More than 1,000,000 people have died result of the US led Iraq invasion!

[earth_as_one]

Very few people seem to know how many deaths have been attributed as a direct and indirect consequence of the US decision to invade Iraq since March 2003.

Iraq Body Count gives this number:

92,393 – 100,868
June 2, 2009
Iraq Body Count

But IBC only counts civilian deaths reported by multiple news sources. They do not count the estimated 30,000 dead Iraqi soldiers killed during the initial invasion.
DefenseLink News Transcript: Secretary of Defense Interview with Bob Woodward - 23 Oct, 2003

IBC does not count violent deaths that did not make the news.

IBC does not count hundreds of thousands of violent deaths resulting from increased crime and religious strife.

In other words, IBC's numbers do not accurately reflect the true impact of the Iraq war on the Iraqi people. Even IBC makes these statements:

...Iraq Body Count only includes reports where there are feasible methods of distinguishing military from civilian deaths...

...We have always been quite explicit that our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording...

...Amnesty International, which criticized and drew attention to the brutality of the Saddam Hussein regime long before the governments which launched the 2003 attack on Iraq, estimated that violent deaths attributable to Saddam's government numbered at most in the hundreds during the years immediately leading up to 2003. Those wishing to make the "more lives ultimately saved" argument will need to make their comparisons with the number of civilians likely to have been killed had Saddam Hussein's reign continued into 2003-2004, not in comparison to the number of deaths for which he was responsible in the 1980s and early 1990s, or to casualty figures during WWII...

Iraq Body Count Press Release 10 (7 Nov 2004) :: Iraq Body Count

Wikipedia has a pretty good article on this subject with links to studies and surveys.

Casualties of the Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The August 2007 Opinion Research Business survey resulted in a statistical mean of 1,033,000 increased violent deaths directly or indirectly related to the US led invasion. Lots of people have died violently in Iraq since 2007. As a result this is a credible statement:

More than 1,000,000 people have died result of the US led Iraq invasion!

In addition to the deaths, over 4.7 million Iraqis (out of 30 million total) have been displaced since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Refugees of Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The original US justifications for this war were:

1) Iraq's non-existant WMDs. (Note: This is the same justification the US used to maintain economic sanctions on Iraq which killed hundreds of thousands of additional Iraqi's through malnutrition and disease during the previous 12 years before the 2003 invasion.)

2) Iraq's non-existent involvement in the events of 9/11

Since the invasion the above justifications have been thoroughly discredited. Americans have since tried to justify this war based on humanitarian grounds. Considering the resulting death and destruction described above, that justification also rings hollow. In fact David Roth of Human Rights Watch made this statement:

...the Iraq war and the effort to justify it even in part in humanitarian terms risk giving humanitarian intervention a bad name...
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/402ba99f4.pdf

I can't see how anyone aware of the above facts could describe what the US has done in Iraq without using words like "War Crime" and "Crimes Against Humanity".

In 2004, Americans had an opportunity to express democratically their opinion regarding this war. They re-elected the people responsible.

 

[EagleSmack]

Basically you took the largest number.

The number was based on a poll question to 1,499 Iraqi's. They asked how many people in their family were killed.

On a poll to just over 1,000 people they came up with 1 Million plus dead. Hardly scientific and based on nothing but the responders answers.

FAILED

 

[earth_as_one]

I took the most recent number which also happens to be the highest number.

Unless the number of people resurrected from the dead starts to outnumber the people dying, its reasonable that the most recent estimate of violent deaths directly or indirectly attributable to the US led Iraq invasion would be the highest.

Regarding this survey's accuracy and scientific methodology. Questioning every single household in Iraq is not possible due to safety reasons. The next most accurate way to gauge the affects of the Iraq war is to survey a random sample of Iraqi households. Surveys are a scientifically accepted way to make an estimate. A survey is not 100% accurate. Instead, surveys have margin of errors based on the size of the sample relative to the total population.

• Results are based on face-to-face interviews amongst a nationally representative sample of 1,720 adults aged 18+ throughout Iraq (1,499 agreed to answer the question on household deaths)
• The standard margin of error on the sample who answered (1,499) is +2.5%

The 2005 census reported 4,050,597 households. From this ORB calculated 1,220,580 deaths since the 2003 invasion. From the poll margin of error of 2.5% ORB came up with a range of 733,158 to 1,446,063 deaths.[1]

ORB survey of Iraq War casualties - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Based on scientifically proven and accepted formulas, there is only a 2.5% chance that the number is outside the listed range. The number I gave is based on the statistical mean. A statistical mean indicates the actually number has a 50% chance of being higher or lower. Its not the same as an average.

