I had previously embedded the British Channel 4 Special Report on the Shia Iraq Death Squads that were engaging ethnic cleansing of Baghdad. The video kept on being removed from sites I located. I just found that it is now available on Google Video:
May 30th, 2009
The Telegraph reports what is in some of the photographs Obama is withholding. This would match contemporaneous accounts of rape occurring inside the prison. It appears that President Obama lied when he said:
“I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”
Such a lie is silly, as he has to know that the truth will come out in this case. Obama’s credibility is thus reduced:
Abu Ghraib abuse photos ’show rape’
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”
It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.
Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”
The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.
Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.
May 28th, 2009
McClatchy Newspapers has more on the evolving story that a major factor in the development of the Bush administration torture program was the desire to demonstrate an Al Qaeda-Irq link. McClatchy now reports that Vice President Cheney told a newspaper in 2004 that Guantanamo detainees had admitted that Al Qaeda had sent members to Iraq for training in Chemical and Biological Warfare.
Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn’t true.
Cheney’s 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.
The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration’s case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“I’m aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, a former military criminal investigator. “That was something they were tasked to look at.”
Was Cheney lying or simply anticipating the “evidence” the torturers were being encouraged to produce?
May 17th, 2009
Now that the question of the relationship of US torture to false evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link has come to the fore, Salon reporter Mark Benjamin reminds us that Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, the “torture general” of Guantanamo, recomemended getting tough to the Iraq Survey Group who were valliantly hunting the non-existent WMD in Iraq. Gen. Miller, you may recall, was on his way at the time to Abu Ghraib, where he successfully recomended “Gitmoizing” the prion, thus contributing to one of trhe greatest strategic defeats in US history. As Benjamin tells the story:
In August and early September of 2003, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the man in charge of the Pentagon’s torture laboratory at Guantanamo Bay, was dispatched to Iraq, allegedly to Gitmoize operations there.
It seems to have worked, at least in one place. Soon after Miller visited with officials in charge of Abu Ghraib, guards there began to use working dogs, stress positions, extremely lengthy interrogations, isolation, yelling and nudity in order to try to wring information from prisoners — all techniques that had been used at Guantanamo and that the world would later see in photos released from an investigation in to what had gone on at the prison.
But according to the Senate committee’s report, before Miller met with the Abu Ghraib officials, he first made a little-known visit to the Iraq Survey Group, which was in charge of the hunt for WMDs in Iraq after the invasion.
Miller told the ISG they were “running a country club” by not getting tough on detainees, Chief Warrant Officer Brian Searcy, the ISG interrogation chief, told the Senate committee. Searcy said Miller suggested shackling detainees and forcing them to walk on gravel. Mike Kamin, another ISG official, told committee investigators that Miller recommended temperature manipulation and sleep deprivation.
Miller also told the ISG’s Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton that Dayton’s unit was “not getting much out of these people,” and complained that the ISG had not “broken” their detainees psychologically. Miller offered to send along suggested techniques, Dayton recalled, that would “actually break” the prisoners.
Dayton demurred, saying his unit wasn’t changing anything and that lawyers would have to carefully vet anything Miller suggested. The ISG generally balked. One of its debriefers threatened to resign if Miller got his way. After the cool reception, Miller appears to have dropped the effort with respect to the ISG.
On his return from Iraq, Miller was sent directly to the Pentagon to personally brief then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone. [emphasis added.]
Followers of this blog may recall that Col. Larry James, a BSCT at Guantanamo under Gen. Miller, is full of wonderful words on the humane tretment of detainees under Miller’s command:
Col. James has a long and honorable association with Behavioral Science Consultation Teams and Guantanamo. “In 2003, my commander made it very clear that he wanted the BSCT to work with interrogators on how to develop rapport-building strategies and techniques with detainees,” said James.
That commander, of course, was Miller. And we know the nature of those “rapport-building” techniques Miller encouraged: isolation, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, nudity, sexual humiliation by females, and visious “stress positions.” And the goal, as Miller reminds us, was to “break” the detainees. We should remember that the torture of Al-Qahtani begins, according to p. 1 of the interrogation log, with a “rapport-builing session.”
