Lancet podcasts

If IBC doesn't want to comment that's all to the good. There's been enough vitriol. They do have a legitimate role to play and if they want to let others sort out what's right or wrong with the Lancet papers, good.

Well, except that the IBC has already commented, very publicly and very negatively. If they now refuse to discuss the matter with Roberts et al., they've just dumped vitriol out there without sorting out much of anything.

It's a shame, because I'd love for them to have an actual dialogue with the study authors. We'd learn a lot more about the nature and completeness of casualty coverage in Iraq if the people trying to catalogue every (English-language) news report were willing to talk to the only people who are actually on the ground doing mortality surveys.

I heard the This American life piece and the interview with Les Roberts was very good.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the interview with Marc Garlasco, who weighed in on (shot his ignorant mouth off about) the first Lancet study without knowing the first thing about it or even about statistics.

Garlasco apparently thought that because he had done some of the targeting in the early part of the war, he was an expert on Iraqi casualties.

The guy clearly lives in fantasy land and, unfortunately, there are far too many "know-nothing know-it-alls" like Garlasco out there.

I particularly enjoyed the "National Interest" interview on so many levels.

I enjoyed when Roberts asserted that MoH had recorded "not a 10th" of 500,000 (it was 400,000 a couple weeks ago) natural cause deaths he projects "should" have taken place. I'll not bother asking for a source, and he won't be providing one.

I also enjoyed the brand new revelation that it is "most disingenuous" to take ILCS as a credible estimate and to point to the difference between it and his study. It now suddenly turns out that he is "sure" that ILCS is was a "gross undercount" of deaths (after its estimate having been offered as confirming the L1 estimate on this website for over a year), and that its authors "know" this to be true.

So many pearls here. I only hope the ABC studios were well fire-proofed, as Roberts' pants must have burst into flames repeatedly throughout the interview.

"He offers up an untidy pile of factoids, some of which are true but out of context, some of which are not at all true, and some of which he seems to have conjured up out of thin air. What they all have in common is that they support his position."

cough..cough..

The "know-nothing know-it-alls" are the ones who got us into the mess in Iraq in the first place.

We all know someone like this: the self-proclaimed "genius", trained in a "rigorous" disclipline like political "science" or "government" -- either too stupid or too busy partying in college to get a real degree.

What's your estimate joshd?

I would be more impressed by the above comments on this thread if they could explain why Les Roberts was content to use CIA fiction as corroborative support for his claim that pre 2003 mortality in Iraq was only 5.5-6 per 1,000 when the actual rate according to the WHO which unlike the CIA may be presumed to have some standing on this issue shows a rate of over 9. Not only that, Roberts claims there was no census or equivalent data, but his own study relies heavily on verification of its estimates on death
certificates; issuing of birth and death certificates is what enables life tables to be constructed, as by WHO. Is Les Roberts a demographer? I would suggest not, alternatively he is so politically motivated that in Quiggin speak he has to be categorised as a liar. As previously noted, using the WHO life tables as datum halves the Roberts deaths count, but 300,000 is still far too many, and as they all occurred on GWB's watch and supervision and assumption of responsibility for law and order in Iraq, and as they far far exceed all estimates of the carnage committed by that much misunderstood man SH, there is a legitimate case for his honourable discharge to be followed by success in his claim for damages for wrongful dismissal by said GWB.

Anbody care to translate that last post for me?

Anbody care to translate that last post for me?

I think it's Tim Curtin's way of saying "I don't have the foggiest idea what a cohort study is; but anyway if Iraqis can still obtain death certificates, then WHO figures from way back must be reliable. Stands to reason, dunnit?".

Kevin Donoghue wrote:

I think it's Tim Curtin's way of saying "I don't have the foggiest idea what a cohort study is

Shorter Tim Curtin: "If you want to see how well a diet works, don't weigh a person before, then put him on the diet, then weigh him after. Instead, compare his post-diet weight to an independent estimate of average weight for all people. If he's heavier than average, the diet didn't work."

Well, on the positive side Tim Curtin did compare GWB with SH and assuming he's sincere about that (I'm not sure), I can't bash a man too hard who equates the two, having just done it myself at a different blog.

Here's an interesting article by Patrick Cockburn--

http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick11052006.html

The whole thing is worth reading, but I bring it up here because he mentions a poll taken only several weeks ago, where they apparently asked sensitive questions such as whether it's okay to attack American troops. So why can't the Lancet study be replicated, at least in part, by having pollsters ask how many people have died violently in a given household since the invasion?

