Yesterday a radio interviewer in South Africa asked me what had been the response of the "mainstream media in the United States" to Just Foreign Policy's ongoing estimate of the Iraqi death toll from the U.S. invasion and occupation, which on Thursday crossed the one million mark.
Sadly, I had to report that it has been ignored by mainstream media, even the wire services. But this is hardly surprising. A main motivation for constructing the web counter was to keep the "Lancet study" alive. The "Lancet study," you'll recall, was a study published last fall in the British medical journal The Lancet, which estimated that more than 600,000 Iraqis had had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. The media largely buried the Lancet study when it was published - and have largely ignored the question of the overall death toll from the U.S. invasion - so it's little surprise that they have ignored our attempt to shine a light on this question.
The Lancet study is the only existing study that uses the method accepted all over the world for estimating deaths due to large-scale violent conflict: a cluster survey. Its principal deficit for understanding the current situation is that the survey it was based on is now a year old, so that when people want to invoke the Lancet study to describe the death toll, they are likely to say, "a year ago the death toll was over 600,000" - leaving out what has happened since. Since the Lancet study is "old news," it's progressively easier to ignore it over time. It was this problem that gave us the idea of constructing an ongoing, rough update.
The tally of deaths reported in the Western media by Iraq Body Count, although it gives an inaccurate picture of the overall death toll, does have the advantage that it is regularly updated. So while the Iraq Body Count tally, by itself, doesn't help us understand the overall death toll, it does give us some information about the trend over time, because one can compare, for example, the Iraq Body Count tally today with the Iraq Body Count tally from July 2006.
Thus, we constructed our ongoing online estimate - for which we provide the code so you can include it on your own web page - by extrapolating from the Lancet estimate using the trend provided by Iraq Body Count.
Our extrapolation assumes that Iraq Body Count is capturing a fixed proportion of the true level of deaths over time. This is a conservative assumption, because it is likely that Iraq Body Count is capturing a smaller share of the true death toll over time, as reporting from Iraq becomes progressively more difficult. By assuming that Iraq Body Count captures a constant share, we will tend to underestimate the true death toll.
Note that the number we focus on is the Lancet estimate of excess deaths due to violence. Thus, we understate the death toll by ignoring, say, increased deaths due to cholera which could be attributed, at least in part, to the destruction resulting from the U.S. invasion and occupation.
Note further that a straight-line extrapolation from the Lancet study - ignoring any increase in the death rate in the last year from the average between March, 2003 and July, 2006 - an average that includes the first year of the occupation, when by all accounts the death rate was lower - would still result in more than 750,000 excess deaths due to violence.
Increasingly, the U.S. occupation is described as a passive onlooker to the violence. This is deeply misleading for two reasons. First, the civil war - or civil wars - that have been unleashed in Iraq was a predictable - and predicted - result of the U.S. invasion. Everything is predicted if one searches enough, but in this case, for example, James Baker gave the threat of unleashing a civil war as a key reason why the U.S. didn't go to Baghdad in 1991, so it's absurd to treat this as an unforeseeable consequence. Second, the picture is being obscured by underreporting in the U.S. of deaths from U.S. air strikes, raids, and shooting at checkpoints.
Why does this matter? Obviously, we have a responsibility to understand the world as best we can, and nowhere is this responsibility greater than in trying to understand the consequences of the actions of our government. But the question is particularly urgent, because there is a major effort underway to rehabilitate the war politically, by cherry-picking - and misinterpreting - current developments. The surge is working, we are told: it must be given more time. If the scale of the overall death toll from the U.S. invasion becomes part of the debate, this sleight-of-hand will be much harder to maintain.
I still dont believe that People think the US and British army are there for the right reasons.
Our preperation continued, with our efforts and the efforts of our brothers, for years and years. Through out that time we gathered, observed and waited until the moment to move arrived.
I still dont believe that People think the US and British army are there for the right reasons.
I have never meet anyone that supported the war.
Bush's rating is below 1/3. I think that is a good indicator.
But still 1/3, I don't see how it can be above 1/100000.
Our preperation continued, with our efforts and the efforts of our brothers, for years and years. Through out that time we gathered, observed and waited until the moment to move arrived.
