Changes

On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms; some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment; over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq; half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued; the Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.  If these assertions are true, they further imply:  Incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began; bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis; the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas; and an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.  In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.<ref>http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks/</ref>  

On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms; some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment; over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq; half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued; the Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.  If these assertions are true, they further imply:  Incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began; bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis; the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas; and an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.  In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.<ref>http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks/</ref>  

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A far more comprehensive and exact survey, using the same exact methods as the Lancet but with a massively larger number of interviews spread out further across the country, found 151,000 civilians had died in the conflict.<ref>http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr02/en/index.html</ref>  Because this was three times higher than the IBC estimate at the time<ref>http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr02/en/index.html</ref>, it would indicate a total sum of approximately 300,000 Iraqis as of today.  This is probably an absolute ''maximum'' estimate because the ratio of 1 out of every 3 deaths being recorded by the IBC has been altered considerably by the great decline in violence following the surge, so that the IBC’s recent figures are much more inclusive of the total sum than its earlier findings.

A far more comprehensive and exact survey, using the same exact methods as the Lancet but with a massively larger number of interviews spread out further across the country, found 151,000 civilians had died in the conflict.<ref>http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr02/en/index.html</ref>  Because this was three times higher than the IBC estimate at the time<ref>http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr02/en/index.html</ref>, it would indicate a total sum of approximately 300,000 Iraqis as of today.  This is probably an absolute ''maximum'' estimate because the ratio of 1 out of every 3 deaths being recorded by the IBC has been altered considerably by the great decline in violence following the surge, so that the IBC’s recent figures are much more inclusive of the total sum than its earlier findings.