It also states that 31% were attributable to US actions, so who commited the other 69%? Terrorists maybe?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...442049,00.html

I might be reading it wrong but the artice said they interviewed the families. If that is the case then of course the number is going to be huge because I guarantee that if the "victim" was a militant or insurgent or terrorist, whatever you wanna call them now days the family will deny it and they chalk it up as a civilian death. I'm sure there are thousands of legitimate civilian deaths, but I would bet that at least half of those numbers were combatants without a uniform.

Just my two cents for what its worth.

If it is 3 years they speak of then it breaks down to about 550 a day.

2,660 + lets say for the sake a padding it a bit 340 Iraqi military deaths.

3,000 a month

That is 100 vs 550

The actual count is off by 5 and half times! (if you believe the report)

Now that is one hell of a variance.

I Don't believe it and I am not even a Republican.

More examples of extremist views being pawned off as facts.

600 k my #%s! :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Since the poll included asking for death certificates to verify the claims, there should be no problem, going through the appropriate Iraqi ministry (Interior?) and finding all 600K of the death certificates, right? :roll:

Fun with math.

"Estimates are pure fantasy".

No consideration of the facts, that more are dying in Iraq due to Sunni and Shia Muslims killing each other.

The BBC used to be respected, they are now regarded on the same lines as the Mirror.

Classic example, The London Anti War protest figures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765041.stm


This BBC article says in its heading “million march in London”
In its article below the picture it says “Hundreds of Thousands”
Below that figure it says “750,000”
Below that it mentions, estimation of “Two million”

Well, this is BBC reporting, Slap stick any figure. AS long as gullible people out their believe the BBC. Then we can see many reapeating the ignorant BBC waffle.

It has nothing to do with the BBC this time - they didn't do the calculations.

Death certificates: i would be surprised if in a war zone all killed persons really receive their certifiocate. So, AL, if I take your argument, then I would expect that there are even more killed people than those 600K for whom you wish to find detah certificates in Iraqi interior ministry (that is said to have even no complete personnel records on it's security organization - and these people are still alive).

The number of kills per day varied over three years, linear projections like being done by AL and Neon do not work well here. If the statistics are competently done, i would expect to see some accoirding "weighting" of values, in that regard.

the authors themselves admit that the m,argin of error is not small, 430K to 790K. However, I think it is safe to assume that the real numbers are much higher than what the Iraqi government, the military and Bush (60K, 50K, 30K) are saying, becasue all three of these have massive interest to keep the published numbers as low as possible, and add a better shine to the miserable overall situation. Iraq is a great success and full of promises for the future, isn't it...? :88)

I do not defend the number in this new statistics and say they are right. However, I say that the official numbers are probably as wrong as well, and that the real kill rates are much higher. I also do not believe anyone telling peole that the events in regions that are more distanced from the central government and the known hotspots of activity are as wellknown and have their informational input considered by medias or governmental statistics as well. Many regions of the country are warzones, with broken comm lines, and rugged terrain.

So, the truth is to be found somewehere between the military's 60K and the 430-790K of the new statistics.

Fine.

That statement alone debunks the phonies at Lancet.

I have yet to understand how the Iraqi government figures are debunked.

The way things are going on out there, there will be no government. I heard on the radio America's patience is running out and Iraq has got three months to get it's act together. So better get those death certificates quick.

These guys present as being anti US and anti Iraq war and look at their total dead

Max: 48,693

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Your lipstick's smeared. :yep:

Just out of interest why is the Lancet is poking it's nose in a civil war? :hmm:

Must be a slow month on the medical news front. ;)

May be the figures are not that far off, if this goes on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?search=...&v=na0IxaMmatA

their statistics exclusively base on kills being reported in public media. Means: they are not accurate, too, and necessarily must be assumed to be much higher. Or do you think every kill throughout Iraq has a reporter counting it?

Yes. Almost as silly as taking a sampling of death certificates and projecting it onto the entire population as opposed to doing the research and counting all the death certificates in the population.

Iraqbodycount does no projections, it only reads newspapers and makes scratches on a list. the mehod only works if newspapers cover ALL deaths there are, and iraqbodycounts reads ALL newspapers, and filter out double messages.

Projections are needed to come even close to the real value. That's what usually is done in zones of natural desaster, war, etc, as well as domestic polls, consumer predictions and election predictions as well. To define statistical criterions for how a sample should be defined to be representative for the total population, weighing these samples to compensate for local differences, and then doing a projection on that basis, is common practice, really. the better part of all statistcial methods being used in science are basing on probabilities, and representaive sampling instead of totalling complete populations. It's the second best thing to doing the research and collecting all certificates there are. If you are in a country where that kind of research is not possible, since there is war and chaos and violence, some areas are no-go zones, administrative structures are partially broken, partially corrupt or incompetent - what do you do then? the second best thing, I think.

This video has been removed due to terms of use violation

In fact, the Iraq Body Count group themselves have responded to the Lancet study: Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates.

I find the last sentence of that press release somewhat interesting.

Another article: 655,000 War Dead? A bogus study on Iraq casualties.

IMHO - US troops should just go home, they got Saddam, they wasted his sons. They did the deed. They are not going to change Iraq to how they want it. For americans sake they should call it a day & let iraq take care of their problems. Save USA mothers the agony of losing their sons.