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Today's
Stories
January 12
/ 13, 2008
Andrew Cockburn
How
the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian
Deaths
Saul Landau
60
Years of Empire
Corey D. B. Walker
Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual
Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot
Eric Toussaint
The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global
Ron Jacobs
Television, Murder and Vietnam
Fred Gardner
The People vs. Christopher James Chakos
Stan Cox
Don't Take That Pill!
Ramzy Baroud
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Joseph Grosso
The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites
David Díaz-Arias
Imagining An/Other Latin American Left
January 11,
2008
Dave Lindorff
Did
Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold
Voting Machines
Paul Craig
Roberts
No
Escape from War and Unemployment
Andy Worthington
Six Years of Guantánamo
Kenneth Couesbouc
Banking on Thin Ice
Jeff Ballinger
Inside the Vienna Consensus
Christopher
Brauchli
Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns
Andrew Silverstein
Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem
Marwan Bishara
Bush in the Middle East
Robert Weissman
The First Amendment Gone Wild
Patrick Irelan
Damn the Small Boats!
Website of
the Day
Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She
Loses
January 10,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
Now
Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards
Bob Wing
Marqueece Harris-Dawson
Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom
Bradley
Michael Donnelly
White Women Gone Wild?
David Macaray
Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions
China Hand
Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries?
Rannie Amiri
Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya?
Website of the Day
Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident
January 9,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
The
Empire Strikes Back
Dave Lindorff
The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation
John Chuckman
Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada
James Bovard
Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006
Alan Farago
As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic
Russell Mokhiber
Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday?
William S. Lind
Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq
Peter Morici
Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters
Josh Reubner
Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment
Mike Roselle
The Pursuit of Happiness
Website of the Day
Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH
January 8,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
No
Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old)
Russell Mokhiber
The Black Hillary: Obama is Just Another Political Sedative
Robert Fantina
The Gulf of Tonkin and the Strait of Hormuz
Dave Zirin
Butts on Parade
Shamako Nobel
I Am an Emcee: the Politics of Hip Hop
John Ross
Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves
Brenda Norrell
Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security
Laura Carlsen
Why Bolivia Matters
Patrick Irelan
Remember the Maine!
Evelyn J. Pringle
The Holes in Bush's FDA
Jonathan M.
Feldman
After Iowa and New Hampshire: a Strategy for Rebuilding the Peace
Movement
Michael Dickinson
Playing Soldier
Website of
the Day
Sean Hannity on the Run!
January 7,
2008
Chris Floyd
There
Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities
John Blair
Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana
Uri Avnery
The Case of the White Bird
Andy Worthington
Who Are the Gitmo Saudis?
Binoy Kampmark
Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court
David Macaray
Women on Strike
Ralph Nader
Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood
Michael Donnelly
It's the War Vote(s), Stupid!
Ron Jacobs
Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough?
Gideon Levy
The Hostile President
Dave Lindorff
A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb
Website of
the Day
Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
January 5 /
6, 2008
Douglas Valentine
Good
Guys in Black Hoods
Kevin Young
The
US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq
Richard Rhames
Saddam
Who?
Saul Landau
Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory
Marc Lynch
Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing
Robert Fantina
Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War
Donna Volatile
Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr.
Jelle Bruinsma
Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands
Bob Sutcliffe
Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist
Harvey Wasserman
Anti-Nuclear Renaissance
Missy Beattie
Why Obama Can't Save Us
David Swanson
Remembering the Separation of Powers
Jacob Hornberger
The Importance of the Padilla Case
Shepherd Bliss
Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms
Ron Jacobs
Bleeding Kansas
Poets' Basement
Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski
Website of the Weekend
Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint
January 4,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Good Night in Iowa
Jonathan Cook
War Crimes Airbrushed from History
Paul Craig Roberts
Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime
Stan Goff
Ron Paul's Monkeywrench
Dave Lindorff
Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
To Pindi Station
Allan Nairn
U.S. Elections Over Before They Began
Joshua Frank
The Failures of Sectarianism
Peter Morici
Economy on the Skids
Mary McInnis
Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease
Website of the Day
The Return of Obama Girl
January 3,
2008
Fatima Bhutto
Farewell
to Wadi Bua
Pam Martens
The
Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos
Joanne Mariner
The Presidential Candidates and Torture
Zoltan Grossman
Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the
Web
David Domke
The Echoing Press and Huckabee
Norman Solomon
Edwards Reconsidered
Nikolas Kozloff
Return of the Faux Liberal
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus
Martha Rosenberg
Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick
Russell Means
This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah
Lands
Website of the Day
WolfQuest
January 2,
2008
Jeff Taylor
The
Left and Ron Paul
M. Shahid Alam
The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy
Gary Leupp
Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan
Paul Craig Roberts
Criminals with Badges
Heather Gray
Georgia's Racist Death Penalty
Fred Gardner
and Shobhit Arora
Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis
David Macaray
Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley
Benjamin Dangl
Fear and Loathing in Bolivia
January 1,
2008
Iain A. Boal
City
of Disappearances
B. R. Gowani
Benazir's Death in Crisistan
Shahid Mahmood
Bhutto and the Press
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling
Harvey Wasserman
Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton
Era
John Ross
2008, Already a Year to Forget
Website of the Day
The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys
December 31,
2007
Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye
2007 and Good Riddance!
