A wrong-headed group called Refugees International wants the US government to allow tens of thousands of Iraqis to move to the United States each year. The US government plans to let in only 12,000 this year.
The State Department cannot resettle in the United States about 25,000 Iraqi interpreters and other refugees who worked for the U.S.-led coalition over the next two years because of limits on the number of applications that can be reviewed, according to Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte.
This is yet another of the long list of costs of the Iraq war. It is a cost we could reject. Let the Iraqis stay in Iraq building a Jeffersonian democracy. Don't they love freedom so much that they are willing to work to free all the people in their country? What's wrong with them for wanting to leave? More to the point: why should Iraqis get to leave while American soldiers have to stay?
If Refugees International had its way we'd accept 37,500 Iraqis per year.
Wisner, in a July 3 letter to Negroponte, had called on the Bush administration to resettle 12,500 Iraqis in each of the next two years. Assuming each would bring two family members, the total influx each year would be about 37,500 people.
Note that would be a yearly influx which could continue for years. My take on it is that we've paid enough for Iraq already.
Nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan -- 300,000 in all -- report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slight more than half have sought treatment, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
In addition, researchers found about 19 percent of returning service members report that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed, with 7 percent reporting both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression.
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The RAND study also estimates that about 320,000 service members may have experienced a traumatic brain injury during deployment -- the term used to describe a range of injuries from mild concussions to severe penetrating head wounds. Just 43 percent reported ever being evaluated by a physician for that injury.
Hundreds of thousands of people with brain damage by themselves add up to far too high a cost for the Iraq war. We should pay no more beyond what we have to pay to take care of our own.
DANVILLE, PA – Vietnam veterans who experienced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were twice as likely to die from heart disease as veterans without PTSD, a new Geisinger study finds.
In a study published in the July issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, Geisinger Senior Investigator Joseph Boscarino, PhD, MPH examined the prevalence of heart disease, PTSD and other problems in more than 4,000 Vietnam veterans.
The more severe the PTSD diagnosis, the greater the likelihood of death from heart disease, the study showed.
Vietnam veterans with PTSD--like chronic smokers—are at higher risk of early death from heart disease, Dr. Boscarino concluded. Boscarino equated PTSD to smoking two to three packs of cigarettes per day for more than 20 years.
PTSD causes the body to release stress hormones, which leads to the inflammation and damage to the arteries and cardiovascular system damage. Stress hormones also tend to reduce the amount of inflammation-reducing cortisol in the body—though researchers aren't sure why.
Plus, the concussions from IED blasts cause lasting brain damage. The costs of the war in Iraq far exceed the $3 billion per week that the US government spends on it now. The war does not help to increase US security. It drains us.
Remember when neocon former Defense deputy secretary Paul Wolfowitz famously predicted that Iraq's oil revenue would pay for all the rebuilding of Iraq? The United States still spends more than twice as much on the Iraq war as the Iraqis earn from oil exports in spite of a huge increase in oil prices.
In an interview with Reuters, Hussein al-Shahristani said he expects oil revenue to reach $70 billion this year if crude prices stay high and output flows remain stable.
Iraq's oil production barely equals the level before the invasion.
The country's exports reached 2.11 million barrels a day in March while the total output stood at about 2.5 million barrels a day, spokesman Assem Jihad told The Associated Press.
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The Energy Information Administration, part of the U.S. Energy Department, estimated Iraqi production at about 2.6 million barrels a day in early 2003.
Iraq's government claims oil production will go up another 300,000 barrels per day this year. Even then American taxpayers will be paying more for the war than the Iraqi government earns from oil sales. Imagine we had instead spent $150 billion per year on hybrid cars, nuclear power plants, and building insulation. We could import far less oil and have the Middle East matter far less to us.
Freedom rings on the Tigris? We've built a $740 million castle for US diplomats in Baghdad.
The 104-acre, 21-building enclave – the largest US Embassy in the world, similar in size to Vatican City in Rome – is often described as a "castle" by Iraqis, but more in the sense of the forbidden and dominating than of the alluring and liberating.
Our castle is bigger than Saddam's castles in case anyone misses the point.
"Saddam had his big castles; they symbolized his power and were places to be feared, and now we have the castle of the power that toppled him," says Abdul Jabbar Ahmed, a vice dean for political sciences at Baghdad University. "If I am the ambassador of the USA here I would say, 'Build something smaller that doesn't stand out so much, it's too important that we avoid these negative impressions.' "
Yet while the new embassy may be the largest in the world, it is not in its design and presence unlike others the US has built around the world in a burst of overseas construction since the bombings of US missions in the 1980s and '90s. Efforts to provide the 12,000 American diplomats working overseas a secure environment were redoubled following the 9/11 attacks.
I'm reminded of Jerry Pournelle's novel Oath Of Fealty where the residents of the Todos Santos arcology live in a massive building that protects them from a future very distopian Los Angeles. "Think of it as evolution in action."
700 employees (doing what exactly?) and 250 military personnel will occupy it. The place is a mini-economy which allows American government workers to work in another country without getting out into that country.
In the case of larger embassies in the most dangerous environments, as in Baghdad, secure housing is included, along with some of the amenities of home – restaurants, gyms, pools, cinemas, shopping – that can give the compound the air of an enclave.
The air of an enclave?
Foreign Policy and the Center for a New American Security did a survey of active and retired officers and found most see the US weakened by the war in Iraq.
In all, more than 3,400 officers holding the rank of major or lieutenant commander and above were surveyed from across the services, active duty and retired, general officers and field-grade officers. About 35 percent of the participants hailed from the Army, 33 percent from the Air Force, 23 percent from the Navy, and 8 percent from the Marine Corps. Several hundred are flag officers, elite generals and admirals who have served at the highest levels of command. Approximately one third are colonels or captains—officers commanding thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines—and 37 percent hold the rank of lieutenant colonel or commander. Eighty-one percent have more than 20 years of service in the military. Twelve percent graduated from one of America’s exclusive military academies. And more than two thirds have combat experience, with roughly 10 percent having served in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both.
We've certainly worn out a lot of equipment, built up huge future costs (e.g. taking care of permanently injured soldiers), and distracted ourselves from more important issues.
The US military can afford to fight in Iraq only because it doesn't have something really important on the table. The drain that is Iraq weakens the US military and leaves it less able to act in other theaters should the need arise.
