Talk:Casualties of the Iraq War

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Why is the lingo/doublespeak/racist word "contractors" used instead of the precise English word "mercenaries"

This is an encyclopedia not a press release.

Wikipedia is not supposed to be the house organ of any one government, but this article uses a lingo/doublespeak/racist term that the USA uses to describe mercenaries of any country other than a predominantly Caucasian political ally.

Wikipedia should be filtering out spin words an translating them into proper English.

I suggest that "contractor" only be used for unarmed non-military non-police contractors.

This simple rule should apply: If the term "mercenary" would be used to describe the job or person if the person were being paid by an agency working for an African government, the term "mercenary" should be used to describe the job or person working for a non-African government.

End the racism. Speak in plain English. This is an encyclopedia not a press release. 50.71.210.133 (talk) 23:29, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

"Contractor" (or 'private military contractor') is the common term for these people in news reports and books. Nick-D (talk) 23:32, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

There weren't truly mercenaries in Iraq, as I said above in another entry. A mercenary is defined under international treaty as a person in a foreign conflict whose nation is not a party to the conflict.

So any American contractors working for PMCs are just contractors, they can't be called mercenaries because the USA was obviously a party to the conflict. Also, the American contractors were being paid by their own government, generally working for their own US State Dept. to be bodyguards for diplomats, State Dept employees, and other civilian VIPs. When the American government hires an American to fight in an American war, then that's not a mercenary. (I think there might have been a few Chilean soldiers hired by Blackwater, and they could be called mercenaries, but I don't recall that there were very many. The overwhelming majority of contractors were US veterans.) Walterego (talk) 16:23, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

costsofwar.org stats

I had to undo some additions to Casualties of the Iraq War. There was nothing new. They referenced http://costsofwar.org/sites/default/files/HMCHART_2.pdf - and it references IBC, and even Wikipedia! Wikipedia is not accepted as a reference here.

I suggest looking at the various individual categories of deaths from the HMCHART_2.pdf and seeing if there is anything new (with references) that can be added separately to the article.

"National Military and Police" is confusing since "Military, Insurgents/Militants" is similar. The notes on both are even more confusing.

"CostsOfWar.org (Crawford) is referenced for "Military, Insurgents/Militants" in the above-linked HMCHART_2.pdf. I can't find a search tool on their site. Google site search finds some stuff when looking for Crawford:

• http://costsofwar.org/sites/default/files/articles/15/attachments/Crawford%20Iraq%20Civilians.pdf

I do not see the same numbers in that article as I see in the HMCHART_2.pdf. That Crawford article frequently says the actual number of deaths in most categories is higher than the sources she could find. So there is a disconnect between the stats in HMCHART_2.pdf and its sources. HMCHART_2.pdf looks like some chart put together by the costsofwar.org webmaster or some grad student who did not connect all the dots. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:20, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

The CoW was an academic project to establish the costs of war, including the Iraq war, established by Brown University. It brought together 30 academics from various disciplines to crunch the numbers and determine what the Project as a whole felt were the most credible numbers. The number of Iraq deaths settled on by the CoW project is unique to that project. It references a variety many sources, though its conclusions favor some as more credible than others. The final CoW number is not the IBC number, but uses IBC numbers for certain categories because the CoW project overview concluded that they were the most credible available for the category. However, their final number is unique. This is, in effect, a large academic project to sift through a wide range of, sometimes conflicting, information on the conflict and determine what is credible to conclude and what is not. This is in the tradition of other academic efforts to reconcile various numbers and claims about different wars, such as the CRED estimates for Darfur (cited here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Darfur#Mortality_figures) which are based on an evaluation of a range of other sources, and which (like CoW) produced final numbers that are the unique judgments of CRED itself about the numbers. The CoW findings have also been widely reported in WP Reliable Sources. As to the HMCHART, I don't think this needs to be the link used on the page. We could just use the homepage and perhaps some of the prominent press reports or press releases that discuss the findings, such as http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/03/warcosts or http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2013/0317/Iraq-war-10-years-later-Was-it-worth-it.

