A medical journal called the Lancet posted a study that claims 665,000 Iraqi civilians have died since 2003. I find this number to be shocking. Not because of the loss of life, but because of what appears to be a blatant mishandling of the truth. Are we to believe that Iraq has lost more people during this war than the U.S. has ever lost in any of the wars it has fought? Are we also to believe that all the headines of 18-30 deaths were extremely inaccurate and that the real count is 770 lives a day? That is quite a margin of error.
But already, the Oregonian is running this report on its frontpage and I am sure SF Comical is doing the same thing. On December of '05, Bush announced that Iraq had lost 30,000 civilians and currently, according to Micheal Medved, the Iraqi Government puts the count at 50,000. Could they both be so wrong?
Iraq the Model has something to say about the Lancet.
4 comments:
Not to be all smelly and tree huggerish, but 50K lost is a lot of dead. It pales in comparison to 650K, but nonetheless, if 50K were removed from PB, I'd notice. I'd probably also be a lot happier...
It's too bad that they can't see the power in the truth.
Exactly. Why exaggerate a number that is already high?
Here are some numbers so that each of us can consider if 50,000 really is or is not a big number.
Iraq Stuff
Population: 26,783,383 (July 2006 est.)
Death Rate: 5.37 deaths/1,000 population (2006 est.)
Population / 1000 = 26783.38
26783.38 * 5.37 = 148,827 deaths per year.
The "war" has been going for 4 years. 575,307 people have died naturally during that time.
The war has added 50,000/4 = 12,500 extra deaths per year to a country in which 148,827 deaths happen per year without the war.
50,000 / 26,783,383 = .0019
The war has cost Irag about two tenths of one percent of its population.
BTW, I only provide the above because numbers without comparisons its harder to determine meaningful info.
I think any life lost is extremely sad.
Post a Comment