If I was choosing the highest number as you claim, then I would have said 1,446,063 deaths, not "more than a million".

Considering the statistical mean is actually 1,033,000, my statement that" more than a million" (which is lower than the statistical mean) has a greater than 50% chance of being correct. Another way to look at these same numbers is that its a 97.5% chance that the number is greater than 733,158 deaths.

The number you choose to believe from IBC is still shockingly high and is also unlikely. According to the ORB survey (which is the most recent), the IBC numbers have a far less than a 2.5% chance of being correct. Even IBC admits its numbers are certainly an underestimate of the real numbers and they explain why. (see the link to their website above)

So yes I feel confident that my statement is backed up by the most recent and accurate information. No I am not 100% certain I'm correct. But I am more than 97.5% certain you are wrong.

Also I'd like to point out that before the 2003 invasion, the US government also gave numbers about Hussein's atrocities. Those numbers were also estimates based on statistical probabilities. The only difference is that I reference dates as well as numbers, whereas the US government only gave numbers without dates, in a deliberate attempt to create a perception that Hussein's atrocities were current and ongoing. Before the 2003 invasion, were you also just as skeptical regarding estimates of violent deaths in Iraq??? Is your current skepticism of estimates related to not liking the sound of the numbers rather than their scientific basis.

Also isn't killing approximately 100,000 innocent people (IBC's number) without just cause a sufficient reason for holding someone accountable? How many innocent people have to die before someone should be held accountable?

The reality is that in the 5 years or so before the war, the Hussein regime was responsible for a few hundred deaths according to both Amnesty International and the US government. By any measure, thanks to US actions, Iraq is a far more dangerous place now than it was in 2002.

 

[lone wolf]

More than a hundred billion people have died of old age and natural causes. Where is the outrage for them? People are territorial. People fight. People die. Anyone have a solution?

I thought not....

 

[Walter]

The US is the worst country in the world, except for almost all of the others. Sheesh.

 

[earth_as_one]

More than a hundred billion people have died of old age and natural causes. Where is the outrage for them? People are territorial. People fight. People die. Anyone have a solution?

I thought not....

Yes, hold criminals accountable for their actions.

In the US, if you murder one person, you get life or a death sentence. But if you murder a million, you get re-elected.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

I have also read estimates ranging from half a million to a million Iraqis. And of course this does not include Iraqis maimed (as a result of land mines, unexploded bombs etc.) and displaced. Include the displaced and they number into millions.

Iraq was just an adventure that Bush decided to embark upon because he felt like it, it was indicative of his cowboy, shoot form the hip mentality.

 

[raymond peters]

Fantasies

Sorry, but Eagle's right. You're throwing around nonsense numbers, and saying a bunch of false things too. Almost everything you've asserted about IBC is wrong:

"IBC only counts civilian deaths reported by multiple news sources. IBC does not count violent deaths that did not make the news." - IBC doesn't require "multiple news sources", nor does every source need to be a news source. It uses morgue and NGO records too, which may contain many deaths that did not "make the news". You can see this on the wiki page about it or their website.

" IBC does not count hundreds of thousands of violent deaths resulting from increased crime and religious strife." - Again, entirely false. According to the wiki again, IBC includes: "civilian deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence in Iraq since the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq." So IBC includes exactly what you say the exclude. And you just made up that these would be "hundreds of thousands" anyway.

Your poll giving "1,033,000" is not credible either and there's a lot you get wrong about it. First, it does not use "scientifically proven and accepted formulas". It is a crude opinion poll pretending to be a scientific mortality survey and which they do crude extrapolations on top of. An estimate which better matches your description is the WHO study ("IFHS" on wiki), which was a much more comprehensive sample and a much more serious study, published in the NEJM scientific journal (rather than a polling firm's own website), and which estimated 151,000.

You also rely alot on the range given for the poll, apparently under the impression that it is a 95% confidence interval. It's actually just another crude and arbitrary calculation pretending to be a confidence interval. When this poll first came out this range was debunked on other discussion boards because, for one, it doesn't account for clustering, but just pretends they did a simple random sample, which they didn't do, which means the range needs to be much wider. Even if it were an actual or credible 95% confidence interval, this statement is wrong: "there is only a 2.5% chance that the number is outside the listed range," because a confidence interval only quantifies the sampling error, which is only one kind of error out of many that can distort an estimate drawn from a sample. IOW, at best, the range only quantifies a particular part of the true range of potential error. But if we ignore this, we could say that the bigger and more credible WHO study gives less than a 2.5% statistical chance that your poll is right, or even within a mile of being right.

