Visitor,
uh..... what?
HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Anything goes in the visitors section. Try to play nice. Post random thoughts in here too, but be aware: NO LOGIN REQUIRED! However, spam is not allowed nor tolerated. All spammers will be blocked and reported to appropriate agencies.
Anything goes in the visitors section. Try to play nice. Post random thoughts in here too, but be aware: NO LOGIN REQUIRED! However, spam is not allowed nor tolerated. All spammers will be blocked and reported to appropriate agencies.
-
Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
astonamous,
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's campaign acknowledged on Thursday that a television ad depicting soldiers listening to Bush speak had been doctored so that some of the faces of the soldiers appear more than once.
Released five days before Election Day, the ad was called, "Whatever It Takes" and had been touted by Bush advisers as a personal message from the president talking about the war on terror.
It depicts Bush talking of his meetings with family members of fallen soldiers and saying the "hardest decision" he faced was the one to send soldiers into battle.
It then shows clips of people apparently listening to the president, including a crowd of soldiers. But some of the faces appear more than once in the image, which flashes across the screen as Bush vows to "never relent in defending America, whatever it takes."
Reed Dickens, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, acknowledged the image had been adjusted but said it was done during the editing process and had not been ordered by the campaign.
"It was completely unintentional," he said. "The ad has already been replaced."
The ad still appeared on the front page of the campaign's Web site as of Thursday afternoon.
The Kerry campaign said it was an example of the Bush administration's dishonesty.
"Now we know why this ad is named 'Whatever It Takes,"' Kerry campaign senior adviser Joe Lockhart said in a statement. "This administration has always had a problem telling the truth from Iraq to jobs to healthcare."
Dickens said, "There was no attempt to mislead."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's campaign acknowledged on Thursday that a television ad depicting soldiers listening to Bush speak had been doctored so that some of the faces of the soldiers appear more than once.
Released five days before Election Day, the ad was called, "Whatever It Takes" and had been touted by Bush advisers as a personal message from the president talking about the war on terror.
It depicts Bush talking of his meetings with family members of fallen soldiers and saying the "hardest decision" he faced was the one to send soldiers into battle.
It then shows clips of people apparently listening to the president, including a crowd of soldiers. But some of the faces appear more than once in the image, which flashes across the screen as Bush vows to "never relent in defending America, whatever it takes."
Reed Dickens, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, acknowledged the image had been adjusted but said it was done during the editing process and had not been ordered by the campaign.
"It was completely unintentional," he said. "The ad has already been replaced."
The ad still appeared on the front page of the campaign's Web site as of Thursday afternoon.
The Kerry campaign said it was an example of the Bush administration's dishonesty.
"Now we know why this ad is named 'Whatever It Takes,"' Kerry campaign senior adviser Joe Lockhart said in a statement. "This administration has always had a problem telling the truth from Iraq to jobs to healthcare."
Dickens said, "There was no attempt to mislead."
-
Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday, October 29, 2004
Eyewitness to Failure in Iraq
by Peter W. Galbraith for The Boston Globe
In 2003, I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion - the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.
I also described two particularly disturbing incidents - one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about.
On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. U.S. troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.
When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. U.S. troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.
There was nothing secret about the Disease Center or the Tuwaitha warehouses. Inspectors had repeatedly visited the center looking for evidence of a biological weapons program. The Tuwaitha warehouses included materials from Iraq's nuclear program, which had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had sealed the materials, and they remained untouched until the U.S. troops arrived.
The looting that I observed was spontaneous. Quite likely the looters had no idea they were stealing deadly biological agents or radioactive materials. As I told Wolfowitz, as long as these sites remained unprotected, their deadly materials could end up with those who knew exactly what they were doing.
This is apparently what happened. According to an International Atomic Energy Agency report issued earlier this month, there was "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program." This includes nearly 380 tons of high explosives suitable for detonating nuclear weapons or killing American troops. Some of the looting continued for many months - possibly into 2004. Using heavy machinery, organized gangs took apart, according to the IAEA, "entire buildings that housed high-precision equipment."
This equipment could be anywhere. But one good bet is Iran, which has had allies and agents in Iraq since shortly after the U.S.-led forces arrived.
This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites.
I supported President George W. Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein. At Wolfowitz's request, I helped advance the case for war, drawing on my work in previous years in documenting Saddam's atrocities, including the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds. In spite of the chaos that followed the war, I am sure that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein.