May 16th, 2009
Former Iraq interrogator Mathew Alexander says protect our troops, stop torturing others:
If We’re Going to Reveal More Memos
By Mathew AlexanderFormer VP Dick Cheney has requested the release of additional memos showing that torture and abuse saved American lives by preventing terrorist attacks. If the Obama Administration decides to release these memos, then I suggest they also release statistics from Iraq showing the number of foreign fighters that were recruited because of our policy of torture and abuse. It was tracked. I know because I saw the slides and because I heard captured foreign fighters state this day in and day out. The government can also release the statistics that show that 90% of suicide bombers in Iraq were these same foreign fighters. These foreign fighters killed hundreds, if not thousands, of American soldiers.
After these revelations, Americans can judge whether or not a policy of torture and abuse kept us safe. Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to evaluate the damage that was done to past or future interrogations. As I experienced firsthand, detainees were less likely to cooperate when they viewed us as hypocrites. We can’t establish the trust that is required to convince a detainee to cooperate unless we live up to the principles that we preach.
I had one detainee in Iraq, a previous Al Qaida fighter, who provided me with all the information he knew willingly without me having to run an interrogation approach. He told me that Al Qaida had accused him of being a mole and tortured him before we rescued him. He then proceeded to say that the reason he was going to cooperate was because we didn’t torture him and because of that, he knew everything that he’d been told about us by Al Qaida was wrong.
Before 9/11, the protection of American soldiers from terrorist attacks was a priority for our country. Consider our responses to the Beirut Bombing, Khobar Towers, and the USS Cole. When we talk about keeping Americans safe from terrorist attacks, we need to include all Americans, especially those that serve in uniform.
May 15th, 2009
This weeks’ news brings new perspectives on the role of Vice President [or is it President for Vice?] Cheney’s office in promoting torture. Former chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell Col. Lawrence Wilkerson attributes the emphasis given to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” [a.k.a "torture"] program to the the administration need to develop evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link:
Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.
So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
Former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem confirms Wilkerson’s basic clasms in The Daily Beast where he reports that VP Cheney’s office recommending waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner in April 2003 in hopes of producing “evidence” of the elusive [and nonexistent] Iraq-Al Qaeda link:
In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”
Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney.
Interestingly, Wilkerson also claims that the CIA’s torture program was shut down after the Abu Ghraib photos were released. [I'll wait for confirmation from other sources before believing this.]:
My investigations have revealed to me–vividly and clearly–that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering “the Cheney methods of interrogation”, simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.
What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama’s having shut down the “Cheney interrogation methods” will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?
May 14th, 2009
There have been so many articles on aspects of the SASC report last night that I can’t find time to read them, much less, post them all. But here’s one from McClatchy, with a different angle:
Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy NewspapersWASHINGTON — The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.
The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush’s quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.
“There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,” the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.
“The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.
“There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.
“Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies.”
Senior administration officials, however, “blew that off and kept insisting that we’d overlooked something, that the interrogators weren’t pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information,” he said.
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
Excerpts from Burney’s interview appeared in a full, declassified report on a two-year investigation into detainee abuse released on Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., called Burney’s statement “very significant.”
“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”
Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.
A senior Guantanamo Bay interrogator, David Becker, told the committee that only “a couple of nebulous links” between al Qaida and Iraq were uncovered during interrogations of unidentified detainees, the report said.
Others in the interrogation operation “agreed there was pressure to produce intelligence, but did not recall pressure to identify links between Iraq and al Qaida,” the report said.
The report, the executive summary of which was released in November, found that Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other former senior Bush administration officials were responsible for the abusive interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld approved extreme interrogation techniques for Guantanamo in December 2002. He withdrew his authorization the following month amid protests by senior military lawyers that some techniques could amount to torture, violating U.S. and international laws.
Military interrogator, however, continued employing some techniques in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.
