Sunday, October 20, 2013

Hejira

Through Saturday, Iraq Body Count counts 638 violent deaths in the month so far.   Today's violence? 

Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports a Baghdad suicide bomber took his own life and the lives of 37 other people while leaving forty-two injured.  AFP quotes police officer Ali Mahdi stating,  "The cafe was full of people watching a soccer game and others smoking shisha (water pipe) when a minibus drove over the pavement and exploded right at the entrance to the café.   At first people in the cafe thought it was a drunk driver, until the blast tore them apart, covering the ground with chunks of human flesh and severed limbs." Al Jazeera reports, "Earlier, police said at least eight people were killed and 20 others injured when eight suicide bombers targeted police stations and the local council, a police station and an army checkpoint in the town of Rawa, west of Baghdad."  National Iraqi News Agency reports that 2 Mosul roadside bombings claimed the lives of 2 police officers and 2 Iraqi soldiers and left a third soldier injured, and another Mosul roadside bombing left 2 men and 1 woman dead.  Mohammed Tawfeeq adds, "Earlier, three attacks in Anbar province targeted a checkpoint, a mayor's office in a government complex and a police station, killing at least six people and wounding 19 others, according to police in the provincial capital of Ramadi."


Last week, a new study on deaths in Iraq was released.  Dropping back to Tuesday's snapshot:

On the topic of damage, Bobb Nodell (UW Health Sciences/UW Medicine) quotes the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at John Hopkins' Gilbert Burnham stating, "There were two big reasons to do this study: to cover the entire period of the war and to improve on the groundwork laid by earlier studies.  By broadening the sources of information we used and by covering the full length of the conflict, this study provides a more complete picture of mortality during the Iraq war."

The study he's referring to?  Al Jazeera reports:


The number of deaths caused by the Iraq War has been a source of intense controversy, as politics, inexact science and a clamor for public awareness have intersected in a heated debate of conflicting interests. The latest and perhaps most rigorous survey, released Tuesday, puts the figure at close to 500,000.
The study, — a collaboration of researchers in the U.S., Canada and Iraq appearing in the journal PLoS Medicine — included a survey of 2,000 Iraqi households in 100 geographic regions in Iraq. Researchers used two surveys, one involving the household and another asking residents about their siblings, in an attempt to demonstrate the accuracy of the data they were collecting. Using data from these surveys, researchers estimated 405,000 deaths, with another 55,800 projected deaths from the extensive migration in and emigration from Iraq occurring as a result of the war.

The University of Washington notes in a press release, "Based on household survey responses, gunshots were reported to cause 62% of violent deaths; car bombs, 12%; and other explosions, 9%. Cardiovascular conditions were the main cause of nonviolent death, accounting for 47% of nonviolent deaths over the entire study period. Other common sources of nonviolent deaths included infant or childhood deaths other than injuries (12.4%), chronic illnesses (11%) and cancer (8%)."  Dan Vergano (National Geographic) speaks with Columbia University epidemiologist Leslie Roberts who declares of the study, "This is a really serious and credible piece of work."

Bill Briggs (NBC News) quotes Amy Hagopian ("lead author of the study") declaring, "In a war situation, people can’t leave their homes to get medical care. When they do leave their homes to get medical care, they arrive at institutions overwhelmed with violent injuries. The water is compromised. Stress is elevated. The power is out. The distribution networks for medical supplies are compromised."  The Medical Press adds:

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser University, Mustansiriya University, and the UW's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation also participated in the study. The study is the first population-based survey since 2006 to estimate war-related deaths in Iraq and the first to cover the full-time span of the conflict.
Researchers state with 95% certainty that there were approximately 461,000 excess deaths during the Iraq war, but the actual number could be as low as 48,000 or as high as 751,000. (For comparison, three years after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the death toll has been estimated anywhere between 46,000 and 316,000).