These officers see a military apparatus severely strained by the grinding demands of war. Sixty percent say the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago. Asked why, more than half cite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pace of troop deployments those conflicts require. More than half the officers say the military is weaker than it was either 10 or 15 years ago. But asked whether “the demands of the war in Iraq have broken the U.S. military,” 56 percent of the officers say they disagree. That is not to say, however, that they are without concern. Nearly 90 percent say that they believe the demands of the war in Iraq have “stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin.”
The war in Iraq also contributes nothing to US security while costing a few trillion dollars in the long run. If we wanted to reduce our risk for terrorism the best thing to do is to reduce the number of Muslims in the United States. We could make visas hard to get for Muslims and do much better border and interior enforcement of immigration laws. Doing that would cost a small fraction of the cost of the Iraq war.
The active duty officers who responded weren't as pessimistic as the retired officers.
In presenting survey results at a public event on February 19, we noted several areas where retired and active duty officers surveyed seemed to have significant differences. For example, 44 percent of active duty officers and those retired for a year or less believed the military was weaker than it was five years ago, compared to 60 percent of respondents overall. On the other hand, for many questions, the results for officers who were either active duty or retired within the last year were similar to those of the overall group surveyed.
That 44% of active duty officers who see the US weakened is still a quite substantial number of the total.
The war began a little over 5 years ago on March 19, 2003. We've now reached 4000 US soldiers dead and a few hundred more Brits and other allied soldiers. What a tragic waste. 5 years is a long time to fight a war in such a small country.
Bush originally argued for an invasion based on a supposed program to develop nuclear and other dangerous weapons. That justification has been discredited and the Bush Administration moved on to terrorism as the reason for the invasion. Bush continues to inaccurately link the Iraq war with the fight against terrorists.
Speaking at the Pentagon, Mr Bush said "removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision". He also said that fighting Islamic militants in Iraq helped to prevent attacks on targets in the United States.
"The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities," he said.
The best way to reduce the terrorist threat is to keep Muslims from visiting the United States. The people trying to blow up US soldiers in Iraq are mostly Iraqis who do not want us there. The idea that we are going to create a peaceful and non-aggressive democratic example in the rest of the Middle East to follow is looking pretty dubious. The country is split into religious, ethnic, and tribal factions who each place more importance on holding power than on democracy or respect for individual rights.
Christians in Iraq were accorded far more rights under Saddam Hussein than they are today. Shiite and Sunni Arabs are locked in a fight because the Sunnis know that democracy means Shia rule and Sunni submission. We've managed to bribe some of the Sunni fighters into becoming legal paramilitary forces under limited US control. But that is just allowing the Sunnis to build up forces they need to fight the Shias and the Shias resent our empowering the Sunnis. I do not see how this ends well. I do not see the point of spending billions of dollars per week to try to make it end well.
UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, wrote Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.
"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Muñoz wrote.
The US "spending" on the Iraq war far exceeds the $3 billion budgeted to get burnt in Iraq each week. We also spent influence. We also burned friends. We also sent about 4000 Americans and a few hundred Brits and other coalition ally soldiers to their deaths so far. Plus, we now have tens of thousands of permanently maimed and brain damaged soldiers coming back from the war. They will require care and produce less and cost more for decades to come. The real cost of the Iraq war runs into the trillions of dollars.
Since vital US interests are not at stake in Iraq these costs are all net costs.
Granted, the cost estimates are squishy and controversial, partly because the $12.5 billion a month that we’re now paying for Iraq is only a down payment. We’ll still be making disability payments to Iraq war veterans 50 years from now. Professor Stiglitz calculates in a new book, written with Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, that the total costs, including the long-term bills we’re incurring, amount to about $25 billion a month. That’s $330 a month for a family of four.
But far too many on the Right can't admit the war is a mistake because they do not want to admit that their ideological enemies could ever be right.
Tyler Cowen argues that the US government's poor handling of the war should have been expected.
Henry at Crooked Timber challenges me to provide more background on why the fiasco in Iraq is another instance of government failure. I do so in the comments to his post and expand somewhat here.
Government founders on problems of incentives and information. On incentives: Should we be surprised that delays, errors and incompetence are more prevalent at the INS than at bureaucracies which must deal with citizens or which face competition from the private sector?
Of course not - but then what incentives does our government have to prevent abuse of foreign citizens? Democracy in this case provides no checks and balances because of anti-foreign bias, the ease with which the public can ignore the deaths of innocents abroad, and the fact that foreigners lack representation in our legislatures or the courts. Thus, Abu Ghraib and the routine shooting of innocents is no surprise - this is what happens when government is unconstrained.
What about the incentives to start wars? Government is bad enough when we all have access to information. What are we going to do when the major source of information is the government itself and they ask us to trust but not verify?
He goes on from there. All worth a read.
We don't just throw away $3 billion dollars a week and lost lives on a pointless war that does nothing to improve American security. Lots of soldiers come back with missing limbs, debilitating injuries in muscles and joints, and brain damage (traumatic brain injury or TBI) with varying degrees of severity.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2008 – An Army report released yesterday outlines how the service can better identify and help soldiers who have suffered traumatic brain injuries.
The report contains some 47 recommendations to help the Army better prevent, screen, diagnose, treat and research traumatic brain injury, said Brig. Gen. Donald Bradshaw, who led the task force charged with investigating TBI. Bradshaw is commander of Southeast Regional Medical Command and Eisenhower Regional Medical Center, at Fort Gordon, Ga.
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The general said 80 percent of those who suffer from mild TBI, commonly known as a concussion, recover completely. Some 10 to 20 percent of soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with experience in combat may have suffered symptoms consistent with mild TBI.
I am skeptical that 80% recover completely. Brains can't heal as well as other parts of the body. The Army is studying longer term effects. But without before and after cognitive testing with testing done periodically after return we aren't going to know how long lasting the concussion effects are.
The task force applauded the brain-injury program at Fort Carson, Colo., where 17% of returning soldiers have shown signs of the injury. As a result, the Army is replicating Fort Carson's program at other installations.
The task force said most soldiers suffering mild brain injury recover completely. Army Col. Robert Labutta, a neurologist and member of the task force, added that research is underway to determine long-term effects.
TBI is in addition to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
TBI is classified as mild, moderate, severe or penetrating, depending on the severity and nature of the injury. Mild TBI, commonly known as a concussion, may affect 10 to 20 percent of Soldiers and Marines redeploying from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not the same as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although the two conditions may produce similar symptoms, such as sleep problems, memory problems, confusion and irritability. Other mild TBI symptoms include headache, dizziness, nausea and light-sensitivity. More than 80 percent of patients treated for mild TBI recover completely.
