Being an “ordinary Iraqi” myself, I must take strong exception to this notion that Iraqis have some kind of “visceral hatered” for Westerners in general and British and Americans in particular. Iraqis are by nature an open, warm and welcoming people – to those who approach them with respect and friendly intentions. Many Americans, British and other westerners have discovered and reported on this both before and after the Bush/Blair invasion.

Ordinary Iraqis, like ordinary people everywhere else in the world, DO take extremely unkindly to having their cities bombed to rubble, their lives turned upside down, their country in chaos. They DO have a visceral hatred for brutal, heavily armed strangers who scream at them in a foreign language, terrorize their children, “disappear” and torture their loved ones, and run them off the road or worse yet blast them away if they don’t show sufficient deference in traffic. Is that surprising?

Ah yes – it is SOOOO messy when the victim resists the rapist. If only they would just lie back and enjoy it, everything would go so much more smoothly for all.

When comparing lancet study to Iraq Body Count you must distinguish between violent war related deaths – the only thing the IBC looks at – and all deaths including sanitation, nutrition, crime, ect.

Comparing Lancet to the study of NEJM study of soldiers interview – Reading NEJM article I see only that it states in table 2 “being responsible for the death of a non-combatant” and puts the figure at 14% for army troops in Iraq and 28% for Marines. We have no idea what the definition of “responsible” is. It could be that a whole platoon feels responsible for a single death. There is no way to extraploit this to the number of dead Iraqis.

Jet – the lancet study is not a study of the number of deaths in fallujah. By no means do the authors try to indicate that they have a sample capable of predicting the amount of deaths in fallujah. I’m sure they would agree with you that it the study provides no information for studing the death rate there.

soru”

There is a 50% chance that there were greater than 100,000 excess deaths. Even excluding the Falluja cluster from the estimate.

soru

Yeah, sure you can’t believe it. It’s perfectly true though, sorry. The constant repetition of “8-194000” as though all figures were equally likely is completely misleading, far more so than anything I said. If the 95% CI is for a standard normal is 8000-194,000, then the 80% CI is presumably something like 45,000-145,000. (Lancet study is not that simple, but close enough). So we have quite a high probability of 40000+ casualties (even when excluding Fallujah completely!), and a very good justification for the statement in the interview that there were tens of thousands of excess casualties from the war. Right there you have gotten rid of almost half of your confidence interval, in the move from 95% to 80% probability. 80% is a damn good level of probability for anything coming out of the mess that is post-91 Iraq. IMO it is certainly a higher p-value than one should have assigned to any of the assurances from the pro-war people who got us into this mess.

soru

“More than 600 Iraqis have been killed in the fighting in Fallujah the past week, the head of the city’s hospital said on Sunday.

Statistics of bodies were gathered from four main clinics around the city taking in casualties and from Fallujah General Hospital, said the hospital’s director Rafie al-Issawi. They totalled more than 600 dead, he said.

“We have reports of an unknown number of dead being buried in people’s homes without coming to the clinics,” al-Issawi said.”

Note that they are dead over one week located in the cities clincs, when not all casualties came in to get medical care due to the danger of venturing into the street.

It’s difficult science to do, but this is an honest scientific estimate. You really need to read up on what a confidence interval is. The center of the confidence interval is most likely to be true, the tails (such as 8000 or 194000) are least likely. The 95% CI is a very strict and conservative level to use. The 8-194000 range was achieved only after completely excluding the highest casualty level site (Fallujah) from the sample, then using the strictest scientific CI. The authors of the study are completely entitled to their opinion that the excess casualty level (note: excess casualties, not casualties) is around the hundred thousand level, since their own research showed that it is more likely than not that excess casualties exceed 100,000. Not a perfect estimate, but the best that could be done.

Jet:

the study makes completely clear that losses due to insurgents are included in the casualty figures. The authors are very straightforward and honest about what they are doing. It is the responsibility of an occupying force to maintain order. The insurgency is a result of our botched invasion and occupation. (Which is not saying the insurgents are not morally culpable for their actions, that is totally different).

Also, the doctor you quote was in no way trying to make an estimate of total Fallujah casualties over the entire sequence of raids, bombardments, sieges of Fallujah (which extended over a year). You should read the article the quote comes from for fuller context. This quote was after the U.S. took steps to restrict access to hospitals because of bad publicity. We shelled Fallujah with artillery (not “smart bombs”), it’s ridiculous to think that there were only 600 casualties.

The reason Roberts says that the figure of 100,000 excess deaths is conservative is that it is conservative. It is the maximum likelihood estimate with the Fallujah sample excluded entirely. The Fallujah cluster was the only real hot-spot picked up in the sampling process. Although there was a cluster in Sadr City, no deaths from violence were reported there. Oddly though, we don’t hear the Lancet-bashers demanding to know how likely is that.

So the guy with the best possible knowledge of the Iraqi death count says there were 600+ Iraqi’s killed during the siege (the siege ended soon after his statement). And we know that number included combatants. So if at the height of combat, 600+ Fallujans were killed according to both the chief of the hospital and the US military, what does that tell us about the Lancet’s 50,000 estimate? That’s right.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/bodycount_all.php?ts=1114040925