The World Health Organization Collaborating Centre at the Imperial College of London's  Salman Rawaf observes, "To my knowledge, none of the governments involved in the invasion or occupation have conducted an official inquiry into the health consecquences of the conflict, calling into question their interest in the true impact of their actions on the civilians in Iraq."
There is a point to that.  Before we get to it, Wednesday, I noted:

Yesterday came news of a study determining that a half-million Iraqis have died in the Iraq War.  Alsumaria notes the study today.  BBC does as well, "The toll includes not only violent deaths from the invasion and subsequent insurgency, but avoidable fatalities linked to infrastructure collapse.  It exceeds the 112,000 violent civilian deaths reported by Iraq Body Count."  Stephen Hui (Straight) quotes the study's summary, "The risk of death at the peak of the conflict in 2006 almost tripled for men and rose by 70% for women. Respondents attributed 20% of household deaths to war-related violence. Violent deaths were attributed primarily to coalition forces (35%) and militia (32%). The majority (63%) of violent deaths were from gunshots. Twelve percent were attributed to car bombs."  RT covers it here.


That was some of the coverage.  There was a lot more.  But that's Al Jazeera, National Geographic, NBC, the Medical Press, Iraq's Alsumaria, the BBC, Canada's Straight and there were many more.  As the story initially broke,  the coverage also included Meredith Clark (MSNBC), Courtney Subramanian (Time magazine),  The Voice of Russia, AFP, Brett Wilkins (Digital Journal), Patrick Cockburn (Independent),  Alexander Besant (Global Post), The Punch, Simon Fraser University News, People's World, Mark Leon Goldberg (UN Dispatch), Joshua Keating (Slate), Roxanne Palmer (International Business Times), and Monte Morin (Los Angeles Times).  That's not all of it.

And if this isn't your first visit to this site, you're aware that, for Iraq today, that's a lot of press.  There are bombings that claim fifty lives or more in a single news cycle that get less coverage than that.

Will Bunch decided today to remember Iraq.  We're supposed to feel flattered.  He's part of the circle jerk so we're also not supposed to call him out. 


Yeah, that'll happen.

Will Bunched Briefs open his Sunday column with this:

This got virtually no attention, but there was a report the other day that confirmed a number that's bandied about for a few years, that the U.S, invasion of Iraq and all the fighting that followed claimed the lives of almost 500,000 citizens there. Some of them were were military combatants, jihadis, whatever, -- but thousands of them were civilians, innocent women and children whose lives were cut short after America's decision to unleash "shock and awe" in the Persian Gulf. And let us never forget that more than 4,000 American troopers died there as well.

He's such an idiot.  And his fantasies/lies do real harm.  As we've noted, the study got press attention. 

No, it did not 'confirm' "a number that's bandied about for a few years." He's referring to the 2006 Lancet Study which found 500,000 Iraqis had died in the Iraq War from violence (actually 654,965 dead) from March 2003 through June 2006.

The new study?

It's covering 2003 through 2011.

I happen to believe The Lancet study.  I also happen to believe that if you lie in public you're asking people not to believe you.  Lying that this new study proves the 2006 Lancet study?  That's putting everything at risk.

The new study's results do not back up the 2006 study.  They back up those who claimed that the numbers in the 2006  Lancet study were wrong.  To basically reach the number the 2006 study did, the current study had to add five years to it.

No one is helped when Will Bunch lies.  No one.

His lies make it that much harder for those who tell the truth about Iraq.

He's an idiot who's been wrongly applauded by the circle jerk -- especially the post-middle aged, White Anglo male sector -- for far too long.

He gets paid to write nonsense and paid to write it badly ("That is the reality-based world that our president and are generals have failed to see [. . .]").

He writes a tired column and does so 8 days before Nouri al-Maliki is set to arrive in the US.

 Marc Lynch (Foreign Policy) wrote a great column -- but it's not just the White House that has to take the visit seriously, it's the press as well.  Clearly, that's beyond Will Bunch's ability or grasp.


We could go on and on.  Including about what kind of an idiot doesn't realize that part of the reason war was declared on Iraq was because of the outrage the White House encouraged in the US  population.   We could point out that if you're writing a column and mentioning the US death toll it's a little insulting at this late date to use "more than 4000" instead of taking the time to look the total up.  Will Bunch is a lazy and very bad writer.



I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

 The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.



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