The table at the top and the Overview currently includes long discredited stuff like the ORB poll, which is rarely if ever cited in any serious circles (and can't even be found anywhere on ORB's website anymore). So it's hard to see why the conclusions of a major academic project like CoW should be suppressed while something marginal like that is featured prominently. That seems like pretty inconsistent and dubious inclusion criteria for the page.Billbowler2 (talk) 00:01, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

The Costs of War project has been mentioned mainly for its estimates of the total financial costs of the war. I can find few mentions of the total number of Iraq War deaths other than in minor publications. Those minor publications and blogs often reference a press release.

There is a March 2013 press release mentioning a total number, 190,000. The press release actually says "at least 190,000 people". It discusses "a new report". The press release mentions Neta C. Crawford.

http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/03/warcosts

Here is a Google site search for Crawford:

https://www.google.com/#q=crawford+site:costsofwar.org

It finds her reports from previous years with different estimates, and also her March 2013 report:

http://costsofwar.org/sites/default/files/articles/15/attachments/Crawford%20Iraq%20Civilians.pdf

The total numbers of Iraq War deaths in some of the references you used is not stated. Only one of the references you used states a total number. That reference is the March 2013 press release written apparently by Courtney Coelho:

http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/03/warcosts - it states "at least 190,000 people".

Since it was reported in a few blogs and very minor publications, though not in any mainstream publication I could find, it merits inclusion in the article, but not at the top. It can be put farther down in the article, along with the other minor tabulations of Iraq War deaths. And it should mention the fact that Neta Crawford thinks the total number could be much higher than 190,000. It should also summarize her sources.

All the other stuff at the top of the article was widely reported. It is there because it was widely reported. All of the estimates have been highly criticized. I personally favor the Orb survey numbers. The Orb estimate is not some derivative number taken from other estimates. I think they did a fairly broad survey. Their methodology seemed sound overall to me. But that is just my personal opinion. Much broader surveys are needed, but that is difficult since there is still fighting going on.

Here are some more direct sources for numbers that I have found:

http://costsofwar.org/iraq-10-years-after-invasion - click on the link for "Iraq Direct War Deaths":

http://costsofwar.org/sites/all/themes/costsofwar/images/Direct-War-Deaths(2).pdf

That costsofwar.org chart says: "Iraq, 2003-2013, More than 189,000 Direct War Deaths. Does not include indirect deaths, due to war-related hardship, which may total many hundreds of thousands more than this estimate."

March 20, 2013 article posted by Neta C. Crawford on the Foreign Policy magazine website:

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/20/the_iraq_war_ten_years_in_ten_numbers

"190,000 ... And, as Neta C. Crawford from Brown University discusses, there are disagreements about how many civilians have been killed directly by violence because documented deaths may be a fraction of the actual number of people killed."

From the bottom of the same article: "Neta C. Crawford, a Professor of Political Science at Boston University, is Co-Director with Catherine Lutz of the Costs of War Project based at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University." --Timeshifter (talk) 19:19, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Here's some other RS reporting on CoW, including the death toll numbers. There's probably more -

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/03/14/293593/us-war-in-iraq-costs-over--2-trillion/

http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/costs-war

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/report_iraq_war_costs_u_s_more_than_2_trillion_so_far/

http://rt.com/usa/us-wars-most-expensive-109/

http://www.arabnews.com/iraq-war-bill-2-trillion-and-rising

Billbowler2 (talk) 19:42, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

They are all minor publications. Reuters is a wire service, and does not publish its stuff itself in the print or broadcast media. I see also, that Reuters is the source of the number of 176,000 to 189,000 people. Reuters did not mention the hundreds of thousands of indirect deaths. Reuters was not clear that there could be many more direct deaths due to violence. Its range number contributed to that lack of clarity. Some of the articles you linked to did mention the number of 189,000 by itself, and that there were many more deaths not included in that number.

Neither the Brown University press release, nor the Reuters article, linked to the Crawford primary source. So I see the problem. But that problem has been solved now that I found the Foreign Policy article by Crawford, and the buried PDF charts and articles on the costsofwar.org site.

