That “whooshing” sound was your own irony passing over your head.

So clearly it didn’t happen.

The question about the role of hospitals can be initially answered with this simple question: In Iraq, do you need to go to a hospital to get a death certificate? Islam requires the body be buried quickly, so maybe local doctors can give death certificates?

If so, most questions about the role of Hospitals are answered and or irrelevant. If not, the only explanation for the discrepancy the IBC discusses seems, to me, to be that the hospitals aren`t reporting to the govt.

If any journalist in Iraq cared about the truth they could find this out very quickly.

Prove that. You’ve asked for proof of this, that and the other thing; it’s your turn now.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2523

It’s written by Jeffrey and Loring White. The latter “has had a long private- and public-sector career in the fields of mathematical modeling and scientific data analysis, specializing in the evaluation of high-uncertainty information.”

The methodological critiques are here:

“First, the study compares results from three fourteen-month periods after the invasion to results from only one fourteen-month period before the invasion—and that period is the one immediately preceding the invasion, when the Iraqi regime was preparing for war. How representative of violent activity in Iraq is that one preinvasion period? Would looking at three periods before the invasion improve the study’s credibility? Second, only two violent deaths were reported in the survey data during the fourteen months prior to the invasion. This seems questionable considering the regime’s prewar security operations and the low-level insurgency being waged in the south. Is this very low baseline of violence, in a regime known for violent activity, plausible? Third, it would be useful to know more about how representative the study’s random sampling process was. Where were the clusters of surveyed households located, and what were the actual numerical results for each cluster? If violent deaths are positively correlated with population density, would random selection of cluster locations proportionate to population size cause an upward statistical bias in the results (when projected over the country as a whole)? Finally, no mention is made of public access to the body of data collected. Public access would allow other experts to attempt replication of the results—a critical requirement for scientific credibility.”

In any case, it’s not obvious whether or not 47 clusters is sufficient for a population as structured and complex as Iraq’s. The fact that Moore (WSJ oped) evidently favored similar cluster numbers for his own (apparently politically motivated) surveys is not encouraging.

Hm, so I can prove that the invasion of Iraq never actually happened?

I´m not an expert in statistics.
But from what I´ve read in newspapers it looks like Iraq Body Count and the two-monthly UN reports badly underreport deaths.
In case of the Iraq Body Count, the reason is clear. They rely on media reports in English. I doubt there are that many reporters out there looking. So it is pretty clear that their number is too low.
The UN reports rely on Iraq Health Ministry reports. And it looks like Sadr´s people aren´t that interested in reliable numbers.

See for example:
UN report July/August 2006 (pdf-file)

The number of civilians killed by violence is calculated adding the number of casualties reported by the Ministry of Health, which includes reports from all hospitals in Baghdad and other Governorates excluding the Region of Kurdistan, and the reported number of bodies brought to the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad. Only a small fraction (between 5-6 %) of the latter figures may be attributed to causes other than violence. The Ministry of Health reported zero number of killed in Al-Anbar for July, which may indicate an under-estimation due to difficulties experienced in collecting information in that particular Governorate.

Death Squads in Iraq Hospitals

The takeover began after the last election in December when Sadr’s political faction was given control of the Ministry of Health. The U.S. military has documented how Sadr’s Mahdi Army has turned morgues and hospitals into places where death squads operate freely.

The chilling details are spelled out in an intelligence report seen by CBS News. Among some of the details of the report are:

• Hospitals have become command and control centers for the Mahdi Army militia.

• Sunni patients are being murdered; some are dragged from their beds.

• The militia is keeping hostages inside some hospitals, where they are tortured and executed.

• They’re using ambulances to transport hostages and illegal weapons, and even to help their fighters escape from U.S. forces.

Iraqi Hospitals Are War’s New ‘Killing Fields’

Authorities say it was not an isolated incident. In Baghdad these days, not even the hospitals are safe. In growing numbers, sick and wounded Sunnis have been abducted from public hospitals operated by Iraq’s Shiite-run Health Ministry and later killed, according to patients, families of victims, doctors and government officials.

As a result, more and more Iraqis are avoiding hospitals, making it even harder to preserve life in a city where death is seemingly everywhere. Gunshot victims are now being treated by nurses in makeshift emergency rooms set up in homes. Women giving birth are smuggled out of Baghdad and into clinics in safer provinces.

Insecurity, under-funding threaten children’s health in Basra

A concurrent shortage of doctors and nurses has also been reported in Basra. According to Abdullah, there are no reliable statistics on how many doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses have left the area, but unofficial data suggests that at least 200 health professionals have left since January. Health ministry statistics also suggest that an average of 30 doctors and nurses per month have left Iraq over the past year after being targeted by criminal gangs.

