Study: 655,000 Iraqis Killed

(CBS/AP)  A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.

The timing of the survey's release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it "politics."

Within hours, President Bush dismissed the study.

Mr. Bush told reporters at a White House news conference: "I don't consider it a credible report."

"Neither does General Casey, neither do Iraqi officials," Mr. Bush added, referring to Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq.

Mr. Bush, who last December suggested there may have been 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, would not give a figure Wednesday for overall fatalities. "A lot of innocent people have lost their life," he said.

In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.

"Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

To better understand the figure, consider this: the same percentage of the much-larger American population would be 7.5 million dead, reported CBS national security correspondent David Martin.

The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal.

At least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.

"They're almost certainly way too high," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.

"This is not analysis, this is politics," Cordesman said.

For Burnham's study, researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.

The survey participants attributed about 31 percent of violent deaths to coalition forces.

The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study — that one was released just before the November 2004 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate.

Speaking of the new study, Burnham said the estimate was much higher than others because it was derived from a house-to-house survey rather than approaches that depend on body counts or media reports.

A private group called Iraqi Body Count, for example, says it has recorded about 44,000 to 49,000 civilian Iraqi deaths. But it notes that those totals are based on media reports, which it says probably overlook "many if not most civilian casualties."

Accurate death tolls have been difficult to obtain ever since the Iraq conflict began in March 2003. When top Iraqi political officials cite death numbers, they often refuse to say where the numbers came from.

The major funder of the new study was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In other developments:

The U.S. Army has plans that would keep the current level of troops in Iraq — about 15 brigades — through 2010, the top Army officer said. The Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, cautioned that people not read too much into the planning, because it is easier to pull back forces than to get units prepared and deployed at the last minute. "This is not a prediction that things are going poorly or better," Schoomaker told reporters. "It's just that I have to have enough ammo in the magazine that I can continue to shoot as long as they want us to shoot."

Violence around Iraq claimed at least six lives, including a parked car bomb that blew up next to a police patrol in southeastern Baghdad, killing two passers-by. The car bomb attack in the Ghadeer neighborhood also injured 10, including four policemen, Lt. Bilal Ali Majid said. A second car bomb attack a half hour later on a police patrol in the capital's eastern Mustansiriyah Square killed another two passers-by and wounded 16, including three policemen, Majid said. In southwestern Baghdad, a bomb exploded near an auto parts shop, killing the store owner and wounding four passers-by, police 1st Lt. Maithem Abdel Razzaq said. Elsewhere, gunmen shot and killed a policeman in the northern city of Kirkuk as he was heading to work, police Col. Anwar Hassan said.

Sectarian violence, armed militias and death squads have created a situation in Iraq where revenge attacks go unchecked, the United Nations' top humanitarian official said, citing statistics that 100 people are being killed in the country every day. "Many of those are killed by gunshots or have been tortured to death," Jan Egeland said. "Revenge killing seems to be totally out of control."

Saddam Hussein took his seat in the dock in his genocide trial, a day after the presiding judge threw him out of court in a raucous session during which witnesses testified that women were raped while in detention during a 1980s crackdown on the Kurds. Saddam and his six co-defendants sat quietly as chief judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa called a Kurdish witness to the stand. Tuesday was fourth time that al-Khalifa had ejected Saddam from the court since he became chief judge on Sept. 20.

The U.S. command in Iraq confirmed the deaths of three U.S. Marines and two soldiers, killed in fighting earlier in the week. The Marines, assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, died Monday from enemy action in Iraq's western Anbar province, the military said in a statement. It did not provide further details. Also Monday, a U.S. soldier was killed when his patrol was attacked by insurgents in an eastern part of Baghdad, the military said. The second soldier, attached to the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, died of wounds from an explosion during a vehicle patrol Sunday north of the city of Tikrit. No further details were available, and the soldiers' names were being withheld pending notification of family.

A massive fire at an ammunition dump at a U.S. base in southern Baghdad was sparked by a mortar round fired by insurgents, which set off a series of explosions from detonating tank and artillery shells that shook buildings miles away, the U.S. military said Wednesday. The 82mm round was fired from a nearby residential area and hit Forward Operating Base Falcon around 10:40 p.m. Tuesday, spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington said. No injuries were reported. The Islamic Army in Iraq, a nationalist anti-occupation insurgent group, claimed responsibility Wednesday in a statement posted on the Internet. The U.S. military statement did not mention the claim or name any particular group as a suspect in the fire.

