April 7, 2006
Simon Kelner,
Editor
Patrick Cockburn,
Andrew Buncombe, Washington
correspondent
Leonard Doyle, Foreign editor
Andrew Grice, Political
editor
Mary Dejevsky,
Terry Kirby,
John
Rentoul,
Underneath Patrick Cockburn’s article "Iraq three
years on: Don't look away" (The Independent, 8 April 2006) your newspaper
presents some number "Then and Now". About IRAQI DEATHS, you
write:
Military
4,895 - 6,370
Civilian 33,821 - 37,943
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article356466.ece
Iraq Body Count, from where you got the numbers,
simply records the Iraqi civilians deaths reported in the English language
media with an online website. On the IBC website, you may read: "It is
likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the
media."
A few weeks ago, the Independent wrote: "But IBC
admits that with the increasing inability of journalists to move around and
report freely, its method of monitoring civilian deaths is becoming increasingly
inaccurate. What evidence has emerged indicates that a widely ridiculed study
published in The Lancet in autumn 2004, estimating that at least 100,000
civilians had died violently since the war began, might not be so
inaccurate." ("Iraq: The reckoning" , Patrick Cockburn and Raymond
Whitaker , The Independent, 12 March 2006)
On 29 October 2004, the British medical journal The
Lancet published 'Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq:
cluster sample survey’:
Making conservative
assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened
since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess
deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent
deaths. (Interpretation)
Most individuals reportedly killed by
coalition forces were women and children. (Findings)
Source: Mortality
before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey, The Lancet,
Published online October 29,2004
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673604174412/abstract
"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...
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." ('Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After
Invasion', October 28, 2004)
http://www.jhsph.edu/PublicHealthNews/Press_Releases/PR_2004/Burnham_Iraq.html
The Financial Times, on November 19,
2004 wrote: "This survey technique has been criticised as flawed, but the
sampling method has been used by the same team in Darfur in Sudan and in the
eastern Congo and produced credible results. An official at the World Health
Organisation said the Iraq study 'is very much in the league that the other
studies are in ... You can't rubbish (the team) by saying they are
incompetent'". (Stephen Fidler, 'Lies, damned lies and statistics,'
Financial Times, November 19, 2004)
The Chronicle of Higher
Education on January 27, 2005 wrote "’Les has used, and consistently
uses, the best possible methodology,’ says Bradley A. Woodruff, a medical
epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Indeed,
the United Nations and the State Department have cited mortality numbers
compiled by Mr. Roberts on previous conflicts as fact -- and have acted on those
results. (...) Mr. Roberts has studied mortality caused by war since 1992,
having done surveys in locations including Bosnia, Congo, and Rwanda. His three
surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental
humanitarian organization, in which he used methods akin to those of his Iraq
study, received a great deal of attention. 'Tony Blair and Colin Powell have
quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the
precision or validity,’ he says." (Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a
Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored, by LILA
GUTERMAN, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27, 2005 http://chronicle.com/free/2005/01/2005012701n.htm
)
According to Les Roberts (Center for International Emergency
Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
one of the world’s top epidemiologists and lead author of the Lancet report)
there might be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian
deaths (Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?, By Les
Roberts, AlterNet, February 8, 2006 - http://www.alternet.org/story/31508/
)
The horror inflicted by our governments, with our money and in our
name, might be way far more horrifying. Dr Gideon Polya recently
wrote:
"AVOIDABLE
MORTALITY (technically, excess mortality) is the difference between the
actual mortality in a country and the mortality expected for a peaceful,
decently-run country with the same demographics (i.e. with the same birth rate
and the same population age profile). Avoidable mortality is a fundamental
parameter to be considered in any sensible discussion of human affairs – it is
the bottom-line issue when assessing the success or otherwise of societal,
regional and global policies. (...)
Ignoring mass mortality simply
ensures its continuance and denying past atrocities simply ensures their
repetition – history ignored yields history repeated. Thus the actuality of
the Jewish Holocaust (6 million deaths) was not formally acknowledged by the
Allies until 30 months before the end of World War 2 in Europe. This tardiness
in reportage must surely have contributed significantly to this
atrocity.
However, TODAY Mainstream Media are comprehensively ignoring
the horrendous magnitude of the avoidable post-invasion deaths in Occupied
Iraq and Afghanistan (presently totaling 2.3 million deaths) and the avoidable
deaths in the First World-dominated non-European World (presently 14.8 million
deaths each year)." (Layperson’s guide to counting Iraq deaths, by Dr
Gideon Polya, MWC News Magazine, 6 April 2006)
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/
I have written many times to your newspaper
on this subject but I have never got a reply from you. This time I want to end
this email with Dr. Polya’s words: "Peace is the only way but silence
kills and silence is complicity – it IS possible to get through the Wall of
Silence."
Gabriele
Zamparini
P.S. Here some important articles regarding the Iraqi civilian
deaths.
Layperson’s guide to counting Iraq deaths, by Dr Gideon
Polya, MWC News Magazine, 6 April 2006
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/
Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian
Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored, by LILA GUTERMAN, The Chronicle of
Higher Education, January 27, 2005 http://chronicle.com/free/2005/01/2005012701n.htm
When Promoting Truth Obscures the Truth: More on Iraqi Body Count and
Iraqi Deaths, by Stephen Soldz, ZNet, February 05, 2006
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9660
BURYING THE LANCET - PART 1
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050905_burying_the_lancet_part1.php
BURYING THE LANCET - PART 2
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_part2.php
BURYING THE LANCET – Update
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_update.php
Do
Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?, By Les Roberts, AlterNet, February
8, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31508/
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