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Bush, The Great Emancipator, Brings Democracy To Iraq At Cost Of 655,000 Iraqi Lives Says Study - RI10
Bush, The Great
Emancipator, Brings
Democracy To Iraq At Cost
Of 655,000 Iraqi Lives
Says Study - RI10
Tabacco: George W. Bush and his “Diplomacy” have brought a lot more than “democracy” to Iraq. When you compare Bush’s “democracy” to Saddam Hussein’s “torture, genocide & totalitarianism”, Saddam looks more and more like Mother Theresa.
Study: 655,000 Iraqis Die Because of War
Wed Oct 11, 6:09 AM
A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.
The timing of the survey's release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it "politics."
In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.
"Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.
The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal.
An accurate count of Iraqi deaths has been difficult to obtain, but one respected group puts its rough estimate at closer to 50,000. And at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.
"They're almost certainly way too high," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.
"This is not analysis, this is politics," Cordesman said.
The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study _ that one was released just before the November 2004 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate.
Speaking of the new study, Burnham said the estimate was much higher than others because it was derived from a house-to-house survey rather than approaches that depend on body counts or media reports.
A private group called Iraqi Body Count, for example, says it has recorded about 44,000 to 49,000 civilian Iraqi deaths. But it notes that those totals are based on media reports, which it says probably overlook "many if not most civilian casualties."
For Burnham's study, researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.
The survey participants attributed about 31 percent of violent deaths to coalition forces.
Accurate death tolls have been difficult to obtain ever since the Iraq conflict began in March 2003. When top Iraqi political officials cite death numbers, they often refuse to say where the numbers came from.
The Health Ministry, which tallies civilian deaths, relies on reports from government hospitals and morgues. The Interior Ministry compiles its figures from police stations, while the Defense Ministry reports deaths only among army soldiers and insurgents killed in combat.
The United Nations keeps its own count, based largely on reports from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry.
The major funder of the new study was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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On the Net:
The Lancet: http://www.thelancet.com
Iraqi Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
© Copyright 2006 CSC Holdings, Inc.
http://www.optonline.net/News/Article/Feeds?CID=type%3Dxml%26channel%3D32%26article%3D19813113
Study: 655,000 Iraqis Dead Since US-led Invasion
A new medical study says the number of Iraqi deaths since the US-led invasion has reached more than 655,000. The study was carried out by many of the same researchers behind the Johns Hopkins University survey that put the death toll at 100,000 two years ago. Researchers based their findings on interviews with a random sampling of households taken in clusters across Iraq. The newest survey yielded the same estimate of immediate post-invasion deaths as the first one. Attacks from US-led coalition forces accounted for thirty percent of the reported deaths. The actual number of dead could be higher. The 655,000 figure represents an estimate of “excess deaths” – people who wouldn’t have died had the US not invaded.
The study is already coming under criticism. Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic & International Studies said the researchers were playing politics ahead of the November mid-term elections. In response, University of Michigan professor and Middle East scholar Juan Cole wrote: “Is he saying that 18,000 households from all over Iraq conspired to lie to Johns Hopkins University researchers for the purpose of defeating Republicans in US elections this November?”.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/11/1430212
James Baker Considers Carving Up Iraq
In Washington, there are reports that former Secretary of State James Baker will soon recommend that Iraq be carved up into three highly autonomous regions – to create Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni areas. Baker heads the Iraq Study Group, which was set up by Congress.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/09/1358249
Tabacco: So this is what democracy looks like to your President! Bombing, destruction, genocide, partition & reparations – not from us to them, but their oil to us. George W. Bush is well on his way to that 6,000,000 Jews executed figure – and that’s only in Iraq. George has other wars planned after the November elections. So don’t give up hope; he could blow that 6,000,000 figure out of the water before January, 2009.
How long before the Iraqis are willing to make the same deal with the devil the people of Judea made when they said, “Give us Barabbas!”
If the Iraqi people had a choice between you-know-who and Saddam Hussein, those still alive would call out, “Give us Saddam!”
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
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