151,000 Iraqis Died 2003-2006
Via Jules Crittenden comes the news that “a new survey estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of the country.” Some 136,000 of those 151,000 casualties “were a consequence of U.S. military operations, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare.”
This estimation is obviously way down from the other estimation which put it on roughly 600,000 deaths if I recall correctly, so it’s quite an improvement, but - as Jules points out - it’s fascinating to see that this report doesn’t say who these people were. Were they terrorists? Were they militia forces? Were they former Baathists? Were they members of the Iraqi Army?
Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman explained: “It would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity. The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq.”
I’d like to see a good breakdown of the numbers. It’s blatantly obvious that many Iraqis were engaged in terrorist activities. They tried to kill American forces and got killed in the process themselves. They also had a go at each other: with Sunnis and Shiites killing each other randomly. O, and then there was Al Qaeda who basically blew everyone up. And as if that’s not enough there was and is also the Iraqi army and police fighting against Iraqi terrorists (whose deaths are included in the estimation).
Is it relevant? Why yes, it is. It’s also relevant to know how many of them would’ve died if Saddam Hussein would’ve stayed in power, since he was quite a butcher himself, wasn’t he?
Now, this number sounds more believable to me than the 600,000 number, which was ridiculous on its face. This one sounds more accurate, and it shows that, indeed, war is truly horrible. But there’s a big difference between the two numbes and it’s also important to know who these people were. O, and - although 151,000 is a lot - one has to realize that these people were living under one of the most brutal regimes in the world, which butchered, tortured, kidnapped and raped its own citizens.
TigerHawk puts it quite well when he, after quoting Digby, writes: “This, I think, reveals the vast gulf between supporters of the war and opponents. The Democrats believe that the United States is responsible for all excess deaths in Iraq following the 2003 invasion… That is why, according to the left, all the excess deaths in Iraq are the fault of the United States war ‘to remove a dictator who wasn’t nearly as efficient at killing Iraqis’.”
Here’s what Digby has to say, and it perfectly illustrates why I can never, and I mean never, side with the anti-war base on an issue like this:
But it remains 150,000 human lives, dead, senselessly, for an unnecessary war of choice. And that only goes up to June 2006, and the authors of the study admitted they were unable to reach certain areas that were “too violent.”
Not to mention the 3,900-plus soldiers, including 9 in the last two days. And the numbers of wounded are incalculable.
All to remove a dictator who wasn’t nearly as efficient at killing Iraqis.
It would be interesting to see whether Digby knows how many Iraqis were killed by Saddam. My guess is he doesn’t. Well, here are some numbers to start with. Aside from that, though, Saddam also tortured his subjects and made life impossible for everyone who dared to disagree with him.
And often enough even for those who did disagree with him.
The Lancet study that put the number at 600,000 was a measure of excess deaths from all causes rather than just violent deaths. The WaPo article you linked to noted that there was also a 60% rise in mortality for non-violent deaths not included in the 151,000 number, so the two may not be as far apart as it seems.
Also, the first report I read on this noted that they didn’t include insurgent deaths in the number.
"My guess is he doesn’t."
lol, Mike, Digby is a woman I believe, fyi.
New slogan for the U.S. occupation: Estimated to be slightly less bloody than under Saddam Hussein!
Wahoo!
Just because a number "sounds" wrong, you shouldn’t discount the possibility of it being the truth. Like BJ said, the 600,000 estimate included people who had died from things related to the invasion but not directly from violence. You know, like not having food, electricity or water.
And what about Abu Ghraib? The death squads that Malikis government turned a blind eye to?
This is the same pattern we followed in Vietnam. We killed hundreds of thousands while bombing and fighting in both the North and South. But don’t worry, they were all bad guys. Sorry, I don’t buy it.
Back then we were saving Vietnam from the Vietnamese people, now we’re saving Iraq from the Iraqi people.
Between incomplete data & fudging of the data, there is no way to obtain an accurate figure of Iraqi deaths from this war. Even the official figure of 4000 US troops KIA is grossly understated because GI casualties who die after leaving the ground of Iraq are not counted officially as KIA, even though they were killed as a direct result of war injuries.
Using these figures to determine our future course of action, however, is irrelevant. What is relevant is the US troop presence appears at present (finally!) to be a stabilizing influence against violence against Iraqi civilians, & also GIs., IAs, & IPs. Life in Iraq is slowly becoming more normal & over increasingly larger areas. As long as this is the case, I believe we need to continue there. We have, if for no other reason, a moral duty to the Iraqis to try to reverse the mistakes we have made. If we can be successful in that mission, we will also benefit from a better standing in the Arab & Muslim world. If we leave now, we lose that opportunity. And so do they.
Whats even more amazing is that if you look at the statistics for the United States during this same 4 year period there were 70,000 murders and roughly 6 million violent crimes committed.
The difference is that we have become indifferent to our own misery but somehow we are amazingly attuned to the misery in a land far away for reasons that I have never understood.
Even more important but lost to those who would look for any bad news to be a reason to leave is that the United States has not killed 161,000 Iraqis. In fact nearly all those deaths have been the result of Iraqis being butchered by either other Iraqis or insurgents who come to Iraq to murder freely and willingly in the name of Allah.
I do not advocate for the war. I advocate for our troops to come home. I also advocate for honesty and integrity when dealing with facts. It is why I support Hillary and not Obama. I believe Hillary will bring us home. I just think she will do it in a wise and effective manner that does not bring chaos to an already explosive middle east.
Obama just cant wait to get out of Dodge and makes no bones about it. He says lets talk to those who have vowed on the blood of Allah to destroy us. What he does not say is what do we do after the talks fail. And they will. No one has yet to find a way to negotiate with them. I wonder what makes him so special?
abrisaham,
Obama supports a responsible redeployment, and has in fact received a great deal of criticism from the left for not being more vocal and active in his opposition to our occupation of Iraq. Wanting to simply "get out of dodge" is a disingenuous and factually incorrect description of Obama’s Iraq strategy.
