60 Comments

1. Sally-O:

Whatever the opposite of a “memory hole” is–that’s what these shake-and-bake last minute pre-election media stories are destined to fall into now.

It seems to me that people are so conditioned to EXPECT October surprises at this point, that they seem about as genuine and genuinely frightening as a jack-o-lantern on a front porch.

“Oh yeah, I guess it’s that time of year again. Dan Rather is going to say BOO!”

Only something of real visceral immediacy, like Osama in handcuffs, could have real effect. And I’m not even sure about that.

And what is left, really, to throw at Bush? Even a half dozen DUIs couldn’t compare to the everything-imaginable already flung his way every day for almost four years.

I suspect we’re out of the macro national media-driven phase at this point.

Now it’s just one high noon showdown at the OK Corral between the GOTV people.

Oct 28, 2004 - 9:29 pm 2. Terrye:

Roger:

John mentioned this on another thread and I made note that 100,000 would be about 185 a day.

How likely is that?

One precision bomb in Fallujah presumabley hits a wedding party and we hear about it but somehow every day 185 people die and it slips by the world press. I am getting to the place where I want proof.

I think of the mass graves and the world’s silence and I wonder where were these people?

And why now? You know the sad thing is that when agencies like this release information like this at such a political time it just becomes part of the campaign and no one really considers it as truth, it is just a means to do harm or good depending on who you support.

Oct 28, 2004 - 9:38 pm 3. the other JD:

I dunno. I think the next “surprise” was what I heard on NPR, that an Army whistleblower got the FBI to investigate how “H-A-L-L-I-B-U-R-T-O-N” got a supposed illegal contract.

I question the timing!

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=axJ2K1bXuJX4&refer=news_index

Oct 28, 2004 - 9:44 pm 4. Sally-O:

But whose eyes don’t glaze over now at the very mention of Halliburton? Anybody prone to that argument has already flown the coop.

The “undecided voter,” that creature of folklore and chronic disconnectedness, probably thinks that Halle Burton is that black chick who cried her eyes out when she won the Oscar.

Oct 28, 2004 - 9:49 pm 5. chuck:

Estimates, they say. I will need to know:

1) how they arrived at the estimates,

2) how many deaths would be considered normal,

3) how many deaths would be in excess over Saddam’s time,

4) how many deaths could be laid at the door of the coalition,

5) where did the data come from.

Lots of questions here. I would also like the names of the authors so I could google them up and see if they were political folks and if they were involved in public health or some other field that would qualify them to make such estimates.

Oct 28, 2004 - 10:01 pm 6. Terrye:

Chuck:

Are they associated with any NGO’s or with the UN?

The US has vaccinated millions of children and it is estimated that 80,000 are alive today because of US intervention. Do they offset any of the positives that come with food and medicine?

Do they even know how many died when Saddam was in power and if so where did they get the information? From the Ba’athists? Were the doctors they spoke to part of the Saddam regime? I know many of them were because it took connections to become a doctor.

Did they see bodies or any physical evidence? Are they including revenge killings and crime as well as civilian deaths?

Why 100,000, why not a million?

If they wanted to be believed why release these figures now? The election just gives them motive for deception. What do they hope to accomplish?

I just don’t think it is possible that on average 5600 people died a month given our casualty rates and the ever present media attention.

Oct 28, 2004 - 10:12 pm 7. Trebek:

I’m going to bet that this number include the total number of deaths. Every estimate I’ve seen of civilians killed is much lower.

http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_deathsundersaddamhussein42503.html

“:Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam’s needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam’s reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam’s 8,000-odd days in power”

Oct 28, 2004 - 10:16 pm 8. Trebek:

“I just don’t think it is possible that on average 5600 people died a month given our casualty rates and the ever present media attention.”

Also, the fact that most of the violence is occurring in a relatively small area of the country also indicates that this is a very inclusive figure.

Oct 28, 2004 - 10:19 pm 9. Jim in Texas:

Guys,

In the 1st Gulf War we bulldozed at least 10-20K Iraqi soldiers under dirt when we first moved out; I know, I was there and I heard (ignored) the cries, as did many others. I will always remember….

It’s a de-humanizing, vicious nasty business, war.

But then, as now, we avoided (to the point of incurring friendly casualities)potential civilian casualities.

