100,000 Iraqis dead since the invasion

[Salimar]

The estimated number of dead people was said to be 10,000 iraqis. Athough they didn't want to count too much. A research into this topic has dicovered that since the invasion of Iraq, the number of dead Iraqis exceeds 100,000.

The article:

The Lancet

Why are we so misinformed?

Salimar

[Bramond]

I do not intend this to be anything but what it is...a perspective, its not an answer nor is in any way a justification of what has and is happening in Iraq.

" In July, 1940 the German airforce began its mass bomber attacks on British radar stations, aircraft factories and fighter airfields. During the next three months the Royal Air Force lost 792 planes and over 500 pilots were killed. This period became known as the Battle of Britain.

On the 7th September, 1940 the German airforce changed its strategy and began to concentrate on bombing London. On the first day of the Blitz killed 430 citizens and 1,600 were severely injured. The German bombers returned the next day and a further 412 died.

Between September 1940 and May 1941, the Luftwaffe made 127 large-scale night raids. Of these, 71 were targeted on London. The main targets outside the capital were Liverpool, Birmingham, Plymouth, Bristol, Glasgow, Southampton, Coventry, Hull, Portsmouth, Manchester, Belfast, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham and Cardiff.

During the Blitz some two million houses (60 per cent of these in London) were destroyed and 60,000 civilians were killed and 87,000 were seriously injured. Of those killed, the majority lived in London. Until half-way through the Second World War, more women and children in Britain had been killed than soldiers."

Lets not forget, unlike in Iraq, the British civilians where not even in the same country that the conflicts where taking place. Lets not forget also that that there are groups of Iraqi sepratists killing civilian and military personel without compunction, and will no doubt make up for a large amount of the figure stated in the lprevious post.

Food for thought, eh!!

[Jarkis]

Big number but not suprising.

We all know the daily violence in Iraq. From insurgents in Fallujah to sucide bombings in Bagdhad and the recent attacks on the national guard. Remember its a whole country which is at war. Though its significantly lesser then in WW2, tactics used in those days were different then today. WW2 you had massive bomb raids in cities. Now, its all precision strikes, hitting less civilian targets.

Bloodshed will continue, so i suspect the number will grow even bigger in a matter of months. The US troops seem to be really stretched. So peace in Iraq is still going to take a looong time to acheive.

[Blog]

I'm not saying that 100,000 people -- half of them women and children -- haven't been killed, I have no idea, but this study doesn't prove it. Its pathetic that the major scientific journals like Science, Nature, and Lancet publish shoddy science to promote a favored agenda. Come on, they rushed it because they just had to get it out 5 days before an election, coincidence, yeah right. Plus the fact that any relative risk below 3 you should view with caution, anything below 2 means that it is almost certain there is no significant relationship, this study has a RR of 1.1 - 2.4. Which in itself shows their data is crap because you never see them with such large ranges, generally it is reported as something like RR 1.7, thats it, no range.

[Aristotle]

What is relative risk? Is this some sort of statistics term of art?

If so, please elaborate for those of us who haven't had the benefit of formal education in statistics.

[Blog]

For relative risk, anything above 1 is an increased likelyhood of the event happening. In this case I'm assuming its dying a violent death at the hands of evil American overlords. The higher the number, the greater the chance, but just because a number is above one doesn't mean that its really anything to write home about.

The RR of a 1/2 pack a day smoker getting lung cancer over a non smoker is ~10, of a smoker getting mouth/throat cancer ~5, of an asbestos worker who smokes getting cancer is 92. The RR of you getting prostate cancer if your dad has it is 2.1, if your brother has it 2.8. The RR of getting any form of cancer if you eat red meat once a week is 1.5 (compared to someone who doesn't eat red meat at all), if you eat 1 or less servings of fish a week its 2.0. I used to have this neat little table I wish I could find it, but the higher the RR the more likely it is to mean something.

Here is an example of the calculation:

http://scangis.dhec.sc.gov/scan/coho...cohortcalc.htm

There are other things that can mess up the numbers, like publication bias (generally, only positive RR's are published), but that is probably not an issue here.

Theres more general stuff here about the study:

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/303/..._000_Ir:.shtml

Including:

''I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election,'' Roberts told The Associated Press. ''My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.

Getting an scientific article published in under a month is insane, as well as having the author stipulate conditions and have the journal meet them.