Why does Irishantiwar.org still have the Iraq Body Count on their home page?

by lizm Thu Apr 13, 2006 01:27

Fantastic work Elephant O'Room.

Well done to IrishAntiWar.org for your quick and efficient response. No to-ing and fro-ing of emails trying to justify yourselves - just hard action. That's the way to do it!

Now - the next step is to provide a prominent space on your homepage with data from the Lancet Report + plus follow up info re Falluja, and also data from Dr Gideon Polya.

The Lancet methodology was perfectly acceptable to those in power when used to assess figures for the Kosovo and DR Congo conflicts, but:

"Les Roberts has been puzzled and disturbed by this response to his work [on Iraq 2003-4], which stands in sharp contrast to the way the same governments responded to a similar study he led in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2000. In that case, he reported that about 1.7 million people had died during 22 months of war, and as he says, "Tony Blair and Colin Powell quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the precision or validity." In fact, the U.N Security Council promptly called for the withdrawal of foreign armies from the Congo, and the U.S. State Department cited his study in announcing a grant of $10 million for humanitarian aid...

The campaign to discredit Les Roberts, the Johns Hopkins team and the Lancet employed the same methods that the U.S. and British governments have used consistently to protect their monopoly on "responsible" story telling about the war. By dismissing the study's findings out of hand, U.S. and British officials created the illusion that they were suspect or even politically motivated and discouraged the media from taking them seriously. This worked disturbingly well. Even opponents of the war continue to cite much lower figures for civilian casualties and innocently attribute the bulk of them to Iraqi resistance forces or "terrorists."

The figures most often cited for civilian casualties in Iraq are those collected by Iraqbodycount, but its figures are not intended as an estimate of total casualties. Its methodology is to count only those deaths that are reported by at least two "reputable" international media outlets in order to generate a minimum number that is more or less indisputable. Its authors know that thousands of deaths go unreported in their count, and say they cannot prevent the media misrepresenting their figures as an actual estimate of deaths. I have asked them several times to be more active in challenging such misrepresentations, but I have to acknowledge that the misrepresentations are so widespread that this would be quite a task.

Beyond the phony controversy regarding the methodology of the Lancet report, there is one genuine issue that really does cast doubt on its findings. This is the decision to exclude the cluster in Fallujah from its computations due to the much higher number of deaths that were reported there (even though the survey was completed before the widely reported assault on the city in November 2004). Roberts wrote in a letter to the Independent, "Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we did a survey estimating that 285,000 people have died due to the first 18 months of invasion and occupation and we reported it as at least 100,000."...

Thanks to Les Roberts, his international team, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the editorial board of the Lancet, we have a clearer and very different picture of the violence taking place in Iraq than that presented by the "mainstream" media. Allowing for an additional 14 months of the air war and other violence since the publication of the Lancet report, we can now estimate that somewhere between 175,000 and 650,000 people have died as a direct result of the war; that 120,000 to 500,000 of them have been killed by "coalition" forces, and that 50,000 to 250,000 of these were children below the age of fifteen. In addition, the combined effect of conservative, even unrealistic, assumptions made to arrive at the lower of these figures makes it extremely unlikely that the actual numbers of deaths are close to the bottom of these ranges."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_333...shtml
Burying the Lancet report . . . and the children
By Nicolas J S Davies
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Dec 14, 2005, 01:26

"This survey indicates that the death toll associated with
the invasion and occupation of Iraq is probably about
100 000 people, and may be much higher."

http://www.epic-usa.org/Portals/1/Lancet_report_on_iraq...3.pdf
PDF of the Lancet Report
www.thelancet.com Vol 364 November 20 2004

"The figure of 100,000 had been based on somewhat "conservative assumptions", notes Les Roberts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, U.S., who led the study.

That estimate excludes Falluja, a hotspot for violence. If the data from this town is included, the compiled studies point to about 250,000 excess deaths since the outbreak of the U.S.-led war."

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html

"Apart altogether from the millions of avoidable
infant deaths:
In particular, over the last 2 years I have
reported the steadily increasing post-invasion
avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality in
Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan that now total 2.3
million and 1.8 million, respectively. Alternative
media (notably MWC News) have been ethical,
responsive and eager to report this shocking
intelligence to their liberal readerships. However
Mainstream Media, while endlessly apprised, resolutely
refuse to report this important information"

Dr Gideon Polya
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/
06.04.06

by Elephant O'Room Tue Apr 11, 2006 02:02 elephant_room at yahoo dot co dot uk

I'll mail them lizm and hopefully I'll receive a better response!

