Many experts and expert groups from a range of fields are attempting to combine their knowledge to understand the lethality to Iraqis of the invasion and post-invasion violence in Iraq.
This is a slightly abridged and amended version of an invited "meta-analysis" of IBC's potential contribution to that understanding, presented in a closed meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on mortality estimates for Iraq, convened by WHO in Geneva, May 2007.
Implications of delay data
The previous finding leaves open the question of whether it is possible that editors (by which would have to be meant local and international editors) ignore stories involving Iraqi civilian casualties that don’t happen to land on their desks the same day, no matter how grevious, and that this accounts for their absence from the public record.
The answer to this question is clearly no, for the simple reason that reports do continue to be published, particularly of significant incidents, for a week or so (sometimes considerably longer) after the event. This is true for around 7% of cases, and across a range of different types of incident.