I challenge the numbers. I don’t think they are valid or supportable.

American warriors in both conflicts were/are proud of their service and their sacrifices to avoid undo civilian casualities.

Jim in Texas

CMSgt USAF, ret

Oct 28, 2004 - 10:41 pm 10. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

The lead researcher gave the paper to the Lancet on the grounds that it be published before the election.

This same lead researcher was opposed to the Iraq war.

Obviously this person is not to be trusted. Just another lefty academic (although Hopkins isn’t a very lefty school).

Other experts in this area are saying that this study’s numbers are way too high.

So this study was published to influence the election. The author says the intent was to have both candidates pledge to take care to minimize civilian deaths.

And if you believe this, I have a bridge you might want to buy.

I wonder what other crap the MSM is going to pull out of … in order to clobber Bush.

Oct 28, 2004 - 10:59 pm 11. Sandy P:

Earlier this year, IIRC, the Sauds sent a memo to their riff-raff asking them to let their rulers know if they’ve seen their sons lately, last contact, that sort of thing.

Maybe the Lancet extrapolated……..?

Oct 28, 2004 - 11:02 pm 12. Lem:

Roger that Jim

We never intended, nor should we, to do invasions perfectly. The apparatus necessary to do what’s being polinuanced goes against every instinct our nation is likely to ever posses.

I can think of a few reason why things are not “going well” in Iraq;

#1 We did not farmed it out. under the UN it dosent get done, and we never leave (korea)

#2 We are in there as though we were in Julia Child’s Kitchen, measuring everything. We don’t know how to do it any other way. thank God for that.

#3 What we have to compare to (the Soviets comes readily to mind) is unacceptable, in fact is not even contemplated!

A perfect US invasion is a fantasy. Could there be a reason why invasions require force? Could the level of ‘perfection’ go up relative to the level of force? Do we really want to find out?

Is it still worth it? You bet.

The benifits of a democratic Iraq, as it relates to the war on terror, will be enormous. Even if is not a Jeffersonian Iraq. Look, Arafat is not stiking around to find out.

Oct 28, 2004 - 11:31 pm 13. Syl:

OT

Cheney is going to HAWAII!!!!!!!!!

Sunday trip to Honolulu!!

from the Note:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/NotedNow/story?id=156246

via polipundit and crushkerry

Oct 28, 2004 - 11:34 pm 14. Lem:

Did I just do Rumsfeld?

My goodness gracious.

Oct 28, 2004 - 11:41 pm 15. Syl:

re the NAACP investigation thingy mentioned in another thread (I think there’s something at Drudge but haven’t gone there)…

the African-american vote that’s going to Bush already distrusts the NAACP. They won’t defect. It will probably get more to the polls (which is the reason for the story, of course) but so will the CBS rehash of a 1955 story they’re planning to air.

The Democrats are slowly losing their base and what I read in a Susan Estrich piece is why. I was apalled when I read this today:

Republicans are much more likely to be the stable, residential phone-answering types than the cell-phone-only kids, minorities and poor people who Democrats are hoping will turn out in record number.

http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/189910-3786-021.html

So minorities can’t be stable, residential phone-answering types? She just insulted a large percent of her voters.

Oct 28, 2004 - 11:45 pm 16. Jackson:

I must be missing something here, because to me, the methods look like some sort of bad joke.

To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighbourhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7868 people, agreed to participate. At each one they asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002

The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.

Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

The investigators worked in teams of three. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers were doctors and all six were fluent in English and Arabic.

In the households reporting deaths, the person who died had to be living there at the time of the death and for more than two months before to be counted. In an attempt at firmer confirmation, the interviewers asked for death certificates in 78 households and were provided them 63 times.

There were 46 deaths in the surveyed households before the war. After the invasion, there were 142 deaths. That is an increase from 5 deaths a 1000 people a year to 12.3 a 1000 people a year – more than double.

However, more than a third of the post-invasion deaths were reported in one cluster of households in the city Fallujah, where fighting has been most intense recently. Because the fighting was so severe there, the numbers from that location may have exaggerated the overall picture.

When the researchers recalculated the effect of the war without the statistics from Fallujah, the deaths end up at 7.9 a 1000 people a year – still 1.5 times higher than before the war.

Even with Fallujah factored out, the survey “indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher”, the report said.

