From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri May 09 2003 - 01:33:41 MDT
A.G.:
>> http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
>> (~2500 Iraqi civilians died)
Lee Daniel Crocker:
>That figure is not anywhere close to reality (not that you'd
>expect a site named "bodycount" to care about the truth anyway).
>The data is still being collected, but it looks like even
>military casualties of the war may be as low as 5,000, and
>civilians in the hundreds.
Sorry, but I'm extremely skeptical. That number would barely
cover the number of civilians killed by cluster bombs alone,
according to this editorial:
-----------------------------------------------------------
"How Many Civilians Were Killed By Cluster Bombs?
The Pentagon says 1: Iraq Body Count says at least 200.
It is understandable that the US government should wish to play down
the damage done to Iraqi civilians by cluster bombs. The rules of
war prohibit the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons. Cluster
bombs are weapons which are incapable of being used in a manner that
complies with the obligation to distinguish between civilians and
combatants. Those who use them in civilian areas therefore open
themselves to charges of war crimes.
Even so, last month's claim by the Pentagon that only one civilian
has died from cluster bombing is breathtaking in its audacious
distortion of reality. General Richard Myers, chairman of the
military's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday 25th April:
<<Only one of the nearly 1,500 cluster bombs used by
coalition forces in Iraq resulted in civilian
casualties. An initial review of all cluster
munitions used and the targets they were used on
indicate that only 26 of those approximately 1,500
hit targets within 1,500 feet of civilian
neighborhoods. And there's been only one recorded
case of collateral damage from cluster munitions
noted so far. >> (1)
But this was only part of the picture, for:
[...]Myers did not mention surface-launched cluster munitions, which
are believed to have caused many more civilian casualties.
"To imply that cluster munitions caused virtually no harm to Iraqi
civilians is highly disingenuous," said Kenneth Roth, executive
director of Human Rights Watch. Instead of whitewashing the facts,
the Pentagon needs to come clean about the Army's use of cluster
munitions, which has been much more fatal to civilians. (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------
The rest of the editorial is here:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------
I would think that the extropians list of all places would appreciate
a systematic and as comprehensive and unbiased as possible approach to
gathering information on a subject. In this case, the subject is the
number of Iraqi civilians who died in the Iraq War.
-----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm#methods
Methodology
from that web page:
The IRAQ BODY COUNT Project
This is a Human Security project to establish an independent and
comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in
Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its
allies in 2003. Results and totals are continually updated and made
immediately available on this page and on various IBC counters which
may be freely displayed on any website, where they will be
automatically updated without further intervention. Casualty figures
are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports.
Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum
and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and
error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count
project team before publication.
The project takes as its starting point and builds upon the earlier
work of Professor Marc Herold who has produced the most
comprehensive tabulation of civilian deaths in the war on
Afghanistan from October 2001 to the present, and the methodology
has been designed in close consultation with him.
Professor Herold commented: "I strongly support this initiative. The
counting of civilian dead looms ever more importantly for at least
two reasons: military sources and their corporate mainstream media
backers seek to portray the advent of precision guided weaponry as
inflicting at most, minor, incidental civilian casualties when, in
truth, such is is not the case; and the major source of opposition
to these modern 'wars' remains an informed, articulate general
public which retains a commitment to the international humanitarian
covenants of war at a time when most organized bodies and so-called
'experts' have walked away from them".
Rationale:
Adversities such as wars and civil wars threaten the survival and
dignity of millions of people. The victims of these conflicts are
primarily, if not almost exclusively, civilians - ordinary men and
women. Civilian casualties are the most unacceptable consequence of
all wars. Each civilian death is a tragedy and should never be
regarded as the cost of achieving our countries war aims, because
it is not we who are paying this price. One in four killed in the US
war on Afghanistan were civilians, and in Yugoslavia the proportion
was even higher. We believe it is a moral and humanitarian duty for
each such death to be recorded, publicised, given the weight it
deserves and, where possible, investigated to establish whether
there are grounds for criminal proceedings.
Traditionally, security threats were examined in the context of
"state security", i.e. the protection of the state, its boundaries,
people, institutions and values from external attacks. States set up
powerful military systems to defend themselves. People were
considered to be assured of their security through the protection
extended by the state. Recent history, however, shows that the
states as "protector of people" frequently come to play ineffective
if not adversarial roles. They showed no serious interest in
documenting and investigating the civilian deaths and their causes.
