Doctor laments brush-off of Iraqi war dead

Doctor laments brush-off of Iraqi war dead
Tom Paulson, Hearst Newspapers

Thursday, October 23, 2008


(10-23) 04:00 PDT Seattle --

Dr. Les Roberts risked his life a few years ago to get some numbers that some people fiercely attack as inaccurate or misleading and that many, many more probably pay little or no attention to.


Roberts, a physician and prominent public health scientist at Columbia University, believes there is solid evidence that something like half a million people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Iraq war. His statistics are about 10 times higher than the estimates put forth by the Bush administration and Pentagon.

But a much bigger problem than the numerical disparity, Roberts said, is the simple fact that so few even ask.

"I think it's important that every American understand the true magnitude of this tragedy," said Roberts. Unfortunately, he added, few in the media or in government appear to want to draw attention to the deaths that have so severely altered the life of nearly every Iraqi.

In 2004, Roberts and colleagues sneaked into Iraq with dyed beards and dressed in robes to conduct a series of mortality "cluster point" surveys in various communities while the war raged on. His team initially estimated the civilian death toll as at least 100,000 (two to three times the official estimate) but later analysis caused him to raise the estimate to be 95 percent certain to be in the range of 400,000 to 950,000 - or a mean of about 650,000 deaths. The findings were reported in the British medical journal the Lancet in 2006.

"To help people understand this, given the population of Iraq, this would be like New York City having two 9/11 attacks every week over a period of three years," Roberts said. Things have gotten less violent in Iraq, he said, but nobody should be lulled into thinking that things are good.
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