No Defense for IBC

Yup, and you heard me right. Iraq Body Count seriously has no defense. I shall continue henceforth with a point-by-point debunking of this farce of a source. Let's start first with their first point:

1 Documenting civilian deaths: an ultimate moral responsibility

[...]

For this reason a group of independent volunteers, made up entirely of UK and US citizens, have been keeping a record of media-reported civilian deaths continuously from the first day of the invasion to the present. This is the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project.

We are led to believe that the IBC is an anti-war source that is against the invasion of Iraq; however, it seems that it stands with their respective countries but not to the extent that one likes it to be. By looking at their statement of beliefs, it is clear that they indicate media-reported deaths. But is that always the case?

We have always recognised and made explicit that our media-derived database cannot be a complete record of civilians killed in violence, and have called for properly supported counts since the beginning of our own project. What IBC continues to provide is an irrefutable baseline of certain and undeniable deaths based on the solidity of our sources and the conservativeness of our methodology.

So, what they are trying to say is that their sources are from the media, and that they only record confirmed deaths of civilians killed in violence. What about those killed indirectly, like tear gas inhalation or gunshot wounds? What about those who are killed in violence not reported by the media? In that sense, we can't rely much on IBC to give us the exact number of deaths in Iraq.

2 A misdirected campaign against IBC

In recent months it has been claimed in a variety of published articles, and also in a coordinated campaign of emails to news media and websites who cite our work, that the Iraq Body Count is not simply an undercount, but a gross undercount, and that the likely death toll could be as much as five or ten times greater than the deaths recorded in our database.

Well, we'll see if they're correct. Personally, I do believe that IBC is a gross undercount, because there are a number of "insurgents" who are really civilians trying to fend for themselves.

It is further claimed that our failure to accept the views of our critics and to draw attention to IBC's alleged "massive bias and gaps" means that we are contributing to the project of concealing Iraqi civilian deaths. Finally, we are charged with the moral obligation to inform the news media and others who use our work that the claims of our critics are true.

But how about the news sources that claim that there are more than what IBC has to show?

2.1 Character and tactics of the anti-IBC campaign

[...]

IBC would prefer to avoid a public spat with a group who shares our opposition to this war. Sadly, the content and tactics employed by Media Lens and its followers have been such that we feel our initial decision to largely ignore them is no longer tenable.

What is amusing is that IBC claims that they do not want to engage in public debate. Oh, well... Guess I'd rather not trust them into coming up.

The rest of this page is really a bashing of critics, reminscient of what you see on an Anne Coulter morning show. On to the next page...

2.2 IBC's response - and a precautionary note

A distinctive feature of this campaign has been the ardent promotion of US researcher Les Roberts as the authority on Iraqi casualties (Roberts was the lead author of a respected mortality survey by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, published in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2004). It is the media's alleged failure to give Roberts and the Lancet study the priority they deserve, as well as the supposed role of IBC in drawing attention away from it, which is behind nearly every recent condemnation of IBC, many of which end with the demand that we give the Lancet findings from 2004, as well as speculative inferences drawn from them, preference over our own ongoing work. Insofar as Roberts has been first among these critics to dismiss IBC as the "source most favored by the war proponents", he has also set the tone of the current "debate".

What IBC is simply arguing is that they have been targeted because they are a "good" source. However, Roberts makes the same point that many warhawks use to outline the "positive" effects of the war.

This is particularly true of the excess deaths from disease which constituted some 14 percent of the Lancet study's widely publicised "100,000" estimate, providing a unique insight which is in urgent need of updating in a larger scale survey. What our analysis soundly refutes are misleading assertions about the Lancet study, including a few which, regrettably, emanate from those who should know better.

What about other cases, such as indirect death from violence? Or violence in unsung parts of Iraq? I mean, the media does not report everything, right? Of course.

3 Is IBC a "gross" undercount?

[...]

"... there are now at least 8 independent estimates of the number or rate of deaths induced by the invasion of Iraq. The source most favored by the war proponents (Iraqbodycount.org) is the lowest. Our estimate is the third from highest. Four of the estimates place the death toll above 100,000."

So, in short, we'd rather rely on the other sources as they all claim that the death toll is above 100,000. Then there's a chance that the other sources claim that the death toll is much higher than IBC's numbers, but lower than 100,000. It's time I got my sources out for the next part (cracks knuckles).

