Toll dwarfed?

A few days ago, lenin had a piece quoting extensively from Anthony Arnove’s article on Tomdispatch drawing a comparison between the treatment of statistics of the tragedy in Darfur and in Iraq. According to Arnove,

Since 2003, according to UN estimates, some 200,000 have been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan in a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign and another 2 million have been turned into refugees.

How would you know this? Well, if you lived in New York City, at least, you could hardly take a subway ride without seeing an ad that reads: "400,000 dead. Millions uniting to save Darfur." The New York Times has also regularly featured full-page ads describing the "genocide" in Darfur and calling for intervention there under "a chain of command allowing necessary and timely military action without approval from distant political or civilian personnel."… celebrities on Good Morning America talking about their commitment to stopping "genocide" in Iraq.

The point of this post is not, however to discuss the reasons for the discrepancy between all the noise about Darfur and the silence about Iraq. Apart from those two articles, Arnove cites ‘The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency’ by Mahmood Mamdani in the latest London review of books. In a later piece, lenin returns to the theme, citing Ed Herman’s recent article on the ‘“Worthy-Genocide” Establishment’.

One of the ironies is that the emphasis on the Darfur crisis is not related to its scale. While the latest UN assessment, cited by Arnove, claims ‘More than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2 million others forced from their homes since 2003’, estimates of Iraqi deaths and displacement are much higher. According to the latest information on their website,

UNHCR estimates there are some 1.9 million Iraqis displaced internally, and up to 2 million in neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan...in 2006 Iraqis had become the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe…By early 2007, internal displacement was estimated to be continuing at a rate of up to 50,000 a month.

In other words, the US occupation of Iraq has displaced nearly twice as many people as the situation in Darfur, universally condemned as genocide. In another cruel irony that I’ve covered before, the US has only accepted as refugees 466 of the two million Iraqis it drove from their country.

What really prompted this post is that while Arnove and others continue to cite the Johns Hopkins study estimate of 655,000 excess deaths published in the Lancet last October, Information Clearinghouse posted an article entitled ‘Deaths In Iraq Have Reached 1 Million’, dated 22 March. Attributed to an ‘Alan Jones’ but not linked to any source, it starts out by claiming,

THE number of deaths in Iraq since the start of the conflict could be as high as one million, it was claimed yesterday.

On the fourth anniversary of the invasion by Allied troops, an Australian scientist insisted the true death toll dwarfed previous estimates.

Dr Gideon Polya said: "Using the most comprehensive and authoritative literature and UN demographic data yields an estimate of one million post-invasion excess deaths in Iraq."

The article does in fact link to Dr Polya’s Global Avoidable Mortality blog, where the most recent post, dated 16 May 2006, relates to Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

In reality, the ICH article appears to relate not to anything published on 21 March, but to Dr Polya's 1 March editorial on his Media With Conscience site. He actually presents the same analysis in a 7 February Countercurrents article.

In the 7 February article, Polya writes, ‘the post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.0 million (ONE MILLION)’. This is his reasoning,

Consider the following estimate from the Johns Hopkins medical scientists of "annual death rate per 1,000 of population" of 13.3 (post-invasion Iraq) as compared to (a) 5.5 (for pre-invasion Iraq after 12 years of crippling Sanctions) and (b) 4.0 (for Iraq's resource-poor but peaceful neighbours Syria and Jordan; UN Population Division data: http://esa.un.org/unpp/).

The "post-invasion excess death rate/1000 of population" was 13.3 - 5.5 = 7.8 (Comparison A) or 13.3 - 4.0 = 9.3 (Comparison B). Assuming an average population of 27 million, the "post-invasion excess deaths" total (over 4 years i.e. as of February 2007) (A) 7.8 x 2,700 x 4 = 842,000 and (B) 9.3 x 2,700 x 4 = 1,004,400 i.e. ONE MILLION.

In other words, the estimate of one million is arrived at by multiplying the difference between the Johns Hopkins study’s estimate of deaths per 1000 in Iraq over the 40 months to July 2006 and the UN estimate of deaths per 1000 population in Syria and Jordan at an unspecified date. Note that the link he provides is to a database that provides population projections. There probably are UN crude mortality rate (CMR) data for Syria and Jordan available, but not at any of the URLs he cites in either the MWC or the Countercurrents articles.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s not really outrageous to compare the post invasion Iraqi crude mortality rate with the rate for a neighbouring country. The rationale is that preinvasion mortality in Iraq was already inflated by the twelve years of sanctions. But by using the Syrian data as the benchmark, Polya is effectively factoring in the sanctions’ effects rather than isolating the effects of the invasion and occupation. Apart from that, there may be any number of other factors that might render the mortality rate in Syria or Jordan not comparable with that in Iraq. Perhaps more importantly, there is no possibility of the mainstream media treating a comparison like this seriously. So the relevant estimate is really his ‘Comparison A’, which, based on the Lancet study’s estimate of crude death rates in Iraq before and after the invasion, arrives at a figure of 842,000 (not 1 million!) for the four years to March 2007.

