An exchange with Assistant Guardian Editor Michael White

Michael White - assistant editor of the Guardian and its political editor from 1990-2006 - replied to my piece When life doesn't count. The Iraq Body Count's genocide denial and the grave responsibility of the anti-war movement

From: michael.white@guardian.co.uk
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008
To: info@thecatsdream.com
Subject: Re: When life doesn't count. The Iraq Body Count's genocide denial and the grave responsibility of the anti-war movement

Thanks for your email about the casualty rate in Iraq. I read it with interest, a complex subject which arouses strong emotions as well as difficult technical arguments about data and methodology which few of us (certainly not me) can claim to understand.

One thing I do understand and would warn you against is making vehement and abusive comments about people of good will with whom you disagree. I know little about the IBC or the people who run it, but I do not think it wise - let alone decent - to impugn their motives which are probably not so different from your own. Abuse of the kind you utter points to a sectarian outlook which is damaging - especially to you.

best wishes

This is my reply:

Thanks Michael.

Are you the same Michael White - assistant editor of the Guardian and its political editor from 1990-2006 - who wrote:

A serious note of caution
I have two problems with the Lancet's headline-grabbing estimates of Iraqi casualties
By Michael White
October 12, 2006

In this piece you wrote:

“I have two problems. Firstly, the figures offered by the study range from 392,976 to 942,636, so the 655,000 estimate splits the difference. This is both strikingly imprecise (not necessarily avoidable), and also at variance with other estimates, both governmental and more disinterested. The Observer's Peter Beaumont, who explained the horrifying murder campaign against professional Iraqi women on Sunday, sets out the numbers in today's Guardian: 98,000 (US researchers), 128,000 (Iraqi NGOs).

Either way, that is appalling and the manner of the US-UK occupation, notably the abolition of internal security without adequate ground forces to sustain law and order against criminal and ''resistance'' forces, has much to answer for: one third, according to the Lancet. One goal of the invasion was to end the loss of Iraqi civilian life - 500,000 on some estimates - caused by the UN sanctions imposed to stop Saddam Hussein troubling his neighbours again.

My second problem arises from Lancet editor, Richard Horton's, commentary in today's Guardian. It transpires that he has views on Iraq, the invasion of 2003 and what will put things right: the withdrawal of US and other coalition forces. This is a leap of logic which seems quite brave. But it would allow a lot of people to sit back and wash their hands of what happens next. When you can't blame the Yanks it's less fun.”

Invasion was the least worst option
One way or another most of us got it wrong about Iraq
By Michael White
March 20, 2008

In this piece you wrote:

“It will not be enough to spare the paper attacks from people for whom the bad news cannot be bad enough. When I queried the Lancet/Johns Hopkins estimate of a likely 600,000 dead in 2006, as being improbably out of line with all other data, I got a kicking. Others still share my view. I stand by it.”

Yet in your e-mail to me you write:

“a complex subject which arouses strong emotions as well as difficult technical arguments about data and methodology which few of us (certainly not me) can claim to understand.”

If you don’t understand this complex subject, how could you write on the Guardian (assuming you are the same Michael White) against the Lancet study? If you don’t understand this complex subject, I wonder what your “I stand by it” really means.

The second part of your e-mail seems almost a threat; certainly the best way I have to answer to it is to invite good faith readers to read again what I wrote and draw their own conclusions. But it beggar belief that the word “decent” is used by people who have the audacity to write – five years and far more than one million slaughtered lives later – that “Invasion was the least worst option”.

This genocide could have never happened if so many so-called professional journalists and so-called “mainstream” media outlets had been honest and decent (yes, decent!) and had informed your readers instead of echoing the government’s lies and indoctrinating the public with propaganda.

No wonder you’re still trying to justify this genocide by denying it.

What a shame!

Gabriele Zamparini

***

FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE:

From: michael.white@guardian.co.uk
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008
To: "The Cat's Dream"
Subject: Re: When life doesn't count. The Iraq Body Count's genocide denial and the grave responsibility of the anti-war movement

yes, of course, there is only one of me: and that's why I am keen that you
not fall out with yr friends, you are on the same side basically; and it is
silly to abuse people and impugn their motives just because you disagree
with their conclusions. best wishes

THIS IS MY REPLY:

Thanks Michael for your reply and for your time.

You're right. It would be silly to abuse people and impugn their motives just because I disagree with their opinions. But this is not what I have done. It's not even a question of friends or sides or political parties.

The US media watch FAIR wrote a couple of days ago:

"There is no more important question about the Iraq War than the question of how many Iraqis have died. It is impossible to truly evaluate the war or discuss where to go from here without knowing the human cost of the war, and that cost has overwhelmingly been borne by Iraqis."

In your email yesterday you wrote: "a complex subject which arouses strong emotions as well as difficult technical arguments about data and methodology which few of us (certainly not me) can claim to understand."

