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100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq

100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq

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Here is the full press release and link to the study.

October 28, 2004

Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion

Civilian deaths have risen dramatically in Iraq since the country was invaded in March 2003, according to a survey conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Columbia University School of Nursing and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The researchers found that the majority of deaths were attributed to violence, which were primarily the result of military actions by Coalition forces. Most of those killed by Coalition forces were women and children. However, the researchers stressed that they found no evidence of improper conduct by the Coalition soldiers.

The survey is the first countrywide attempt to calculate the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since the war began. The United States military does not keep records on civilian deaths and record keeping by the Iraq Ministry of Health is limited. The study is published in the October 29, 2004, online edition of The Lancet.

“Our findings need to be independently verified with a larger sample group. However, I think our survey demonstrates the importance of collecting civilian casualty information during a war and that it can be done,” said lead author Les Roberts, PhD, an associate with the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies.

The researchers conducted their survey in September 2004. They randomly selected 33 neighborhoods of 30 homes from across Iraq and interviewed the residents about the number and ages of the people living in each home. Over 7,800 Iraqis were included. Residents were questioned about the number of births and deaths that occurred in the household since January 2002. Information was also collected about the causes and circumstances of each death. When possible, the deaths were verified with a death certificate or other documentation.

The researchers compared the mortality rate among civilians in Iraq during the 14.6 months prior to the March 2003 invasion with the 17.8 month period following the invasion. The sample group reported 46 deaths prior to the March 2003 and 142 deaths following the invasion. The results were calculated twice, both with and without information from the city of Falluja. The researchers felt the excessive violence from combat in Falluja could skew the overall mortality rates. Excluding information from Falluja, they estimate that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred. Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery.

“There is a real necessity for accurate monitoring of civilian deaths during combat situations. Otherwise it is impossible to know the extent of the problems civilians may be facing or how to protect them,” explained study co-author Gilbert Burnham, MD, associate professor of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and director of the Center for International, Disaster and Refugee Studies.

“Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey” was written by Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi and Gilbert Burnham. Roberts and Burham are with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Lafta and Khudhairi are with the College of Medicine at Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Garfield is with the Columbia University School of Nursing.

The study was funded by the Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland.

Public Affairs media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Tim Parsons at 410-955-6878 or paffairs@jhsph.edu.

America, Imagine This!

America, Imagine This!

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M. Shahid Alam: America, Imagine This!

Here is a very interesting thought experiment from M. Shahid at Northeastern University, writing for CourterPunch. He notes that the 9/11 Commission, charged preparing a “full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks,” and yet the 500 page report of the Commission “contains not a single mention of any possible connection between 9-11 and US policies towards the Middle East.”

Try this out for size:

“Imagine waking up tomorrow in an upside-down world, one in which the history of America’s relations with the Arabs is inverted. Iraq is now the global hegemon, the world’s richest democracy, a beacon of freedom; Iraq and the Arab democracies dominate the world and what was once the USA. Imagine that the Arabs have used their power to replace a United States of America with forty-four nominally independent states–with states for native Americans, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, Italian Americans, German Americans, Anglo-Americans, Jews, Mormons, Sikhs, the Amish, etc–with most of these states run by despotic Iraqi surrogates.

Iraq, after colonizing New England and ethnically cleansing its native inhabitants, has converted it into an exclusive, racist, colonial-settler state for Arabs brought in from Sudan who were dying from a severe drought, the worst in a thousand years. This state, Arabistan, is by far the most powerful of the states on the American continent. It is Iraq’s strategic asset in the Americas, periodically mounting incursions against the neighboring states from where the New Englander refugees wage occasional guerilla attacks on Arabistan.

Starting in March 2003, the Iraqi marines, supported by two divisions from Palestine, had invaded and occupied Texas. The Iraqi administration argued that this was a preemptive invasion to prevent the fanatical Texans from developing biological weapons. However, some Arab publications on the Left have argued that the Texan oilfields were Iraq’s real target. It is well known that production from the Arab oil fields has been declining since 1997.

What would the Americans, now split, divided, corralled into forty-six racial, ethnic and sectarian states do if they found themselves in such a world? Would they resent the surrogate despotisms that ruled over them with Iraqi arms and money? Would some of their young men, faced with overwhelming Iraqi power, resort to suicidal attacks within Iraq itself? Would they too hate the Iraqis and Arabs and attack them because they are free, prosperous and democratic?

