Keith Dancey wrote: 
>
>
>
> Yes they did.

From the text of the report...

"Interpretation: Making conservative assumptions, we think that about
100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened
since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the
excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces
accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of
public-health information is possible even
during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further
verification and should lead to changes to reduce noncombatant
deaths from air strikes."

Note they don't specify "civilians".  Note the last sentence where they
indicate they don't have a good handle on how much of their data simply
reflects casualties to the Iraqi armed forces.  So they attribute most
of the deaths to coalition air strikes and don't differentiate
combatants from noncombatants.  Wouldn't one logically conclude most of
the deaths were those who were shooting back?

Also from the paper: "Many of the Iraqis reportedly killed by US forces
could have been combatants. 28 of 61 killings (46%) attributed
to US forces involved men age 15–60 years, 28 (46%)
were children younger than 15 years, four (7%) were
women, and one was an elderly man."

So even if you accept their findings (based on 21 reports of violent
deaths outside of Falluja) as accurate the best you can claim in your
signature is on the order of 50k *civilian* violent deaths.  And that's
if you assume 100% of them were caused by coalition action.  And even
that's ignoring the circumstances such as combatants shooting at
coalition forces from places like schools, hospitals and such.

So as I said originally.  I hope your work numbers are more accurate
than the numbers in your signature.

-- ced


--
Chuck Dillon
Senior Software Engineer
NimbleGen Systems Inc.

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