Iraq Failure (yet again!)
- Thread starter Ex-RoNiN
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Has it resulted in that?@if ®afiq said:
You quote that figure as if it were a fact, but it isn't. It's actually the mid-point of a range in a statistical survey. It could be right, but it very well could be wrong, and by quite a long way. Even the authors of the survey will tell you that it is just the mid-point of a range, and could be higher or lower than that by, according to the statistical methods used, up to a quarter of a million.
Also, that figure is simply comparing deaths in Iraq over two different periods. It does NOT, as you state, seek to attribute them all to any form of violence. The figure you quote, for instance, includes non-violent deaths, like heart disease, cancer and chronic illness (albeit that that is a small proportion). Nor, for that matter, does it distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
And then, if you take a relatively small sample (1849 households) and extrapolate it up to cover a population of nearly 30 million, you can expect some pretty substantial variance levels. And on top of that, you'd have to look at the survey assumptions to know if it allowed for any kind of weighting as to variation in results in different areas. For instance, what percentage of the surveyed households, and what percentage of the deaths, took place in the turbulent regions compared to relatively peaceful Kurdish north?
But, however you look at it, that figure is a statistical estimate, not a fact. It may be right. It may even be an under-estimate. But it is just an estimate.
Geoff said:
You are right it is mid-range. The authors of the report say that there is 2% chance that it is lower than their lowest figure which is 400,000. Of-course it could also be higher and approaching the million mark.
Geoff said:
This is also true. From what I can gather though, they have attributed about 30 percent of the violent deaths directly to the the occupying forces. The remaining 70 percent is a mixture of deaths caused by anti-occupation forces/terrorists and also those deaths that cannot be clearly attributed to either of the two forces.
The 50,000 deaths from illness, imo, are the fault of the occupyng forces and their lack of planning for the aftermath and also the complete farce that is the reconstruction process.
Geoff said:
I don't know enough about the methods but from what I gather this is the same method that, according to one of the authors, the US government trains people in doing. It is also the same method that has been used in past conflicts such as the Bal;ans.
Geoff said:
I agree it is an estimate, but with the US proudly stating that they "don't do body counts" - what else is there to go by? But if you take that further than pretty much everything to do with Iraq has been based on estimates.
RaohNS said:
Have you read the report?
Let me try and break it down. Listed below is the percentage of deaths attributed to different sources:
Year 1:
Coalition: 14
Other forces: 6
Unknown: 23
Non-violent: 60
Year 2:
Coalition: 21
Other forces: 10
Unknown: 23
Non-violent: 46
Year 3:
Coalition: 16
Other forces: 19
Unknown: 27
Non-violent: 39
@if ®afiq said:
Through September 2005, over 2,800 schools have been rehabilitated, and 45 constructed
Over 47,500 secondary school teachers and administrators nationwide have received training
USAID edited, printed, and distributed 8.7 million Iraqi math and science textbooks
School supplies have been distributed to one million primary school children and two million secondary; sports equipment has been distributed to every school
2005 emergency campaigns supported the immunization of 98 percent of children 1-3 years (3.62 million children) against measles, mumps, and rubella. As a result, there has been a 90 percent reduction in laboratory confirmed cases of measles between 2004 and 2005.
97 percent of children under five (4.56 million) immunized against polio during the 2004-05 national polio immunization campaign, enabling Iraq to maintain its polio-free status
Vaccinated 3.2 million children under five and 700,000 pregnant women, with UNICEF and WHO
Provided supplementary doses of vitamin A for more than 1.5 million nursing mothers and 600,000 children under two, and iron folate supplements for over 1.6 million women of childbearing age.
Trained 11,400 staff at over 2,000 community child care units to screen for malnutrition and to provide monthly rations of high protein biscuits to malnourished children and pregnant mothers
Renovated 110 facilities and equipped 600 centers with basic clinical and lab equipment
Trained over 2,500 primary health care workers, improving access to essential primary health care.
Vaccines and cold chain equipment provided to selected remote health centers along with training of staff and social mobilization has increased routine immunization coverage from 60 to 74 percent.
Returned to pre-war daily generation levels of 3,958 MW by October 2003 and reached a peak of 4,584 MW during July 2004.