The governments of victor states certainly have almost no interest
in doing this during the conduct of military campaigns. Proponents
of modern warfare also make much of the claim that their weapons
are smart or precision guided. Civilian deaths give the lie to
such claims. Recent examples demonstrate that no air-launched weapon
can avoid civilian deaths.
The UN Secretary-General has called the world community to advance a
new human-centred approach to these problems. As a contribution to
this effort, the Commission on Human Security (CHS) first met in New
York in June 2001 and held its second meeting in Tokyo in December
2001. The Iraq Body Count project is a direct response to this
agenda of Human Security.
The Iraq Body Count project aims to promote public understanding,
engagement and support for the human dimension in wars by providing
a reliable and up-to-date documentation of civilian casualties in
the event of a US-led war in 2003 in the country. The duty of
recorder falls particularly heavily on the ordinary citizens of
those states whose military forces cause the deaths. In the current
crisis, this responsibility must be borne predominantly by citizens
of the USA and the UK.
It is accepted that war causes many dire consequences for the
civilian population even if they are not directly killed or injured
in military strikes. They may suffer long-term injury or illness (as
a result, for instance of radiation, post-conflict contact with
unexploded munitions, pollution due to spillage of toxic materials).
UN estimates suggest that a war in Iraq would create starvation and
homelessness for millions. A widely-leaked UN report on the
humanitarian consequences of a US-led war in Iraq has estimated that
the conflict would create two million refugees. (BBC News, 28
January, 2003, 07:38 GMT) People may suffer deep psychological
trauma, miscarriage, bereavement, dislocation, and loss of home and
property. Destruction of civil infrastructure can have effects which
last for generations. These factors undoubtedly cause many further
deaths. However, documenting and assigning responsibility for such
effects requires long-term on the ground resources. Immediate
deaths and injuries through military strikes can be pinpointed in
place and time, and responsibility straightforwardly attributed to
the weapon that caused the death or injury.
This project aims to record single-mindedly and on a virtually
real-time basis one key and immutable index of the fruits of war:
the death toll of innocents. The full extent of this has often gone
unnoticed until long after a war has ended, if at all. One reason is
that reports of incidents where civilians have been killed are
scattered in different news sources and spread over time: one or two
killed here, a few dozen there, with only major incidents (such as
the attack on the Al-Amariyah bomb shelter where hundreds of women,
children and elderly were incinerated alive) being guaranteed
headline coverage. But the smaller numbers quickly add up: and
however many civilians are killed in the onslaught on Iraq, their
death toll should not go unnoticed by those who are paying in
taxes for their slaughter. It is to these all too easily
disregarded victims of violence that Iraq Body Count is dedicated,
and we are resolute that they, too, shall have their memorials.
Methodology:
Overview
Sources
Data Extraction
Data Storage
Publication of data (including conditions of use)
Limitations
1. Overview
Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online
media reports and eyewitness accounts. Where these sources report
differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given.
All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least
two members of the Iraq Body Count project team in addition to the
original compiler before publication.
2. Sources
Our sources include public domain newsgathering agencies with web
access. A list of some core sources is given below. Further sources
will be added provided they meet acceptable project standards (see
below).
ABC - ABC News (USA)
AFP - Agence France-Presse
AP - Associated Press
AWST - Aviation Week and Space Technology
Al Jaz - Al Jazeera network
BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation
BG - Boston Globe
Balt. Sun - The Baltimore Sun
CT - Chicago Tribune
CO - Commondreams.org
CSM - Christian Science Monitor
DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
FOX - Fox News
GUA - The Guardian (London)
HRW - Human Rights Watch
HT - Hindustan Times
ICRC - International Committ of the Red Cross
IND - The Independent (London)
IO - Intellnet.org
JT - Jordan Times
LAT - Los Angeles Times
MEN - Middle East Newsline
MEO - Middle East Online
MER - Middle East Report
MH - Miami Herald
NT - Nando Times
NYT - New York Times
Reuters - (includes Reuters Alertnet)
SABC - South African Broadcasting Corporation
SMH - Sydney Morning Herald
Sg.News - The Singapore News
Tel- The Telegraph (London)
Times - The Times (London)
TOI - Times of India
TS - Toronto Star
UPI - United Press International
WNN - World News Network
WP - Washington Post
For a source to be considered acceptable to this project it must
comply with the following standards: (1) site updated at least
daily; (2) all stories separately archived on the site, with a
unique url (see Note 1 below); (3) source widely cited or referenced
by other sources; (4) English Language site; (5) fully public
(preferably free) web-access.
