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PlatypusMaximus 3/15/2007 4:58:30 PM

Sorry. no more insults. This is a love fest, here on the frontlines of the armchair GWOT, compared to the atmosphere in a couple of Gibson guitar forums I haunt. this is nothing. I'm harmless, and apologize.

The point is that no one knws what the true level of civilian deaths is only that the number has been increasing since 2003 and that it is a greater number (per day) than died under Saddam.

Then, with all due respect sir, I suggest you shut the fudge up. You simply can't have the available estimates from all the available sources, the available evidence of increasing violence and *your* total number...does not compute.

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PlatypusMaximus 3/15/2007 5:00:48 PM

Of course I have an argument. I thought shocking you into responding to it might work. Apparently not.

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Pseudonym 3/15/2007 5:08:27 PM

"The point is that no one knws what the true level of civilian deaths is only that the number has been increasing since 2003 and that it is a greater number (per day) than died under Saddam."

Let us dissect this statement of hypocrisy.

No one knows how many are dying.

I know more are dying then under Saddam.

This is a logical contradiction which has NO BACKING AS ADMITTED BY YOURSELF.

FYI the average number of deaths per day for Saddam was 125 spread out over 30 years. First prove to me that we are hitting above a hundred deaths every day, let alone 125 every day, then you can sit back and WAIT FOR THIRTY YEARS SO WE CATCH UP TO SADDAM.

Dude don't you dare come in here spouting this no one knows but me BS. We aren't stupid. We have sat and read your attempts to reach the 100 per day threshold, AND YOU FAILED. Now its at over 125 and only you know it.

You are a biased source, your emotions are controlling your judgement.

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eu4ea 3/15/2007 5:27:15 PM

Most war supporters are studiously ignoring this, but there's a long and highly consistent history of attempting to estimate fatalities in similar conflicts - Angola, Algeria, Congo, Timor, Bosnia, El Salvador, etc..

The top-line items we have learned from doing just this in other conflicts include:

1- The government in charge consistently underestimates fatality rates.
That, in itself, is hardly surprising; typically the government in power (whoever they may be) want to produce an impression that the war is going well, and they almost always the lack the resources to produce an accurate count even if they wanted to. In many cases they themselves are involved in the killing via death squads or (less often) direct massacres carried out by their armed forces, and hence have an interest in minimizing or downplaying information about such activities.

2- Direct-count methods invariably produce a large undercount
Again, not surprising - some of it is just due to the fog of war, some of it is due to the fact that civilian killings are typically distributed over a large and inaccessible area, some of it is due to the facts that free resources in the war zone are scarce and dedicated to other tasks (supporting military operations, fighting, caring for the living, etc.), and some of it is due to the fact that dead bodies are highly perishable and typically get buried within a few days of their death, so the window of opportunity for the counting team to get to them is brief.

The extent of this undercount is also well-know. In every comparable conflict within the last 20-30 years, direct count methods very rarely detect even 20% of total fatalities. In fact, the only case where the 20% level was surpassed was Bosnia - which is exceptional in many ways. For instance, it's a small (roughly 5 million people) European nation, the fighting areas were relatively constrained, and an unusually high proportion of the casualties were the result of organized single-event massacres (eg Srebrenica) that left mass graves in their wake. In every other case, the number of casulaties detected by body-counting was under 20% of the actual fatalities, and typically closer to 10%.

3- Overall fatality rates follow relatively predictable patterns
This applies to both the types of death (most deaths are civilians, young males die disproportionately, etc), the geographic distribution of deaths (higher in the areas of most intense conflict), and their overall incidence (typically 1-2% of the population per year of fighting, though in some cases it was a lot higher - for instance in East Timor the total death toll was over 20% of the population)

Now, turning to Iraq:

1- The government in charge underestimates fatality rates.
This certainly seems to fit the pattern - they do have an interest in portraying the war as going well, they certainly lack the resources to provide even basic services (water, sanitation, electricity), and they are themselves involved in a fair amount of death squad activity which they would not like to see documented or publicised.

2- Direct-count methods typically produce an undercount
Again, the situation in Iraq fits the pattern - civilian killing are occuring over a large and inaccesible area (entire areas of the country, including some of the most violent ones are no-go zones), free resources are scarece and dedicated to other tasks, and bodies are typically buried quickly due to both the climate and the Islamic custom of burying the dead within a day of their death.

