Bush's 'Troop Withdrawal' Branded Phony;
Sattar Assassination a blow to Bush Optimism;
1 million Dead in Iraq?
Our national discourse has now reached a point where it is a journalistic coup just to point out when a politician is lying. Thus, the headlines that Bush's 'troop cuts,' announced in his speech last night, are phony, and reflect normal rotations.
Patrick Cockburn, whose excellent reporting is deeply informed by his risky forays into the real Iraq,, analyzes the meaning of the assassination of Sattar Abu Rishah for Bush's policies, and finds that ' His killing is a serious blow to President Bush and the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who have both portrayed the US success in Anbar, once the heart of the Sunni rebellion against US forces, as a sign that victory was attainable across Iraq. '
Tina Susman reports the results of a recent British poll done in Iraq, which concludes that as many as a million Iraqis have died in war-related violence since late March of 2003. This estimate is higher than that in the Lancet study of last fall, since that study simply looked at excess deaths from all kinds of violence above what one would have expected from the baseline of 2002. That is, the Lancet study included criminal violence, tribal feuding, etc., not just military or guerrilla actions. The combination of the two, however, makes the Lancet study's conclusions seem unassailable and if anything conservative.
David Broder thinks that US Ambassador in Iraq Ryan Crocker was admitting to Lindsay Graham that the US might push for a vote of no confidence in the al-Maliki government. Graham should please explain to us how the biggest bloc in parliament, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, is going to come up with a candidate substantially more effective than al-Maliki is. The UIA under the Iraqi constitution would form the next government.
Frank Davies confirms my own analysis that the Democrats lack the ability to get the US out of Iraq. Many readers suggested the route of cutting off funds and refusing to present any other Defense budget, but realistically speaking that is a very dangerous ploy that could get them defeated in the next election as obstructionists. And if they are defeated, the Republican Party will keep the US in Iraq, so what would be the point?
The NYT reports that the compromise on the draft petroleum bill crafted by oil minister Hussein Shahristani with the Kurdistan Regional Government appears to have collapsed amid acrimony. Passing an oil law was put forward by Bush last January as one of four benchmarks that had to be met by June. The Kurds are now demanding Shahristani's resignation, since he calls independently-negotiated oil deals struck by the Kurdistan government with Hunt and other oil companies 'illegal' because they were not cleared by Baghdad. Children, can you spell 'Fort Sumter'?
The Kurds are also upset that the referendum on adding oil-rich Kirkuk province to the Kurdistan Regional Government is certainly going to be postponed from the planned date of late 2007.
At the Global Affairs blog, Barnett Rubin reflects on how his posting on a possible 'Iran war rollout' has been received in the blogosphere.
At the Napoleon's Egypt blog, an eyewitness account of the Battle of the Nile.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/14/2007 12:19:00 AM
|
Facebook
27 Comments:
The Democrats' vision of “ending the war” is not that different from Israel's vision of peace with the Palestinians. The occupied accept their fate and, the control by the occupier in return for a bit less killing and destruction. It is even worse than that. The Americans in Iraq are on the ropes, and their public is clearly against the occupation. Any continuation of attacks after substantial troop reduction will surely be the total collapse of the support at home, and the end of occupation. So why should the attacks stop?
The reason is the newly invented logic that people do not mind being occupied; bombed; killed; and subjugated, provided it is done with few troops. And you thought that the throwing flowers at the occupiers was stupid. Ah, they say, but this is not occupation: it is training the Iraqis (“we are doing it for your sake, not ours ...”) and to kill terrorists who oppose the occupation. Plus we have huge assets we want to keep in Iraq to be able to control the Iraqis, and we need to protect those assets (“it is self defence you see...”.) How original. This presumably allows any country to go and occupy another: it is charity, or philanthropy +5% as the Imperial British use to say.
For once, the Democrats are even more delusional than Bush. The problem is that there are too few troops, no too many. Get out, or use the maximum number of troops you can muster.
We are contributing to the killing of as many as a million Iraqis, displacement of millions more and the killing and serious maiming of US troops. Does that not require that the Dems stand up, even if there is some risk. If the huge percentage of the population that is against the continuation of the war does not stand up with them, then we truly deserve more Republican rule.
Cockburn writes that "Abu Risha might equally have been killed by the many non al-Qa'ida insurgent groups in Anbar."