The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases.

However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces – with about 95 per cent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships.

Violent deaths – defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others – were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters. The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.

Twelve of the 73 violent deaths were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children were killed by coalition forces in the survey households. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths a 1000 live births before the war to 57 deaths a 1000 afterward.

The researchers estimated the nationwide death toll due to the conflict by subtracting the preinvasion death rate from the post-invasion death rate and multiplying that number by the estimated population of Iraq – 24.4 million at the start of the war. Then that number was converted to a total number of deaths by dividing by 1,000 and adjusting for the 18 months since the invasion.

“We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the post-war period in the 97 per cent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Fallujah, the researchers said in the journal.”

Link

My first post, apologies if large cut and pastes are frowned upon.

Oct 29, 2004 - 12:07 am 17. Caroline:

Totally off -topic but please excuse an insomniac at 2:30 am when noone else is posting…

2 quick thoughts on Bush vs. Kerry:

1. Touring the blogosphere and noting the arguments which are bringing folks to a difficult decision between 2 less than desirable candidates, I notice a recurring theme among those who support the Iraq war – Bush should be held accountable for his failures there and his refusal to acknowledge or apologize for them. While these same folks don’t necessarily think Kerry has any better plan for how to deal with Iraq now (not buying the “more allies” line) – they nevertheless place a high premium on accountability and therefore choose Kerry. I understand this demand for accountability but I apply it in the oposite direction towards Kerry. I feel he should be held accountable for his post-Vietnam actions – most especially the Paris meetings, his gross underestimation of the number of casulaties that would ensue from our withdrawal from Vietnam, and for the impact of his anti-war actions which resulted in discrediting our military for a generation. Has Kerry really acknowledged or apologized for the consequences of his actions? Ironically it seems to have been Gulf I which restored the military’s credibility, and Kerry opposed that war. So IMHO accountability cuts both ways.

2. If a decision has to be made between 2 unknowns with regards to prosecuting the WOT (maybe change is better than more of the same even if we don’t really know what change means or maybe not?) – then I think a major factor to be considered is the impact of our decision on the perception of the enemy. We all know that Spain’s decision had major ramifications. I think to myself – multiply that 10 fold. And if Bush does win this – I suspect that this one simple calculation will end up having played a major role in the average, semi-informed, American voter’s mind.

Oct 29, 2004 - 12:15 am 18. Caroline:

Sorry Syl, Lem and Jackson – seems I forgot about West Coast time – must be the lack of sleep……

Oct 29, 2004 - 12:25 am 19. David Thomson:

ìThe Democrats are slowly losing their base and what I read in a Susan Estrich piece is why. I was apalled when I read this today:

Republicans are much more likely to be the stable, residential phone-answering types than the cell-phone-only kids, minorities and poor people who Democrats are hoping will turn out in record number.

Link…

So minorities can’t be stable, residential phone-answering types? She just insulted a large percent of her voters.î

Susan Estrichís remarks may not be politically correct—but Republicans are generally more mature and self disciplined. Few of these newly registered Democrat Party inclined individuals may bother showing up on election day. The book which greatly influences my thinking is –Who Votes?– by Raymond E. Wolfinger (the odds are that this Berkeley professor is also very liberal) written some twenty years ago. Forget politically ideology, the real determining criteria is oneís level of affluence and formal education. The more stable and invested you are in American society, the more likely you will actually vote. This is why a number of Republicans are hoping for inclement weather conditions next Tuesday. Many Democrats, it is argued, simply lack the dedication to vote unless the circumstances are near perfect.

Oct 29, 2004 - 12:31 am 20. lindenen:

This is classic. The media seems to have noticed a trend. Imagine that!

Bad news dogs Bush as election nears.

Oct 29, 2004 - 12:42 am 21. Caroline:

Jackson – a key quote in your post is “…violence…was mainly attributed to coalition forces…”

By whom? By the Iraqis living in the households interviewed? I recall the bombing of the marketplace early on in the war – which was attributed to the coalition but seemed as likely to have been caused by errant Iraqi munitions. I also recall the numerous accounts of obvious insurgent/terrorist attacks over the course of the war which ordinary Iraqis denied could be the work of fellow Iraqis or Muslims. Invariably the coalition forces were blamed. So the source of the attribution strikes me as important – and also the “mainly”…..

