New Iraqi Death Report Roughly Confirms Lancet

I haven't had time to research everything, but one thing stands out in the reporting of the new Iraq/WHO study of deaths since the invasion. The number of people now dying who would not have been dying without the invasion is in the hundreds of thousands, probably in the half million to million range. This is roughly what Lancet said more than a year ago, extrapolated for another eighteen months. It is wildly higher than either what the Bush administration said at the time or Iraq Body Count calculated.

It is also evident that people report statistics, where precision is extremely important, with very loose language. Contrary to the headline in the above-linked article, 151,000 is not the toll. It's where the toll stood, according to this report, through June 2006. We're in January 2008, and the last two years have been very violent. It doesn't even claim to be "all deaths as a result" but just "violent deaths as a result."

The difference between Iraq/WHO and Lancet is not as great as has been reported. Lancet looked primarily at excess mortality and concluded that it was almost entirely due to violence. Iraq/WHO says that it was a lot less violence but that there was 60% or more increase in non-violent deaths. On the back of an envelope, I get a gross number for them that is within the error range for Lancet. The disagreement seems to be primarily why people die.

This will require more analysis and I'll have another post later.