Before last year's Lancet report was published, which stated that over 650,000 people had died in Iraq, the British government were told and knew it was "accurate and reliable".
What did the British government do (as did the Bush government)? They lied, and rejected the report as BS.
And for both the US and UK governments the tactic worked. The report was mostly rejected. Now we know the report was accurate makes little difference - the story has been shelved as old news.
That is a perfect example of the political art of how to bury bad news.
quote:
By Richard Horton
03/28/07 "The Guardian" -- - -Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.
Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report".
Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality".
Here's Bush's full response to the question from the reporter at CNN... I think slightly different than yours h@ts.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN: A group of American and Iraqi health officials today released a report saying that 655,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war. That figure is 20 times the figure that you cited in December at 30,000. Do you care to amend or update your figure and do you consider this a credible report?
PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I don’t consider it a credible report, neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials. I do know that a lot of innocent people have died and it troubles me and grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to ? you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.
Johns Hopkins University professor Gilbert Burnham was the principle author of the Lancet study you refer to. Here are some results from a full interview with him soon after the survey was published.
>He used a baseline mortality rate (the rate during Saddam years) of 5.5/1000 – almost half of the mortality rate of Europe. The mortality rate in the EU is 10.10/1000.
>Pre-invasion death rate was essentially the same number as found in 2004, the same number as the CIA gives and the estimate for Iraq by the US Census Bureau.
>Approximately 25% of the estimate comes from Baghdad (only 21% of the population is in Baghdad).
>All of their interviews came from populated areas where they could interview people (so word-of-mouth of their purpose would help keep the interviewers safe), but also where the violence is more concentrated. Rural areas were left to a minimum.
>Across Iraq, deaths and injuries from violent causes were concentrated in adolescent to middle age men. This does suggest that collateral damage is unlikely to be the cause of death for the majority as many of the males could have been combatants.
Now, if you divide 655,000 by 40 months this works out to 16,375 per month. This is a huge number! Any country that loses 16,375 people a month would have some awareness from Red Cross, Human Rights,etc., any of dozens of very liberal oriented organizations. Where have they been? The US hasn't kept those organizations out and yet none of them have reported anything close to this number of deaths per month.
That is more casualities than the American civil war. This is double the deaths that occured in Somalia during the early 90's. That caused a huge outrage and UN resolutions.
In the four years of violent, full-on war with enemy forces in WWII, the USA lost less lives than the number of Iraqi lives that are being reported killed in the last two years in Iraq.
The WSJ stated the biggest but not only weakness in his "study" was the use of far too few clusters in his sample; perhaps 1/5 as many as should have been used.
With the very small number of cluster points (where they sampled) it would be virtually impossible to reproduce or even check the study against any verifiable data. They use a sample that is mostly self chosen rather than random. They publish an 8 page document with no raw data to allow anyone to even try to check their sample.
These numbers make some sense if you count the hundreds of thousands of (saddam killed) bodies discovered in mass graves and identified since the war. Prior to 2003, many if not most could be considered 'missing' by their families. Now, after identification, the next of kin are notified that they are indeed 'dead'. I remember when those graves were opened mulitiudes of surviving family members finally resolved their loved one's fate.
Disgruntled people can provide a "death certificate." His survey count was 90% reliant on them.
In their 2004 study with the same methodology they found over 200.000 killed in Falujah alone. This was obviously too large, so they just removed the Falujah cluster. But the researchers did no attempt what so ever to explain what bias gave rise to this absurd figure, and used the same method to get the 655.000 figure.
Yeah h@ts, give it a toss. And btw, do you have some kind of an answer? Or are you just another arrogent bull lefty finding the feel-good angle to portray yourself above it all.
Steevo said this in post #3 : Yeah h@ts, give it a toss. And btw, do you have some kind of an answer? Or are you just another arrogent bull lefty finding the feel-good angle to portray yourself above it all.
The story was cynically and dishonestly burried, despite them being advised and told the methodology was correct. Yet again a feeble mainstream media went along with the whole government pushed propoganda and the public ended being none the wiser. What are you trying to defend?
