donc

Here is the Authors reply, I provided the entire article because Lancet requires registration to access there website. Here is a link if you want to join. Also if anyone wants some wingnut books, go to Amazon, and type in the name of the National Journal authors of that article.

Elsevier

The Lancet 2007; 369:103-104
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60063-4
Correspondence
Mortality in Iraq – Authors' reply
Johan von Schreeb and colleagues point out that our interviewed households were only visited once. This is true, but past efforts at repeat interviewing in Iraq, Liberia, and Zaire have yielded more deaths on a second interview.1–3
The deaths that were not confirmed by a certificate were too few to do any meaningful trend analysis. The higher proportion of death certificate confirmations in our second study might reflect the re-establishment of issuance procedures in recent years. In the 2004 data (but not in the 2006 data), the period most associated with no death certificates was the weeks following the invasion, and this period constituted a smaller fraction of all deaths in the second study.
The observation that the non-violent death rate among those younger than 15 years is lower than in 2004 (4·8 per 1000 per year) and strikingly lower than during a period of sanctions a decade earlier is interesting but ignores the fact that this rate is similar to those reported by the UN for 2004 in Syria and Kuwait.4 We openly acknowledge in the Discussion section of the paper that under-reporting of deaths might have occurred. In a stable and functioning environment where death certificates are universally completed and fully accessible, the method von Schreeb and colleagues suggest would be an excellent check on under-reporting from survey or census results.
Prabhat Jha and colleagues and Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks express concern about the number of clusters. The confidence intervals presented in the paper were calculated with robust standard errors that account for cluster sampling. Virtually all clusters experienced violent deaths (figure) and if only visiting 47 randomly selected areas missed significant areas, this can only mean that our estimate is too low.
Our criteria for a household death included the decedent residing with the interviewed families continuously for the 3 months before their death. We suspect that this definition would have excluded deaths rather than including deaths from other households as Jha and colleagues suggest. The death certificate documentation was high before and after the invasion period and it is not plausible that people would have fabricated death certificates after hearing about our study because (a) most small cities and villages were only visited for one day, and (b) the interviewing began just minutes after the selection of a specific location. In order for this mass falsification to happen, millions of Iraqis would have needed to fabricate death certificates, and their motive to do so is not clear.
In both this survey and the 2004 survey, the proportion of the entire population surveyed was so small that a capture-recapture analysis is not possible. We agree that revisiting households with different interviewers would be ideal but security concerns made this seem imprudent.
Although, as Ricks states, two governorates were not sampled, rates calculated were applied against the population of Iraq minus the population of these governorates, or 26·1 million.
If neighbourhoods selected also included residential streets that did not cross main streets, these additional streets were also included in the random sampling process. The results of this current survey closely paralleled those from the 2004 survey which selected start houses by global positioning system (GPS) methods, suggesting that random selection of start households used in this study did not introduce a measurable systematic bias. Selecting the house with the nearest front door is a standard field method, and the author supervising field work ensured this approach was consistently followed. Sampling in each cluster involved two teams working together. With this arrangement, sampling 40 households in a day was indeed feasible.
The Iraq Living Conditions survey was carried out after barely a year of conflict by government employees who did interviews that took 82 min on average.1 The survey included 2200 clusters to provide development information by governorate. Only one question was asked about deaths, and one of the senior researchers in that study has stated that he knows his estimate was an underestimate.1 He knows this because the baseline non-violent death rate measured was implausibly low and because revisits to ask about mortality in those younger than 5 years in a sample of the same houses after survey completion found about 50% more deaths than initially reported.
Josh Dougherty and Debarati Guha-Sapir and colleagues all point out that figure 4 of our report mixes rates and counts, creating a confusing image. We find this criticism valid and accept this as an error on our part. Moreover, Dougherty rightly points out that the data in the US Department of Defense source were casualties, not deaths alone. We regret this labelling error. But the graph presented by Guha-Sapir and colleagues uses a scale that masks the fact that there are roughly three times as many deaths reported by Iraq Body Count in recent months than during the same post-invasion months of 2003. We had wanted to show that the three sources all similarly pointed to an escalating conflict, but neither graph shows that well, and we regret the confusion that this created.
Among the comments by Guha-Sapir and colleagues, we do not see the inconsistency they describe. First, by looking at mortality data from the Democratic Republic of Congo collected more than a year after the main conflict was resolved and the warring armies returned home, they conclude that the ratio of indirect excess deaths to violent deaths seems low in Iraq. We feel a better comparison would be to the data collected during that war which showed that 1·8% of the 19·9 million people in the eastern part of the country died of violence in the first 33 months of the conflict, a proportion similar to that measured in Iraq.5
It is believed that the population in Iraq is not as susceptible to death from malnutrition and disease as that in Darfur. Wars occurring in countries with widespread access to high-power weaponry, such as Kosovo and Bosnia and where violence accounted for most excess wartime deaths, are more fitting comparisons.
We declare that we have no conflict of interest.
References
1. UN Development Programme. Iraq living conditions survey 2004
http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm
(accessed Nov 29, 2006)..
2. Becker SR, Diop F, Thornton JN. Infant and child mortality in two counties of Liberia: results of a survey in 1988 and trends since 1984. Int J Epidemiol 1993; 22: S56-S63.
3. Taylor WR, Chahnazarian A, Weinman J, et al. Mortality and use of health services surveys in rural Zaire. Int J Epidemiol 1993; 22: S15-S19.
4. WHO. Life tables for WHO member states
http://www3.who.int/whosis/life/life_tables/life_tables...
(accessed Dec 18, 2006)..
5. Roberts L, Belyakdoumi F, Hale C, et al. Mortality in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: results from eleven mortality surveys. New York: International Rescue Committee, 2001:
http://www.theirc.org/resources/mortII_report.pdf
(accessed Nov 28, 2006)..

