At least 17 die in gunbattle near Iraq's Samarra

The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.

This devastating human toll demands greater recognition. It eclipses the Rwandan genocide and our leaders are directly responsible. Little wonder they do not publicly cite it. Here is simple HTML code to post the counter to your website and help spread the word.


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http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
How Just Foreign Policy’s Iraqi Death Estimate is Calculated

For the Iraqi Death Estimator, Just Foreign Policy accepts the Lancet estimate of 601,000 violent Iraqi deaths attributable to the U.S. invasion and occupation as of July 2006.

To update this number, we need to obtain a rate of how quickly deaths are mounting in Iraq. For this purpose, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) provides the most reliable, frequently updated database of deaths in Iraq. (The IBC also usefully provides a database of all violent Iraqi deaths demonstrable through press reports and thus relatively undeniable.) The IBC provides a maximum and minimum. We opted to use the midpoint between the two for our calculation.

We multiple the Lancet number as of July 2006 by the ratio of current IBC deaths divided by IBC deaths as of July 1, 2006 (43,394).

The formula used is:

Just Foreign Policy estimate = (Lancet estimate as of July 2006) * ( (Current IBC Deaths) / (IBC Deaths as of July 1, 2006) )


Use of the Iraq Body Count Database

The Iraq Body Count (IBC) records all violent Iraqi civilian deaths recorded in at least two press reports. Our Estimator assumes that the IBC’s method, while it does not capture all Iraqi deaths as shown by the Lancet studies, captures roughly the same percentage of deaths over time. This means, for example, that if the violent death rate in Iraq doubled over a given period, IBC would count approximately twice the number of deaths per day over that period than it did previously. If the death rate fell by half, IBC would count roughly half the number of deaths per day.

It is worth noting that, to the extent that the English-language media covers less of the violence in Iraq over time – if they are progressively less capable of receiving accurate reports from outside the Green Zone or certain sectors of Baghdad, for example – then to that extent, the violent death rate derived from IBC will be lower than the actual death rate that would be picked up by a scientific, statistical survey. This would tend to make the Just Foreign Policy Estimate lower.

This actually seems to have been the case from 2004 to 2006. In September 2004, the scientific estimate from the Lancet was about 9 times the IBC death estimate. By July 2006, the Lancet estimate was about 12 times the IBC death estimate, suggesting that IBC was picking up a smaller percentage of total deaths.

This combination of the IBC and the Lancet is not perfect, although we think it the best way of obtaining a rough estimate using existing tallies while awaiting another scientifically-based number. For example, the IBC, unlike the Lancet and the Just Foreign Policy Estimator, seeks to exclude “combatant” deaths from their tally. This could lead to differences between the IBC rate of increase and the actual rate of increase in overall Iraqi deaths, but it is not clear in which direction this difference goes.

Since our interest is simply in providing a rough estimate – rather than a scientifically accurate estimate – of current Iraqi deaths, we can accept the possible inaccuracies produced by combining the Lancet and IBC.

http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78
September 2007 - More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered

In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.

Previous estimates, most noticeably the one published in the Lancet in October 2006, suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths).
These findings come from a poll released today by ORB, the British polling agency that has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005. In conjunction with their Iraqi fieldwork agency a representative sample of 1,499 adults aged 18+ answered the following question:-

QHow many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.

None 78%
One 16%
Two 5%
Three 1%
Four or more 0.002%

Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003. Calculating the affect from the margin of error we believe that the range is a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063

What Just Foreign Policy’s Iraqi Death Estimator Is and Is Not

Since researchers at Johns Hopkins estimated that 601,000 violent Iraqi deaths were attributable to the U.S.-led invasion as of July 2006, it necessarily does not include Iraqis who have been killed since then. We would like to update this number both to provide a more relevant day-to-day estimate of the Iraqi dead and to emphasize that the human tragedy mounts each day this brutal war continues.

This daily estimate is a rough estimate. It is not scientific; for that, another study must be conducted. However, absent such a study, we think this constitutes a best estimate of violent Iraqi deaths that is certainly more reliable than widely cited numbers that, often for political reasons, ignore the findings of scientifically sound demographic studies.

In September 2007, a new scientific poll of Iraqis confirmed that the number dead is likely to be over a million. The prestigious British polling firm, Opinion Research Business, estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis had been killed violently since the U.S. invasion.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=9660
David Edwards of Media Lens has a brilliant critique of the shortcomings of the Iraq Body Count tally of civilian deaths in Iraq: Paved With Good Intentions: On Iraq Body Count, Part 1 and Part 2.
Edwards points out the generally recognized fact that IBC's methodology -- only listing deaths reported by two or more Western sources -- likely results in their tally being a conservative estimate of civilian deaths. However, Edwards goes further by showing that there is a systematic source of bias in that Western news agencies are more likely to report deaths caused by "insurgents" than those caused by "Coalition" forces. Edwards reports on an examination of the IBC database for the six-month period from January through June, 2005. They found that, of 58 incidents involving at least 10 deaths, only one was attributed to US/Coalition action. Further, during this period, only 15 civilian deaths total were attributed "to 'coalition' airstrikes, helicopter gunfire and tank fire," a result that is completely implausible to anyone who has followed news of the repeated massive attacks by US and allied forces on alleged "insurgent strongholds."