As we have been finding out for four or five years now, Iraqi insurgents are fighting our occupation. The "al Qa'ida" label is irrelevant.
In response to the several commenters (including myself) who responded to his earlier article on the Democrats' dilemma (re: stopping the war) by pointing out that Congress could simply not provide any more funds to fight it, Juan writes: "Realistically speaking that is a very dangerous ploy that could get them defeated in the next election as obstructionists."
The first point to note is that 76 members of the House have already signed on to a pledge promising to vote against money for the Iraq war beyond that required to bring the troops home safely. The nucleus of this bloc is the House Progressive Caucus, the main antiwar grouping in Congress. Among its leaders are Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters, and Barbara Lee.
It is possible that they and others among the 76 signers have decided that using what power they have to stop the war is a major (and practical) issue that over-rides the desires of the national Democratic Party leadership to do nothing ... that would threaten their election victory in 2008.
It is hard to believe that anyone in Congress would let issues of conscience - for example, the totally meaningless death of 3 US soldiers each day, or the more than one million Iraqis killed so far, or the financial ruin and moral devastation of this country -- stand in the way of election victory. But we must be open to this possibility. It has happened before with great moral issues, for example the abolition of slavery.
Those who are opposed to the war - Juan and others - should put their support behind the antiwar movement, including their allies in Congress -- and let more experienced and qualified "pragmatists" and "triangulators" do what must be done to keep the Democrats on the path of doing nothing about the war so that Hillary can triumph on 2008.
Frank Brodhead
New York
Its amazing that the Democrats still thin they can lose by pursuing a policy favored by a large majority of Americans and opposed by the most unpopular President in history.
If I was running a Democratic 2008 campaign, the best thing in the world would be a Republican candidate who wants to make Iraq the key issue. A good candidate would slaughter that Republican.
And if the anti-war movement was doing it right and already organizing independent or 3rd party campaigns in these same districts, the Democrats would be more afraid of losing because the anti-war vote was deserting their party.
I fail to see how it is obstructionist to force Bush to abandon a failed policy and save the US more casualties.
Of course the Bushies will call this obstructionist but that is hardly news.
http://kenthink7.blogspot.com
As much as I agree with John Edwards that Congress should pass appropriation after appropriation for veto from now until the end of session next fall, I have to agree with my head and with Juan that this would be a most reckless course. In fact, I doubt for procedural reasons that just holding up DoD appropriations would be doable. They 'd never hold enough democrats for a majority. That being the case, they'd have to filibuster the bill as a majority party.
Would look not only obstructionist but feckless as well.
That said, they should do the Republicans a couple of times. Don't just give up.
"And if they are defeated, the Republican Party will keep the US in Iraq, so what would be the point?"
The Democrat wisdom is "We can't govern if we aren't elected." But apparently they can't govern if they are elected, so what's the point of electing them?
If they started to force a withdrawal now, by next year's elections it would be a fait accompli and there would be no way to get us back into Iraq.
Mr Cole,
Has Big Brother replaced you with a loyal servent to the state? I cannont believe that you are the same person i have been reading for 6 years now.
We the people are not falling for the same shit anymore! this quote from Frank Davies "confirmation" of your position -
"We have the votes to end the war in the House, but not enough to override a veto, and the Senate is talking about ideas but not voting," Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Wednesday. "You can slice and dice it any way you want, but that's the reality."
is a deception and promotes the same falshoods that you are now promoting - WE DO NOT NEED TO OVERIDE A VETO - if Bush vetoes a bill - BLAME DEFUNDING THE WAR ON BUSH
whether this leads to a democratic defeat in 08 - NO ONE KNOWS - but i think it would insure a dem victory by energizing the base (this has as much validity as ANY theory as to what will happen) either way, the war will be defunded and troops should be home by 08 - lives would be saved, our dignity as a country would start to be revived
The political risks of cutting off funding are real but overblown. The big problem with that solution is that Bush will be the one who implements that solution, and it is clear that Bush does not care for public opinion, does not care for Congress messing with what Bush considers his prerogatives, and does not particularly care for the lives of the troops. Bush will therefore implement the withdrawal in the worst possible way, with a mind toward impeding the process wherever possible, and without making the diplomatic overtures that you must make to ensure a successful and casualty-free withdrawal. Naturally Bush will blame the whole mess on Congress, and most of the public will see through that subterfuge. It doesn't change the fact that our current rate of casualties, such as it is, would pale as compared with the rate of casualties during a bungled withdrawal.
