quote:

If "more than 60 cruise missiles" hit a crowded city of almost 6 million, and less than 512 people died, it seems we would have been better off dropping diseased cows and just waiting a while.

Perhaps, but there is no way that 655,000 civilians were killed in Iraq.

quote:

Overview
Summary of casualties of the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Possible estimates on the total number of people killed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq vary widely. All estimates below are as of November 20, 2005, and include both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the following Post-invasion Iraq, 2003-2005.

Iraqis: Counts of civilian deaths specifically documented range from 26,994 to 30,420.
U.S. armed forces: 2,095 total deaths. 15,704 combat wounded (7,347 evacuated) + unknown non-combat injuries
Armed forces of other occupation countries: 201 (98 British, 27 Italian, 18 Ukrainian, 17 Polish, 13 Bulgarian, 11 Spanish, 17 other)
Non-Iraqi civilians: Unknown, but at least 278 contractors, 58 journalists, 20 media support workers, and 150 aid workers.

REF

Hi Gang:

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg's own words they claimed that teams of doctors went, door to door, to almost two thousand homes in Iraq.They also claimed that they found the homes provided 92% of the death certificates for those who had died.

All of this happening during a full fledged civil war going on...what hooey!!!

Our own troops don't even go out of doors if they can help it...but these guys went ,door to door,...I don't believe it.

And,with the total chaos going on within the present Iraqi Government,they had time to issue 92% of the death certificates for those who had died...this from a government that can't even keep the electricity on in their cities.

While I believe that Bush is lowballing our casualty figures,those who hate Bush are doing everything in their power to make those figures as high as possible.

We are not getting the truth from either side.

hippolips

The recent survey, like the first one, was conducted by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are based on interviews with a random sampling of households from across Iraq. This survey yielded the same estimate of deaths immediately following the occupation, as the first survey. It also found that 30% of the reported deaths are caused by the occupation forces.
This study is the only one, other than the first study published in The Lancet, that calculates mortality in Iraq using scientific methods. It is a technique of "cluster sampling" also used to estimate mortality caused by famines and after natural disasters.
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Further underscoring the validity and authenticity of the survey methodology are two importantestimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the previous survey. Additionally, the figures are backed by official evidence as the greater majority of deaths were substantiated by death certificates.
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for several years, said that the survey method is "tried and true," and that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have." His view was backed by Sarah Leah Whitson at the Human Rights Watch in New York, who testified, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy."
Here it is worth recording that the survey's estimate of Iraq's pre-invasion death rate, which was used as the baseline of the survey, was roughly the same as the one used by both the CIA and the US Census Bureau.
As in the instance of the first survey, this study found that the actual number of dead Iraqis could in fact be higher. The fact that this study tabulated "excess deaths" implies that these people would still be alive if the US had not invaded their country. facts: first, that the leg work has been conducted by eight Iraqi doctors and second, that the recent survey came up with the same
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101206A.shtml
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Of course some of the hunches and educated (?) guesses by others here may be closer to the truth as the result of better methodology, perhaps they will explain how their estimate was carried out.

Thanks for the link, Scotty. Below is from Scotty's link. The first part is something Scotty must have missed. The second part comes after a discussion of the various estimates of Iraqi deaths due to the invasion. I can see why Scotty chose not to cite it.
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PT. 1
Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and continuing with the ensuing 2003 occupation of Iraq and continuing occupation presence) have come in many forms, and the accuracy of the information available on different types of casualties varies greatly.

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Pt 2. (This was the last paragraph of the article Scotty linked us to.)
Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from occupation forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce noncombatant deaths from air strikes.

The team that researched the 1800 plus families got a death rate of about two and a half times the average death rate in peacetime. Now, it may not be right to use such a figure as a base for calculating deaths for the whole of Iraq but it does pose the question of how and why the proven deaths were so much higher in the sample. What was happening post-war that hadn't been before?

quote:

Thanks for the link, Scotty. Below is from Scotty's link. The first part is something Scotty must have missed. The second part comes after a discussion of the various estimates of Iraqi deaths due to the invasion. I can see why Scotty chose not to cite it.

There you go assuming again, DG, I gave you the link didn't I?
What about the other 500,000?

quote:

I am sure that the count is a hell of a lot closer to 50,000 than it is to 655,000.

The last survey mentioned in the article linked to was dated October 2004. If the number of deaths could have been 100,000 in at the end of 2004, what might it be two years later?

It seems that the 50,000 figure quoted by the US 'commander on the ground' is the Iraq Body Count one. When Bush some time ago mentioned 30,000, that was also what the Iraq Body Count total was at the time. They're using what must be a minimum possible total - passively collected data based only on confirmed news reports.

