And I bet the number is larger than half a million.
Doctor to discuss effort to clarify Iraqi death toll
By TOM PAULSON
P-I REPORTER
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Roberts, a physician and prominent public health scientist at Columbia University, believes there is solid evidence that close to a half-million people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Iraq war. His statistics are about 10 times higher than the estimates put forth by the Bush administration and Pentagon when asked about civilian casualties.
But a much bigger problem than the numerical disparity, Roberts said, is the simple fact that so few even ask.
"I think it's important that every American understand the true magnitude of this tragedy," said Roberts, who will speak about Iraq war deaths at the University of Washington on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, he added, few in the media or in government on either side of the political aisle appear to want to even draw attention to the deaths that have so severely altered the life of nearly every Iraqi.
In 2004, Roberts and colleagues sneaked into Iraq dressed in robes and with dyed beards to conduct a series of mortality "cluster point" surveys in various communities while the war raged on. His team initially estimated the civilian death toll as at least 100,000 (two to three times the official estimate), but later analysis caused him to raise the estimate to be 95 percent certain to be in the range of 400,000 to 950,000 -- or an average of about 650,000 deaths. The findings were reported in the British medical journal The Lancet.
"To help people understand this, given the population of Iraq, this would be like New York City having two 9/11 attacks every week over a period of three years," Roberts said. Things have gotten less violent in Iraq, he said, but nobody should be lulled into thinking that things are good.
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/384390_iraqdead22.html
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