Therefore, one must conclude that removing Bush from office is a necessary prerequisite to any successful withdrawal from Iraq.
A small correction. The Lancet study included all deaths and calculated excess deaths, not just violence. They also concluded that nearly all the excess deaths were due to violence, which may cause confusion. Both numbers were in the 600K range.
Since they were sampled only through June 2006, it's likely that extrapolating another 15 months would reach a million.
I got tired of explaining the math to skeptical friends, so I've stopped defending the Lancet article. Instead, I've simply said that before long, nobody will doubt that the total has reached a million. In one report, we're there now. Eventually, it will become universal.
You assert that if the Democrats take an obstructionist route to end the war, they might lose the coming elections. I argue that, if elected, the Democrats neither intend to end the war nor have any more ability to do so than they do at this time. Therefore, if ending the war is a primary consideration, cutting off funds right now makes as much sense as any other course of action, and has the virtue that it will actually work.
The central issue with respect to the Democrats and Iraq is whether they will end the war.
(1) Do any of the likely Democratic candidates intend to end the war?
The answer to this question is no. Iraqis will continue to fight American troops as long as they occupy Iraq, and that all likely candidates intend to leave troops in Iraq indefinitely.
Hillary Clinton: "But as Sen. Hillary Clinton privately told a senor military adviser, she knows there will be some troops there for decades. It's an example of how in some cases, politics can force dishonesty." (as reported on NPR)
John Edwards: "If John Edwards is president, we're not going to leave the American Embassy in Iraq as the only undefended embassy in the world, for example. There will be Marine guards there, just like there are at our embassies in London , Riyadh , and Tokyo . And just the same, if American civilians are providing humanitarian relief to the Iraqi people, we're going to protect them."
(The American Embassy in Iraq, intended as the seat of power for the neocolonial US occupation, is the largest such in the world and requires many thousands of troops.)
Barack Obama: "We can't totally disengage from Iraq any more than we can disengage with any other part of the world. And we've got both strategic interests and humanitarian interests in the region, but what my plan calls for would continue to involve US troops protecting a US embassy and US personnel there, and US troops who are able to strike at terrorist targets inside Iraq..."
(2) If the Democrats are elected, will they have more ability to end the war than they do at the present time?
Again, the answer to this question is no. Presidents do not like to incur military losses on their watch. The charge of losing the war and stabbing the troops in the back is a potent, serious threat to the Democrats which the Republicans are using without hesitation against the Democrats and will use in the future.
If the fear of losing elections over being perceived as weak or obstructionist is keeping Democrats from cutting funds off to stop the war, then the same fear will prevent them from ending the war once elected.
Will the Democrats end the war?
For the reasons outlined above, the Democrats do not intend to end the war and in any case have no ability to do so either in or out of the White House. This argument is general and extends to both parties. Whichever party has the ability to end the war will be too afraid of being accused of losing to do so.
Matt Taibbi has argued that
"with each passing season, as the antiwar rhetoric increases both among the public and in Washington, we'll see a corresponding increase in both financial and personnel commitment in the Iraq theater. The logic here is irresistible; Bush will not preside over what he perceives to be a surrender, and the Democrats will not cast a vote "against the troops" in an election season. So what we'll get is a lot of what we just saw -- non-binding antiwar votes hitched to troop increases and/or "short-term" funding boosts...
"What worries me about this state of affairs is that presidents don't like to see military losses land on their watch. If a Democrat wins in '08, bet on it, an excuse will be found to keep the troops there."
Will the war end?
However, there is another way the war can end, and that is by means of external forces beyond Washington. The military position may grow untenable in terms of casualties, logistics, the ability to resupply or the ability to withdraw.
Defeat on the ground at the hands of the Iraqis is a possibility that is not diminishing with each successive year of occupation, as
(i) the resistance grows more sophisticated and draws in external allies
(ii) as the US loses control over existing allies in the occupation and supply routes (as in the British withdrawal from the south)
(iii) and finally as the US occupation grows more costly, both in direct political, economic and moral costs, and in opportunity costs.
