly be asked to provide their evidence for that speculation.
Similarly, the ability to speculate successfully on a related issue in the past is, it seems to me, suggestive of some competence in the area.
Not that it's of any particular interest to anyone, but I was a young man, engaged in a demanding career, without the time or the inclination at that stage of my life to keep myself very well informed of world events. That certainly isn't the case today, but having still never attended a protest rally for any cause, I'm not going to claim I would have engaged in such a protest in 1988 had I been politically active at the time.
But that's not really the point, is it Ian? I never claimed to be one of Zoot's " activists," did I? I could ask you the same question, and I expect you'd tell me that you were leading one man protest marches on behalf of the Kurds back then.
No, as a member of amnesty International I was campaigning for the release of Iraqi political prisoners and writing letters to my MPs and Asutralian Ministers opposing our support for Saddam.
You're right Mike, I think I could try to make my point a little clearer thanks. Invasion of Iraq was not the only possible means of achieving the end of Baathism, and one trouble with our having invaded is the problem of what will fill the vacuum we've created. We've achieved the end of Saddam - hooray! - but have we been wise? A solution has been imposed on the Iraqi people, but how much more valuable would have been an answer that Iraqis themselves might have provided without recourse to war? When weighing the probabilities, more weight should be given to less probable solutions if the likely returns from the less likely solutions may be anticipated to be that much greater than the returns from possibly more certain means to the same end. It was easily forseeable that a violent removal of the Iraqi regime could not possibly have as good an outcome, long term, as the far less likely yet nonetheless real possibility of, for instance, Saddam being made an offer he couldn't refuse to retire his Baathists to a seaside resort in Israel, say, having first set in place democratic institutions to replace him. Oh sure it was unlikely - but how much more weighting did that unlikely outcome deserve, compared to the outcome we have?
I'm thinking, as I write this, that good things shouldn't be expected to come from dumb leaders, whatever the field of play. The US has now done what it does best, which is to employ strategic violence - yet the strategies have been formulated by dummies. Like you I was tempted to feel at the time of the first Gulf War that perhaps, if only it had been possible, the then coalition should have supported the shiites and kurds that it had encouraged to believe would indeed be given our support, and Saddam been overthrown then. It was a tough question, I felt no blame attached to the coalition then for failing to answer it satisfactorily. On the other hand though, blame was due for setting up Saddam's opponents as we did with false assurances, then allowing them to be slaughtered by him as we failed to deliver on those promises.
This was a long time ago. Today you have people I see as simpleminded idiots in charge of the Whitehouse - and why would anything good be expected to come of them? Their ignorance meant that their calculations on Iraq and the aftermath of a war were worth precious little.
On the other hand dictators such as Soeharto and Pinochet stepped aside voluntarily didn't they? and presumably their countries have been the better for it. What weighting should you apply in any analysis, to such unlikely (in the case of Saddam) but qualitatively far superior outcomes?
Dang, that's a good post jemima.
D
Ian:
"The "we" in my statement was intended to be inclusive and took in my initial post."
Fair enough. I didn't pick up on the " we " in your comment.
"But not all speculation is equal..."
And that is precisely what my argument is based upon. It's the reason I challenged your assertion that ".. there's every probability that Saddam or his successors would have been overthrown by a coup or a popular uprising in the next few years." This was a much less likely speculative outcome than the one I proposed, that Saddam was not facing any immediate internal threat to his rule, and that any future "popular uprising" was likely to both fail and result in a higher death toll than regime change through foreign intervention. Any internal Baathist coup also presented a risk of significant deaths, and the continuation of a Baathist tyranny, with no meaningful improvement in the lives of the average Iraqi.
"Similarly, the ability to speculate successfully on a related issue in the past is, it seems to me, suggestive of some competence in the area."
You may be engaging in a derogatory comment about my intelligence. Then again, maybe I'm misreading this, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, subject to any clarification you might decide to offer.
"No, as a member of amnesty International I was campaigning for the release of Iraqi political prisoners and writing letters to my MPs and Australian Ministers opposing our support for Saddam."
And you deserve much credit for doing so. I take it however, that if there had been any demonstrations or protests on behalf of the Kurds back then, you would have mentioned them. Your admirable efforts do not change the fact that there was a conspicuous absence of organized rallies of support for Saddam's victims.
When the Left seeks to portray the U.S. as a hypocrite for supporting Saddam at one time, and attempts to use this to discredit the removal of Saddam, then it becomes fair comment to point out that the Left didn't take to the streets to protest the slaughter of Kurds in 1988, but did turn out in the hundreds of thousands in 2003 to try to prevent the murderer of the Kurds from being brought to justice.
I'll add to Dano's post: excellent contribution Jemima!
Mike, I'd be happy to write to you about these issues. I am surprised that access to the importance of Caucasus oil and natural gas supplies for US control, however, does not register with you. Both the UK and US have been making serious overtures to court the governments of the region, ignoring the vast evidence of human rights violations by leaders like Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov. If you read Zbignieuw Brezinski's "The Grand Chessborad", written in 1998 (and a model for the later "Project for the new American Century"), the piece makes clear what the strategic and military objectives of the established order in the US should be. Brezinski explains that 'whoever controls the vassals of oil and natural gas in the Caucasus region and central Asia will control the world economy'. This document was not lost on the neocons who emerged from te political wilderness to take the reins of power of US government since 2000. The most important point is not to necessarily have access to the mineral-rich region of the Middle East and Central Asia for domestic consumption, but to control the 'taps'. Back in the 1950's the CIA prepared a report for the Eisenhower administration in which they explained why there was so much antipathy in the Arab world for the US. The conclsuion was that it had nothing whatsoever to do with 'hating democracy and freedom' nor with 'envy'. It had to do with the fact that, in order to control middle east oil supplies, the US (and UK) continually supported repressive regimes in the region as client states, that it suppressed demcracy and nationalism, and that there were double standards seen as applied to US relations with Israel. What was the US response? To maintain the status quo - in ther words don't change anything. The situation is so utterly relevant today.