Tariq Ali
Pakistan, the Aftermath
Liaquat Ali Khan
The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers
Wajahat Ali
After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan?
Robert Fisk
Who Killed Bhutto?
Ajai Sahni
Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark
Future
Marwan Bishara
You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential
Election Campaigns
Uri Avnery
The Beilin Syndrome
Mark T. Harris
Does This Happen in Canada?
Brenda Norrell
Resistance and Censorship
Website of the Day
A People United Will Never Be Defeated
December 29
/ 30, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Options
in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby
Tariq Ali
Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto
Gary Leupp
The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance
China Hand
Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss
Jacob Hornberger
Stop Medddling in Pakistan
John Chuckman
Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics
Missy Beattie
Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard
Ralph Nader
Who Will Take the Next Step?
Fidel Castro
There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something
Robert Fantina
The Sham of Homeland Security
Greg Moses
Beauty from the Heart of Texas
Catherine Lutz
What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing
Kristin Van
Tassel
Seeing in the Dark
Kim Nicolini
Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More
Poets' Basement
Landau, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan
December 28,
2007
Farzana Versey
The
Complex Electra
Wajahat Ali
A
Pakistani Requiem
Binoy Kampmark
Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives
Anthony DiMaggio
Turkey's Bombing of Iraq
Ray McGovern
Creeping
Fascism
Jim Goodman
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
Ron Jacobs
Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted
Russell Hoffman
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba
John Murphy
Greens Gone Wild
Website of the Day
Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"
December 27,
2007
Dilip Hiro
A
Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?
Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?
Stephen Soldz
Fallujah,
the Information War and U.S. Propaganda
Bill Quigley
Locked
Outside the Gates
Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up
Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?
Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim
Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT
Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman
Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink
Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades
Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth
December 26, 2007
Charles Tripp
From
One Saddam to Fifty
Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government
Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men
Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb
Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within
Website of
the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas
December 25,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Conscience
and Empire
December 24,
2007
Andrea Peacock
A
Dark Ride on the Border
Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said
Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!
Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot
Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington
Mike Whitney
The Big Fix
Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans
John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders
Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas
Website of the Day
Back in the USSR
December 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Mike
Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Ralph Nader
Politics
and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way
Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons
in Afghanistan
Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan
Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids
Rev. William
E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?
Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq
Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol
Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques
Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law
William Loren
Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake
Okeechobee
Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita
Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford
Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa
December 21,
2007
John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico
Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
Dick J. Reavis
A
Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss
Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon
The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes
Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms
Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie
Kerik)
Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution
Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist
David Macaray
Union Aftermath
Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa
Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA
Website of
the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape
December 20,
2007
David Rosen
Mitt
Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer
Alan Farago
The
Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage
Crisis
Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA
Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot
Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates
Website of
the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter
December 19,
2007
Saul Landau
Is
the NIE Bush's Watergate?
Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk
Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice
Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes
Sen. Russell
Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation
Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags
Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions
Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?
Website of
the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV
December 18,
2007
R. F. Blader
The
Politics of Teen Pregnancy
George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho
Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?
Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar
David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem
Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays
Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home
Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters
Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print
Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit
Website of
the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America
December 17,
2007
Mike Whitney
Staring
Into the Abyss
Tom Barry
Planning
the War on Immigrants
Uri Avnery
A
Gaza Masada?
Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas
Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder
Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers
Stephen Lendman
Police State America
Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way
Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza
Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game
December 15
/ 16, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
People's Penny for the Magna Carta
Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb
Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco
Raymond J.
Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas
Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine
Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists
Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the
Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up
Ahmad Samih
Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op
Missy Comley
Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins
Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims
James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future
Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten
Website of
the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support
December 14,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him
John Ross
Iraqi
Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax
Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?
Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes
Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest
Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies
Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace
Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"
December 13,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Shrinking
the Dollar from the Inside-Out
Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding
Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy
Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze
Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch
Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia
Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?
Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It
Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land
Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol
Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!