The time scale for harsh reality to assert itself in military defeat is uncertain but seems likely to be on the order of a decade, going from the previous reference point of the Vietnam War.
-frizzled
Juan,
Thanks for your informative analysis.
I disagree though that the Democrats lack the ability to get the U.S. out of Iraq. A clear majority of the population has backed a withdrawal for several years now, as do a majority of the troops.
In that political context, with wide and deep hatred of Bush, it is unlikely Americans would turn against the Democrats as 'obstructionists'. In fact, Congress' low approval ratings (lower than Bush's!) are attributable to the fact that the Democrats have not taken such strong steps.
I think the reason they don't do this is because they are actually just as committed to the occupation as the Republicans. None of the candidates will uncategorically come out in favor of a withdrawal. At best, they will talk about a re-deployment, which is of course a recipe for further war (in Iraq, and then against Iran).
This is a very interesting article here, giving the Iraqi perspective on the British withdrawal from Basra:
http://www.niqash.org/content.php?contentTypeID=265&id=1998
Seems the militias are under a lot of pressure to disarm now that the British - their raison d'etre for having arms - have withdrawn.
The Iraqi Army and police seem to have taken over, and the warring factions - including Al-Fadhila and SIIC - have made peace.
This confirms what the anti-occupation forces have been saying for a while - the occupying troops are not stabilising the situation, they are inflaming it.
Professor Cole:
Can you please shed some light on his claim from last night that the Iraqis are the ones seeking this "enduring relationship" with us? Do you know of a single instance where the Iraqi government has requested we set up and operate permanent bases in their country?
Are you aware of any instance where the al-Maliki government, or even Jalal Talabani have asked the Bush Administration for a Korea-style presence in their country?
Would it not undermine his whole speech last night if it was revealed that the Iraqis do not seek a permanent presence, and instead want us to stay for something less than 5 years?
I cannot believe that the Shiites want a Korea-style presence, or even a presence of Petraeus' 9-10 years. Even though the Sunnis may want us to stick around a few more years, I have heard nothing about them supporting a 9-10 year presence, let alone a Korea model. As for the Kurds, they just want to be left alone with their oil, but haven't said as far as I know anything about a Korea model or even 9-10 years.
That first link is from the Edmonton Journal. Any stories from major American newspapers with something like "phoney" in the headline?
Given that our war against Iraq started in 1991, shouldn't that be two million, at least?
Dr. Cole,
When I read something like this from you:
"Many readers suggested the route of cutting off funds and refusing to present any other Defense budget, but realistically speaking that is a very dangerous ploy that could get them defeated in the next election as obstructionists. And if they are defeated, the Republican Party will keep the US in Iraq, so what would be the point?"
I can barely believe my eyes. Couple that with the Petraeus is sincere comments from the other day and I really have to wonder what has happened to you. A Party that continues to take the politically safe path is not going to be able to sustain itself. At some point, it has to stand for something. The American people will support the Democrats if they were to show a backbone at all. They oppose the war and want a withdrawal by wide margins. The only person this logic helps is George W. Bush in his quest to keep the war going until he leaves office, so he can blame his failure on someone else. This should be obvious by now. No Republican is going to win an election on supporting the war in Iraq anymore.
Readers who have not done so should read the Lancet Studies. They do not have to be taken as gospel but they do explain their methodology and the problems with other methods. A curious reader can find separate detailed descriptions of the methodology as it is quite standard and used to assess humanitarian catastrophes.
There has been a great deal of talk of various statistics and metrics of late. Keep in mind that the DoD has armies of statisticians and analysts who are under a great deal of pressure to make the best case for the policy makers. They are not necessarily cynical and corrupt persons but I have read published pieces that were C or D- work and anything but good science. The particular piece used a decision model to rationalize Bush's decision to invade Iraq. Key numbers were pulled out of the air when there were clear, fact-based alternatives that would have produced a different conclusion.
The child of a friend served in Iraq during and after the invasion. He and a few other troops were assigned to travel around count Iraqi fatalities, i.e., it is more than likely that the DoD has gathered mortality statistics and continues to do so. Military operations are a science these days and the DoD invests heavily in the research and tools needed to continue to perfect their operational capabilities. Our military is not a rag-tag bunch of amateurs when it comes to this aspect of their work. Look at the outright efficiency of the evacuation and treatment of the wounded. That takes a great deal of planning and coordination, i.e., it does not happen by accident.
