100,000 Iraqi Civilians have died in current war

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Just a paragraph before that it says
Q.E.D. if they are not throwing around this word "most", we have untargetted coalition air strikes killing mostly woman and children. Is that even possible? I don't think so.

A battlefield is a very dangerous place for everyone. In the Liberation of Kuwait, with every attack being carefully coordinated and with aircraft routinely demanding confirmation before they attacked, then most American deaths were due to friendly fire. How can this be, UT asks? Welcome to war. Even your own friends can be a very deadly threat. And this assumes death only from violent action.

Numbers say that as many as 30% of smart munitions have failed to strike their target. This can vary significantly for so many reasons including the targeting aircraft under fire, failure of the targeting munitions, bad weather, etc. Sometimes dumb bombs may be used because the 'smart' electronics may not be available to upgrade that dumb bomb. It is a battlefield. Use what you have. There are so many reasons why even smart munitions miss their targets. Technical reasons. Human failure.

Do you point an unloaded weapon at anyone? No. Absolutely not. Even an unloaded weapon can unexpectedly fire. Why does UT expect smart weapons to be any more reliable? Battlefields are very complex. Again, even friendly fire is a major source of death and destruction. Just one of so many reasons why people - military and civilian - die.

[Undertoad]

It's all over. It's all over.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ma/4217413.stm

On Thursday, January 27 2005, the Iraqi ministry of health released to the BBC's Panorama programme statistics stating that for the six-month period from 1 July 2004 to 1 January 2005:

* 3,274 people in Iraq were killed and 12, 657 injured in conflict-related violence
* 2,041 of these deaths were the result of military action, in which 8,542 people were injured
* 1,233 deaths were the result of "terrorist" incidents

These figures were based on records from Iraqi public hospitals.
...
Jack Straw said: "In many cases it would be impossible to make a reliably accurate assessment either of the civilian casualties resulting from any particular attacks or of the overall civilian casualties of a conflict. This is particularly true in the conditions that exist in Iraq.

"However, since 5 April 2004 the Iraqi ministry of health has sought to collect casualty data.

"Explaining the procedure, the Iraqi minister of health stated on 29 October: 'Every hospital reports daily the number of civilians (which may include insurgents) who have been killed or injured in terrorist incidents or as a result of military action. All casualties are likely to be taken to hospital in these circumstances except for some insurgents (who may fear arrest) and those with minor injuries. The figures show that between 5 April 2004 and 5 October 2004, 3,853 civilians were killed and 15,517 were injured. I am satisfied that this information is the most reliable available'."

Mr Straw continued: "We share this view. The ministry's figures do not of course cover the whole of the period since military action was taken, but they do include the months of April and August, when casualty figures were particularly high."

I do hope the regulars have the gonads to check in after this post.

I am often wrong. This time I was right. It doesn't matter because we all start with a pretty-much clean slate every time a new thread starts.

Except for tw. The Iraqi Civvy Body Count now becomes his official aluminum tube albatross. How, tw, could you have BEEN so UTTERLY UTTERLY wrong? How could you write paragraph after paragraph backing information that was this bad? I await your self-analysis and the changes you will make in the future. And most importantly I await your apology for being a complete and total ASS through this whole discussion.

Christ on a fuckin' stick, it covered the same time frame and the actual number was even outside of the study's incredible margin of sampling error!

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

And most importantly I await your apology for being a complete and total ASS through this whole discussion.

How does that limited time frame (on or after 2004), using data from a limited source (only hospitals), and only citing deaths due to violence correspond to the time frame of the Lancet published study? Trying to define a tomato using peach standards? You don't even specify a conclusion. Are we to guess what you point is?

Posted are some numbers that tell us nothing useful. Furthermore you assume that Iraqis take all dead bodies to the hospital - which furthermore assumes hospital exist everywhere in Iraq and that Iraqis everywhere can safely travel to hospitals. We know that Americans will not even travel the 5 mile road between Baghdad and the airport. Too dangerous.

Again, the study is about all deaths as a result of American action - not just those created by direct military action. Where are the numbers from 2003 and earlier? Oh. They were destroyed by the looting that Rumsfeld said was not happening.