3.1 What is IBC being measured against?
[...]

Unfortunately, the HPN table is so riddled with errors and inconsistencies as to make it hopelessly inadequate as a reliable comparison between the studies listed — and nor can it provide any credible basis for the sweeping critiques of IBC which directly or indirectly stem from it.

So, all it says is that the table is riddled with errors. Well, for one thing, the source takes into consideration only a few official sources. However, according to this dossier, they have made it clear that they do not rely on Arabic and other non-English sources, which are numerous on Iraq such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya.

3.2 IBC's critics understate our death-rate by almost a factor of two

As can be seen from Table 2, when this correction is made IBC is no longer "the lowest estimate", and IBC's per day rate becomes about one-fifth (rather than one-tenth) of even the table's highest entry. (It is only this corrected table that we discuss from here on when reference is made to "the HPN table").

The HPN table that it refers to is seriously erroneous in the sense that it understates the "deaths per day" statistic that IBC is implying.

3.3 IBC's critics overlook that deaths-per-day vary over time

Even if all the studies were equally effective in recording deaths, they would produce different per day rates simply because they cover different periods - some, for instance, are concentrated around the massive slaughter of the invasion phase, while others miss it completely.

I actually agree with this, though the escalation of violence in Iraq has gone to a great degree in that IBC has failed to count the non-reported deaths.

Therefore the claims made by Roberts, uncritically accepted and repeated by other critics, that "the IBC monitoring network cannot be more than 20% complete" and that IBC-derived totals are "too low, most likely by a factor of five or ten" cannot be sustained by the data he himself provides. If the highest of the estimates in the HPN table is a credible one (and we will examine that claim next) then the worst one can say of IBC from this only slightly more rigorous, but much fairer, analysis is that it is lower than some (but not all) other studies by a factor of two or three.

IBC is arguing that the studies that criticize IBC assess it as an understatement. It could be, but according to David Edwards, the Daily Telegraph asserts that at least 9,000 Iraqis were killed by U.S. forces, which does "not do body counts", as per General Franks' remark. It should also be noted that armed civilians mistaken for insurgents have also been killed in the war, and thus the recording of civilian status by several media outlets has been dismissed by IBC. David Edwards confirms my point in that there are usually "gaps in reporting", and thus the dead are not always accounted for.

I'm not here to prove that IBC is a gross undercount, but that it really is an undercount, and that we can't rely on one source alone to count the deaths for us.

3.4 Three of the studies do not qualify as rigorous contributions

3.4.1. "NGO Coordination Committee of Iraq": a "personal communication", and "unpublished"

What they're asserting is that the NGOCCI has not responded to their requests, though that still does not make them bad contributions.

3.4.2. "Mental Health Study 2004": not the source of "133 per day" estimate

Must have been a typo, I guess. I think he was referring to this.

I'll give them this one.

3.4.3. "Iraqi Kaffi/People's Kifah": no such study as described

[...]

Even if this date discrepancy is overlooked, full details of the survey's methodology (including reliability of data-gathering methods, checks for double and triple-counting etc.) have never been described. It is therefore not possible to give this survey the same weight as studies whose methodologies are clear and auditable.

There are already a lot of flaws in the IBC methodology, with them being selective in their sources, especially their preferences for FOX, AP, Reuters, and a few Arab sources that publish in English.

3.5 Studies with different inclusion criteria are not directly comparable

In light of this, the particularly harsh light that critics shine on IBC (but not on Ministry of Health or ILCS) is hard to fathom. In a Media Lens-published email correspondence with a columnist for the Independent newspaper, Les Roberts has claimed that the differences between Lancet and ILCS are largely explainable by differences in methodology, and that therefore they are broadly consistent with one another, pointing to a similar underlying phenomenon. If the substantial difference between the Lancet and ILCS estimate is not proof that ILCS is a "gross underestimate", then there is no basis for applying a similar judgment to IBC.

The Lancet report's methodology had success in Darfur, and such a source may have been reliable, considering that the war on Iraq is not only on a larger scale, but is involving full-scale attacks almost daily. Also, the ILCS makes a noteworthy appearance in that it actually records the deaths of "combatants" who might actually be a civilian partisanship. However, the ILCS seems to have a stronger methodology.