You can read the full Traumatic Brain Injury Task Force Report (PDF).
Geroge Mason University economist Tyler Cowen, and co-author of the Marginal Revolution web log, has an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that the opportunity costs of the Iraq war are huge.
Set aside the question of what we could have accomplished at home with the energy and resources we've devoted to Iraq and concentrate just on national security. Here, the hidden cost of the war, above all, is that the United States has lost much of its ability to halt nuclear proliferation.
Tyler argues that failure in one intervention leads Americans to oppose future interventions for years and for foreign governments to feel more emboldened and less constrained by what decision makers in Washington DC might do. I emphatically agree.
The waste of the Iraq war has diverted money away from efforts that have the potential to deliver real improvements in our security. Tyler doesn't mention it but efforts to keep out illegal aliens - some of the 9/11 attackers were here illegally - would buy us a real increase in security by reducing terrorist risk and conventional crime.
1. We still haven't secured our ports against nuclear terrorism. The $1 trillion we've probably spent on the war could have funded the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security 28 times over.
Tyler argues that there has been no return on investment from the Iraq war. Some of the war's supporters would dispute this. But benefits of the invasion seem really hard to find. Some of the war's supporters expect some eventual benefit. But, again, I do not see this happening. At best, for even more expenditures we might eventually cause Iraq to develop in directions that we could at least pretend to claim we controlled. The goal then is to make us look efficacious by seeing the war through to some sort of conclusion where we can leave while claiming victory.
5. Above all, governing Iraq has, so far, been a fruitless investment. According to 2006 figures, U.S. war spending came out to $3,749 per Iraqi -- almost as much as the per capita income of Egypt. That staggering sum hasn't bought a lot of leadership from Iraq, or much of a democratic model for its Arab neighbors.
The US war effort more per Iraqi than the per capita GDP of dozens of countries. In fact. we are spending more per Iraq than countries 125 (Saint Vincent and Grenadines) through 194 (Malawi at $600 per capita) in a table of countries ranked by per capita GDP using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).
That measure really understates the size of the war cost because many of the economic costs show up in future years with care for disabled veterans, decreased work by disabled veterans, interest on money borrowed to fight the war, replacement of worn out equipment, and other costs will come due in the future.
We have weakened ourselves and reduced our influence by invading Iraq.
Following your lead, Iraq hawks argued that, in a post-9/11 world, we needed to take out rogue regimes lest they give nuclear or biological weapons to al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups. But each time the United States tries to do so and fails to restore order, it incurs a high -- albeit unseen -- opportunity cost in the future. Falling short makes it harder to take out, threaten or pressure a dangerous regime next time around.
This is called shooting fish in a barrel.
The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts' "hidden costs"-- including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.
That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled "The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War," estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000.
Yes, of course the war costs more than the amount of money appropriated on it so far. We are borrowing the money to spend it. Plus, we have tens of thousands and many hundreds of soldiers coming home with physical and mental disabilities. A lot more soldiers are getting brain damaged than are getting diagnosed for it. The costs for all that get tallied up over decades and the costs are quite high.
People who are soldiers are people who are not workers. There are opportunity costs.
The report argues that war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from "productive investment" by American businesses in the United States. It also says that the conflicts are pulling reservists and National Guardsmen away from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers that the report estimates at $1 billion to $2 billion.
The war does not provide a net benefit to American security. If our leaders really really wanted to do something to reduce the threat of terrorists there's a far easier thing to do: Keep out the Muslims.
Starting a war causes all sorts of unintended consequences. The Turkish response to Kurdish terrorists is stoking Kurdish nationalism.
YUKSEKOVA, Turkey — Turkish threats to attack Iraq, which may be heightened by a kidnapping over the weekend, are having the unintended effect of fostering closer ties between Kurdish communities in the two countries.
Will the Turkish Kurds leave Turkey for a Kurdistan which will secede from Iraq? What justification can be offered for forcing Kurds to live under Turkish and Arab rule?
Ankara's stance is "pushing Kurds together and deepening the rift between Kurds and Turks," said Sezgin Tanrikulu, bar association head in Diyarbakir, the southeastern Turkey's largest city. "Wounds are being created that will not be easy to heal."
Five years ago, Turkish Kurds had little but contempt for Iraqi Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Kurds in teahouses across southeastern Turkey dismissed them as "backward tribesmen interested in nothing but dollars from Washington."
Today, that contempt has entirely evaporated. Instead of insults, many Turkish Kurds prefix mentions of Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani with the word "brej" — a Kurdish expression of respect.
The Kurds within Iraq have been fleeing the Arab areas and are becoming more heavily concentrated in the Kurdish north. The central government in Baghdad is a net negative in their lives. They'd be better off with independence. Will they get it?
They find that even when there are no outward signs of injury from the blast, cells deep within the brain can be altered, their metabolism changed, causing them to die, says Geoff Ling, an advance-research scientist with the Pentagon.
The new findings are the result of blast experiments in recent years on animals, followed by microscopic examination of brain tissue. The findings could mean that the number of brain-injured soldiers and Marines — many of whom appear unhurt after exposure to a blast — may be far greater than reported, says Ibolja Cernak, a scientist with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
This cellular death leads to symptoms that may not surface for months or years, Cernak says. The symptoms can include memory deficit, headaches, vertigo, anxiety and apathy or lethargy. "These soldiers could have hidden injuries with long-term consequences," he says.
The Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) blasts might be injuring the brains of between 10% and 20% of soldiers who serve in Iraq.
When the war in Iraq began, clinicians treating the wounded began noticing similar symptoms. Some screenings at military bases showed that 10% to 20% of returning troops may have suffered such head wounds.
"We've had patients who have been in a blast, who we tested. They looked OK. And they came back later, and they were not OK," says Maria Mouratidis, head of brain injury treatment at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
The effects of the blasts appear to cause neural damage that accumulates over time.
150,000 veterans might have brain damage due to the Iraq war.
Medical experts say some wounded vets suffer from undiagnosed brain injuries caused by these highly concussive explosions. An estimated 150,000 soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home and even gone back to the battlefield with an unrecognized brain injury, according to the Brain Injury Association of America.
This is a huge cost. The Iraq was is not making us more secure. We get no benefit for this cost. The war was a mistake and its continuation is a far bigger mistake.
Soldiers with traumatic brain injury have to wait for treatments.
Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffering traumatic brain injury, grave wounds or serious illnesses often wait longer for outpatient appointments than the 30-day VA standard, according to an Observer analysis of two internal VA reports.