You may recall that Wesley Clark said recently (or was it not carried by your meda) that he was told by a military official as far back as spring of 2001 (some 6 months before 9/11) that the US had a 'five year plan' to reorder the middle east to bolster its own strategic agenda. Ths meant, according to the official, possible attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia and Libya. Muammar Quaddafi was smart enough to deflect attention away from Libya by claiming to abandon his (non-existent) weapns programme. Somalia has huge reserves of natural gas, but appears to be less vital than competing the 'grand slam' by attacking Syria and Iran. The neocons are going to ratchet up the anti-Syrian propoganda as the months pass (watch this space; they already are, with CNN and other US networks fulfilling their service function in this regard). The recent terrorist attack in Lebanon has served the agenda of people like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton and the other neocons in the Bush administration well. Although there is no evidence at all for Syrian involvement, the media has been hammering away at the alleged Syrian connection almost non-stop. This is aimed to soften up opposition to the 'next step'.
As far as WMD are concerned, its been common knowledge that Iraq has been a stricken nation for many years. How you can buy the propoganda that 'Saddam still posed a threat' is beyond me. Scott Ritter and others (e.g. Hussein Kamel) say that Iraq was '95% clean by 1998'. The chemical weapons aleged to have been stockpiled by Saddam have a very short shelflife. I stand by my statement that the 'coalition' virtually destroyed the civilian and military infrastructure of Iraq in Gulf War I, then ensured it was not rebuilt by largely punishing the civilian population. Here's what the coalition did in Gulf War I:
The US and its allies destroyed Iraq's water, sewage, and water purification systems and its electrical grid. Early every bridge over the Tigris and Euphrates was demolished. They hit twenty eight hospitals and destroyed thirty-eight schools. They hit all of Iraq's large hydropower dams. The bombed grain storage silos and irrigation systems. Farmlands near basra were inundated with saltwater as a result of allied attacks. Ore than 95 per cent of Iraq's poultry farms were destroyed, as were 3.5 million sheep and 2 million cows. The coaltion bombed textile plants, cement factories, and oil refineries, pipelines and storgage facilities. When confronted by the reports of Iraqi women carting home buckets of filthy water from the Tigris River, contaminated from raw sewage from bombed treatment plants, one American general shrugged his shoulders and said, 'People say, "You didn't recognize that the bombing was going to have an effect on water and sewage?". Well, what were we trying to do with sanctions, help out the Iraqi people? What we were doing with the attacks on the infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of the sanctions'. The intervening years were spent ensuring that Iraq could not get on its feet in ay way whatsoever. In 1998alone the coaltion dropped 1,800 bombs on the country. Two senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, sent to oversee UN aid to the country resigned with disgust over what they called the west's 'gencidal intent' with respect to the sanctions. Then the US sends in an invading army! The country was destroyed over again. Yes, its possible. It happened.
The US/UK media channeled blatant lies from their respective governments because they had an alternate agenda there that had nothig to do with democracy and human rights (see above). By contrast, why do the US/UK increase their financial and military aid to Uzbekistan, whose leader, Karimov, is another Saddam? His regime is known to boil its domestic political opponents alive. The fact is that we are conditioned to see the world through a one may moral screen. We attack 'them' and its business as usual. They attack 'us' and the world is coming to an end. The unpeoples of the world are valued in terms of ther worth to the privilaged elites. In other words, the human rights of other peoples usually means nothing to our state planners.
The US has had the habit of supporting rogue regimes for more than a century; Suharto was one of the world's biggest torturers and mass murderers of the second half of the twentieth century, but he was courted by the US and UK almost right up until the end. His bloody 1965 coup, which left up to a million dead, would not have been opossible without immense efforts from American/Australian/Uk governments and intelligence. Sukarno, his predecessor, was a nationalist who wanted to expel the IMF and World bank from Indonesia. He as not a communist, but, liek the term 'terrorist' is used today, accusing nationalists of being communists served a very uselful purpose in the cold war. It allowed western goverments to intervene in the economies of countries that were deemed to be 'worth the trouble' and to prevent nationalist governments from expunging western corporate interests from their lands. The bottom line is that the capital of these contries, although lying nder other land masses, is clearly the property of western investors 'by right'. The major concern of western corporate interests is that 'radical nationalism' will become a pandemic, and that these nations will have the 'audacity' to redirect the countries wealth internally. This is why last year a document was leaked (commissioned by then attorney general Ashcroft) by a whstleblower which revealed that the US wanted increase surveillence on countries that posed a threat to US 'national security'. If I asked you to guess the names of these contries you'd inevitably say, "Iran, North Korea, and Syria". But the countries listed were Argentan, Brazil and Venezuela. Why? Because these countries had recently elected populist governments whose leaders (Kirshcner in Argentina, Lulus in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela) were not subservient to US conglomerates. Thanks to the distorted media, I'll bet you didn't even know this. At the same time, te US continues to support some of the most brutal regies on the planet, including Colombia and Nigeria. Bear in mind that the US only stopped supporting Suharto when he became uppity in the 1990's and started challenging IMF rules. Suddenly, our press 'remembered' the atrocities of his regime in East Timor, and he became 'expendable'. Twent years of colelctive amnesia was erased in the blink of an eye. Clinton had even referred to him as 'our kind of guy' earlier, and the Australian ambassador to the country had also defended Suharto claiming that he was one of the great humanitarians on the twentuieth century.