You are absolutely right Michael, this certainly is a difficult topic. For this very reason, do you think it's reasonable to write about such incredibly important and difficult issues when you admit yourself you lack the expertise? Of course journalists can't be expected to know everything, but shouldn't you be reaching out to experts in epidemiology to help you get these things right? Is there any chance you might write a second, more accurate piece after consulting with these experts?

The name Galileo should always remind us that science must be free and protected from political and ideological interferences. Only the light of reason can help us against the darkness that, far from being defeated, is always there to make fun of us. I include here below a few useful resources. I appeal to your reason and I'm sorry if with my email yesterday I hurt your feelings. I assure you that was not my intention.

Best wishes,
Gabriele

- Lancet study authors Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham have written an informative piece on Iraq mortality studies, available at the website for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health: Answers to Questions About Iraq Mortality Surveys

- MIT's John Tirman, who commissioned the second of the two Lancet studies, has answered critics of those studies, including what looks like a media campaign of disinformation

- Regarding the WHO study estimate of 151,000 deaths, Les Roberts has noted that there is more in common with the Lancet results than first appears, while he also points to a likely under-reporting of violent deaths in the WHO study AND here

- Spagat's "50-page research paper" is a non-refereed, unpublished document that he uploaded to his own website. Serious flaws, including deceptive cherry-picking of data, have been identified by statistician Tim Lambert at his Deltoid blog

***

FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE:

From: michael.white@guardian.co.uk
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008
To: "The Cat's Dream"
Subject: partisanship

thanks for the further note and the links which I am in the process of studying further. I have kept an eye on the controversy over the months and agree that it is important to establish what happened and why - though I sometimes wish that more attention was devoted to the terrible, avoidable and persistent loss of life in the Congo and elsewhere.

In this instance, my own stated scepticism rests on experience ofseeing sincere progressive people believing something because they wish to believe it. In the 30s it was that Stalin's purges were justified, just as well into the 70s we told each other that the Chinese CP had avoided the errors of the CPSU - no purges, mass murders etc. Sceptics were lumped in with rightwing propagandists and Simon Leys book, Chinese Shadows, was roundly abused.

It turned out not to be so, Sometimes we are better at condemning the west than at taking a cold hard look at its opponents. That's why I ask questions without claiming to have the answers myself....

regards

MY REPLY:

Thank you Michael for your reply and for giving this issue the due attention.

Did you know that Les Roberts, a world renowned epidemiologist and lead author of the Lancet’s on Iraq, worked also in Congo for the International Rescue Committee? From a Media Lens Alert in 2005:

...in 2000 Roberts began the first of three surveys in Congo for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in which he used methods akin to those of the Iraq study. Roberts' first survey estimated that an astonishing 1.7 million people had died in Congo over 22 months of armed conflict - on average 2,600 people were dying every day. The IRC's president, Reynold Levy, put the figures in perspective:

“It's as if the entire population of Houston was wiped off the face of the Earth in a matter of months.” (Hrvoje Hranjski and Victoria Brittain, ‘2,600 a day dying in Congolese war,’ The Guardian, June 10, 2000)

As Roberts says, the reaction could not have been more different:

"Tony Blair and Colin Powell quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the precision or validity." (Quoted, Lila Guterman, ‘Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored,’ The Chronicle Of Higher Education, January 27, 2005; http://chronicle.com/free/2005/01/2005012701n.htm)

Indeed, within a month of Roberts’ IRC report being published, the UN Security Council passed a resolution that all foreign armies must leave Congo, and later that year, the United Nations called for $140 million in aid to the country, more than doubling its previous annual request. Citing the study, the US State Department announced an additional $10 million for emergency programmes in Congo.

In his October 2001 speech to the Labour party conference, Tony Blair said the international community could resolve many of the world’s worst conflicts:

“It could, with our help, sort out the blight that is the continuing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where three million people have died through war or famine in the last decade.” (‘Part one of the speech by prime minister, Tony Blair, at the Labour Party conference,’ The Guardian, October 2, 2001)

The three million figure was produced by Roberts’ study using essentially the same methodology employed in Iraq. And yet, in rejecting the Lancet report out of hand, Blair told parliament:

“Figures from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is.” (David Hughes, ‘No inquiry into Iraq death toll, says Blair,’ Daily Mail, December 9, 2004

AND

“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)

I agree we should condemn mass violence and abuses of human rights every where and from wherever side they come. I’m horrified from what’s happening in Tibet where Chinese brutality needs to be condemned and the Tibetans helped in their non-violent efforts to resolve that conflict through dialogue and peaceful means, as repeatedly asked by the Dalai lama.

I believe our condemnation of violence must be even stronger when it’s our own governments to be responsible for huge crimes against humanity, as it’s in Iraq.

Thank you again Michael for being open to dialogue and for the time you’ll dedicate to this important issue.

I will CC this e-mail to Media Lens and Les Roberts.

Best wishes,
Gabriele