IRAQ: an email to the Indepenent

Dear Patrick Cockburn and Raymond Whitaker,

In “Iraq: The reckoning” (The Independent, 12 March 2006), you write:

“But IBC admits that with the increasing inability of journalists to move around and report freely, its method of monitoring civilian deaths is becoming increasingly inaccurate.

What evidence has emerged indicates that a widely ridiculed study published in The Lancet in autumn 2004, estimating that at least 100,000 civilians had died violently since the war began, might not be so inaccurate.”

Question: When you wrote “widely ridiculed”, were you referring to the following?

“However, this number is only the central point of a range that extends from 8,000 to 194,000. This huge disparity was mocked ignorantly by one American commentator as ‘not an estimate, it's a dartboard‘. It was also defended, equally ignorantly, by the editor of The Lancet, who said: ‘It's highly probable the figure is 98,000. Anything more or less is much less probable.’ Both wrong. What the figures say is that there is a 95 per cent chance that the true figure lies between 8,000 and 194,000... It is statistically respectable, which is why The Lancet article passed its peer reviews, but it produces estimates hedged about with great uncertainty.

And there are good reasons for thinking that the true figure is towards the lower end of The Lancet's range.” (‘We should be counting the dead in Iraq, but let’s not get the figures out of proportion like this,’ John Rentoul , The Independent on Sunday, December 10, 2004)


“The Iraqi Body Count figure is probably much too low, because US military tactics ensure high civilian losses. American firepower, designed to combat the Soviet army, cannot be used in built-up areas without killing or injuring many civilians. Nevertheless a study published in The Lancet, estimating that 100,000 civilians had died in Iraq, appears to be too high.” (‘Terrified US soldiers are still killing civilians with impunity,’ Patrick Cockburn, The Independent on Sunday, April 24, 2005)


[the Lancet findings has been reached] “by extrapolating from a small sample... While never completely discredited, those figures were widely doubted”. (‘The true measure of the US and British failure,’ Leader, The Independent, July 20, 2005)


“even Iraq Body Count, an anti-war campaign, puts the total attributable to coalition forces at under 10,000, rather than the figure with an extra zero that is the common misconception of anti-war propaganda”. (‘Islam, blood and grievance,' John Rentoul, The Independent, July 24, 2005)

The Financial Times, on November 19, 2004 wrote: “This survey technique has been criticised as flawed, but the sampling method has been used by the same team in Darfur in Sudan and in the eastern Congo and produced credible results. An official at the World Health Organisation said the Iraq study ‘is very much in the league that the other studies are in ... You can't rubbish (the team) by saying they are incompetent‘”. (Stephen Fidler, 'Lies, damned lies and statistics,' Financial Times, November 19, 2004)

Question: Why did it take sixteen months to the Independent just to begin to acknowledge what it was clear and known since the beginning?

On your same newspaper, Andy McSmith recently wrote: “Mr Blair refused to say whether he had prayed for guidance on whether to send British troops into Iraq - which has cost the lives of 103 British troops, 2,300 US soldiers, and up to 30,000 Iraqis, with many thousands maimed or injured, in a conflict which has claimed more lives since the fall of Baghdad than the war itself.” (“Blair: 'God will be my judge on Iraq'”, Andy McSmith, The Independent, 04 March 2006)

When I wrote to McSmith, asking about the meaning of “up to 30,000” and why he had not mentioned the Lancet study, he wrote back: “There has been a lot written about the Lancet study, which was professionally conducted but under difficult conditions, but which necessarily relied on a small sample with a wide margin or error. They estimated 8,000-194,000 'excess deaths', and put the probable total at 98,000. This included increases in infant mortality, traffic accidents etc, with 60% directly attributable to the violence. It is the small sample and very wide margin of error that makes people nervous about the Lancet figure.”

You also write in your today’s article that the Lancet study “might not be so inaccurate”.

Question: What do you exactly mean with “might not be so inaccurate” ?

Considering the outrageous and disgraceful job that most of the media (including The Independent) have done with regards to the Lancet study and the Iraqi victims of this war, I would like to bring to your attention that according to Les Roberts (Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the world’s top epidemiologists and lead author of the Lancet report) there might be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?, By Les Roberts, AlterNet, February 8, 2006)

Question: Should we wait another sixteen months before reading on your newspaper that this number “might not be so inaccurate” ?

Thank you for your time and I look forward for your comments.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

P.S. For an exchange between The Independent’s Mary Dejevsky and Lancet author Les Roberts and for more details on how the lancet study was “widely ridiculed”, please take the time to read:

BURYING THE LANCET - PART 1

BURYING THE LANCET - PART 2

BURYING THE LANCET – Update

You may also find this material in the new book “Guardians of Power. The Myth of the Liberal Media” by David Edwards and David Cromwell. Even though your newspaper refused to review it, I am sure you will find this book highly educational and helpful.