Okay, one other thing about the latest Lancet survey. The only "good" news Americans can glean from this document is that the proportion of violent deaths caused by coalition forces has decreased - from a high of 39% to today's 26%, with an average total of 31% coalition-inflicted violent deaths. So of the 600,000 violent deaths in Iraq since March 2003, 186,000 were directly attributable to the coalition, with that proportion shrinking over time. In short, the US Army is statistically speaking a slightly less egregious engine of mass death in 2006 than it was in 2004.
Of course (and you knew it was coming) there is a dark cloud to this silver lining. These numbers imply that the violence in Iraq is not only beyond the control of the American forces, but is rapidly becoming more so. The American forces in Iraq are already incapable of controlling the violence there. It might not be unreasonable to expect a decrease in violence when the American leave, simply because coalition forces seem to be the single biggest cause of violence there, notwithstanding the civil war. The American monopoly on airpower alone is responsible for 13% of Iraqi dead.
America needs to leave Iraq. Now.
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And the decline from 39% to 26% is a highly deceptive attempt to find a silver lining in other ways, too...the context in which the entire increase in mortality has occurred was set by the invasion in 2003, so it's not as if the U.S. can reasonably disclaim any responsibility for the other 74% of the detahs. (And as always, it should be pointed out that this increase was increase over a context in which the horrible sanctions regime was operating -- sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the U.K. via the U.N., which themselves killed more than a million Iraqis according to U.N. research.)
This survey depends on dubious sampling methods.
Why not just go to the Iraqi government for the real figures.
If we extrapolate backwards from the 3,000 (actually less) deaths reported last month and assume that number was constant (actually it was lower).
You get 36,000 deaths a year or about 120,000 in 3 years.
That is 1/5th the number this study reports.
Real engineers do reality checks. Rough order of magnitude stuff. Real engineers always look to see if prejudice affects the numbers. Or "are we in the right ball park".
This study does not pass the smell test.
"Why not just go to the Iraqi government for the real figures."
Because the Iraqi govt and the US govt both have refused to release a full accounting of the total number of deaths since March, 2003. Hence these kinds of estimates.
As for dubious sampling methods, you'll need to explain why these methods are field-tested and used acceptably in any number of other situations and war zones, but suddenly lose their validity when applied to Iraq.
Real engineers do reality checks. Real statisticians stand by these surveys.
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