3.6 Legitimate comparisons between studies and the strength of ILCS

The ILCS survey is superior to the Lancet's on sample size, geographical distribution of samples, and number of deaths recorded. As a result its 95% confidence intervals are far smaller. The confidence interval is the key indicator of the reliability of the study. ILCS has a confidence interval of 11,000 (end-points 18,000 - 29,000). Lancet has a confidence interval of 186,000 (end-points 8,000 — 194,000). All other things being equal, the central ILCS estimate of 24,000 to late Spring 2004 should be taken as the best available estimate of violent, conflict-related deaths to that point in time.

However, the Lancet, as pointed out, had success in Darfur. IBC has also failed to take into account the fact that deaths are not always reported, even violent deaths. Furthermore, we can't be sure that IBC is telling us everything: when one looks at the first few eighteen pages, there are less than ten references to casualties in helicopter and other coalition-style attacks.

On the other hand, war proponents will argue that "terrorists don't count" and that "those who are 'associated' with terrorists don't count". Thus, one could conclude that the media is not covering everything!

3.6.1 IBC compared to ILCS

There is no reliable way to determine from ILCS data how many Iraqi combatants were killed, either during the invasion or after it. However, excess deaths from crime are recorded by IBC and can be removed from its figures. When these deaths are excluded, IBC's total for the same period is 10,593, or about 44 percent of the ILCS estimate. Even under the extremely conservative assumption that less than 3,000 of the ILCS total are combatants, including Iraqi military killed during the invasion, IBC has caught over half the ILCS estimate. So, when appropriately compared to ILCS, the worst one could say of IBC is that its count could be low by a factor of two, a far cry from factors of "five or ten".

This is pretty much an assertion that combatants and those in the field are not to be considered, even if they were civilians caught in a crossfire.

3.6.2 Lancet compared to ILCS

Second, the correct ILCS figure is probably nearer 28,000 than 33,000. This is because the per-day death rate in the post-invasion period was much lower than during the invasion.

The latter part is fact, but the former is wrong: the death-per-day rates were still high even prior to the setting of the first Coalition soldier on Iraqi soil, taking into account the continuous bombardments on part of the Coalition.

Figure 1 displays the likelihood of all possible estimates for war-related violent deaths, for both Lancet and ILCS. The Lancet curve is relatively flat with a gentle peak at 38,400, spreading probabilities over a wide array of strongly diverging estimates ranging from 3,140 all the way up to 73,670 at 95% probability. By contrast, the sharp spike of the ILCS curve pinpoints the true number of war deaths within a narrow range near 28,165. It has been argued that the true number for war-related violent deaths was likely higher than the number given in Lancet's central estimate, but the ILCS data only allows for a one in a thousand chance that the true number lies within the upper half of the Lancet range (the area shaded in grey).

While I agree that the Lancet report might have been flawed, probability is not an option: it is possible that ILCS is correct in the case that it has obscurely recorded combatant deaths: what if there are other combatants and civilians who were unaccounted for? IBC admitted that it has been selective of its sources.

3.7 Needless confusion on the civilian/combatant question

The confusion is added by IBC in that it only regards civilian deaths in mainly terrorist attacks. Only those reports of so-called "collateral damage" have been considered. Fallujah was probably forgotten.

3.8 Conclusion: In sum, a baseless charge

When like is compared with like, and blatant errors and misconceptions in the HPN table are corrected, IBC falls very much into the same range as the other serious studies. Indeed, there is no more reason to characterise IBC as a "gross undercount" of civilians violently killed than there is to call the Lancet study a "gross over-estimate" of deaths from combat.

Why don't we just refer to IBC as an undercount and the Lancet as a slight overestimate or a possible exact figure? I am not asserting that 300,000 are dead, but the figures are really higher than what they seem to be...

Let's move on to the next part.

4 Does IBC underrepresent deaths caused by US forces?

Because IBC fails to confirm these two conjectures — one false to begin with, the other tenuous — our critics conclude that IBC is at fault, rather than questioning their own unfounded conjectures. We deal with these two conjectures in turn.

IBC is misrepresenting the deaths by the U.S. forces. However, IBC fails to mention the subsidized nature of most news networks covering the Iraq war on the ground, especially FAUX news and MSNBC. The majority of sources, when one looks at the figures represented in their database, are mainly Iraqi sources that sprung after the invasion phase of the war, including a few news networks controlled by the CIA.

Such propaganda is used to cover up the deaths by the U.S. military.

4.1 Lancet shows a similar proportion of US-caused deaths to IBC

[...]