3- Fatality rates follow relatively predictable patterns.
Some of the patterns, at least, are certainly followed - most deaths are civilian, young males are represented disproportionately, and deaths are highest in the areas of most intense conflict (Al-Anbar, Fallujah, Ramadi, Bagdhad). As for the total death rate, the Lancet survey puts it at 2.5% of the population over 3.5 years of fighting, or under 1% per year of conflict, which is at the low end of the range we've observed elsewhere.

The figures usually cited on this board (50-150,000 dead), are an entirely different story, however. That works out to between 0.05% and 0.15% of the population dead per year. If that were the case, it would mean that we are looking at a highly exceptional war, one unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Frankly, I dont believe that's the case. While it certainly has some peculiarities, I see no compelling reason to believe this war is absolutely unlike any other war we've ever seen before.

Pretty much every aspect of it is par for the course - including the fact that both the local government and the war's supporters abroad claim that the casualties are minimal, the fact that they insist on using direct-count methods that are know to produce radical undercounts, and the fact that they claim that anyone who disagrees with this is uninformed, unpatriotic or both.

Heart,

eu4ea

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.”

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Plutarch 3/16/2007 12:59:27 PM

"The point is that no one
knws what the true level of civilian deaths is only that the number has
been increasing since 2003 and that it is a greater number (per day)
than died under Saddam."

Let us dissect this statement of hypocrisy.

No one knows how many are dying.

I know more are dying then under Saddam.

This is a logical contradiction which has NO BACKING AS ADMITTED BY YOURSELF.

FYI the average number of deaths per day for Saddam was 125 spread out over 30 years. First prove to me that we are hitting above a hundred deaths every day, let alone 125 every day, then you can sit back and WAIT FOR THIRTY YEARS SO WE CATCH UP TO SADDAM.

Dude don't you dare come in here spouting this no one knows but me BS. We aren't stupid. We have sat and read your attempts to reach the 100 per day threshold, AND YOU FAILED. Now its at over 125 and only you know it.

You are a biased source, your emotions are controlling your judgement.

That’s why I stated early on in my thread that I am merely speculating about the numbers (See above). Lighten up dude seriously it’s just a message board (talk about being guided by emotions). Yes I don’t know the exact number of civilian deaths, but I am “speculating” that it is high given the intense level of violence in Iraq, which is why numbers like 150,000 appear credible. What I do know is the violence has not lessened in four years, it has become more intense. So low numbers like 30,000 do not seem credible to me; maybe they are right, but it would be surprising.

Say the entire state of California (roughly same size and population of Iraq) breaks away and is engulfed in violence for four years. Nothing can stop it; four car bombs a day go off in LA, and it is sectioned off by ethnic group, ethnic cleansing takes place, etc. Do you honestly think only 30,000 civilians would be killed in such upheaval?

As for the Saddam numbers they are merely a point of reference: It has been widely stated by many human rights groups that Saddam directly killed 300,000 Iraqis: 180,000 Kurds, 60,000 Shiites, and 60,000 political opponents during his regime. Over his 8,000+ day regime that adds up to 34 killed per day. Taking the lowest number of Iraqis killed per swhitebull’s link to icasualties.org and their average is 54 Iraqis killed per day. Perhaps Saddam killed double that number than we have only marginally improved the lives of Iraqis since the invasion.

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Plutarch 3/16/2007 1:28:26 PM

"The point is that no one
knws what the true level of civilian deaths is only that the number has
been increasing since 2003 and that it is a greater number (per day)
than died under Saddam."

Let us dissect this statement of hypocrisy.

No one knows how many are dying.

I know more are dying then under Saddam.

This is a logical contradiction which has NO BACKING AS ADMITTED BY YOURSELF.

FYI the average number of deaths per day for Saddam was 125 spread out over 30 years. First prove to me that we are hitting above a hundred deaths every day, let alone 125 every day, then you can sit back and WAIT FOR THIRTY YEARS SO WE CATCH UP TO SADDAM.

Dude don't you dare come in here spouting this no one knows but me BS. We aren't stupid. We have sat and read your attempts to reach the 100 per day threshold, AND YOU FAILED. Now its at over 125 and only you know it.

You are a biased source, your emotions are controlling your judgement.

Quote Reply

PlatypusMaximus 3/16/2007 4:41:37 PM

Without sitting down with a cipherin stick, you could just say 100/day since the Samarra mosque bombing(Feb06)...which it probably isn't, as it was reported the following May that a new level of 50/day had been reached...anyhoo..100/per day for most of 06 and several dozen/day up to that point...54's isn't insane. It is the low number though, so Id agree it'll probably end up as just that.