I’ve made attempts to update the Lancet estimate before, but the Lancet data are now eight months old and we know the slaughter has proceeded, by all accounts at an accelerating pace, we need some new estimates. The report of Polya’s estimate has prompted me to take it a little further. This is not to cast aspersions on Polya’s method, but I have adopted a different approach.

The Lancet estimates published last October cover the period March 2003 through June 2006. The estimated average monthly crude death rate for the fourteen months through April 2004 was 7,017. For the thirteen months from May 2004 to May 2005, the average was 15,115 per month, and for the last thirteen months June 2005 to June 2006, 27,710.

The method I am using is to assume that the Lancet estimates are correct as a starting point and increment them for the eight months since July 2006 based on monthly averages. I have calculated projections using three assumptions. As I am not actually weighting new data, but just projecting from the July 2006 data on the basis of some assumptions about the probable average monthly rate of increase, I will round the figures to the nearest thousand.

First, if we assume that the monthly rate of deaths over the last eight months was equivalent to the average of the forty months from March 2003 to July 2006, 16,373 per month, the current toll would stand at about 786,000. I regard this as highly improbable, as it would mean that the average monthly crude death rate had decreased by 41% from the 2005-2006 average.

Second, if we assume that the monthly rate has remained at the average for the 2005-2006 period, the total would now come to 877,000.

Third, if we assume that the current average monthly crude death rate has increased proportionally by as much over the 2005-2006 average as that average increased over the previous thirteen month period, by about 83%, the monthly average would now be 50,801 and the total to date, 1,061,000.

Bear in mind that these are based on statistical estimates each of which represents the approximate midpoint of a range of values. Principally because the size of the sample in the Johns Hopkins study, the confidence interval is wide. The claim the authors, Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, made was that they were 95% confident that the true number of excess deaths in July was between 393,000 and 943,000. Using the same confidence interval proportionally, in the first and least likely scenario, where the monthly rate had decreased, we would be talking about a range of 472,000 to 1,131,000. In the second scenario, where the rate had remained constant from last year, it would be between 526,000 and 1,262,000. Finally, if the average monthly crude death rate has increased as much as it did between 2004-05 and 2005-06, the range is 637,000 to 1,528,000.

The following table may clarify the results.

		Estimate	95% Confidence interval
			Minimum	Maximum
Lancet estimate to 2006 07		654,965	392,979	942,636
Polya’s estimate	Iraq baseline	842,000	n/a	n/a
	Syria baseline	1,004,400	n/a	n/a
My projection assuming increase at:	Per month
A. 2003-2006 average rate	16,373	786,000	472,000	1,131,000
B. 2005-2006 average rate	27,710	877,000	526,000*	1,262,000
C. 83% above B.	50,801	1,061,000**	637,000	1,528,000

* The true death toll is almost certainly more than 526,000.

** The probable death toll is 1,061,000.

From all reports, the rate of increase has been increasing itself, so even these highest projections are likely to be on the low side. Conservatively speaking, I think you could claim with nearly 100% confidence that the crude mortality rate over the last eight months has certainly not decreased from the average of the previous thirteen month period and that the US invasion and occupation has cost at least 525,000 Iraqi lives over the last four years. If, as seems probable, the CMR has in fact increased since last July, the figure is very likely to be over a million and could exceed a million and a half.

The central point is that, horrific though the situation is in Darfur, estimates based on similar methods demonstrate that it is in fact much much worse in Iraq, where the US, UK, and Australian governments bear direct responsibility for the catastrophe.

An ancillary point is how we use these statistics. At the top of the daily ICH email and the ICH site it asserts, ‘Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War On Iraq - At Least 655,000 + +’. I thought that the Johns Hopkins University team did good work under dangerous conditions and have done the peace movement a big favour by publishing their results in the prestigious and impeccable Lancet journal. Sorry to split hairs, if that’s what it is, but I think it would be fair to treat their findings as if we believed what they said.

