IRAQ - Over 600,000 Killed.

Conflict in Iraq has killed more than 600,000 people since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to a controversial study published on Oct. 11 by the Lancet. This is a leading medical journal. Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, carried out the survey with doctors from al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, using a technique based on interviewing a random sample of households throughout Iraq. They concluded that there were 655,000 "excess deaths" as a result of the war, equivalent to 2.5% of the population; 601,000 died through violence, usually gunfire. The researchers had already published in 2004 an estimate of almost 100,000 excess deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion, using a similar technique. In response to the controversy provoked by the first study, Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, wrote in a commentary accompanying the new paper: "It is worth emphasizing the quality of this latest report, as judged by four expert peers who provided detailed comments to editors". Dr Horton said the findings "corroborate the impression that Iraq is descending into bloodthirsty chaos".

The study used two medically qualified teams, each consisting of two male and two female interviewers. They surveyed 1,849 households in 47 randomly selected sites across Iraq between May and July this year, asking about births, deaths and migration in and out of the area. A death certificate was available to confirm 92% of the 629 reported deaths. The mortality rate more than doubled, from a pre-invasion baseline of 5.5 per 1,000 people per year to 13.3% per 1,000 people per year after the invasion. The violence is worst in a belt across the centre of Iraq, in the provinces just north of Baghdad. The least dangerous places where people can live are in the south-east and north-east.

Dr Burnham said: "Our total estimate is much higher than other mortality estimates because we used a population-based, active method for collecting mortality information rather than passive methods that depend on counting bodies or tabulated media reports of violent deaths".

The widely quoted Iraq Body Count (IBC), an independent estimate, gives a death toll since the invasion of about 50,000. No other mortality study anywhere near as comprehensive as the Lancet survey has been published, largely due to the difficulties of gathering accurate information in a country beset with armed groups and fearful of outsiders.

The researchers acknowledged that security concerns had affected the gathering of data and said the survey teams were allowed to choose alternative sites if they judged that the original, randomly selected ones were too dangerous. However, the Lancet paper did not explain in detail how the researchers could have visited 47 sites across the country during three months when sectarian violence was at its height and most Iraqis did not leave their home neighbourhood for fear of kidnapping or murder.

Little Iraq & Afghanistan In USA: The Boston Globe on Oct. 8 focused on the Pentagon's "Little Baghdad, a stretch of road at the US Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona designed to look like a highway in Iraq". The paper said when it was created in early 2004, the simulation was perfect, right down to 19 simulated explosive devices, one hidden in the carcass of a donkey.

The US Army built Little Baghdad as a testing site for technologies to help identify the so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which have killed hundreds of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the tests were completed, the US Army gave top marks to a system from Flight Landata, a private company in North Andover, Massachusetts, whose airborne digital camera, mounted in a plane or helicopter, can spot IEDs at a distance of about 300 metres. In the test at Yuma, it correctly identified 17 of the 19 bombs, including the one in the donkey. The Globe quoted "the Flight Landata president, Brooks Patterson", as saying: "That earned us an all-expenses-paid trip to Iraq".

By end-2004, the camera BuckEye was on duty in Iraq and is credited with saving lives. In one area near Mosul, the company said, the number of attacks with IEDs dropped from 65/week to four after BuckEye-equipped aircraft began surveillance missions. The Globe quoted "Captain James Richards, an R&D co-ordinator for the Army Corps of Engineers", as saying: "We are a satisfied customer of the system. It's doing the job". The paper said Richards declined to provide details about lives saved or disasters averted by the BuckEye system, citing operational security. The Globe said: "At least two other companies - Leica Geosystems, which is based in Switzerland, and Applanix, based in Canada - make such georeferencing aerial photography equipment for commercial applications. But the two companies lost out to Flight Landata after all three systems were tested at the Yuma Proving Ground. So far, the US Army has purchased four BuckEye units, which carry a base price of $500,000 but sell for much more when loaded with additional sensor packages. The army also has bought versions with several accessories, but Flight Landata did not detail the features that the military had ordered. The company is now marketing its products to the private sector, seeking to sell high-resolution survey data to agribusinesses, urban planning agencies and real estate companies".

The Globe said that, in flights over the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico in November, the company planned to test its system for possible use in space exploration. The BuckEye system will try to spot water in the mouths of caves. Scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have identified similar caves on Mars, and any water in them could be an incubator for life. If the BuckEye passes the terrestrial test, a future version might be sent to the planet.

The idea behind BuckEye might seem obvious: take multiple aerial photos of the same spot, then examine the images for changes. If freshly turned dirt appears by the side of the road, or a dead donkey moves, it might signal where an explosive device has been hidden. But it requires great precision. The Globe quoted the "Flight Landata chief scientist, Xiuhong Sun, as saying: "If you want to do this, the image has to be precisely 3-D georeferenced".

In other words, precise geographical data must be embedded into the picture, so the latitude and longitude of every building, car, tree and dead donkey are determined. When a bomb is detected, disposal teams are sent to clear the road of explosives. This was far beyond Flight Landata's ability when it was founded as an aerial photography company 12 years ago. Sun joined the company in 1995 after completing post-doctoral research in remote sensing technology at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He has spent years developing the geo-referencing techniques that make Flight Landata's images so valuable.

The company's first big infusion of government money came in 2002, when it won a grant from NASA to develop the system for earth sciences research. The Globe said BuckEye's "relatively simple camera is bolted into a modular platform that uses global positioning systems to georeference every picture it takes. Then pictures of the same spot taken hours or days apart can be easily compared, or even laid right on top of one another. The pictures are sharp enough to detect objects as small as a centimeter, so changes on the ground are easy to see. BuckEye also supports laser-based elevation measurement technology, allowing the camera to take three-dimensional images of landscapes or cities. It includes hyperspectrum sensors that can detect electromagnetic frequencies far beyond those of visible light.

This enables the system to spot threats invisible to the naked eye, like camouflaged vehicles. Richards, the captain, said in addition to searching for explosive devices, the US Army used BuckEyes to generate three-dimensional maps of urban areas before sending in troops. The camera's images are far superior to those offered by intelligence satellites in space, and the 3-D feature lets battle commanders electronically "drive" down a dangerous street and identify every possible hazard along the way. "We've done a whole bunch of cities in Iraq and also in Afghanistan", Richards said. "You know better what you're going into before you go into an operation".