However, the date range in the two year IBC dossier is greater than that in the Lancet by some 6 months. Re-analysing the IBC data using the same date range as in the Lancet study yields a percentage of deaths attributable to coalition forces of 47 percent (8,814 out of 18,822 media-reported civilian deaths), a proportion slightly higher than Lancet's 43 percent.

IBC argues that both it and the Lancet show the same proportion of U.S. related deaths. However, proportion does not necessarily mean quantity: the Lancet's figures are much higher, and the number of incidents reported does not necessarilty relate to the number of deaths.

On the other hand, there have been cases in which the Coalition and the subsidized media showed a potent disregard for human life. In that sense, casualties are almost never recorded. Also, Robert Fisk outlined that there are other cities in Iraq that are succumbing to violence, and that not every single event of violence is being counted in Iraq. Moreover, IBC has failed to mention the study from Iraqiyun, and specified confirmed deaths in violent attacks. Moreover, the ILCS study mentioned above, though with a good methodology, was under U.S. supervision, and that made things murkier.

I like the part that follows this:

4.2 Reported casualties for 2005 correlate to the number of air strikes

[...]

While it is probable that media reports currently undercount the civilian deaths caused by air strikes to some unknown extent, there is no clear evidence that they under-report these deaths more than any other category of violent death. If anything, under-reporting is more likely in those less "spectacular" unrecorded killings caused by occupation troops on a small scale, but frequent basis (such as at checkpoints), and also in those cases where the perpetrator is unknown

IBC asserts that people are killed at checkpoints, and admits that body counts are being undercounted in Iraq. So, in that sense, the claims that they are reporting the "underreported" is laughable.

Stephen Soldz has argued against the bias inherent in Iraq Body Count.

The sections that follow are simply plain defenses that do not count for the inherent bias in their sources.

My conclusion is that while IBC can be relied on for confirmed media-reported deaths, it can't be used to confirm other deaths given that it cited independent sources as flawed and subsidized sources as "correct". I leave you with this study by Stephen Soldz:

100,000 Iraqis Dead: Should We Believe It?

One justification for the Iraq war was to remove the barbarous regime of Saddam Hussein, thereby freeing Iraqis from the threat of death at the hands of his regime. Yet, from the first days of the war, accounts have surfaced of Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of "coalition forces" and from the increased crime and chaos that have swept much of the country.

The United States and its British and other allies claim they do everything in their power to prevent civilian casualties. Yet, repeatedly accounts have appeared of civilians dying at checkpoints, in passing American convoys, in house searches, and in the relentless bombing campaigns that are allegedly precision strikes on known terrorist hideouts. Reports have also surfaced about increased murder rates.[1] If the rates of Iraqi civilian deaths increased significantly since the invasion, it would undercut the last remaining rationale for the war.

So, how many Iraqis have died since the invasion in March 2003 and the subsequent occupation and war? The United States has repeatedly insisted that it doesn't keep track of civilian deaths. In the infamous words of General Tommy Franks, "We don't do body counts"[2] (though, claims remain that the US does do secret body counts[3]). Furthermore, when the Iraqi health Ministry attempted to count civilian deaths, they were summarily ordered to stop by the US occupation authorities.[4]

While the US military and occupation authorities may profess a lack of interest in Iraqi civilian deaths, decent people around the world are concerned to know whether Iraqis have died post-invasion at rates that would substantially undermine any alleged humanitarian benefit of the war.

Perhaps the best known estimate of civilian deaths from the fighting is that of the Iraq Body Count project.[5] This British-based group of researchers has systematically examined the western press and collated all accounts of civilian casualties. They tabulate all deaths that are independently reported by two sources. Based on this rigorous methodology, they estimate civilian casualties from the invasion until October 29, 2004 at between 14,181 and 16,312. Other estimates have come from the Brookings Institution[6] (between 15,200 and 31,400 "killed as a result of violence from war and crime between May, 2003 and September 30, 2004." Some of their estimates are based on Iraq Body Count data), and the Iraqi People's Kifah[7] (through a household survey they identified 37,000 deaths between March and October 2003).

