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...?
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.
Quote:
The new study samples 1,849 families in 47 different neighborhoods across Iraq. Researchers said the selection of geographical areas in 18 regions across the country was based on population size, not the level of violence. In 92 percent of the sampled homes, they said, families had death certificates.
"The best of what you can expect"
Statistics experts in the United States who reviewed the study said the interviewing methods looked legitimate. Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, said talking to urban dwellers chosen at random was "the best of what you can expect in a war zone."
But he added that the number of deaths in the families interviewed -- 547 in the post-invasion period versus 82 in a similar period before the invasion -- was too few to extrapolate up to more than 600,000 deaths across the country during the war.
The study included about 53,000 non-violent deaths that the authors said should be attributed to the war because of its effect on health care. Gilbert Burnham, the study's lead author, defended the figures by saying they showed an increase in death rates that was similar to the increase shown by another civilian casualty project, Iraq Body Count, which collates deaths reported in the news media. But Iraq Body Count puts the current maximum death toll at just short of 49,000.
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