Still, while somewhere there is most likely an accurate picture of the situation on the ground, it is not going to be revealed. Generals are like CEO's talking to stock analysts about their last quarter performance. The only difference is the clothes they wear.
Finally, pay attention to what counts as opposed to numbers. If you are talking about fatalities and displaced persons and such, arguing over the difference between 50,000 and a 1,000,000 is missing the point. Is it ok to kill 50,000 people and devastate a country that did not attack us and had no intention of attacking us and did not have the capacity to do so if it was their intention? There probably have been 1,000,000 excess fatalities in Iraq and the number is growing. Should we feel better if it were ONLY 500,000 or 70,000?
This little tidbit of inanity courtesy of McClatchy:
WASHINGTON — Despite President Bush's pledge Thursday that U.S. troops will remain in Iraq after he leaves office, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus, said Friday that he will still use the prospect of troop withdrawals to persuade Iraq's political leaders to resolve their differences.
In a half-hour interview Friday with McClatchy Newspapers at the Pentagon, Petraeus said the message that he and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will take back to Baghdad is: "Let's get on with it (or) you are going to have to take it on by yourself." [In Full]
Considering that the average Iraqi on the Street wants us OUT Out Out, that isn't really going to be seen as a 'big stick' by the majority of Iraqis.
It would seem that this is only a threat aimed at the State department's cronies in the Iraq client state apparatus to git their ... together or be abandoned to the villagers with the pitchforks/torches.
Leigh
I think that your reasoning in support of the claim that Democrats lack the ability to stop the war is more of an argument that Democrats lack the will to stop the war. You outline one approach they could take, but say that it could be electorally risky for them. I don't buy it. John Kerry showed how ineffective is the 'I voted before it, after it, inside outside upside down' approach. We got 150000 guys risking their lives and these guys are worried about their crappy jobs?
Also, the war has been funded through supplemental bills, not as part of the regular defense budget, so I don't even see how that flies.
And I don't buy fretting over being considered 'obstructionist' when the Democrats whip out the 'we can't do anything because we can't override a veto/stop a filibuster' argument; how can they simultaneously be worried about being viewed as obstructionist, and be willing to roll over against real obstructionism?
The argument also makes me wonder why they didn't filibuster the war funding even when they were in the minority.
I really shouldn't wonder that, however. The Senate had a Democratic majority when the authorization for use of force in Iraq was passed.
Politicians on both sides see human life as expendable when it comes down to THEIR political survival. Soldiers are merely chess pieces to be moved around and cast aside in the game of politics. Men like Bush can readily distance themselves from human suffering and compartmentalize their emotions, if they have any at all. Compassion is viewed as weakness. Common sense is avoided at all costs. The politicians are removed from the reality of war. They will contend that they must be dispassionate. A little Vietnamese girl burning up from napalm is quickly ignored. A child having lost his legs and arms in a bombing is quickly forgotten. The politicians insist they are being objective, when, in fact, they are as far removed from objectivity as Pluto is from the Sun. Their objective is to protect their power, their influence, their perks and privileges. Their lofty goal is to be re-elected. Let countless more die. It matters not. They will cloak their self-serving agenda in lofty words of patriotism, protecting the people, saving us from terrorism. You can drive an 18 wheeler through their arguments, but, sadly, most people don't bother to get past the sound bites. In the end, economic forces will reign-in United States' aggression, just as they did the old Soviet Union. Unfortunately, it is a slow process; but it is occurring. The house of cards will tumble.
Prof. Cole's obversation that "Our national discourse has now reached a point where it is a journalistic coup just to point out when a politician is lying" reminds me of George Orwell's statement: "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act."
I am so done with even wondering whether Democrats will do this or that. They're just the left wing of the corporate party, and they obviously do what they're told. After over 40 years of never missing an election, I'm finished with this entire charade. Participation in the fraud only gives it legitimacy. Put me down for never voting again until the (fake) Republic falls.
The blogs could do a world of good by organizing people to start new ways of food production and distribution, developing new ways of obtaining water and shelter for all, teaching basic medical skills, etc. We're gonna need all that.
I ain't holding my breath, though.
The Dems ought to try the Webb Amendment, and tie funding to sane R & R periods for the troops, limiting their deployments. That could effectively reduce our troop footprint there.