With the exception of the People's Kifah estimates, which might be considered suspect as they are an anti-occupation organization and they have published no details about their methods (and which only covers the first eight months of war and occupation), these estimates largely are based on western press accounts. As is acknowledged by Iraq Body Count, such accounts likely underestimate deaths as many, perhaps most, battles and other military actions, and resultant Iraqi deaths, are often not reported unless coalition forces suffered casualties.[8] Additionally, in recent months western reporters have been unable to move about Iraq independently, meaning that even such high-profile claims of mass civilian deaths from US bombing as the killing by US bombing of upwards of 45 Iraqis at a wedding party in the town of Mogr el-Deeb in May[9] could not be independently verified. Thus, all previous estimates of Iraq civilian deaths since the invasion are probably on the low side.

In order to address the question of how many Iraqi deaths have occurred, a team of public health researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Columbia University School of Nursing, and the College of Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad undertook an epidemiologic survey of "excess Iraqi" deaths since the March, 2003 invasion.[10] This high-powered research team combined epidemiologic expertise with a background in studying people in disaster and emergency situations and an in-depth knowledge of Iraq. Members of the team have carried out research and consulting in many parts of the world, including Iraq, sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe and have worked with such organizations as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.[11-13]

The results of the research by this team have surprised many. The researchers estimated that there were 98,000 more deaths in the 18 months after the invasion than there would have been if Iraqis had died at the same rate as during the 15 months prior to invasion.

This report has stirred up quite a storm. The British Government has challenged it.[14] The Washington Post quoted a "senior military analyst" at Human Rights Watch as saying "The methods that they used are certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting.... These numbers seem to be inflated".[15] On the other hand, numerous critics of the war and continuing US occupation have latched on to these results as further evidence of the destructiveness of the US-British invasion.[16-20]

So how should one evaluate this study? While it may be tempting for those outraged by this war from the beginning to accept these results uncritically, those of us who also believe our politics should be guided by facts and a search for the truth should approach these findings with caution. All controversial research needs to be carefully examined for evidence of methodological problems or other flaws.

As an activist who is also a psychological and public health researcher with experience conducting prevalence surveys, and a teacher of statistics and social research methods, I'd like take a look at this study to help readers judge it for themselves. Researchers early learn the folly of latching onto results simply because they support our preexisting beliefs.

The Study Methodology

The researchers used a traditional epidemiologic technique called a clustered sample survey. Without getting into technical details, the country was divided into a number (33 in this instance) of subgroups and a community was randomly selected from each cluster. In each community, Global Positioning System (GPS) devices combined with random numbers were used to select a particular point in the community. Then the nearest 30 household were surveyed; these 30 households are referred to as a cluster.

The important points in the previous paragraph are that the procedure was systematically designed to represent the population of the entire country and that random numbers were used whenever choices had to be made. The combination of a systematic procedure along with random numbers when choices must be made are techniques used by survey researchers to avoid any systematic bias due to the researchers intentionally or unconsciously selecting certain communities or households. If carried out successfully, these procedures allow a fairly small sample to accurately represent the population of an entire country. Thus, while we may have questions about the accuracy of election polls, they are usually at least in the ballpark of representing the vote-getting potential of a candidate. Seldom does a candidate get 10 percentage points more or less than an immediate pre-election poll.

The researchers ended up with information on 7,438 people pre-invasion and 7,868 people post-invasion. These people represented 988 households in 33 clusters.

After households were selected, the interviewers, Iraqis (five of the six of whom were medical doctors), had a carefully designed procedure to ask about the population in the household from January 1, 2002 (about 15 months before the invasion) on. Any changes in people living in the household were carefully noted so that births, deaths, and changes in residence could be identified. In order to control for potential bias in recall, the interviewers asked to see death certificates in a certain predetermined fraction of the households; in the vast majority of instances these were provided, or their absence had a reasonable explanation. Thus, people's accounts of deaths of family members appeared to be accurate and showed no evidence of bias.

The researchers then used standard statistical techniques to estimate the rate at which Iraqis died before the invasion and at which they died post-invasion. They report a number of checks on their data analysis, all of which supported the reasonableness of their analyses.

Discussion and Critique of Results

By the luck of the draw, the Iraqi city of Falluja was included in their sample. The researchers found an enormous number of deaths in that besieged city, much higher than in any over cluster they sampled. Researchers call such an observation an outlier and have developed a number of techniques for dealing with them. These researchers used the most conservative approach: namely, they presented many of their data excluding Falluja. With this exclusion they found that mortality (deaths) rose from 5.0 deaths per 1000 people per year to 7.9 deaths.