Bush and his top lieutenants charged that Saddam was secretly pursuing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in defiance of a United Nations ban, and had to be overthrown because he might provide them to al Qaida for an attack on the U.S. or its allies.
ON THE WEB
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
In reversal, Obama opens door to prosecuting top Bush aides
Bush-era interrogations: from waterboarding to forced nudity
Guantanamo: Beyond the Law – a McClatchy investigation
Archive of McClatchy’s Iraq intelligence reporting
April 22nd, 2009
In response to the posting on the UN Human Rights Council resolution sponsored by Denmark, I have been sent this letter by former Danish intelligence officer and whistleblower Frank Grevil, who served four months in prison for revealing pre-Iraq war lies to Parliament by the Danish Prime Minister, who is now scheduled to become NATO Secretary-General:
One of the candidates for NATO’s next secretary general is an infamous Danish war criminal
Letter Written by: Frank Grevil
Date of Letter: 2009-03-11
Subject: WAR!!!Dear Americans,
From a U.S. perspective, the slumbering North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, may not deserve a lot of attention. Nevertheless, the is good reason to pay attention to current events in the NATO alliance, where the next secretary general will expectedly be appointed in a few weeks from now.
One of the candidates to the posting is an infamous Danish war criminal, who was an accomplice to your former president George W. Bush’s aggression on Iraq. His name is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and he currently holds the position of prime minister of Denmark.
Not that the office of NATO secretary general is in any way influential, but appointing Fogh Rasmussen for the office would imply the honouring a man of ill reputation.
If the U.S. should at one point impeach George W. Bush for misconducting his office during his eight-year reign, it would seem awkward to have one of his European sycophants as head of the NATO alliance.
Five years ago, when I was employed by the Danish defence intelligence service (the equivalent of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency), I disclosed secret reports, mostly copied from documents received from the U.S. and the U.K., revealing that Fogh Rasmussen lied intentionally to the Danish parliament, when he claimed to have firm intelligence documenting that Iraq under its former dictator Saddam Hussein was defying U.N. resolutions demanding it to cease its WMD programs and allow for inspections.
For this my contribution to shed light on the events leading to a motley U.S.-headed group of states invading Iraq in March 2003 without a U.N. mandate, I served four months in prison where, on top of the incarceration proper, my under-age daughter was harrassed by the Danish authorities.
Under normal circumstances, I would be proud to see a Dane as head of an international organization, but not this one, who should be tried according to the Nuremberg charter as an international major war criminal.
Matters aren’t settled yet, so I strongly urge all of you Americans to put pressure on the U.S. government to refuse Fogh Rasmussen’s candidacy.
Yours sincerely Frank Grevil Copenhagen, Denmark frank@grevil.dk http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8a96aa0c-0cd2-11de-a555-0000779fd2ac.html
March 27th, 2009
Several readers of my post earlier today New Doubts Regarding the Lancet Iraq Mortality Study have raised the question as to why the lapse committed by Burnham et al. in this study warrants dismissing the entire study. After all, they argue, the lapse of recording names was an ethical lapse, perhaps, but recording extra information should not affect the results. Let me take this opportunity to clarify my reasoning.
The faith one has in the results of any study depends largely on the quality of the research design and on how carefully that design is followed. In the case of a population-based epidemiological survey like the 2006 Lancet study (Lancet II), even minor deviations from the survey design can have large effects on the results. (Survey research depends crucially on every person in the population having an equal chance of being selected.) As one example, if interviewers used discretion – beyond that mandated by safety considerations – in selecting households, it could introduce (probably unintentional and unconscious) bias that would make the findings unreliable. For this reason, survey researchers attempt to maintain strict control over the procedures actually used by those collecting data in the field.
We have been assured for years that the design of Lancet II was carefully followed. Now we hear that the specified design was not followed in a crucial way that may have put participants at risk. Furthermore, the Lancet researchers have for years pointed to those very risks as reasons to deny access to raw data and to withhold crucial methodological information when questioned. The fact that the protocol wasn’t followed in a central aspect severely reduces the confidence we can have that the study procedures were carefully monitored.