Very disturbing was the tone of IBC's founder John Sloboda's response to being emailed a question about this potential bias. He implied that IBC had no bias in that it recorded all such events reported in the Western media, while ignoring Edwards' point that the Western media may itself have a bias in what it reports. He stated correctly that "We have always publicly acknowledged that our numbers must underrepresent the true figure." He then goes on to state "the question of by how much is one that exercises us, as it does many others." However, he gives no evidence of wrestling with this issue or of recognizing its overriding importance in evaluating what the IBC numbers tell us about the extent of Iraqi deaths.
IBC does, indeed, "acknowledge" the limits to their work. But, like many academic researchers throwing in a pro forma "limitations of the study," this acknowledgment is done in such a way as to give it little emphasis. For example, in their July, 2005 report A Dossier of Civilian Casualties 2003-2005, on page 24 of 28, in a discussion of why they use their "maximum" estimates , they state "even our max figure is likely to under-represent the full toll, given that not every death is officially recorded or reported." Certainly this language gives no indication that their maximum may, in fact, radically underestimate the true toll.

Similarly, on the IBC website, they have a section entitled Limitations and scope of enquiry, consisting of responses to question that have been raised about their work. The only one relevant to the issue of systematic bias is the question: "Won't your count simply be a compilation of propaganda?" Their reply:
"We acknowledge that many parties to this conflict will have an interest in manipulating casualty figures for political ends. There is no such thing (and will probably never be such a thing) as an 'wholly accurate' figure, which could accepted as historical truth by all parties. This is why we will always publish a minimum and a maximum for each reported incident. Some sources may wish to over-report casualties. Others may wish to under-report them. Our methodology is not biased towards 'propaganda' from any particular protagonist in the conflict. We will faithfully reflect the full range of reported deaths in our sources. These sources, which are predominantly Western (including long established press agencies such as Reuters and Associated Press) are unlikely to suppress conservative estimates which can act as a corrective to inflated claims. We rely on the combined, and self-correcting, professionalism of the world's press to deliver meaningful maxima and minima for our count."

This statement clearly suggests that the true figure is between their "minimum" and their "maximum," as these words would imply. Nowhere in this Limitations section do they acknowledge the problem of systematic bias due to reporting bias.
Despite the strength and originality of Edwards' critique, I believe that it does not give enough attention to another source of bias that is minimized by IBC. This is the difficulty in reporting from Iraq and the absence of Western reporters from most of the country. Iraq reporting has been dangerous from the beginning of the war, with several reporters killed by American forces during the invasion. By the fall of 2003, as Reuters reported, reporters were also at risk from rebel forces and, sometimes, the dissatisfied Iraqi population.
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Given, as indicated in that report, that ten media outlets provided over half the IBC reports and three agencies provided over a third of the reports, there is simply no reason to believe that even a large fraction of Iraqi civilian combat-related deaths are ever reported in the Western media, much less, have the two independent reports necessary to be recorded in the IBC database. Do these few agencies really have enough Iraqi reporters on retainer to cover the country? Are these reporters really able comprehensively to cover deaths in insurgent-held parts of Iraq? How likely is it that two reporters from distinct media outlets are going to be present at a given site where deaths occur? How many of the thousands of US bombings have been investigated by any reporter, Western or Iraqi? Simply to state these questions is to emphasize the fragmentary nature of the reporting that occurs and thus the limitations of the IBC database.
If IBC believes that the vast majority of Iraqi deaths are reported by the Western media and, thus, recorded in their database, IBC should provided an argument to that effect. IBC does not provide such an argument. Neither do they remind readers of these potential limitations in any way that would attract attention to them and decrease the ability of others to deliberately misuse the IBC numbers.
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Conservative estimates lose their value, however, when they serve to obscure, detracting attention from the true magnitude of the phenomenon. Thus, as the fighting has intensified and as other estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths have become available, IBC's low-ball estimates have increasingly been used to mask the true magnitude of the suffering, rather than as a call for better, more precise estimates. Such misuses of the IBC figures could only be avoided, or at least reduced, if IBC took every opportunity to prominently call attention to the fact that their estimates are nothing but rock bottom figures, almost certainly far below the true mortality figures. Indeed, a September, 2005 report by the Humanitarian Practice Network, Interpreting and using mortality data in humanitarian emergencies: A primer for non-epidemiologists, lists seven studies from which estimates of violent civilian deaths in Iraq can be derived. Since each study covers a different period and length of time, the results are standardized as "violent deaths per day." Of the seven studies, IBC has the lowest estimate, at 17 deaths per day, followed by 22 deaths per day estimated by the Iraqi Ministry of Heath. Two studies produce estimates of 50 and 56 violent deaths per day. The Lancet study leads to an estimate of 101 violent deaths per day, while two other studies generate even higher estimates of 133 and 152 deaths per day. Thus, as suggested by our analysis, the IBC estimates are far below those from most other sources and cannot credibly be taken as being anything but rock-bottom minimums.
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If Western reporters, competing for scarce public attention, are loath to accurately portray the extent of their ignorance about what is going on in enormous chunks of Iraq, IBC has no excuse not to acknowledge, openly and prominently, the resultant limits to their civilian death tally. To not proclaim loudly that the IBC count is, by its nature, likely a severe undercount of the true number of deaths, is to participate in the culture of deceit and denial of the costs in civilian lives and suffering that has plagued this alleged humanitarian intervention from the beginning. If IBC does not understand this point, then their efforts at promoting truth have now turned into its opposite and should cease.