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War has killed 100,000 Iraqis: study
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| Superstar |
What do you guys think? I've highlighted some of the points.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/natio...aths041028.html
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War has killed 100,000 Iraqis: study
Last Updated Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:53:35 EDT
LONDON - Nearly 100,000 more Iraqis have died during the American-led occupation than would have died otherwise, a study posted on The Lancet medical journal's website Thursday estimates.
* INDEPTH: Casualties in the Iraq war
A building explodes during a U.S. aerial assualt (AP Photo)
Most of the extra deaths in the first 18 months of the occupation were due to violence, the researchers said – in particular, air strikes that claimed civilian casualties.
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they wrote.
Previous estimates of the number of Iraqis killed during the American-led air strikes and occupation have ranged from 10,000 to 30,000.
The report in the British journal is based on the work of teams from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The authors acknowledge that the data cited in the study might be of "limited precision."
However, similar methodology was used in the late 1990s to calculate the number of deaths from the war in Kosovo, put at 10,000.
The information was obtained as Iraqi interviewers surveyed 808 families, consisting of 7,868 people, in 33 different "clusters" or neighbourhoods spread across the country.
In each case, they asked how many births and deaths there had been in the home since January 2002.
That information was then compared with the death rates in each neighbourhood in the 15 months before the invasion that toppled president Saddam Hussein, adjusted for the different time frames, and extrapolated to cover the entire 24.4 million population of Iraq.
The researchers came up with the figure of 100,000 extra deaths based on the fact that the rate rose from five deaths per 1,000 people before the war to 12.3 deaths per 1,000 in the 18 months that followed its start.
Fallujah neighbourhood factored out
One neighbourhood in the besieged city of Fallujah may have boosted the numbers unnaturally, the researchers pointed out.
But even with that neighbourhood taken out, the death rate was 7.9 per 1,000 people – 50 per cent higher during the occupation than in the months before.
"We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the post-war period in the 97 per cent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Fallujah," the researchers said in the journal.
Nearly 1,100 American soldiers have also died in the conflict.
Before the invasion, the most common causes of death in Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases, the Lancet report said.
Since early 2002, violence was by far the main cause of death, linked to coalition air strikes in about 95 per cent of cases where people died by the intentional act of others. Infant mortality also rose significantly. |
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| DJ_Elyot |
| Wow. That's quite startling... but I guess all wars have their casualties. That's far more deaths than the world trade towers... |
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| Renegade |
I've read this from a couple of different sources and it's not clear yet whether they're talking about total Iraqi deaths (i.e. including soldiers, policemen, militants etc.) or just civilians. If it's the former then these figures would sound extremely likely to me (perhaps even - as the surveyers suggest - a tad conservative) but if it's the latter then I'd be skeptical pending further evidence.
The report hasn't yet been released yet to clear this up (it'll be up on www.thelancet.com once it is) so I'd wait for that before making any judgements either way.
EDIT: - Well this answers part of my question:
| quote: | | Some of those killed may have been insurgents, not civilians, the authors noted. Also, the rise in deaths included a rise in murders and some deaths were caused by the decline of medical care. "But the majority of excess mortality is clearly due to violence," Dr. Burnham said. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/i...casualties.html |
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| JM |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ_Elyot
Wow. That's quite startling... but I guess all wars have their casualties. That's far more deaths than the world trade towers... |
now what the kind of a comparison is that? i guess its expected, coming from a cannuck.
>JM< |
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| Yoepus |
Although I believe even these numbers are quiet high and most likely fradualent.
They are counting deaths of Iraqi vs. Iraqi casualties and Iraqi vs. Terrorist casualties, and most likely deaths due to stravation malnutrition that although can be attributed to occupation were already happening under sanctions and previous conditions. |
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| ambs |
wow, although I was watching an interview with a female iraqi journalist who was saying that conditions in iraq have actually gotten much worse... women are afraid of leaving their homes because there's no control... fear of being attacked and raped is at a prime and there's no law enforcement to protect them...
On the other hand, many people do believe that things have to get worse before they can get better... either way i think it's still way too many lives lost... but what can i do to change it, right? |
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| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
and most likely deaths due to stravation malnutrition that although can be attributed to occupation were already happening under sanctions and previous conditions. |
Yeah but those are factored into the results, as the survey compares the motality rates prior to the war to those after and then extrapolates the difference. As I said, the numbers are quite high, but depending on what sort of deaths are measured, they are quite plausible. |
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| girllovingtvibe |
| Absolutely Horrendous... |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by JM
now what the kind of a comparison is that? i guess its expected, coming from a cannuck.
>JM< |
well, i think it is a quite valid compariasion. apperently you have killed 30 times more people "to make the world safer" than in the actual attack on you. |
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