Let me be as blunt and direct with the American people as I can be. The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy–Al Qaeda–which killed more than 3,000 people on 9/11 and which still plots our destruction today. And there’s just no question about it: the president’s misjudgment, miscalculation and mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on terror harder to win.
One of the most-ignored tragedies in our is what the US has done to the people of Iraq. Whether you support the war in Iraq or not, it is difficult to imagine a circumstance in which the deaths of 100,000 (mostly innocent) Iraqis could be described as “acceptable”.
What is likely to cause considerable rancor in this new estimate is that most of the deaths reported were from U.S. bombing — nearly 80 percent — and not as a result of the insurgency. This scale of destruction is on par with the war in Vietnam.
The estimate, to be published next week in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal, comes from a distinguished group of social and medical scientists at Johns Hopkins University, headed by Dr. Les Roberts of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The team also included researchers at Columbia University and the College of Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They went house-to-house in 33 neighborhoods that reflect Iraq society as a whole and interviewed residents about deaths in their households since the U.S. invaded. The death rate, they found, averaged about 300 percent higher than normal, attributable to the war’s violence.
As reported in Friday’s newspapers, the estimate is being treated with considerable skepticism. The motives of the editors of The Lancet were questioned in The New York Times story (tucked away in a single column on page A8), because the study was released in a special Web version before The Lancet’s usual publication date. It is as if the Times were implying that such major news should have been held until after the election. Over at the Washington Post, a researcher for Human Rights Watch criticized the study’s method by alleging that the sample was too small. HRW and some other groups have tried to count casualties by using documents, such as press reports. Those estimates have been around 17,000 Iraqi deaths.
But the estimate by the Hopkins team is sound in terms of how the data has been gathered and what it says about the casualty rate. A sample of 988 households with more than 7,800 people, in a country of 25 million, is a sizable sample. By comparison, pollsters in this country, using similar techniques of sampling (so the people interviewed in aggregate represent the demographics of the country as a whole), consider a sample of 1,500 people in a country of 280 million to be adequate for extrapolation and reliable results. Wherever possible, too, the researchers verified claims of fatalities with documents. A larger sample would be worthwhile, and as in any important empirical research, it would be useful to repeat the data collection to compare results. But the method is sound.
This should be taken as a clear indictment, not of our troops on the ground, but of our Prevaricator-in-Chief and his dishonest manipulation of faulty intelligence. This allowed both he and his neo-Conservative cohorts to get a war they had wanted since Day One.
If this estimate is correct, and it does appear that the data-collection method IS sound, we- and George W. Bush- are responsible for the deaths of some 800,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. In different times, this would be referred to as a “war crime”. Now, it is merely “collateral damage”. As a nation, we would be up in arms if a Democrat were in the White House and responsible for this sort of carnage. Why does George W. Bush get a free pass? No matter how much and how often Dick Cheney attempts to spin the truth, the war in Iraq has nothing in common with Bush’s never-ending War On Terror. Any yet, fully half of Americans plan on voting for the Butcher of Baghdad. What does that say about us as a people? That it’s OK- as long as someone else’s children are dying? Are we that self-absorbed and ignorant of reality??
Apparently so.
WE DESERVE BETTER.
Truth in reporting - You really should review the motives behind this report. One of the writers was against the war and insisted that it be released before the election. You should also get someone who knows a little about pollng and the preparation of statistics to review the report. In the fine print it states that there is a 98% chance of the numbers of dead being between 8000 and 100,000. A weather forecaster could do better. I would be embarrassed to put my name to a report with such a level of inaccuracy.
I am embarrassed every day by the insistence that the cretin in the White House is something that should be blamed on Texas.
Davod, so many things are "forbidden" the people by this White House ...
Do you know how many GIs have died in Iraq?
How many coalition troops from other nations?
How many GIs have come home wounded, their lives irrevocably and permanently altered?
How many GIs have come home and subsequently committed suicide?
How many Iraqis were on the hijacking crews on 9/11/01?
I don't really care what your perception of inaccuracy is, Davod. I do, however, have draft-age sons.
So I care more than I ever have before in my life about the outcome of this election. America deserves better, and so does the rest of the world.
Bush MUST be beaten.
And, Davod, outside of your considered viewpoint, exactly WHAT are you using for evidence?
SLATE.COM
"We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.
Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)
This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board."
Slate is a very liberal site, so when it debunks the 100,000 figure, you've gotta think twice before you take it as fact....
Northstar,
I think these guys are getting desperate ... ;0}
I am not hung up on the actual number. What I am hung up on is the indiscriminate nature of much of the violence that has been visited upon innocent Iraqi civilians. No, the Bush Administration is not responsible for all of it, but their reckless pursuit of a failed policy certainly makes them the leading culprit.
Dear North Star:
You asked where I got my evidence from and AAron responded. You then took a more reasoned approach by saying you were "not not hung up on the actual number. What I am hung up on is the indiscriminate nature of much of the violence that has been visited upon innocent Iraqi civilians. No, the Bush Administration is not responsible for all of it, but their reckless pursuit of a failed policy certainly makes them the leading culprit."
Grow up. There were no figures of the Iraqi governments planned, as opposed to indiscriminate, deaths, tortures rapes and other acts of violence against their own people before the second Gulf War. If you were a good Sunni, Kurd, Shiite, Christian or Muslim (Religion didn't matter) you might have been left alone. Do not use the indiscriminate nature of the attacks against Iraqi civilians by fellow muslims as a canard to blame a Bush policy. Over time the Iraqis will be a lot better off under their own freely elected government.
Do not be so blinded by your own idealogy that you do not see the good that may come out of a policy.
The-Other-Sarah:
I would be worried about having draft age sons. But not because of anything the Republicans would do. The reason their will be no draft under President Bush's second term is quite simple. We have a professional military. The reason it did so well in Afghanistan and Iraq is because it is well trained and focussed on its mission. It is extremely hard to train conscripts up to the level of a professional military. A knowledgeable person as you should also know that the only people in government talking about a draft are Democrats, Representative Charlie Wrangel and Senator Hollings who submitted bills to congress. The Republican led Congress brought up the bill for a vote and even Rangell voted against his own bill. Rangel said it was mean to bring up his own bill for a vote. I hope you do not suppoprt such duplicitous people. Be carefull who you vote for - your 'friends' may give you what you do not want.