War Numbers Shoot Down The Truth (Slams The Left's Inflated Numbers of Iraqi Dead)

NY Daily News ^ | 7/27/05 | John Leo

[areafiftyone]

Isn't it awful, a friend said at dinner, that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the U.S. invasion? When I asked where the statistic came from, he said maybe it was 8,000, but definitely somewhere between 8,000 and 100,000. That's a broad spread, so I did some checking.

The 100,000 estimate is from a survey of Iraqi households conducted last year by a team of scholars from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and published in a British medical journal, the Lancet. As luck would have it, the team was anti-war, and the study was released just before the presidential election.

Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group, Britain-based anti-war organizations, released an analysis of Iraqi civilian fatalities last week, based on their collection of media reports (www.iraqbodycount.org). It said 24,865 civilians had died in the first two years after the invasion, with U.S.-led forces accounting for 37% of the total, criminal violence 36% and "anti-occupation forces/insurgents" 9%.

There is yet another round of inflated estimates, this one on the number of homeless veterans. One report a few months ago reported that nearly 300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. If so, as blogger Megan McArdle pointed out a few weeks ago on Asymmetrical Information, that would mean that every single homeless person in America must have served in the armed forces, since 300,000 is about the total number of the homeless.

New York City has reported 40,000 homeless, Los Angeles County 90,000 and Chicago 9,600. The problem here is a familiar one. "Advocates for the homeless," as they are called in the usual press catch phrase, cannot resist passing on wildly inflated numbers.

Now the numbers foisted on the media have soared again. The Department of Veterans Affairs says that some 250,000 vets are living on the street on any given night. Since the department says that number accounts for something like a third of all homeless, this means they are working with a total estimate of more than 750,000 homeless.

This makes the department a piker compared with the Urban Institute and the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers, which say, in a joint study, that between 2.3 million and 3.5 million people (and 529,000 to 840,000 veterans) are homeless at some time during the year.

The lesson? Don't trust advocacy numbers.

[goarmy]

"...24,865 civilians had died...with U.S.-led forces accounting for 37% of the total."

Doesn't say that these "civilians" were non-uniformed combatants (see: Fedayeen, Syrian mercenaries). Betcha with our rules of engagement (an encyclopedic list), most of these "civilians" were bad guys.

[Cobra64]

The pacifists must be really pissed at FDR, Harry S. Truman, and JFK. (shaking head / rolling eyes).

[Steve_Seattle]

"Doesn't say that these "civilians" were non-uniformed combatants."

Yes, in Iraq the word "civilian" carries enormous ambiguaity because of all the irregular militias and insurgents that are fighting. Yet this obvious point is rarely mentioned in news stories about so-called civilian deaths. Moreover, some civilians are killed because they are deliberately drawn into the action by the insurgents. I think it will be years - maybe never - before we have an idea of how many true civilians were killed, and by whom.

[txroadhawg]

just read the tag line...

[patj]

We can add to this list the numbers of uninsured.

[flying_boy]

"As luck would have it, the team was anti-war"

Not for nothing but is there anyone out there that's "pro-war"?

What I mean is, war is always a last resort, so who's out there complaining that there aren't enough wars?

[visitor]

reference bump...rto