The analysis of 283,000 recent outpatient appointments showed that the VA scheduled 93 percent within 30 days, a key measure of the agency's ability to meet demand. That left 20,500 waiting longer.
Dr. Martin F. Stein, a 71 year old retired colonel and kidney specialist has been going on 3 month rotations to the Landstuhl Regional Army Medical Center in Germany every other year since 1985. Not exactly the profile of an anti-military guy, right? Well, Dr. Stein says the Bush Administration is trying to hide from the public the extent of US military injuries.
But one thing that has become increasingly clear to Stein as the Iraq conflict continues year after year is that the U.S. government is keeping its wounded soldiers behind curtains as much as possible. The American public has been protected from visual reminders that soldiers are dying and that those who live are left with shattered lives, facing an uncertain future.
"During previous trips, I was free to roam with my camera," says Stein. "During my latest trip, from January to March of this year, that ended. I took out my camera, and guards were on top of me."
He found, too, that his e-mail home was being censored.
"All references to wounded soldiers were being deleted," says Stein.
Your government tries to deceive you.
Writing in his New York Times Economic Scene column, economist Tyler Cowen says the use of private contractor to accomplish military objectives isn't automatically bad.
It is easy to rail against contractors for holding money above loyalty to country; Halliburton, for instance, has been a target of this criticism. But money isn’t the real issue. Few Americans would join the armed services without pay, and most American weapons are made by the private sector for profit.
Furthermore, privateers, private ships licensed to carry out warfare, helped win the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In World War II, the Flying Tigers, American fighter pilots hired by the government of Chiang Kai-shek, helped defeat the Japanese. Today, many of our allies receive payment, either implicitly or explicitly, to support American efforts. War is, among other things, an economic undertaking, so the profit motive in military affairs isn’t always bad or ignoble.
However, Tyler thinks the use of contractors is a sign of government weakness.
The recent comeback of private contracting suggests that central governments have become weaker again, at least relative to the tasks they are undertaking. Alexander Tabarrok, my colleague (and sometimes co-author) at George Mason University, where he is also a professor of economics, traced the history of private contractors in a study, “The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Privateers” (The Independent Review, spring 2007, www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=49&articleID=631). He showed that public navies and armies began to displace private contractors in the 19th century, as governments became more powerful and better funded.
Today, America no longer has a draft, its military bureaucracy can be inflexible and the public wishes to be insulated from the direct impact of war.
In a way the use of contractors reduces the accountability of government. If George W. Bush had to use only uniformed US military personnel in Iraq then he'd have to implement a draft. But a draft would be so politically unpopular that he might be forced to scale back the US military effort in Iraq or to pull out entirely. Bush is in a weak position and therefore he uses contractors. So it makes sense on a certain level for opponents of the war to oppose the use of contractors.
Tyler sees a number of reasons to use contractors, not all of them good.
Security guards, however, are often "mercenaries." A general or top Iraqi official for instance might be guarded by Blackwater employees. The critics have not shown that Blackwater employees misbehave at a higher rate than do U.S. soldiers, so the comparative case against Blackwater -- as opposed to the more general case against the war -- is mostly shrill rhetoric. It is possible to pay Blackwater employees bonuses for good performance rather than just give medals, plus they are on a higher pay scale in the first place. Nonetheless my judgment call is that issues of perception and accountability are important enough in contemporary Iraq that we should be using contractors less in these capacities (as the column indicated), but the temptation to use them is based on more than just sheer political abuse.
Contractors lower the cost of good operations, contractors lower the operational (but not social) cost of bad operations, contractors magnify the costs of mistaken Executive preferences, and contractors can raise new problems of monitoring. If you don't think the first item on this list is at work, there is good reason to cut back on contractors in Iraq.
It is worth noting that soldiers from some other countries that are serving in Iraq are in a sense contractors to the US government. A glance at the list of Multinational Forces In Iraq shows odd entries such as El Salvador, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. Their presence represents political deals with the United States where they sent forces in exchange for favors or influence or aid. We pay for those forces even if the payments don't come in the form of contracts with private companies.
If the Iraq war goes past 2008 then the cost will exceed $1 trillion.
Washington - Whatever the merits of US military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, one thing seems clear: It's very expensive.
If this week's White House request for $196 billion more for Afghanistan and Iraq is included, total costs for these operations will reach about $808 billion by the end of next year, according to figures compiled by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
That's more than the Gulf War ($88 billion in today's dollars), or Korea ($456 billion), or Vietnam ($518 billion). It's within shouting distance of the price of the Korea and Vietnam conflicts combined.
But the US economy is much larger today than it was in, say, 1968 – meaning the financial burden on the nation posed by these costs is correspondingly lighter.
Bush has been able to keep the US troops in Iraq for a few reasons. First off, there's no draft and hence the college kids are relatively complacent as compared to the 1960s. Second, the US economy is much bigger and so a couple hundred billion dollars a year in costs don't impact living standards much. Third, some of the people who don't pay really close attention are at least partially convinced by the argument that the fight in Iraq is against terrorists. So the war goes on.
These costs are only for operations. The longer term costs such as taking care of disabled veterans for decades to come do not show up in these numbers. The soldiers who died are losses these dollar figures do not capture. Lots of other costs that will show up in the future aren't captured in the Congressional appropriations - yet.
Just the Iraq war will cost more than Vietnam by the end of 2008.
But according to the CSBA, the war in Iraq alone has now cost the US more than the Gulf War and Korea, and will surpass Vietnam by the end of 2008.
But again, if we include future costs due to the war then total costs are far higher. We borrowed money to fight the war. We'll be paying for the interest for years to come. The military wore out lots of equipment. We'll be paying for replacements for years to come. Some returning soldiers will commit homicide and suicide as a result of how the war has damaged their brains. Other soldiers will find it hard to hold down regular jobs due the effect of post traumatic stress and some will beat their wives and kids.
All these costs do not come with the benefit of making us any more secure in America.
Harvard labor economist George Borjas draws attention to a story about some Minnesota National Guard and how the US government connived to avoid paying them more benefits for an especially long tour of duty.
When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.
1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill...
Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.
Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school. "Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.
I no longer believe in coincidences when it comes to stuff like this. Whoever wrote the order for 729 days knew precisely what he or she was doing.
What does this say about the Bush Administration and the people in the Pentagon? When America sent soldiers abroad to fight for 1, 2, 3 years in World War II they came back to receive excellent educational benefits. Well, we have many soldiers who have been on multiple 1 year tours of duty in Iraq plus their most recent tours of 15 months and beyond.