Lastly on IBC, you quote statements from them, but don't quote the ones showing that they reject the conclusions you put forward: "Our own view is that the current death toll could be around twice the numbers recorded by IBC and the various official sources in Iraq. We do not think it could possibly be 10 times higher."
The state of knowledge on civilian casualties in Iraq :: Iraq Body Count

 

[earth_as_one]

Shouldn't people who shoot from the hip and kill a million people be held accountable for their actions?

Americans should know how much blod they have on their hands. They should know how many innocent people have died as a direct and indirect result of their leaders' decision to rid Iraq of non-existent WMD stockpiles and punish Iraq for their non-existent links to al Queda.

Most Americans believe they've done Iraqis a service, when the ugly reality is that their leaders have committed war crimes and destroyed millions of lives.

 

[petros]

Iperialism ain't purdy.

 

[taxslave]

And what exactly is your estimate of the number that would have died if the US hadn't invaded? How many millions more?

 

[petros]

And what exactly is your estimate of the number that would have died if the US hadn't invaded? How many millions more?

From sanctions or depleted (not really) uranium?

 

[steve_american]

What did you think would happen? It is a war.. it's not like they went over to Iraq just to provide their country with public health insurance.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

And what exactly is your estimate of the number that would have died if the US hadn't invaded? How many millions more?

That would be a close call, taxslave. It would be difficult to say whether more Iraqis would have died under Saddam Hussein than died under Bush.

However, I do know what would have been different under Saddam. Christians would not have been persecuted under Saddam. Most Christians lived peacefully under Saddam, he was no Fundamentalist. Indeed, his Prime Minister was a Christian (Tariq Aziz).

After Saddam was overthrown, persecution of Christians started and I understand by now most of them have fled Iraq.

Just about the only good thing about Saddam was that he was not a Fundamentalist, he did not persecute Christians. As long as you worshipped Saddam as God no.1, he didn’t care who you worshipped as God no. 2, Allah or Jesus.

 

[earth_as_one]

And what exactly is your estimate of the number that would have died if the US hadn't invaded? How many millions more?

If the US had waited for UN weapon inspectors to finish their work, Iraq would have gotten a favorable report, leading to the lifting of economic sanctions.

Read this report

SECURITY COUNCIL 7 MARCH 2003
Oral introduction of the 12th quarterly report of UNMOVIC
Executive Chairman Dr. Hans Blix

...How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months....

Security Council 7 March 2003

Hussein's brutal regime would have remained in place, but hundreds of thousands of people who have died since the 2003 invasion would still be alive and living conditions in Iraq would have improved dramatically.

You seem to have a misperception that millions of people were dying in Iraq at the time of the invasion. Here is what the US government claims about the Iraq from 2000-2003:

- 122 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/March 2000
- 23 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in October 2001
- At least 130 Iraqi women were beheaded between June 2000 and April 2001

Life Under Saddam Hussein

At the time of the US invasion, the Hussein regime hadn't killed anyone for over a year. Since 2000 they executed 275 people convicted of capital crimes.

In 1999, the Hussein regime executed several thousand people. Most of these executions were related to a failed 1996 CIA sponsored coup attempt.

The coup that wasn't

Scott Ritter was the former US marine captain tasked with finding Saddam Hussein's weapons. Now, in this first detailed account, he reveals how the CIA plotted to use a UN weapons inspection to overthrow the Iraqi regime - and how fiasco turned to tragedy when it failed

Scott Ritter on failed CIA plot to overthrow the Saddam Hussein's regime using UN weapons inspection | World news | The Guardian

Like most totalitarian dictatorships including those the west considers allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the Hussein regime was brutal and oppressive. But for the most part, Iraqis not committing capital crimes or plotting to overthrow the government were left alone. Your obvious misperception that Hussein was killing millions and about to kill millions more at the time of the US invasion is based on pro-Iraq war misinformation coming mostly from the Bush admistration, propagated by a compliant news media and believed by millions of sheeple without question.

