Between 175,000 & 650,000 people have died as a direct result of Iraq War

Burying the Lancet report . . . and the children

By Nicolas J S Davies
Online Journal Contributing Writer

After excluding the results from Anbar province as a statistical anomaly and half the increase in infant mortality as possible "recall bias," they estimated that at least 98,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the previous 18 months as a direct result of the invasion and occupation of their country. They also found that violence had become the leading cause of death in Iraq during that period (51 percent or 24 percent with or without Anbar). However, their most significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent deaths were caused by "coalition" forces using "helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry," and that almost half (48 percent) of these were children, with a median age of eight.

<snip>

...aerial bombardment was largely responsible for the higher numbers of deaths caused by the "coalition." The overall breakdown (72 percent U.S.) is remarkably close to that attributed to aerial bombardment in the Lancet survey (79 percent).

<snip>

The figures most often cited for civilian casualties in Iraq are those collected by Iraqbodycount, but its figures are not intended as an estimate of total casualties. Its methodology is to count only those deaths that are reported by at least two "reputable" international media outlets in order to generate a minimum number that is more or less indisputable.

<snip>

Beyond the phony controversy regarding the methodology of the Lancet report, there is one genuine issue that really does cast doubt on its findings. This is the decision to exclude the cluster in Fallujah from its computations due to the much higher number of deaths that were reported there (even though the survey was completed before the widely reported assault on the city in November 2004). Roberts wrote in a letter to the Independent, "Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we did a survey estimating that 285,000 people have died due to the first 18 months of invasion and occupation and we reported it as at least 100,000."

<snip>

Allowing for an additional 14 months of the air war and other violence since the publication of the Lancet report, we can now estimate that somewhere between 175,000 and 650,000 people have died as a direct result of the war; that 120,000 to 500,000 of them have been killed by "coalition" forces, and that 50,000 to 250,000 of these were children below the age of fifteen.


More Info Here:
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_333.shtml

(a Baptist minister and lawyer) tell my son..... don't pay attention, civilians are always killed in a war. They, of course, make additional excuses for the shrub and his minions.

off topic slightly:
Luckily, my son doesn't buy any of it. Nor the church his mom had been making him go to (where they told him Jews were going to hell). Half of my side of the family are Jews. Most of his cousins. That's when he really began to question and reject the right wing, Christian fundie bullshit. Unfortunately, he had just begun to really get into Morning Sedition and is upset that today was its last day.

when presented with two disparate figures from two opposing sides is to add them up and divide in half.

So you have Bush's 30K and 650K. 380K divided by 2 is 190,000.

That's a lot of people. I hope the purple fingers are worth it.

The Halliburton/KBR/Blackwater Billions are and any future Oil Profits for Chevron/Exxon/BP etc ...
:(

is that in the study they purposefully excluded Falluja because they found the figures of dead there to be so high as to skew the study. Since that time other cities have undergone assaults using the same "cleansing" methods applied in Falluja.

"We won't count Falluja deaths because too many people died there."

Hmmmm

far less reported than even Falluja. There is absolutely no telling the extent of bombing that has been done in various places. Only the Pentagon knows.

But remember we only hear the bad news! right..

And that is where the majority of the deaths come from.

From aricle and corroborrated by other reports:
"...their most significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent deaths were caused by "coalition" forces using "helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry," and that almost half (48 percent) of these were children, with a median age of eight."

Call it karma, revenge of the all mighty or just cause and effect physics. Can a nation get away with watching sitcoms while killing hundreds of thousands of innocents? Whatever the repercussions are I don't think they will include international good will. The day that this nation gets bit I won't blame it on 911. I'll blame in on GW.

"what goes around comes around". Our Nation is suffering from mass insanity.

Now it's confirmed.

:headbang:
rocknation

A Death Toll Lower Than DC Murder Rate?

NPR Swallows Bush Guestimate on Iraqi Dead

By APRIL HURLEY, M.D.

To: Scott Inskeep
National Public Radio

Dear Mr. Inskeep:

Yesterday, on your National Public Radio Show, Morning Edition, you asked an "expert" to comment on G.W. Bush's evident ignorance. Your stooge pundit, Michael O'Hanlon, was satisfied with George's guestimate that 30,000 Iraqi civilians and combatants have been killed during 32 months of invasion and occupation. He suggested that G.W's figure doesn't include Iraqi crime victims. This proposes a mortality rate for Iraqis from combat alone that is lower than Washington D.C.'s homicide rate during the year of the latest stats, 2002. A war zone also safer than Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans before Katrina. Perhaps a paid professional at NPR, who isn't busy doing the bidding of a White House propagandist, would wonder what's wrong with this picture and do some minimal investigation. Such as the most globally respected survey, an independent and heroic study on the casualties in Iraq, peer reviewed and published in The Lancet. A curious child could get those US city homicide figures and do the math!

I witnessed Shock and Awe in Baghdad and the tsunami of lies discounting those deaths. The bombing then was brutal and the occupation since has been a serial massacre. Iraq today is our massive Guernica. It is obscene that this war president continues in denial that he has, conservatively, caused the death of 150,000-200,000 Iraqi men, women and kids. And this after, conservatively again, more than 500,000 died under Clinton's promoting of UN sanctions. How can you National Public Radio people live with your complicity in hustling such horrific crimes and distortions about them. 

The tangled web of deception spun by NPR must feel like a cocoon for you by now! I am another outraged listener reminding all of you. We are an internet-literate audience; we won't tolerate being brainwashed by our own public airwaves. And the drivel you choose to distract us with at these critical times will serve to secure your indictment.

Increasingly outraged,
April Hurley, MD

http://www.counterpunch.org/hurley12142005.html

 

I can believe that it is closer to 650,000 than we want to believe.

I mean, it's not like they don't all carry bombs and plot to blow up 'murka. Especially those sneaky little kids that we shoot, bomb, or blow up with artillary.

They're a real threat to America and our oil that we're generously trying to get out of their country.

There not as important as Americans. It's ok for us to destroy their country and kill their citizens, we are speading democracy....that's why we went to Iraq in the first place, right?

It can't take much more, nor can its current effect on people. Even those in the upper middle class who've saved all their lives and are now in retirement.

A society that's grossly overpopulated because our economy says expansion is good...