Why the low body count?

[Doctor_J]

I Don't get this

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Fallujah and Baghdad were both obliterated. The death toll is probably close to 200,000. Why does this site insist on undercounting so severely?

[SouthernDem2004]

1. Well...

Baghdad was not obliterated. Baghdad was bombed in a very selective manner to avoid civilian deaths.

Fallujah is a different story. It was bombed heavily but the civilian population was given alot of notice and most had fled the city.

[tnlefty]

4. Shock and Disgust had large parts of Baghdad on fire so that

doesn't fall into my category of very selective manner to avoid civilian deaths, but, hey, I guess bombing a city like that with millions of citizens and most of them young makes it okay.

[SouthernDem2004]

11. Er, did you read my msg or are you replying to someone else?

What large parts were on fire??????????????????????

[Tigress]

17. Maybe we should have bombed them like we did to Berlin or something!

My god, we were so unbrutal compared to some past confrontations that there is no comparison.

[Frederik]

7. Still

Various parts of Iraq are bombed each and every day (according to Sy Hersh and Dahr Jamail, among others). And that ain't the desert they're bombing.

It is also probable, from the reports coming out of that city, that a substantial portion of the several thousand killed during the november assault on Falluja were civilians.

"Baghdad was bombed in a very selective manner to avoid civilian deaths."

Well, I somehow doubt that.

[SouthernDem2004]

12. Why?

"Well, I somehow doubt that."

Are you saying we intentionally targeted civilians for no reason?

Remember, The original poster was using figures like hundreds of thousands. I dispute the number.

[Frederik]

14. I think

100,000 is a reasonable estimate for the number of civilians killed, perhaps too low. I'm not saying intentionally targetting civilians, but I have no reason to believe that much effort is devoted to avoid civilian casualties.

[Doctor_J]

9. You must have been watching a different

shlock and awwww than I was. The entire sky was lit up for several days & nights. And according to Seymour Hersch, there are still DAILY bombing raids. And as another poster pointed out, it is doubtful that they are wasting all that ordnance on the desert.

If "most" of the civilian population had evacuated Fallujah, why did we have to flatten it?

Stop believing what you hear on hate radio, SD. One of the main functions of DU is to collect and disperse TRUTH, not the lies that Bush's media machine put out.

[SouthernDem2004]

13. Excuse me...

But what facts are you speaking of?

Baghdad was bombed selectively. The military gave us the targets daily. Media from around the world has been all over Baghdad. The city was not razed and civilian areas were not targeted.

Your statement "If "most" of the civilian population had evacuated Fallujah, why did we have to flatten it?" answers itself.

I do not listen to right wing radio ever. Saying 200,000 people were killed in Baghdad and Fallujah is not truth, it is a lie. Saying Baghdad was razed is not truth, it is a lie. Denying the citizens of Fallujah fled prior to the bombings is not truth, it is a lie. Saying trash like that does nothing but hurt our chances in 2006 and beyond.

[Just Me]

2. I am beginning to have my suspicions.

At minimum, I suspect they simply haven't the resources or backing to maintain an accurate count.

[Dave Reynolds]

3. I read the page with the sites biographies,

and none of the people listed seem to have ever been on the ground in Iraq. I could find no info on where their numbers come from. On the other hand, I have no idea where the Lancet came up with 100,000 plus (although I think that would be a closer estimate).

[Frederik]

8. Interviews

with families on the ground, and extrapolation from that. They excluded the Falluja area, as it was unusually violent, and said the 100,000 number was a conservative estimate of deaths up to mid-04.

Iraq Body Count only count deaths that are reported in the media, and thus it is a much lower estimate than the actual number. The IBC people said they thought the Lancet's number was probable.

[hack89]

10. There were only 8000 deaths...

or 194,000 or any number in between. It was a statistical study - in the study text it says: "We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.". The (95% CI 8000-194 000) means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.) That is a ridiculously wide range to make any definitive statements on the number of deaths.

[Frederik]

15. Well not quite

The methodology is sound enough. 95% confidence interval is the norm in population surveys like that, it is not a ridiculous inference at all. Noone has succesfully attacked their methodology so far, I believe. Of course the 100,000 number isn't a "definitive statement", it is an estimate, and a credible one.

[hack89]

16. But doesn't that confidence interval let one say...

that "only" 8000 were killed and still be just as "right" as someone who says that 190,000 were killed? As a poli sci major, I have no background in statistics so I would be very pleased if someone could clarify this for me.

[Frederik]

18. The thing is

I have a master in poli sci myself and had to take statistics courses, I learned all those things but I don't remember any of it! I'm pretty sure that's not how it works though. There's a bell curve and the middle is the likeliest I think, if you lowered the probability to 50% the range around 98,000 would be much narrower, but I really don't know if I remember correctly. Someone who knows more please correct me, it's embarrassing. But a confidence interval of 95% is the norm in this kind of study, that much I remember.

[Terran1212]

5. Iraq Body Count only uses published reports

To be completely accurate, IBC only uses published death reports. Obviously, most of the deaths in Iraq have gone unreported. The only way you could report the killing in the first waves of attack was if you were lucky enough to get the dead or injured to an unbombed hospital. After the war, the US refused to run a body count, so the vast majority of those killed remain unrecognized.

Baghdad WAS very much obliterated. "Precision bombs" lacked precision, and the US troops met with heavy resistance and used massive force to subdue the city.

[miss_kitty]

6. From the site's FAQs

Why is your web counter not increasing?
We put accuracy above speed and do not update the data base until we have located and cross-checked two or more independent approved news sources for the same incident (for more details see our Methodology). If you want to submit news stories that could help us confirm an incident involving civilian deaths please email news item weblinks to [e-mail] (the more specific and detailed, the better).

Still, your "maximum" count seems very low to me. Surely there must be many, many more civilian deaths than you've published.

We are not a news organization ourselves and like everyone else can only base our information on what has been reported so far. What we are attempting to provide is a credible compilation of civilian deaths that have been reported by recognized sources. Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war.