Also, Muslims would never swear anything "on the blood of Allah." Allah is god to them, and he has never taken a human form, according to Islam, and wouldn’t have any blood to swear on. And god forbid we try to deal with the disenfranchised and misunderstood with civility and humanity instead of guns, GIs and GWB, huh?
You may have missed the news that the United States is a much larger country than Iraq. Iraq is roughly the size of California with about 2/3rds the population (based on 2006 estimates, so it could be a lot lower now).
The difference is that we are paying a high price in blood and money to oversee the Iraqi misery that in large part we’ve unleashed.
The best piece I’ve ever read on whether the hundreds of thousands of deaths resulting from the war in Iraq can be justified as a humanitarian intervention against the killings of the Ba’ath regime is by Ken Roth, of Human Rights Watch, the organization most-cited by those critical of that regime. HRW investigators spent a quarter-century risking their lives to document at least a quarter of a million deaths and disappearances perpetrated by Hussein’s government.
http://www.hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm
The short version: nope. There were times when a war would have been justified, he writes: when Hussein was gassing Kurds by tens of thousands, or when there were massacres of up to 100,000 Shia after the US incited them to revolt during the Gulf War then pulled out - an intervention then could have saved more lives than it cost. But in 2003, Hussein was estimated to be killing "only" a few thousand of his people per year. It would have taken several years of a total end to such killing just to "pay back" the Iraqi population for killing 10,000-20,000 of their soldiers, much less all the "regrettable" - but unavoidable, if you start a war - civilian collateral deaths. When the deaths by violence after the war started to exceed that estimate of 2,000 per year, the balance of "better off because of the invasion" figures kept sliding further into the hole. 151,000/2,000 = 75 years to "payback" if the dying stops today.
Indeed, note the quarter-million grand total for 25 years of the Ba’ath party. Remember that the 151,000 figure is stated by the report itself to be conservative - what can be documented in a place where people bury their own by sunset and don’t like to call the authorities. The real figure by violence may be closer to 250,000; and if you count even a fraction of those who have died by secondary causes - no ambulance service, no power, bad water, no blood-pressure medicine in the pharmacy - the 600,000 estimate is not actually that hard to understand: if you have 30 million people, a few percent of them over 70, and the life expectancy drops from 72 to 69 because of bad conditions and reduced health services…do the math.
In short, reasonable figures indicate the war, "caused" (?) … certainly brought about conditions, anyway, that resulted in more deaths than Saddam’s grand total.
It’s just numerical fact, as estimated by the people on the ground, who’ve spent the most time and work monitoring the situation.
Indeed, note the quarter-million grand total for 25 years of the Ba’ath party
Hmm, the million-plus dead from the Iraq/Iran war seem to have vanished, along with the dead from the first Gulf War. Funny how war deaths are only counted against one party.
Even the official figure of 4000 US troops KIA is grossly understated because GI casualties who die after leaving the ground of Iraq are not counted officially as KIA, even though they were killed as a direct result of war injuries.
I’m sorry, but that’s flat-out false. Deaths as a result of injuries sustained on deployment ARE counted in the US casualty totals regardless of where death takes place, and regardless of whether or not they were the result of combat or accident. Even vehicle accidents and disease are included, and they don’t even have to occur “on the ground” in theater, just while on combat deployment.
Hmm, the million-plus dead from the Iraq/Iran war seem to have vanished, along with the dead from the first Gulf War. Funny how war deaths are only counted against one party. A fair point - HRW figures focus on killings of country X by the government of country X itself, so tend to leave out deaths from wars they start. The "one million" round number generally accepted for the Iran/Iraq war of course includes deaths on BOTH sides - more than half a million Iranians and somewhat less than half a million Iraqis, by those same estimates. But isn’t blaming all the deaths on both sides on the side that "started it" the thing you’re complaining out? I’m getting confused. Really, that’s not some rhetorical sneer, I mean, honestly confused. I don’t mind arguing for/against an issue, but please define the terms. As a rule, debaters who argue the war was a humanitarian intervention because Saddam Hussein killed very nearly as many of his own people as the war has killed. They don’t normally bring the I/I war into it. Probably because most Western powers tacitly supported him in that war, actively supported him with intelligence, turned a blind eye to his use of WMDs in the course of it, and by some accounts may have helped him decide to get into it by letting him know of that support beforehand. But, frankly, I’d rather not argue the point at all. As the original HRW essay I was bringing up pointed out, it’s not supportable, in THEIR eyes, to start a war to take revenge against, or arrest, a regime for past crimes: it’s too expensive in human lives for the pursuit of justice against a few thousand of the national elite responsible for the crime. Would the cops shoot their way through a crowd of 10 innocents to catch one murderer, in the name of justice? Not at home, so why abroad? So, hell, I’ll apologize for mentioning the "greater than 250,000" point at all, Roth only mentioned it to emphasize that HRW was well aware Hussein was a mass-murderer of the highest order. Those same cops at home will risk innocent lives if they believe even more innocent lives are about to be lost to imminent crime: the Feds storming Waco when they heard children were being killed. Similarly, HRW presses for arrest of any such international criminals by any means that doesn’t involve killing many innocents to get them. (Please read the link.) However, they can’t support killing 20,000 people in one fell swoop - much less bringing about conditions of poor infrastructure and loss of societal controls that will directly result in tens of thousands more deaths - when the imminent threat to innocents is (and I myself gag at the next word) "only" 2000 a year. Let’s leave my point at that and kindly forget the "sum total of Hussein’s regime" remark.