December 12, 2007
Allan
Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian
Phones
Alan
Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young
Ray
McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts
Evan
Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell
Doom for the US Farm Belt
James
Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers
Joel
Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine
Joshua
Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention
Sherry
Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
Dan
Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard
Website
of the Day
Men Eating Bugs
|
Weekend
Edition
January 12 / 13, 2008
Gross Distortions,
Sloppy Methodology and Tendentious Reporting
How
the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi
Civilian Deaths
By ANDREW COCKBURN
Almost five years into the destruction
of Iraq, the orthodox rule of thumb for assessing statistical
tabulations of the civilian death toll is becoming clear: any
figure will do so long as it is substantially lower than that
computed by the Johns Hopkins researchers in their 2004 and 2006
studies. Their findings, based on the most orthodox sampling
methodology and published in the Lancet after extensive peer
review, estimated the post-invasion death toll by 2006 at about
655,000. Predictably, this shocking assessment drew howls of
ignorant abuse from self-interested parties, including George
Bush ("not credible") and Tony Blair.
Now we have a new result complied
by the Iraqi Ministry of Health under the sponsorship of the
World Health Organization and published in the once reputable
New England Journal of Medicine, (NEJM) estimating the
number of Iraqis murdered, directly or indirectly, by George
Bush and his willing executioners at 151,000--far less than the
most recent Johns Hopkins estimate. Due to its adherence to the
rule cited above, this figure has been greeted with respectful
attention in press reports, along with swipes at the Hopkins
effort as having, as the New York Times had to remind readers,
"come under criticism for its methodology."
However, as a careful and informed
reading makes clear, it is the new report that guilty of sloppy
methodology and tendentious reporting -- evidently inspired by
the desire to discredit the horrifying Hopkins findings, which,
the NEJM study triumphantly concludes "considerably overestimated
the number of violent deaths." In particular, while Johns
Hopkins reported that the majority of post invasion deaths were
due to violence, the NEJM serves up the comforting assessment
that only one sixth of deaths in this period have been due to
violence.
Among the many obfuscations
in this new report, the most fundamental is the blurred distinction
between it and the survey it sets out to discredit. The Johns
Hopkins project sought to enumerate the number of excess deaths
due to all causes in the period following the March 2003 invasion
as compared with the death rate prior to the invasion, thus giving
a number of people who died because Bush invaded. Post hoc, propter
hoc. This new study, on the other hand,  explicitly sought to analyze
only deaths by violence, imposing a measure of subjectivity on
the findings from the outset. For example, does the child who
dies because the local health clinic has been looted in the aftermath
of the invasion count as a casualty of the war, or not? As CounterPunch's
statistical consultant Pierre Sprey reacted after reading the
full NEJM paper, "They don't say they are comparing entirely
different death rates. That's not science, it's politics."
Superficially at least, both
the Hopkins team and the new study followed the same methodology
in conducting their surveys: interviewing a random sample
of households drawn from randomly selected "clusters"
of houses around the country, in which the head of the household
was interviewed. While the Johns Hopkins team demanded death
certificates as confirmation of deaths and their cause, the NEJM
study had no such requirement. That survey was based on a sample
of 9345 households, while the 2006 Johns Hopkins report drew
on a sample of 1849 households. In reports on the NEJM study,
much respectful attention was paid the fact that their sample
was bigger, which, uninformed reporters assumed, had to mean
that it was more accurate. In fact, as their papers' own pollsters
could have told them, beyond a certain point the size of a sample
makes less and less difference to the accuracy of the information,
with accuracy increasing as a factor of the square root of the
ratio between the two.
Far, far more important than
the size of the sample, however, is the degree to which the overall
sample is truly random, that is, truly representative of the
population sampled and here is where the first of many serious
questions about the NEJM effort arise. As the authors themselves
admit, they did not visit a significant proportion of the original
designated clusters: "Of the 1086 originally selected clusters,
115 (10.6%) were not visited because of problems with security,"
meaning they were inconveniently situated in Anbar province,
Baghdad, and two other areas that were dangerous to visit, (especially
for Iraqi government employees from a Shia-controlled ministry.)
While such reluctance is understandable--one of those involved
was indeed killed during the survey--it also meant that areas
with very high death tolls were excluded from the survey.
To fill the gap, the surveyors
reached for the numbers advanced by the Iraq Body Count, (IBC)
a U.K. based entity that relies entirely on newspaper reports
of Iraqi deaths to compile their figures. Due to IBC's policy
of posting minimum and maximum figures, currently standing at
80,419 and 87,834, their numbers carry a misleading air of scientific
precision. As the group itself readily concedes, the estimate
must be incomplete, since it omits deaths that do not make it
into the papers, a number that is likely to be high in a society
as violently chaotic as today's Baghdad, and higher still outside
Baghdad where it is even harder for journalists to operate.