I guess since there are more minor publications than I previously noticed these Iraq War death numbers may merit inclusion in the top chart, but only if the Crawford source numbers are used along with the very important points about hundreds of thousands of more deaths. I still say this is nothing new, and just a new shuffling of the source data, as interpreted by one professor. Are we going to add every new summation of the same source data by a professor? --Timeshifter (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

You're spinning at this point. The range of "minor publications" here are more than the bogus ORB poll ever received. The page about the ORB poll even cites people whining about how little any mainstream sources reported or payed attention to it. The CoW conclusions were that of the project team, not "one professor", regardless of who was tasked with doing the media interviews for it. Most of the listed sources do not offer any number for "indirect deaths", and many of them hedge about uncertainty in the numbers or speculate that there "may" be more deaths. You're pushing a POV here and spinning to have this suppressed because you "personally favor the Orb survey numbers". Serious academic work on this should not be suppressed because you happen to want to believe - or want other people to believe - the most baseless and discredited assertions ever made on the topic.Billbowler2 (talk) 09:02, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

(unindent). The Orb poll had its spate of discussion in the media and blogs. Just like the Costs of War stats. Both got far less coverage than the 2 Lancet surveys. The CoW stats come from one person, Neta Crawford. I found no one else mentioned on their site concerning stats. Neta Crawford, the co-director of the project, is the main one getting interviews too. For example;

• The Costs of War: 10 Years After Iraq Invasion, New Study Tallies the Massive Human, Financial Toll. On Democracy Now!.

I am not trying to suppress her info. I am just saying that I question whether it belongs in the top chart. Your case is a little stronger now that you have found more minor publications. Try not to be so emotional. No one knows the true number of casualties. True believers in the Iraq War try to deny that many hundreds of thousands of people died violent deaths. Plus hundreds of thousands more from indirect deaths. But any thinking person can see that if at least 80,000 people have died violently in a smaller country, Syria, in a couple years (Syrian civil war), then far, far more have died in a far bloodier war in Iraq over a far longer time. A war with the full weight of the U.S. military involved. Similar Shi'ite-Sunni civil war being a large part of both wars. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:18, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Neta Crawford seems to be the main spokesperson for the project. It mentions 30 other academics involved. Your attempts to turn it into something one professor says is nonsense. And I suppose IraqBodyCount, the WHO, and all the scientists, journalists and others who are on the record rejecting the Lancet study are "True believers in the Iraq War". Yeah, right.... On Syria, there's no basis for the claim that it's "at least 80,000" killed there. There was a recent estimate of 60,000 made, which then got loosely extrapolated to 70,000 by a UN official, but neither qualify as "at least". And there's also no basis for your claim that one is "far bloodier" than the other, unless you start by assuming your own premise and use circular reasoning: Iraq was "far bloodier" than Syria because the Orb poll is true: therefore the Orb poll is true because Syria is already "at least 80,000".

The numbers that have been claimed for Syria are pretty similar to the numbers that IBC, UNAMI, CoW and others have for the worst years of Iraq's civil/sectarian war. Is Syria's civil war "far less bloody" than Iraq's was? You seem to think you know. I don't think you do.Billbowler2 (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

It is obvious that you are ignoring the source documents on the Costs of War website from Neta Crawford. Hey, you have the right to your biases. But Wikipedia links to references not biases. Wikipedia lets readers make up their own minds. As at Syrian civil war Wikipedia provides the various estimates with references, and lets readers make up their own mind. Obviously, we disagree as to which estimates to believe. They are all estimates. None are firm numbers for the total of actual deaths in either war since that would require a very, very large survey bordering on a census. Even a census would have problems since many people have left both countries. How would you know if someone is dead or has left? That would require looking worldwide, contacting relatives, doing missing persons searches. Syrian civil war death estimates currently range between 70,000 and 120,000. For the period between April 2011 (when fighting started) and May 2013.

