The Washington Post reports this morning on a new study being released that claims that 650,000 Iraqis more have died since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq than would have if there was no invasion. That is more than 10 to 20 times previous estimates and paints a grim picture of the effects of the Coalition invasion. It's one more grim story in a whole series of stories on Iraq, terrorism, Afghanistan, and on and on. But is it true?
There are two good reasons I see for being very skeptical of this study. The first is that they interviewed 1800 households that averaged 7 members each. If that average is actually representative, than Iraq's population of 26.78 million means there are more than 3.8 million households in Iraq. I'm not a survey expert by any means, but I'm very skeptical that you can take a country as diverse as Iraq and in its current security state and extrapolate results from 1/20th of 1% of households to the rest of the nation.
The second reason I'm skeptical is that God knows the media has not shrunk from reporting the daily death toll from all over Iraq. If there were more than 500 Iraqis dying per day we would certainly be hearing about it on a daily basis, and we are not.
Rick Moran has an excellent take here.
I guess it shouldn't be a shock that a dubious report on Iraq is released a few weeks before the election. Like the partial and biased leak of the NIE a few weeks ago in the New York Times, the intent is not to give a true perspective that will stand the test of time. It's meant to provide ammunition to those who will unquestioningly embrace the results and it's also meant to dishearten those who still see success in Iraq as a critical and strategic goal to rolling back Islamofascists.
In J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings, there is a character named Grima who is an advisor to the King of Rohan, Theoden. Over the years, through deceits and manipulations, he convinces the King that he is weaker than he really is and that despair is the natural response to the threats gathering against the kingdom. Others see Grima for the scoundrel that he is and they appropriately call him Wormtongue for the lies that spew from his mouth. Eventually Grima Wormtongue gets his comeuppance and the King realizes he is not so weak and shakes off his despair.
We should recognize that we have our own Wormtongues in this country. They are not the ones who disagree with the war in Iraq and are willing to honestly debate it. Our Wormtongues are the ones who criticize but never offer an alternative. Who ignore plainly worded speech or twist it into something it clearly doesn't mean. Who deny the evil nature of Iraq's enemies and actually have the gall to call the barbarians "Minutemen". Who do half-baked studies that are really just thinly veiled propaganda.
There are certainly bad things happening every day in Iraq and we can't shrink from looking at them. There are also good things happening though, and a very young Iraqi government, elected by the people, struggling to stand on it's own. We can choose to fall into despair and let Iraq go by the wayside, dealing ourselves a defeat that will haunt us for years, or we can focus on the real reasons that we are fighting in Iraq and elsewhere and the true nature of who we fight.
There will always be Grima Wormtongues among us. Listen to their deceits and their call to despair.
Then laugh at them.
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