The Baltimore Sun reported:
“Because of the difficulty of carrying out research in Iraq during the war, Burnham and his team partnered with Iraqi doctors at a university in Iraq. Burnham, working out of Jordan, said he made it clear to the doctors that they could collect the first names of children and adults, to help keep the information straight, but that last names could not be collected.
“When the surveys came back to him in Jordan, it appeared that some had last names. Many were in Arabic. Burnham said he asked his Iraqi partners and was told that the names were not complete, which he accepted. But Hopkins, in its investigation, found that the data form used in the surveys was different from what was originally proposed, and included space for names of respondents. Hopkins found that full names were collected.”
This description, if true, supports the assumption that Burham was in no position to carefully monitor the details of data collection for the study. Further, at its most charitable, it indicates severe communication difficulties with the Iraqi staff that may easily have left him unaware of other possible deviations in procedures. If one is not so charitable, one may wonder why Burham was told a falsehood, that the names were only first names, and thus what else was distorted. In any case, in the absence of this confidence in the study procedures, we cannot maintain confidence in the study’s results.
There is yet another troubling aspect of this incident. The lapse that occurred, recording of full names of respondents reporting deaths from violence in a country undergoing civil war after the Johns Hopkins ethics committee and the respondents were told no names or unique identifiers would be collected, is no trifling error. As Johns Hopkins Magazine reported in its February 2007 issue:
“Concern for the safety of interviewers and respondents alike produced two more decisions. First, they would not record identifiers like the names and addresses of people interviewed. Burnham feared retribution if a hostile militia at a checkpoint found a record of households visited by the Iraqi survey teams.”
Thus, the researchers were well aware that collecting names of respondents could put them at grave risk. Burnham owed it to the people in his study to have enquired further when he noticed names on the forms and not so easily accepted false reassurances. That he did not suggests that he may have (perhaps unconsciously) looked the other way at other possible deviations from protocol.
Since the study was released over two years ago, it has been subjected to severe criticism. While much of this criticism was likely motivated by concern for the political implications of the study, and some of the criticism was clearly unwarranted, that does not give the study a free pass on criticism. And we shouldn’t look the other way to its potential problems just because its findings support our antiwar position.
In response to the criticism, the Lancet study authors have been less than forthcoming with key details, such as their exact sampling procedure for selecting streets, which, under criticism, they admitted was not accurately described in the published paper. That we now know that another crucial detail, the collection of identifiable information, deviated from the published record, and that the authors failed to correct the public record on the matter until forced to, raises questions about what other aspects of the study may not have been conducted as described. As long as these questions remain, the study cannot be considered reliable.
March 16th, 2009
SEE UPDATE BELOW:
Since the Iraq war began, an important question for those closely following the conflict has been the number of excess Iraqi casualties resulting from the war and occupation. Various researchers have attempted to estimate this number. Iraq Body Count has kept a running tab of civilian deaths reported in the Western media and, more recently, by certain Iraqi government sources., but their figure, now at around 95,000, is undoubtedly low due to its reliance on media reports and Iraqi government figures. During times of intense conflict, many deaths likely go unreported in the media, while there have been numerous inconsistencies in and reports of political manipulation of government figures as it may not be in the government’s interest to admit the extent of deaths from the conflict.
An alternate way to estimate conflict-associated mortality is through the conduct of carefully sampled household surveys counting the number of deaths in selected households and using statistical techniques to extrapolate to the overall population. Much attention has been focused especially, by myself and others, on the Lancet mortality studies of 2004 and 2006.The first of these studies estimated that there had been approximately 100,000 excess deaths from the war by September 2004. The second study estimated that there were around 650,000 excess deaths through summer 2006. They further found that the vast majority of these excess casualties — around 600,000 — were from violence, a stark contrast from most other such conflicts studied where large numbers die from poor health and the breakdown of social organization associated with conflict. “Excess casualties” here means the number who died above that number that would have been expected to die had prewar trends continued and the war and occupation not occurred.
