The Course

WASHINGTON -- A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many times higher than any previous estimate.

The study, to be published Saturday in the British medical journal the Lancet, was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health by sending teams of Iraqi doctors across Iraq from May through July. The findings are sure to draw fire from skeptics and could color the debate over the war ahead of congressional elections next month.

The Defense Department until 2004 eschewed any effort to compute the number of Iraqi dead but this summer released a study putting the civilian casualty rate between May and August at 117 people a day. Other tabulations using different methodologies put the range of total civilian fatalities so far from about 50,000 to more than 150,000. President Bush in December said "30,000, more or less" had died in Iraq during the invasion and in the violence since.

I'd say that 600,000 is "more" rather than less. About 20 times more. I guess it's easier to "stay the course" if you underestimate the casualties.

The Johns Hopkins team conducted its study using a methodology known as "cluster sampling." That involved randomly picking 47 clusters of households for a total 1,849 households, scattered across Iraq. Team members interviewed each household about any deaths in the family during the 40 months since the invasion, as well as in the year before the invasion. The team says it reviewed death certificates for 92% of all deaths reported. Based on those figures, it tabulated national mortality rates for various periods before and after the start of the war. The mortality rate last year was nearly four times the preinvasion rate, the study found.

"Since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq's population has died above what would have occurred without conflict," the report said. The country's population is roughly 24 million people.

Human Rights Watch has estimated Saddam Hussein's regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over 20 years.

Damn that science! Why does it hate America?

Paul Bolton, a public-health researcher at Boston University who has reviewed the study, called the methodology "excellent" and said it was standard procedure in a wide range of studies he has worked on. "You can't be sure of the exact number, but you can be quite sure that you are in the right ballpark," he said.

A similar, smaller study by the same team in 2004 put the number of deaths at the time at 9,000 to 194,000. That report drew fire for the breadth of its estimate. In part to offset such criticism, the researchers said they picked the largest sample possible for this survey, after considering the high level of danger involved in sending teams door-to-door in Iraq.

The study's lead researchers, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins, have done studies in the Congo, Rwanda and other war zones. "This is a standard methodology that the U.S. government and others have encouraged groups to use in developing countries," said Mr. Burnham, who defended the study as "a scientifically extremely strong paper."

This study, "The Human Cost of the War in Iraq," puts civilian fatalities at 426,369 to 793,663 but gives a 95% certainty to the figure of 601,027.

Perhaps the fact that people who've actually put effort into studying the issue, and reviewing death certificates, come up with a number 20 time higher than the President's helps to understand why people are beginning to doubt the man.

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A majority of U.S. adults say President George W. Bush has deliberately misled the public about progress in Iraq and opposition to the war matches an all- time high, according to a poll conducted for CNN.

The poll, released today, coincided with publication of the book ``State of Denial'' by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, which says Bush ignored warnings from military officials about the growing Iraq insurgency and made claims of success that conflicted with intelligence assessments.

In the Sept. 29-Oct. 2 poll, 58 percent said the administration misled the public about how the war is going. In addition, 57 percent said the conflict has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism, indicating that Bush's central argument in defense of his policy isn't gaining traction with voters.

Meanwhile, today in Iraq:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents hit an ammunition dump on a U.S. base in Baghdad with a mortar round, setting off fiery explosions through the night that shook buildings miles away, while renewed attacks killed at least 14 people, primarily in the capital.

The corpses of seven people were turned in to the morgue in the southern city of Kut, including at least three apparent victims of sectarian death squads that were fished out of the Tigris in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad where bodies dumped in the capital often surface. They were shot, and had their hands bound.

The United Nations' top humanitarian official said some 100 people are being killed in Iraq every day with sectarian and revenge attacks by militias and death squads going unchecked.

"Many of those are killed by gunshots or have been tortured to death," Jan Egeland said in Geneva. "Revenge killing seems to be totally out of control."

While the politicians in Washington have been resolutely making the argument that withdrawing our forces would plunge Iraq into violent chaos, they seem to have avoided noticing that Iraq has already been plunged into violent chaos. I've yet to see that the administration's "plan" for Iraq now is any better than their "plan" when we invaded. So far, the course we've stayed hasn't been working out.