Most deaths blamed on Hussein occurred in the 1980's in the context of a war Hussein started with Iran ( Iran–Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) and early 1990's in the context of civil war in southern Iraq which was encouraged by similar techniques being used to encourage civil unrest in Iran in the last few weeks. ( 1991 Uprising in Karbala - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

The numbers of deaths attributed to Saddam Hussein are based on educated guesses and are probably about as accurate as ORB's survey.

 

[earth_as_one]

Sorry, but Eagle's right. You're throwing around nonsense numbers, and saying a bunch of false things too. Almost everything you've asserted about IBC is wrong:

"IBC only counts civilian deaths reported by multiple news sources. IBC does not count violent deaths that did not make the news." - IBC doesn't require "multiple news sources", nor does every source need to be a news source. It uses morgue and NGO records too, which may contain many deaths that did not "make the news". You can see this on the wiki page about it or their website.

" IBC does not count hundreds of thousands of violent deaths resulting from increased crime and religious strife." - Again, entirely false. According to the wiki again, IBC includes: "civilian deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence in Iraq since the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq." So IBC includes exactly what you say the exclude. And you just made up that these would be "hundreds of thousands" anyway.

Your poll giving "1,033,000" is not credible either and there's a lot you get wrong about it. First, it does not use "scientifically proven and accepted formulas". It is a crude opinion poll pretending to be a scientific mortality survey and which they do crude extrapolations on top of. An estimate which better matches your description is the WHO study ("IFHS" on wiki), which was a much more comprehensive sample and a much more serious study, published in the NEJM scientific journal (rather than a polling firm's own website), and which estimated 151,000.

You also rely alot on the range given for the poll, apparently under the impression that it is a 95% confidence interval. It's actually just another crude and arbitrary calculation pretending to be a confidence interval. When this poll first came out this range was debunked on other discussion boards because, for one, it doesn't account for clustering, but just pretends they did a simple random sample, which they didn't do, which means the range needs to be much wider. Even if it were an actual or credible 95% confidence interval, this statement is wrong: "there is only a 2.5% chance that the number is outside the listed range," because a confidence interval only quantifies the sampling error, which is only one kind of error out of many that can distort an estimate drawn from a sample. IOW, at best, the range only quantifies a particular part of the true range of potential error. But if we ignore this, we could say that the bigger and more credible WHO study gives less than a 2.5% statistical chance that your poll is right, or even within a mile of being right.

Lastly on IBC, you quote statements from them, but don't quote the ones showing that they reject the conclusions you put forward: "Our own view is that the current death toll could be around twice the numbers recorded by IBC and the various official sources in Iraq. We do not think it could possibly be 10 times higher."
The state of knowledge on civilian casualties in Iraq :: Iraq Body Count

Welcome to the forum raymond peters.

No one has absolute numbers regarding the death toll for this conflict.

I stand corrected regarding the IBC. Before they record a death, they require corroboration from multiple sources and the news media is just one possible source.

I reject your claim that the numbers I'm using are nonsense. I didn't pull these numbers out of the air. I referenced the most recent information I know regarding this topic.

Your reliance on IBC's numbers are flawed. IBC never claimed their numbers represent the total number of violent deaths in Iraq attributable to US led invasion of Iraq. They claim each death they list is verifiable. But lots of Iraqis have died anonymously in this conflicted and as a result didn't make IBC's list. That means IBC's numbers do not represent the actual number of violent deaths attributable to the US led invasion of Iraq. In fact IBC admits they believe the actual number is likely twice as high as their published numbers.

But you seem to take IBC's numbers as a more reliable than ORB's number. Perhaps you can explain the scientific rationale behind IBC's belief that they have underestimated the number of deaths by only 50% and don't accept that they may have underestimated by a greater factor? What scientifically accepted method did they use? What is IBC's margin of error when they say the current death toll could be twice their posted number?

Also IBC only counts civilian deaths. I count all soldiers who serve their countries (including Iraq) as well as all insurgents (foreign and Iraqi) fighting the Iraq occupation among the people who might be alive today if the US hadn't invaded Iraq.

ORB's survey used scientific methods to calculate their estimate. I agree they weren't published in a scientific journal, but that hardly means this information can be discounted. Their estimate is more or less consistent with a previous 2006 Lancet estimate which was peer reviewed and printed in academic journals:

2006 Excess Mortality Study
Main article: Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties

The October 2006 Lancet study[17][18] estimated total excess deaths up to July 2006. Total deaths (civilian and non-civilian) include all additional deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.. The survey estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war. The 2006 study involved surveys between May 20 and July 10, 2006. More households were surveyed than during the 2004 study, allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths. The result was disputed by President Bush based both on the number of deaths and the methodology.[81]

Although the British Government initially tried to dispute the accuracy of the Lancet survey, the UK Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser later said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust" [82].