(Note: the average Iraqi will receive more hours of electricity than before the war, pre-war this was 24hour to Baghdad while the rest of the country received much less as a result the US have gone about creating 13hours of electricity on average for each Iraqi)
Plenty more but i'll hold them back for when the time calls for it
>| Raoh |<
On what is that opinion based, though?@if ®afiq said:
Personally, I wouldn't blame the occupying forces, who seem to be doing everything they can, but I may well blame the planners. From what I hear, I would also blame insurgents, who seem to be doing their level best to either prevent the military from addressing things like civil engineering needs, or doing their best to destroy them, it clearly being in their interests to promote as much disatisfaction with the state of affairs as possible. Otherwise, why keep blowing up army and police recruiting stations and, as in the last incident, a teacher-training facility?
If you can prevent the police and army from doing the job, or getting trained adequately and in sufficient numbers, you keep the outside military in the country, which suits the insurgents just fine, since it makes Iraq an "occupied" country.
So I don't think you can just blame all that on the occupying forces.
I haven't studied the report, much less the methodology, but my comments were generic. ANY such study has the weaknesses I mentioned. There was the classic example some decades ago in the US. A telephone poll suggested a huge Republican electoral success was imminent, only to be a Democrat victory. It turned out afterwards, on thinking about it, that because in those days merely having a phone suggested you were relatively affluent, you were therefore relatively likely to be a republican. So, merely by a mistake in the basis for sample selection, a huge bias was introduced.@if ®afiq said:
Of course, these days, a telephone poll would have FAR less statistical bias, on the basis that there's a far less, if any, correlation between telephone ownership and affluence. But nonetheless, the story indicates how careful you have to be to pick a representative sample if you're subsequently going to extrapolate the data to be representative of a large population. The telephone poll was a numpty mistake to make, but the error could be far less obvious and still important.
Am I saying the figures are wrong? No. Not necessarily. Just that any such estimate needs to be treated as an estimate, not mistaken for a fact.
Maybe the US don't do body counts because it simply isn't practical. Maybe they don't do it because to do it would leave the troops doing it open to attack. You say "proudly", but it's a loaded phrase. Do you know their reasons?@if ®afiq said:
And there are other figures to go by, but they have their problems too. If you adopt the method of counting bodies, you have to be sure to count ALL of them, or your figures will be wrong. If you adopt the statistical sampling method, you have all the problems associated with designing and doing the sampling ... and the body doing the sampling admitted that they'd have done more, but figured it put their staff in unnecessary danger. Had they increased the sample, the accuracy would have gone up and the variance down, but it would still have been a sample.
My guess, and it's only that, is that the truth probably lies somewhere between the low-ball "body-count" and the potentially high-end statistical method. In any event though, it's a big number. There's no getting away from that, and that IS a fact.
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I'd agree with that, although the power vacuum and political fallout is going to be much bigger than vietnam.robmiller said:
The only way this iraq situation is going to be settled is:
1. All the Iraqi's which are classed as insurgents are wiped out. (which could be every iraqi if things carry on)
2. We pull out and civil war ensues.
3. We occupy the country for a long forseeable future which would be worse than vietnam with regards to robmiller's point in the quote above.
Geoff said:
On my sketchy knowledge of the rules of war, is it not the responsibility of the occupying forces to provided security etc for the general population. This would include rebuilding the infrastructure (electricity), clean water, sanitation, providing more medicine than has been made available etc..
Geoff said:
What I meant was the planners and not your average GI Joe. I agree with your stance on the insurgency, but this comes down to the complete lack of planning. For some strange reason we thought we would be welcome in a country where we starved half a million babies
. And we also assumed that they would accept the leadership we have chosen for them. Geoff said:
Mostly, but not all. We also have the plunderings by the corporation to thank as well.
Geoff said:
Just me being emotional.....to me it sounds more like we don't care how many we kill rather than it would be too dangerous. I mean, even the straight forward shooting up of a civilian car is not recorded.
@if ®afiq said:
It is generally however when you have a sizeable force coming in from the neighbour next door it becomes rather difficult. You may find that as i've pointed out the average Iraqi now receives 13hours of electricity per day, more than before the war. And again it shows you have failed to read my posts regarding the million of children who have been vaccinated against TB and the like. The additional health care staff etc.
>| Raoh |<