The US used similar arguments (the threat of communism) for destroying fledgling democracies in Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua and elsewhere (including Viet Nam). Following on from my thoughts above, the world is divided by our planners in other ways. There are 'good Kurds' in Iraq and 'bad Kurds' in Turkey; countries that are 'partners in the war on terror' like Algeria and Turkey, with horrific human rights records, and those we impugn, like Iran and Syria. I would be more than happy to enlighten you on some relevant history. Fact is, Mike, that human rights does not enter as even a blip on the radar screens of western agendas. In fact, it tends to conflict with our military and business agendas: countries that routinely violate human rights, that torture union leaders and murder priests, and have appalling environmental records tend to be the best countries for business investment. That's because overheads are lower. Check out the countries that have received the highest amount of foreign 'aid' from the last few US administrations. They tend to be countries with the worst human rights and enviromental records. Its obvious why.
And Tim Lambert, have you though about permalinks for the comments? That way I can link directly to Jeff Harvey's brilliant comment without the bother of having to lift it wholesale and pretending I wrote it.
OK, there are now permalinks for comments.
Jemima:
Thanks for the clarification. Hopefully my reply is coherent, and addresses the points you make.
"A solution has been imposed on the Iraqi people, but how much more valuable would have been an answer that Iraqis themselves might have provided without recourse to war?"
The problem with that, as I see it, is the lack of a plausible " answer " that didn't begin and end with Saddam's regime being removed by force of arms. It's difficult to see an alternative course of action for the Iraqi people, when the segment of the Iraqi people who were in control (that being the Baathists, comprised of tribes and clans loyal to Saddam), didn't want a " solution." For them, the status quo was the solution.
"When weighing the probabilities, more weight should be given to less probable solutions if the likely returns from the less likely solutions may be anticipated to be that much greater than the returns from possibly more certain means to the same end."
Again, I think one has to be logical and pragmatic about the potential for success of " less likely " solutions. " Less likely " is a term that often does not accurately serve as a meaningful comparative. You could suggest a course of action for Iraq that was all but a certainty to fail. But place that option next to regime change by foreign intervention, which was a virtual certainty to succeed in removing Saddam, and one could still make the claim that the implausible was simply " less likely " than the virtual certainty, to result in a favourable outcome.
Unless I've misread your post, the only "less likely" solution you have proposed is the persuasion/coercion of Saddam to voluntarily step aside, in the manner of Pinochet and Suharto. This actually was offered to Saddam, days before invasion, and he refused. Saddam couldn't have had any illusions about the outcome of a coalition invasion. He had to know his reign was finished, once foreign military intervention was inevitable. Yet he still refused to cede power. I see this as a compelling indication that Saddam would never relinquish power voluntarily.
Even if he had been amenable to surrendering control, how many Baathists would have to be relocated and "retired" along with Saddam? Would those who remained in Iraq accept democracy and the accompanying loss of their power? For every Suharto or Pinochet, there is a Saddam, a Mullah Omar, or a Ceaucescu, who can only be removed from power through force.
Jemima, I just don't see that there were a variety of alternative strategies for ending Saddam's rule.
Jeff:
I'll have to get back to you with a reply. Time is short at the present, but I'll have something up by tommorrow at the latest.
Mike, I suppose I was in part suggesting that if the stepping off point of an analysis of the Saddam problem foresaw no possible solution other than by foreign invasion and force of arms, then the analyst wasn't going to be in for many surprises. Although the only alternative I mentioned above was the seaside retirement gambit, I think it's clear that if an analysis were to be given the chance to turn up something other than an invasion as the answer, possibilities other than invasions would certainly need to have been weighted in as well. I'm sure that there were many alternatives that might have been considered, some with higher chances of success than others but many - not only a few - with better outcomes than the one Iraq has had experience of so far. No matter what the weightings needed to be, those scenarios with better outcomes than the present reality deserved their day in the sun of at least the analysis. What was the Whitehouse really thinking at the time? Probably nothing that I'd admire very much.
Nice post, but wrong in one respect. The Iraq Body Count doesn't just use press reports. See http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm
Jeff
There are a number of statements in your post I'd take issue with if I had more time. However there is one I will address:
The best estimates for deaths resulting from Suharto's coup are around 300-500,000. Of course, in addition to that we can add the hundreds of thousands of people tortured and sent into internal exile; the hundred thousand or so East timorese killed (along with lesser number of Papauns; molukkans and Acehnese) and the tens of thousands killed in subsequent internal repression such as the "anti-crime" camapaign of the early 90's when military death squads summarily executed suspected criminals.
First, Mr. Devine's refers to the Iraqi Body Count in which he writes:
In response, you state:
I think it is highly interesting that in your response you mention the press but conspicuously omit the Iraqi hospital and morgue officials clearly referred to by Mr. Devine.
Additionally, if we are to believe your argument, we must assume that the 80,000+ additional Iraqis who have (supposedly) been killed as a result of the US-led intervention have gone completely unnoticed by the press, AS WELL AS by Iraqi hospital and morgue officials.
