Report on 655,000 alleged Iraqi civilian casualties since the beginning of the Iraq war: the latest October surprise

Posted by: Sister Toldjah on October 11, 2006 at 9:14 am

It’s all over the news – Memeorandum has it at the top of their page, so it’s getting a lot of play in the blogosphere as well. Here’s the Washington Post headline: Study Claims Iraq’s ‘Excess’ Death Toll Has Reached 655,000

Rick Moran has the definitive post up on this latest ’study’, which incidentally was conducted by the same group who conducted the last controversial Iraq civilian death count study, which claimed that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed since the start of the Iraq war. That study, I should note and as Rick pointed out, was also released shortly before an election: October 29, 2004. This latest study is highly dubious, as Rick points out with various links, so treat the media hype for what it is: an October surprise.

Others blogging about this: Gateway Pundit, Outside The Beltway, Blue Crab Boulevard, Decision ‘08, Terry Trippany at Newsbusters

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  • 76 Responses to “Report on 655,000 alleged Iraqi civilian casualties since the beginning of the Iraq war: the latest October surprise”

    Comments

    1. Baklava says:

      Aghast showed limited vocabulary skills by cussing saying, “We all know Iraq is f*cked at this point…how f*cked is besides the point,

      Limited Reading comprehension, vocabulary, perspective. It’s always the liberals on this site with those tendencies… and not just this site. Read Think backwards Pr*gress for a sampling of studity

    2. Baklava says:

      Aghast twisted and lied by saying, “So chill out righties, you’ve already admitted in this thread that it doesn’t matter to you that 655,000 are dead…

      No. That’s not what we were saying. Please apologize for misstating what we’ve said. We have said repeatedly that every death is a tragedy, unfortunate, and we wish they didn’t happen. Utopia would be great. But the mark of a successful war is winning. This is why we consider WW2, WW1 and the civil war successes even though the very tragic loss of millions of lives. It is because we won. Good triumphed over evil. It’d be quite a different America and world if we said at a certain number of lives we give up and surrender. Now you can stop lying about us and stop cussing and start gaining perspective I hope.

    3. Lorica says:

      Aghast you are so wrong. What kind of asinine stupidity is this comment.

      The average rightists dolt thinks mao killed 10 million…when it was really poverty and starvation due to his policies. But does it really matter? I think not.

      Soooo Bush is reponsible for all the evil in the world due to his policies, but Mao isn’t. LOL And you think we are idiots???

      Then there is this from your 2 separate posts:

      Its 655,000 additional deaths. Determined by calculating the death rate before and after the invasion, in a study, not a survey.

      Additional as in Not War Casualties?? Or Additional as in Extra War Casualties??? Hello?? Didn’t Longz just tell us that this was not about the war??? Sooo why do you individuals continue to say these causualties are due to the war, or is it additional casualties?? I agree with Sev, when you get to a point let us know.

      And now this:

      We all know Iraq is [edited. --ST] at this point…how [edited - ST] is besides the point, because the basic disagreement comes down to whether the war is un-[edited--ST]. If there’s nothing we can do to fix things (or if our presence makes it worse), it’s hard to argue that we should stay.

      You lowlifes have been saying that Iraq is in a civil war for a year now. We are still waiting. Or is it you just hoping it turns into a civil war. Yet we are the blood thirsty ones. Clue if you need some money let me know, and I can help you buy one. But then again, according to the “study” this isn’t about war deaths, just deaths in general. So why pick Iraq??? Why not pick Mexico? This whole study is a political hack job in the hopes to influence the elections.

      The logic used by the left grows so tiresome. It’s not about the war, it’s about the deaths the war has caused. Drum Roll Please!!!! And the difference is???? You all come in here with your confused logic and blast out some stupidity then go look at me, I am so much smarter than everyone else. It is going to be so amazing to see your reaction once the Reps cement their majority come November. – Lorica

    4. Baklava says:

      I see Aghast did not apologize for misstating what we’ve said.

      Here’s one more post on the topic. Iraq the Model has spoken on the subject. Good Stuff.

    5. Severian says:

      The logic used by the left grows so tiresome. It’s not about the war, it’s about the deaths the war has caused. Drum Roll Please!!!! And the difference is????

      The leftists are a trip aren’t they Lorica? The same people who want to parse everything negative to them to the point of splitting hairs with a laser, as in “Abramoff didn’t give money to Democrats, he only told others to give money to Democrats,” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and “They only enriched uranium, we only told them not to enrich plutonium so they didn’t cheat!” are the ones who get all sloppy with their logic when it’s in their interest, “This isn’t about the war it’s about the deaths!”

