2006, October: 0.6 Million violent Iraq Deaths + 0.6 million excess deaths from deprivation

Gideon Polya, “0.6 Million Iraq Deaths. New Lancet Study”, MWC News, 12 October 2006, partly cached by Google.

0.6 Million Iraq Deaths. New Lancet Study [October 2006]

TOP MEDICAL JOURNAL The Lancet has just published a report from a team headed by Johns Hopkins scientists that estimates 655,000 post-invasion avoidable deaths (excess deaths) in Occupied Iraq.

One can make a distinction between total (violent and non-violent) deaths due to the war in Iraq and violent deaths. I have been publishing updated estimates of "avoidable mortality" (avoidable deaths; excess mortality; excess deaths; deaths that should not have happened) associated with the Bush Wars over the last 3 years; these estimates were based on publicly available data published by the UN Population Division. The total post-invasion avoidable deaths (including both non-violent and violent deaths) in Occupied Iraq are currently (October 2006) about 563,000 whereas the post-invasion violent deaths reported by the Iraq Body Count scholars are about 49,000.

However, according to Australian philosopher/bioethicist Professor Peter Singer (presently at Princeton University; held to be the world’s most influential living philosopher), we are responsible for what we do and for what we fail to do (see: Singer, P. (2000), Writings on an Ethical Life, Ecco Press, New York).

Professor Singer has controversially argued for the humane “active euthanasia” of severely disabled infants. At present many experienced hospital doctors will administer pain relief but not sustenance to such infants by way of “passive euthanasia”. According to Singer:

“Doctors who deliberately leave a baby to die when they have the awareness, the ability, and the opportunity to save the baby’s life, are just as morally responsible for the death as they would be if they had brought it about by a deliberate , positive action” (see: Kuhse, H. & Singer, P. (1985), Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants, Oxford University Press, Oxford).

Inspection of WHO data on “annual per capita medical expenditure” reveals that the “annual per capita medical expenditure” in 2003 was $26 (Occupied Afghanistan), $64 (Occupied Iraq), $2,874 (Occupier Australia), $2,399 (Occupier UK) and $5,711 (Occupier US).

It is clear from this data that the huge post-invasion avoidable mortality in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (about 2.7 million as of October 2006) (see MWC News ) is largely due to gross violation of international law by the Occupiers through non-provision of requisite life-sustaining requisites as required by the Geneva Convention.

Whether an Iraqi child dies violently from Coalition bombs and bullets or from deprivation due to deliberate Coalition “passive genocide”, the end result is the same and the moral culpability the same: “[those] who deliberately leave a baby to die when they have the awareness, the ability, and the opportunity to save the baby’s life, are just as morally responsible for the death as they would be if they had brought it about by a deliberate , positive action.”

The total avoidable mortality in Iraq has been estimated in various ways based on authoritative data as outlined below.

Method #1. Avoidable mortality (excess mortality, deaths that did not have to happen) is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. From UN Population Division Data (see: HERE and HERE ) the post-invasion avoidable deaths in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan (as of October 2006) are 563,000 and 2,090,000, respectively, for a total of 2,653,000 avoidable deaths; by way of comparison, the corresponding post-invasion under-5 infant mortality figures are 437,000 and 1,665,000, respectively, for a total of 2,102,000 deaths (i.e. about 80% of the total avoidable mortality). Iraq Body Count estimates that 44,000 – 49,000 Iraqi civilians have died violently post-invasion in Iraq.

This estimate of 563,000 post-invasion Iraqi avoidable deaths is in good agreement with the estimate by Burnham et al in the article in The Lancet (2006) of post-invasion war-associated deaths totalling 655,000.

Method #2. Another way of estimating post-invasion Iraqi deaths due to war is from under-5 infant mortality figures reported and regularly updated by UNICEF. Detailed analysis of infant mortality and avoidable mortality for every country in the world since 1950 reveals that for Third World countries "under-5 infant mortality" is about 0.7 times the "total "avoidable mortality" (see MWC News). Checking the latest data on the UNICEF website we see that 122,000 under-5 year old infants die each year (12 months) in Occupied Iraq i.e. 122,000 x 44/12 = 447,333 would have died over the 44 months since the invasion; dividing by 0.7 yields an estimate of 639,000 post-invasion avoidable deaths in Occupied Iraq - in close agreement with the estimate reported in the article by Burnham et al (2006) in The Lancet.

Method #3. A further way has been to consider the initial report by Roberts et al (2004) in The Lancet in which they estimated a post-invasion annual death rate of 12.3 persons per 1,000 of population (see: HERE ; for critical comment see Wikipedia). Subtracting the annual death rate in impoverished but peaceful neighbouring Syria and Jordan (about 4 deaths per 1,000 of population) we get a post-invasion annual avoidable death rate of 8.3 per 1,000. This yields an estimated post-invasion avoidable mortality of 791,000.

Method #4. The present Burnham et al (2006) estimate from a cross-sectional cluster sample survey is of 655,000 post-invasion avoidable deaths.

There is remarkable agreement between all these estimates that derive four (4) quite distinct data sets. The only major concern is the very high proportion of avoidable deaths attributed to violence in the latest Burnham et al. (2006) study [indeed one should then consider that there are about 0.6 million violent post-invasion deaths and a further 0.6 million non-violent post-invasion deaths from deprivation].

Whatever the minutiae of the analysis, it is clear that for honest, non-racist people of goodwill there is clear evidence from 4 separate data sets indicating horrendous post-invasion Iraqi deaths that in turn are indicative of gross violation of the Geneva Conventions by the Coalition Occupiers. The information in data sets #1-3 has been around for several years but has been steadfastly ignored by racist lying mainstream media and racist, lying Coalition politicians.

Denial of the Jewish Holocaust is a criminal offence in Israel and in Austria, France, Germany and Switzerland. The denial of authoritatively-based estimates of the horrendous post-invasion avoidable deaths associated with the Bush Wars is egregious, racist, holocaust denial by racist, lying Mainstream media and racist, lying Western politicians.

This carnage demands international legal action via the International Criminal Court against the main Coalition perpetrators (notably Bush and Blair) (as recommended by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter ) and international and intra-national sanctions and boycotts against those complicit in these continuing crimes against humanity. If refusing an Arab a table in a restaurant is anti-Arab anti-Semitism, what does one call the war criminal mass murder of 0.6 million Iraqis?