What are you trying to defend? I can't speak for the UK but when it came out major publications in the US and the Internet wrote about it. There's been no coverup as far as the info being readily available, that's a complete crock cooked up by an extremely agenda-driven Guardian that you put your senseless faith in. Huge holes can be pocked through the study mate. Can't you get beyond your little conspiracy to know every major liberal anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-Iraq war group would use it in a heartbeat if they felt they could? That includes our NY Times, LA Times... heck the overwhelming majority of paper publications being liberal, our largely anti-Buch major TV outlets of ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, and NPR liberal radio. Hell yeah "Bush lied" so major media who have opposed him and the war's efforts from the beginning, didn't want the public to know.
You probably don't even know your integrity-laden Guardian tried to directly influence undecided US voters in the 06 presidential election by telephoning hundreds in swing state Ohio. They tried persuading them to vote for Kerry. It backfired big time once our citizens realized a group of British journos were directly interfering - something unprecedented. That should give you a small but powerful glimpse of how driven by politics and ideology they are.
Steevo said this in post #5 :
There's been no coverup as far as the info being readily available, that's a complete crock cooked up by an extremely agenda-driven Guardian that you put your senseless faith in. Huge holes can be pocked through the study mate.
Did I say it had been covered up? No. The political aim was to rubbish the Lancet report until it was no longer taken seriously, despite the fact that the the government had been adviced before the report came out by the Ministry of Defence’s chief scientific advisor that the methodology was “robust” and “close to best practice”.
quote:
Hell yeah "Bush lied" so major media who have opposed him and the war's efforts from the beginning, didn't want the public to know.
The media did report it, and both the UK and US governments rubbished it very succesfully despite the fact that the methodology was approved by the British government elsewhere, for example in Kosovo, Rwanda.
quote:
You probably don't even know your integrity-laden Guardian tried to directly influence undecided US voters in the 06
I know what the Guardain did. And this to you means the Lancet report and the subsequent information retreaved under the freedom of information act is wrong? Please explain the relevance?
What? Doh excuse me for misunderstanding you. When the likes of an agenda-driven Guardian tell you our governments lied, and you believe the report which was shown to have huge faults... you question why I question you?
When I say cover up I mean intentionally buried, kinda the same if you can get over semantics. Any concerted effort on the part of our openly antagonistic media to make the choice for this not to be pounded upon day and night would require an intentional collective effort going against everything they've been motivated by, IF INDEED THE FACTS WERE TRUE. To believe the "feeble mainstream media," just, "shelved it." is to believe they all took an about face and decided he was trustworthy on one of the most damning stories - incredibly stupid on your part.
Tell us how the Guardian makes you wiser? Tell us the angle they tell you is simply the way it is. Their representation of Bush's response? Not telling the other side, how many faults the report actually does have?
You've got it alright unlike the rest of us sheep: "cynically and dishonestly buried, despite being advised and told the methodology was correct. Yet again a feeble mainstream media went along with the *whole government pushed propaganda* [my emphasis of course] and the public ended up non the wiser."
You know what the Guardian did? yet you're unable to think beyond their angle. You don't even speak to the points of refute with the article posted here and much more elsewhere. And nobody is talking about getting stuff under the freedom of info act as being wrong? Geese. Your mind is set and I really can't help to wonder: conspiratorial mode A-OK.
Let me know when you get round to actually addressing the message instead of shooting the messenger. I'll repeat it again for the 4th or 5th time:
The Lancet report was rubbished by both Bush: "I don’t consider it a credible report", and by a spokesman for Blair: "not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate", despite the fact that under the freedom of information act a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, stated on 13 October, "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."
Hopefully sometime soon the penny's going to drop.
If you want to know the level of cynicism that the Blair government is capable of there's no better example than the time Jo Moore, adviser to Blair's cabinet Minister Steven Byers, suggesting using the 9/11 attack to bury bad news.
quote:
Jo Moore, an adviser to Stephen Byers, suggested using the 11 September attacks on America to bury "bad news". But, writes BBC News Online's Chris Horrie, the government is well practised when it comes to identifying "good" and "bad" news days.
Following the advice of ex-President Clinton's PR chief James Carville that "politicians must always be ahead of the news cycle" New Labour has become expert in the art of controlling the formal "news agenda". - 10 October, 2001
03-28-2007 07:47 PM