In other words, over 80% of the additional deaths the Lancet study estimates occurred in Iraq because of the war have somehow avoided detection by these three groups.
I'm sorry, but am I the only one who finds this all highly implausible? It certainly smacks of revisionist history to me Sir.
How, exactly, do you explain the discrepancy Mr. Lambert?
Sincerely,
Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
www.medienkritikonline.com
Note: Emphasis mine in above quotes.
Ray, Devine screwed up. Iraq Body Count only reports deaths reported in the media.
The passage there about hospital and morgue officials refers to a period early after the occupation when the Baghdad morgue and hospital used to issue press releases; AFAICT they don't any more.
Ray, you can find out the IBC's methodology here. It's based on media reports.The Lancet study is including deaths indirectly caused by the invasion (increases in disease and murder) as well as those directly killed in the fighting.
Tim, thank you for your response.
However, I would like to address your statement that IBC's methodology is "based on media reports" because I believe you are jumping to a very dangerous conclusion. First off, it seems to me (with all due respect) that you are giving people the false impression that the IBC's body count is based solely on media reporting as the primary source. A second conclusion that you seem to draw is that the IBC's count of "additional dead" as a result of the US-led Iraq war falls far short of the actual number of "additional" dead in Iraq because it is primarily "based on media reports."
That, in fact, is not true at all. Here's why:
You provided a link on the methodology at IBC which gives readers the impression the site relies almost entirely on the media as its primary source. In the section "sources" IBC writes:
The fact that IBC sources "include public domain newsgathering agencies" certainly does not mean that the IBC excludes other highly significant sources (such as Iraqi hospitals and morgues.) In fact, the IBC website directly addresses erroneous claims that it relies solely on the media or journalists as the primary sources for its death count. Here is a direct quote from the IBC website:
Just looking over the IBC database, I realized how easy it is to come to the (false) conclusion that it is based entirely on media reports. When looking at the documented incidents recorded in the IBC's extensive database, they almost all have corroborating media sources. If one looks more closely, however, the entries in which morgues and hospitals are the primary sources are unmistakable.
Take, for example, the following page of the IBC database. Just look at entry "x350." While searching through the database, one will occasionally encounter this sort of entry (typically with several hundreds of dead) in which government run institutions, hospitals, morgues, etc., are the primary sources for the casualty numbers. The fact that the media subsequently reports these numbers does not change the fact that the hospitals and morgues remain the primary sources.
Here is another example with over 1,600 deaths recorded, scroll to entry "x334".
Here is another, "x172", and another, "x096" and another from the "major combat operations" phase of the conflict, "x073."
In fact, these entries, in which Iraqi hospitals, morgues and other governmental institutions are the primary source, represent a very significant portion of IBC's overall death count.
The bottom line: It is vital we acknowledge that the IBC relies significantly on hospital and morgue death counts in addition to reports of death in which the media or NGO's are the primary information source. This is entirely consistent with what Miranda Devine stated in the quote you cite above in your original article.
In other words, if we are to believe the Lancet Study's "conservative" 100,000 "additional" deaths figure, we must assume that 80,000+ "additional" deaths (above and beyond the IBC's count) occurred in Iraq completely unnoticed and unrecorded by the world media, NGO's, hospitals, morgues and all other Iraqi governmental institutions. Again, that would be to say that over four-fifths or well over 80% of the "additional" deaths in Iraq have somehow gone undetected by all of the above-mentioned sources, except, of course, the Lancet Study, which relies on an unconfirmed estimate derived through "sampling" techniques.
This leads me back to my original comment: I find this all highly implausible Sir. It smacks of revisionist junk science to me.
Once again I ask: How do you explain the discrepancy Mr. Lambert?
Respectfully yours,
Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
(Note: Emphasis mine in quoted sections.)
"The fact that the media subsequently reports these numbers does not change the fact that the hospitals and morgues remain the primary sources."
Ray,
Of course reporters may get information from such sources. This does not alter the fact that IBC is a passive reporting system, which is likely to miss a great deal.
Ray, the specific incidents you link to above are the press releases which the Baghdad morgue used to put out but no longer does, plus the occasional Iraqi Health Ministry figures.
I don't see how you go from that to claiming that any other deaths in Iraq must be "totally unrecorded". The people who collect the statistics you're talking about make no such claims about their comprehensiveness. You might also note that IBC simply does not endorse your claim that their figures are comparable with the Lancet study.
Since these facts are quite easily available from the IBC website, I would like to ask you, "Sir", why you are wasting our time with what appear to me to be clearly bogus criticisms?
dsguarded, you write:
Where, exactly, do I make that claim? It is obvious that the Lancet study figure is based on questionable sampling techniques described by the Washington Post as "an extrapolation based on a relatively small number of documented deaths," whereas the IBC's numbers are based on incidents of death documented by the media, Iraqi authorities and NGOs and systematically documented by IBC. I said as much in my previous comment, where I described the Lancet Study as relying on "an unconfirmed estimate derived through "sampling" techniques." By contrast I described the IBC as a compilation of deaths documented by media sources, Iraqi authorities and NGOs. I suppose if you had actually read my previous comment, you would know that now wouldn't you dsguarded?
It is also of note that, according to the IBC, the Lancet Study did not differentiate between military and civilian deaths. The IBC does and counts only civilian deaths. This means that many of the projected dead in the Lancet study may be military casualties. The problem is that the entire study is so strongly based on statistical projections that it is difficult to draw any concrete conclusions at all.