This group from Minnesota who just served 22 months includes members who probably have served in a war for longer than the vast bulk of the US soldiers who served in World War II. These currently serving soldiers spent probably much more time in combat conditions than did the average US soldier in WWII as well. During WWII we had lots of soldiers in support outfits away from the front lines who were in friendly territory. The soldiers who marched across Europe didn't even spend 12 months from D-Day at Normandy until Nazi Germany surrendered. Now we have National Guard units spending twice the amount of time the D-Day soldiers spent and cheapskates in the Bush Administration are looking at how to shaft them by reducing their time abroad by 1 day.
Update: It angers me that someone so manifestly unworthy (i.e. George W. Bush) has these soldiers over in Iraq dying essentially to allow him and his allies to save face and to pretend that some good result can come this pointless war. Not only is he expending their lives needlessly and getting many more maimed he's also cheating them of benefits with things like this 729 day deployment.
The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is now running at about $666 per American citizen. Er, 666. Superstitious anyone?
The request will total nearly $200 billion to fund the war through 2008, Pentagon officials said. If it is approved, 2008 will be the most expensive year of the Iraq war.
U.S. war costs have continued to grow because of the additional combat forces sent to Iraq in 2007 and because of efforts to quickly ramp up production of new technology, such as mine- resistant trucks designed to protect troops from roadside bombs. The new trucks can cost three to six times as much as armored Humvees.
Of course, lots of people (e.g. children, prisoners, the unemployed, and those with low pay) do not pay any federal income taxes. Others do not pay very much. So if you are a member of the ranks of net taxpayers (that dwindling breed of those who pay more in taxes than they get in benefits) then you are paying thousands of dollars per year for the Iraq Debacle.
That $200 billion total includes money for Afghanistan. Well the United States has about 27,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and 169,000 in Iraq. That suggests well over 80% of the war costs are for Iraq.
The war spending is in addition to the base Pentagon budget.
During that period, Congress will be debating the administration's new war request, and potentially some additional wiggle room could be provided if Democrats complete action on the regular $460 billion fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill in that timeframe.
Note that the $200 billion per year for Iraq does not include expenses that we are incurring for Iraq that will come due for decades to come. For example, every disabled veteran will have medical costs and many of the more severely disabled will have assisted living costs such as live-in nursing help. Plus, those coming back damaged in mind and body will produce less in jobs and therefore won't pay taxes or generate as much wealth. SO there are opportunity costs. Plus, the war is being funded with debt and we will be paying that debt for years to come as well.
Another cost of the Iraq war is the overuse of soldiers who are in bad shape.
BURTON -- In a ranch home where wind chimes tinkle in the breeze and Marine Corps and American flags flap high outside, Cpl. Bryan Antkowiak has been settling into a new life.
He's spending time with wife Kim and daughter Emma, the blonde, bubbly 3-year-old whose birthdays he's missed. He's trying to treat degenerative disc disease, and starting a new job at General Motors.
But two years after leaving Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, the Marine -- whose family says is considered by Veteran's Affairs to be 30 percent disabled -- is being sent to the Middle East involuntarily as an inactive reservist.
The amputees and other permanently disabled are an especially important cost of the Iraq war.
Dawn Halfaker is a native of San Diego. She was 27 and a first lieutenant in the Army. Her right arm and shoulder were amputated in an explosion. She suffered lung damage and multiple internal shrapnel injuries. She says: "My dark memories are inescapable; they are the fiber that shaped the threads of my new life, and I must accept them for what they are and persevere through them."
Jay Wilkerson, 41, an Army staff sergeant from El Sobrante, Calif., suffers long- and short-term memory loss. He has lost the use of eight fingers, and the left side of his body is damaged. His two children call him daily at the hospital. "They call to make sure I'm OK," he says, "and it's weird, because I'm the parent. But they call me to make sure I'm OK." Then he laughs.
Our soldiers are losing body parts in a futile attempt to make the Iraqis stop their civil war.
Remember in late August 2007 when 6 sergeants and a specialist in the US Army wrote an essay in the New York Times entitled "The War As We Saw It" where they conveyed a rather more pessimistic view of developments in Iraq. Well, two of those sergeants have died in an accident in Iraq.
Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war in an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Baghdad on Monday. They were not killed in combat, nor on a daring mission. They died when the five-ton cargo truck in which they were riding overturned.
The victims, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were among the authors of “The War as We Saw It,” in which they expressed doubts about reports of progress.
The US presence in Iraq serves no useful purpose. These lives were wasted there.
The US goal in Iraq is basically to hold back competing factions from defeating each other. That doesn't make the factions give up permanently. The conflict will even last longer because we prevent victories and defeats and because many factions are clear that they want to blow up American soldiers.
Sunni Al Qaeda terrorists won't take over Iraq if we withdraw. The powerful Shia majority oppose rule by local Sunni Arabs and even more so oppose rule by foreign Sunni Arabs. The local Sunnis don't want to be ruled by foreign Sunnis either. These basic facts about Iraq need repeating again and again. The facts just plain get ignored by war supporters who parrot the deceitful Bush Administration party line.
You can bet that some of the Iraq war cost is buried in the $460 billion regular defense budget too.
President Bush is expected to ask Congress sometime in September for an additional $50 billion in Iraq outlays on top of the $147 billion in supplemental spending he proposed for Iraq and Afghanistan in February. That's separate from the $460 billion in regular defense spending for fiscal year 2008.
These current costs do not include the cost of lost lives or the medical care, nursing, and subsidized living for those who come back missing body parts.
We have no vital interest at stake in Iraq. If we leave our national interest will not be harmed. In fact, we'll be more secure, not less.
So far America has managed to dodge one particular big cost of the Iraq war: Iraqi muslim refugees.
BAGHDAD, Aug. 28 — Despite a stepped-up commitment from the United States to take in Iraqis who are in danger because they worked for the American government and military, very few are signing up to go, resettlement officials say.
The reason, Iraqis say, is that they are not allowed to apply in Iraq, requiring them to make a costly and uncertain journey to countries like Syria or Jordan, where they may be turned away by border officials already overwhelmed by fleeing Iraqis.
George W. Bush needs to stand up and demand that Iraqis stay in Iraq to help fight the terrorists and to help rebuild the Iraqi economy. We need those Iraqis in Iraq so they can volunteer for the Iraqi police, Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi Interior Ministry security forces. They need to be made to fight for freedom and democracy whether or not they favor freedom or democracy.
