Lancet, Hopkins, Iran, Mahdi

.."We estimate that as of July 2006, there have been 654,965... excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population ..
..Lancet study .. Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore
.. estimated deaths in the post-invasion period from March 2003 to June 2006, and compared the mortality before the invasion, from January 2002 to January 2003.
They randomly selected 47 sites across Iraq, comprising 1,849 households and 12,801 people.
..Of the 629 deaths recorded, 547, or 87%, were in the post-invasion period.
..31% of deaths ..by the coalition .

Crude check of these figures:
the Pre period is 13 months, the Post period is 39 months...the expected ratio would be 1:3 ie 209:419 whereas the observed ratio was 82:547
given 82 "normal" deaths in 13 months, then in the subsequent 39 months we would expect 246 deaths. we actually got 547 ie excess deaths of 301 in population of 12,801
.total Iraq population is 26.2 million
so total excess deaths estimate = 301* 26,198,600/12801 = 616,000, roughly what the Hopkins study found
Of course 2002 might be considered a not-normal year . Is an annual death rate of (12/13) *(82 *100/12801) = 0.59% a 'normal" death rate? Doesnt seem all that high
[cf Scotland had 55747 deaths in a population of 5094800 = 1.09%, much higher than Iraq-Pre.
I guess Scotland has a much older population.

Actually the reported Hopkins figures are meaningless as error margins are not mentioned. I am sure the Hopkins study would include such figures, its the news agencies who are at fault for not including them.]


So Cheney & co are prepared to go up against the record of Kennedy|Johnson|Nixon who killed 1.5 million or so Vietnamese. Iran, take note. These USAnians are mass murderers on a Stalinistic scale.

Some suggestions for Iran:
Teach all villagers to recognise invader helicopter sounds so that commando teams can be identified and captured. Consider barrage balloons holding up nets above main roads. USA cruise missiles may still follow optical terrain maps, and cruise wings are flimsy. Get film studios to quickly erect dummy buildings to confuse them. Unroll Al foil corner reflectors over important buildings so laser designators are not diffused into targeting systems. Shine duplicate lasers onto unimportant buildings. Practice city-wide silent periods so that drones can he located with parabolic microphones. Get Russian GPS jammers on trucks. The latest USA bombs rely more on GPS and less on laser designators. In Baghdad the Russian GPS jammers were early targets, so have plenty of dummy trucks with correct thermal signatures (HA had lots of warm fake rocket launchers to confuse the IAF)

Best wishes to the Iranian people as they face down Empire.

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Juan Cole startled by Tank loss:

On Sunday, heavy fighting broke out in downtown Diwaniyah between US troops and the local branch of the Mahdi Army. The gunbattle erupted when the US attempted to arrest a prominent Sadrist Shiite leader. RPG and small arms fire echoed through the city for hours and the Shiite guerrillas managed to destroy an Abrams tank. (What? Do they have shaped charges or RPG-28s or what? Ordinary RPG shells just bounce off an Abrams.)
...Altogether, the US military announced the deaths of 9 US troops over the weekend on Sunday

[I believe that 'ordinary' RPG have one shaped charge, you need a double charge to get past reactive layer]
I have a theory that the USAnians death rate is self-limited at 2.4 per day, ie less than 1000 per year. Any more deaths, and they retreat to barracks, any less and they charge into another suburb and start throwing blindfolded people onto trucks, then they lose another 2.4 soldiers, so retreat, etc,etc


Lancet Hopkins Iran Mahdi