I think it was Mike in the past few weeks who provided a link to a story about a Gallup poll back in 2003 (when it was safer) asking Baghdad families about deaths under Saddam--the conclusion was that he'd killed 60,000 in that city. No error bars provided, nothing about methodology or how they kept track of who lived in the household over the period when Saddam was in power, and it didn't occur to the person writing the story to wonder about such details. But one would think (okay, an amateur like me would think) you could get a rough idea of the violent mortality rate over the past few years with a few questions by professional pollsters, yet it doesn't seem like anybody is interested in doing this, despite the number of polls done in Iraq that we've all read about.

JoshD, I expect people like Tim C to be an apologist for western crimes and the misuse of corporate power but you can do better. As I said before, it seems rather strange to me that you and the other IBC people are expending so much vitriol against JHU and the Lancet and are giving the criminal gangs in Washington and London a free pass. Why the hell aren't you using your energy more constructively? Its clear that Bush used the IBC underestimate of civilian casulaties last year to downplay the much more damaging higher estimates of the post-invasion Iraq death toll from other sources (including JHU). But where was IBC when its figures were being so flagrantly abused to legimtize and to normalize western aggression? Yet as soon as your thunder is stolen by JHU, there you are, foaming at the mouth with indignation. It makes me wonder exactly what IBC stands for.

Jeff,

Your post reminds me of another thing I found distasteful about the ABC interview. For LR it always seems that contrition and regret for turning Iraqi into a hell-hole is only possible if you accept his studies and their conclusions. You go a step further and say that a toll such as 50,000 dead Iraqi civilians "legitimizes and normalizes western aggression".

I fail to see how one can go from that to "legitimate" and "normal".

There are some corners of the left who have simply lost the plot here.

And this is also one of my concerns about this Lancet estimate. If such estimates are too high, they throw out of whack peoples sense of proportion, and serve to make lower numbers seem "not so bad", when it is actually very bad.

Shorter joshd logic stream:

It's better to undercount, because...um...people will get sensitized to American military damage. Yeah. That's it. Sensitized.

Jus' sayin'.

Best,

D

joshd - why do you keep using '50,000' when you know that value is a floor on the number of deaths, and not an estimate of the number of deaths?

Josh,

I know you don't believe that the true death toll is 50,000. But you are quite wrong to suggest that if it were, Iraq would qualify as a hell-hole. If a country lost about one in five hundred non-combatants in the course of an invasion followed by a counter-insurgency campaign lasting over three years, many people would judge that the campaign must have been managed pretty well. I'm not sure that many Americans would be too bothered even if the Pentagon announced that a million Iraqis had died since 2003, as long as it was stressed that terrorists were to blame. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it's clear that very few would think 50,000 Iraqi lives too high a price for keeping America safe, etc. etc.

Of course you are under no obligation to accept the conclusions of Burnham et al., but you do have an obligation to ensure that your criticisms are fair. The fact that Medialens is unfair to IBC has nothing to do with that.

But your criticisms are not at all fair. Once again in this thread you are waving the ILCS around. Anyone who goes to the ILCS will find that there is precious little there. It refers to "the number of deaths of civilians and military personnel in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion". No indication is given as to how long after the invasion "the aftermath" goes on. It is a vague term, as is "war related" deaths, the expression used in the questionnaire. We don't even know what figures they got for deaths in other categories, or what the total is. Maybe the full ILCS figures would cast doubt on the JHU figures, if we had them. Or maybe they would provide powerful support for JHU, or they might turn out to resolve nothing. We don't have the figures so the whole topic is just a distraction.

For the rest, the IBC critique mostly depends on:

a) The idea that if a doctor (or dentist, or whoever) issues a death certificate to a family, that means that the whole process of keeping vital statistics at national level is working well enough to provide useful information. Maybe such information exists, somewhere, but one thing is for sure: it isn't being published.

b) The idea that large numbers of people can't die without reporters noticing. That sort of criticism should be left to people like TallDave and Seixon, who don't know any better.

joshd - what is your estimate? Do you see yet that your unwillingness to answer that question, combined with the vitriol you heap on the Lancet report, damages nothing so much as your own credibility? Nobody outside your own organisation will be taking you seriously if you keep this up much longer. You clearly have in your own mind a far lower figure for the death toll than the Lancet has estimated. You're smart enough to realise that you can't say it out loud because it is based on only your intuition and your IBC experience with media reported deaths so you'll be unable to support it with sufficient evidence, yet you're personally, vehemently, certain that your gut feel and instincts trump the Iraqi doctors' surveying on the ground -even though the researchers claim to have checked that there were death certificates available to support a very high fraction of their statistics.