What would the New Englanders do, now scattered in refugee encampments in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio? Would they dream of returning to their country? Would they demand the right to return to their homes in New England? Would they demand compensation for the homes they had lost? Would they hate the Sudanese settlers who now lived in their homes, their towns and cities?

What would all the other Americans do if the New Englanders began to wage a campaign of terror against Iraqi interests in the former USA? What would they do if Arabistan–the Iraqi surrogate–then retaliated by bombing New York, Detroit, Washington and Albany? What would they do if the Iraqi media accused them ad nauseum of hating Iraq’s free, open, democratic society?

If only Americans could imagine all this–imagine all this for even a few seconds–how would this change the way they think about what their country, the United States, together with its democratic ally, Israel, have been doing to the Arabs? Can Americans imagine this? What would it do if they could imagine this–even for a few seconds?

Would they recognize in their imagined pain, in their imagined humiliation, in the imagined wars and destruction imposed upon them, the real wars, occupations, massacres, ethnic cleansings, tortures, bombings, sanctions and assassinations endured by Palestinians and Iraqis for more than eight decades?

Would they?”

The trouble is, we’ve almost completely lost our power for imagination, compassion, and empathy anyone outside our own country. We are underinformed and badly educated. We claim to be religious when we are being most heartless and anti-christian. And we swallow pretty much what is planned for us to swallow.

Give me back my USA.

100 Mistakes for the President to Choose From – Center for American Progress

100 Mistakes for the President to Choose From – Center for American Progress

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100 Mistakes for the President to Choose From – Center for American Progress

Here is a nice little list of a hundred mistakes Bush has made, although he couldn’t really think of any (maybe a couple of appointments) during the debate.

Personally, I think the way he ignored the State Department’s plan for peace in Iraq was pretty major… Anyway, after looking at this list, which is pretty damning, I really truly can’t understand how anyone could think that Bush is good for this country in any way.

He is the worst president in my lifetime for sure – I wonder how far back you really have to go to find a worse one? He even makes Nixon look pretty good. It’s hard to believe now that Nixon was hated so much for Watergate – doesn’t it now seem a little, well, quaint? It seems like some of the presidents after Nixon were involved in things an awful lot worse than that.

About Iraq / No One Died When Clinton Lied

About Iraq / No One Died When Clinton Lied

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(Thanks to my Aunt Elaine for passing these on!)

Some interesting biblical things about Iraq:

The name Iraq means country with deep roots.

What we now call Iraq is referred to as Babylon, Land of Shinar, and Mesopotamia.

The word Mesopotamia means between the two rivers, more exactly between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

The Garden of Eden was in Iraq.

Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, was the cradle of civilization!

Noah built the ark in Iraq.

The Tower of Babel was in Iraq.

Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq!

Isaac’s wife Rebekah is from Nahor, which is in Iraq.

Jacob met Rachel in Iraq.

Jonah preached in Nineveh – which is in Iraq.

Assyria, which is in Iraq, conquered the ten tribes of Israel.

Babylon, which is in Iraq, destroyed Jerusalem.

Daniel was in the lion’s den in Iraq!

Belshazzar, the King of Babylon saw the "writing on the wall" in Iraq.

Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, carried the Jews captive into Iraq.

Ezekiel preached in Iraq.

The wise men were from Iraq.

Peter preached in Iraq.

The "Empire of Man" described in Revelation is called Babylon, which was
a city in Iraq!

No one died when Clinton lied

This is a composite of some of the american soliders who have died in the current Iraq war. Thanks to my Aunt Elaine for passing it on.

Click on the image to see the full picture. If anyone knows its creator, please comments so that I can credit it.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11

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I’ve just seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.

I’m going to try to get a few of my thoughts down about this film while I’m still feeling nauseous and tearful. Tears or nausea, nausea or tears?

It’s hard to know where to start – with the woman in the lobby who blindly reached for me after the film, embracing a total stranger – a middle aged, middle class woman with tears running down her face – a woman who grappled me as though I were the remaining vine that prevented her from falling off the mountain? "What have we become?" she asked me in a broken voice as her tears moistened my left shoulder.

Or perhaps with the sudden anguished moan of my intellectual husband, a man not known for displays of emotion, upon hearing the words "can they ever trust us again"? That is, after being promised not to be put in harm’s way unless it were absolutely necessary, how can those who have always been first to stand up and serve (the american poor) ever trust in their country again?