Oct 29, 2004 - 12:54 am 22. Jackson:

Caroline, I agree. And the survey appears to be nothing more than a poll based extrapolation. It’s not based on a full body count.

Marc Herold achieved fame for his Afghanistan “body count” that turned out to consist of him rifling through news reports (some which were obviously unreliable)and adding up all the claimed deaths. It was totally debunked (especially when it was found that he had counted the same deaths over and over because they were reported in different papers and that his “estimates” even exceeded what the Taliban’s propaganda machine was claiming) and became a huge embarrassment for the MSM who had fawned so lovingly over it. But at least he actually counted bodies (even if he did count many of them several times)

If I was to be seriously cynical I would suggest that this survey may well have a similar genesis to Herolds survey. A lot of people suggested that Herolds final figure was based more the need to be able to say ‘look, more Afghan’s have died than Americans did on 9/11 so the U.S is worse than the Taliban.’

In Iraq one of the issues the anti-war people have always been unable to counter is the fact that by using another extrapolation (based on average deaths over past decades), more than 100,000 Iraqi’s have probably been saved simply by virtue of Saddam and the Baathists no longer being in power. Now guess what pops up just before the election, a survey that supposedly shows more that a 100,000 having died because of the liberation – the answer to the horrible reality that if they’d had their way, Saddam would still be in power and many more would have died than have as a result of the liberation.

How convenient.

Oct 29, 2004 - 2:46 am 23. Terrye:

Speaking of surveys I saw one that “estimated” Saddam disappeared more than 60,000 people in Baghdad alone. But as for Saddam there are the mass graves and chidrens’ prisons and the reports of torture and murder on a grand scale that have been kept and maintained by the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Are they now saying they were just “guessing”?

I want some evidence to back up this latest “report”, like dead bodies and it should be remembered that people may be looking for compensation as well and so the higher the death count…

But I know that children are receiving more and better medical care, there is a steadier supply of food, the water is cleaner and sewage systems are working better. These day to day things have to be improving the quality of life for Iraqis not living in the Sunni triangle at least. And they say so themselves in other surveys. They have a better right track wrong track number than we do.

But 100,000 is just too bizarre and I am tried of people coming out of effing no where with this crap at a time when they know it can’t be verified. They made the accusation, let them prove it and I mean proof.

Oct 29, 2004 - 4:28 am 24. Terrye:

Jim:

My father was at Nagasaki five days after they dropped the bomb. He was at Okinawa where almost 50,000 Americans died shortly before that. His brother was wounded in Europe and carried the slug in his body for the rest of his life becasue they could not be remove it at the field hospital. He hurt all the time. His other brother went to the South Pacific and came back with malaria that he had to be medicated for until his death. Two of their sons went ot Viet Nam, one as an infantry man, the other as a fighter pilot activated from the infamous National Guard.

My mother’s brother was in Korea and got a section 8 after combat there. He was never what you would call “all right” again.

I have two cousins who have served in Iraq and believe it or not they are not brazenly killing Iraqi civilians in the dozens on a daily basis. Nor are they leaving dangerous shit around for some crazy to find use to kill them.

So yes, I know about war. My people are the kind of people who always end up fighting them.

Oct 29, 2004 - 4:42 am 25. Lem:

Syl

I remember on CSPAN some months ago Michael Ignatieff in the middle of a trashing of the administration, getting around to Condoleeza Rice and with peculiar venom said “…. serves at the behest of her masters”.

Ignatieff paused abruptly, catching himself. I’m paraphrasing ‘….that’s not what I intended to say’ and apologized profusely.

But to me the damage was done. I’m sure there is clip of this outhere.

Oct 29, 2004 - 5:20 am 26. ganzo azul:

As reported on BBC radio this morning:

Of the 100,000, most were women and children killed by US airstrikes.

The BBC also mentioned the sampling of 808 families across 33 neighborhoods.

Oct 29, 2004 - 6:08 am 27. AlanC:

Lem,

Sorry I think you’re “wrong”. A perfect invasion is not a fantasy, it was an episode of the A-team back in the 70’s.

Surely you’re old enough to remember the millions of rounds of ammunition fired, the explosions everywhere, and all the bad guys being arrested cause no one was killed?