Conclusion: the IBC was an idea worth trying but the evidence suggests very strongly that its model is a failure - media reporting of deaths occasioned in very nasty theatres of conflict such as in Iraq at present may bear little to no relationship to the real underlying rate of death. joshd's own defensive belligerence and refusal to even discuss the question renders the conclusion unavoidable.

Guys, Joshd = Josh Dougherty, Associate Researcher with IBC.

link

Ah, you already knew that I see. Anyway, Josh's credentials as a Jazz guitarist are unquestionable.

Josh and apparently a fair number of IBC researchers think their methods probably capture better than 50 percent of the total civilian death toll. 50 percent is, I think, as low as they're willing to concede as realistic, but in a hypothetical sort of way they've said coverage as low as 25 percent is possible. But they don't really think that is at all likely.

The reply to the medialens critics (which is up on their website) contains, I think, the 50 percent estimate, but I'm not sure. I'm conveying what I understand Josh to have said on the medialens site itself.

Josh will correct me if I'm wrong.

Josh, I know you guys are antiwar and think people should stop making the charge that you're not. But I understand where the opinion comes from. IBC's numbers, if true, actually provide strong support for the chastened formerly prowar liberal position , the one that says the Iraqis were glad to be liberated, but where we went wrong was in not supplying enough troops to provide security. From all that I've read the Iraqis were willing to accept the 7000 or so civilian deaths (IBC's figure) in the invasion to overthrow Saddam. What has turned them against the Americans is what came after.

And that's where the Lancet and IBC versions of reality are starkly different, and not just in the total number. A very large number of Iraqis are so angry at the US that they favor attacks on US troops, yet in IBC's view (and the mainstream view), the US troops are only responsible for a small fraction of the civilian carnage once you get past the invasion phase and I don't think most Iraqis were so murderously angry at Americans back in May 2003. The main failure of the troops in the IBC version of reality is in not providing security from the insurgents, criminals, and death squads, yet many Iraqis have long favored targeting them. If IBC's numbers are correct, there is a strain of xenophobic irrationality to this, because it's only the Americans who (in this version) are trying to keep the violence down. There's a reason why the US government and the mainstream Iraqi analysts like Cordesmann and O'Hanlon have embraced the IBC figures and it's not simply because they've got a commitment to objective truth. By the way, none of this means you're wrong--it just means that your data supports the notion that the US military is operating with restraint, doing its unsuccessful best to keep Iraqis from killing each other. There are some on the right who say this is the problem--the US should have been tougher all along.

The Lancet version explains the Iraqi hatred of the US troops in a simpler way--the Americans have continued to be a major source of Iraqi casualties.

I don't know which is closer to the truth, though I have my own opinions.

You said:

"The National Interest has an interview with Les Roberts where he answers all the criticisms of the study."

I couldn't find where Les answers the criticism that the 5.5 baseline pre-invasion mortality is too low. Could you point me to where he addresses that?

Thanks.

Donald, I think your 'versions' and your analysis of them are oversimplified. Even if we take the IBC number to be complete, coalition troops are still killing Iraqi civilians persistently, and have been throughout the entire war, and Iraqis I'm sure know damn well that the coalition presence is the whole problem to begin with, regardless of what number they might be killing.

They also know that George Bush does not have their interests in mind while running their country, and has no intent of leaving no matter what they think or want. Saddam Hussein would get better approval ratings, and more confidence among more Iraqis that he had their best interests in mind. Many Sunnis are angry at the US for taking away their power and position. Many Shiites are angry at the US for not giving them enough power and keeping power over Iraq to themselves. For these and countless other reasons, even aside from what number the US troops might be killing, they have a lot of grounds for hating the US presence there. It doesn't require non-stop mass slaughter of civilians by an occupying power for large numbers of the occupied population to hate them and consider using force against them acceptable or appropriate. We can see this in Palestine. That the occupying force might be directly killing them in still higher numbers, or much higher numbers, would simply add even more fuel.