The film has faults, to be sure. It uses a bit too much caricature, which is sometimes distracting. Although I agree that our president is developmentally stunted and anything but a compassionate conservative, a less cartoonish display would have been more persuasive. What one sees in Bush finally is what one sees in the eyes of any irresponsible and narcissistic alcoholic – the dry drunk. There’s a book in that and I hope to read it one day. I also found one section of the film truly offensive. While I understood that the listing of the so-called "coalition of the willing" (outside of the US and the UK) was meant to highlight the absurdity of including nations without a military, I certainly didn’t appreciate seeing ancient film footage of nosferatu to represent Romania, a viking to represent Iceland, someone smoking a marijuana pipe to represent The Netherlands, poppies for Afghanistan (Afghanistan?!?!), and so on. Along with the superimposition of western imagery upon the current administration (which admittedly does seem driven by the tropes of westerns and thrillers), it was both off-putting and ineffective.

What sticks with me, though, are other images. I’m more of an idea person, but images from this film already haunt me. The face of the policeman who "infiltrated" the Fresno Peace group, the pro-military woman who lost her son aimlessly wandering around the white house lawn, the guy who talked about the war at the gym and was reported to the FBI, the sobs of an Iraqi woman calling out to God to avenge the houses of her innocent family, the young man digging out a piece of his neighbor’s body from the rubble, the soldiers playing their killing soundtrack, other soldiers remorseful and confused by their experiences, the brave guy who said he would never go back to Iraq "to kill the poor" no matter what the consequences – so many images, images we didn’t see, images we should be seeing. Say what you will about Michael Moore – but what comes through for me is his anger for the sake of others, and his feeling for people. He turns a mirror on America, to show us with what we have become complicit and why the nations of the world have turned away. It is a profoundly patriotic film. Its message is, in one way, very simple. For those of you on the "religious" right, you should understand: It’s all about the money, a lot more than the customary 30 pieces of silver.

However, I also learned something that I did not know and honestly had not wanted to know. Moore, after all, does not spare either the left wing or the media from his critique. All those disenfranchized voters of the last presidental "election" couldn’t get one senator to sign a petition so that their argument could be heard. Person after person stood up in the proceedings painfully led by Al Gore himself. Time and time again, they had to say they had many signatures, but the required senatorial signature was "missing." One woman said she didn’t care that she didn’t have a signature, and Gore reminded her that "the rules do care." It reminded me of what I had forgotten somehow – how very angry I was at the Democrats. Where was John Kerry for those people, or any other democratic senator for that matter? Why couldn’t they get one signature? It brought back for me the day I watched the news in disbelief as Daschle did his 180-degree turn (not long after a certain airplane crash) on his Iraq anti-war stance. Really, where IS the left in this country? I miss those old academic Marxists of the Vietnam-war era, the theorists who remembered to ask the primary questions of money and power. This isn’t really a movie about serious dissent – it’s a mainstream american film in a country that has become deeply suspicious of intelligence and education, its traditional anti-intellectualism racheted up a notch or two. For those who might not have looked at some of this information, or who are patriotic but somewhat uninformed, this movie gives a big shove in the direction of actual thinking.

All of the family ties, the network connections, the money trails – Moore points out some of the major ones – enough at least to intimate that something of major importance about Saudi Arabia is still being withheld from the American people, for example. The section dealing all the connections and disconnections between the Bin Laden family, the Taliban of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, The Carlyle Group, Enron, Arbusto Oil, Halliburton, and the Bush family – was probably a little confusing to some. If so, read any of the books on the shelves these days, from Michael Moore and others. Molly Ivins’ essays from the time of W’s Texas days are particularly enlightening with regard to such things as the Taliban. To me, it’s all about networks of power and money these days. It seems pretty clear that we mirror the terrorism network with our own nation-based criminal networks.

I don’t think Moore really got across the importance of the pipeline, or put enough into the effects of the Patriot Acts, but he did manage to convey some of what is happening to this country under this administration. Left-wingers of all types, libertarians, and republicans should see this film – the neo-cons are a different order entirely and I feel that much of America just simply doesn’t understand what is being taken from them, and what is happening in their name and to their own.

As our husbands returned from the restroom, the woman who had embraced me took a step back, embarrassed. Moving slowly, the four of us walked out into the blazing heat of the Georgia day. When you have a child and no babysitter, you don’t get to go to movies at night very often. I had to stand for a moment to breath deep against my heaving stomach. The parking lot shimmered in the sun, and for a moment, I felt profoundly alienated from everyone and everything. Then the tears came for me.

