Iraq Casualty Study in The Lancet
A long and thorough debunking of the controversial study was just published in National Journal.
Quote:
Published by The Lancet, a venerable British medical journal,
the study [PDF] used previously accepted methods for calculating death rates to estimate the number of "excess" Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 426,369 to 793,663; the study said the most likely figure was near the middle of that range: 654,965. Almost 92 percent of the dead, the study asserted, were killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. This stunning toll was more than 10 times the number of deaths estimated by the Iraqi or U.S. governments, or by any human-rights group.
National Journal on Lancet
I started to read this to see if it could shed any light on discrepancies between the various estimates. I then continued to the bottom with a view to launching an attack on a crap bit of jouranlism, but it does not warrant the effort and I regret the time I have wasted.
So too was the Lancet article and survey
less than stellar or accurate. Garbage in, garbage out.
I didn't read the National Journal article linked in this thread
but like you read and followed the original Lancet article and the later one also. Let me start by stating that I also essentially have no problems with the sample size or the methodolgy. I had and have three problems with the studies overall:
While I agree with the sample size, I strongly disagree with the location of the sampled households; predominately urban, major roads which were known trouble spots and a couple of other things to me indicate a biased selection.
Anyone with any experience in the ME knows that in such an exercise, you are going to get either the answer the respondent thinks you want to hear or the answer the respondent wants you to hear. They are not lying, in the western sense, they live in a different culture where politeness and concern for family, tribe and group transcend objectivity in conversation. The authors of the report may not have been aware of that but the survey crew certainly was. IOW, the authors got suckered.
Both the Editor of the Lancet and the report authors acknowledged they rushed the effort and timed the release to affect the US elections in the case of both reports. That is 'unscientific' and a biased political approach to a true problem that effectively in the eyes of too may discounted the effort; they ruined their own effort by so doing.
Ergo, to me the reports were totally bogus.
Add to that the common sense quotient. If the reports are to be believed, a year or so of transitory and very low key warfare killed more civilians than were killed in western Europe in WW II. That simply does not track.
Quote:
All of that rambling is really an explanation of why I was reading this old thread to see if there was any serious discussion here on the costs to those being trampled underfoot rather than the tramplers.
I can share your concern but I fear that while there may be discussion on that score here, I strongly doubt that there will be much in either Whitehall or the Pentagon, at No 10 or the White House. As Lord Palmerston said; “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” the world is not a nice place, no matter how much we wish it were.
In fairness to those locations I mentioned, I'm really pretty sure they'd be more willing to not only discuss the issue but ameliorate the problem IF they knew they could rely on others to be as humane. They cannot.
Maybe someday the world will eschew war, it certainly is one of mankind's most stupid endeavors and needs to disappear -- I'm afraid that won't happen in our lifetime or even that of our children. Nor, I'm afraid will a lack of concern in many cases for the many innocents who get trampled...