So, sure the Lancet version of constant mass slaughter by US troops, including the otherwise invisible 2006 'shock and awe' scale air campaign, provides a much simpler explanation that neatly conforms to a lot of the assumptions of a certain segment in the anti-war camp, and gives them a strong and simple argument with which to make their case (and I think this is some of the reason why so many are willing to overlook so many contradictions, inaccuracies of fact and suspend any manner of healthy disbelief), but that doesn't make it the only explanation, or the right one.

"That the occupying force might be directly killing them in still higher numbers, or much higher numbers, would simply add even more fuel."

You might even consider Donald, that it's not even in the strategic self-interest of the war makers to be doing all the things that would be implied by the Lancet, for precisely that reason. Every civilian they kill is then another set of brothers, sons, or other relatives and friends more likely to go join up to attack the occupiers.

That's not to say that they wouldn't of course, because from their perspective, they may be damned if they do and damned if they don't, so pick one. That's the very definition of quagmire.

"it's not even in the strategic self-interest of the war makers to be doing all the things that would be implied by the Lancet"

It is beyond any reasonable doubt that Rumsfeld ad the others who have been directing th Iraq war have no clue about "strategic interest (or anything else).

Whatever else may be true, it is a fact that reason has been thrown like confetti to the wind in the execution of this war.

Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Cambone et al are all perfect examples of the "Know-nothing know-it-all" personality type.

Their positions of power derive almost exclusively from their personality (rather than from intelligence or competence ) and their idea of "reasoning" is to shout all the louder with those who disagree.

Not much time right now--anyway, one reason I think the US killing has been greater than reported is that there are hints in the press of unreported killing. There's the debate outlined by George Packer in the New Yorker earlier this year and by John Burns in the June 4, 2006 NYT between those in the military who favor the "kinetic" approach which has been employed all along (lots of killing) vs. a more hearts and minds approach which General Chiarelli (can't remember if that's his name and don't have time to look it up) favors.

Whether the killing is as high as in Lancet2 is another question.

JoshD, other posts have summed up my position on your response to my last posting, but you still didn't answer my question, which is to ask you why you and IBC are so indignant at JHU and The Lancet but have been alarmingly silent over the attempts by Bush and co. to downplay Iraq civilian casualties. As far as I can see, IBC said nothing when Bush answered a reporter last December by saying that about 30,000 civilians had died in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. Its clear that this is a significant underestimate, but IBC was notable at the time for its deafening silence.

The criminal gangs running foreign policy in Washington and London have done everything in their power to downplay their complicity in the mass murder of Iraqi civilians. And although you are correct in saying that 30,000 or 50,000 deaths is a huge total, the aim of the government planners in the US and UK is to make it appear as if the vast majority of the killing was the result of conflict between Sunnis and Shias (thus implying that few of the civilians were actually killed by coalition forces). Although the occupying forces should be also responsible for security in Iraq, this still lessens coalition culpability, and this is why Bush can trot out such a figure and have the corporate-state media write it up as if it is authoritative while hardly denting the myth of our unherent 'benevolence' and 'exceptionalism'. Such a figure makes the invasion seem like a mistake, an error, rather than a great crime, which is what it actually was.

In May of 2003, just two months or so after the invasion of Iraq began, the reporter John Pilger asked John Bolton, then in charge of arms control (a totally Orwellian title for such a wretched person), how he felt knowing that 10,000 civilians had been killed in the first phase of the Iraq war. Bolton did not deny this figure, but replied that he didn't think it was so bad, considering the scale of the invasion. This shows you the mindset of the DC planners and of the supine US media, which would repeat Bush's 30,000 guesstimate as if it was nothing exceptional. This also aptly describes the 'normalization' process which is well described in the title of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's book, "Manufacturing Consent". However, the much higher figures of the carnage, like those in the JHU studies, are far more damaging to western propaganda efforts, and must be marginalized, which explains the US-UK media's hostility to them. It is not because the figures are all that exceptional, given the fact that Iraq has been all but virtually flattened, but that a death toll of over 500,000 Iraqis seriously damages the well cultivated myth of our benevolence and thus creates a serious PR problem for western planners, who are terrified of public opinion. It is their Achilles Heel, which explains why the buildup to the war required one of the most mendacious public relations campaigns in political history, in the words of analyst Anatol Lieven. 'Managing the outrage' has always been the goal of the PR indutry, and whereas 50,000 deaths in Iraqi is a nominally 'managable' total, 655,000 is not.