The Costs of War project numbers are nothing new really. Iraq Body Count Project and Costs of War Project both have similar totals (174,000 versus 189,000). That is because they use the same sources for the most part. CoW uses IBC as its source for the bulk of deaths. They both say they are undercounts since they are counts, and not surveys. The question is how much of an undercount. No one knows. No one can know at the moment. You can flail around and claim you know, but you don't. All of the estimates, counts, surveys, etc. have been viciously attacked by respected academics from all sides, from media from all sides, from organizations of all kinds. All old news to me. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Talk archive created

I archived old talk that has not had any discussion in the last year. See Template:Talk header and Talk:Casualties of the Iraq War/Archive 1. The archive is named in the standard way so that it is automatically detected by Template:Talk header and Template:Archives. The search form will work after the talk archive is indexed in awhile by the MediaWiki software. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Language and Terminology

This article needs a lot of help to correct improper and poor use of language and terminology. The most glaring and obvious example being that apparently no one knows the difference between "Casualties" and "Fatalities". Anyone that can properly correct that issue should be capable of cleaning up much of the rest of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.225.135.22 (talk) 04:58, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

There is also an issue with the Opinion Research Business survey casualty estimation which states that the estimation is "widely rejected as credible"; this is a contradiction in terms and should either be "rejected as not being credible" or "rejected as incredible" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.183.194.32 (talk) 02:32, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:39, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Costs of War / Iraq Body Count Redundancy

Right now, both the Costs of War project and Iraq Body Count are cited as separate casualty figures. They aren't independent counts. The Cost of War project is simply a reprint of the Iraq Body Count casualty figure, with the addition of 12,000 deaths from the Iraq War logs. Even the figure of 12,000 additional deaths is provided by Iraq Body Count, and simply cited by the Cost of War project. This means that we're double counting Iraq Body Count's figure. The list of casualty estimates should only include independent counts, and leave off reprints of the same count. If there's no objection, I'd like to remove the Cost of War figure. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:44, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the Cost of War figures, since they're just a citation of Iraq Body Count's figures, which we already list. Listing Cost of War separately gives the impression that it's actually an independent count of civilian deaths. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:53, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Restored CoW info. This was addressed in previous discussion long ago on the talk page. The CoW was a large academic project evaluating all the varying information on deaths in Iraq to arrive at their own total number of war deaths that best reflects the reality according to CoW's analysis. The final CoW numbers cited here are not IBC numbers, nor is it IBC numbers with an addition of 12,000 as claimed above. CoW wound up using IBC numbers for the civilian portion of their total because the CoW team judged those numbers to be the most reliable for that portion of their total. CoW's numbers as cited here reflect civilians, combatants and insurgents on all sides, based on a variety of sources as judged according to the CoW team. They do not reflect the judgments of IBC and nor do those totals come from IBC.Billbowler2 (talk) 15:39, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

The CoW numbers used previously in this Wiki article were, indeed, the IBC numbers. It's inappropriate to list citations of one count as a separate count. CoW deferred to IBC for its count of civilian deaths, and so did not produce their own estimate. Since they did not produce an estimate, there is nothing to list here. Readers will get the impression that there was a second count, which there was not. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:02, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

You are just mistaken. The CoW numbers cited here appear nowhere from IBC (If they do, go ahead and provide a citation of IBC giving those numbers). The only kernel of truth in your false argument is what I stated above. CoW chose to use IBC numbers for a portion of their count because their team judged it to be the most reliable numbers to use for that portion of their count. This has no relevance to whether the CoW findings should be cited here.Billbowler2 (talk) 16:31, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

You say I am mistaken, and then repeat exactly what I said, namely that "CoW chose to use IBC numbers for a portion of their count." If you take a look at the most recent CoW paper, their tally of civilian deaths is a direct citation of the Iraq Body Count. All they do in addition to that is to add in other groups' counts of military and "militant" deaths, to arrive at the final figure they cite.

CoW cites other figures, beyond the IBC numbers. Neta Crawford, in the most recent CoW paper, summarizes her findings as

If a full recording of Iraqi violent deaths due to war were to be made, the toll could be twice as high, according to Iraq Body Count (IBC), the one organization that has attempted to document all the violent deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the initiation of war ten years ago. Thus, the toll of violent death due to war may be 250,000 or more people.

Neta Crawford goes on to discuss the figures given by statistical studies, and to say that they show tallies, like those produced by IBC, are underestimates:

Whether or not the resulting numbers from the cluster sample survey research are valid, cluster sampling from Iraq and other conflicts does show that reliance on media reports of death undercount the true number of dead.

