[Updates at bottom.]
As BarbinMD notes, we're being told that "the surge" worked; that violence is down in Iraq. I'd like to point out a small, troubling pair of numbers. Together, they prompt a question. Perhaps several questions.
From May to July of 2006, the famous Lancet study [warning pdf] interviewed people from 1,849 households in Iraq. Based on statistical analysis, it concluded that 601,027 persons had died violently since the US invasion, "the most common cause being gunfire."
In August of 2007, Opinion Research Business, a British polling firm that has been working in Iraq since 2005, interviewed people from 1,499 households in Iraq. Based on statistical analysis, ORB concluded that 1,220,580 persons had died violently since the US invasion in 2003.
So, then, here is an obvious question: what happened in between July 2006 and August 2007?
A straight-up reading of the data leads the reader to a nearly incomprehensible conclusion: that as many Iraqis died from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2007 as died in the entire three previous years of the war in Iraq; that the thirteen-month period in between the two studies was a maelstrom of violence. If this is right then the "peace" was bought at an unspeakable cost.
In the face of this awful data, one is inclined to doubt the ORB study. But there are reasons not to.
First, the Lancet study itself remarks that the death rate at the time of publication (October 2006) was accelerating, not declining:
The number of people dying in Iraq has continued to escalate. The proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006, although the actual numbers have increased every year. Gunfire remains the most common cause of death, although deaths from car bombing have increased.
Second, the ORB method was, in the main, the same method as was employed in the Lancet study. Both studies used interview sampling; the same technique used in Darfur, Rwanda, and elsewhere. Doubters are therefore obligated to explain to why this method is valid in the latter regions -- where the US is not directly culpable -- yet is invalid in Iraq -- where the US is. (A point made by Mark Weisbrot at Alternet.)
Third, the website Just Foreign Policy has kept a scaled death count estimate running since the Lancet study. Using the Lancet figures as a baseline and weighing new death rate reports in the media against the ratio of previous media reports vs. Lancet figures, JFP reaches an estimate strikingly in line with ORB report. "Likely over a million," is their cautious wording.
So, again, absent any serious reason to doubt these figures, we are faced with a question that any amount of considered reflection at all leaves one nearly speechless. What the hell happened between the summers of 2006 and 2007?
In this thirteen-month period, Iraq suffered approximately 620,000 violent deaths. This nears 1994 Rwanda genocide levels (937,000 according a Rwanda report) , and is greater than the entirety of the Darfur genocide since 2003. (500,000, according to a 2006 National Geographic report.)
I don’t know the answer to this question, but I am inclined to wonder, a lot, about the little-noted stories concerning the uptick in the US air war during that period. Nick Turse wrote at TomDispatch, picked up by TomPaine:
While cluster bombs remain a point of contention, Air Force officials do acknowledge that U.S. military and coalition aircraft dropped at least 111,000 pounds of other types of bombs on targets in Iraq in 2006. This figure—177 bombs in all—does not include guided missiles or unguided rockets fired, or cannon rounds expended; nor, according to a CENTAF spokesman, does it take into account the munitions used by some Marine Corps and other coalition fixed-wing aircraft or any Army or Marine Corps helicopter gunships; nor does it include munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many private security contractors flying their own missions in Iraq.
In statistics provided to me, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped those 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles." The Guided Bomb Unit-12, a laser-guided bomb with a 500-pound general purpose warhead—95 of which were reportedly dropped in 2006—was the most frequently used bomb in Iraq last year, according to CENTAF. In addition, 67 satellite-guided, 500-pound GBU-38s and 15 2,000-pound GBU-31/32 munitions were also dropped on Iraqi targets in 2006, according to official U.S. figures. There is no independent way, however, to confirm the accuracy of this official count.
-- snip --
While military press information officers continue to stonewall on the number of cannon rounds fired by helicopters ("We cannot comment on your inquiry due to operational security"), earlier this year Col. Robert A. Fitzgerald, the Marine Corps' head of aviation plans and policy, was quoted in National Defense Magazine on the subject. He claimed that, in 2006, "Marine rotary-wing aircraft flew more than 60,000 combat flight hours, and fixed-wing platforms completed 31,000. They dropped 80 tons of bombs and fired 80 missiles, 3,532 rockets and more than 2 million rounds of smaller ammunition." (When asked if Col. Fitzgerald's admission endangered "operational security," a military spokesman responded, "I cannot comment on the policies or release authority of a Marine colonel.")
That was before "the surge". Since then (USA Today, Oct . 22, 2007):
Military steps up war-zone airstrikes
Increase in missions key part of Iraq plan
By Jim Michaels
USA TODAY
The U.S. military has increased airstrikes in Iraq fivefold this year, reflecting a steep escalation in combat operations aimed at al-Qaeda and other militants.
Coalition forces launched 1,140 airstrikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of last year, according to military statistics.
-- snip --
In Iraq, the temporary increase of 30,000 U.S. troops ordered by President Bush in January has led to the increase in bombing missions. The U.S. command has moved forces off large bases and into neighborhoods and has launched several large offensives aimed at al-Qaeda.
Lately we've been hearing a lot about how violence is down in Iraq. Joe Lieberman and Charles Krauthammer, most recently, have been telling Democrats to get off it; time to get with the program.
I would like, though, to ask a very impolite question. What did George Bush really order the US military to do, in order to get that violence to go down? And another question: if the information in this diary is even half-right, why should we believe anything at all that we’re hearing about violence in Iraq, now?
Six-hundred thousand people in one thirteen-month period?
And that, maybe, got violence to go down?
And someone is celebrating?
Charles Krauthammer:
How do they [Democrats] avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks -- mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government -- that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.
Joe Lieberman:
The Democratic Party has become emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq — reluctant to acknowledge the progress our troops are now achieving. If Democrats don't take off their ideological and partisan blinders. They risk compromising our national security and losing next year's election.
I agree with Charles Krauthammer on one point, at least. I want to know what realities we are avoiding acknowledging on the ground, too.
[Update 11/25/07 9:00 am EST by LithiumCola]: Some commentors find the ORB numbers not credible. This prompted me to look closer at the numbers. The ORB may have based their estimate on a too-high estimate of the total number of Iraqi households. Redoing their numbers with a lower guess at the number of Iraqi households, I get 980,000 deaths; or about 380,000 killed in the thirteen-month period. My reasoning is spelled out in this comment. I feel uncomfortable typing in this detached way about this, but there we are, and accuracy is of utmost importance. I'd ask for one of our Kossak statisticians to look at this.
[Update #2]: hquain points out, correctly, that the ORB results show only 9% of respondants say a household member died do to aerial bombardment. It is therefore not correct that the uptick in the air war accounts for the thirteen-month period.