From Consortium news

By Dr. Curren Warf, a professor of pediatric medicine and a board member of the Physicians for Social Responsibility

Last week, the medical journal The Lancet released an epidemiological study concluding that 655,000 Iraqis died from war-related injury and disease from March 2003 to July 2006. This shockingly high figure has drawn attacks from the Bush administration and right-wing pundits.

Speaking as a medical doctor, I wish to set the record straight. The Lancet study is superb science. The study followed a strict, widely accepted methodology to arrive at its sobering conclusion. The study is being attacked not on scientific grounds, but for ideological reasons.

People may not realize that The Lancet is the world’s most prestigious medical journal. Prior to publication, the Iraq study was subjected to a thorough peer-review by specialists in the field of epidemiology.

Three of the study’s authors, Gil Burnham, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, are doctors at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. The fourth author, Riyadh Lafta, is on the faculty of Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Under dangerous conditions, researchers conducted a cross-sectional cluster sample survey involving a total of 1849 Iraqi households. The survey documented a four-fold increase in the crude mortality rate from the pre-invasion to the post-invasion periods and, in addition, characterized the causes of death.

The investigators followed the same methodology in Iraq that has had been used in estimating death and disease in other conflicts such as the Congo — where the Bush administration uncritically accepted their results. The public health tool they employed — cluster surveys — has been demonstrated time and again to be the best method of estimating rates of death in areas where vital statistics are not scrupulously maintained. Such bureaucratic vigilance is not the case in present day Iraq.

In a war-ravaged country, an estimate of war-related deaths based on the method of counting bodies will radically underestimate the number of people who have died. In Iraq today, there have been numerous reports of mass graves and of bodies dumped in fields, beside roads, or in the Tigris River.

These deaths are, by and large, not reported to authorities, as some of these deaths may be linked to police forces.

One must also consider the Muslim practice of burial where internment is swift — often on the same day. Therefore, relying on media reports of the number killed, morgue logs, or Iraq Ministry or U.S. military counts will not provide an accurate estimate of the death toll. We must also not discount the possibility of bias by government officials; the U.S. and Iraq have much to gain by minimizing civilian deaths.

Since the media has been unable to find a scientist critical of the study, they’ve turned to policy wonks with literally no expertise in the health sciences . Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Foundation derides the study, but her advanced degree is in international studies. Nor does Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies nor Michael E. O’Hanlon of Brookings have a health background.

At his Oct. 11 press conference President Bush asserted “No, I don’t call it a credible report.” He said he asked the generals and the generals told him it was wrong. When asked to give a precise number of Iraqi war-related deaths the President demurred, saying ” I do know that a lot of innocent people have died.”

Despite the scientific rigor of the Hopkins study, there is a danger that the unsubstantiated criticism by administration will color the public’s perceptions. In this age, where fact shares equal time with conjecture, critics have attempted to discredit the Hopkins study without specifically addressing the science whatsoever.

If the administration believes the Hopkins study to be flawed, the federal government should fund its own study of Iraqi mortality, and submit the methodology and results to a medical journal subject to independent peer review. After all the Hopkins study was funded in large part by a $50,000 grant from MIT; surely the federal government could afford such a study.

I belong to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility. We care about the ‘ Medical Consequences of the War in Iraq.’ In fact, that’s the title of our upcoming conference to be held at UCLA this Saturday, Oct. 21. The conference is co-sponsored by the UCLA School of Public Health and UCLA Extension. Dr. David Rush, past president of the Society of Epidemiologic Research, will discuss the Lancet Iraq study. You can register here.

As physicians, we realize the horrible human cost and needless suffering the American invasion has brought on the people of Iraq. The war has also terribly harmed our own American soldiers, 2,765 of whom have been killed and 20,000 of whom have suffered disabling injuries.

At his recent press conference, President Bush brushed aside a question to quantify the human toll of the Iraq War with the comment that ‘a lot of innocent people’ have died. 655,000 is not a guess. It is the best estimate that we have to date of the human tragedy in Iraq.

As the catastrophe in Iraq continues to unfold, an unresolved question remains on the role of Bush, Blair, and the US/UK military. To what extent were they passively incompetent in facilitating the decline into civil war, and to what extent were they actively pursuing policies that promoted that outcome?

The adoption of the ‘Salvador Option’ by the US in Iraq was reported and discussed from the beginning of 2005 onwards. As described by Newsweek, the Salvador Option looked something like this:

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called “snatch” operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

US Congressman Denis Kucinich took up the issue in April of this year in a letter to Donald Rumsfeld:

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:

I am writing to request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams.

On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a report that the Pentagon had a proposal to train elite Iraqi squads to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal has been called the “Salvador Option,” which references the U.S. military assistance program, initiated under the Carter Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan Administration, that funded and supported “nationalist” paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebel leaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent civilians were assassinated and “disappeared,” including notable members of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Oscar Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, it was successful in eradicating guerrillas…..

…About one year before the Newsweek report on the “Salvador Option,” it was reported in the American Prospect magazine on January 1, 2004 that part of $3 billion of the $87 billion Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to fund operations in Iraq, signed into law on November 6, 2003, was designated for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. According to the Prospect article, experts predicted that creation of this paramilitary unit would “lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists.” The article further described how the bulk of the $3 billion program, disguised as an Air Force classified program, would be used to “support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded Iraqi security force.” According to one of the article’s sources, John Pike, an expert of classified military budgets at www.globalsecurity.org. “the big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the resistance.”…

…News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis.

The evidence that the US directly contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its own secretive security strategy is compelling. Historically of course this is nothing new – divide and rule is a strategy for colonial powers that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it was used in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago. However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and sustainability for Washington and London.