The Lancet2 paper, btw, gives a 95 percent confidence interval for the number of Iraqis who blamed the violent deaths on the coalition--it was 26-37 percent. That result might well stand even if the hypothetical main street bias inflated the total. Some of the Iraqis might be blaming deaths caused by other Iraqis on Americans, of course, but then, when it comes down to it, the whole question is one of who you believe. And maybe some Iraqis blame "unknown" rather than single any particular faction out.

I don't think the MSM has the question of US-caused civilian casualties very high on its agenda and they don't seem to be pushing the US government very hard on it, to put it mildly. I know there were media reports of nearly 2000 deaths in Fallujah caused by the US because of IBC, not because I can remember the NYT ever putting any such number on its front page. These very basic questions about death toll are back page fodder at best, at least in the US most of the time. It simply hasn't been a question they've emphasized very much. I would take media reports on casualties more seriously if there was evidence that the press was really pushing the government hard to come clean on how many civilians it is killing, or if they try to verify it themselves. Les Roberts suggested visiting gravediggers and pollsters still continue asking questions about whether people favor shooting American troops, so it doesn't seem out of the question that if reporters ever get out into the Iraqi streets, they could try checking up on ordinary people's experiences of the level of violence. If they don't dare do it, or even ask their Iraqi stringers to do it, then that tells you something right there. It shouldn't be that hard for reporters to ask their Iraqi stringers if what Riverbend and Raed have said is true in their experience--that virtually every Iraqi extended family has lost members to violence since the occupation.

Donald,

No disrespect to Iraqi stringers, but I'm afraid your suggestion reminds me of the (apparently apocryphal) story about the liberal who didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon. English-speaking Baghdadis who work with the media are probably at greater risk than most Iraqis. That's the trouble with convenience samples.

Actually now that the Democrats are in a position to demand some answers from Rumsfeld (or better still from his replacement), there is a way to check Burnham et al.; the military undoubtedly has reports of firefights and airstrikes which must include some indications of the numbers believed to have been killed. Even if much of the detail must remain classified there is no reason why some useful information can't be made public.

Putting it another way, we are about to find out whether Americans really want to know about dead Iraqis. My belief, hopefully to be refuted, is that they don't. No particular disrespect to Americans intended - I'm afraid that's the way with all nations. The Brits, French and others who got involved in colonial adventures also lacked curiosity in these matters.

Believers in American exceptionalism, step forward: your chance to shine has arrived.

Better yet, Democrats can demand answers from Rumsfeld and from his replacement. Cripes, that was a quick exit! But hardly premature.

"that was a quick exit! But hardly premature.

When it comes to Rumsfeld, the only thing that is premature (that most of us are privy to) is his thinking.

Americans, or at least those who make decisions in news organizations, nevermind the politicians, care almost nothing about the number of Iraqis we might be killing. I'll be surprised if having more Democrats in office will change that. The most you can ever do in mainstream political circles (which includes the press) is talk about policy failures and our inability to prevent bad foreigners from doing bad things. That's why, on American TV, when they have roundtable discussions about our duty to prevent genocide it's always about our failure to prevent other people from doing evil things in Rwanda, etc... and never ever about our active complicity in helping genocidal killers in Guatemala and East Timor. And forget about the notion of war crimes trials for policymakers in Vietnam. Only fringe characters ever go beyond that and talk about high-ranking Americans who might be guilty of war crimes.

As for stringers, there are polls taken still in Iraq, so there are people besides the Lancet team brave enough to knock on doors and ask questions. What's missing is the willingness to ask questions about death rates.

JoshD, other posts have summed up my position on your response to my last posting, but you still didn't answer my question, which is to ask you why you and IBC are so indignant at JHU and The Lancet but have been alarmingly silent over the attempts by Bush and co. to downplay Iraq civilian casualties. As far as I can see, IBC said nothing when Bush answered a reporter last December by saying that about 30,000 civilians had died in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. Its clear that this is a significant underestimate, but IBC was notable at the time for its deafening silence.

My answer to your question would be that your premise is incorrect, and it's an 'are you still beating your wife' question.

John Sloboda said something in the press at the time about Bush, though probably not what you'd want him to say (ie, "Bush is lying there are hundreds of thousands of deaths!"), because he doesn't share your premises.

