The Great Civilian Body Count Controversy & Other News From The Forever War

Ascertaining an accurate count of the number of civilians to die in the Iraq war -- a bloodbath that they neither invited nor deserved -- has been impossible. Some deaths are never reported, some are suppressed and the people who keep track of the carnage often have an ax to grind, which results in a predisposition to under or over report.

If there is anything approaching a consensus view, and I use that term advisedly, it is that somewhere between 80,000 and 87,000 civilians have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2001. That is the range arrived at by the folks at Iraq Body Count based on data cross-checked from media reports and hospitals, morgues, non-government organizations and official figures.

That number stands in stark contrast to the claim that 601,027 civilians died in a Johns Hopkins University cluster-sample survey published three weeks before the mid-term elections in The Lancet. By contrast, Iraq Body Count listed 47,702 deaths during the same period.

The survey provoked a firestorm. Anti-war advocates seized upon it to advance their view that the civilian toll was far worse than was being acknowledged, while pro-war advocates argued that it was deeply flawed.

Drawing on my own experience in survey taking and analysis and despite a healthy dose of skepticism, I myself came down somewhat on the side of the survey. But just as there still are people looking for proof of those elusive Iraqi WMD, there have been people hard at work trying to debunk the survey.

"Data Bomb," the most thorough and persuasive effort to date, has just been published in The National Journal.

Authors Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon write that the survey authors:

* Were ideologically predisposed to conclude that there was a much higher body count and the timing of the survey's release just before the election was no accident.

* Followed a model that ensured that even minor components of the data, when extrapolated over the whole population, would yield substantially higher numbers.

* Have made it difficult to resolve apparent inconsistencies in their methodology and analysis by not making available to other researchers the surveyors' original field reports and response forms and not just collated survey results.

* May have engaged in fraud.

The survey was led Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins University professor, with assistance from Riyadh Lafta, and Les Roberts.

Burnham defends the survey, although not all that persuasively, in an interview with Pajamas Media editor Richard Miniter.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE

After bottoming out in October, suicide bomb attacks have been on the uptick. Eleven people were killed yesterday in Baghdad at a ceremony celebrating Iraq's national Army Day holiday in the latest incident in an upsurge of suicide attacks.

The bomber struck as an elderly man was placing flowers into the barrels of three Iraqi soldiers' rifles. He and the soldiers were among the casualties. Minutes before the blast soldiers had been dancing and chanting "Where is terrorism now?"

More here.

SUICIDE BOMBERS OF THE LAST RESORT

Meanwhile, an increasing number of suicide bombers are women apparently trained by Al Qaeda.

Women have been responsible for 14 of 667 suicide attacks since May 2005, or about 2 percent of the total, according to The Associated Press. They have caused at least 107 deaths, or 5 percent of the 2,065 people killed during that period. But in November and December, women carried out three suicide bombings in Diyala province, one of Iraq's most violent areas, where Al Qaeda remains a force to be reckoned with.

More here.

NEXT STOP: 4,000 U.S. DEATHS

While deaths have dropped precipitously since the Surge began getting traction, some 3,909 U.S. soldiers have died in the war.

Given the Pentagon's penchant for playing loose and fast with the numbers, it is not surprising that this total does not include the soldiers who later died of wounds.

More here.

THEY HAVE THEIR PRIORITIES

The big news as the Greatest Deliberative Body in the World returns to Washington this week is not that they'll be pursuing the really important stuff, but awaiting the testimony of pitching ace Roger Clemens in the Major League Baseball steroid scandal.

Then there is the matter of a congressionally-backed pay raise for troops and bonuses for new recruits which are on hold because of President Bush's holiday pocket veto of a gadzillion dollar defense spending bill. The prez iced the bill because it could expose the Baghdad government to billions of dollars in legal claims dating to Saddam Hussein's reign of terror.

The House had passed the bill, which had been enthusiastically backed by the president, by a vote of 370-49; the Senate vote was an even more persuasive 90-3.

More here and here.

Photograph by Franco Pagetti for Time magazine