Bush wants us to believe good times are around the corner. If that is true then there's no need for the US to be burdened by a big Muslim refugee immigrant population from Iraq.
What I want to know: Why should we have US soldiers fighting and dying for the Iraqi people while we also let the Iraqis leave rather than stay and support the Iraqi government? We should oppose a large Iraqi refugee settlement into the United States. We should keep Muslims separated from the rest of the world. Islam is the problem. We should keep the problem out of our civilization.
A growing portion of the war in Iraq is getting privatized.
BAGHDAD -- Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months.
The full article is long and provides many interesting details.
In order to hide the scope of the violence the casualty figures for private security services weren't reported at all for years and now they are only partially reported.
After a year of protests by Wayne and logistics director Jack Holly, a retired Marine colonel, the casualty figures were included. In an operational overview updated last month, the logistics directorate reported that 132 security contractors and truck drivers had been killed and 416 wounded since fall 2004. Four security contractors and a truck driver remained missing, and 208 vehicles were destroyed. Only convoys registered with the logistics directorate are counted in the statistics, and the total number of casualties is believed to be higher.
Since many contractors are not Americans (e.g. 500 Kurds who guard a large depot near Baghdad) the cost per soldier is probably much lower in many cases.
One British security company that guards one third of all non-military convoys has lost more people than all but 3 of the countries in the coalition.
The U.S. Labor Department reported that ArmorGroup has lost 26 employees in Iraq, based on insurance claims. Sources close to the company said the figure is nearly 30. Only three countries in the 25-nation coalition -- the United States, Britain and Italy -- have sustained more combat-related deaths.
That is just one of the security companies supplying mercenaries. When you hear about other countries which supposedly make the US presence in Iraq into a big coalition operation keep in mind that the mercenaries combined probably do more security work and fighting than Italy. With the Brits scaling back their Iraq presence the private military outfits probably are doing more than British soldiers as well.
The use of private armies comes at a cost to liberty: If governments estranged from their people can raise the money to hire private armies then the need for willing citizens to serve in militaries ceases to place a restraint on the actions of elites. The elites who want a single world government and the gradual weakening of state sovereignty have got to be looking at the performance of private armies in Iraq and wondering whether they'll serve as key elements of a new world order.
The 127 US deaths in Iraq for May 2007 are surpassed only by April 2004 with 135 deaths and November 2004 with 137 deaths.
Whenever the US pulls out the Iraqis are going to go at it with each other to decide who gets to force which factions to submit. Equality is a foreign idea in Arab Muslim cultures. Most will submit and others will dominate. We are wasting lots of American lives to try to defend a myth and pretend otherwise.
WASHINGTON - The bitter fight over the latest Iraq spending bill has all but obscured a sobering fact: The war will soon cost more than $500 billion.
That's about ten times more than the Bush administration anticipated before the war started four years ago, and no one can predict how high the tab will go. The $124 billion spending bill that President Bush plans to veto this week includes about $78 billion for Iraq, with the rest earmarked for the war in Afghanistan, veterans' health care and other government programs.
This cost does not include the lost wages of debilitated soldiers, their long term care, the interest on the debt, and other costs that will show up in future years. This is easily a trillion dollar war and probably more.
For a very small fraction of this war's cost we could have a very rigorous system for tracking and deporting illegal alien Muslims in the West. We could make visas hard to get from Muslim countries. We could have much better border security. We could deploy many more CIA agents to track and disrupt terrorist organisations. We could pay other governments to track down Muslim terrorists. If enhanced US security is the goal then the war in Iraq offers very bad value per dollar spent.
The Bush Administration wants to up the cost of the Iraq war for the American people.
The United States will accelerate the resettlement of about 7,000 Iraqis referred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and will contribute $18 million to the agency's appeal for Iraq, about one-third of the total, Undersecretary of State Paula J. Dobriansky said Wednesday.
Plans call for the paperwork allowing the Iraqis to enter the United States to be completed by the end of September, said Dobriansky, appearing at a news conference in Washington with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ant?nio Guterres, and Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey.
This is part and parcel with Bush's larger "Invade the world, Invite the world" strategy. He connects various harmful policies together to increase the synergy between them.
Bush wants to scale up Iraqi immigration even higher in order to protect collaborators.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — The Bush administration is considering legislation that would allow Iraqis who have been singled out as collaborators for working or associating with American officials to come to the United States on special immigrant visas or through other programs, officials said Wednesday.
Bush embraces the exact opposite of the strategy best equipped to protect us from a threat that he claims is large enough to justify a very costly war. What is that best strategy that Bush rejects? Separationism. Separate the West from the Muslim countries. This is akin to containment with a greater emphasis on immigration restriction. The need for military deterrence is much less in the case of Muslim countries because they are so weak militarily in the first place. We just have to keep them from migrating to non-Muslim countries.
One of the costs of the Iraq war is a decline in the quality of recruits.
The number of waivers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show.
...
The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.
Look at it on the bright side: If we are going to lose American soldiers fighting in Iraq I'd rather lose people with criminal records.
More recruits are being let in on medical waivers.
The Defense Department has also expanded its applicant pool by accepting soldiers with criminal backgrounds and medical problems like asthma, high blood pressure and attention deficit disorder, situations that require waivers. Medical waivers have increased 4 percent, totaling 12,313 in 2006. Without waivers, the soldiers would have been barred from service.
Some of those with medical problems can probably serve in domestic positions and free up others to go abroad.
As Steve Sailer points out, the Army places such a high priority on intelligence that they have relaxed IQ standards the least. Better to let in criminals than dummies. Much of the time the criminals will carry out the tasks assigned to them. By contrast, the dummies lack the capacity to learn how to do complex tasks.
Update: A link from Salon brought a fair number of readers, some of whom saw my comments as an opportunity to pose as morally superior to moi. Let me be clear to those individuals: The American government sends troops to Iraq where lots of people want to kill them. As a result, some of them die. As long as the American government sends troops to Iraq some of them will continue to die. Do you really favor sending non-criminals to die in preference to criminals? If so, why?
I happen to think we shouldn't send US soldiers to Iraq. I have argued this position for years now. I do not think our vital national interests are at stake. I also do not think US troops make Iraq a better place. All we are doing is slowing down the civil war and by slowing it down we are increasing the number of Iraqis who will die and we are doing so at considerable expense with deaths and maiming of our own soldiers. It is a bad idea to have US forces in Iraq. It is pointless. It is even counter-productive.
