I bet the reason the Bush administration’s accepted estimates for civilian casualties in Iraq was low, was due to the numbers in Iraq being translated from Arabic numbers into whatever number system Americans use.
What’s that? Oh. The Arabs invented the American system? Interesting. Instead of finding WDM, they found a few zeros on a body count instead.
*The use of “funny” in the title refers to funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha.
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Adrian MacNair | 13-Oct-06 at 4:48 pm | Permalink
I find 655,000 deaths to be a little exaggerated. As well, does this count civilians murdered by extremists, or only by the “conflict”? Surely Islamists have contributed to their share of bloodshed.
Saskboy | 13-Oct-06 at 5:52 pm | Permalink
That number includes all deaths, even natural causes. When those averages are taken out, it still leaves an estimate of over 600,000. Scary, no matter if the hand of death is American, insurgent, or extremist terrorists.
Adrian MacNair | 13-Oct-06 at 10:06 pm | Permalink
Yeah, it is pretty nasty. I understand that 1/3rd can be attributed to “coalition forces”, which is still 220,000 by math. I hesitate to call it genocide; let’s call it genocide by collateral proxy.
Miss Cellania | 14-Oct-06 at 4:58 am | Permalink
The discrepancy in the numbers can be attributed to a psychological state called “seeing what we want to see”. When you allow yourself the privilege of picking and choosing your credible sources, there’s no limit to what you can come up with. Like WMDs, a link between Saddam and Bin Laden, conspiracies, etc.
Saskboy | 14-Oct-06 at 9:45 am | Permalink
Miss C, who was picking and choosing credible sources though, the latest study, or previous ones? What I’ve heard of the latest study, it sounds reasonable, and over 90% of the homes that claimed deaths showed death certificates to boot. So assuming a large margin of error of even 50%, the figure blows away the Bush admin’s accepted studies - which are hardly rosy themselves.
Adrian MacNair | 14-Oct-06 at 1:54 pm | Permalink
10 months ago George Bush said it could be no more than 30,000. That’s still disturbingly massive. Imagine having to take the time to count to 30,000. You would lose interest somewhere around 300, and still be 100 times shy of your objective.
Olaf | 14-Oct-06 at 4:51 pm | Permalink
Look,
I know he’s a right wing propagandist (and a pretty good one at that), but read his column called “A Reckless Game of Numbers”. It’s in today’s Post, and will probably be on his website soon. He has this online right now ( http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGNlNjM4ZTFhY2Y3MDU5ZjA0OTA0N2FiZjZjZGQ1OTY= )
but he does a better job in the column.
It’s worth a read, before we get ahead of ourselves here.
Saskboy | 14-Oct-06 at 6:10 pm | Permalink
He doesn’t offer reasons for why the numbers are flawed, he only offers reasons to suspect them, or what to think if they ARE true.
Wikipedia: “A July, 2005 estimate of the total Iraqi population is 26,074,906.”
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html
Iraq Death rate (deaths/1,000 population) 5.37 estimated 2006
600,000 dead / 3 years = 200,000 a year dead because of the conflict.
200,000 dead / 365 days = 548 people dead a day.
Here’s where I’m not sure if I’m doing this right:
26,074,906 people * (5.37/1000) = 140,023 die every year estimated from the CIA.
140K / 365 = 384 people dead a day from both war and natural causes I’d assume is what the CIA has figured out.
So there are 164 people dying every day and not being counted for some reason according to the high estimate from the Lancet. [Also assuming I understand the death rate numbers right].