Smug alert: Beware of good news from Iraq

USA Today has an interesting set of graphics on the changes in death patterns in Iraq.

The number of civilians killed in multiple-fatality bombings targeting civilians (read terrorist attacks) seems to be plummeting.

Jan 379
Feb 622
Mar 617
Apr 634
May 325
Jun 38 (through June 8)

Now I admit, the June numbers are way too preliminary, but still, there does seem to have been some positive trending.

The cost of this progress, you should note, has been U.S. and Iraqi military lives. As USA Today reports, April and May were the deadliest two-month period since the war began for U.S. forces. And Iraqi military and police fatalities topped 300 in April compared to January's death toll of 91.

Now whether this positive trend will continue - well, I hope it will. But then I'm not someone who is invested in the idea that the U.S. should fail in Iraq.

Call me cynical, but I sense that some people want the U.S. to fail in Iraq only so they can say I told you it would be a disaster. They don't care about the consequences of such a failure, they are just desperate to feel smug.

Doubts grow about Lancet study on Iraq War deaths

The (London) Times is reporting that skepticism is increasing regarding the number of Iraqi deaths related to the U.S.-led invasion that were reported by the British medical journal, The Lancet, in October.

Recall that The Lancet study placed the number of Iraqi dead at more than 650,000, a number that would have represented one in 40 Iraqis. This compares to 50,000 the number of deaths that were estimated by Iraq Body Count, an organization that the Times describes as "an antiwar web-based charity that monitors news sources." This lower figure was essentially corroborated by the United Nations Development Agency.

Lancet claimed that it arrived at its estimate by asking Iraqi doctors to knock on doors in Iraq in order to inquire about the number of deaths that had occured in a given household.

According to the Times:

Several academics have tried to find out how the Lancet study was conducted; none regards their queries as having been addressed satisfactorily. Researchers contacted by The Times talk of unreturned e-mails or phone calls, or of being sent information that raises fresh doubts. Iraq Body Count says there is “considerable cause for scepticism” and has complained that its figures had been misleadingly cited in the The Lancet as supporting evidence.

One critic is Professor Michael Spagat, a statistician from Royal Holloway College, University of London...Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the
"three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports. “The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,” contends Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. “They published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not actually follow the procedures that they stated.” The paper had “no scientific standing”. Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? “No.”

The Times suggests that politics may have been involved:

One of The Lancet authors, Dr Les Roberts, campaigned for a Democrat seat in the US House of Representatives and has spoken out against the war. Dr Richard Horton, editor of the The Lancet is also antiwar.