      Just more examples of the hypocrisy of the left, the people who believe in free speech for themselves but not for others. And these are the idiots who have the nerve to claim that the Republicans are bringing us closer to an Orwellian nightmare.

    6. Baklava says:

      655,000? No! One more good analysis on this subject.

      One of the money paragraphs:

      —The Hopkins team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate in the year before the invasion at 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people, comparing it with their post-invasion average of 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people a year. The difference between these two rates is the rate of “excess deaths;” the deaths occurring from violence is how they get to the 600,000 number.

      The entire “context” then, hinges on the validity of the pre-war mortality rate. If you accept this number, then I’m told you accept that pre-war Iraq had a better mortality rate than any other country in the Middle East, even Israel.

      OK. ONe more money paragraph:

      But back to that U.N. number, 100 deaths a day in August. The Hopkins study suggests that the number of deaths not just this August, but every month since March 2003, is five times larger. Given that the level of violence we are witnessing today is at or near its peak, and given that for periods of time between May 2003 and April 2004, the violence had not yet gotten out of control, in order to get to the Hopkins numbers, one would have to see even significantly higher numbers in recent months than 500 daily deaths to “average” out to 500 deaths overall.

      Is it possible that the U.N. is not seeing four out of every five Iraqis who is dying, even today?

      My last post of the day. Got stuff to do!!!

    7. Severian says:

      I call BS on this entire study, particularly the rate of 5.5 per 1000 people as a death rate in Iraq. The statistics found here:

      National Center for Health Statistics US Death Rate for 2004

      Indicates a death rate for the US of 816.7 per 100,000, or 8.16 per 1000. Are we to grant any credibility to a purported death rate for Iraq of 5.5 per 1000, that would put the US at a 48% higher death rate than that in Iraq under the loving mercies of Saddam? If it really is 13.3 per 1000 in Iraq, that’s 64% higher than in the US, which even if it is true doesn’t sound that high for a country with little to no medical infrastructure in the middle of a violent insurgency. In reality it’s probably less, and even if it isn’t it’s not that huge a difference in rates even without the armed insurrection going on, and one that would be easily explained by population demographics and medical/health care differences.

      The people pushing this story are counting on no one taking the time to look at this carefully, which when you’re dealing with the MSM is probably a safe assumption, but c’mon, don’t piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining! 8-|

    8. Severian:

      No, if you take the US death rate and apply it over three years to a 25 million people population like Iraq, you’d expect 650K total deaths, more or less. Even if Iraq’s death rate was the same as the US, and as the authors of this study state an additional 650K people died, that would mean a doubling of the death rate, which is not that hard to imagine given the issues Iraq has. But, I haven’t managed to find in any article yet exactly how many Iraqi’s would have been expected to die in a “normal” 3 year period (if Iraq under Hussein could ever be qualified as being “normal” with the mass graves and such).

      Iraq, being a significantly younger nation – that is, one with a younger populace – than the US is expected to have a much lower death rate. The death rate found – not assumed, but found – by the researchers was in line with CIA estimates, the previous study, and other estimates for similar nations under similar situations.

      You’d have discovered this if you’d read the study, rather than making stuff up to use to try to discredit it.

      As a side note, I do have to admit I found your claim that I didn’t understand the world because I saw Iraq as no significant threat to be amusing, though.

      Before the war, we had 5,000 people in Saudi Arabia to keep the threat contained. Did we have more people over there, on aircraft carriers, maybe? Let’s say it was 20,000 people, just to be safe.

      Now, in order to keep us safe, we need 150,000. No, wait… we have 150,000, but it doesn’t seem like it’s enough to bring about stability.

      And you’re saying that then, the threat is greater than it is now.

      Ah, never mind, I’m sure you’ll brush this off as more liberal lies. I’m sure we had more people, and were spending more money, patrolling the no-fly zones before we invaded than we have occupying Iraq now.

    9. Baklava says:

      Long hairs got in the way of him reading my 10/13 4:37 post:
      Let’s repeat a key paragraph:
      —The Hopkins team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate in the year before the invasion at 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people, comparing it with their post-invasion average of 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people a year. The difference between these two rates is the rate of “excess deaths;” the deaths occurring from violence is how they get to the 600,000 number.

      The entire “context” then, hinges on the validity of the pre-war mortality rate. If you accept this number, then I’m told you accept that pre-war Iraq had a better mortality rate than any other country in the Middle East, even Israel.

      Call long haired duped I guess.

      Also, Iraq Body Count themselves shredded the idiotic number.

      So, yes… I feel comfortable calling the 655,000 number a big whopper…