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PlatypusMaximus 3/16/2007 7:44:41 PM

I used the methods above to determine that there approximately 7,031,500 WMD's in Iraq.

Hey kids! Lancet can be fun!

Of course that cannot be the reality. The reality is that Saddam searched high and low for 12 years and couldn't find the wmd's which American troops found every single one in under 3....with spare time to cruise into the capital and capture the enemy's President.

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Plutarch 3/16/2007 8:21:14 PM

I used the methods above to determine that there approximately 7,031,500 WMD's in Iraq.

Hey kids! Lancet can be fun!

I quite frankly don't think anything will change your mind; so let me ask you a series of questions:

Do you believe that there is political violence in Iraq? If not why not? If so, is it at an acceptable level to bring about stability? If not what level of violence would you deem acceptable to bring about stability within the country (Stability defined as rule of law enforced, generally low unemployment, high economic growth, lowered crime rate,etc.)? If you believe that the level of violence is already acceptable to make Iraq stable then why isn't Iraq stable? If you believe Iraq is stable than how would you define that stability, and when/should American troops be withdrawn?

Thanks for your time.

Plutarch

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PlatypusMaximus 3/16/2007 10:03:52 PM

You tell me..

...However I still suspect the death rate for 2006 is underreported. In July 2000 Iraq's death rate was 6.4 per 1000, 6.21 per 1000 in 2001, etc.under Saddam, yes, but internally stable as well.

There are currently 100 deaths per day in Baghdad, also there are reports that there are at least one violent death every hour in Basra, and at least that many (24) in the rest of Iraq. So at least 55,000 Iraqis will die in political violence per year or close to 200,000 Iraqis dead for the first four years of the war, and those are the numbers we know of. Not every Iraqi shot in the back and dumped near his family's house is going to be reported in the media or in the morgue. The Iraqis certainly cannot trust the police to help them "solve" the murders.

I'll accept just about anything that is significantly better than the fantasy that is your minimum.

No hard feelings...you okay?

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Plutarch 3/19/2007 4:00:49 PM

You tell me..

...However I still suspect the death rate for 2006 is underreported. In July 2000 Iraq's death rate was 6.4 per 1000, 6.21 per 1000 in 2001, etc.under Saddam, yes, but internally stable as well.

I'll accept just about anything that is significantly better than the fantasy that is your minimum.

No hard feelings...you okay?

...However I still suspect the death rate for 2006 is underreported.

As I stated before I am speculating. However there is some more evidence in my favor.

In this new poll:

link

26% of Iraqis have directly experienced the murder of a family member. Not death but actual murder. The poll was conducted with over 5,000 adult Iraqis from every province and ethnic group using random sampling etc, etc. Now of course six million Iraqis have not been murdered, but a sizeable number have. It isn’t unreasonable to believe that several hundred thousand Iraqis have been killed in the four year war.

Close to one hundred thousand civilians were killed in the First Chechen War in three years, and Chechnya only had one million people living there to begin with, and none of the high-profile bombings that are a trademark in Iraq. So is there less death in Iraq with a higher concentration of people, more weapons, more enemies, and more space?

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Pseudonym 3/19/2007 8:15:51 PM

"Not every Iraqi shot in the back and dumped near his family's house is going to be reported in the media or in the morgue. The Iraqis certainly cannot trust the police to help them "solve" the murders."

I love it. So basically it is a massive coverup where not only do the killers hide the truth, the US Military, Iraqi Military, enemy populace, and my favorite THE KIN OF THE DEAD, and not A SINGLE PHONE CALL TO THE MEDIA, NO CRIES FOR JUSTICE...

That is your justification for adding thousands of deaths to your lancet-lite study where you pick out the highest number you can tell to some idiot on the street and get them to believe.

FYI Plutarch,

With every souless word you utter your opinion becomes less and less. About 80 Percent of this planet have empathy, they will now ignore you if they read this thread, as your opinion leaves out the reality of the human condition.

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shek 3/20/2007 7:49:00 AM

My argument is that this war is similar to comparable wars (Algeria, the Congo, Timor, Bosnia, El Salvador, Vietnam, etc.) and not something entirely new and never seen before. Further, I would also add that:

Eu4ea,

Let's take this by the numbers since you've avoided providing specific facts in the past relating to similar assertions. So, I'll just ask for an argument on one specific point so that it is a response that adresses the argument on the assertion or a non-response.