I don't really accept your view about Bush's comment anyway. I think if IBC were not around he would not have even admitted to the 30,000, even given his distortion of it. So I think that was a small victory. And John also wrote an editorial about Blair distorting IBC figures a few months ago, called "Blithe Ignorance". Look it up.

So your "deafening silence" is something you've invented, and which has probably been circularly reinforced for you in this campaign of disinformation that has been directed at IBC, of which this website has been active.

Also, I expect people on the same side as me to be on the level. When they're not, as in this interview, I get upset. I don't expect it from Bush. When he's not, it's just another day. Since you're obviously a Chomsky reader you can search for any number of quotes about why we should pay attention to the wrongs of our own side first, you'll find lots of them.

... I expect people on the same side as me to be on the level. When they're not, as in this interview, I get upset. I don't expect it from Bush.

Josh,

If that's how it is you don't need to be upset by Les Roberts and Tim Lambert. They are not on your side at all. They never have been and they never will be. The argument isn't about politics, it's about how to do science.

Actually in this matter you are on the same side as Bush, who says the methodology of the JHU study is unsound. That is your belief also. Do not be troubled therefore, but rejoice in the knowledge which the Lord hath vouchsafed you.

Josh, Thanks for your insightful comments. Now we are getting somehwere. But the main point I made, and you did not answer, is how the American public view 30,000 deaths aganst 655,000. Given the appalling record of US sponsored atrocities around the world over the past 50 years, 30,000 doesn't seen so bad, particularly if it can be implied that very few of these were the direct result of coalition bombs and artillery fire. Moreover, Bush only quoted the 30,000 figure when other studies (including the first JHU study) had produced much higher estimates. This has everything to do with what I described in my last posting: managing the outrage. If scum like John Bolton can dismiss 10,000 deaths early in the conflict as a total that isn't so bad, and this is ignored by the punditocracy in the US, then a total of 30,000 two years later will seem like an easy total to manage from a PR point of view as well. In the illusory 'war on terror', I am sure that many, perhaps most, Americans would not lose any sleep if they think that the loss of 30,000 Iraqi lives, especially if 90% were the result of internal conflict, had occurred during 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'. But half a million or more? Perhaps 200,000 killed directly by US forces? This is much harder to manage from a propaganda point of view. The information warriors' and 'perception managers' in PR firms (e.g. the Rendon group) will have their work cut out for them suppressing internal outrage and consternation over 655,000 excess deaths, even in a so-called 'war on terror'. This total, in combination with the unnecessary loss of almost 3,000 American soldiers, will undermine the exceptionalist myth of their country that is drip-fed to many American citizens from birth, and would join a litany of carnage from other US (mis)adventures in imperialist expansion.

To reiterate what you said earlier, it is a horrendous loss of life and makes the invasion a crime, but not a crime on the epic scale that the latest JHU figures would suggest.

Jeff Harvey:
The WHO established life tables for Iraq in 2001 by methodology it deployed elsewhere (eg Iran). The crude mortality rate for Iraq was 9.26. The Lancet (with its phony "peer review" sic) and JHU chose to disregard this life table, based as it was on the very death certificates used by JHU in their cohort study. Using the WHO rate., available from its web site with none of Les Roberts' political ambitions to guide it, there were no "excess deaths" in Iraq in 2003-2004, and only 43,300 to May 2005. In 2005-2006 there was (according to JHU) a large increase to 261,330, which can hardly plausibly be attributable to the invasion per se, as manifestly most were due to secticide. The total excess of 305,000 is still an outrage, and fully justifies the resignation of Rumsfeld. But if academic integrity means anything, and this site is testimony to the obverse, the JHU study by ignoring disinterested data from the WHO has done all of us a disservice.

