100,000 Iraqi Civilian Deaths - Part 1

[Guest guest]

Tue, 2 Nov 2004 12:25:42 UT

" Medialens Media Alerts " <noreply

 

 

100,000 Iraqi Civilian Deaths - Part 1

 

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

 

November 2, 2004

 

MEDIA ALERT: 100,000 IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS - PART 1

 

 

The Nicest Guys You Can Imagine

 

In their film, The Corporation, Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel

Bakan describe how in the mid-1800s the corporation was declared a

" fictitious person " in law and granted the same legal rights as real

individuals. So what kind of `person' is a corporation?

 

The filmmakers assessed the corporate `personality' using diagnostic

criteria of the World Health Organisation and standard diagnostic tools

of psychiatrists and psychologists:

 

" The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly

anti-social `personality': It is self-interested, inherently amoral,

callous

and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it

does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of

empathy, caring and altruism... Concluding this point-by-point

analysis, a

disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of

laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a

`psychopath.' " (http://www.thecorporation.com)

 

We, of course, live in a society dominated by these corporate

psychopaths. Our media is not +controlled+ by them, as is sometimes

claimed; it

is comprised of them.

 

Unsurprisingly, then, the corporate media system consistently responds

in an inhuman and callous way to even the most horrific suffering. But

isn't the media made up of nice, well-educated, well-spoken

journalists? Yes, absolutely, but Noam Chomsky makes the point that

matters:

 

" When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave

owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the

individual.

So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently

monstrous. But the individuals participating in them may be the nicest

guys

you can imagine – benevolent, friendly, nice to their children, even

nice to their slaves, caring about other people. I mean as individuals

they may be anything. In their institutional role, they're monsters,

because the institution's monstrous. And the same is true here. " (Ibid)

 

And the same is certainly true of the media response to the US-UK

assault on Iraq.

 

On October 29, the prestigious scientific journal, The Lancet,

published a report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public

Health:

'Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample

survey'.

(http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol364/iss9445/early_online_publication)

 

The authors estimate that 100,000 more Iraqi civilians died than would

have been expected had the invasion not occurred. They write:

 

" Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the

actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to

air strikes and artillery. " (Press Release, `Iraqi Civilian Deaths

Increase Dramatically After Invasion,' October 28, 2004,

http://www.jhsph.edu/Press_Room/Press_Releases/PR_2004/Burnham_Iraq.html)

 

Most of those killed by " coalition " forces were women and children.

 

The report was met with a low-key, sceptical response, or outright

silence in the media. There was no horror, no outrage. No leaders were

written pointing out that, in addition to the illegality, lies and public

deception, our government is responsible for the deaths of 100,000

civilians.

 

Scepticism is reasonable enough, of course, but there have been no

debates allowing the report's authors to respond to challenges.

Journalists

seem uninterested in establishing whether the government's dismissal of

the report might be one more cynical deception. Instead they have been

happy to just move on. And to just move on in response to a mass

slaughter of innocents on this scale is indeed indicative of corporate

psychopathy. As Chomsky says, in their institutional roles, corporate

journalists really are monsters.

 

At time of writing (November 2), the Lancet report has not been

mentioned at all by the Observer, the Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph,

the

Financial Times, the Star, the Sun and many others. The Express

devoted 71

words to the report, but only in its Lancashire edition. We asked the

Observer editor, Roger Alton, why his paper had failed to mention the

report. He replied:

 

" Dear Mr Edwards,

 

Thanks for your note. The figures were well covered in the week, but

also I find the methodology a bit doubtful... " (Email to Media Lens,

November 1, 2004)

 

In fact, the figures were covered in two brief Guardian articles

(October 29 and October 30). The second of these, entitled, `No 10

challenges

civilian death toll', focused heavily on government criticism of the

report without allowing the authors to respond. The Guardian then dropped

the story.

 

The Independent also published two articles on October 29 and 30. But

these were then followed up by two articles on the subject totalling

some 1,200 words in the Independent on Sunday.

 

The Guardian's David Aaronovitch told us:

 

" I have a feeling (and I could be wrong) that the report may be a dud. "

(Email to Media Lens, October 30, 2004)

 

This is the sum-total of coverage afforded by The Sunday Times:

 

" Tony Blair, too, may have recalled Basil Fawlty when The Lancet

published an estimate that 100,000 Iraqis have died since the start of

the

allied invasion. " (Michael Portillo, `The Queen must not allow Germany to

act like a victim,' The Sunday Times, October 31, 2004)

 

The Evening Standard managed two sentences:

 

" The emails came as a new study in The Lancet estimated 100,000

civilians had died since the conflict began. The Prime Minister's

official

spokesman... added that the 100,000 death toll figure could not be

trusted

because it was based on an extrapolation. " (Paul Waugh, `Blair " did not

grasp risk to troops " ', October 29, 2004)

 

The Times has so far restricted itself to one report on October 29.