What they actually found was that there were 654,965 excess deaths in Iraq over the 40 months to July 2006. Specifically, they were 95% certain that the number of people who had died since the 20 March 2003 invasion who would not have died otherwise, was in the range 392,979 to 942,636. As I have pointed out before, Burnham et al. do not say that at least 655,000 civilians were slaughtered.

For one thing, if there is an ‘at least figure, it is not 654,965, but 392,979. For another, the Johns Hopkins study is absolutely explicit that, ‘Separation of combatant from non-combatant deaths during interviews was not attempted…’ So their research provides no basis for any claim specifically about ‘civilians’. Finally, these estimates are for deaths from all causes. The relevant estimate of specifically violent deaths to July 2006 is 601,027 (i.e. in the range 426,369–793,663). Presumably, that would be the number slaughtered.

It’s not as if the Lancet study’s findings were not sensational enough. There’s no need to distort them as ICH continues to do, much less to headline Polya’s 1 million figure, which explicitly includes sanctions effects with the invasion and occupation.

In my view, the safest, most responsible approach remains to be to cite ‘the July 2006 estimate of about 655,000’. Alternatively, as Eli Stephens of Left I on the news points out, the confidence that the true figure is above 393,979 is nearly 98%, so it would be even more accurate to assert that the invasion and occupation of Iraq killed ‘at least 394,000’ by July 2006. However, I am fairly comfortable that my projections provide a sound basis for asserting that the current death toll definitely exceeds half a million, is probably much higher, and possibly three times that number.

Democrats’ 'values and deepest principles'

George Lakoff had an op-ed in yesterday’s NY Times where he analyses how the slogan ‘staying the course’ provides a useful frame for Bush’s propaganda campaign:

“Stay the course” is a particularly powerful metaphor because it can activate so many of our emotions…Because achieving goals so often requires going to a particular place…we think of goals as reaching destinations.

Another widespread — and powerful — metaphor is that moral action involves staying on a prescribed path, and straying from the path is immoral...

In the context of a metaphorical war against evil, “stay the course” evoked all these emotion-laden metaphors. The phrase enabled the president to act the way he’d been acting — and to demonstrate that it was his strong character that enabled him to stay on the moral path.

In this context, he offers Bush some sound advice:

The first rule of using negatives is that negating a frame activates the frame. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, he’ll [sic] think of an elephant…

To not stay the course evokes the same metaphors, but says you are not steadfast, not morally strong. In addition, it means not getting to your destination — that is, not achieving your original purpose. In other words, you are lacking in character and strength; you are unable to “complete the mission” and “achieve the goal.”

If the Democrats do well in next month’s election, he reckons,

…it will be because of Republican missteps and not because they’ve acted with strategic brilliance. Their “new direction” slogan offers no values and no positive vision…

This is a shame. The Democrats are giving up a golden opportunity to accurately frame their values and deepest principles (even on national security)…

I immediately sent the op-ed around to a few people thinking what a joke – Lakoff still thinks the Democrats have values, principles, and vision. Obviously the closest they come to having vision is an illusion of more of them sitting in Congress, and maybe one of them in the White House.

But then I came across this exclusive interview with former First Lady Hillary Clinton, linked from the invaluable Information Clearing House, where she articulates the Democrats’ elusive deepest principles.

In the true spirit of the Democrats’ name, Clinton reckons January’s PA elections weren’t sufficiently democratic. You might think that’s because elections, insofar as they are ever meaningful under any circumstances, are completely meaningless under military occupation. But in Clinton’s view,

…we should have made sure we did something to determine who was going to win …

On the occupation of Iraq,

I think my position differs with the administration largely with respect to the execution and implementation of the policy, which I think has been a terrible series of blunders.

Blunders like massacring 655,000 and disabling nobody can even speculate how many, not to mention the estimated 1.6 million forced into exile? Blunders like imagining that Iraqis are stupid enough to think an occupying army can impose democracy? Or that the primary US objective in invading Iraq is something other than to secure unchallenged control over the planet’s second largest known reserves of petroleum? No, actually,

…I don't know why they wouldn't put in more troops…

As for the sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government,

We haven't told the Iraqi government, "You've got to deal with the unfinished business, and we're going to push you to do it and we're going to help you do it, but we're not going to stand by and have you ignore doing it."

Sometimes you forget that in American political discourse ‘democracy’ has nothing to do with people making their own decisions - democracy means ‘elections’, and not just any elections, but only those where ‘we’ ‘determine who was going to win’. And of course, once ‘our’ favoured candidates take ‘power’, they must stick closely to ‘our’ agenda, or risk being branded ‘a failed state’.