That’s where all of these addled 3Ls got their military training. All you need is Mr. T and George Pappard and hey presto, the perfect invasion.

Oct 29, 2004 - 6:55 am 28. Terrye:

ganzo:

I heard that the BBC is getting Michael Moore, George Soros and Sidney Blumenthal to do their US election coverage.

Heaven forbid they should show bias like Fox news.

Any word on where the remains of the dead 100,000 women and children went to?

Oct 29, 2004 - 6:57 am 29. Lem:

WaPo

“The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases.”

At no point in the story are the deaths attributed to Saddam and his sons mentioned!

Did the survey even ask? I think we have another rush to ‘publish’ here.

The telling bit in the story ?

“The journal’s spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in and said it was too late to make Friday’s issue, and possibly too late for the Nov. 5 edition.”

The printed (likely revised downward) version comes out AFTER the election. They know the numbers dont add up.

“The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way.”

It doesn’t pass the smell test.

Oct 29, 2004 - 6:58 am 30. Huan:

Regarding the Lancet article, lets remember that this is a survey and not a study, not even a count. The first and unsurmountable obstacle toward validity of this report is that it is a household survey of known deaths. As we all know, every person that dies is known by many. Thus the likelihood of repeat count would grossly inflate the estimated deaths. If each dead is known by 2 survivor, then the “count” is halved. If each dead is known by 5, then the estimate is down to 20,000. You get the idea. It is crap and obviously politically motivated and a huge dissappointment that the Lancet would stoop to that level of trash publication.

Oct 29, 2004 - 6:58 am 31. Morgan:

I think the baseline is suspect. From the Lancet article:

“During the period before the invasion…the crude mortality rate was 5.0 per 1000 people per year…after the invasion 12.3 per 1000 people per year [including Fallujah]…7.9 [excluding Fallujah].”

Crude death rate estimates – 1995-2000:

Iraq 8.5

US 8.7

So this source says the Iraqi death rate from 1995-2000 was higher than the post-invasion death rate excluding Fallujah. If I read this correctly, the number of deaths attributable to the war will be overstated by 3.5 per 1000 population – 3.5 * 24000, or 84000.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:07 am 32. Bryan C:

Thanks, Jackson. This sounds utterly preposterous. “Pardon me, Mr. Insurgent! How many hundreds of innocent women and children have the Coalition killed today? My, that’s quite a lot! That George Bush sure is evil! Thanks, I’ll let you get back to your Minuteman-like activities now!”

You might as well examine the entrails of a chicken. That might actually be more accurate, since it’d at least be subject to a sanity check before publication. It’s bound to be thorougly debunked almost as soon as it hits print, but when your study is calculated to create headlines instead of facts I suppose that’s doing just fine.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:07 am 33. Morgan:

Sorry, that should be 84,000 per year.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:09 am 34. Lem:

Good point Huan

WaPo

“Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research…. it’s possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq,”

Another reason why they can’t put it on paper yet!

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:14 am 35. chuck:

Jackson,

The methodology doesn’t seem awful at first sight, but the sample is so very small that it would be extremely sensitive to the choice of neighborhood and bias in the respondents/interviewers. It’s that pesky old “how to get a random sample” thing. Just pick a family from every bad neighborhood in the country and presto, amazing results. So I would have to see where the families were located and who picked the locations. Why was Fallujah in the sample to start with, for instance? It has a pop. of about 200K, IIRC, and a sample of 30 neighborhoods evenly spread in a country of some 20M would put each neighborhood at about 600K, so it would be possible to sample the Falluja neighborhood without ever sampling Falluja. What about Najaf, was it in the sample. Which neighborhoods in Baghdad? Were the deaths in the immediate family or in the extended family or local tribal grouping? Etc, etc.

Mostly women and children looks suspicious to me. Especially as I am willing to concede that some tens of thousands of fighting Iraqis could have been killed since the end of the invasion. In fact, since most of the ordinance is directed in their direction, I would expect the fighters to have the highest representation. And no, I don’t believe we randomly shoot up civilian habitats chasing after fighters. So why didn’t they show up in the statistics, or if they did, what is their percentage?

