Iraq Body Count, Real People, Fake Numbers

The first session I went to was titled, Iraq Body Count, Real People, Fake Numbers. Steve Clark was the presenter and he did an outstanding job. This was one of the sessions that was offered at the Keene State College Citizenship Symposium. He made sure that we knew that it is important as citizens to know what to make of statistics because constantly the news and government are throwing numbers at us to prove a certain point, and we must be able to understand what they are getting at. Clark told us about his bias and about why he stands where he does, which is opposed to the war in Iraq. He has a son who is enlisted in the army and did so after 9/11, he was at age of the draft during the end of the Vietnam War and had two of his friends commit suicide when they returned from Vietnam. He informed us that statistics can be misleading, and virtually can say whatever we want them to say. He let us know some of the questions we should be asking when we hear a statistic. They included: “Who produced this statistic?”, “How was this statistic produced?”, and “Why was this statistic produced?”. He also talked about the actual war in Iraq and the number of Iraqi people who have died. He said that the number of how many Iraqis have died gets little attention. “We must be able to see them as less human than us to kill them” (Clark). Lancet came out with a study and found that six hundred and fifty thousand Iraqis have died as a result from the war in Iraq. Lancet did a cluster sampling and Iraqi doctors went door to door and asked families about deaths and asked to see death certificates. From this was calculated the astonishing number that no other study has come close to. Clark’s talk was very informative and I thought he did an excellent job keeping the audience’s attention and adding humor in here and there.