The project relies on the professional rigour of the approved
reporting agencies. It is assumed that any agency that has attained
a respected international status operates its own rigorous checks
before publishing items (including, where possible, eye-witness and
confidential sources). By requiring that two independent agencies
publish a report before we are willing to add it to the count, we
are premising our own count on the self-correcting nature of the
increasingly inter-connected international media network.
Note 1. Some sites remove items after a given time period, change
their urls, or place them in archives with inadequate search
engines. For this reason it is project policy that urls of sources
are NOT published on the iraqbodycount site.
3. Data extraction
Data extraction policy is based on 3 criteria, some of which
work in opposite directions.
a.Sufficient information must be extracted to ensure that each
incident is differentiated from proximate incidents with which
it could be potentially confused. b.Economy of data extraction
is required, for efficiency of both production and public
scrutiny. c.Data extraction should be uniform, so that the same
information is available for the vast majority of incidents.
This is best guaranteed by restricting the number of items of
information per incident to the core facts that most news
reports tend to include.
The pragmatic tensions in the above have led to the decision to
extract the following information only for each incident:
Date of incident
Time of incident
Location of incident
Target as stated by military sources
Weapon (munitions or delivery vehicle)
Minimum civilian deaths (see Note 2)
Maximum civilian deaths (see Note 2)
Sources (at least two sources from the list in
section 2 above)
Reliability of data extraction will be increased by ensuring that
each data extraction is checked and signed off by two further
independent scrutineers prior to publication, and all data entries
will be kept under review should further details become available at
a later date.
Note 2. Definitions of minimum and maximum
Reports of numbers dead vary across sources. On-the-ground
uncertainties and potential political bias can result in a range of
figures reported for the same incident. To reflect this variation,
each incident will be associated with a minimum and maximum reported
number of deaths. No number will be entered into the count unless it
meets the criteria in the following paragraphs. This conservative
approach allows relative certainty about the minimum.
Maximum deaths. This is the highest number of civilian deaths
published by at least two of our approved list of news media
sources.
Minimum deaths. This is the same as the maximum, unless at least two
of the listed news media sources publish a lower number. In this
case, the lower number is entered as the minimum. The minimum can be
zero if there is a report of "zero deaths" from two of our sources.
"Unable to confirm any deaths" or similar wording (as in an official
statement) does NOT amount to a report of zero, and will NOT lead to
an entry of "0" in the minimum column.
As a further conservative measure, when the wording used in both
reports refers to "people" instead of civilians, we will include the
total figure as a maximum but enter "0" into the minimum column
unless details are present clearly identifying some or all of the
dead as civilian - in this case the number of identifiable civilians
will be entered into the minimum column instead of "0". The word
"family" will be interpreted in this context as meaning 3 civilians.
[Average Iraqi non-extended family size: 6. -CIA Factbook 2002.]
4. Data storage
Although it is expected that the majority of sources will remain
accessible on the web site from which they were drawn, the project
will create a secure archive of all original sources (in both
electronic and paper form). Where judged appropriate by the project
team, this data may be released to bona-fide enquirers, for
verification purposes. At an appropriate juncture, the entire
archive will be passed to an institution of public record (such as a
University or National Library) for permanent access by bona-fide
researchers. The copyright of original sources will remain with the
originators. The copyright of the Iraq Body Count data extraction
remains with the named researchers on the project (see About us).
5. Publication of data (including conditions of use)
Once verified through the processes described in section 3 above,
each new incident will be added as a new line on a spreadsheet
database which will be updated regularly (at least daily) on the
www.iraqbodycount.org site. The total minimum and maximum deaths
will be automatically updated, and will feed through to all remotely
positioned web-counters donwloaded from the site.
