# If you thought that rape survey was bad... **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 19, 2003, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459 "2003-03-19T04:13:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/1 "2003-03-19T04:13:18Z")
Take a look at this: [http://www.iraqbodycount.net/](http://www.iraqbodycount.net/) It makes the logical part of my brain cry. It’s like they figured out the most complicated way to pervert statistics to give them the numbers they want. ---
**Author:** ![hazel-rah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hazel-rah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hazel-rah)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/2 "2003-03-19T09:04:02Z")
You find that methodology to be complicated? ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/3 "2003-03-19T10:28:33Z")
Of course, since these numbers are given by ‘Iraqi authorities’ to western news outlets, they are worth less then shit. In a few years, Iraq will a free(er) press. Then we can believe Iraqi press releases. Until then, I want to see independent verification. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/4 "2003-03-19T10:57:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Brutus \* > \*\*Of course, since these numbers are given by ‘Iraqi authorities’ to western news outlets, they are worth less then shit. > > In a few years, Iraq will a free(er) press. Then we can believe Iraqi press releases. Until then, I want to see independent verification. \*\* [If the US deliberately tries to underestimate the number of Iraqi civilian casualties like they did in Gulf War 1.0, I’ll take all the information sources I can get, _including_ possibly biased Iraqi ones.](http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/869570.asp?cp1=1) ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/5 "2003-03-19T12:04:03Z")
According to her, she included the 30,000 Kurds and Shiites murdered by Saddam after the war. It looks like to me that she was deliberately overestimating. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/6 "2003-03-19T12:26:25Z")
No. She had to make an estimate of the Iraqi population since the 1987 census. In doing so, she took the 30,000 Kurds and Shi’ites into account, but she did NOT present them as casualties of the Gulf War. > [@](#): > > Although Cheney said shortly after the 1991 Gulf War that “we have no way of knowing precisely how many casualties occurred” during the fighting “and may never know,” Daponte had estimated otherwise: 13,000 civilians were killed directly by American and allied forces, and about 70,000 civilians died subsequently from war-related damage to medical facilities and supplies, the electric power grid, and the water system, she calculated. > In all, 40,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed in the conflict, she concluded, putting total Iraqi losses from the war and its aftermath at 158,000, including 86,194 men, 39,612 women, and 32,195 children. > … > That required her to estimate how many Iraqis had died from the war and its aftermath, including the rebellion of Shiites in the South and Kurds in the North [an **additional** 30,000 deaths, she estimated]. Daponte used a 1987 Iraqi census and U.N. figures as her base of comparison. [The Defense Intelligence Agency eventually estimated 100,000 Iraqi military were killed in the war, plus or minus 50,000.] Bolding mine. Estimating the war casualties was part of the excersise, as was estimating the casualties of the resulting rebellions. She did NOT present them as a cumulative number. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/7 "2003-03-19T12:52:38Z")
> [@](#): > > “In modern warfare, postwar deaths from adverse health effects account for a large fraction of total deaths,” she wrote, an inclusion that continues to be debated. “In the Gulf War, **far more persons died from postwar health effects than from direct war effects**.” Bolding mine. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/8 "2003-03-19T13:00:27Z")
Yes. So? My point was, Libertarian, that the US fired a federal employee because her estimate was “too high” for their moral conscience. The official figure, accompanied with basically “we’re just taking a wild stab at it”, prevailed over the numbers from someone who actually did some fucking research. This means that while finding “independant data” is going to be hard enough, I see no reason to exclude possibly overstated Iraqi figures, especially if we have to take “official” (historically underestimated, as per Gulf War 1.0) US estimates into account as well. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/9 "2003-03-19T13:05:34Z")
Oh, well, I agree with you there. I certainly trust nothing that the US government says. Meanwhile, my opinion is that the person who most wants extensive civilian deaths — and will likely do all he can to faciliate exactly that — is Saddam Hussein. ---
**Author:** ![Skid\_Row](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/779978/32.png) [@Skid\_Row](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skid_Row)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/10 "2003-03-19T13:20:49Z")
“_Gulf War 1.0_” is a great line. ---
**Author:** ![ticker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@ticker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ticker)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/11 "2003-03-19T14:12:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Skid Row \* > \*\*“_Gulf War 1.0_” is a great line. \*\* Are we now at v1.1 or is this a whole new release - Gulf War 2.0? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-thought-that-rape-survey-was-bad/162459/12 "2003-03-19T21:53:51Z")
Depends on whether or not Saddam has any “bugs.”