Baghdad had an official murder rate of 266 per 100,000 in 2006 with 16,000 murders documented by the Sadrists…err Health Ministry. How many more went undocumented is hard to say. The UN also reported nearly 35,000 civilians died as a result of violence in Iraq or about 95 per day. That’s a murder rate of 135 per 100,000, greater than Columbia and South Africa combined (the two countries with the next highest murder rates). The murder rate for the US is about 5.5 per 100,000. It isn’t 600,000 but it isn’t the low rate the media states either…icasualties.org and AP/Reuters report numbers less than a third of what the UN states. One could also speculate that the numbers for 2004 and 2005 stated by the media were also low, and the actual numbers could be around 100 per 100,000 or 26,000 murders per year, and a lower number in 2003 which would put the total for the war close to or exceeding 100,000 dead civilians. Throw in 55,000 dead insurgents and 15,000 dead police/army and yes you have a number of at least 150,000 dead Iraqis in 4 years or about .5% of the population. Throw in 3 million refugees and you got yourself a civil war/mess/serious crisis.
Remember the study released last year by British medical journal The Lancet that ludicrously claimed more than 650,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the Iraq War? The study that was seized upon by “anti-war” groups, and is now cited as fact and repeated endlessly in the propaganda from International ANSWER, CODEPINK, Stop the War Coalition and every other loony left organization on the planet?
Now, a damning peer review has come to the conclusion that the Lancet’s study has “no scientific standing”?and may in fact be fraudulent.
Well, knock me over with a feather.
Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion?
One critic is Professor Michael Spagat, a statistician from Royal Holloway College, University of London. He and colleagues at Oxford University point to the possibility of “main street bias” – that people living near major thoroughfares are more at risk from car bombs and other urban menaces. Thus, the figures arrived at were likely to exceed the true number. The Lancet study authors initially told The Times that “there was no main street bias” and later amended their reply to “no evidence of a main street bias”. Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the “three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports. “The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,” contends Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. “They published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not actually follow the procedures that they stated.” The paper had “no scientific standing”. Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? “No.” If you factor in politics, the heat increases. One of the Lancet authors, Dr Les Roberts, campaigned for a Democrat seat in the US House of Representatives and has spoken out against the war. Dr Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet is also antiwar. swhitebull - you be the judge. I'm sure more to come.
One critic is Professor Michael Spagat, a statistician from Royal Holloway College, University of London. He and colleagues at Oxford University point to the possibility of “main street bias” – that people living near major thoroughfares are more at risk from car bombs and other urban menaces. Thus, the figures arrived at were likely to exceed the true number. The Lancet study authors initially told The Times that “there was no main street bias” and later amended their reply to “no evidence of a main street bias”.
Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the “three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports.
“The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,” contends Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. “They published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not actually follow the procedures that they stated.” The paper had “no scientific standing”. Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? “No.”
The new deaths came a day after Iraqi Health Minister Ali al-Shemari estimated 150,000 civilians have been killed in the war?about three times previously accepted estimates.
In comments to the AP during a visit to Austria, al-Shemari said he based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals?although such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.
Previous estimates of Iraq deaths held that 45,000-50,000 have been killed in the nearly 44-month-old conflict, according to partial figures from Iraqi institutions and media reports. No official count has ever been available.
Health Minister Ali al-Shemari gave his new estimate of 150,000 to reporters during a visit to Vienna, Austria. He later told The Associated Press that he based the figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals _ though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.
As of March 11, 2007 approximately 7,056 insurgents/militia have been reported killed according to the linked sources or articles.
In addition as of March 11, 2007 approximately 522 suicide-bombers have also reported to been killed, see list here.
Grand total: 7,578 insurgent dead
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