This, however, at least contradicted the growing government and media

smear campaign:

 

" Statisticians who have analysed the data said last night that the

scientists' methodology was strong and the civilian death count could

well

be conservative.

 

" They said that the work effectively disproved suggestions by US

authorities that civilian bodycounts were impossible to conduct. " (Sam

Lister, `Researchers claims that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in

war,'

The Times, October 29, 2004)

 

 

Scientific Strength - Our Data Have Been Back And Forth

 

The tone for the response was set on Channel 4 News (October 29,

19:00), by science reporter Tom Clarke, who spent 53 seconds of his 2

minute

15 second report challenging the methodology of the Lancet report:

 

" Today, Downing Street dismissed the report saying the researchers used

an extrapolation technique, which they considered inappropriate, rather

than a detailed body count. " (Tom Clarke, Channel 4 website, October

29, 2004)

 

Clarke emphasised how much higher the report's estimate of civilian

deaths was than previous estimates:

 

" The Iraq Ministry of Health has estimated 3000 civilian deaths, but

they've only been counting for six months.

 

" Another figure - over 16 000 since the conflict began - comes from a

project called Iraqbodycount. Their estimate is based on reported

casualties. This latest study comes up with a very different number:

nearly

100,000 extra civilian deaths since war began - possibly more. "

 

Clarke then added:

 

" But without bodies, can we trust the body count? Higher than average

civilian casualties in Fallujah strongly distorted this study making the

nationwide average well over 100 thousand so families surveyed there

were discounted from the final figure.

 

" The reliability of interviews must be questioned too, though four out

of five families were able to produce a death certificate. "

 

Curiously, Clarke claimed that Fallujah " strongly distorted this

study " . And yet, as he himself noted, " families surveyed there were

discounted " – so Fallujah did +not+ in fact distort the report. But he

then

claimed the reliability of interviews must +also+ be questioned - ie that

this was a further problem in addition to the distortion he had just

discounted.

 

Clarke then made his most serious claim:

 

" But the study's main weakness, and the one highlighted by Downing

Street in dismissing today's figures, is that it multiplies a small

sample

across the whole of Iraq. A country at war, where people are aggrieved

and displaced from their homes, makes household based surveys far less

accurate. "

 

It is remarkable that a news reporter could so casually dismiss the

methodology and findings of a carefully implemented study that has been

rigorously peer-reviewed for one of the world's leading scientific

journals.

 

We asked the report's authors about the large rise in numbers of

estimated civilian deaths over previous estimates, and also on the

ability to

make a reliable body count without bodies. Dr. Gilbert Burnham

responded:

 

" In short, we used a standard survey method that is used all over the

world to estimate mortality. So bodies are not necessary to calculate

mortality. In fact going to the community for household surveys on

mortality is the standard method used for calculating mortality all

over the

world, and is probably the method used in the UK census as well,

although I am not a demographer.

 

" Anyway, information collected in surveys always produces higher

numbers than `passive reporting' as many things never get reported.

This is

the easy explanation for the differences between iraqbodycount.net, and

our survey.

 

" Further a survey can find other causes of death related to public

health problems such as women dying in childbirth, children dead of

infectious diseases, and elderly unable to reach a source of insulin,

which

body counts cannot do--since they collect information from newspaper

accounts of deaths (usually violent ones). Can one estimate national

figures on the basis of a sample?

 

" The answer is certainly yes (the basis of all census methods),

provided that the sample is national, households are randomly

selected, and

great precautions are taken to eliminate biases. These are all what we

did. Now the precision of the results is mostly dependent on sample size.

The bigger the sample, the more precise the result. We calculated this

carefully, and we had the statistical power to say what we did. Doing a

larger sample size could make the figure more precise (smaller

confidence intervals) but would have entailed risks to the surveyors

which we

did not want to take, as they were high enough already.