But, again, if we are going to have Americans dying in Iraq I'd rather some of them be criminals than not. How can one argue otherwise? Leave aside standard liberal or neocon moral posing. Just tell me why you would prefer non-criminals to die over criminals.
The rate of waste and folly is going up. Asymmetrical warfare with a hostile tribal Muslim population is very expensive.
The Pentagon wants the White House to seek an additional $99.7 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to information provided to The Associated Press.
The military's request, if embraced by President Bush and approved by Congress, would boost this year's budget for those wars to about $170 billion.
When they speak of this year's budget keep in mind that the US government's fiscal year starts in October.
The money spent during the war is just the tip of the iceberg of total costs. Lots of worn out equipment is piling up.
At the Red River Army Depot in Texas, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in October that at least 6,200 Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, trucks and ambulances were awaiting repair because of insufficient funds.
There's a virtual graveyard of tanks and fighting vehicles at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. Depot spokeswoman Joan Gustafson said that the depot expects to repair 1,885 tanks and other armored vehicles during the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. That's up from the 1,169 and 1,035 vehicles repaired in the prior two fiscal years
For the soldiers coming back from Iraq there are the medical costs and costs in decreased ability to work and make a living.
More than 73,000 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and with problems such as drug abuse and depression. That's enough people to fill a typical NFL stadium.
The ones coming back without limbs, with brain damage, with severed spinal cords, and other missing and damaged parts add a whole lot of other costs that will show up in future years as goods and services not produced, taxes not paid off of income not earned (due to less ability to work), and costs paid out by the government to take care of the veterans.
Iraq will be more expensive than Vietnam by spring.
The length of the Iraq war surpassed that of World War II last month. The costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global fight against terrorism are expected to surpass the $536 billion in inflation-adjusted costs of the Vietnam War by spring. That's more than 10 times the Bush administration's $50 billion prewar estimate.
What a tremendous waste. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has previously estimated a total cost of $2 trillion for the Iraq war. But the accelerated tempos of spending and US casualites and likely future increases in the number of troops in Iraq suggest that his figure might be too low.
All this money is not buying us victory.
As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."
We can not win without a huge increase in the number of troops employed. But even a victory would be fleeting. If we put in a few hundred thousand more troops we could get control of a number of cities. But then what? As soon as we left the various factions would start fighing again.
Bush is going to support an increase in the authorized and funded size of the military. But can youths be enticed to sign up in sufficient numbers?
U.S. officials said the administration is preparing plans to bolster the nation's permanent active-duty military with as many as 70,000 additional troops.
...
Every additional 10,000 soldiers would cost about $1.2 billion a year, according to the Army. Because recruitment and training take time, officials cautioned that any boost would not be felt in a significant way until at least 2008.
The people recruited by the military will get pulled away from more productive work in the private sector. Since soldiers are smarter than the average American citizen their deaths and injuries in the battlefield will be especially costly to the economy and dysgenic as well.
The Iraqis will fight each other much more cheaply and with more decisive results if US forces withdrew from Iraq. For a small fraction of what we are spending now we could influence which factions come out on top by funding factions and by bribing powerful Iraqi figures. But it is not clear to me that we should care how the Iraq civil war comes out.
As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The deaths from all causes—violent and non-violent—are over and above the estimated 143,000 deaths per year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion.
The estimates were derived from a nationwide household survey of 1,849 households throughout Iraq conducted between May and July 2006. The results are consistent with the findings of an October 2004 study of Iraq mortality conducted by the Hopkins researchers. Also, the findings closely reflect the increased mortality trends reported by other organizations that utilized passive methods of counting mortality, such as counting bodies in morgues or deaths reported by the news media. The study is published in the October 14, 2006, edition of the peer-reviewed scientific journal, The Lancet.
“As we found with our previous survey, the majority of deaths in Iraq are due to violence—although we also saw a small increase in deaths from non-violent causes, such as heart disease, cancer and chronic illness. Gunshots were the primary cause of violent deaths. To put these numbers in context, deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003,” said Gilbert Burnham, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and co-director of the Bloomberg School’s Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. “Our total estimate is much higher than other mortality estimates because we used a population-based, active method for collecting mortality information rather than passive methods that depend on counting bodies or tabulated media reports of violent deaths. Though the numbers differ, the trend in increasing numbers of deaths closely follows that measured by the U.S. Defense Department and the Iraq Body Count group.”
They estimate over 91% were killed by violence and that coalition forces were responsible for about 31% until July 2006 when deaths from coalition forces declined to 26% of the total. That's probably a sign that the sectarian killings have increased.
The invasion more than doubled the death rate in Iraq.
According to the researchers, the overall rate of mortality in Iraq since March 2003 is 13.3 deaths per 1,000 persons per year compared to 5.5 deaths per 1,000 persons per year prior to March 2003. This amounts to about 2.5 percent of Iraqi’s population having died as a consequence of the war.
One of the justifications for invading Iraq was to stop Saddam Hussein from killing Iraqis. Oops.
Update: Here's what I've long wondered about the casualty rate reports from Iraq:
Update II: Steve Sailer has an extensive post on the plausibility of this report. Steve points to the text of the study that shows most of the Iraqis polled who reported family deaths were able to provide death certificates.
The study population at the beginning of the recall period (January 1, 2002) was calculated to be 11 956, and a total of 1474 births and 629 deaths were reported during the study period; age was reported for 610 of 629 deaths, sex reporting was complete. During the survey period there were 129 households (7%) that reported in-migration, and 152 households (8%) reported out-migration. Survey teams asked for death certificates in 545 (87%) reported deaths and these were present in 501 cases. The pattern of deaths in households without death certificates was no different from those with certificates.
The death certificates suggest that parts of the Iraqi government have the documentation that could be used to measure the death rates. In theory one could go to an Iraqi city government administration building, go into the archives of death certificates, and see how many death certificates there are for various time periods. Or do Iraqi bureaucracies issue death certificates that they do not keep copies of?
The first issue here: Iraq's pre-war mortality rate. The first Johns Hopkins study from 2004 pegged it at five per every 1,000 population, based on what those interviewed recalled. This one was 5.5/1,000.
But UN reports had suggested Iraq's crude death rate was higher than this in the 1980s and '90s. It was in at least the 6.8/1,000 range and rising, which would make the difference between normal deaths and what the researchers called "excess deaths" brought about by the war quite a bit smaller.
...
This one roughly 40 households in each of 50 sites and as a result the confidence continuum has narrowed considerably to between 426,369 and 795,663 — which is still quite a range.
If we take the low end of the confidence interval we are still left with a high increment in the death rate. Worse, even those who argue for a lower death rate admit the death rate rose substantially this year.
