Anti-war Soros funded Iraq study

[RANA]

Anti-war Soros funded Iraq studyBrendan Montague
A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros.

Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.

The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003.

“The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

The Lancet study was commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and led by Les Roberts, an associate professor and epidemiologist at Columbia University. He reportedly opposed the war from the outset.

His team surveyed 1,849 homes at 47 sites across Iraq, asking people about births, deaths and migration in their households.

Professor John Tirman of MIT said this weekend that $46,000 (£23,000) of the approximate £50,000 cost of the study had come from Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Roberts said this weekend: “In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.”

The Lancet did not break any rules by failing to disclose Soros’s sponsorship.

http://www.ti****nline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3177653.ece

[Logan13]

Suprise! This is the study that at least 5 people in this forum have quoted from.............

[RANA]

Suprise! This is the study that at least 5 people in this forum have quoted from.............

I know, everyone states how 1/2 million have been killed. Wow, that is a huge difference

[Tock]

Doesn't really make much difference who paid for the study, or how many civilians were killed. Truth is, had the Bush Administration been honest with the American public and heeded the advice of US intelligence agencies, there would not have been a war. Of course, Saddam Hussein would still be a PITA, but that's not sufficient reason to start a war.

Another aspect of this war that few people like to talk about is how the US borrowed the $$$ to pay for this war. Or that when the final cost is tallied, it will cost US taxpayers over a trillion $$$; maybe two.

[mcpeepants]

The Lancet used the same methodology to calculate deaths in Iraq that were used to calculate the deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo (several million), Kosovo (several thousands), and Darfur (tens of thousands) yet you don't hear a pip from the Bush administration and their supporters of the validity of those measurements.