Iraqi deaths "wildly exaggerated"

Originally posted by telerion
I don't subscribe to the WSJ online so your link take me to a very incomplete page. With that in mind, let me ask you a question. Was the article taken from the news section, the editorials, or the opinions?
From what little you have on this page, I can see that the article will likely use the National Review as a primary source. By using a highl ...[text shortened]... hing to come from the news section of the WSJ; it's quite another to come from the opinions.

the national journal article was very informative and did not require registration.

Originally posted by der schwarze Ritter
From today's Wall Street Journal:

Three weeks before the 2006 elections, the British medical journal Lancet published a bombshell report estimating that casualties in Iraq had exceeded 650,000 since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. We know that number was wildly exaggerated. The news is that now we know why.

It turns out the Lancet stu ncet study: http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf

The Lancet reported "estimated casualties".
What you're quoting (the roughly 48.000) is "confirmed".

Now take into account "missing persons", etc. and you get a much higher number. Subtract "counted refugees" and you get a number somewhere in between (I presume).

If your bloody army had bothered counting civilian casualties, then there wouldn't be such a POO HA about it now, would there?


EDIT: Just stumbled across this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7180055.stm

"One of the biggest surveys so far of Iraqis who have died violently since the US-led invasion of 2003 has put the figure at about 151,000.
This is about a quarter of the figure given in a disputed Lancet article, but nearly three times higher than that of the Iraq Body Count campaigning group.

The result is based on interviews with over 9,000 families across Iraq carried out by the health ministry for the WHO.

The survey says more than half of all violent deaths were in Baghdad.

The World Health Organization study looks only at the period from March 2003 until June 2006. "

Originally posted by telerion
I don't subscribe to the WSJ online so your link take me to a very incomplete page. With that in mind, let me ask you a question. Was the article taken from the news section, the editorials, or the opinions?
From what little you have on this page, I can see that the article will likely use the National Review as a primary source. By using a highl ...[text shortened]... hing to come from the news section of the WSJ; it's quite another to come from the opinions.

Judge for yourself:

The Lancet's Political Hit
January 9, 2008; Page A14

Three weeks before the 2006 elections, the British medical journal Lancet published a bombshell report estimating that casualties in Iraq had exceeded 650,000 since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. We know that number was wildly exaggerated. The news is that now we know why.

It turns out the Lancet study was funded by anti-Bush partisans and conducted by antiwar activists posing as objective researchers. It also turns out the timing was no accident. You can find the fascinating details in the current issue of National Journal magazine, thanks to reporters Neil Munro and Carl Cannon. And sadly, that may be the only place you'll find them. While the media were quick to hype the original Lancet report -- within a week of its release it had been featured on 25 news shows and in 188 newspaper and magazine articles -- something tells us this debunking won't get the same play.

The Lancet death toll was more than 10 times what had been estimated by the U.S. and Iraqi governments, and even by human rights groups. Asked about the study on the day it was released, President Bush said, "I don't consider it a credible report." Neither did the Pentagon and top British authorities. To put the 655,000 number in perspective, consider that fewer Americans died in the Civil War, our bloodiest conflict.

Skeptics at the time (including us) pointed to the Lancet study's manifold methodological flaws. The high body count was an extrapolation based on a sampling of households and locations that was far too small to render reliable results. What the National Journal adds is that the Lancet study was funded by billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute. Mr. Soros is a famous critic of the Iraq campaign and well-known partisan, having spent tens of millions trying to defeat Mr. Bush in 2004.

But "Soros is not the only person associated with the Lancet study who had one eye on the data and the other on the U.S. political calendar," write Messrs. Munro and Cannon. Two co-authors, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, told the reporters that they opposed the war from the outset and sent their report to the Lancet on the condition that it be published before the election.

Mr. Roberts, who opposed removing Saddam from power, sought the Democratic nomination for New York's 24th Congressional District in 2006. Asked why he ran, Mr. Roberts replied, "It was a combination of Iraq and [Hurricane] Katrina."

Then there is Lancet Editor Richard Horton, "who agreed to rush the study into print, with an expedited peer review process and without seeing the surveyors' original data," report Mr. Munro and Mr. Cannon. He has also made no secret of his politics. "At a September 2006 rally in Manchester, England, Horton declared, 'This axis of Anglo-American imperialism extends its influence through war and conflict, gathering power and wealth as it goes, so millions of people are left to die in poverty and disease,'" they write. See YouTube for more.

We also learn that the key person involved in collecting the Lancet data was Iraqi researcher Riyadh Lafta, who has failed to follow the customary scientific practice of making his data available for inspection by other researchers. Mr. Lafta had been an official in Saddam's ministry of health when the dictator was attempting to end international sanctions against Iraq. He wrote articles asserting that many Iraqis were dying from cancer and other diseases caused by spent U.S. uranium shells from the Gulf War. According to National Journal, the Lancet studies "of Iraqi war deaths rest on the data provided by Lafta, who operated with little American supervision and has rarely appeared in public or been interviewed about his role."

In other words, the Lancet study could hardly be more unreliable. Yet it was trumpeted by the political left because it fit a narrative that they wanted to believe. And it wasn't challenged by much of the press because it told them what they wanted to hear. The truth was irrelevant.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119984087808076475.html

Originally posted by der schwarze Ritter
Judge for yourself:

The Lancet's Political Hit
January 9, 2008; Page A14

Three weeks before the 2006 elections, the British medical journal Lancet published a bombshell report estimating that casualties in Iraq had exceeded 650,000 since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. We know that number was wildly exaggerated. The news is that now w ...[text shortened]... r this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119984087808076475.html

Most likely the study was flawed for the reason implicitly cited in the article: the sample group was not a good representation of the entire population. Political bias probably did have a lot to encourage, or perhaps more precisely, not discourage shoddy methodology. Most media outlets probably didn't get on it because they didn't have the experts to accurately critique the report. The only media outlets that would spend the time/money to drum up experts to look at the study would be places with an axe to grind. Enter the National Review. Of course, we have to take their findings with a large grain of salt to thanks to their political bias.

Anyway, I'm not surprised. In economics (and surely in other fields) politically-biased thinktanks thrive on producing large piles of caca. The caca consumers are politicians and political pundits that need convenient figures for their own work, and of course, for the many extremist airheads (left/right/center) that want any ammo to bash the other side(s).

Originally posted by telerion
Anyway, I'm not surprised. In economics (and surely in other fields) politically-biased thinktanks thrive on producing large piles of caca. The caca consumers are politicians and political pundits that need convenient figures for their own work, and of course, for the many extremist airheads (left/right/center) that want any ammo to bash the other side(s).

I think that this problem is particularly strong in economics. Also, because it's influential. Politicians want to put a mask of respectability behind their positions and economics is the flavour of the day.

Hyperbole aside, it's a little reminiscent of the crackpot Eugenics in the Nazi days. Bad science can be a powerful propaganda tool.

Originally posted by duecer
The latest figures are 151,000 deaths. Is that an acceptable number? How many until we get to too many?



source: Huffington Post

giggle and lol

You are kidding... Right? Huffington is ALSO paid for by Soros! This is priceless!

Talk about going in circles! Soros pays Saddams henchmen to attack US. Soros pays Huffington to attack US. Huffington then used to uphold fake research...

What is wrong with this line of "reasoning"😵