I have never meet anyone that supported the war.
Bush's rating is below 1/3. I think that is a good indicator.
But still 1/3, I don't see how it can be above 1/100000.
You don't seem to meet alot of people! First no atheists who don't use weird logic, now this , I must say I am shocked, if anything I've seen too many people who supported it. Maybe its different in USA, but then that doesn't make sense as Bush did get reelected over kerry :/. Maybe its a Christian thing, that made Bush get re-elected, meh...
Fight in the way of God, against those who fight against you, drive them out of the places they have drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. Fight them, until persecution is no more, and Religion is for God. But if they stop, let there be no war.
You don't seem to meet alot of people! First no atheists who don't use weird logic, now this , I must say I am shocked, if anything I've seen too many people who supported it. Maybe its different in USA, but then that doesn't make sense as Bush did get reelected over kerry :/. Maybe its a Christian thing, that made Bush get re-elected, meh...
First my atheists friends are logical. I think most "not dumb" people are logical.
Maybe "birds of a feather" explains why I don't know any war activests.
At the time, I think many people believed the Bush scare tactics.
I have searched and searched Al Jazeera and I can't find any thing about this.
By the way you may be looking at wrong one:
because of international Trade Mark laws.
aljazeera and al Jazeera are two separate companies. aljazeera and it's subsidiaries are a British founded company. Which is probably a subsidiary of either Time-Warner or CNN.
al Jazeera and it's subsidiaries is a Qatar owned company.
two totaly seperate groups. since the question is asking about alJazeera I guessed as to whether it was owned by CNN or Time-Warner.
I still dont believe people repeat these figures from lancet study as somekind of religious mantra. Its kind of telling that the study with the highest civilian casualty figure is adopted as the "true" value.
I still dont believe people repeat these figures from lancet study as somekind of religious mantra. Its kind of telling that the study with the highest civilian casualty figure is adopted as the "true" value.
My concern with the "Lancet study" is that they seam to ignore the more than a million killed by Saddam Hussein.
But still, as I said earlier more than 1 (Saddam Hussein) is too many.
From what I can find aljazeera.net is a news source out of Qatar.
aljazeera.com seams to be by the same company but in magazine form.
I can find no connection between an aljazeera and CNN. (That only means I didn't find any).
I concider .NET a good news source.
.COM looks line a hate magazine.
I still dont believe people repeat these figures from lancet study as somekind of religious mantra. Its kind of telling that the study with the highest civilian casualty figure is adopted as the "true" value.
Tell it brother. The Lancet study was blessed with an author with a political agenda and was rushed to publication without the standard peer-review process just in time for a US election. Imagine that.
oh, did I mention the author did not "keep" the raw data for "security reasons"
Oh, did I further mention that, according to the Lancet study, the average daily mortality attributable to the war (for every single day of the war>500) is higher than the single highest daily total reported in the media.
From what I can find aljazeera.net is a news source out of Qatar.
aljazeera.com seams to be by the same company but in magazine form.
I can find no connection between an aljazeera and CNN. (That only means I didn't find any).
I concider .NET a good news source.
.COM looks line a hate magazine.
The funny thing is that when I used the Al jazeera TV 6 or 7 years back think it was completely diffrent to the way it presents itself now.
It had many (I know you won't like this ) toons such which were against the Leaders of US, Uk, Israel, even the Saudi govermetn which is a Muslim nation! Toons like this:
But I mainly used CNN and BBC news and rarely used any other sources. But man, at some point it just got too derpressing watching what was happening so when I whent back to see whaat Al-Jazeera had to say and imagine My shock when I saw:
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Our preperation continued, with our efforts and the efforts of our brothers, for years and years. Through out that time we gathered, observed and waited until the moment to move arrived.
, I must say I am shocked, if anything I've seen too many people who supported it. Maybe its different in USA
, but then that doesn't make sense as Bush did get reelected over kerry :/. Maybe its a Christian thing, that made Bush get re-elected, meh...
) toons such which were against the Leaders of US, Uk, Israel, even the Saudi govermetn which is a Muslim nation! Toons like this:
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