What U.S. media largely ignored: How many Iraqis were killed – 1.2 Million

The Iraq War was sold to Americans in part as an intervention that would benefit Iraqis, "liberating" them from the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein. In retrospect, after no weapons of mass destruction were found and the alleged links to Al-Qaeda were debunked, this supposed humanitarian mission became the central justification for the invasion. Today, it is a major pillar of what support remains among the U.S. public for continuing the occupation was what FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, opined when President Obama declared Tuesday 31 August that War in Iraq was over.

FAIR, an independent Think Tank which scrutinizes the US media said: If Americans are to make informed judgments not only about the invasion of Iraq and whether the occupation should continue, but also about future wars our government may wish to start, then we need to have good information about the war's impact on Iraqis.

By the time President Obama declared the end of the war there was no democracy in Iraq, leave aside extending democracy to the entire Middle East region, no stable government since the election sex months ago and no ‘women’s rights’ in sight. 4,400 US Marines had to sacrifice their lives and more than 30,000 severely injured families of Men and Women in Uniform shattered.

But the major U.S. press rarely considers a most basic measure of that impact: how many Iraqis have been killed. When they do mention the toll, they consistently ignore or malign two major statistical studies, the first conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet (10/11/06), and the other released by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (9-2007). Both indicate that over a million Iraqis have now been killed. Yet, FAIR states, an Associated Press poll in February (2/24/07) that asked Americans how many Iraqis have died received a median response of less than 10,000.

The Johns Hopkins study estimated that, as of July 2006, 655,000 Iraqis had been killed, about 600,000 of them violently and at least 30 percent directly by coalition forces. It updated an earlier study (Lancet, 10/29/04) that estimated that 100,000 Iraqis had died during the first year of the war.

The Asian Tribune came across an extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins estimate of violent deaths done by Just Foreign Policy (9/18/07) currently stands at over 1.1 million.

Just Foreign Policy is an independent and non-partisan membership organization dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy by mobilizing and organizing the broad majority of Americans who want a foreign policy based on diplomacy, law and cooperation.

Although Just Foreign Policy will focus exclusively on foreign policy, it appeals directly to Americans for whom foreign policy is not a primary concern.
This foreign policy organization has seen through the Iraq war that unnecessary military actions can undermine civil liberties and democracy at home, and can be used to remove pressing domestic issues like the economy from the political agenda to the detriment of the great majority.

Just Foreign Policy states eventually the United States must move towards a more multilateral approach to foreign relations—one that relies less on raw U.S. military and economic power and more on international law and treaties, co-operation, and diplomacy.

The media's neglect of the above noted statistical studies is particularly striking when contrasted with their regular citation of similar studies whose results do not reflect badly on U.S. military policy. The Johns Hopkins studies employ the method accepted around the world to measure birth and death rates in the wake of natural and man-made disasters: a cluster survey. It is the same method that was used to estimate that 200,000 have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region (Science, 9/15/06). Yet, while the Darfur figure has been cited over 1,000 times by major U.S. press outlets the estimate for Iraq is ignored.

FAIR states: The different treatment of death estimates in Darfur and Iraq reveals a pervasive bias in the U.S. media. Journalists question or outright ignore studies that reveal the humanitarian costs of U.S. military policy, while those estimates that reflect badly on official enemies, as in Darfur, take on the solidity of undisputed fact.

The same pattern emerged again in September 2007 when a respected British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), released a poll finding that 1.2 million Iraqis had been killed violently since the U.S. invasion. Given this poll's close agreement with Just Foreign Policy's extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins study (the Just Foreign Policy estimate is well within the margin of error of the ORB estimate), this provides compelling evidence that more than a million Iraqis have died. At least the possibility deserves to be reported and to be included when journalists give ranges of the estimates of Iraqi deaths.

The Asian Tribune now turns to the Iraqi death estimate released by the Just Foreign Policy (justforeignpolicy.org) which is at 1.2 million.

Just Foreign Policy says “The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.”

Since researchers at Johns Hopkins estimated that 601,000 violent Iraqi deaths were attributable to the U.S.-led invasion as of July 2006, it necessarily does not include Iraqis who have been killed since then. Just Foreign Policy updates this number both to provide a more relevant day-to-day estimate of the Iraqi dead and to emphasize that the human tragedy mounts each day this brutal war continues.
Just Foreign Policy states that this daily estimate is a rough estimate. It is not scientific; for that, another study must be conducted. However, absent such a study, this constitutes a best estimate of violent Iraqi deaths that is certainly more reliable than widely cited numbers that, often for political reasons, ignore the findings of scientifically sound demographic studies.

In September 2007, a new scientific poll of Iraqis confirmed that the number dead is likely to be over a million. The prestigious British polling firm, Opinion Research Business, estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis had been killed violently since the U.S. invasion.

Iraq is in a state of extreme upheaval that makes it very difficult to record deaths. The occupiers and the central government they established do not control much of the country. The occupying forces have made it clear that they “do not do body counts.” The Iraqi government releases regular estimates of deaths in the country, but these are unreliable. In early 2006, the Iraqi Minister of Health publicly estimated between 40,000 and 50,000 violent Iraqi deaths since the invasion. In October 2006, the same week a study was published in the Lancet estimating 600,000 deaths, the Minister tripled his estimate, saying there had been 150,000 deaths. Can this be anything but political?

The media in any country only detect a fraction of all violent deaths. In Iraq, the media is limited to shrinking zones of safe passage. While press reports of violence in Iraq are important and often heroically obtained, they cannot provide a complete picture of all deaths in that war-torn country.

In a country such as Iraq, where sufficient reporting mechanisms do not exist, there is a scientifically accepted way to measure demographics including death rate: a cluster survey. Cluster surveys provide reliable demographic information the wake of natural disasters, wars and famines. Cluster surveys give us the data about deaths in Darfur, accepted for example by the U.S. government as one basis for its charge of genocide. They are used by U.N. agencies charged with disaster and famine relief.

In Iraq, there have been two scientifically rigorous cluster surveys conducted since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The first, published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, estimated that 100,000 excess Iraqi deaths had resulted from the invasion as of September 2004. The second survey, also published in The Lancet, updated that estimate through July 2006. Due to an escalating mortality rate, the researchers estimated that over 650,000 Iraqis had died who would not have died had the death rate remained at pre-invasion levels. Roughly 601,000 of those excess deaths were due to violence.

As with all statistical methods, the Lancet surveys come with a margin of error, as do opinion polls, for example. In the second survey, the researchers were 95 percent certain that there were between 426,000 and 794,000 excess violent deaths from March 2003 to July 2006. 601,000 is the most likely number of excess violent deaths. It is this number that Just Foreign Policy Estimator updated.

As of September 2007, a poll from the British polling firm Opinion Research Business contributed to Just Foreign Policy understanding of the Iraqi death toll, confirming the likelihood that over a million have died with an estimate of 1.2 million deaths.

-Asian Tribune-