[extropy-chat] IRAQ: Weapons pipeline to Syria

[BillK]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 13:19:56 -0800 (PST), Stephen Van_Sickle wrote:
> 
> First, they could have dropped the outlier to make the
> result more believeable for political purposes.
> 

Probably correct. They reckoned that nobody would really believe
300,000 civilian dead.

> 
> While I am loathe to agree with Mike Lorrey on this,
> who reached his conclusion apparently without data or
> reading the paper, the study is crap.
> 

OK, so how many civilian dead do you reckon there are?

Is 30,000 fine by you? Small enough to forget about, just collateral damage?

When they decided not to include the areas in Fallujah it was because
there was nobody left to interview. The houses were empty, bombed-out
shells. People from neighbouring areas told them that many had died
there, but they were unable to verify this, so they decided not to
include these areas.

The deaths that the other clusters told them about were verified as much
as possible. They found an increase in infant mortality from 29 to 57
deaths per 1,000 live births, which is consistent with the pattern in
wars, where women are unable or unwilling to get to hospital to
deliver babies.

The other increase was in violent death, which was reported in 15 of
the 33 clusters studied and which was mostly attributed to airstrikes.

"This survey shows that with modest funds, four weeks and seven Iraqi
team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilian
deaths could be obtained."

Iraq Body Count researcher Hamit Dardagan said the new research was
very different from his group which keeps a running total of deaths
reported by media or other sources.

But he added that beyond debates on figures, what it showed was how
little is really known about the full impact of the war on Iraqis.
"The people who should really be doing this and providing the figures
are the occupying forces," he said.

"Why is it being left up to under-funded, small groups of individuals
to get accurate counts? It is within their (the occupying forces')
power to do so, but they refuse to because it is politically
embarrassing."

BillK