You also write:
If they are not "totally unrecorded" then who, exactly, is recording them or has recorded them? If someone is recording actual confirmed deaths (and not statistical estimates derived from sampling techniques "based on a relatively small number of documented deaths") in Iraq, why are they being missed by the media, NGO's and Iraqi authorities on such a massive scale?
Further question: If you believe that the Lancet Study's "conservative" estimate of 100,000 "additional" deaths is, in fact, accurate, how do you account for the whopping difference of well over 80,000 deaths above and beyond those deaths recorded by the IBC? How could the world media and the other sources upon which the IBC relies including hospitals, morgues and NGO's have missed well over 80% (or more than four-fifths) of the deaths that have allegedly occurred in Iraq if we are to believe the 100,000 figure? We are talking about 80,000+ deaths here that supposedly went unnoticed by these sources...
The question is simple enough, Sir.
You conclude:
Appearances can be deceiving my friend, especially when your view of the facts is clouded by a slanted worldview.
I would like to conclude by saying that it is not my objective to downplay or talk away the human cost of war. It is also not my goal to claim that the IBC has provided us with a completely accurate estimate of "additional" deaths resulting from US-led military action. Kevin Donoghue's point is well-taken. Perhaps the IBC does understate the real count. But by 80,000+? And are these deaths really "additional" deaths? Have these studies taken into account the number of Iraqis dying as both a direct and indirect result of Saddam Hussein's regime prior to March 20, 2003?
I would simply like to hear a believable explanation of the enormous discrepancy between the Lancet Study's "conservative" figure of 100,000+ "additional" dead Iraqis and the figures provided by other sources such as the IBC. That is all I am asking for. Absent more extensive, comprehensive studies done to investigate the actual death toll in Iraq, I find the Lancet Study's conclusions to be highly questionable and very hard to believe. I also find dsguarded's blind faith and the blind faith of many others in the findings of the Lancet Study to be questionable, especially considering the doubts raised about the study and the gravity of the figures involved.
Respectfully,
Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
"Have these studies taken into account the number of Iraqis dying as both a direct and indirect result of Saddam Hussein's regime prior to March 20, 2003?"
Yes
@ Ian:
Even if these studies have attempted to take the mortality rate in Iraq under Saddam into account, how can we be sure they can do so with any accuracy? Can we honestly trust the statistics provided by the Saddam Hussein regime, if, that is, statistics were kept at all? The Lancet Study itself states:
Just a few sentences further on, the study states:
Put differently, the entire pre-conflict mortality-rate baseline from which the study measures is highly questionable and very likely inaccurate.
In terms of infant mortality, which has a significant impact on the study's findings, the pre-conflict rate is estimated at 29 deaths per 1000 livebirths, which according to the study "is similar to estimates from neighbouring countries." It must be noted, however, that neighbouring countries were not subject to the Saddam Hussein regime and the UN sanctions imposed on that regime. For that reason, the 29 deaths per 1000 livebirths figure is questionable at best. It certainly would not have been in the interest of the Saddam Hussein regime to report the actual level of infant death in Iraq prior to March 2003.
Essentially, the Lancet Study's findings are based on 32 clusters (the 33rd cluster was in Falluja and was excluded in reaching the 100,000 "additional" deaths figure) in which over 900 households were visited containing over 7,000 residents. These households reported 89 post-conflict deaths, 21 of which were violent (24%). In 18 of the 32 clusters analyzed, no violent deaths were reported at all. The Lancet Study's "conservative" estimate of 100,000 "additional" deaths is based entirely on the 89 deaths reported on in the 32 clusters analyzed.
In other words, if the teams conducting the survey happened to wander into even just one "cluster" area disproportionately hard-hit by violence and deaths (other than Fallujah of course) it would be enough to change the results of the entire survey dramatically. Or, if even a few of the households surveyed misrepresented post-conflict deaths, it would have been enough to dramatically change the final results.
The authors of the study themselves write:
The authors further call for additional investigations and openly admit that their data is limited and could be brought into question if they omitted or (what is more likely to be the case) over-targeted areas where a disproportionate number of deaths occurred.
Once again, I find it amazing that so many people have so unquestioningly committed themselves to this 100,000 additional deaths figure. It clearly has more to do with emotion and ideology than with a desire for truth. What we really need to clarify the actual death count in Iraq are larger, more precise, more comprehensive studies. Until those studies are conducted, the jury is still out on this flimsy 100,000 figure as far as I am concerned.
Respectfully, Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
Well, Ray, I find it amazing that people like will attack the study despite having no clue about what it measured and how it was conducted. I think their attacks have more to do with emotion and ideology than with any actual flaw in the study.
The study did not rely on statistics provided by Saddam's regime. Why not take the time to read it? Could the statistics be skewed by an unrepresentative cluster? Yes, but that's what all the statistical calculations are meant for -- they tell us how uncertain such a possibility makes the result.
In other words, if the teams conducting the survey happened to wander into even just one "cluster" area disproportionately hard-hit by violence and deaths (other than Fallujah of course) it would be enough to change the results of the entire survey dramatically.
And would thus be discarded as an outlier. There is just no reason to believe that this happened; the pattern of increased death rates was consistent across the non-Kurdish clusters.
Also note that this is Kaplan's fallacy; we happen to know that the team did come across at least one surprisingly low violence cluster - the cluster in Sadr City which had zero mortality - but you are not even considering the possibility of an underestimate. This really does damage your credibility in my eyes.
