In “Dead Reckoning: Counting Iraq’s Civilian Dead” (ByAdam Shemper, Mother Jones, May/June 2006 Issue), AdamShemper writes:
“This tally is updated daily on his website,Iraqbodycount.net, which Dardagan cofounded and runswith a team of 16 volunteers. The site, also known asIBC, has been the only consistent record of the war’shuman toll, making it the go-to source for reporters,activists, and even the Bush administration. (…)
There have been more than a dozen independent surveysof civilian casualties, including a 2004 report in TheLancet that concluded 100,000 Iraqi civilians had beenkilled, but IBC remains the most-cited source forcasualty numbers.
When asked for a figure last December, President Bushshrugged “30,000, more or less”—a number very close tothe one on IBC at the time. Afterward, a CNN WhiteHouse correspondent reported that Bush officials namedIraqbodycount.net as the source of the president’sestimate. “I think he surprised everyone by givingthis figure,” said John Sloboda, IBC’s cofounder. (Thepresident, however, misused the number, thinking itincluded Iraqi military and police casualties.)”Just a few days ago Dahr Jamail and Jeff Pfluegerwrote:“We are, however, alarmed at their apparent lack ofconcern at the way their information is being usurpedby the pro-war camp to manipulate public opinion andminimize the catastrophe the failed US occupation hasbecome for Iraqis. The authors of this piece submitthat if, as it claims, IBC is truly a humanitarianresearch project armed for greater impact with anaggressive and sophisticated marketing system, it mustnot allow its data to be misused and misrepresentedfor pro-war propaganda campaigns.
If IBC cannot prevent the misuse of its data, it wouldbe better for it to remove its web site and countersfrom the Internet permanently. It must then limititself to objective scholarly research of the Englishmedia without sophisticated marketing paraphernalia.”(Learning to Count: The Dead in Iraq, by Dahr Jamailand Jeff Pflueger, truthout, 13 April 2006)In February, Stephen Soldz wrote:“If Western reporters, competing for scarce publicattention, are loath to accurately portray the extentof their ignorance about what is going on in enormouschunks of Iraq, IBC has no excuse not to acknowledge,openly and prominently, the resultant limits to theircivilian death tally. To not proclaim loudly that theIBC count is, by its nature, likely a severeundercount of the true number of deaths, is toparticipate in the culture of deceit and denial of thecosts in civilian lives and suffering that has plaguedthis alleged humanitarian intervention from thebeginning. If IBC does not understand this point, thentheir efforts at promoting truth have now turned intoits opposite and should cease.” (When Promoting TruthObscures the Truth: More on Iraqi Body Count and IraqiDeaths, by Stephen Soldz, ZNet, 5 February 2006)
About the “Lancet study” and the Iraqi civiliandeaths, you and Mr. Shemper may be interested in thefollowing.
On 29 October 2004, the British medical journal TheLancet published ‘Mortality before and after the 2003invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey’:Making conservative assumptions, we think that about100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most ofthe excess deaths and air strikes from coalitionforces accounted for most violent deaths.(Interpretation)
Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forceswere women and children. (Findings)
Source: Mortality before and after the 2003 invasionof Iraq: cluster sample survey, The Lancet, Publishedonline October 29,2004This study reads:“The researchers found that the majority of deathswere attributed to violence, which were primarily theresult of military actions by Coalition forces. Mostof those killed by Coalition forces were women andchildren… Eighty-four percent of the deaths werereported to be caused by the actions of Coalitionforces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to airstrikes and artillery.” (‘Iraqi Civilian DeathsIncrease Dramatically After Invasion’, October 28,2004)The Financial Times, on November 19, 2004 wrote:“This survey technique has been criticised as flawed,but the sampling method has been used by the same teamin Darfur in Sudan and in the eastern Congo andproduced credible results. An official at the WorldHealth Organisation said the Iraq study ‘is very muchin the league that the other studies are in … Youcan’t rubbish (the team) by saying they areincompetent'”. (Stephen Fidler, ‘Lies, damned lies andstatistics,’ Financial Times, November 19, 2004)The Chronicle of Higher Education on January 27, 2005wrote“’Les has used, and consistently uses, the bestpossible methodology,’ says Bradley A. Woodruff, amedical epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention. Indeed, the United Nations andthe State Department have cited mortality numberscompiled by Mr. Roberts on previous conflicts as fact— and have acted on those results. (…) Mr. Robertshas studied mortality caused by war since 1992, havingdone surveys in locations including Bosnia, Congo, andRwanda. His three surveys in Congo for theInternational Rescue Committee, a nongovernmentalhumanitarian organization, in which he used methodsakin to those of his Iraq study, received a great dealof attention. ‘Tony Blair and Colin Powell have quotedthose results time and time again without any questionas to the precision or validity,’ he says.”(Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of IraqiCivilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored, by LILAGUTERMAN, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January27, 2005)According to Les Roberts (Center for InternationalEmergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at JohnsHopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of theworld’s top epidemiologists and lead author of theLancet report) there might be as many as 300,000 Iraqicivilian deaths (Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?,By Les Roberts, AlterNet, February 8, 2006)
The horror inflicted by our governments, with ourmoney and in our name, might be way far morehorrifying. Dr Gideon Polya recently wrote:“AVOIDABLE MORTALITY (technically, excess mortality)is the difference between the actual mortality in acountry and the mortality expected for a peaceful,decently-run country with the same demographics (i.e.with the same birth rate and the same population ageprofile). Avoidable mortality is a fundamentalparameter to be considered in any sensible discussionof human affairs – it is the bottom-line issue whenassessing the success or otherwise of societal,regional and global policies. (…)
Ignoring mass mortality simply ensures its continuanceand denying past atrocities simply ensures theirrepetition – history ignored yields history repeated.Thus the actuality of the Jewish Holocaust (6 milliondeaths) was not formally acknowledged by the Alliesuntil 30 months before the end of World War 2 inEurope. This tardiness in reportage must surely havecontributed significantly to this atrocity.
However, TODAY Mainstream Media are comprehensivelyignoring the horrendous magnitude of the avoidablepost-invasion deaths in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan(presently totaling 2.3 million deaths) and theavoidable deaths in the First World-dominatednon-European World (presently 14.8 million deaths eachyear).” (Layperson’s guide to counting Iraq deaths, byDr Gideon Polya, MWC News Magazine, 6 April 2006)
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