So when discussing CoW, should we cite Crawford's absolute lower bound, 134,000 civilian deaths (a repeat of the IBC figures), or the figure she says is more credible, 250,000 (about twice the IBC figures), or should we cite the figures she gives from statistical studies (approximately half a million to a million)? The CoW papers are discussions of various estimates produced by others. The figure we are citing is simply the IBC count, with a number of official tallies added in to cover other Iraqi soldiers and "militants."

I think we should only include independent counts of war dead in this Wiki page. If we include secondary compilations, we are effectively giving the counts they are based on extra weight.

A larger point is that we should more clearly separate estimates of total violent deaths from tallies of violent deaths. A reader looking over our list of figures might be confused by the extreme discrepancy between the various numbers. Most of the studies we cite discuss the difference between statistical studies and counts of documented deaths. In particular, most sources claim that statistical studies are the most accurate means of determining the total number of people who have died as a result of the war, while tallies based on media accounts and official sources are undercounts. Clearly separating out the two categories of numbers will help the readers understand the figures they are looking at. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:24, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you are mistaken. You claimed the CoW number is the same as the IBC number. It isn't, which is why you evaded my request to support your claim by providing a citation of IBC giving the CoW number. I'll not repeat the explanation above, except to say that part of you may be made up of water, but that doesn't mean you're water. Beyond that, I think you're mistaken about almost everything else you say above. You make weird interpretations of Crawford and suggest we should maybe ignore the headline finding the CoW project settled on as the most credible, and which has been reported as such in reliable sources and is given on the page now, and instead give preference to off the cuff speculations from one of the authors suggesting the true number "may" be higher. Almost all the sources have hedged about limitations and said the number "may" be higher. There's nothing unique to CoW in that really. You're also mistaken that most sources claim "statistical studies are the most accurate". I think you are cherry picking your sources or misinterpreting them. Moreover, the "statistical studies" listed differ from *each other* more than some of them do from the "tallies". For example, the IFHS is much closer to IBC, AP or CoW than it is to the Lancet. That should raise serious doubts about how much your particular distinction matters, or should be elevated to definitive importance above any number of other distinctions that could be drawn between the different sources here. Our opinions on the merits of these sources shouldn't really matter, but you seem to insist on imposing yours, I don't think a distinction between "tallies" and "statistical studies" actually explains much of anything about why the numbers listed here differ so much. The fact that the "statistical sources" don't even come close to agreeing with each other in the first place is just one of the reasons why that explanation fails.Billbowler2 (talk) 19:24, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

You say that I "suggest we should maybe ignore the headline finding the CoW project settled on as the most credible." CoW does not claim that the IBC figure which they cite is the most credible estimate of total deaths. In fact, they explicitly say that it likely underestimates the true figure by a factor of two, and that statistical surveys actually attempt to measure the true death toll. They use IBC because as a lower bound, it is incontestable, not because they believe it to be accurate. It's not merely my opinion that statistical studies of mortality differ fundamentally from tallies of reported deaths. That's the opinion of people who compile these sorts of counts and do surveys. I'm surprised you're not familiar with this very fundamental distinction.

CoW is not independent of IBC. It's simply a reprint of IBC's numbers. Go back to the CoW papers, and look how they get their figures. They don't claim to be conducting original research into the number of deaths in the Iraq War. They are compiling various figures into one report. I think it might be useful to mention them in the section on Iraq Body Count, but to list their numbers gives the false impression that someone went out and did an independent analysis of the number of Iraqis that died in the war, and came to the same exact conclusion as IBC. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:55, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