So, what did Blair know of and approve in the implementation of the Salvador Option? How does he feel about it now? Maybe someone should ask him.

From The Independent

Tony Blair has received a public warning from the country’s most senior military commander that the British presence in Iraq is threatening disaster there and in the UK.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, who took over as Chief of Staff six weeks ago, has warned the commitment to Iraq “exacerbates” problems faced by the UK in other parts of the world. He urged Mr Blair to give up his ambition to see a liberal democracy established in Iraq and settle for a “lower ambition”, warning that British troops were not invited into Iraq and the time when they were welcome has passed.

The Times reports that the comments from General Sir Richard Dannatt that he wants his forces to leave Iraq sometime soon have met with overwhelming support on the Army Rumour Service website.

MOD Oracle has more:

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, dropped a political bombshell last night by saying that Britain must withdraw from Iraq “soon” or risk serious consequences for Iraqi and British society.

In a blistering attack on Tony Blair’s foreign policy, Gen Dannatt said the continuing military presence in Iraq was jeopardising British security and interests around the world.

In an interview on BBC radio this morning the General went even further – pleading that the army must not be broken by a continuation of government policy in Iraq.

The full research paper on the latest nationally representative mortality survey in Iraq was published today in The Lancet. One point that has not received press attention, and was glossed over by the NY Times article we posted on yesterday, is the extremely high level of casualties inflicted by US forces. According to the published research:

Deaths attributable to the coalition accounted for 31% (95% CI 26-37) of post-invasion violent deaths. The proportion of violent deaths attributable to the coalition was much the same across periods (p=0?058). However, the actual number of violent deaths, including those that resulted from coalition forces, increased every year after the invasion.

Interestingly, the proportion found by this survey was consistent with that reported by the Iraq Body Count in 2005 when their media monitoring project found that 37% of civilian casualties were caused by US forces, the largest single cause of violent death. But what does 31% mean when considering the results of this new national survey?

To put it into numbers, US and UK troops have directly killed about 186,000 Iraqis since the war began. The invasion, occupation and resulting war has, overall, resulted in the deaths of about 650,000 more people than would of died if it had not happened.

Richard Horten, editor of The Lancet, writes in The Guardian on the findings of the study and the expectations of the government response.

The New York Times is reporting on the latest survey results from Iraq which show that that 600,000 civilians may have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war.

Go here for the full article.

Next month, on the 6th November Military Families Against the War go to court in a bid for a full public inquiry into why the UK went to war in Iraq.

Earlier this year the Court of Appeal ruled they were entitled to apply for a judicial review of the government’s refusal to hold an independent inquiry.

Peter Brierley, whose son Shaun died in Iraq March 2003 said:

“At last our case will be heard in full, I am convinced that my son died for no good reason as he should not have been sent to Iraq in the first place. I am looking forward to hearing the three defendants having to explain how they justify the invasion.”

Thanks to Lenin’s Tomb who also has a nice write up from the ‘Peace Train’ and a review of speeches and the days events.

A video of Craig’s speech at the demonstration can be viewed here courtesy of Ady Cousins from MFAW.

Unexpected speakers included Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious medical research journal, The Lancet. In November 2004 the Lancet published the only representative survey performed, so far, to document the excess mortality arising from the invasion of Iraq. More recent surveillance data posted on this blog indicates just how catastrophic the situation has become since the survey was carried out.

However, don’t expect these inconvenient facts to get any airtime on the conference platform.

The full report from the UN can be found here

Summary from Yahoo News

BAGHDAD (AFP) – At least 6,599 civilians were killed across war-torn Iraq in the months of July and August, the United Nations said.

In July at least 3,590 people were killed and in August 3,009 died in bloody attacks on civilians, according to the UN human rights report on Wednesday.

“The month of July witnessed an increase in the number of security related incidents resulting in an unprecedented number of civilians killed throughout the country,” the report said.

“Although the number of killings decreased at the beginning of August, further increases were evident towards the end of the month in Baghdad and other governorates.”

The country is in the grip of a bitter conflict between the newly empowered Shiite majority and the ousted Sunni Arab elite that has left thousands dead since February.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday warned that Iraq was on the brink of all-out civil war.

From BBC Online

The US threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf has said. General Musharraf said the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan’s intelligence director.

“I think it was a very rude remark,” Mr Musharraf told CBS television.

Pakistan agreed to side with the US, but Gen Musharraf said it did so based on his country’s national interest.

“One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that’s what I did,” he said.

‘Ludicrous’ requests

The extracts from the CBS show 60 Minutes, which will run on Sunday, were released on the same day that the White House praised Pakistan for its co-operation in America’s “war on terror”.

Gen Musharraf is due to meet US President George W Bush at the White House on Friday.

He is also due to launch his autobiography next week and some analysts say the timing of the revelation may be an attempt to generate interest in the book.

The White House and US State Department declined to comment on the 60 Minutes interview.

The Pakistani president said that, following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the US made some “ludicrous” demands of Pakistan.

“The intelligence director told me that Mr Armitage said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age’,” he said.

The US envoy also insisted that Pakistan suppress domestic expression of support for attacks on the United States, he said.

“If somebody’s expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,” Gen Musharraf said.

Mr Armitage also allegedly demanded that Pakistan allow the US to use its border posts as staging points for the war on Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s support was considered crucial in the defeat of Afghanistan’s Taleban government, which Pakistan had helped to bring to power.

President Musharraf has proved a loyal ally though many now will question the means used to extract the co-operation, says the BBC’s US state department correspondent Jonathan Beale.