Ray
I suggest you take tim's advice and read the study.
both pre-war and post-war mortality figures were arrvied at using the identicial methodology: surveyed households were asked to report on deaths since the invasion and in the 18 months before the invasion.
The pre-invasion mortality figures would therefore be subject to all the same possible sources of error as the post-invasion figure. Suppose the survey had happened to select an area which had been particularly victimised by Saddam's regime, this would produce an upward bias in the pre-war mortality figures and therefore result in an underestimation of the number of excess deaths since the invasion.
@ Everyone:
Tim you wrote:
Yes, I did read it, and I wrote the following in my previous comment...
Clearly, I was responding to a comment by Ian and we were discussing the general topic of "studies" dealing with casualties in Iraq. I was not specifically referring to the Lancet Study at that point. Just wanted to clear that up. If you go back and read my comment you will see that is clear.
Now, as to the infant mortality rate, here is what I actually wrote:
I clearly state the 29 per 1000 death rate is "an estimate" and that the Hussein regime had no interest in reporting the actual rate (which it, in fact, did not.)
The study derived the preconflict infant mortality rate of 29 per 1000 rate from the clusters. In other words, it is an "estimate" just as I stated. Since no statistics were kept at all in Saddam's Iraq after 1999, the 29 number is another statistical guess based on a very small sample. The authors claim that this number is "not a major factor in this survey" because it "is similar to estimates from neighbouring countries."
Once again, if we are to believe that this number is accurate, we must also believe that from 1999, (when UNICEF recorded the infant mortality rate in Iraq to be 108 out of 1000 livebirths) to 2002, a period of just 3 years, that the rate of infant death was reduced on a national level in Iraq from 108 to 29. This miraculous improvement that the survey author's expect us to believe out of hand was supposed to have occurred in Saddam Hussein's Iraq under harsh UN sanctions.
Apparently Mr. Lambert supports this argument by pointing out that such drops in the infant mortality rates have occurred in other nations. In other nations under sanctions and harsh dictatorships Mr. Lambert? Please provide an example...
All that I am asking, please explain to me how the infant mortality rate dropped from 108 in 1999 to 29 in 2002 in Saddam's Iraq under UN sanctions based on more than just this flimsy Lancet survey's "estimate." Because if it didn't make that drop, your entire study is (further) in the tank my friends.
After you do that, explain to me how the international media, Iraqi authorities and NGO's have all missed out on the deaths of 80,000+ "additional" Iraqis over the past 2 years.
Bottom line: We are supposed to make this giant leap of faith with the survey authors and assume that the infant mortality rate miraculously dropped in Saddam's Iraq and that 80,000+ deaths simply went unnoticed by the media, NGOs and the Iraqi authorities. And you call that scientifically sound??? The entire Lancet Study was based on a survey the Washington Post calls "an extrapolation based on a relatively small number of documented deaths."
Again, I am not convinced. I would like to see more research done before I blindly believe this whopper.
Respectfully, Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
We are supposed to make this giant leap of faith with the survey authors and assume that the infant mortality rate miraculously dropped in Saddam's Iraq
http://www.unicef.org/media/media_19237.html
In short change from clinton's oil for food - intentionally designed to have no real effect- to smart sanctions allowed vast improvements in the health of iraqi children, mortality studies taken a few years before the war hence should show higher rates then the lancet pre-war estimate.
80,000+ deaths simply went unnoticed by the media, NGOs and the Iraqi authorities
Happens every day in many countries - except it wasn't really going unnoticed. for example unicef in may after the war:
Really though - 100,000 deaths really are not that much. For counting combatants and noncombatants, violent and non-violent deaths, including all the secondary effects - infrastructure, people unable to access hospitals etc, - I do not understand why anyone finds this study surprising.
@ Andy B:
So you believe the statistics you cited on child nutrition supplied by Saddam's regime to UNICEF to be accurate? Furthermore, you consider this to be evidence that supports the remarkable claim that infant mortality fell from 108 to 29 per 1000 live births in just 3 years...? To put it mildly, I am still not convinced.
The other stat you supply is from May 2003, which was immediately after the war. Of course there was going to be a spike in malnourishment and violent death due to the war. However, your implied assertion that this rate has remained steady and not dropped significantly in the meantime is the fatal flaw in your argument.
Sorry guys, 100,000 is a lot of dead people, and this study's very shaky claims based on a relatively small sample are going to need to be confirmed by larger, more precise studies. The authors of Lancet themselves have themselves said the same, so don't put all of your intellectual eggs in this shoddy basket.
Respectfully, Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
So are you saying Iraq would lie about improving health of the children under the sanctions in order to help justify keeping the sanctions on themselves? Infant mortality rate is a favored health indicator because it is so sinsitive to changes - Increased rations to pregnant women under sanctions condition can quickly and radically change the numbers.
The cite after the war discusses malnutrition - it says nothing about violent death. Of course there is little that we can confidently say from that one study - that is why we need more studies - like the lancet study.
so don't put all of your intellectual eggs in this shoddy basket.
Perhaps you have missed the repeated support this site has given to the those pushing for more comprehensive studies? Of course no one is saying this is final word, but it gives us a baseline understanding instead of just randomly guessing.
Ray, you seem rather selective in your sceptecism about stats that possibily could have been doctored by Saddam's regime. High infant death rates you accept because they help your argument, but low malnutrition rates you reject because they don't.
There have been two malnutrition studies since the war, one just after in Baghdad, and a nationwide one last year. They both showed similar increases in malnutrition since the war. The increase was not a spike.