I think folks more knowledgeable than myself will soon be looking at the paper. There are certainly grounds for potential criticism.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:22 am 36. Teresa:

Here’s an interesting commentary written by Rick Leventhal, an embedded reporter from Fox News, about the numerous weapons depots in Iraq.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136803,00.html

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:24 am 37. Knucklehead:

Lem,

I suspect we’ve got something similar to wandering around hospitals and extended-care facilities counting the sick, injured, infirm, and recently deceased and then extrapolating the number into the general population. “Holy Sh*t! Eighty-seven million Americans are sick, injured, infirm, dying, or recently deceased! That f*cking Bu$hitler!”

Does anyone besides me suspect that the methods used to get to this 100,000 number are similar to the methods used to once upon a time claim that 50,000 kids/year were being kidnapped in the US or that 1 of 8 American children go to bed hungry each night?

When numbers are jaw-dropping its time to do the ‘rithmetic. And always remember, lotteries are taxes on people who are bad at ‘rithmetic.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:30 am 38. richard mcenroe:

Terrye, et al — A quick Google search for this Les Roberts fellow has him speaking at a lot of academic symposia with the words “Colonialism” and “Imperialism” in the title. Also, he appears to be an hydraulic engineer of some sort, not a medical professional or statistician.

Without knowing how the study was conducted, the size of its data base, etc., the 100K quote is meaningless.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:34 am 39. Lem:

Why does it have to be over 100,000 as opposed to over 90,000?

Hooked on phonics anyone?

Remember the first debate? PBS’s Jim Lerher asking Bush about the 10,000 dead soldiers…. I mean 1,000 dead soldiers. Darn.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:35 am 40. Mark Poling:

Terrye:

But 100,000 is just too bizarre and I am tried of people coming out of effing no where with this crap at a time when they know it can’t be verified. They made the accusation, let them prove it and I mean proof.

In a way, it’s a blessing for Bush that the number seems so ridiculous. That will set off the BS detector in anyone who doesn’t believe the US carpetbombs cities. Remember Dresden:

On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Recent research suggest that 35,000 were killed but some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000.

It actually takes some effort to kill 100,000 civilians. And I think most people get that.

Assuming the numbers were crunched correctly, why might the interviewees have claimed more deaths than actually occurred?

Can you say “Blood money”? Sure. I thought you could.

The 100,000 is a story that’s just too big to take at face value, except by people who really want it to be true. Everyone else will want to look that horse in the mouth.

And then the Coastal Establishment takes another one in the teeth.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:51 am 41. Mike:

The authors of this study betray their bias and intention to manipulate the election when they specifically claim that the deaths were primarily women and children (thereby attempting to deny critics of their study the rebuttal that thousands and thousands of insurgents surely make up this total) and also that the majority of the deaths were caused by American military action, particularly airstrikes (with the aim of preventing critics from pointing to the significant number of civilian deaths undeniably caused by insurgent attacks alone).

In doing so, the authors fell victim to an intellectual form of ” getting greedy.” Perhaps their study would have had some chance of withstanding scrutiny for a time, if they had lumped all deaths, including insurgents, into their 100,000 figure, and if they had been willing to acknowledge that insurgents have directly killed a high percentage of the victims.

This is what will ultimately discredit the study. The 185 a day death toll can be seen to be even more obviously fictitious when one recalls there were weeks at a time after Saddam was ousted, when virtually no airstrikes took place. In order for this account to have any credibility, several thousand civilians would have to die on individual days to make up for the weeks when few were dying because of a lull in the insurgency.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:57 am 42. Lem:

I seem to recall that the pentagon has in place some program for restitution to Iraqis who claim undo hardship of some kind. I can’t think of any grater hardship than the killing of innocent family members.

How much and to how many people have the pentagon shelled, I mean pay out in Iraq. This can be easily checked.

I can’t; I’m supposed to be working (salaried) right now.

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:57 am 43. chuck:

Oh, and one more thing. Who funded the study? It had field work, so someone had to pay. If not, how did they recruit volunteers?

Oct 29, 2004 - 7:58 am 44. jerry:

Mark:

You said: “Remember Dresden: Ö It actually takes some effort to kill 100,000 civilians. And I think most people get that.”

Wrong: Any person who has knowledge of military operations knows that but there is a dwindling number of people on both sides who have this knowledge. Today, the general population, especially those under 40, thinks of war in video game terms. They have no idea of the level of effort required to cause the kind of mass casualties that this study claims.