It is my own country that is worse off - 1,100 dead soldiers, billions added to the deficit and the enmity of much of the world. Someone out there has nuclear bomb-making equipment, and they may not be well disposed toward the United States. Much of this could have been avoided with a competent postwar strategy. But without having planned or provided enough troops, we would be a lot safer if we hadn't gone to war.
Eyewitness to Failure in Iraq
by Peter W. Galbraith for The Boston Globe
In 2003, I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion - the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.
I also described two particularly disturbing incidents - one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about.
On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. U.S. troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.
When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. U.S. troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.
There was nothing secret about the Disease Center or the Tuwaitha warehouses. Inspectors had repeatedly visited the center looking for evidence of a biological weapons program. The Tuwaitha warehouses included materials from Iraq's nuclear program, which had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had sealed the materials, and they remained untouched until the U.S. troops arrived.
The looting that I observed was spontaneous. Quite likely the looters had no idea they were stealing deadly biological agents or radioactive materials. As I told Wolfowitz, as long as these sites remained unprotected, their deadly materials could end up with those who knew exactly what they were doing.
This is apparently what happened. According to an International Atomic Energy Agency report issued earlier this month, there was "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program." This includes nearly 380 tons of high explosives suitable for detonating nuclear weapons or killing American troops. Some of the looting continued for many months - possibly into 2004. Using heavy machinery, organized gangs took apart, according to the IAEA, "entire buildings that housed high-precision equipment."
This equipment could be anywhere. But one good bet is Iran, which has had allies and agents in Iraq since shortly after the U.S.-led forces arrived.
This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites.
I supported President George W. Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein. At Wolfowitz's request, I helped advance the case for war, drawing on my work in previous years in documenting Saddam's atrocities, including the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds. In spite of the chaos that followed the war, I am sure that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein.
It is my own country that is worse off - 1,100 dead soldiers, billions added to the deficit and the enmity of much of the world. Someone out there has nuclear bomb-making equipment, and they may not be well disposed toward the United States. Much of this could have been avoided with a competent postwar strategy. But without having planned or provided enough troops, we would be a lot safer if we hadn't gone to war.
-
Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday, October 29, 2004
Iraqi Deaths Count to 100,000
(China Daily)
A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.
There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. As of Wednesday, 1,081 U.S. servicemen had been killed, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
The scientists who wrote the report concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision," because the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqi, most of them doctors.
Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the study is being published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal.
The survey indicated violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and airstrikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they said.
The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way. The Lancet routinely publishes papers on the Web before they appear in print, particularly if it considers the findings of urgent public health interest.
Those reports then appear later in the print issue of the journal. The journal's spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in and said it was too late to make Friday's issue, and possibly too late for the Nov. 5 edition.
Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him.
"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Asocciated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.
"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."
Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took is a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll.
However, it's possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq, said Peto, a professor of medical statistics at Oxford University in England.
Lancet editor Richard Horton wrote in an editorial accompanying the survey that more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report, "but at an enormous and unacceptable risk to the team of interviewers."
"This remarkable piece of work represents the efforts of a courageous team of scientists," he wrote.
To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate. Each group At each one they asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002.
The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.
Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
The investigators worked in teams of three. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers were doctors and all six were fluent in English and Arabic.
In the households reporting deaths, the person who died had to be living there at the time of the death and for more than two months before to be counted. In an attempt at firmer confirmation, the interviewers asked for death certificates in 78 households and were provided them 63 times.
There were 46 deaths in the surveyed households before the war. After the invasion, there were 142 deaths. That is an increase from 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 12.3 per 1,000 people per year — more than double.
However, more than a third of the post-invasion deaths were reported in one cluster of households in the city Fallujah,
where fighting has been most intense recently. Because the fighting was so severe there, the numbers from that location may have exaggerated the overall picture.
When the researchers recalculated the effect of the war without the statistics from Fallujah, the deaths end up at 7.9 per 1,000 people per year — still 1.5 times higher than before the war.
Even with Fallujah factored out, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher," the report said.
The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces — with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships.
Violent deaths — defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others — were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters. The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.
Twelve of the 73 violent deaths were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children were killed by coalition forces in the survey households. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward.
The researchers estimated the nationwide death toll due to the conflict by subtracting the preinvasion death rate from the post-invasion death rate and multiplying that number by the estimated population of Iraq — 24.4 million at the start of the war. Then that number was converted to a total number of deaths by dividing by 1,000 and adjusting for the 18 months since the invasion.
"We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the postwar period in the 97 percent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Fallujah," the researchers said in the journal.
"This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said.
The researchers called for further confirmation by an independent body such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the World Health Organization.
