Largest comprehensive study places Iraq civilian death toll at 150,000

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080110/wl_nm/iraq_deaths_survey_dc

I know, I know, the UN and the Iraqi Health Ministry must be lying.

Hell of a lot of folks, but not nearly as many as the Lancet or ORB studies say.

Surprisingly, this one doesn't even come directly in front of an American presidential election, or is being lead by a researcher who also happens to be a politician running to try to stop the evilness that is the Bush Administration.

On a side note, if the Lancet stats were so off, then it casts a significant pall over the research that was done on the Congo genocide by the same research team, which also report unprecedented casualties.

Let's just be thankful that as awful as it was, it wasn't as bad as some people claimed, and cross our fingers that the Iraqi people seem to have put the worst behind them as of this point.

150,000 dead?

That's as if they wiped out my whole town!

Hey....I'm sorry. But I told them I hadn't taken a dump in a week or so
and things could get ugly once I found a porta-john.
If it's any consolation, they never felt a thing...it was instantaneous.

Right about where I personally thought it was, and a tragedy that gets overlooked.

That is over the course of 5 years I believe.

Some estimates were that from 1991-2003 more Iraqis died every year due to the effects of U.S. enforced economic sanctions.

...and not in contradiction with the Lancet studies, if you'll look closer at the definitions of "civilian" used in each case.

Are these people we've killed by accident (bombings, battles, etc.) or self-inflicted (suicide bombings)?

That can be arranged.

Intriguing - what's the difference?

Yes, Packard, please do tell.

Where do the extra 500,000 bodies come from?

Oh, excuse me, the Lancet study said that 50,000 deaths were from non-violent occurrences, so that would give us only an additional 450,000 deaths more than the study that used 10 times the sample size for comparison.

If the methodology of the Iraqi "health" ministry is anything as it was before -- and why shouldn't it, given the support their propaganda has received from Americans unwilling to face the reality reported by their own studies, and swallowing Iraqi propaganda instead --, then a civilian cannot be an armed person; cannot be member of any political party; cannot be a Kurd; and does not count if the scene that killed him made it impossible for Iraqi hospitals to issue death certificates.

An overview of further problems from one of the Lancet authors

None of the assertions you make are backed up by the link provided.

And of course the Lancet survey DID claim to see death certificates almost 90% of the time.

Can't have it both ways.

Oh, the bonafides on this study - conducted jointly by the World Health Organization and the Government of Iraq, had five times the sample size of the larger Lancet study, and seven times the budget.

Of course, it also doesn't claim that 15,000 Iraqis have been killed by US forces in road accidents like the Lancet study, so it must not be valid. LOL.

This is extrapolated from the 5 actual road accidents found by the Lancet study. http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/databomb/index.htm

What? No, they didn't.

From wiki:

Original source:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/312581_moment21.html

And:

It's the very lynch pin of the argument for the authenticity of the Lancet research.

Of course, it was a survey done by the same pollster who put forward the Hussein regime claims that a million Iraqi children died because of the UN sanctions.

Wow, that's a bargain!!

The UN and WHO have long been US Imperialist stooges.

That's 90% of those interviewed, which was a sample that was then extrapolated. Not 90% of the total figure.
But I suspect I'm just misunderstanding you - that's probably what you meant...

Ah, yes. That was the sanctions regime that a large number of US senators condemned as "infanticide masquerading as policy" and which the administrator of the program described as "satisfying the definition of genocide".

So they have to be Iraqi bystanders who's death is proven?

Yeah, I can see where you can have a problem with that.

I see absolutely no reason for the US to shoulder any of the guilt for Iraqis killed by other Iraqis.

He's right though. People are responsible for their own choices.

We gave them the freedom to make their own choices, and this is how they dealt with it.

Now, if the question is "Should we feel sorrow" for those people, then absolutely.

So, in your mind, it's better for people to be dying by the thousands if the trains run on time?

Not knowing that, or even acting like we didn't know that, doesn't make us responsible for the actions those members of competing religious sects take against each other. They still have a choice. They are not helpless victims of their own bad acts.

As long as the rationale for the war includes saving Iraqi lives from being taken by other Iraqis, Iraqis killed by other Iraqis in enormous numbers are a sign of failure.

So if the Lancet studies are correct, it's time to make up a new rationale - again.

Yes, yes you would. 'cept that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a foreign power invading your nation, killing your family, and then you picking up a rifle and killing your neighbor.

As a general hypothetical subject to scrutiny of the specifics, yes. I would be more than mildly tempted to go after the forces that killed my family.

But we weren't talking about Iraqis taking up arms against the US military. We were discussing how Iraqis are killing each other, and how the outside force cannot be blamed for that.