|
It
seems that Iraq has reached a point of genocide and ethnic cleansing
approaching the Balkans and Cambodia. The killings of young people in
particular are evidence that future soldiers are being killed. Within the
context of the Abrahamic traditions, this approaches an Armageddon environment,
and should not be underestimated in the hearts and minds of all, including
those ‘warrior Christians’ urging it on. This is by far
the greater scandal, not another sex scandal in Washington. KwC At least 75 bodies found in Baghdad since Monday:
“Iraq’s immigration
minister, Abdul-Samad Sultan, said that more than 300,000 Iraqis had fled their homes since the American-led
invasion in 2003, The Associated Press reported. Half of them left after the
February bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra set off cascades of
sectarian violence. He estimated
that about 890,000 Iraqis have moved to Jordan, Iran and
Syria since 2003, after the American-led invasion toppled the government of Saddam
Hussein, whose trial on genocide charges continued.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/world/middleeast/11iraqcnd.html Hundreds of corpses dumped into the Tigris
River: Local police in the nearby town of Swaira
say that since
January 2005 they
have collected 339 bodies of men, women and children from the filters. It's
considered one of the highest numbers of corpses found in a single location in
Iraq since the US invasion in 2003. "Every day, we find bodies in the
river," an official at the Swaira police force's crime department told ABC
News. "Most of them are of Iraqis living in the bloody areas to the south
of Baghdad." Most of the corpses are young people who have been shot and then hacked to pieces, according to
the head of the Swaira police force, who asked that his name not be printed.
"Swaira County is in the southern death triangle of Baghdad," the
police force head noted. http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCoverage/story?id=2539854&page=1 MIT Study Claims Iraq's
'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 By David Brown, Washington Post
Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 11, 2006; A12 A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have
died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died
if the invasion had not occurred. The estimate, produced by interviewing
residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far
higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government. It is more than 20
times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a
speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000
civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group. The surveyors said
they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper
rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as
reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year
ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four
times what it was the year before the war. Of the total 655,000
estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes,
according to the study. This
is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country. The survey was done by
Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of
Public Health.
The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal
the Lancet. The same group in 2004
published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the
invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The
new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military,
have died since then -- a finding likely to be equally controversial. Both this and the
earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific
methods. The technique, called "cluster sampling," is used to estimate mortality in famines and after
natural disasters. While acknowledging
that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is sound for numerous
reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion
deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the
methods. The
great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates. "We're very
confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins
physician and epidemiologist. A Defense Department
spokesman did not comment directly on the estimate. "The Department of
Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere
else," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "The coalition takes enormous
precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries." He added that "it
would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the number of civilian
deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity. The Iraqi Ministry of Health
would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more
accurate information on deaths in Iraq." Ronald Waldman, an
epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and
true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we
have." This viewed was echoed
by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said,
"We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the
survey. "I expect that people will be surprised by these figures,"
she said. "I think it is very important that, rather than questioning
them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of
Iraq." The survey was
conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi physicians organized
through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They visited 1,849 randomly
selected households that had an average of seven members each. One person in
each household was asked about deaths in the 14 months before the invasion and
in the period after. The interviewers asked
for death certificates 87% of the time; when they did, more than 90% of
households produced certificates. According to the
survey results, Iraq's mortality rate in the year before the invasion was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people; in the post-invasion period it was 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The difference between these rates was
used to calculate "excess deaths." Of the 629 deaths
reported, 87% occurred after the invasion. A little more than 75% of the dead
were men, with a greater male preponderance after the invasion. For violent post-invasion deaths, the
male-to-female ratio was 10-to-1, with
most victims between 15 and 44 years old. Gunshot wounds caused
56% of violent deaths, with car bombs and other explosions causing 14%,
according to the survey results. Of the violent deaths that occurred after the
invasion, 31% were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes, the respondents
said. Burnham said that the
estimate of Iraq's pre-invasion death rate -- 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people --
found in both of the Hopkins surveys was roughly the same estimate used by the
CIA and the U.S. Census Bureau. He said he believes that attests to the
accuracy of his team's results. He thinks further evidence of the survey's
robustness is that the steepness of the upward trend it found in excess deaths
in the last two years is roughly the same tendency found by other groups --
even though the actual numbers differ greatly. An independent group
of researchers and biostatisticians based in England produces the Iraq Body
Count. It estimates that there have been 44,000 to 49,000 civilian deaths since
the invasion. An Iraqi nongovernmental organization estimated 128,000 deaths
between the invasion and July 2005. The survey cost about
$50,000 and was paid for by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for
International Studies. Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html |
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