The study was funded by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins University and by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, a research project based at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
Iraqi deaths count to 100,000 -- survey
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-29 08:10
A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.
A man cries for his slain son while next to a charred civilian vehicle which was blown up when insurgents set off a car bomb targeting a U.S. convoy in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004. The man, whose son was killed six months ago, mourns regularly at the site of new bombings. [AP]
There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. As of Wednesday, 1,081 U.S. servicemen had been killed, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
The scientists who wrote the report concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision," because the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqi, most of them doctors.
Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the study is being published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal.
The survey indicated violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and airstrikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they said.
The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way. The Lancet routinely publishes papers on the Web before they appear in print, particularly if it considers the findings of urgent public health interest.
Those reports then appear later in the print issue of the journal. The journal's spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in and said it was too late to make Friday's issue, and possibly too late for the Nov. 5 edition.
Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him.
"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Asocciated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.
"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."
Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took is a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll.
However, it's possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq, said Peto, a professor of medical statistics at Oxford University in England.
Lancet editor Richard Horton wrote in an editorial accompanying the survey that more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report, "but at an enormous and unacceptable risk to the team of interviewers."
"This remarkable piece of work represents the efforts of a courageous team of scientists," he wrote.
To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate. Each group At each one they asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002.
The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.
Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
The investigators worked in teams of three. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers were doctors and all six were fluent in English and Arabic.
In the households reporting deaths, the person who died had to be living there at the time of the death and for more than two months before to be counted. In an attempt at firmer confirmation, the interviewers asked for death certificates in 78 households and were provided them 63 times.
There were 46 deaths in the surveyed households before the war. After the invasion, there were 142 deaths. That is an increase from 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 12.3 per 1,000 people per year — more than double.
However, more than a third of the post-invasion deaths were reported in one cluster of households in the city Fallujah,
where fighting has been most intense recently. Because the fighting was so severe there, the numbers from that location may have exaggerated the overall picture.
When the researchers recalculated the effect of the war without the statistics from Fallujah, the deaths end up at 7.9 per 1,000 people per year — still 1.5 times higher than before the war.
Even with Fallujah factored out, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher," the report said.
The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces — with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships.
Violent deaths — defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others — were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters. The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.
Twelve of the 73 violent deaths were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children were killed by coalition forces in the survey households. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward.
The researchers estimated the nationwide death toll due to the conflict by subtracting the preinvasion death rate from the post-invasion death rate and multiplying that number by the estimated population of Iraq — 24.4 million at the start of the war. Then that number was converted to a total number of deaths by dividing by 1,000 and adjusting for the 18 months since the invasion.
"We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the postwar period in the 97 percent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Fallujah," the researchers said in the journal.
"This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said.
The researchers called for further confirmation by an independent body such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the World Health Organization.
The study was funded by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins University and by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, a research project based at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
Iraqi Deaths Count to 100,000
(China Daily)
A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.
There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. As of Wednesday, 1,081 U.S. servicemen had been killed, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
The scientists who wrote the report concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision," because the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqi, most of them doctors.
Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the study is being published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal.
The survey indicated violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and airstrikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they said.
The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way. The Lancet routinely publishes papers on the Web before they appear in print, particularly if it considers the findings of urgent public health interest.
Those reports then appear later in the print issue of the journal. The journal's spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in and said it was too late to make Friday's issue, and possibly too late for the Nov. 5 edition.
Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him.
"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Asocciated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.
"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."
Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took is a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll.
However, it's possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq, said Peto, a professor of medical statistics at Oxford University in England.
Lancet editor Richard Horton wrote in an editorial accompanying the survey that more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report, "but at an enormous and unacceptable risk to the team of interviewers."
"This remarkable piece of work represents the efforts of a courageous team of scientists," he wrote.
To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate. Each group At each one they asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002.
The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.
Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
The investigators worked in teams of three. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers were doctors and all six were fluent in English and Arabic.
In the households reporting deaths, the person who died had to be living there at the time of the death and for more than two months before to be counted. In an attempt at firmer confirmation, the interviewers asked for death certificates in 78 households and were provided them 63 times.
There were 46 deaths in the surveyed households before the war. After the invasion, there were 142 deaths. That is an increase from 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 12.3 per 1,000 people per year — more than double.
However, more than a third of the post-invasion deaths were reported in one cluster of households in the city Fallujah,
where fighting has been most intense recently. Because the fighting was so severe there, the numbers from that location may have exaggerated the overall picture.
