An interesting article on the Z-Mag web-site talks about the 'cluster sample survey' conducted by a group of epistimologists to estimate the true extent of civilian casualties in Iraq, and the attempts by the the British and US governments to dicredit their findings after they were published in the Lancet journal.
"Over a year ago an international team of epidemiologists, headed by Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, completed a “cluster sample survey” of civilian casualties in Iraq. Its findings contradicted central elements of what politicians and journalists had presented to the U.S. public and the world. After excluding any possible statistical anomalies, they estimated that at least 98,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the previous 18 months as a direct result of the invasion and occupation of their country. They also found that violence had become the leading cause of death in Iraq during that period. Their most significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent deaths were caused by “coalition” forces using “helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry,” and that almost half (48 percent) of these were children, with a median age of 8."
Yet these deaths go almost completely unreported by the media, a nod to the success of the British and US administrations in undermining their research, and the article goes on to explain how even the sections of the media which have positioned themselves against the war continuosly underestimate the number of civilian casualties and ignore the primary source of their deaths, a bombing campaign hidden from the public that continues right up to the present unabated.
4 comments:
Have a look at these two, for acceptable media mortality figures:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_good_part2.php
Very interesting links Dav, thank you. Well worth checking out.
As the articles you posted links to show, the IBC only takes into account civilian deaths recorded in the media, so the US and British administrations not only get to bomb with little media coverage of the fatal consequences, the IBC figures distort the statistics and act as a useful propaganda tool in coalition efforts to ensure further media acquiescence.
Yeah, its such a pity that a group that have worked tirelessly to account for victims of western aggression would end up doing a service to the very people the information should be there to criticise.
I doubt, even if they were to plaster all over the site the truth of the matter, that it is only deaths reported by several different sources (in English!) that get counted, that those in the UK/US governments would even recognise the pit falls in using this as even an estimate of deaths.
but bombing people=freeing people. I haven't heard one report on US tv about the civilian deaths in Iraq. it is disgusting
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