New York Times Propaganda on the Iraqi Death Count

The New York Times has an article that touts that as many as 600,000 civilians may have died of violence since the 2003 US invasion. Personally the only line I found convincing in the story was the final one:

Donald Berry, chairman of biostatistics at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was even more troubled by the study, which he said had “a tone of accuracy that’s just inappropriate.”

Just this week it was reported that the US Department of Labor had underestimated the number of jobs created in the US from March 2005 to March 2006 by 810,000. So the US Department of Labor with the best available statistical tools is off by 810,000 but we are expected to believe that the numbers collected by a few folks from Johns Hopkins in a war zone can be fairly accurate? No thanks.

You want reason to doubt the accuracy of this study? Consider this line from the article:

The mortality rate before the American invasion was about 5.5 people per 1,000 per year, the study found. That rate rose to 19.8 deaths per 1,000 people in the year ending in June.

The current mortality rate in the US is 8.26 deaths/1,000 population (2006 est. according to the CIA World Handbook). So according to the authors of this study - pre-war Iraq had a lower mortality rate than the US today. Yeah - no reason whatsoever to question the numbers in this study.

Chances are that the pre-war mortality rates in Iraq were double or triple the reported rates. That coupled with the fact that Iraq is a war zone should lead every one to the shocking revelation that the death rate has risen.