Today's planned blog entry's been pre-empted by a study published today in The Lancet. The study estimates that the US war in Iraq is responsible for the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis:
An estimated 655,000 more Iraqis have died as a consequence of the March 2003 military invasion of Iraq than would have been expected in a non-conflict situation, according to an Article.The study's interpretation of the data is this:
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.
What more can one say? Read the study. Impeach King George.
Update, 12 Oct: Here's some other commentary on the study, from people looking at its methodology and statistics: from Mark Chu-Carroll, of Good Math, Bad Math, here and here; from Mike Dunford, of The Questionable Authority, here.
I'll also add that even if we consider the low end of the scale (maximal error in the study), the estimate is still around 400,000 excess deaths.
1 comment:
That is indead a horrifying number.
However, The Lancet's previous study had an extremely wide margin of error (8000 - 194,000). I wonder if the margin of error here is similarly large? The Iraq body count website's count stands at less than 50,000.
Some more interesting discussion is happening on reddit .
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