GySgt

I can't believe the lack of intelligence on this thread. The Lancet Report was always garbage and I have showed this to be true numerous times to the very individuals who continue to cling to the Lancet Report as if God himself blessed it and handed it down through Gabriel.


According to CNN....

July was the deadliest month for civilians since the war started in March 2003, figures show. During the month, 3,438 Iraqis were killed -- 1,855 because of sectarian or political violence and another 1,583 from bombings and shootings.

The Lancet Report came out in October of 2006 to the cheers of anti-war protestors everywhere as it boasted 655,000 deaths in Iraq.



But wait a minute. There seems to be something wrong with the math here. If the UN, America, and other organizations hold similar numbers then why is the Lancet Report so off base? Does the UN hold us with such great regard and respect that it would lie along with the other organizations and the American government just to fool the world into thinking that the war they refused to take part in wasn't as bad as some want? If we pretended that the most violent month that produced 3,500 deaths occurrd every month (and there were 39 months prior to this).....then that means that...

3,500 x 39 months = 136,500.

Of course, we know that sectarian violence didn't start until later in 2003 and that not every month produced such high numbers of civilan deaths, so the number must have been even lower than this. And we know that 2007 saw a great improvement in death counts. And the majority of those civilan deaths came from their own fellow Muslims (though our critics don't like to acknowledge this either). But maybe the Lancet Report was accurate and we just didn't account for the two weeks between the UN report of the deadliest month and the Lancet Report's accusations. Maybe there were 518,500 deaths that occurred over this two week period.

Come to think of it, what about the other rumors and "facts" people were clinging to? Where's the great "civil war" in Iraq? Where's the breakdown in humanity that was to bring on the disaster right around the corner? Certainly, something as great as the civil war that was taken place wouldn't simply disappear? Or was the whole story of a civil war blown out of proportion, making the mission more difficult for the troops on the ground, as I stated also over and over? Today Iraq looks nothing like the great "civil war" that protestors, commentators, and Democrats were alluding to.


Grow a brain people. Do your own ****ing math.

__________________

GySgt
Semper Fidelis
USMC

Reverend_Hellh0und

Excellent post Gunny. I think though that some want to believe this as thier ghoulish desires help thier anti-American stance.

__________________
كافر
Never forget those who died.
Never forget those who killed them.

Xen

136,500 deaths is still 136,500 too many for pointless war that Bush not only lied us into, but failed to do his homework on. The Iraq War has become a complete drain on tax dollars, that could be better spent on scientific/medical research. But apparently lying to the public about the presence of WMDs to justify an invasion and subsequent occupation of a nation that posed no current threat in order to "protect" American lives is providing a better service than actually saving friggin American lives through the biggest threat and killer, diseases.

And even if Iraq is not the "civil war" that protestors, commentators, and Democrats were alluding to", it is still a violent craphole that will remain as such as long as American troops are stationed there against the peoples' will, no matter how many touching stories of a soldier handing a candy bar to a poor Iraqi boy with mud and blood all over his face, smiling at the Americans as published by The Washington Times or someother worthless conservative media source. The chickenhawks really don't give a flip if an average of 4, or however many American soldiers are being killed everyday at a relatively consistent rate. The innocent Iraqi deaths never get mentioned, and are of little concern. The puppet government is about as productive as Ferris Bueler, and takes more vacations than a retired couple.

Joe Hill

The Connection is quite clear, but seldom accepted by those who grow fat and rich on war profiteering:





"Of all enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it compromises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few." James Madison

__________________
"We can have democracy in this country or we can have
great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both.":
Louis D. Brandeis

Reverend_Hellh0und

And like clockwork Joe comes out with his usual propaganda pictures and an out of context quote....

GySgt

Blah...blah...blah....<insert bleeding heart deceit>......but it's not 655,000. And I appreciate that you pretend to know what Iraq is. One would think that considering the vacation spot Iraq is now as compared to when the Liberal masses were feeding off of exagerations and lies, protestors would see how they have been played by commentators and reporters who knew less about Iraq than the people feeding off of them. If 136,500 is too many for a "pointless war" then why wasn't 136,500 a good enough number for protestors? Why the scam? Why the obnoxious declarations of "civil war?" Why the urgent need to portray events worse than they are? One of the reasons protestors are given no respect is because they can't even be honest in their protest. As they whine and complain about how the administration lies to them, they employ lies and deceits of their own.

If 136,500 is too many, then 136,500 should have been good enough for the protest. True or not?

GySgt

While whining and complaning about the propaganda for the war.

Billo_Really

Your arrogance never surprises me.

Hey, you wanna be the new King TOT?

You don't **** about epidimology, so stop acting like you do!

__________________

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners"
- Charlton Heston

Hundebolg

The Lancet report has been confirmed by a new independent report. There's a thread on that issue also.

This 'body count' encomprises only the dead reported by press, i.E. known to the press. All serious websites displaying these numbers sport a big disclaimer. Do you think the USAF parachuted a Photo Journalist just before every bombing ? Ridiculous!