We have recently learned that Gilbert Burham, the lead author of second Lancet study, has been sanctioned by Johns Hopkins for deviating from the approved IRB protocol and collecting the names of many survey respondents, a fact that was implicitly denied in numerous public pronouncements. The school does assert that, as far as they can determine, no one was harmed by this ethical lapse. As a result of this sanction, Burnham has been barred by Johns Hopkins from serving as the principal investigator (lead researcher) on studies involving “human subjects” (live people) for five years. He was also ordered to publish a correction in the Lancet, which has now appeared:
“The Methods section of this Article (Oct 21, 2006) stated that ‘Participants were assured that no unique identifiers would be gathered.’ Upon review, it was determined that a significant number of the surveys contained names of respondents and household inhabitants. This was a lapse in the authors’ obligations to protect participants. However, to the authors’ knowledge, the completed surveys remained in possession of the research team at all times and there were no known breaches in confidentiality.”
This error, and its possible coverup in subsequent public statements means that, in my opinion, we can no longer rely upon the Lancet II mortality estimates. If one major methodological detail was distorted, we simply cannot know whether other aspects of the study were carried out as stated. Until and unless there is far greater detail on these methods, I do not feel that their estimate of 650,000 post-invasion surplus deaths can be trusted.
Burnham had early last month been censured by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for refusing to reveal details of the study methodology. I must say I find this censure highly unusual at best as Burnham is not a member of AAPOR. I have never previously heard of a professional association investigating, much less censuring, a non-member. However, as the Hopkins investigation shows, the non-cooperation may have been to cover up the methodological discrepancy, rather than for more understandable reasons.
I find this episode deeply disturbing. The issue of the magnitude of civilian deaths in Iraq is a profoundly important one. Given the known political sensitivity of the issue, the researchers should have been especially careful in the controllable aspects of their methodology. They were not. Rather, they gave ammunition to those who would inevitably attack their conclusions for political or ideological reasons. The result is that we are less knowledgeable about this important question than many of us believed as an important data source is no longer reliable.
While I find David Kane’s self-satisfied tone to be disturbing, I must admit that he was more right than I had believed regarding the weaknesses in the Lancet II study. As Kane points out, Burnham’s public statements were, in spirit if not in legalistic wording, not accurate.
We are left with several other studies estimating Iraqi casualties. The British ORB polling company estimated as of August 2007
that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003
While ORB is a reputable polling company, the faith we can place in these results is weakened due to their failure to publish a detailed methodology; such information is typically included in papers published in peer-reviewed journals, which is one reason researchers typically place greater credence on studies published in such journals. When the Lancet II findings were credible, the ORB study appeared to be a replication of the general order of magnitude of casualties found in that study. With the increased doubts about the Lancet II study, the ORB stands as an outlier. I wish the firm would publish a detailed methodology that would allow better evaluation of their findings.
At the low end, a study conducted by the Iraq Ministry of Health and other Iraq government entities in collaboration with the World Health Organization, estimated 151,000 violent between January 2002 and June 2006. While the authors did not estimate the total number of excess deaths — nonviolent as well as violent — presumably because these estimates would be less precise, dependent as they would be on estimates of prewar mortality rates, those estimates would be considerably higher by several hundred thousand. Critiques of this study have questioned whether many Iraqi citizens might be reluctant to admit to Iraqi government-associated researchers that a family member was killed by violence. Thus, it is not implausible to assume that this study is an undercount and constitutes a lower bound. As the Ministry of Health study period ended while some of the most severe violence was still occurring, there have likely been many more violent deaths since then.
Thus, the best guess we can make at present is that at least 200,000 people died through violence since the US-led invasion, and that the true figure may be far higher. Moreover, an additional number that could be in the hundreds of thousands may have died from nonviolent causes — e.g., lack of clean water and healthcare — associated with the conflict, but this figure is uncertain. No matter what the correct figures turn out to be, it is clear that far too many have died as a result of this war of choice and subsequent occupation which may have deposed a dictator but which also disrupted an entire society.