Casualties of the Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since July 2006 Lancet survey, the total number of casualties in Iraq has gone up, not down. IBC is a good reference in that they can verify every death, but its not accurate and by IBC's admission an underestimate. Even if the ORB's numbers aren't the most accurate, they are the most recent. I would like to see a link to the WHO study you referenced.

RP, I believe the actual current number is somewhere around a million. You obviously don't. Fine, let's agree to disagree.

But I'm interested in knowing whether you believe the Iraq war was justified and why.

 

[petros]

That would be a close call, taxslave. It would be difficult to say whether more Iraqis would have died under Saddam Hussein than died under Bush.

However, I do know what would have been different under Saddam. Christians would not have been persecuted under Saddam. Most Christians lived peacefully under Saddam, he was no Fundamentalist. Indeed, his Prime Minister was a Christian (Tariq Aziz).

After Saddam was overthrown, persecution of Christians started and I understand by now most of them have fled Iraq.

Just about the only good thing about Saddam was that he was not a Fundamentalist, he did not persecute Christians. As long as you worshipped Saddam as God no.1, he didn’t care who you worshipped as God no. 2, Allah or Jesus.

Saddam tried to buy aluminum tubes. There is nothing more frightening or dangerous than aluminum tubes. That would be like Iran getting water and making a hydrogen bomb. Oh the horror.

 

[EagleSmack]

Shouldn't people who shoot from the hip and kill a million people be held accountable for their actions?

Perhaps but we did neither of the two. We did not shoot from the hip nor did we kill a million people.

Americans should know how much blod they have on their hands. They should know how many innocent people have died as a direct and indirect result of their leaders' decision to rid Iraq of non-existent WMD stockpiles and punish Iraq for their non-existent links to al Queda.

Most Americans believe they've done Iraqis a service, when the ugly reality is that their leaders have committed war crimes and destroyed millions of lives.

We do know... and it isn't a million.

 

[darkbeaver]

999,999 is more acceptable to the imperialist dog lickers

 

[darkbeaver]

Perhaps but we did neither of the two. We did not shoot from the hip nor did we kill a million people.



We do know... and it isn't a million.

Oh yes you did and legally you murdered every one of them

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]US Iraqi Holocaust And One Million Excess Deaths[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]By Dr Gideon Polya[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]07 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org

It is nearly the Fourth Anniversary of the illegal Anglo-American-Australian-Coalition invasion of Iraq. What has been the economic and human cost of Bush’s Iraq War?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In short, as of February 2007: (a) the accrual cost has been $2.3 TRILLION; (b) there are 3.7 million Iraqi refugees; (c) the post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.0 million (ONE MILLION); (d) post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.6 million; (e) there were 1.7 million excess Iraqi deaths associated with the Western-imposed 1990-2003 Sanctions War; (f) there were 1.2 million under-5 year old infant deaths in the 1990-2003 Sanctions War (see: MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Iraqis Massacre Continues... ); and (g) Coalition deaths total about 3,360. These horrifying estimates from authoritative sources are amplified and documented below.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif](a) ECONOMIC COST TO USA. The accrual cost of the Iraq War (i.e. the total, long-term committed cost, not just the Congressional allocation as measured by “cost accounting”) is $2.3 trillion according to the 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate US Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and his Harvard colleague Professor Linda Bilmes (see: The more-than-$2-trillion war ). [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif](b) IRAQI REFUGEES. The number of Iraqi refugees now total 3.7 million - 2.0 million outside Iraq and 1.7 million inside Iraq – and UNHCR predicts that there will be up to 2.3 million internally displaced people within Iraq by the end of this year. (see: UN launches £30m Iraq refugees appeal | World news | guardian.co.uk ).[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif](c) POST-INVASION IRAQI EXCESS DEATHS. In October 2006 an estimate of “655,000 post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq as of July 2006” came from a top medical epidemiology research team in America's (and the World's) top Public Health Department (the Bloomberg School of Public Health) at a top US university (Johns Hopkins) and was published peer-reviewed in a top medical journal (The Lancet) and endorsed by 27 top Australian medical experts in the area (see: MWC News: MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Ignoring Iraq Holocaust/ ; MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Gideon Polya and MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Bush & Blair Holocaust Commission ).[/FONT]
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