Regarding the 2004 Lancet report by Les Roberts that estimated 100,000 Iraqi war-related deaths:
I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis.
- George W. Bush, December 12, 2005, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
...We begin with a more accurate number provided by the British medical journal The Lancet on October 29, 2004. The published results of their survey "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey" stated, "Making conservative assumptions, we think about
100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths." The report also added that
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," and that "Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces."The report, whose findings have been strongly criticized, not surprisingly, by pro-war camps as well as, surprisingly, by researchers at Iraq Body Count, has been backed by established, credible sources.
(...)
The lead author of the Lancet report,
Les Roberts, reported more recently on February 8, 2006, that there may be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. One of the world's top epidemiologists who lectures at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Roberts has also worked for the World Health Organization and the International Rescue Committee.
Further underscoring these results from the Lancet report were comments made by Bradley Woodruff, a medical epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education on January 27, 2005: "Les has used, and consistently uses, the best possible methodology." The article continues,
"Indeed, the United Nations and the State Department have cited mortality numbers compiled by Mr. Roberts on previous conflicts as fact - and have acted on those results. (He) has studied mortality caused by war since 1992, having done surveys in locations including Bosnia, Congo, and Rwanda. His three surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization, in which he used methods akin to those of his Iraq study, received a great deal of attention.
'Tony Blair and Colin Powell have quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the precision or validity,' he says."
In an interview on Democracy Now! on December 14, 2005, Roberts, when discussing why the figure from
his report was too low stated that
it excluded Fallujah so as not to skew the survey, and said, "And so, those who attacked us did not attack us for our methods. In fact, I think, if you read the reviews in the Wall Street Journal or The Economist, of what we did, the scientific community is quite soundly behind our approach. The criticism is of the imprecision.
But realize the imprecision is: Was it 100,000 or was it 200,000? The question wasn't: Was it only 30 or 40 (thousand)? There's no chance it could have been only 30 or 40 (thousand)...."
I have to admit, before reading these, I was skeptical of the 100k figure. Now... :cry:
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(615 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