Permission is granted for any individual or agency to download and
display any of the web counters available on this site, provided
that the link back to the www.iraqbodycount.org site is not disabled
or otherwise tampered with when displayed on a live interactive
web-site. Permission is also granted for cut-and-paste downloads of
the spreadsheet database listing each incident. All press and
non-commercial uses are permitted. Other commercial uses are
prohibited without explicit permission (contact
info@iraqbodycount.org).
We request that you acknowledge any use of the Iraq Body Count data
base or its methodology by mentioning either the project name ("Iraq
Body Count") or the url (www.iraqbodycount.org) or the names of the
principal researchers, Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda.
6. Limitations and scope of enquiry:
Any project has limitations and boundaries. Here are some FAQs about
this topic and our answers to them.
Why dont you report all civilian deaths in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf
War ended?
Our decision to stick with deaths from Jan 2003 is mainly tactical,
and based on the resources we have. We would rather provide one
stream of verifiable evidence to a high degree of reliablity than
spread ourselves too thin. Current deaths are more newsworthy than
past deaths, and will be of more interest to the general websites
who will carry the IBC Web Counters. We agree that reckoning total
deaths since 1991 is a very worthwhile project. We would be happy to
support someone wanting to do this, but we can't manage it ourselves
with current resources.
Why don't you report civilian injuries as well as deaths?
Injuries are difficult to quantify. Anything from shock to loss of
limb can be classified as an injury. Also, injuries can recover, so
that by the time there is independent verification the injury can
have healed. The level of resource we would need to track and
categorise the far higher number of injuries would likely overwhelm
our resources. Deaths are irreversible and immutable. Again, they
are the most "newsworthy" tip of the iceberg, and the greatest crime
against innocents.
"Does your count include deaths from indirect causes?"
Each side can readily claim that indirectly-caused deaths are the
"fault" of the other side or, where long-term illnesses and genetic
disorders are concerned, "due to other causes." Our methodology
requires that specific deaths attributed to US-led military actions
are carried in at least two reports from our approved sources. This
includes deaths resulting from the destruction of water treatment
plants or any other lethal effects on the civilian population. The
test for us remains whether the bullet (or equivalent) is attributed
to a piece of weaponry where the trigger was pulled by a US or
allied finger, or is due to "collateral damage" by either side (with
the burden of responsibility falling squarely on the shoulders of
those who initiate war without UN Security Council authorization).
We agree that deaths from any deliberate source are an equal
outrage, but in this project we want to only record those deaths to
which we can unambiguously hold our own leaders to account. In
short, we record all civilians deaths attributed to our military
intervention in Iraq.
(The above FAQ does not apply to sanctions; although we are opposed
to them, our study deals with the consequences of our current
military actions in Iraq. It has also been newly revised due to our
growing awareness that we were too narrowly-focused on bombs and
other conventional weapons, neglecting the deadly effects of
disrupted food, water, electricity and medical supplies. These
effects, though relatively small at the outset of a war, are likely
to become much more significant as time passes, and we will monitor
media reports accordingly.)
Won't your count simply be a compilation of propaganda?
We acknowledge that many parties to this conflict will have an
interest in manipulating casualty figures for political ends. There
is no such thing (and will probably never be such a thing) as an
"wholly accurate" figure, which could accepted as historical truth
by all parties. This is why we will always publish a minimum and a
maximum for each reported incident. Some sources may wish to
over-report casualties. Others may wish to under-report them. Our
methodology is not biased towards "propaganda" from any particular
protagonist in the conflict. We will faithfully reflect the full
range of reported deaths in our sources. These sources, which are
predominantly Western (including long established press agencies
such as Reuters and Associated Press) are unlikely to suppress
conservative estimates which can act as a corrective to inflated
claims. We rely on the combined, and self-correcting,
professionalism of the world's press to deliver meaningful maxima
and minima for our count.
Will you co-operate with other similar projects?
Many projects are needed to evaluate the full human cost of this
war. We value them all, but this one is ours. We need to ensure that
our study is focused and that its intent, scope and limits are
widely and clearly understood. We will certainly build up and
maintain our set of links to projects doing related work so that
viewers of this site can be pointed to related activity.
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end." --Calvin
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