"So what would be the point?"
The point is that its a trap. The Republicans want the Dems to share ownership. The longer the Democrats avoid doing their fullest and best to stop the war, the more they are accepting ownership of it. Which puts them more and more in Bush's shoes, afraid to get us out and admit that what they partly own is a colossal failure.
One of these days, the American public will come out of its stupor and force the issue, just as we did in Vietnam. By then (if not already) both party's hands will be fully soiled.
ORB, a British polling group, has just released the results of a poll it took in Iraq in August that suggests that over a million Iraqis have died violently since the US invasion. However, it’s important to understand the level of uncertainty involved in the estimate. It is very, very hard to quantify what’s happening in a place as chaotic as Iraq.
One measure of the level of uncertainty is that the weighted estimate of violent death is about 50% higher than the raw figures would suggest. ORB asked Iraqis a number of questions, including whether one or more people living under their roof had been killed violently since the invasion. If the sample is randomly chosen, the margin of error should be fairly predictable.
One of the key challenges is a random sample. You can pick phone numbers at random: this works well if almost everyone has a phone, and is equally likely to answer it. If not, you can adjust for the difference between those that answer phones and those that don’t, if you can.
Or you can send out polling teams in a way that insures that everyone has about the same chance of being polled. This requires that you have a good idea of who is living where. This can work well under quite bad conditions. If a large share of the population is living in squalid refugee camps, and you have a good idea how many are living in each camp because a relief agency is handing out rations, and the residents have been thoroughly randomized by panicked flight from murderous militias, you can get a good random sample this way, at least for the people in the camps.
Iraq fits neither condition. Having completed their initial survey, ORB concluded they needed to massage the numbers. Did they undersample Baghdad? If so, they should adjust those numbers, assuming they have a good estimate of the current total population, and whether their sample was proportionate to the current population of the neighborhoods they sampled.
There’s a dilemma here. If the government is functioning adequately, you don’t estimate violent deaths by survey: you ask it to tabulate the corpses in the morgues, or the ration card holders that have stopped eating. On the other hand, if it has lost count of the corpses, then they are probably even less capable of telling you the current population of a specific neighborhood or region net of massive refugee flows.
Massaging polling numbers is a tricky business. Your poll may capture a surprisingly low number of Sunni Arab adult males. This might be sampling error, best dealt with by re-weighting the sample. On the other hand, it may reflect the fact that a large number of the expected Sunni Arab adult males are, in fact, dead. If that’s the case, re-weighting the sample will only distort the truth.
Something along those lines seems to be reflected in the recent ORB poll. Looking at the raw, un-weighted responses, 7% of Iraqi Kurds have lost a household member to violence since the invasion, and 6% of those that identify themselves as Shiites. Many Iraqis refused to claim a particular sect for the pollsters, and simply called themselves Muslims. 9% of these lost a household member. This group included some Kurds, and backing those out at the Kurdish death rate suggests that Arabs that identified themselves as “Muslim” rather than a particular sect had a household violent death rate of about 10%. This group includes both Sunni and Shiite Iraqi Arabs.
The group that identified themselves as “Sunni” had a 32% household violent death rate in the un-weighted ORB poll. However, most Kurds are Sunni, but reported much less violence. Backing them out at the average rate of reported violence for Kurds suggests that Sunni Arabs reported household violent death since the invasion at about 38%.
If the poll results are remotely in the right ballpark, Arabs that identify themselves as Sunni are suffering much worse losses than other groups in Iraq: the sort of casualties that knocked Russia and the Central Powers out of World War I, and drove the French army to the edge of mutiny.
Since the poll makes no effort to isolate civilian casualties, one plausible explanation of at least part of the disparity is that Sunni insurgents are being killed in large numbers.
While this poll will be taken by some as confirmation of Burnham et al (2006) published in the Lancet, they do contradict each other in one important sense. According to Burnham et al, Baghdad’s level of violence was about average for Iraq. According to ORB, Baghdad is about twice as deadly as Iraq as a whole. The two studies are also not directly equivalent. Burnham et al attempts to measure excess violence as a result of the war. ORB measures all violence since the war, and the number presumably includes some ordinary murders that would have occurred even if there had been no invasion.
Post a Comment
<< Home