Over at the OxBlog, Taylor Owen has a post up about the Lancet Iraqi excess death study, Counting Death
I wrote a friend who has intimate knowledge of the methods used in the Lancet Iraq study, asking the following question:
What is your professional opinion of the new Lancet study of Iraqi casualties? Is the real story not the 650,000 but the 392,000 at 95% certainty? Would be very interested in your assessment.
I received the following reply:
No, message is 650,000 excess deaths is most probable estimate (probability
density highest here). 392,000, as the lower bound of the confidence interval, is a much less likely estimate. Same for upper bound.
The bigger question is why this should surprise us, given the political and
military situation.
This person has worked in just about every major conflict zone of the past two decades, and developed statistical surveys that are at the forefront of the field. He is intimately knowledgeable on the indirect human costs of war. His point is a clear one. The principal question is why are we so surprised that this level of conflict would result in such levels of excess mortality?
Taylor goes on to explain his own theory, which is that war is simply too sanitized these days. And I'm sure that's a large measure of the reason why your average person on the street is surprised by this number.
But there's a couple of important issues here, and not just the obvious one of people being surprised that the humanitarian cost of these conflicts is huge. Quite frankly, most people don't pay attention to things for one reason or another, after all not everyone is a news junkie - they have real lives. What is surprising, though, is that this large number is surprising to people who were theoretically paying attention to this.
Part of the huge issue - which, by the way, is still there and hasn't even changed one whit - is that the supporters of the war simply don't care about these numbers. It's all about PR, propaganda (in the true meaning of the term) and keeping America's will intact. They have, since the very beginning of this mess, consistently and viciously attacked any "bad news" coming out of Iraq. Hell, just look at one minor slice of the way information was handled in the first few weeks when people were looting and chaos was running rampant. The drumbeat from the war's supporters was that the MSM (that's the media) was showing the "same rioters over and over" and thus distorting the true picture of what's happening on the ground.
And again, this is just one tiny example out of an endless series of escalating tactics used by the supporters and prosecutors of this war.
It's not like the information required to come to grips with the realities of the humanitarian disaster was hard to find - hell, it was staring us in the face. Hiding, as it were, in plain sight. So, if the war is "sanitized" it is an active act of white washing, not a virtual desert of facts with hapless nomads trundling about searching for the unvarnished truth. It was (and still is) an incredibly sophisticated and well financed PR and Propaganda push by the supporters to "prevent another Vietnam" (where we lose the war because of the lack of will in the American people caused by the "hate America first" crowd).
Hell, just look at the most recent dust up over Jamil Hussein and the AP. This whole event was about white washing and protecting the image of what's happening on the ground in Iraq. It isn't about facts and a full and frank discussion about what's going on.
So, if people on this side of the great pond are largely in the dark, I would claim it's largely due to the fact that the press is quite well under control and the facts are actively being suppressed (whether this is ultimately successful or not, there is no doubt there is an active campaign). Hell, the whole Lancet study itself was viciously attacked and the same crowd of amateurs who attacked the AP over Jamil suddenly became experts at statistics overnight and did exactly the same. And the press? You know, the people who are supposed to be informing the unwashed masses? Well, they just couldn't be bothered. Sure, it showed up for a few days, but mostly as a matter of reporting on the controversy.
Statistics? Hell, that's way over the head of pretty much every reporter, and ever single OpEd contributor. If they weren't attacking it or disparaging the work itself, they were simply ignoring it. And so why are we so surprised that people are so surprised? I mean, what? Have you been sitting in a hole in Oxford for the past 5 years, Taylor? Do you truly think we've had a rational discussion about Iraq? Do you truly think we're seeing a full investigation by the fourth estate? If not, then why the hell do you think people are going to be up to date and well informed about the humanitarian cost of war?
Clearly, if our media made a real effort here, we'd see a lot different response. As it stands now, most people here in the Colonies still believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11. If our media can't even educate the masses on that simple fact, what possible hope is there for them doing anything else? Surprised? Sanitized? A better term is White Washed. It's the way all wars continue.
The last thing on earth the supporters and prosecutors of this war want is a full and frank discussion, much less an educated and aware populace.
Lying is an essential part of the strategy. Keeping the vast majority of people in the dark is part of the plan. It's a feature, not a bug. This should be obvious to even those struggling in Oxford.
Via Black Lab (love their new album)