Oct 29, 2004 - 8:14 am 45. Morgan:

chuck -

From the acknowledgements:

“The study was funded by The Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Small Arms Survey in Geneva Switzerland…This work could not have been conducted without a host of brave Iraqis who endured danger, police interrogations and the risk of being associated with foreign investigators.”

Oct 29, 2004 - 8:25 am 46. Fresh Air:

This Lancet piece is a complete joke:

1. It’s not even an epidemiologic study, it’s a survey.

2. It’s a badly done survey. It has a time problem: it was only done during one month. (Could be a month when things were going on, etc.) It also has a place problem, with probable geographic bias (not necessarily representative of the population).

3. The idea everyone would tell the truth, especially to some do-gooder chumps from England is hilarious. The country is known to have a traumatic relationship to the truth owing to 30 years of despotic rule when saying the wrong thing got you killed.

4. The sample size is absurdly small: the MOE has to be very high.

5. It’s one sample. Take a look at our presidential polls, done by the highest quality polling outfits in the world and tell me what you can see from one poll.

6. I’m sure there’s lots more problems baked in.

Bottom line: Lancet is a politicized piece of trash and the authors should be ashamed to call themselves physicians, much less researchers. This is total crap, not even junk science, for there is no “science” behind it, only politics.

Oct 29, 2004 - 8:38 am 47. WAmom:

Saw a huge banner, “100,000 dead in Iraq. Stop the war.” behind Ralph Nader speaking to a group on Washington State TV (like C-span).

Oct 29, 2004 - 8:45 am 48. Tara:

OT

Drudge is reporting this new alert:

FLASH 10.29.01 11:36:56 ET /// Soldier to brief reporters at Pentagon within the hour that he was tasked with removing explosives from al Qaqaa and he and his unit removed 200+ tons… Developing…

Apologies if this has already been posted as I have not read all the comments.

Oct 29, 2004 - 8:48 am 49. Catherine:

hi everyone

Still trying to get my immune system back in working order, but I did get out to the Institute of French Studies lecture on the new anti-semitism in France last night.

I’ll try to report on that later, but for the moment, the subject of numbers of Iraqi dead came up at dinner after the lecture. One of the people there was a professor of Middle Eastern studies, an expert on sharia, fluent speaker of Arabic, violently anti-Iraq War, has worked for the defense in two terror cases here in the U.S., is working now for the prosecution in a case against Bin Laden’s driver & bodyguard (I believe)—in other words, a guy who knows his stuff as well as anyone else, whether you agree with him or not. (He grew up in Lebanon; Christian dad, I think, & Jewish mom–assuming I got that right. Arabic is his first language.)

He seemed to think perhaps 25,000 Iraqis had died since the invasion.

I think we were all somewhat surprised & saddened to hear a figure that high. I know I was.

But it’s a far cry from 100,000.

Oct 29, 2004 - 8:53 am 50. Hylas:

This is interesting.

Notice what is left of the “trend” in the death rate if you subtract reports from Fallujah.

Approximately nothing.

Oct 29, 2004 - 8:56 am 51. Terrye:

Catherine:

Hello. I hope you are better.

I would have thought 15,000 to 25,000, especially if you included the pounding the Iraqi army took as the US came in last year.

But I don’t know. We are still finding mass graves and there was so much propaganda associated with sanctions that if we believe 100,000 children were dying a year because of evil US supported sanctions against the Iraqi people it makes it somewhat more difficult to believe that the primary cause of death before the invasion was heart attack. It seems the left gets lost in the maze of their own propaganda.

This is Iraq, it is so hard to know the truth, but I think we would be seeing some breathless and excited news people standing next to the mounds of dead bodies if we had indeed killed 100,000 civilians in bombing raids.

Oct 29, 2004 - 10:11 am 52. Fresh Air:

Jeezus! Everybody go look at the chart Hylas 8:56 pointed out. All the deaths are in Fallujah!

No sh*t, Sherlock! Can’t you see the poor thugs telling the English lefties how they just wanted to be left in peace to tend their goats and that their daughters, wives, aunts, nephews, etc. were being massacred?

The tip-off was that bit about “airstrikes.” Quiz: How many airstrikes not involving Al Sadr and not including Fallujah have been made since May 2003?