When the researchers recalculated the effect of the war without the statistics from Fallujah, the deaths end up at 7.9 per 1,000 people per year — still 1.5 times higher than before the war.
Even with Fallujah factored out, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher," the report said.
The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces — with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships.
Violent deaths — defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others — were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters. The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.
Twelve of the 73 violent deaths were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children were killed by coalition forces in the survey households. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward.
The researchers estimated the nationwide death toll due to the conflict by subtracting the preinvasion death rate from the post-invasion death rate and multiplying that number by the estimated population of Iraq — 24.4 million at the start of the war. Then that number was converted to a total number of deaths by dividing by 1,000 and adjusting for the 18 months since the invasion.
"We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the postwar period in the 97 percent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Fallujah," the researchers said in the journal.
"This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said.
The researchers called for further confirmation by an independent body such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the World Health Organization.
The study was funded by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins University and by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, a research project based at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
Iraqi deaths count to 100,000 -- survey
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-29 08:10
A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.
A man cries for his slain son while next to a charred civilian vehicle which was blown up when insurgents set off a car bomb targeting a U.S. convoy in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004. The man, whose son was killed six months ago, mourns regularly at the site of new bombings. [AP]
There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. As of Wednesday, 1,081 U.S. servicemen had been killed, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
The scientists who wrote the report concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision," because the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqi, most of them doctors.
Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the study is being published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal.
The survey indicated violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and airstrikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they said.
The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way. The Lancet routinely publishes papers on the Web before they appear in print, particularly if it considers the findings of urgent public health interest.
Those reports then appear later in the print issue of the journal. The journal's spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in and said it was too late to make Friday's issue, and possibly too late for the Nov. 5 edition.
Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him.
"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Asocciated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.
"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."
Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took is a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll.
However, it's possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq, said Peto, a professor of medical statistics at Oxford University in England.
Lancet editor Richard Horton wrote in an editorial accompanying the survey that more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report, "but at an enormous and unacceptable risk to the team of interviewers."
"This remarkable piece of work represents the efforts of a courageous team of scientists," he wrote.
To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate. Each group At each one they asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002.
The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.
Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
The investigators worked in teams of three. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers were doctors and all six were fluent in English and Arabic.
In the households reporting deaths, the person who died had to be living there at the time of the death and for more than two months before to be counted. In an attempt at firmer confirmation, the interviewers asked for death certificates in 78 households and were provided them 63 times.
There were 46 deaths in the surveyed households before the war. After the invasion, there were 142 deaths. That is an increase from 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 12.3 per 1,000 people per year — more than double.
However, more than a third of the post-invasion deaths were reported in one cluster of households in the city Fallujah,
where fighting has been most intense recently. Because the fighting was so severe there, the numbers from that location may have exaggerated the overall picture.
When the researchers recalculated the effect of the war without the statistics from Fallujah, the deaths end up at 7.9 per 1,000 people per year — still 1.5 times higher than before the war.
Even with Fallujah factored out, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher," the report said.
The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces — with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships.
Violent deaths — defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others — were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters. The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.
Twelve of the 73 violent deaths were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children were killed by coalition forces in the survey households. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward.
The researchers estimated the nationwide death toll due to the conflict by subtracting the preinvasion death rate from the post-invasion death rate and multiplying that number by the estimated population of Iraq — 24.4 million at the start of the war. Then that number was converted to a total number of deaths by dividing by 1,000 and adjusting for the 18 months since the invasion.
"We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the postwar period in the 97 percent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Fallujah," the researchers said in the journal.
"This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said.
The researchers called for further confirmation by an independent body such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the World Health Organization.
The study was funded by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins University and by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, a research project based at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
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Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
goddammit! careful with your cutting-and-pasting, eugene! unless you wanted me to read that twice! 
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Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - ABC News on Thursday showed video that appeared to confirm that explosives that went missing in Iraq did not disappear until after the United States had taken control of the facility where they were stored.
The disappearance of the hundreds of tons of explosives from the Al Qaqaa storage facility has become a hotly contested issue in the US presidential campaign.
Democrat John Kerry said it was an example of President George Bush bungling the Iraq war. Bush countered that Kerry was making wild accusations without knowing the facts.
Vice-President Dick Cheney said it was possible that the explosives had been removed from the site before the US forces arrived there.
ABC said the video was shot by an affiliate TV station embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when members of the division passed through the facility on April 18, nine days after the fall of Baghdad.
ABC said experts who have studied the images say the barrels seen in the video contain the high explosive HMX, and UN markings on the sealed containers were clear.