Note the very different response below* by eh one G. Jefferson Price III - an editor at the Baltimore Sun to being informed of the same error...

What's really surprising are those on the left who've been sidetracked by the coalition and the mainstream media's (MSM) two-faced bluff and bluster on this. The very same western MSM that the IBC figures are based upon!

BTW the above medialens report has been updated. Check out the full article from the link below.

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

April 10, 2006

MEDIA ALERT UPDATE: IRAQ BODY COUNT - A SHAME BECOMING SHAMEFUL

John Pilger And A Leading Epidemiologist Challenge IBC

Noam Chomsky once observed:

"If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong."
( http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/...m.htm )

One indication that the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project is doing something wrong is that it is deemed, not merely inoffensive, but is eagerly embraced by people who really ought to be offended.

Consider Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt, described by John Pilger as "the lowest of journalism's low, an extreme right wing and aggressively idiotic member of Murdoch's dominant press group in Australia". (Email to Media Lens, April 4, 2006)

Bolt's recent article, 'Body of evidence,' provides a jaw-dropping display of propaganda. Bolt asserts, for example, that Saddam Hussein "claimed on average between 90 and 120 victims each day. Every day. For 24 years. That's three or four times higher than the daily deaths in fighting in Iraq today". (Bolt, 'Body of evidence,' Herald Sun, March 22, 2006; http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,18552....html )

While this is sheer fantasy, Bolt +does+ accurately cite IBC's maximum tally for reported civilian deaths by mid-March - 37,800 - to make his point:

"It is a shocking loss of life, but see how many more Saddam killed or ordered to their death each day."

Elsewhere, a Media Lens reader challenged one G. Jefferson Price III - an editor at the Baltimore Sun - on his reference to the claim that there have been "about 35,000 Iraqi dead" ( http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0404-21.htm ). Our reader suggested to Jefferson Price that, assuming IBC had been the source of his figure, he should be aware that IBC's methodology and figures have been subject to challenge. Jefferson Price responded:

*"Thank you for your note. I will definitely take that into account the next time. I've used the 35,000 figure because that is the lowest number but still, tragically, too high." (Forwarded to Media Lens, April 6, 2006) ......

by lizm Mon Apr 10, 2006 22:11

I remember first when the Lancet came out - I assumed IBC would take a back seat, but it seems to be being given more credence than ever by the mainstream. This is one of the reasons why it's so shocking that irishantiwar have it still boldly up on its front page. Unbelievable!

Please alert Irish Anti-War if you can , any readers here, asap!

Check out David Edwards, co-author of "Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media" on Californian Radio Station http://www.kvds.org/

the audio link: http://www.asucd.ucdavis.edu/radio/showme.cfm?show=43&t...le=It\'s About

by Corpse Counter Mon Apr 10, 2006 14:55

This really is appalling, the Iraq Body count is a complete joke, as has been shown quite specularly by a report on the media lens site.

What is most strange though is how the respected medical journal the Lancet's epidemiological report and figures on the Congo, by the same people and using the same methodology as that used in Iraq, was greeted so favourably by the US and UK .....

See the thread The Real Body Count
http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?t=10048

Paved With Good Intentions - Iraq Body Count - Part
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_go...d.php

Paved With Good Intentions - Iraq Body Count - Part 2
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_go...2.php

Burying The Lancet Report
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2006/davies0206.html
"Over a year ago an international team of epidemiologists, headed by Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, completed a “cluster sample survey” of civilian casualties in Iraq. Its findings contradicted central elements of what politicians and journalists had presented to the U.S. public and the world. After excluding any possible statistical anomalies, they estimated that at least 98,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the previous 18 months as a direct result of the invasion and occupation of their country. They also found that violence had become the leading cause of death in Iraq during that period. Their most significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent deaths were caused by “coalition” forces using “helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry,” and that almost half (48 percent) of these were children, with a median age of 8."
.....

"Allowing for 16 months of the air war and other deaths since the completion of the survey, we have to estimate that somewhere between 185,000 and 700,000 people have died as a direct result of the war. Coalition forces have killed anywhere from 70,000 to 500,000 of them, including 30,000 to 275,000 children under the age of 15. "
http://www.medialens.org/about/