Public health researchers usually report such data as the relative risk of death post-invasion, compared to pre-invasion. A relative risk greater than 1.0 means that more people died after the invasion than in an equivalent time period before the invasion. With Falluja included, the relative risk post-invasion was 2.5, whereas with Falluja excluded it was 1.5. so they estimated that roughly 50% more people died post-invasion than had died in the same time period before.

The researchers then estimated how many more people died in the post-war period than would have been expected from the pre-war mortality (death) rate. The figure they came up with was 98,000.

In interpreting this estimate, the researchers, like all good researchers, give an estimate of its precision. This is done by providing what are known as 95% confidence intervals. These mean that, 95% of the time, the true value is between the lower and upper limits of the confidence interval (remember, these are estimates). Given the nature of the study, the confidence intervals for this 98,000 estimate are broad, from 8,000 to 194,000. Thus, it is 95% likely that the true rate of excess deaths is between 8,000 and 198,000.

From these results alone, it could be that the true value is nearer the lower estimate of 8,000 than at the middle or upper end of this interval. On this basis, one could conclude that the headlines about 100,000 excess deaths are unwarranted. But is that all there is to it? Fred Kaplan in Slate seems to think so.[21] A closer examination of this crucial issue is needed, however.

In contradistinction to the beliefs of the poor souls suffering through statistics classes, when researchers analyze data, they don't just run a set of canned statistical procedures on their data to derive an answer. Rather, they use statistics as part of a process of examining data to try and extract meaning, to tell an empirically justifiable story about what is happening in the world the data came from. Similarly, when we researchers read a research paper, we examine the data presented to form a judgment of whether they are consistent with the authors' interpretations.

So let's examine the data in this article. Of course, we don't have the raw data in the researchers' computers. But we do have the wealth of data they present in the article. These data go considerably beyond the estimates of relative risk and excess mortality.

One issue to examine is: are the deaths localized in one cluster that may be atypical of the country as a whole? Of course, the death rate in Falluja was far higher than that for the rest of the country. (More on this below). The authors provide information on the distribution of deaths in their Figure 1, which illustrated the pre- and post-invasion death rates in the randomly selected clusters in 11 of Iraq's Governorates. One of these Governorates is Falluja, with mortality rates over 10 times higher than the rest of the country. For another Governorate, Sulaymaniya, the post-invasion rate was considerably lower than the pre-invasion rate, while for two others, Karbala and Ninawa, the rates were essentially equal. Now, Sulaymaniya is in the Kurdish north of the country, under the firm control of the Kurdistan Regional Government, where there is no insurgency and no Coalition attacks. The other seven Governorates all exhibit considerable increases in mortality rates post-invasion. Thus, 8 of 10 sites in non-Kurdish Iraq exhibit a pattern of increased mortality.

These data help explain the large confidence intervals (mentioned above) around the mortality estimates. Most likely a major reason the confidence intervals are so large is the inclusion of the Kurdish region and the reversed pattern in Sulaymaniya. It would have been reasonable to have analyzed the data for non-Kurdish Iraq separately, which would undoubtedly have resulted in a higher estimated relative risk and confidence intervals for estimated deaths with a considerably greater lower bound (above the 8,000 reported in this paper). The fact that the authors did not do so, as well as their exclusion of Falluja from the excess deaths estimate, is a sign that they were conservative in their data analysis; that is, they did not make post hoc (knowing how they would affect the results) decisions in order to inflate the mortality estimate.

In addition to noting that the Kurdish region is included in analyses, it is important to examine areas of the country that were not included. By excluding Falluja from the estimate of excess deaths, the authors are in fact excluding all of Anbar Governorate. Now, Anbar Governorate includes both Falluja and Ramadi, as well as some of the areas near the Syrian border where "foreign insurgents" are alleged to have entered Iraq. An examination of news accounts from Iraq, or of US casualties[22] will show that a large proportion of all fighting in Iraq occurs in Anbar, as this Governorate has been in the forefront of fighting since the first month of the occupation.[23] Thus, excluding this Governorate could easily lead to a serious underestimation of Iraqi deaths.