'Why is this Lancet estimate so much higher than the figures put out by President Bush or the Iraq Body Count website? They put the number of casualties in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands. To be fair, Iraq Body Count does not claim to publish accurate absolute numbers of deaths. Instead, their figures are valuable for measuring trends. But the reason for the discrepancy between these lower estimates and the new figure of 650,000 deaths lies in the way the number is sought. Passive surveillance, the most common method used to estimate numbers of civilian deaths, will always underestimate the total number of casualties. We know this from past wars and conflict zones, where the estimates have been too low by a factor of 10 or even 20.

Only when you go out and knock on the doors of families, actively looking for deaths, do you begin to get close to the right number. This method is now tried and tested. It has been the basis for mortality estimates in war zones such as Darfur and the Congo. Interestingly, when we report figures from these countries politicians do not challenge them. They frown, nod their heads and agree that the situation is grave and intolerable. The international community must act, they say. When it comes to Iraq the story is different. Expect the current government to mobilise all its efforts to undermine the work done by this American and Iraqi team. Expect the government to criticise the Lancet for being too political. Expect the government to do all it can to dismiss this story and wash its hands of its responsibility to take these latest findings seriously.' www.guardian.co.uk

(This article mentions the bombing of Iraq in the first Gulf War and 'a fleeting Associated Press story reported on March 22, 1991, that the six-week war had killed an estimated 100,000 Iraqi people -- a figure that came from official U.S. military sources.')

But, whether the figure is 20,000 or 200,000, it's still a mystery how Bush manages to sleep at night (or why he still clings to office). Imagine knowing that all those people had died needlessly, because of your decision.

quote:

While I believe that Bush is lowballing our casualty figures,those who hate Bush are doing everything in their power to make those figures as high as possible.

I doubt if anyone is trying to 'make' the figures higher. All it takes is reality and little commonsense to know that the whole war is built on lies, so why wouldn't Bush's casualty figure be just another lie? Futhermore, he probably doesn't even know what 50,000 is.

'The U.N. said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the most in any month since the war began 44 months ago, and a figure certain to be eclipsed in November. The U.N. said citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month, and that at least 1.6 million Iraqis have left since the war began in March 2003.

The International Organization for Migration, a U.N.-associated group, said Tuesday the number of Iraqis displaced by violence since the Samarra bombing has now increased to almost 250,000 individuals in the 15 central and southern governorates, with more than 1,000 people on average being displaced a day in September, October and November.' news.bostonherald.com

[QUOTE]Originally posted by newnickname:
The U.N. said citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month, and that at least 1.6 million Iraqis have left since the war began in March 2003.
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Hi NN:

In order for the UN to compile the records they claim,they would have to have UN tabulators[counters] in every country bordering Iraq ,as well as additional counters stationed on every border of Iraq itself.

Seems like this would require an enormous manpower requirement on the part of the UN.

I'm skeptical of their of their figures for this reason.

hippolips

More recent figures on refugees:

Jordan, Syria: Iraqi Refugees Need Help

The figures seem to be from the Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese governments, rather from UN people standing at the borders counting. But of course, they could all be lying, too.

The BBC had numbers of internal refugees, from a survey conducted in Iraq. I'll see if I can find it.

Holocaust Denial?

Iraq Body Count, first brought up in discussion last year by triple n, is interesting. After reviewing the site more extensively, it also appears credible. For anyone who is willing to spend a few minutes there, do you believe their numbers are not objective (even if they disagree with your own perception, and even in light of their admission to being "anti-war")?

As of this moment their count is the range 77,321 – 84,238.

I honestly believe that numbers several times this have been excessively inflated to promote an agenda. Doing this with your numbers, however, tends to hurt your own cause.

Iraq Body Count's own assessment:


Recent public debate has rather focused on the number of deaths we don’t record, and how much of an undercount that might be. Our own view is that the current death toll could be around twice the numbers recorded by IBC and the various official sources in Iraq. We do not think it could possibly be 10 times higher.

Other possible criticisms are dealt with in the website. Some of it is laid out plainly in the slide show.

The Lancet count does seem to arrive at a staggering figure, but their methodology was just the same as used elswhere - Darfur for example - without question.

On refugees: The Politics of Tallying the Number of Iraqis Who Return Home

...last week, Iraq's Ministry of Health released its large survey, also ending in June 2006, finding that 151,000 had died by violence. But their data tables show an enormous "excess death" total of nearly 400,000 caused by the war, and a peculiarly flat rate of violence throughout the war. Because the interviewers worked for the government, it's likely that many respondents attributed deaths to nonviolent causes, in order to protect themselves from unwanted attention.

What to make of all this? The first conclusion is that hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of the war - this seems incontrovertible. It is buttressed by the large number of displaced - some 3 million to 3.5 million caused by the war - and a reported total of 500,000 war widows... The murky toll of the Iraq war

'More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found... Iraq Conflict Has Killed A Million Iraqis