The emergency unit in the Teaching Hospital was closed for five months after a number of doctors were killed by unidentified attackers while working there. Now many doctors and nurses refuse to go to work, fearing for their lives.

UN report May/June 2006

25. The Medical Association in Mosul informed UNAMI HRO that, since April 2003, at least 11 doctors have been killed while another 66 have left the city. In Mosul, on 8 May 2006 at 18:00 hours, unknown gunmen arrived in two private cars to the Al-Zayzafon pharmacy, opposite Al-Khansa hospital in Al-Sukar district. The men took the pharmacist Fadhel Ezalddin Nidham and executed him in public before setting the pharmacy alight. Also in Mosul, on 15 May, in Garage Al-Shemal area unknown gunmen assassinated Dr. Adnan Abbas Al-Hashemy after he was leaving his private clinic. Two other doctors are said to have been killed the same week in Mosul.
…
27. As a result of the violence, many health workers continue to leave the country or to relocate to safer areas. In western regions of Iraq, where ongoing military operations have resulted in increased number of casualties, hospitals have reported lack of adequate supplies, military surveillance of medical facilities, intimidation and harassment of medical personnel. In general, health workers have failed to receive adequate protection during military operations and they have been unable to carry out their work in safety.

So your second point, hositals are largely functioning and reporting accurate numbers to the Health Ministry, looks pretty weak.
First, because of Shia militia influence as mentioned above. And second, because large numbers of doctors and nurses (the educated people) have fled, refuse to work, are dead.
Which means that the wounded are probably undercounted.

All in all, “Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times than from before the invasion of March 2003,” Dr Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.
That statement doesn´t strike me as unlikely.

Posted by Kevin Donoghue

Short of parachuting the incredulous into Iraq for a short but educational vacation, one points out their errors, and the fact that their ‘incredulity’ is either willful refusal to belief, or dumbf*ck stupidity. When the bystanders are sufficiently convinced that Mr. ‘My Gut Says Otherwise’ is indeed a liar or a fool, then one is done.

By now, it’s clear that there is no innocent denial of this study. There might be valid, genuine professional objections, but they don’t seem to be available on weblogs (they’re probably exchanged in e-mails between professionals).

I looked at Deltoid and found that he endorses “rebuttals” based on inability to distinguish one IBC report from the other, and Lancet 2006 from Lancet 2004. The arguments are basically illiterate. The evidence is above in this thread. I’ve seen the two links you provide – they’re anecdotal, it’s not clear to how many hospitals in the country they apply, and the problem described there is explicitly stated to have begun in December 2005, so it would affect at most 7 months of the 40 covered by Lancet 2006. Moreover, if these horrible incidents really affected the population’s willingness to go to hospitals on a large scale, we’d see the difference in the statistics provided by the hospitals, between before December ‘05 and after, would we not?

All of those points have been covered. Check posts here and at Deltoid and follow the links. To take just one of the niggles: why aren’t wounded people showing up at hospitals, or why is the Ministry of Health not reporting injuries if they are showing up? Look here and here for possible answers.

Something like this would do:

IBC: it’s incredible that at least 10% of male adult population died (in large areas; 7% overall) and this was not noticed by local media, international media, observers, Iraqi bloggers, officials, whatever. A decimation of the male adult population around you is an astounding event that doesn’t happen very often. Yes, Iraq is a hellhole, but according to all observers on the ground it doesn’t seem to nearly be such a hellhole as that.

An adequate reply to IBC: your argument from incredulity here is bull. Here (1,2,3,4) are examples of civil wars/other conflicts/whatever where the losses are now agreed to have been around 10% or more of adult male population, but at the time nothing of the kind was claimed by observers/agencies on the ground.

IBC: 800,000 people, conservatively estimated, received serious injuries and only 10% of them ever got any kind of reported hospital treatment, with hospitals largely continuing to function throughout the country? Considering that the hospitals are strongly motivated to report the injuries, to maintain funding? Can’t be.

Adequate reply to IBC: what nonsense. You’re factually wrong about the funding issue; here’s evidence that hospitals do not in fact report injuries on a large scale; here’s evidence that your estimate of number of wounded is seriously overblown; here’s evidence that in X% of the territory there’s no real access to hospitals; here’s historical evidence about other conflicts/civil wars in which the number of treated is in huge discrepancy with the agreed number of seriously wounded, despite working hospitals; etc. etc.

And so on, and so forth.

Anatoly,

What would a reply have to look like in order to be satisfactory to you? Basically the dialogue so far boils down to this:

Survey Data: the mortality situation Iraq is in the range you would expect to see during a major civil war.

IBC “Reality Check”: No, Survey Data, you’re wrong, we follow the media reports closely and it’s really not that bad at all.

How does one refute the argument from incredulity?

So worth a look.