Posts
The Lancet study purporting to find that over 650,000 Iraqis have died since the US-led invasion is so far out of line that anti-war site Iraq Body Count (IBC) has posted some “reality checks”. Bottom line: If the estimate published by The Lancet is accurate, then one or more of the following must have occurred.
- Incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
- bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
- the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
- an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.
In IBC's view, those implications are "extreme and improbable".
The refutation closes with an expression of regret that this controversy has diverted some of their limited resources away from more important work.
h/t: Verum Serum
Previous related post: Lancet study of Iraqi deaths is statistically unsound and unreliable
