Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Won

[RedEarth]

When more than 200,000 people died in a tsunami caused by an Asian earthquake in December, the immediate reaction in the United States was an outpouring of grief and philanthropy, prompted by extensive coverage in the news media.

Two months earlier, the reaction in the United States to news of another large-scale human tragedy was much quieter. In late October, a study was published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, concluding that about 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led coalition in March 2003. On the eve of a contentious presidential election -- fought in part over U.S. policy on Iraq -- many American newspapers and television news programs ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines.

The paper, written by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Baghdad's Al-Mustansiriya University, was based on a door-to-door survey in September of nearly 8,000 people in 33 randomly selected locations in Iraq. It was dangerous work, and the team of researchers was lucky to emerge from the survey unharmed.

The paper that they published carried some caveats. For instance, the researchers admitted that many of the dead might have been combatants. They also acknowledged that the true number of deaths could fall anywhere within a range of 8,000 to 194,000, a function of the researchers' having extrapolated their survey to a country of 25 million.

But the statistics do point to a number in the middle of that range. And the raw numbers upon which the researchers' extrapolation was based are undeniable: Since the invasion, the No. 1 cause of death among households surveyed was violence. The risk of death due to violence had increased 58-fold since before the war. And more than half of the people who had died from violence and its aftermath since the invasion began were women and children. Les F. Roberts, a research associate at Hopkins and the lead author of the paper, was shocked by the muted or dismissive reception. He had expected the public response to his paper to be "moral outrage."

http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=6g87s8d900q52bjppa5m3h7noo5ikert

[indepat]

1. A large segment of the American people doesn't give a shit if it is 8,000

or 194,000.

[Briar]

8. Bingo

It's rather touchingly sweet of the scientists to blame themselves and think that if they had presented the story better, more Americans would have cared, but they're out of touch. The turn off word was "Iraqi". That was why the report had so little effect. Many Americans don't care, and so do many of those in the media. Just as they didn't care about the torture of Iraqis at American hands. After all, who but muslims would be wussy enough to mind being piled naked into a human pyramid? That doesn't count, with the likes of Fox and CNN, as real torture.

[housewolf]

2. Re. the Lancet article on number of Iraqi deaths

The article explains how the report came into being


Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored
By LILA GUTERMAN

When more than 200,000 people died in a tsunami caused by an Asian earthquake in December, the immediate reaction in the United States was an outpouring of grief and philanthropy, prompted by extensive coverage in the news media.

Two months earlier, the reaction in the United States to news of another large-scale human tragedy was much quieter. In late October, a study was published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, concluding that about 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led coalition in March 2003. On the eve of a contentious presidential election -- fought in part over U.S. policy on Iraq -- many American newspapers and television news programs ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines.

<snip>

Les F. Roberts, a research associate at Hopkins and the lead author of the paper, was shocked by the muted or dismissive reception. He had expected the public response to his paper to be "moral outrage."

<snip>

Mr. Roberts has studied mortality caused by war since 1992, having done surveys in locations including Bosnia, Congo, and Rwanda. His three surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization, in which he used methods akin to those of his Iraq study, received a great deal of attention. "Tony Blair and Colin Powell have quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the precision or validity," he says.

<snip>

Mr. Garlasco, of Human Rights Watch, is mystified that the Defense Department is not publicly interested in such studies. "Civilian casualties can be a bellwether for the actual conduct of the war-fighting," says Mr. Garlasco, who was an intelligence officer at the Pentagon until 2003. "They're using all these precision weapons, so one would expect that if you're striving to minimize casualties, you'd have very low casualties. In Iraq we've seen the exact opposite, so one has to wonder why."

Besides, he says, counting civilian deaths could actually be useful for the Pentagon's public image. "I truly believe when the U.S. military says we're not there to kill civilians, it's absolutely true," he says. "The problem is, though, there are many people who don't accept their reasoning. The only way they'll change their minds is if the U.S. military shows they take civilian casualties seriously enough that they quantify them and attempt to minimize casualties in the future."

more...
http://chronicle.com/free/2005/01/2005012701n.htm

[struggle4progress]

3. They're not trying to minimize casualties ...

... and of course they're not reconstructing the country.

To judge from the evidence, their plan seems to be: smash Iraq thoroughly (largely accomplished), bankrupt the country (largely accomplished), install a puppet government (essentially accomplished as of the date of "elections"), build a huge military infrastructure an Iraqi oil industry dependent on close ties with USA to keep equipment functioning --- then sit back and watch as the puppet government begs the USA stay in Iraq "for security reasons" while the puppets desperately sell oil for cheap in a frantic effort to provide enough revenue to buy off potential opponents and forestall civil war.

[NYC]

5. No, but they're trying to minimize publicity.

And they are succeeding.

[struggle4progress]

6. More than that, the regime has been controlling the interpretation ...

... of the news.

[KT2000]

4. I think that most people

are not aware of the reality of this country's values under BFEE. I guess it has to hit eveyone right in the face.

[90-percent]

7. casualties

thats a core argument. If we're now there to liberate iraqi's, then how come its so acceptable and unimportant that we're liberating 100,000 joe average iraq citizens of their lives? doesn't that grow generations of future american hating terrorists when they see their entire family blowed up real good by american soldiers?

Killing people to liberate them is a pretty fucked up form of liberation?

Why the hell the whole world could care less how many innocent deaths America is responsible for is key to this whole issue. Why is it regarded as insignifigant by American and even world media is beyond me?

Esp when you compare casualties in Iraq to the tsunami!

Answers, please

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