I think pretty much everything you say above is incorrect, except the first sentence. I think CoW does say IBC is the most credible estimate of total deaths, or more precisely, of total civilian deaths. If they believed another estimate was more accurate they'd have used that instead. CoW also did not say that IBC "likely understimates the true figure by a factor of two", as you assert. Rather, a spokesperson said it "may" do so, citing IBC itself saying something like that in the past. There's no dichotomy between something being judged the most credible estimate available and speculating that it's too low. I happen to think IBC is currently the best available estimate of total deaths, and I also think it's probably too low. These aren't mutually exclusive propositions, as you imply. I think CoW used IBC in the way they did because they judged that there is no other estimate available that was credible enough for them to actually stand behind as being a more accurate measure of civilian deaths. And I think they were right in that assessment. They can hedge all they want about the uncertainties, as so many of the sources do (including IBC), but if CoW believed there was a more accurate measure, we would know, because they'd have used it. I do not disagree that "statistical studies" differ from "tallies". The sources have a wide variety of differences. That being just one. Rather, I disagree that your particular selected difference is fundamentally so much more important than many other differences that it should be used to divide otherwise neutral introductory references into arbitrary and subjectively-labelled camps. That is just imposing bias about what type of differences matter among many (and just purely coincidentally allows you to place your version of the "best" sources first, and move your version of "not so best" sources to a second tier). I think your favored distinction matters less than some others that could be drawn. There are also many sources cited on this and other related pages that evaluate these studies and judge them on wholly different criteria. In other words, there are other distinctions between the sources that are as or more important than this one. The place to go into all the various methodological differences of the sources, including this one among many others, is in the broader discussion of the sources, which it already does, and from which readers can draw their own conclusions about which methodological differences matter and in what ways and to which degrees.

Yes, CoW is independent of IBC. And no, COW is not "simply a reprint of IBC". Rather, it is analysis and value judgment, an academic judgment made by CoW, independently of IBC, that the IBC numbers are the most reliable numbers available to use for the civilian deaths portion of CoW's broader totals. Yes, they did original research into the number of deaths in the Iraq War, and are not simply "compiling". They're evaluating a range of available material, making their own unique value judgments about their relative reliability and bringing together disparate material into a whole that is different from and broader than anything they used from any one of the underlying sources. For that matter, IBC is also "compiling" and bringing together material that is published already somewhere else. But the final product is not the same as any of those other sources. And i don't think it gives any "false impression", and nor does it give the "same exact conclusion as IBC".Billbowler2 (talk) 06:14, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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Initial table should distinguish between counts and scientific surveys

The initial table in the lead should be split, so that scientific estimates of excess deaths are listed separated from body counts. This is because scientific estimates and body counts are two wholly different methods that measure two wholly different things. Lumping both methods together gives the false impression that the numbers are equivalent, when they are clearly not. -Darouet (talk) 22:26, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

That sort of arbitrary segregation of sources is really dodgy for a variety of reasons. It necessarily imposes bias and POV. Some of the sources you placed into the "scientific" category are disputed by published sources on the very grounds that they are not scientific. For example, see Mark van der Laan's conclusion that the Lancet survey, "is not science. It is propaganda.", cited in the Criticism section of the Lancet survey page. Imposing your classification requires taking a side in such disputes. What exactly qualifies as a "scientific survey" here, and according to whom? It also requires selecting which classification should be highlighted, which means choosing which features are important or unimportant, and which feature is more important than all others. This all needlessly brings in bias and POV and adds nothing besides. You also don't seem to really understand the sources you're trying to segregate. You seem to want so-called, "scientific estimates of excess deaths" separated from "body counts". But you don't even seem to realize that some of the sources you placed into the first category are not "estimates of excess deaths" themselves. I also think you are simply wrong that these sources "measure wholly different things". To the extent they measure different things, that is already noted in the descriptions in the table. And your particular classification doesn't even handle their differences properly. For example, the IFHS is measuring basically the same thing that the latter IBC number is measuring (violent deaths of civilians and combatants), but you place IFHS into the same category as PLOS which is measuring something very different ("deaths in Iraq as direct or indirect result of the war").

I'd also point out that in the past there were debates about how to present the sources in the table, with arguments over which should come first, and this was ultimately settled by putting the opening sources in the table simply into alphabetical order. Your suggestion has the effect of undoing some long agreed upon neutrality in favor of imposing an inherently biased and subjective framework.Billbowler2 (talk) 01:39, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

As I noted at Talk:Iraq War, your objection essentially boils down to two points:

1) you don't understand the difference between a survey and a body count, and

2) you agree with objections, however spurious, to the Lancet study.

Even if those objections legitimately called into question the estimates of excess violent deaths (they don't), there would still be a difference between surveys that estimate violent deaths and body counts that document confirmed, individual deaths. This distinction is crucial enough that, because of your inability to understand it, you should recuse yourself from editing these articles. -Darouet (talk) 16:49, 29 April 2014 (UTC)