Please make the argument why Vietnam is similar to Iraq for casualty figures. Please cite the number of excess deaths in Vietnam (please include a source for the study that concludes the figure you provide), over what time period, and what percentage of the population per year this represents. Next, I'd like for you to compare levels of American forces in both conflicts, and ROE such as the number for Free Fire Areas in Iraq vs. the number of Free Fire Areas in Vietnam.

Thanks.

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Plutarch 3/21/2007 4:13:10 PM

"Not
every Iraqi shot in the back and dumped near his family's house is
going to be reported in the media or in the morgue. The Iraqis
certainly cannot trust the police to help them "solve" the murders."

I love it. So basically it is a massive coverup where not only do the killers hide the truth, the US Military, Iraqi Military, enemy populace, and my favorite THE KIN OF THE DEAD, and not A SINGLE PHONE CALL TO THE MEDIA, NO CRIES FOR JUSTICE...

That is your justification for adding thousands of deaths to your lancet-lite study where you pick out the highest number you can tell to some idiot on the street and get them to believe.

FYI Plutarch,

With every souless word you utter your opinion becomes less and less. About 80 Percent of this planet have empathy, they will now ignore you if they read this thread, as your opinion leaves out the reality of the human condition.

So basically it is a massive coverup where not only do the killers hide the truth, the US Military, Iraqi Military, enemy populace, and my favorite THE KIN OF THE DEAD, and not A SINGLE PHONE CALL TO THE MEDIA, NO CRIES FOR JUSTICE...

Who are they going to call; the Police? No they call the Mahdi Army, or al Qaeda, and yes there are calls for justice which is why the violence is spiraling out of control. Do you not know what is going on? The Iraqi populace doesn't like the American militay presence with the lone execption of the Kurds, and they can't trust the police, so they turn to the various militias to protect them.

That is your justification for adding thousands of deaths to your lancet-lite study where you pick out the highest number you can tell to some idiot on the street and get them to believe.

It is cited and has never been retracted by the Health Minister of Iraq. What do you believe? That the MSM is making up the violence, that only some 30,000 civilians have been killed in four years of unrelenting bloodshed?

With every souless word you utter your opinion becomes less and less. About 80 Percent of this planet have empathy, they will now ignore you if they read this thread, as your opinion leaves out the reality of the human condition.

Yet you still respond to my posts. I never said I didn't have empathy. I don't go out and kill babies or root for violence in Iraq. I gave the administration the benefit of the doubt in 2003 that they could bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, yet they have obviously failed. Empathy is a good thing for humans to have, but it makes for lousy foreign policy. States have interests and those interests should govern policy, not emotion. It's well and good that you want to save the Kurds, but if that belief is based on an emotional response than where does it end and how do you make it effective policy. "I feel your pain" is more in line with the feel-goodness of the Clinton years, and not something I would expect from a Republican administration.

Do you understand what I am talking about?

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swhitebull More Debunking 7/25/2007 1:09:52 PM

From LittleGreenFootballs:

link

New Critique of the Lancet's Civilian Death Claims

In 2004, British medical journal The Lancet released a study in the final days leading up to the US presidential election. Their attempted October Surprise was heavily promoted by international media and the international left (there’s a difference?), and claimed the US was responsible for more than 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. Then, in 2006, they published another study with even more wildly inflated claims.

Today Michelle Malkin has posted a new critique of the Lancet’s 2004 study, a statistical analysis by David Kane, Institute Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University?who identifies serious problems in the Lancet’s methodology: Document drop: A new critique of the 2004 Lancet Iraq death toll study.

Much of the math here is mind-numbingly complicated, but Kane’s bottom line is simple: the Lancet authors “cannot reject the null hypothesis that mortality in Iraq is unchanged.” Translation: according to Kane, the confidence interval for the Lancet authors’ main finding is wrong. Had the authors calculated the confidence interval correctly, Kane asserts that they would have failed to identify a statistically significant increase in risk of death in Iraq, let alone the widely-reported 98,000 excess civilian deaths.

An interesting side note: as Kane observes in his paper, the Lancet authors “refuse to provide anyone with the underlying data (or even a precise description of the actual methodology).” The researchers did release some high-level summary data in highly aggregated form (see here), but they released neither the detailed interviewee-level data nor the programming code that would be necessary to replicate their results.

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