www.talkcyprus.org

[brother]

Quote: Ali Huseyin Bakir has recently published an interesting research on American casualties in Iraq since the start of the occupation. According to data that appeared on http://dunyabulteni.net (this covers the period between the beginning of the occupation and October 23, 2006), four fairly different figures have been published on US casualties:


1) According to official US figures, the number is 2,790.


2) According to estimates from independent and reliable foreign sources, this figure is slightly over 15,000.


3) According to figures announced by resistance groups (Iraqi Islamic Army), it is more than 25,000. This figure is also close to the estimates of Russian military experts, who assert that the number of American troops killed in Iraq is always ten-fold the figure declared by Pentagon.


4) According to Arabic-language news portals (Al-Muhktasar), it is 33,693.


After carefully examining the sources and results, Bakir concludes that “The average of the latter three figures is over 24,000, which seems pretty plausible. This figure constitutes 9.8 percent of the total number of American troops stationed in Iraq.”


He goes further, saying, “When talking about the number of American casualties, the intensity of the daily operations in Iraq should be taken into consideration. According to American journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, between 800 and 900 operations are carried out against American forces every week. This means that American troops are subjected to four attacks per hour, 100 everyday. When this information is compared with the statement of an Iraqi resistance group, we can observe its accuracy. In its statement in September, the Iraqi Islamic Army noted that the number of its military operations within the last four months had reached 2,600. This means they carried out 22 operations per day. That only one resistance group carries out 22 operations daily means the resistance forces are capable of conducting 100 operations everyday.”


The Pentagon announced that more than 5,500 servicemen have deserted since the beginning of the Iraq war. And the US Army has already issued orders forcing soldiers to stay beyond their scheduled retirement or enlistment period in Iraq. According to a report released by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) on Aug. 31, 2005, this order covers more than 14,000 troops. (10 percent of the total number of the troops who are still serving in Iraq without knowing when their military service will expire).


One more thing should be underlined: The Pentagon makes a one-time payment of $20,000 to all new recruits and reimburses educational expenses to the tune of $60,000. Moreover, those who join the special forces are given a $150,000 bonus. In addition, the administration grants citizenship to those who join US Army. Because previous incentives failed, President George W. Bush has ratified the bill that reduces the duration of the citizenship process from three years to one year. Thanks to this bill, 7,500 troops earned the right to American citizenship in 2004; the highest number since the Vietnam War.


According to the widely-cited Lancet Report, 655,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the occupation in 2003. This figure is higher than all other estimates made so far. It presents a figure 13 fold more than the estimates of the Iraq Body Count program. It is certainly much more than official US estimates.


At least 655,000 innocent lives have perished! Along with the dead Americans, we are talking about the lives of 700,000 human beings. If you ask the reason why, “for no reason” is the answer you get.



http://www.zaman.com/?bl=columnists&alt=&trh=20061121&hn=38491

[thebrix]

Quote: Ali Huseyin Bakir has recently published an interesting research on American casualties in Iraq since the start of the occupation.

The obvious problem with this is that the individuals are countable:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/fallen/

If there were 10 times as many personnel killed as actually were, do you not think that relatives, friends etc. would have noticed and clamoured to get them on the list?

Quite apart from all those other sources being unquoted, I note the other blunders such as:

"That only one resistance group carries out 22 operations daily means the resistance forces are capable of conducting 100 operations everyday." - "does not follow" (as a mathematics lecturer of mine liked to annotate unwarranted extrapolations and jumps in logic ...);

"According to the widely-cited Lancet Report, 655,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the occupation in 2003." is just flat wrong; that was given as the median value of a very wide spread of estimate!

I think journalists should be banned from quoting all numbers above 3 in any writing ;)

[city]

a site which I consider thrustworthy http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

has a Press Release on the Lancet report

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr14/0.php

Its worth to read the article in full

Quote: There has been enormous interest and debate over the newly published Lancet Iraqi mortality estimate of 655,000 excess deaths since the invasion, 601,000 of them from violence (and including combatants with civilians). Even the latter estimate is some 12 times larger than the IBC count of violent civilian deaths reported in the international news media, which stands at something under 50,000 for the same period (although the IBC figure for this period is likely to considerably increase with the addition of as yet unprocessed data). The new Lancet estimate is also almost the same degree higher than any official records from Iraq. This contrast has provoked numerous requests for comment, and these are our first observations.

summary, implications 1-5, and conclusions are available at the bottom of the page

Quote: We would hope that, before accepting such extreme notions, serious consideration is given to the possibility that the population estimates derived from the Lancet study are flawed. The most likely source of such a flaw is some bias in the sampling methodology such that violent deaths were vastly over-represented in the sample. The precise potential nature of such bias is not clear at this point (it could, for example, involve problems in the application of a statistical method originally designed for studying the spread of disease in a population to direct and ongoing violence-related phenomena). But to dismiss the possibility of such bias out of hand is surely both irresponsible and unwise.

[cypezokyli]

Quote: 1) According to official US figures, the number is 2,790.


2) According to estimates from independent and reliable foreign sources, this figure is slightly over 15,000.


3) According to figures announced by resistance groups (Iraqi Islamic Army), it is more than 25,000. This figure is also close to the estimates of Russian military experts, who assert that the number of American troops killed in Iraq is always ten-fold the figure declared by Pentagon.


4) According to Arabic-language news portals (Al-Muhktasar), it is 33,693.


After carefully examining the sources and results, Bakir concludes that “The average of the latter three figures is over 24,000, which seems pretty plausible. This figure constitutes 9.8 percent of the total number of American troops stationed in Iraq.”

taking the average of four undreliable sources, is not really what i call "science"


thebrix wrote: I think journalists should be banned from quoting all numbers above 3 in any writing Wink


:lol:
totally agree