When asked about the ‘war on terror’, Hillary opines,

…we must do everything possible to prevent any of them – Iran, Al Qaeda and the like – from getting nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction. That's the ballgame.

After all, it wouldn’t be fair to send ‘our boys’ and girls up against an enemy that wasn’t entirely defenseless. This is a true game of hardball, where the balls explode on contact, demolish buildings and infrastructure, and penetrate human flesh. In this ballgame, ‘we’ make the rules and the first rule is, whoever makes the rules doesn’t have to play by them.

While on the subject of the 655,000 dead, on the 19^th, I put a comment up on ICH in response to ‘The Science of Counting the Dead’, by Rebecca Goldin Ph.D:

There are actually two methodological issues with the survey that I've noticed.

One is that the authors define a household as ‘a unit that ate together, and had a separate entrance from the street or a separate apartment entrance', but do not indicate whether or how it was determined whether the group ate together, much less why this would be relevant. While this oversight is annoying, it is common to nearly all surveys conducted by national statistical agencies in peacetime and doesn't impact a great deal on estimates.

Related to this is the failure to determine who comprises the 'unit' with respect to visitors and persons temporarily absent, except that 'Deaths were recorded only if the decedent had lived in the household continuously for 3 months before the event.'

The other issue relates to the clusters. The authors have compensated in part for their implementation effectively of a 'skip' of one. That is, the forty households in each cluster were adjacent. Ordinarily, you would sample, say, every seventh dwelling in the selected block. However, instead of including EVERY next household in the sample, 'Empty houses or those that refused to participate were passed over until 40 households had been interviewed in all locations.' In principle, this distorts the sample, but it was clearly necessary to skip the refusals for the safety of the interviewing teams. Obviously data were not available from uninhabited dwellings, but by excluding them from the sample, we miss out on data that would probably directly impact on the estimates. People leave houses empty for all kinds of reasons, but in the context of Iraq, it is plausible that the dwellings were empty either because the residents were dead or had fled. So, impressionistically, this introduces bias that would result in a LOWER estimate.

The main issues remain:

- the methods deployed in this study are absolutely standard and are not controversial at all when applied outside Iraq

- they are not significantly worse than the methods used by professional, official statisticians in countries at peace

- the total population of Iraq is in doubt and this does impact on the calculation of the weights by which the actual observations are multiplied, but this is the case wherever there are not robust systems for recording births and deaths, which means most of the world, and statistics from, for example, Pakistan, are not treated as controversial

- it is important to remember that in statistics, an 'estimate' is not just a guess - it is calculated by multiplying the number of actual observations by the weights, i.e. the proportion of the population represented by the sample

- finally, the nature of the 'margin of error' is that the estimate at the centre of the range is JUST as likely to be low as to be high. It is NOT more likely that the true number of deaths is 392,979 than 942,636. In other words, there could just as easily have been nearly 1 million excess deaths as under 400,000. The probability of a toll along the lines of the Iraq Body Count of under 50,000 is vanishingly small - nearly impossible.

I actually have a little beef with ICH about this. The very first line at the top of the ICH home page proclaims: ‘Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War? At Least 655,000’ [my emphasis]

Now, Tom knows as well as I do that the Lancet report that provided the estimate of 654,965 makes no such claim. The authors are quite explicit that, ‘Separation of combatant from non-combatant deaths during interviews was not attempted, since such information would probably be concealed by household informants, and to ask about this could put interviewers at risk… some were probably combatants…’.

Second, the estimate is the midpoint of a range. The study claims that the analysis provides 95% confidence that the actual number of people who have died since the invasion who would otherwise not have died is between 392,979 and 942,636. Although as the margin of error narrows, confidence decreases, it is still probable that the actual number is near the middle of the range. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, it is decidedly not more probable that the actual number is nearer the low end of the range than the high end. Or vice versa. Therefore, to write that the number is ‘at least 655,000’ suggests a belief that the authors are wrong to assert that it could be as low as 392,979.

Curiously, in the daily email of ICH headlines, I read, ‘Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War? As Many As 655,000’ [my emphasis], suggesting that the Lancet report’s authors are wrong to think that the actual number of excess deaths could be as high as 942,636.

I’ve written to Tom a couple of times to point out the contradiction between the two assertions, as well as that both formulations actually distort the study’s findings, but he has declined either to refute my argument to make the necessary adjustments. So I guess the time has come to go public.

Bearing in mind that the study was conducted between May and July and many more have died since then, the number of persons killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is probably at least 393,979 and as many as 942,636. And whatever the actual number may be, that is exactly the number more than it ought to be.