NiteShift said:
UK-based Iraq Body Count estimated that up through September of 2006, between 43,491 and 48,283 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion.
The Iraqi NGO Iraqiyun estimated 128,000 deaths from the time of the invasion until July, 2005, by use of various sources, including household interviews. Estimates from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior were in line with this.
There is no reason to assume that the Lancet's much higher numbers are the more accurate.
Yes there are some reasons to assume so. Here's a few of them.
The fact that the survey uses an extrapolation technique does not automatically mean that it is less likely to be accurate than a body count. In fact, it is more likely to be accurate than existing attempts at body counts of Iraqi civilians. This is because in Iraq, where there are so many no-go areas, it would be impossible to count every casualty.
This is also the problem with Iraqi Ministry of Health figures obtained by counting bodies arriving at hospitals, cited by the PMOS in response to the Lancet report on
1st November: many of those who have died or been killed will never arrive at hospital in conditions of war, when access to roads and health facilities are severely disrupted, and when it might seem pointless to risk the journey for the sake of someone who is already dead.
Finally, attempts to do body counts through deaths reported in the press, like Iraq Body Count, are also necessarily underestimates, since press reports of casualties will be incomplete, not least because the areas where people are being killed are the same areas into which journalists don't dare go. As Iraq Body Count states on its
website:
"Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media."
In these circumstances, population-based research like the Lancet study is thus arguably a much better source.
A detailed, comprehensive body count on the ground by military and medical personnel would perhaps be more accurate, but it is a task which the US and UK forces in Iraq refuse to carry out. For Downing Street to question the best available study on the grounds of preferring a methodology which they themselves refuse to operate is surprising, to say the least.
<snip>
The Government must accept that despite shortcomings due to the difficulties faced by a small team of volunteer doctors collecting data in a war zone, the Lancet report is the most comprehensive study of Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003 currently available. If it is to rebuff its findings, the Government must honour its own obligations by undertaking a large-scale survey of civilian casualties. As the Lancet report states:
“ US General Tommy Franks is widely quoted as saying “we don’t do body counts”. The Geneva Conventions have clear guidance about the responsibilities of occupying armies to the civilian population they control. The fact that more than half the deaths reportedly caused by the occupying forces were women and children is cause for concern. In particular, Convention IV, Article 27 states that protected persons “. . . shall be at all times humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against acts of violence . . .”. It seems difficult to understand how a military force could monitor the extent to which civilians are protected against violence without systematically doing body counts or at least looking at the kinds of casualties they induce. In view of the political importance of this conflict, these results should be confirmed by an independent body such as the ICRC, Epicentre, or WHO.”
See the rest of them here.