Update IV: Daniel Davies says the numbers do add up.
The results speak for themselves. There was a sample of 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in 47 geographical locations. That is a big sample, not a small one. The opinion polls from Mori and such which measure political support use a sample size of about 2,000 individuals, and they have a margin of error of +/- 3%. If Margaret Beckett looks at the Labour party's rating in the polls, she presumably considers this to be reasonably reliable, so she should not contribute to public ignorance by allowing her department to disparage "small samples extrapolated to the whole country". The Iraq Body Count website and the Iraqi government statistics are not better measures than the survey results, because one of the things we know about war zones is that casualties are under-reported, usually by a factor of more than five.
And the results were shocking. In the 18 months before the invasion, the sample reported 82 deaths, two of them from violence. In the 39 months since the invasion, the sample households had seen 547 deaths, 300 of them from violence. The death rate expressed as deaths per 1,000 per year had gone up from 5.5 to 13.3.
Talk of confidence intervals becomes frankly irrelevant at this point. If you want to pick a figure for the precise number of excess deaths, then (1.33% - 0.55%) x 26,000,000 x 3.25 = 659,000 is as good as any, multiplying out the difference between the death rates by the population of Iraq and the time since the invasion. But we're interested in the qualitative conclusion here.
How can a survey of such a large number of people come out drastically wrong? Davies is right. 12,000 people is a large number of people to survey.
Update V: What other method would be more accurate than a survey? I agree with Richard Garfield that under the circumstances a survey is the most accurate method available for measuring death rates.
"I loved when President Bush said 'their methodology has been pretty well discredited,' " says Richard Garfield, a public health professor at Columbia University who works closely with a number of the authors of the report. "That's exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don't think there's anyone who's been involved in mortality research who thinks there's a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there's a better way to do it."
Do you trust lower official figures from a dysfunctional and corrupt Iraqi government? Recall that an employee of the Baghdad morgue reported in August that the real death toll the morgue saw was 3 times the death toll reported for Baghdad by the Iraqi government.
Update VI: The Iraqi woman who writes the Baghdad Burning blog says she sees so many deaths per family among the families she knows that she finds the Johns Hopkins results plausible.
For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc, seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that's about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush- especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers. So far, the only Iraqis I know pretending this number is outrageous are either out-of-touch Iraqis abroad who supported the war, or Iraqis inside of the country who are directly benefiting from the occupation ($) and likely living in the Green Zone.
The chaos and lack of proper facilities is resulting in people being buried without a trip to the morgue or the hospital. During American military attacks on cities like Samarra and Fallujah, victims were buried in their gardens or in mass graves in football fields. Or has that been forgotten already?
We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons – with so many different ways to die, is the number so far fetched?
We know the Iraqi government will deceive about death rates. We also know the Iraqi government barely exists in some parts of Iraq. Surely the death rate is underreported. The question is only by how much?
Burnham: This was a ‘cohort’ study, which means we compared household deaths after the invasion with deaths before the invasion in the same households. The death rates for these comparison households was 5.5/1000/yr.
What we did find for the households as a pre-invasion death rate was essential the same number as we found in 2004, the same number as the CIA gives and the estimate for Iraq by the US Census Bureau.
Death rates are a function of many things—not just health of the population. One of the most important factors in the death rate is the number of elderly in the population. Iraq has few, and a death rate of 5.5/1000/yr in our calculation (5.3 for the CIA), the USA is 8 and Sweden is 11. This is an indication of how important the population structures are in determining death rates. (You might Google ‘population pyramid’ and look at the census bureau site—fascinating stuff.)
The fact that his measured 5.5 rate is close to the CIA 5.3 rate for the pre-war period is an indication (though not conclusive) that at least for the pre-war period his sample was representative and his method of data collection was sound.
Burnham says most facilities (e.g. morgues) are not reporting their mortality information to the central government and the government is manipulating the data it does get.
PajamasMedia: You write that an active survey is more accurate than a “passive” system of counting media reports, morgue reports or other lists of the dead, which are often grossly incomplete in a war zone. This seems reasonable. To make sure people weren’t making things up, you teams received death certificates some 80% of the time. Also reasonable. So why are the active death figures an order of magnitude higher than the passive counts?
Burnham: The difference depends on the proportion of the passive-reporting facilities whose reports on death tolls reach some central tabulating body. Our information is that not many facilities are reporting, and what is being reported is often being manipulated.
I fully expect far less than complete reporting by the local government units. I also expect not all bodies to even make it to morgues or hospitals. I also expect provincial governates and the central government to cook the books. Plus, reporters can't even get out to most of the places where people are dying unless they are embedded with US troops. So reporters can't get the story of what is really happening with deaths.
A new survey estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of the country. Roughly 9 out of 10 of those deaths were a consequence of U.S. military operations, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare.
The survey, conducted by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization, also found a 60 percent increase in nonviolent deaths -- from such causes as childhood infections and kidney failure -- during the period. The results, which will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine at the end of the month, are the latest of several widely divergent and controversial estimates of mortality attributed to the Iraq war.
The three-year toll of violent deaths calculated in the survey is one-quarter the size of that found in a smaller survey by Iraqi and Johns Hopkins University researchers published in the journal Lancet in 2006.
Here from the WHO press release on the January 2008 study:
The estimate is based on interviews conducted in 9345 households in nearly 1000 neighbourhoods and villages across Iraq. The researchers emphasize that despite the large size of the study, the uncertainty inherent in calculating such estimates led them to conclude that the number of Iraqis who died from violence during that period lies between 104 000 and 223 000.
"Assessment of the death toll in conflict situations is extremely difficult and household survey results have to be interpreted with caution," said study co-author Mohamed Ali, a WHO statistician who provided technical assistance for the survey. "However, in the absence of comprehensive death registration and hospital reporting, household surveys are the best we can do."
"Our survey estimate is three times higher than the death toll detected through careful screening of media reports by the Iraq Body Count project and about four times lower than a smaller-scale household survey conducted earlier in 2006," added Naeema Al Gasseer, the WHO Representative to Iraq.
The study found that violence became a leading cause of death for Iraqi adults after March 2003 and the main cause for men aged 15-59 years. It indicated that on average 128 Iraqis per day died of violent causes in the first year following the invasion and that the average daily violent death toll was 115 in the second year and 126 in the third year. More than half of the violent deaths occurred in Baghdad.
You can read the full text of this January 2008 report in the New England Journal of Medicine: Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006.