Tim Curtin, you claim that 305,000 excess deaths is 'still an outrage and fully justifies the resignation of Rumsfeld'. Wow, that's really making a point (NOT). Shouldn't you be saying that this is 'still an outrage and fully justifies war crimes tribunals against the civilian leaderships of the coalition nations that violated internation law, the UN charter, and the Nuremburg code, and which resulted in senseless butchery and carnage on a vast scale? Or is the resignation of scum like Rumsfeld enough in your view? Is this victor's justice? What about all of the other criminals who should be tried for crimes against humanity - Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Armitage, Feith, Libby, Ledeen, Kagan, Perle, Bolton, Negroponte and the other motley crew of recycled Reaganites in the DC axis of evil who supported the Butcher of Bagdad when he was committing his worst crimes and now hold the reins of power (albeit diminished since yesterday)? What about Blair, Straw, Hoon, Reid, and the other criminals in the UK government? The supine Howard government in your own land of OZ? Where do the 305,000 (if it is "only" 305,000 excess civilian deaths instead of 655,000) victims fit into this picture of justice? If the US and its proxies spent more money saving and helping people instead of killing them, then I might be able to sense something important was afoot. But you express more ire at the JHU group and their Lancet article for daring suggest that since the invasion and occupation 655,000 excess deaths have occurred instead in Iraq instead of the far more realiastic total (in your calculations) of 305,000. What the heck is the difference in terms of immorality and criminality?

"If that's how it is you don't need to be upset by Les Roberts and Tim Lambert. They are not on your side at all. They never have been and they never will be. The argument isn't about politics, it's about how to do science."

Apparently their side on "how to do science" is to distort facts, make up facts, and mislead, as in the cited interviews.

Josh, you wrote 'Apparently their side on "how to do science" is to distort facts, make up facts, and mislead, as in the cited interviews'.

Please fill me in on your full scientific qwualifications. How many peer-reviewed papers have you published in this or related fields? If your qualifications are as stated in the IBC website (Masters Degree in Jazz Studies) then I am sorry: this won't do if you are trying to make a persuasive argument that yu know good science from bad science.

As earlier posts have stated, you are foaming again at any notion that the clearly baseless IBC 50,000 civilian death estimate in Iraq may be many times less than the true total (heck, even apologists like Tim Curtin are claiming that the total, though far below te JHU estimate of 655,000, may still be as high as 305,000, which is fully 6 times more than the IBC estimate). What's amusing is that you have made a few remarks effectively saying, gosh, how bad 30,000 or 50,000 deaths are, followed by a bit of pontificating, before turning most of your wrath to JHU and the Lancet. Kevin D is right: you appear to be showing your true colors with regard to the Iraq war.

Tim Curtin wrote:

The WHO established life tables for Iraq in 2001 by methodology it deployed elsewhere (eg Iran). The crude mortality rate for Iraq was 9.26. The Lancet (with its phony "peer review" sic) and JHU chose to disregard this life table, based as it was on the very death certificates used by JHU in their cohort study. Using the WHO rate., available from its web site [...] there were no "excess deaths" in Iraq in 2003-2004

Shorter Tim Curtin: "I don't know what a cohort study is."

I wrote:

Shorter Tim Curtin: "I don't know what a cohort study is."

I may have been too hasty. There's another explanation. Alternative shorter Tim Curtin: "I know what a cohort study is, but I'm hoping you don't."

JoshD and IBC aren't prowar and Sloboda did write a decent commentary about Bush some months back.

The squabble is similar to clashes between scientists with differing approaches to some problem that give very different results. (I can make the comparison without saying anything about the merits of the two sides.) It got ugly on both sides with the medialens campaign. Egos got involved and everyone knows the rest.

Donald, I still have yet to see JoshD wade in here with as much anger at those doing much of the killing in Iraq as he is at those doing whom he perceives to be incorrect audits of the killing. This explains why many here are bemused at his posts, that and the fact that JoshD, from what I see is not a scientist, but a musician.

IBC has performed an important role in focusing on civilian deaths in Iraq back when nobody else was doing so.

But their work was always just the beginning of an effort to count deaths in Iraq, not the end. Nearly everyone -- except the Bush administration -- recognizes the IBC number as an underestimate of mortality in Iraq.

IBC should see the Johns Hopkins work as a logical progression of their own but instead, they see it as a threat.

They have apparently become so self-enamored that they can not see the forrest for the trees.

Robert: when you can show you understand (1) life tables, and (2) need for some benchmarking (even Lancet/JH admitted this but chose the CIA) then tell me about cohort studies. Of course the latter can be valid but they need to have some further support.