American Dead, Censorship, Women’s March

American Dead, Censorship, Women’s March

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Sinclair Broadcasting Group, one of the largest owners of local television stations, will pre-empt tonight’s ABC News program "Nightline" in 8 cities: St. Louis; Columbus, Ohio; Greenville, S.C.; Greensboro, N.C.; Charleston, W.Va.; Mobile, Ala.; Pensacola, Fla.; and Springfield, Mass.; and Sinclair-operated WTXL-TV in Tallahassee, Fla. This network is even more conservative than Clear Channel – In 2004, 98 percent of Sinclair’s political contributions have gone to GOP candidates.

Why won’t they show Nightline? Ted Koppel will read aloud the names of every soldier killed by hostile fire in Iraq, showing the dead soldiers’ photo. You would think this memorial would evoke respect for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

It has aroused controversy on both sides. Nightline won’t be aired across Sinclair-operated stations because they feel the memorializing of the dead is an unpatriotic anti-war statement. Anti-war activists aren’t very comfortable either – they would like to see the same treatment for the Iraqi dead, not just the American dead (now THAT would be a long show!).

Koppel rarely criticizes US policy even when he disagrees with it – he’s probably one of the best we’ve got – which is why ultra-conservatives are so hopping mad. He has credibility. Sinclair is right, of course, about Koppel’s stance – but that’s not a reason to censor it off the air. Koppel’s reading of the names of the war dead comes on the eve of the anniversary of President Bush’s appearance on US aircraft carrier under a carefully placed banner announcing "Mission Accomplished." The program also will be aired on the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, April 30, l975, when the city of Saigon fell to North Vietnamese and NLF forces – maybe then my students won’t believe that we WON that conflict?

In any case, isn’t it about time that we showed some respect to the American soldier? For all the ballyhoo about supporting them, are their jobs there when they return? What kind of respect are other veterans getting? In the last five years of my father’s life, he couldn’t even get the VA to acknowledge him AS a veteran, much less get any of the benefits he deserved. These poor guys go over there for a President that dared our enemies to "bring it on," but when our soldiers die – we must not see or acknowledge or memoralize their deaths.

We must not even admit that the war is not over.

We must not admit that our children and grandchildren will be paying for it.

We must not admit that the soldiers aren’t the only ones to make sacrifice.

We must not admit that we weren’t prepared, that we don’t understand the culture, that we aren’t succeeding in the propaganda war. Our memes and thought contagions just don’t seem to be very self-propagating.

Yesterday I heard a radio announcer describe a Sports Illustrated journalist as a liberal pansy pinko anti-American. I never thought this could happen again. And where is the spine of the American left? Why are you all so silent?

Last weekend was the Women’s March on Washington. On network news, across several stations, I only saw a brief comment by the director of NARAL, a snippet of Hillary Clinton urging people to vote, one shot of the crowd, and several comments by anti-abortion counter-protestors. Issues of choice and abortion were certainly at the top of the agenda list, but that’s not all there was! The coverage of this amazing event was sickeningly minimal. I was so angry that I actually understood the expression "hopping mad" from the inside. I was hopping! HOPPING!

So it’s as if it never happened. Please, someone, publish the transcripts. I want to know what the speakers said!

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, in a group that doesn’t fight, doesn’t vote, doesn’t salute the flag (false idol), doesn’t celebrate Christmas or (like the new conservatives) Halloween. They thought Dungeons and Dragons was demonic long before the hysteria surrounding things like the Columbine attacks and Harry Potter. I was completely out of touch with politics (and the social scene in general) when I was growing up – I remained apolitical even through my undergraduate and master’s degrees. It has only been in the last decade that I even took an interest in these sorts of things – other than a few so-called women’s issues. WOMEN’s issues?

You know, there is a feminist argument against abortion. It’s to the man’s advantage for the woman to have an abortion when he doesn’t want to marry her or even provide support. I’m not personally a big fan of abortion. It’s a really difficult and awful thing to have to think about. But it’s not for the government to legislate. Whatever the choice, it’s my choice. I have never had an abortion and I hope that I would never be in a position to have to consider it. But I have had two pregnancies, while married, that didn’t make it to term. One of them almost killed me. Suppose my two doctors in those cases no longer had the training to do a D&C, for example?

Well, I won’t get off on a rant on that, but it does really bother me that Bush is propelled by an evangelical vision of himself and this country. The "Faith-based initiatives" funding that was approved by executive order and bypassed the congress all went to protestant groups – you knew that, right? No catholics, no jews, no buddhists….

How can we be so stupid? Has all the rapid change just shut down people’s brains? Are we as susceptible as Germany was?