I don't understand how limited records from hospitals provides us with significant facts? What is the point you are desperately trying to make? Are you saying these limited numbers prove a responsible study from The Lancet is wrong? Are you saying Jack Straw, a British politician with the bias of a flawed agenda, is more honest then something published by The Lancet? If you do, then your logic is only based in emotion (and red angry faces).

Where, pray tell, is your logical conclusion from those numbers? Numbers from a polticially biased source (that also tried to claim those aluminum tubes were for WMDs) must be correct? Jack Straw also claimed those WMD existed. Therefore anything Jack Straw says must be more accurate than what The Lancet publishes.

Somehow the integrity of that source and UT's numerically proven conclusion escapes me. But then I am not trying to justify an illegal and now well proven unjustified war.

[Undertoad]

Aw hell yer right sorry.

[Schrodinger's Cat]

I find it intriguing that in March of 2003, the Health Ministry was ordered to cease the reporting of civilian casualties. A new head of the ministry was appointed and then fired 10 days later for having had too close a tie with the Saddam regime. There has been great difficulty finding qualified professionals in Iraq who did NOT have a tie with the Saddam regime, since such ties were a requirement for anybody to do much of anything at all in Saddam's Iraq. One can't help but wonder how the Health Ministry has managed to regain credibility in such a relatively short amount of time, and under war conditions, at that.

The Lancet survey measures excess death. The count of the Iraqi Health Ministry measures civilian casualties. A direct count is the most accurate measure, as long as it can be reasonably assumed that most victims would make it to hospitals or morgues. Frankly, I don't know if it is reasonable to make this assumption about victims in the Iraqi conflict or not.

To calculate excess mortality, one needs estimates of death rates before and after. The Lancet study estimates something like 5 per 1000 before and 7.5 per 1000 after.

I will be very interested to see how this story continues to evolve.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Aw hell yer right sorry.

One more question. Where do you find some great emoticons?

[Undertoad]

What, for posting here? Hit the "Go Advanced" button, click on the "More" button at the bottom of the table of smilies.

[jaguar]

Aw hell yer right sorry.

magnimity in defeat, an enviable trait.

[Undertoad]

Yeah I blew the dates.

[Troubleshooter]

Anybody see any problems now that Hariri is dead?

[Schrodinger's Cat]

From Reuters

The United States condemned the blast and said it would consult U.N. Security Council members about punitive measures.

Guess this means the invasion of Canada is a "GO"!

[tw]

Originally Posted by tw

One more question. Where do you find some great emoticons?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

What, for posting here? Hit the "Go Advanced" button, click on the "More" button at the bottom of the table of smilies.

The perspective of my question was more about who makes these neat little artworks? I am sure the artist who made the original smiley face never in his wildest imagination thought he created a whole new species.

[Happy Monkey]

Of course not. Forrest Gump didn't even know he'd invented the smiley face at all!

[slang]

Originally Posted by Schrodinger's Cat

From Reuters


Guess this means the invasion of Canada is a "GO"!

Hello SC. I've been following this thread half heartedly and honestly dont really agree with much you say or your opinions.

That never stopped me from blasting in from far right field to make some goofy comment though, and when I saw this I just had to say.....

sounds like a damn fine idea to me!



slang

[richlevy]

Well, now the ***ts hit the fan. Some 6th grade schoolchildren wrote to a soldier. While many of the letters were predictably patriotic, some questioned the war.

One girl wrote that she believes Jacobs is "being forced to kill innocent people" and challenged him to name an Iraqi terrorist, concluding, "I know I can't."

Another girl wrote, "I strongly feel this war is pointless," while a classmate predicted that because Bush was re-elected, "only 50 or 100 [soldiers] will survive."

A boy accused soldiers of "destroying holy places like mosques."

Not that I agree with all of the sentiments here, but it sounds like some kids do not want to play sheep and may be engaged in independent thinking. I'll have to remember this reaction whenever conservatives complain about conservatives speech being suppressed on campus. Apparently, some suppression is ok with Fox.

BTW, technically the US has targeted mosques, although it does so only in cases where soldiers come under fire or it suspects the mosque is housing weapons.

"I want to think these letters were coached by the teacher or the parents of these children," Jacobs said in an interview from Camp Casey, Korea.

"It boggles my mind that children could think this stuff."

Damn that free speech. Damn.