Tim, you are absolutely right, infant mortality could have been much higher than 108 per 1000 live births in the late 90s. I don't at all accept that number as absolute dogma. Actually, the 1999 number was a study conducted in both areas controlled by Saddam Hussein as well as autonomous areas (primarily in the Kurdish north.) The study you are talking about showed an overall increase in infant mortality in Iraq from 47 deaths per 1000 live births between 1984 to 1989 to 108 deaths per 1000 live births from 1994 to 1999 despite the decrease in infant mortality in autonomous regions from 64 to 59 in the same period. That means the infant mortality rate increased even more dramatically in Saddam Hussein controlled areas into the late 1990s than the 108 figure would actually indicate.
I am still amazed that you are willing to buy the argument that the rates could have decreased from (at least) 108 to 29 in just 3 years. The UNICEF study Andy provided is hardly convincing evidence that such a dramatic drop occurred. In fact, the "29 infant deaths per 1000 live births" figure for infant mortality derived by the Lancet Study is based entirely on 8 actual pre-conflict infant deaths out of 275 pre-conflict births recorded in the 33 clusters. That's right Tim, 8 actual deaths are the basis for the statistic you are claiming accurately reflects the infant mortality rate for a nation of over 24 million in 2002 despite the fact that the figure was at least 108 infant deaths per 1000 live births in 1999.
Additionally, the entire 100,000 death estimate is completely based on 89 deaths (21 of them violent) reported in the 32 surveyed clusters containing 960 households and about 7645 residents (excluding Falluja) over a 17.8 month period during and after the war from March 19, 2003 to mid-September 2004. That was compared to the 46 deaths reported to have taken place in the same 32 clusters in a 14.6 month period prior to the war.
Put differently, the survey recorded an average death rate of 3.15 deaths per month before the war and an average death rate of 5 deaths a month during and after the conflict in the 32 clusters considered for the 100,000 estimate.
And this is how the Lancet study used those averages to come up with the 100,000 approximation: First they adjusted for time for both data sets. That would give us a figure of approximately 56 deaths for the pre-conflict period. (3.15 deaths a month multiplied by 17.8 months). Remember, in the period during and after the war, the figure was 89 for 17.8 months. That means you had 33 more deaths (89 minus 56) in the sample clusters during and after the war than before the war out of a sample group of 7645 people. The study used 24.4 million as the population figure for Iraq. So to estimate the overall number of additional deaths, they first divided 24.4 million by 7645. That gives us 3192. We then take our 33 additional deaths and multiply them by 3192 and voila we have over 100,000+ additional deaths.
So again, this entire study and its 100,000 "additional" death estimate is based on 89 deaths in a 17.8 month period versus 46 deaths in a 14.6 month period. In other words, if even one cluster was disproportionately affected by death (or a lack thereof) either before, during or after the war, the results of the study would be dramatically off base. A change of just 10 deaths would have the effect of throwing this survey off by around plus or minus 30,000 deaths.
Tim, how can you sit there with a straight face and claim that this sample group was large enough to be taken seriously when we are debating an issue of such gravity? How can you sit there and defend a survey (with 41 articles) that makes such heavy claims of 100,000 additional dead in Iraq when it is based on a difference of just 33 deaths (time adjusted) in 960 households? If even just one or two of the surveyed families was the unfortunate victim of a particularly violent bombing incident or terror attack, the entire survey could be way off base and fatally skewed. So, no Tim, it is not a large enough sample group. The Washington Post was absolutely right to call the Lancet Study "an extrapolation based on a relatively small number of documented deaths."
Until we have larger, more conclusive surveys of this issue, there is no way we can view the Lancet Study's findings as an accurate, conclusive or reliable estimation of the number of additional dead in Iraq. Your inability to address any of my other arguments above also leaves me highly unconvinced.
I suggest you expend more of your energies calling for better studies of the issue at hand, not defending one that is so deeply flawed and lacking in depth.
Respectfully, Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
Ray, the effects of the sample size are already covered in the confidence intervals for the estimates. Those intervals are wide. We know that, but we have to do our best with the information we have. I have repeatedly called for larger and better studies, but the US and UK governments refuse to conduct them. That fact suggests that the LAncet study is not too far wide of the mark.
@ Tim:
I think the US and UK are too busy trying to defeat a violent insurgency with limited resources to be too worried about keeping statistics. Additionally, the fact that they don't have the time, energy, and/or desire to keep the statistics does not make the Lancet Study any more accurate, reliable or on "the mark." The sample group upon which it relies is simply too small to lend any credence to the weighty conclusions it draws.
At least we can agree that larger, better, more precise, more comprehensive studies are absolutely necessary to either confirm or debunk the study's findings. Even the study's authors themselves request more studies be done:
And in terms of the other issues, I suppose that we will simply have to agree to disagree on them, I hope you will at least consider my arguments...thanks
Respectfully, Ray D.
Davids Medienkritik
Ray, that's ridiculous. I guarentee you they have extremely detailed statstics on all the military activity and teams of very smart people and powerful software going over them looking for patterns. Doing a survey ten times the size of the Lancet one would cost about as much as running the war for five minutes.
Tim,
Hey, I agree we need more studies that are larger and more accurate. I would be all for a comprehensive survey at least ten times larger than Lancet. Several should be done. I agree with the Lancet authors that it should be done by an independent body though. Otherwise people will just view it as more US/UK propaganda. I just hope that whoever does this work is unbiased, precise and fair.
Respectfully, Ray D.