Nevertheless, the NEJM study
happily adopted a formula in which they compared the ratio between
their figures from a province they did visit to the IBC number
for that province, and then used that ratio to adjust their own
figures for places they did not dare go. Interestingly, the last
line of the table on page 8 of the Supplementary Appendix to
the report, "adjustment for missing clusters using IBC data,"
reveals that in using the Body Count's dubious figures to fill
the holes in their Baghdad data, the formula they employ actually
revises downward the rate of violent deaths on what they
label "low mortality provinces."
A paragraph in the published
abstract of the report, blandly titled "Adjustment for Reporting
Bias" contains an implicit confession of the subjectivity
with which the authors reached their conclusions. As Sprey points
out, "they say 'the level of completeness in reporting of
death was 62%,' but they give no real explanation of how they
arrive at that figure." Les Roberts, one of the principal
authors of the Johns Hopkins studies, has commented: "We
confirmed our deaths with death certificates, they did not. As
the NEJM study's interviewers worked for one side in this conflict,
[the U.S.- sponsored government] it is likely that people would
be unwilling to admit violent deaths to the study workers."
The NEJM does cite an effort
to check information given by the household heads by also interviewing
household daughters about any deaths among their siblings. Again,
this data is rife with inconsistencies, particularly in the siblings'
reports of pre- and post- invasion deaths, inconsistencies egregious
enough that these interview results were not folded into the
calculations used to determine the report's conclusions.
Further evidence of tendentious
assessment surfaces in the section blandly titled "Response
Rates" in which the authors report that "Of the households
that did not respond, 0.7% were absent for an extended period
of time, and 1.1% of households were vacant dwellings."
Given current Iraqi conditions, houses are likely to be vacant,
or their owners absent for long periods, because something nasty
happened there--i.e. higher death rates. Yet, as Sprey points
out, there is no effort by the authors to account for this in
their conclusions.
As a statistician, Sprey is
most affronted by the enormities committed under the heading
"Statistical Analysis" in the NEJM paper, where it
is stated, "Robust confidence intervals were estimated with
the use of the jackknife procedure." The "confidence
interval" cited in the report is 104,000 to 223,000 with
a 95% uncertainty range. This does not mean, as many laypeople
assume, that there is an 85% chance that the "true number"
lies somewhere between those two figures.
Sprey explains its true meaning
this way:
"If you went out and did
the same study using the same methods and the same size sample,
but with different households, a thousand times, then 950 of
those studies would come up with a figure between 104,000 and
223,000. But the 'jackknife' they refer to is simply a procedure
by which you don't rely on data to estimate the confidence interval.
They admit in "Statistical
Analysis" that their confidence interval is simply a calculation
based on their numerical guesses quantifying the unknown size
of the three key uncertainties in their survey: the real death
rates in clusters they didn't dare visit; the percentage of unreported
deaths in their sample; the proportion of the Iraq population
that has fled since the invasion. So this is a computerized guess
on what the confidence interval might be without using any of
the actual data scatter from their survey. This in sharp contrast
to the Johns Hopkins team, who rigorously used the data of their
survey to estimate their confidence interval. To call it 'robust'
is simply a disgrace. It's not robust, it's simply speculation."
If any further confirmation
of the essential worthlessness of the NEJM effort, it comes in
the bizarre conclusion that violent deaths in the Iraqi population
have not increased over the course of the occupation. As Iraq
has descended into a bloody civil war during that time, it should
seem obvious to the meanest intelligence that violent deaths
have to have increased. Indeed, even Iraq Body Count tracks the
same rate of increase as the Hopkins survey, while NEJM settles
for a mere 7% in recent years. As Roberts points out: "They
roughly found a steady rate of violence from 2003 - 2006. Baghdad
morgue data, Najaf burial data, Pentagon attack data, and our
data all show a dramatic increase over 2005 and 2006."
These distortions come as less
of a surprise on examination of page 6 of the supplementary appendix,
an instructive table that reveals that the 279 men and women
engaged in collecting data for the survey labored under the supervision
of no fewer than 128 local, field, and central supervisors and
"editors." Senior supervisors were shipped to Amman
for a training course, though why the Iraqi government should
want to send its own officials abroad for training is unexplained,
unless of course some other government wanted a hand in the matter.
Finally, there is the matter
of the New England Journal of Medicine lending its imprimatur
to this farrago. Once upon a time, under the great editor Marsha
Angell, this was an organ unafraid to cock a snoot at power.
In particular, Angell refused to pander to the mendacities of
the drug companies, thereby earning their undying enmity. Much
has evidently changed, as the recruiting ad for the U.S. Army
on the home page of the current New England Journal reminds
us.
Andrew Cockburn is the author of Rumsfeld:
His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy.
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