UPDATE:
Postscript:
Several readers have raised the question as to why the lapse committed by Burnham et al. in this study warrants dismissing the entire study. After all, they argue, the lapse of recording names was an ethical lapse, perhaps, but recording extra information should not affect the results. Let me take this opportunity to clarify my reasoning.
The faith one has in the results of any study depends largely on the quality of the research design and on how carefully that design is followed. In the case of a population-based epidemiological survey like the 2006 Lancet study (Lancet II), even minor deviations from the survey design can have large effects on the results. (Survey research depends crucially on every person in the population having an equal chance of being selected.) As one example, if interviewers used discretion – beyond that mandated by safety considerations – in selecting households, it could introduce (probably unintentional and unconscious) bias that would make the findings unreliable. For this reason, survey researchers attempt to maintain strict control over the procedures actually used by those collecting data in the field.
We have been assured for years that the design of Lancet II was carefully followed. Now we hear that the specified design was not followed in a crucial way that may have put participants at risk. Furthermore, the Lancet researchers have for years pointed to those very risks as reasons to deny access to raw data and to withhold crucial methodological information when questioned. The fact that the protocol wasn’t followed in a central aspect severely reduces the confidence we can have that the study procedures were carefully monitored.
The Baltimore Sun reported:
“Because of the difficulty of carrying out research in Iraq during the war, Burnham and his team partnered with Iraqi doctors at a university in Iraq. Burnham, working out of Jordan, said he made it clear to the doctors that they could collect the first names of children and adults, to help keep the information straight, but that last names could not be collected.
“When the surveys came back to him in Jordan, it appeared that some had last names. Many were in Arabic. Burnham said he asked his Iraqi partners and was told that the names were not complete, which he accepted. But Hopkins, in its investigation, found that the data form used in the surveys was different from what was originally proposed, and included space for names of respondents. Hopkins found that full names were collected.”
This description, if true, supports the assumption that Burham was in no position to carefully monitor the details of data collection for the study. Further, at its most charitable, it indicates severe communication difficulties with the Iraqi staff that may easily have left him unaware of other possible deviations in procedures. If one is not so charitable, one may wonder why Burham was told a falsehood, that the names were only first names, and thus what else was distorted. In any case, in the absence of this confidence in the study procedures, we cannot maintain confidence in the study’s results.
There is yet another troubling aspect of this incident. The lapse that occurred, recording of full names of respondents reporting deaths from violence in a country undergoing civil war after the Johns Hopkins ethics committee and the respondents were told no names or unique identifiers would be collected, is no trifling error. As Johns Hopkins Magazine reported in its February 2007 issue:
“Concern for the safety of interviewers and respondents alike produced two more decisions. First, they would not record identifiers like the names and addresses of people interviewed. Burnham feared retribution if a hostile militia at a checkpoint found a record of households visited by the Iraqi survey teams.”
Thus, the researchers were well aware that collecting names of respondents could put them at grave risk. Burnham owed it to the people in his study to have enquired further when he noticed names on the forms and not so easily accepted false reassurances. That he did not suggests that he may have (perhaps unconsciously) looked the other way at other possible deviations from protocol.
Since the study was released over two years ago, it has been subjected to severe criticism. While much of this criticism was likely motivated by concern for the political implications of the study, and some of the criticism was clearly unwarranted, that does not give the study a free pass on criticism. And we shouldn’t look the other way to its potential problems just because its findings support our antiwar position.
In response to the criticism, the Lancet study authors have been less than forthcoming with key details, such as their exact sampling procedure for selecting streets, which, under criticism, they admitted was not accurately described in the published paper. That we now know that another crucial detail, the collection of identifiable information, deviated from the published record, and that the authors failed to correct the public record on the matter until forced to, raises questions about what other aspects of the study may not have been conducted as described. As long as these questions remain, the study cannot be considered reliable.
2 comments March 15th, 2009
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