This thing is even worse than I thought. Somebody with a website should put the numbers into a spreadsheet and fit a regression onto them. I’m virtually positive it will show a correlation coefficient near zero.

Oct 29, 2004 - 10:17 am 53. Yehudit:

Les Roberts has a Masters degree in public health from Tulane University and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins. He did a post-doctorate fellowship in epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he worked for 4 years. In 1994, he worked as an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Rwanda during their civil war. At present, Les is Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee, an NGO based in New York that provides relief to victims of war. He is a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering where he teaches each fall.”

Those look like good credentials to me. Although I agree about the sloppy methodology and the politicizing of the report.

Oct 29, 2004 - 10:41 am 54. Hylas:

I’ve been digging around a little more and I found a few interesting things.

A few years ago a study in the Lancelet claimed that MMR vaccine caused autism. This caused a worldwide scare. But the study was crap. The author, Andrew Wakefield, was paid to produce a study linking MMR with autism:

The issue of funding aside, there is another, perhaps more fundamental, issue. After lengthy investigations by The Sunday Times, Wakefield finally admitted last week that ìfour, perhaps fiveî of the children in his Lancet study were among the 10 named in the legal aid contract. Was it four or five? ìLetís make it five,î he said. The questioning went on. Were they litigants? Yes. Was he being paid to help them to build their case? Yes.

source

Here’s what Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancelet said about the fiasco:

“All in all, my attitude was far too laissez faire. If this is what critics meantóand still meanóby reckless, then I am guilty of that charge. I failed to do enough to manage the media reaction to this work. Until the Wakefield paper, I had not seen this media management role as one for a scientific medical journal editor. I now see it as one of my main responsibilities.”

source

Media management. I think that speaks for itself. Horton is still the editor at the Lancelet. He provided an editorial accusing the US of “democratic imperialism” to accompany this latest study.

Interesting.

Oct 29, 2004 - 10:48 am 55. Hylas:

That should be Lancet, not Lancelet. I need a proofreader.

Oct 29, 2004 - 11:07 am 56. Terrye:

Yehudit:

Mengele was a gifted doctor. Smart people can be stupid [or worse] too, especially when politics are involved.

I am beginning to wonder about these NGOs. They are too international politics what 527s are to our electoral process.

Oct 29, 2004 - 11:16 am 57. Fresh Air:

Something else:

Here is what the Lancet article says: If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion.

For those of you not familiar with epidemiology, 1.5 is the relative risk, or multiplier, placed on normal mortality in this case.

Two points:

1. The threshold for publication in most leading medical journals is an RR of 3.0. This means Lancet has pushed this thing into print by lowering its own standards.

2. An RR of 1.5 means that (1.5-1.0) / 1.5 is the percentage “explained” by their data, or 33%. In other words, 66% of the explanation is due to something other than the war!

So to recap, Lancet publishes a study using highly flawed survey methods with numerous systematic and other biases, lowers its own standards and rushes its peer review to get it into print. And even then their numbers don’t prove anything.

This is junk science of the worst kind. Pathetic.

Oct 29, 2004 - 11:23 am 58. Terrye:

Fresh Air:

It is also a direct attack on our military. This is not just an attack on Bush, they are quite plainly calling the US military baby killers.

Where have we heard this before? Do these folks ever get an original idea?

Well now if someboy wants an excuse to spit in a soldier’s face these fine upstanding folks have provided them with one.

I wonder if any of these people said anything about the Iraqis before the invasion? Or if they are card carrying members of the Saddam fan club. Maybe they would like us turn him loose. They could do a survey and ask the Iraqi people about that. But they probably would not get past Fallujah, again.

Oct 29, 2004 - 12:39 pm 59. Birkel:

Roger,

Thanks for the nod. It is greatly appreciated. There is a lot of great info in your comments section that might shame what I collected on my blog. What a crowd.

But I do want to let people know that I’ve got two other postings at Random Birkel that detail other significant information. Most importantly The Lancet underestimated the infant mortality rate by a mere 500%.

And then the report gets unbelievable!!

Oct 29, 2004 - 2:29 pm 60. Old Grouch:

Here are the links to the two earlier Birkel posts:How Many Dead/Death Rates/Baselines (updated)The Nation on problems in previous Lancet-published Iraq Research

Oct 29, 2004 - 3:49 pm

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