Here's an interesting article (I found it by way of Juan Cole) about how Iraq might be the least transparent and most corrupt country on earth. Obviously the place to go for accurate government statistics on how many people are being killed by its death squads and American allies.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n21/harr04_.html

Jeff--I think IBC should be pushing the mainstream press to push harder on the subject of civilian casualties. The last thing the press needs, IMO, is to be told they do a good professional job in that department. What's ironic, I think, is that when IBC was first saying its figures could be trusted because the press's professionalism could be trusted, they were defending themselves from rightwing critics who said that IBC numbers were clearly inflated. That defense makes sense--I'd assume that if IBC is careful in checking press accounts against each other, they can weed out doublecounts and give a solid minimum estimate for the number of deaths. But the press does not need to be told that they do such a good job that their numbers can be relied upon to do anything more than put a basement on the possible number.

Tim Curtin challenged:

Robert: when you can show you understand (1) life tables, and (2) need for some benchmarking [...] then tell me about cohort studies.

Hmmm. You got me there. Cuz I can't imagine how I'd [ever](http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~wachter/110/pal.html) be able to [demonstrate](http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~wachter/210/pal210.html) that.

So, which is it: you don't know what a cohort study is, or you know and are
hoping that none of us here do?

I have to say that Robert was the best professor that I ever had. There were a group of us who would try to take any class that he taught. He finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material.

Jeff--I think IBC should be pushing the mainstream press to push harder on the subject of civilian casualties. The last thing the press needs, IMO, is to be told they do a good professional job in that department.

Donald, the last thing the press needs is to be told lies by people in the anti-war movement. The Lancet report is full of them and so are the interviews posted above. That needs to stop.

Jeff Harvey said: "Americans would not lose any sleep if they think that the loss of 30,000 Iraqi lives, especially if 90% were the result of internal conflict, had occurred during 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'. But half a million or more? Perhaps 200,000 killed directly by US forces? This is much harder to manage from a propaganda point of view."

Most Americans that I know are not aware of the Lancet study or even the IBC number.

If they are ware of any number at all, it is what Bush said in his press conference a while back": "30,000, more or less"

You think our leaders are uninformed about the world? That's nothing compared to the average person in this country, who would not be able to find Iraq on a map if their life depended on it.

Most are not even aware that American bombing in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war killed a huge number of civilians. I'm also willing to bet that most Americans could not say just how many US troops died in Vietnam.

It's pretty pathetic -- and inexcusable -- but, unfortunately, that's the way it is.

You can lead an ingnorant man to the library, but you can't make him read -- particularly not unflattering things about himself.

JB wrote:

You can lead an ingnorant man to the library, but you can't make him read

You can lead a horse's ass to water, but you can't make him think.

Oh, shit, why not: "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think." - Dorothy Parker, once asked to use the world "horticulture" in a sentence.

JB,

Great post. I lived I the US for a number of years and sadly I can vouch for some of what you said. But Mark Curtis nailed the reason in 'Web of Deceit when he blamed a supine, corporate slavish media that is in the business of 'mass producing ignorance'. Given this fact, and the extra fact that many people embrace ignoration, its no small wonder that when Madeline Albright said in a 1996 interview with Lesley Stahl, "When all is considered, we think the price is worth it" in describing the possible deaths of up to half a million Iraqi civilians as a result of the sanctions regime, many Americans probably were switched elsewhere or greeted this admission with collective yawns. After all, why question or even show a remote interest in what empire does when one's lifestyle is the result of empire, irrespective of the human and social costs?

Jeff,

I believe that the advanced state of ignorance of the American public is as much a result of our education system as it is of our corporate-controlled media.

After all, if people in this country had learned how to think for themselves, they would recognize propaganda when they see it in the media and certainly not allow the media and think tanks to do their thinking for them.

America's Universities are the envy of the world -- and rightly so --, but our primary and secondary education system produces a very large number of functional illiterates and innumerates.

If one can not parse a simple sentence or do anything beyond very simple math, one is absolutely lost when it comes to analyzing statistical studies of Iraqi mortality.

By and large, even those Americans who have a college degree lack critical thinking skills. Most did not take any math or science in college beyond the very basic (if they took any at all), so they are also at a loss when it comes to doing very basic logical analysis of scientifically related issues like global warming, mortality studies, stem cell and other medical research, economics, etc.

It is very easy to dismiss studies like the Johns Hopkins one with know-nothing phrases about "Lies, damned Lies and statistics". As another hackneyed (though accurate) expression puts it, "ignorance is bliss".

"I paid someone to smuggle me into Baghdad. He was an officer in Saddam's military."--Les Roberts

Now, that I believe.