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Another
note on the disbelief over the Lancet report (funded by MIT) that there have
been 655,000 ‘excess’ deaths in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam is that what
we are accustomed to reading about on a daily or weekly basis is produced by
the media, and the media have relatively few reporters roaming freely in Iraq
outside the safety of the Green Zone in Baghdad, who might actually investigate
rather than regurgitate data. Daniel
Davies at Crooked Timber provides
further explanation why common perception is at variance with death
certificates in the Lancet survey: 2. When someone dies, you get a death
certificate from the hospital, morgue or coroner, in your hand. This bit of the
death infrastructure is still working in Iraq. Then the person who issued the
death certificate is meant to send a copy to the central government records
office where they collate them, tabulate them and collect the overall mortality
statistics. This bit of the death infrastructure is not still working
in Iraq. (It was never great before the war, broke down entirely during
the year after the invasion when there was no government to send them to and
has never really recovered; statistics agencies are often bottom of the queue
after essential infrastructure, law and order and electricity). Therefore, there is no inconsistency between
the fact that 92% of people with a dead relative could produce the certificate
when asked, and the fact that Iraq has no remotely reliable mortality
statistics and quite likely undercounts the rate of violent death by a factor
of ten. http://crookedtimber.org/2006/10/12/death-rates-and-death-certificates/ Finally,
it hasn’t been a big media story in the US but there has been a significant refugee
exodus from Iraq, as would be expected when civil war and violence against
civilians reaches the level of ethnic cleansing. The AP and Reuters reported earlier
that at least 250,000 had fled, mostly into Jordan and Syria, but since then reported
much higher. It rose sharply after the bombing of the mosque in Samarra in
February. 092806: “The
registered refugee figures showed 40,000 families -- 240,000 people -- claiming assistance, up from 27,000 families
in July. The figures do not include an uncounted number of Iraqis who have
moved home without claiming aid.” http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=1438192006 101106: Over 1,000 Iraqis a day flee: According the
UN’s Under Secretary General Jan Egeland, “Between 1.2 and 1.5 million Iraqis were sheltering in neighbouring
states, with some 2,000 crossing into Syria each day, Egeland said. He told a news conference that sectarian violence and military
operations had forced over 315,000 to
flee their homes in the past eight months. Many
of those who were fleeing were highly educated people, such as doctors, leaving
the country facing a considerable brain drain, Egeland said. "Some
estimates are that universities and hospitals had a loss of up to 80 percent of
their professional staff. A third or more of Iraqi professionals have also left the
country," he
said.” http://uk.news.yahoo.com/11102006/325/violence-forces-1-000-iraqis-day-flee-homes-u-n.html |
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