John Tirman, MIT, author The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in Americas Wars First Lancet study

found 100,000 deaths from all causes (structural, direct, etc), which was received skeptically in the U.S. as high The second Lancet study, which Tirman commissioned, (primary investigator Gilbert) 10/2006, found 650,000 Iraqis killed. Bush discredited the methodology, had canned answer from White House discussions. This study was also received dismissively. Poll of Iraqis identified US presence as primary cause. (Tirman estimates this number to now be closer to 800,000 to 1 million [the approximate death toll from the Rwandan genocide]). We hear of the 4,000 American soldiers, the $3-4 trillions (cf Crawford et als number from costs of war project which corroborated Stigletz previous estimate) expended but we hear little of this number in the US media, let alone the 3-4 million displaced persons [roughly equal to the number of displaced in Afghanistan]. Tirmans investigation included all post-1945 wars: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. A pattern emerged indicating how gov and public received news of civilian casualties or collateral damage. The amount and quality of reporting tended to underemphasize that the action of states have consequences. Knowledge of mortality, the epistemology of war (W.T. Sherman) is the obvious first step to evaluating not only the morality of war, but the nature of war, and to understanding the effects on American reputation. Tirman emphasizes the effects of reputational costs in global public opinion as an equally crucial, yet widely ignored factor in international relations strategy. (e.g. the leveling of N. Korea in a two-year bombing campaign about which LeMay bragged does not come with a casualty figure.) An example from Iraq: Tirman was dissatisfied with the explanation that Sunni Arabs discontent at loss of status as the prime explanatory variable in the almost instantaneous insurgencies (plural) that sprung up in Iraq. He postulated that knowledge of this persistent and deadly trend made addressing it seem difficult. In 2006, Petraeus wrote a manual [with aid from Kircullen] for conducting counterinsurgency that pointed out civilian casualties as a primary driver of the unrest. An accurate accounting was central to this aim but also to the effort of reconstruction. Tirman cites obligation to reconstruct, not only in terms of infrastructure, but psychological and emotionally. Awaking the American public to the costs of war and reconstruction needs to happen sooner in order to affect future policy-making. His study cites this absence as leading to the repetition of mistakes in American foreign policy intervention. Epidemiology conducts household surveys (widely accepted cluster sampling, traditionally used to account for the incidence of disease but downplayed by demographers [which puts a premium on up-to-date census data etc) to assess violence. There was no such real-time systematic attempt to account for war dead in previous conflicts. Its results challenge US assertions that the deposition of Saddam

Hussein was worth the cost. The Wall St. Journal cited Soros funding as a reason to discredit the survey. This resulted in a continuation of violence in 2007-2008 until the advertisement of the surge and its successes. Ratios from population density in previous conflicts (E. Timor 1:1) preliminarily corroborated the Lancet numbers. The Iraq body count, which tallied reported war dead in English language media, tended toward numbers closer to 100,000 and was more widely accepted. As the troops draw down, Tirman predicts the epistemological deficiency will become salient in media retrospectives. Q&A: Harvard prof of epidemiology raises the question of disproportionality as war crime. Public rallied to soldiers side after My Lai. Carrie did three years of house arrest for the death of 400 civilians. Tirman points out that the rate of road deaths during war rose fivefold. Tirman speculates that Al Sadr was in control of the Ministry of Health at that time and there was a disincentive to report. This was the opposite set of incentives as the Bosnian retrospective, which compared census data against normal mortality rates: at the time of the war, numbers of war dead were exaggerated. Washington Post reporting confirms sanctions in first Gulf War were intended to provoke an uprising. 1997 numbers put 500,000 child deaths, which Albright on 60 minutes claimed was worth it to attempt to effect Saddams deposition. Prof confirms that King of Jordan funded a colleague from the Law School to assess the civilian impact of GWI in its early stages. A second, later study received criticism, but the 500,000 number came from a cluster survey, which included people from HSPH; it was longitudinal and later revised downwards after houses were revisited and children were alive.