Update on Iraqi Death Toll

A New Zealand academic has challenged the widely quoted estimate of a 655,000 death toll in Iraq, which was a US-led study's estimate, published in the Lancet, a British medical journal.

They say the study, by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, overestimated Iraqi deaths by a factor of three.

About 218,000 would be "closer to the truth," said Dr Gourley.

The Lancet study - attacked by President George W. Bush and others in his Administration - said between 392,979 and 942,636 Iraqi deaths had occurred because of the war, which began in March 2003.

The research was based on a survey of 1849 Iraqi households in 47 randomly selected clusters around the country, asking about death numbers in each of the homes before and after the war started.

These figures were multiplied to produce a number for the whole of Iraq.

Dr Gourley is a physicist who has been studying statistical patterns in financial markets and civil conflicts.

He said the flaw of the Lancet study was that it polled too many families who lived on main streets or their feeders, where bombings and shootings were more common than in back alleys.

Families living near main streets would have a higher death rate than those in more isolated areas, distorting the national estimate.

The authors of the Lancet study have defended their research methods, saying that they sampled deeper into residential areas than their written report suggested, and that areas other than obvious sites of violence had been included.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10417599

listening to Front Line Assembly | The Blade

Another New Year of Death

Back from the beach. I'm not ready for work yet, it'd be nice to have another week to feel really rested.

DiscoSis bought a paper yesterday. It has some really disturbing stats. 3000 US solders killed in Iraq, 22,057 wounded and

655,000 Iraqis believed to have died as a direct result of the the US-led invasion.

I couldn't quite believe that. But the figures are from an October report by John's Hopkins University, so I guess there is some credibility to them. Wow. How many people did Saddam kill? Surely this matches or even beats him (not counting the people killed in the Iraq-Iran wars).

And in the Independent, a writer alleges that the US, with UK support surrounded Fallujah in November 2004 and used chemical weapons - white phosphorus.

Two rather sobering things for me to investigate.

Addendum: After doing a little investigating I've found the following.

Saddam's Death Toll?

This website
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/hussein.html
seems to have actually done some research. They suggest Saddam was responsible for up to two million deaths. However, I am discounting those killed in the Iran-Iraq wars which - while horrible - are not necessarily the actions of an evil dictator. After all, many 'democratic' Western nations have killed lots of people in war.

The figures on the killing of political dissidents are more, er, interesting.

Mass graves discovered following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 suggest that the total combined figure for Kurds, Shias and dissidents killed could be as high as 300,000

If this is accurate, then the western invasion has caused the deaths of twice the number of Iraqi citizens that Saddam did. In perhaps one tenth of the time. Perhaps pacifism isn't such a stupid position to hold after all?

Secondly, turns out the US did use white phosphorus bombs in Fallujah. Some suggest that white phosphorus bombs are 'chemical weapons', but the semantics are debateable. They are supposed to be just illumination devices, but there is evidence that Iraqi civilians were burned to death by them.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1108/dailyUpdate.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Phantom_Fury#White_phosphorus_controversy

Eighty countries have signed Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons, which bans its use as an incendaiary weapon against civilitan populations. The United States has refused to sign the treaty and is officially exempt - according to this http://www.nonviolence.org/2005/11/us_admits_to_chemical_weapons.php This website also has links to information on white phosphorus.



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Welcome to the new year all. On the upside, it looks like musically it might be a good one for me. I propose to party lots and not think about anything that might trouble me; I declare this the year of the Ostrich.




listening to Tool | Right In Two (prompted by n.e. lyfe)