Ray wrote "I think the US and UK are too busy trying to defeat a violent insurgency with limited resources to be too worried about keeping statistics". Yup, they've said that in just about ever one of their imperial adventures: Viet Nam, The Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, Kenya, Guatemala, Chile, Panama, Gulf War I, etc. etc. The logic is simple: "If we don't count em', then it (a high civilian death toll) didn't happen". I'd like to ask Ray why Tommy Franks famously claimed that the coalition "Counts every screwdriver". Are these more important than the 'unpeoples' of the world?
@ Jeff
"Imperial adventures"? Ever heard of the Cold War and Stalin Jeff? Ever heard of Pol Pot and Mao? Of course they were not responsible for the deaths of any of the world's unpeoples now were they? It is all America's fault all the time. That is the default assumption for folks like you.
Anyway, perhaps we should use the USSR's method for counting bodies in Afghanistan in the 1980s, since they were such good guys and had nothing to do with Vietnam, Nicaragua, Chile, etc. according to you. The Soviet Army derived the calculation from a mathematical equation in which the total number of rounds fired at the enemy was divided by a predetermined factor provided by Defense Ministry analysts. It was this formula that produced the number of 30,000 bandits killed in action per year.
How's that sound Jeff?
As I said earlier, I have nothing against larger, better studies, I have been saying we need that all along. I'd prefer they be carried out by an independent group of organizations so that people like Jeff can't claim it is US propaganda if the results turn out to debunk their theories of six-digit deaths.
---Ray D.
As for war opponents ... a study that compares deaths in the first 14 months of the war vs. the previous 14 months? PUH-LEASE! What about the Iran-Iraq war?
Generally regarded as a disaster for Iraq.
The gassing of the Kurds?
Generally regarded as a atrocity by the government of Iraq.
The suppression of the Shi'ite revolt?
Generally regarded as an ugly and brutish civil campaign in Iraq.
But the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US?
Oh, THAT's "liberation"...
The only position left for those who believe an increased death rate resulting from regime change nullified the net gain and benefit from regime change, is to maintain that the Iraqi people were better off being consigned to oblivion under continued Baathist dictatorship. In fact, using this criteria, one would also have to be against any attempts by the Iraqi people to oust Saddam on their own.
This is, of course, bullshit. It is like claiming that those objecting to a dentist pulling all your teeth out must be maintaining that an impacted wisdom tooth is a desirable thing, and that to object to getting all your teeth pulled out means you must object to the wisdom tooth being removed.
We do not object to Hussein being removed. We object to Hussein being removed at the cost of lying to the world, launching an illegal invasion, murdering over 100,000 people and a large power occupying for the indefinate future another sovereign nation.
It would have been better if Hussein had been removed by the people of Iraq. The option to encourage this with support from outside forces was always there; the choice to invade and occupy the country with American troops was not necessary.
As for war opponents ... a study that compares deaths in the first 14 months of the war vs. the previous 14 months? PUH-LEASE! What about the Iran-Iraq war?
Generally regarded as a disaster for Iraq.
The gassing of the Kurds?
Generally regarded as a atrocity by the government of Iraq.
The suppression of the Shi'ite revolt?
Generally regarded as an ugly and brutish civil campaign in Iraq.
But the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US?
Oh, THAT's "liberation"...
The only position left for those who believe an increased death rate resulting from regime change nullified the net gain and benefit from regime change, is to maintain that the Iraqi people were better off being consigned to oblivion under continued Baathist dictatorship. In fact, using this criteria, one would also have to be against any attempts by the Iraqi people to oust Saddam on their own.
This is, of course, bullshit. It is like claiming that those objecting to a dentist pulling all your teeth out must be maintaining that an impacted wisdom tooth is a desirable thing, and that to object to getting all your teeth pulled out means you must object to the wisdom tooth being removed.
We do not object to Hussein being removed. We object to Hussein being removed at the cost of lying to the world, launching an illegal invasion, murdering over 100,000 people and a large power occupying for the indefinate future another sovereign nation.
It would have been better if Hussein had been removed by the people of Iraq. The option to encourage this with support from outside forces was always there; the choice to invade and occupy the country with American troops was not necessary.
As for war opponents ... a study that compares deaths in the first 14 months of the war vs. the previous 14 months? PUH-LEASE! What about the Iran-Iraq war?
Generally regarded as a disaster for Iraq.
The gassing of the Kurds?
Generally regarded as a atrocity by the government of Iraq.
The suppression of the Shi'ite revolt?
Generally regarded as an ugly and brutish civil campaign in Iraq.
But the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US?
Oh, THAT's "liberation"...
The only position left for those who believe an increased death rate resulting from regime change nullified the net gain and benefit from regime change, is to maintain that the Iraqi people were better off being consigned to oblivion under continued Baathist dictatorship. In fact, using this criteria, one would also have to be against any attempts by the Iraqi people to oust Saddam on their own.
This is, of course, bullshit. It is like claiming that those objecting to a dentist pulling all your teeth out must be maintaining that an impacted wisdom tooth is a desirable thing, and that to object to getting all your teeth pulled out means you must object to the wisdom tooth being removed.
We do not object to Hussein being removed. We object to Hussein being removed at the cost of lying to the world, launching an illegal invasion, murdering over 100,000 people and a large power occupying for the indefinate future another sovereign nation.
It would have been better if Hussein had been removed by the people of Iraq. The option to encourage this with support from outside forces was always there; the choice to invade and occupy the country with American troops was not necessary.