I recently received an alumni magazine from Johns Hopkins. It looked far different than usual. No upbeat cover showing a researcher busily investigating or a teacher engaged with a class. Instead the cover was solid black. In the center a number in gray: 654,965. A small subtitle underneath: "Could this many have died?"
The article described the research of JHU epidemiologists Gilbert H. Burnham and Leslie F. Roberts, whose findings on "excess mortality" in Iraq since the start of the 2003 invasion were published in Britain's premier medical journal The Lancet shortly before the 2004 elections. The results of a second study--the one yielding the appalling figure at the top of this diary--were published in October 2006.
Think about it. The second study was done 42 months into our occupation of Iraq. 654,965 divided by 42 equals 15,594 Iraqi deaths per month.
I know that most of you have seen this number before and that you realize it's not merely a number, but reflects people--people who loved being alive just as much as you and I. Yet the hideous fact this number represents has gotten obscured; indeed it was never truly fathomed in the first place.
It's no surprise that the study showed an increasing number of deaths as the war progressed:
...the findings were stunning. If the estimates were correct, throughout the Allied occupation Iraqis had been dying at an appalling rate, upward of 1,000 per day during the last year of the survey period ....Of the post-invasion deaths, 92 percent were by violence. The data indicated that gunshots had killed more people than air strikes, car bombs, and improvised explosive devices combined. Only 31 percent of violent deaths were attributed to coalition armed forces, which revealed the level of sectarian violence and lawlessness.
The "only" 31% of deaths attributable to Coalition forces equals 203,039 people. And would the deaths resultant from sectarian violence have occurred had we not invaded Iraq?
Of course the JHU study wasn't much more than a blip on our media's radar screen:
George W. Bush: "I don't consider it a credible report."
Tony Blair: "We have questioned [their] technique right from the beginning and we continue to do so."
In the Wall Street Journal Steven E. Moore wrote an op-ed entitled "655,000 War Dead? A Bogus Study on Iraq Casualties."
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The figure of 654,965 results from a bell-curve distribution. Even the lowest end of the curve is heartbreakingly high:
The Lancet stated that the authors were 95 percent sure that the true figure was within a range of estimated mortality: 392,979 to 942,636 above what would have been expected had the war not occurred. Many people mistakenly assumed that any number within that range was equally likely to be the actual count. Not true. The range was a bell-curve distribution, with the now-famous figure of 654,965 at the top of the curve, statistically the most likely accurate count. Every other number in the range was less and less likely as one approached the extremes. So 400,000 or 900,000 deaths were possible but highly improbable.
I only wish the number 654,965 were "now famous." But who in our government or media is truly contemplating the ENORMITY of this? As members of Congress bicker in back rooms about their various non-binding resolutions, who is thinking about the fact that we are "liberating" the Iraqi people to death?
The alumni magazine article asks the obvious question about the results of the study:
If, for the sake of argument, the study is wrong and the number of Iraqi deaths is less than half the infamous figure, is it acceptable that 'only' 300,000 have died? Last November, with no explanation, the Iraqi Ministry of Health suddenly began citing 150,000 dead, five times the previous estimate. Is that amount of death acceptable? In January, the United Nations reported that more than 34,000 Iraqis were killed violently in the last year alone. Is that acceptable?
Every day that Congress ineffectively blathers about non-binding resolutions 500 PEOPLE DIE.
Is that acceptable?