It should also be noted that Najaf, scene of fierce fighting and massive US bombing in April and August 2004,[24, 25] was also not sampled (see Table 1 in the paper). Further, while the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City, a stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr -- and site of furious fighting and US bombing for months -- was included in the sample, the area sampled there "by random chance was in an unscathed neighborhood with no reported deaths from the months of recent clashes" (p. 7). Thus, many of the areas with the most intense fighting were either excluded from key analyses (Falluja) or were not sampled (Ramadi, Najaf), or while part of a sampled area did not have their violent section sampled. This fact suggests that the mortality rate for the country as a whole may, in fact, be far higher than the authors estimate (the authors in fact state this possibility). In any case, these exclusions, combined with the inclusion of the Kurdish region with the Sulaymaniya outlier, increase the likelihood that the rate of excess deaths is NOT near the lower level of the stated confidence interval of 8,000.

One of the surprising findings is that, of the 61 violent deaths attributed to Coalition forces in this study, only three involved actions by ground forces. The other 58 deaths were attributed to "helicopter gunships, rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry" (p. 7). These results strongly suggest that the air war has been even more intense than is often suggested.

On the other hand, it is possible that at least a few of these deaths may actually be due to insurgent actions. There have been a number of reports of Iraqis blaming American helicopters or missiles for attacks actually carried out by insurgents.[26-28] Thus, it is possible that not all the violent deaths attributed to Coalition actions may be due directly to those actions. Of course, one could still argue that the US and its allies, by invading Iraq on false pretenses and continuing a long-term occupation of the country, bear primary moral responsibility for deaths occurring as a consequence. Nonetheless, one should exercise some caution in attributing all these deaths to Coalition actions. It should, however, also be remembered that even official statistics from the Iraqi Ministry of Health (before the US-installed government ordered them to stop releasing statistics on Iraqi casualties[29]) document that the majority of reported casualties are due to Coalition actions, rather than those of the insurgents.[30]

Conclusion

This study is an extremely well-conducted and analyzed piece of research. Like most high-quality research, it has potential limitations and the paper's Discussion section details possible interferences with the accuracy of the results. The authors argue convincingly that none of these limitations invalidate their basic findings of high excess deaths following the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In fact, they argue, based on arguments somewhat different from those I present here, that the real number of excess deaths may be even higher than their 98,000 estimate.

So, have excess 100,000 Iraqis died since the invasion? I don't know for sure. But this study convinces me that it is extremely likely that many tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, far more than the Iraqi Body Count estimate that I had previously relied upon. Noted Middle East scholar Juan Cole came to a similar conclusion.[31]

We researchers never consider a single study to be the definitive word on a topic. We always like to see a number of studies, using somewhat different methodologies and carried out by researchers with different biases. The authors clearly recognize this desirability and do not present their study as the last word on Iraq mortality rates. (See the excellent interview with one of the study authors from the New Republic Online.[32]) Near the end of their paper they call for "confirmation by an independent body such as the ICRC, Epicentre, or WHO" (p. 7). The British-based NGO, Medact has endorsed the call for independent investigations.[33] Medact further points out that this study only examines Iraqi deaths and that "experience suggests that at least three times as many people are injured as are killed in conflict." Thus, it is likely that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded in the last 18 months.

In the absence of this confirmation, this study remains the best estimate of Iraq deaths. Its finding are truly horrifying. Recent reports indicate that the US is placing a far greater reliance on air power as a way of reducing Coalition casualties.[34] If this study's findings are at all accurate, the result of these policies will be even higher Iraqi civilian casualties. The continued US war in Iraq cannot be justified on any conceivable humanitarian grounds when many tens of thousands of Iraqis are being killed and many more injured. Surely, this study should be a wake up call for all those, regardless of their opinions about the original justifiability of the war, who sincerely are concerned about the fate of the Iraqi people. The looming attacks on Falluja and Ramadi suggest that, in the absence of world outrage restraining this Coalition action, the death and injury toll will soon be rising far higher.

Thus, many have died from injuries, and this is in accordance with the Iraqiyun study presented.

Therefore, IBC clearly has forgotten many points in its defense of its methodology and its reliability. I conclude with the assertion that IBC has understated the deaths in Iraq, and this may have been unintentional. Nevertheless, death is obviously not the main factor for the changing political climate in Iraq: civil strife is being purportedly brought out, further incited by the Coalition. I hope that the Iraqi people rid themselves of this occupation and they start building Iraq from ground zero the way they want it and the way it should be.

Oh, yeah, and I'd like to see Rummie and Dubya strung up for the world to see for what they did in Iraq.

Salaam, from
Saracen