 

" Our data have been back and forth between many reviewers at the Lancet

and here in the school (chair of Biostatistics Dept), so we have the

scientific strength to say what we have said with great certainty. I

doubt any Lancet paper has gotten as much close inspection in recent

years

as this one has! " (Dr. Gilbert Burnham, email to David Edwards, October

30, 2004)

 

Channel 4's Tom Clarke had made a further observation:

 

" The definition of civilian is also unclear. The majority of violent

deaths were among young men who may - or may not - have been insurgents. "

 

The report's lead author, Dr. Les Roberts, responded to this point:

 

" The civilian question is fair. About 25% of the population were adult

males. >70% of people who died in automobile accidents were adult

males. Presumably, they died more than other demographic groups because

they are out and about more. 46% of people reportedly killed by

coalition forces were adult males. Thus, some of them may have been

combatants, some probably were not... perhaps they were just out and

about more

and more likely to be in targeted areas. We reported that over half of

those killed by coalition forces were women and children to point out

that if there was targeting, it was not very focused. Thus, we are

careful to say that about 100,000 people, perhaps far more were

killed. We

suspect that the vast majority were civilians, but we do not say each

and every one of the approximately 100,000 was a civilian. " (Email to

David Edwards, October 31, 2004)

 

Clarke concluded his Channel 4 report with a damning statement:

 

" Given the worsening security situation, it'll be a long time before we

have an accurate picture for civilian losses in Iraq, if ever. "

 

This suggested that flawed methodology meant the Lancet report could

safely be dismissed as failing to provide " an accurate picture for

civilian losses in Iraq " . It meant the researchers, the Lancet peer

review

team, and the Lancet editors, had produced an unreliable piece of work.

 

To reiterate the response of the report's authors: " we have the

scientific strength to say what we have said with great certainty. I

doubt any

Lancet paper has gotten as much close inspection in recent years as

this one has! "

 

An October 29 Downing Street press release read:

 

" Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned about a survey published

today suggesting that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the

war in Iraq, the PMOS [Prime Minister's Official Spokesman] said that

it was important to treat the figures with caution because there were a

number of concerns and doubts about the methodology that had been used.

Firstly, the survey appeared to be based on an extrapolation technique

rather than a detailed body count. Our worries centred on the fact that

the technique in question appeared to treat Iraq as if every area was

one and the same. In terms of the level of conflict, that was

definitely not the case. Secondly, the survey appeared to assume that

bombing

had taken place throughout Iraq. Again, that was not true. It had been

focussed primarily on areas such as Fallujah. Consequently, we did not

believe that extrapolation was an appropriate technique to use. "

(http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6535.asp)

 

We again raised these queries with the report authors. Dr. Roberts

replied:

 

" Point 1 is true and it is not a mistake on our part. We would have

had a more accurate picture if we conducted a `stratified' sample, with

some in the high violence areas and some in the low violence areas.

But, that would have involved visiting far more houses and exposing the

interviewers to even more risk. Secondly, we do not know how many people

are in the `high violence' areas, so this would have involved large

assumptions that would now be criticized.

 

" Most samples are taken with the assumption that all the clusters are

`exchangeable' for purposes of analysis. The difference between them is

considered in the interpretation of the data.

 

" Point two, assumes bombing is happening equally across Iraq. There is

no such explicit assumption. There is the assumption that all

individuals in Iraq had an equal opportunity to die (and if we did

not, it

would not be a representative sample). It happens, that the one place

with

a lot of bombings, Falluja, and we excluded that from our 100,000

estimate....thus if anything, assuming that there has not been any

intensive

bombing in Iraq.

 

" Finally, there were 7 clusters in the Kurdish North with no violent

deaths. Of those 26 randomly picked neighborhoods visited in the South,

the area that was invaded, 5 had reported deaths from Coalition

air-strikes. This, I suspect that such events are more widespread

than the

review suggests. " (Email to David Edwards, November 1, 2004)

 

Almost none of the above has been debated anywhere in the UK press. It

is clear that the Johns Hopkins researchers, the Lancet editors, and

the Lancet's peer-review team, naturally took every precaution to ensure

that the methodology involved could withstand the intense scrutiny a

report of this kind was bound to generate. Their results point to the

mass slaughter of 100,000 civilians. The media is just not interested.

 

Part 2 will follow shortly...

 

 

SUGGESTED ACTION

 

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and

respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge

readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

 

Write to Observer editor, Roger Alton

Email: roger.alton

 

Write to the Observer's foreign affairs editor, Peter Beaumont

Email: peter.beaumont

 

Write to Andrew Gowers, editor of the Financial Times

Email: Andrew.Gowers

 

Write to Martin Newland, editor of the Daily Telegraph

Email: Martin.Newland

 

Ask them why they have failed to so much as +mention+ the Lancet's

report of 100,000 excess civilian deaths as a result of the US-UK

invasion

of Iraq.

 

Email Channel 4 News about their reporting:

 

Tom Clarke, Science Reporter, Channel 4 News

Email: tom.clarke

 

Jim Gray, Channel 4 News Editor

Email: jim.gray

 

Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens:

 

Email: editor

 

If you would like to make a donation:

http://www.medialens.org/donate.html

 

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org