The barrels were found inside locked bunkers that had been sealed by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war began, ABC reported.
The disappearance of the hundreds of tons of explosives from the Al Qaqaa storage facility has become a hotly contested issue in the US presidential campaign.
Democrat John Kerry said it was an example of President George Bush bungling the Iraq war. Bush countered that Kerry was making wild accusations without knowing the facts.
Vice-President Dick Cheney said it was possible that the explosives had been removed from the site before the US forces arrived there.
ABC said the video was shot by an affiliate TV station embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when members of the division passed through the facility on April 18, nine days after the fall of Baghdad.
ABC said experts who have studied the images say the barrels seen in the video contain the high explosive HMX, and UN markings on the sealed containers were clear.
The barrels were found inside locked bunkers that had been sealed by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war began, ABC reported.
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Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Visitor,
This whole board is overflowing with excellent reasons to vote for Kerry or at least to Bush out of office. But I gotta tell you - even if they read nothing else, anyone who reads this one thread in its entirety and still votes for Bush on Tuesday is seriously sick in the head, not to mention a mortal enemy of mine and a clear and present danger to the United States of America.
How can anyone call themselves a Christian and still support or follow this man? How can anyone call themselves a patriot and still support or follow this man? How can anyone call themselves a decent human being and still support or follow this man?
When I was a child I was told people like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Charles Manson were inexplicably all part of God's plan. That's why he allowed so many human sheep to follow them so blindly. I have accepted that although I have yet to understand it. I'll assume G.W. Bush is the same deal, so I'll accept it. But I may never understand it. And I sure as hell don't have to like it.
I'll just hope that Bush has served whatever purpose God had for him and he will be nothing but a bad aftertaste at the end of January.
This whole board is overflowing with excellent reasons to vote for Kerry or at least to Bush out of office. But I gotta tell you - even if they read nothing else, anyone who reads this one thread in its entirety and still votes for Bush on Tuesday is seriously sick in the head, not to mention a mortal enemy of mine and a clear and present danger to the United States of America.
How can anyone call themselves a Christian and still support or follow this man? How can anyone call themselves a patriot and still support or follow this man? How can anyone call themselves a decent human being and still support or follow this man?
When I was a child I was told people like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Charles Manson were inexplicably all part of God's plan. That's why he allowed so many human sheep to follow them so blindly. I have accepted that although I have yet to understand it. I'll assume G.W. Bush is the same deal, so I'll accept it. But I may never understand it. And I sure as hell don't have to like it.
I'll just hope that Bush has served whatever purpose God had for him and he will be nothing but a bad aftertaste at the end of January.
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Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear "The Vistor"
I second the "Uh What" from the other Vistor..
I don't believe for a second that all the posts left unsigned in the Vistor's Forum are by the same person b/c they aren't all as clever as the Mr. Pryor For President Post
Personally I think a very famous comedian with a National TV show based here in NYC wrote it but for whatever reason, he'd like to remain anonymous so I'm going to respect that and not out him even though I recognize his work
I hope he posts again soon though..he's one funny fucker
Luchia
"Leave the gun. Take the canoli"
I second the "Uh What" from the other Vistor..
I don't believe for a second that all the posts left unsigned in the Vistor's Forum are by the same person b/c they aren't all as clever as the Mr. Pryor For President Post
Personally I think a very famous comedian with a National TV show based here in NYC wrote it but for whatever reason, he'd like to remain anonymous so I'm going to respect that and not out him even though I recognize his work
I hope he posts again soon though..he's one funny fucker
Luchia
"Leave the gun. Take the canoli"
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Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Visitor,
Know what's almost funny? It doesn't feel to me like we're voting for a President on Tuesday. It really feels more like we're all choosing sides in the upcoming Second American Civil War. Well, I hope my guy wins so we'll be the side with the nukes.
Know what's almost funny? It doesn't feel to me like we're voting for a President on Tuesday. It really feels more like we're all choosing sides in the upcoming Second American Civil War. Well, I hope my guy wins so we'll be the side with the nukes.
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Visitor
Re: HOLY JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Visitor,
We chose sides a few years ago. But you're right - this is all about which side gets the military and which side will have to be the Minute Men. Iraq showed us that you can win a guerilla war against our forces, but it would be nice to have the nukes.
Davisitor
We chose sides a few years ago. But you're right - this is all about which side gets the military and which side will have to be the Minute Men. Iraq showed us that you can win a guerilla war against our forces, but it would be nice to have the nukes.
Davisitor