[clestes-2009]

Good going Bush, by the time you leave office the death toll will reach 1,000,000 and you can join the ranks of Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin. How proud your family must be of you!

[gslinger3]

Here is some Liberal Hypocracy for you:

Tom Daschle Quotes
This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war.
--Tom Daschle, when President Bush, struck Iraq

We have exhausted all of our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply
with their own agreements and with international law.
Given that . . . we have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily.
--Tom Daschle, in 1998, when President Clinton, struck Iraq

[drgoodwin12]

If you take the media reports for this year as being somewhat accurate being obtained from the morgues,then you would arrive at a figure of 36000 Iraqis for this year alone.That does not calculate all the civilian deaths that do not show up in the morgue,the people simply disappear.No one knows the exact count.What is more troublesome is the NIE report and Woodwards book which no one has successfully rebuked(you cannot count the first ladys pr office as she herself has not rebuked Woodward).Add to that several top generals in Iraq have said we have two months to turn this around or else we will be faced with a full fledged civil war.Members of the Iraqi goverment,military and police are aiding and abbeting the insurgents,terrorist and militias.It is time for a new direction in Iraq,not a stay the course or a cut and run policy.Let the generals who are on the ground in Iraq determine the policy,they know more than we do or the current adminstration.It takes a general to lead this country when we are faced with so many fronts Iraq,Iran and N.Korea.

[joehawkinson]

W. says:

655,000

what me worry?

[cbs_oliver]

The Iraq Body Count numbers are virtually useless for a number of reasons. They require two independent originl source news reports of the casualties. They require that the news reports be in english. They only count civilian casualties. They use the word "maximum" to mischaracterize their results. The university where they work has many UK government funded projects. Their "maximum" numbers are wildly low by any rational standard.

The AP story is biased. The CBS/AP story is even more biased.

For example, the group quoted as commenting on the results is a political research group not a resource on best practices for surveying. Therefore their comments are not useful for evaluation of the accuracy of the results.

There are counter quotes available. CNN reports that an expert on sampling said the methodology was sound. That seems like more relevant info than the opinion of President Bush and some political research group.

[mjv2944]

tibu987

Your speaking my kind of language, these characters don't deserve to serve this great country. They are hollow people, created for the media and by the media. VOTE THEM ALL OUT!!!!!! Just watch the price of gas after the election, you'll see who they really care about, its not you or me, its big business and special interests only. One of the biggests jokes is the so called ethics committee, now tell what you really think about that.

[tibu987]

Get the creeps out of office.
Vote for term limits.
Vote the incumbent OUT!

[christiansin]

It is inconvenient for those in power in the U.S. to have bad news released just before an election. However, the argument that the release of bad news just before the election is somehow inappropriate is a sign of the problem that needs to be fixed by getting rid of those who want to hide the bad news. If the information is relevant to the decision to vote them out, then it is good that it is being made public before the election. Its content and accuracy can then be taken into consideration.

In other words, those who are critical of the messengers delivering information that allows the public to make an informed decision on election day must have something to hide. If they can't come up with a better counter argument than to simply attack the messenger, then their response speaks volumes more than the bad news itself.

Not only does speech need to be free in a health democracy, but information also needs to flow freely. What else is your government hiding from you in the cesspool of stagnant misinformation coming from the current administration and majority in Congress?

[osidebear]

Many supporters of the war will undoubtedly think along the lines of, "In order to make an omelet, you've got to break a few eggs." And the will suggest that these numbers are exaggerated.

None of us knows how many innocent Iraqis have been killed due to the Bush administration's failed and foolish Iraq policy. Is it 655,000? or 300,000? or 100,000? When you get right down to it, isn't one death due to this lie too many?

Send a message next month - the war is wrong. Bring our troops home now.

[mjv2944]

The only weapons of mass destruction reside in our congress, repubs and dems, and Dudya and his band of merry men. Wow, are we in trouble or what. Cathaleen is right, most were killed by fellow Iraq's, but we should have stayed out.