Another big number ... 655,000

[WildBillHickok]

[stickdude]

[k3nt]

[laynegt]

[Rhound50]

[excession]

The group that came up with this number is the same group that released their "estimate" of 100,000 deaths just weeks before the 2004 elections.

Now they release this "estimate" just weeks before the 2006 elections.

I imagine that their "estimate" will be up to tens of millions of dead Iraqis by the time the 2008 elections roll around...


If you read the methodology it's impeccable and follows the standard worldwide procedure for estimating impact of wars and natural disasters.

About 2000 home visits (12000 people) across 47 randomly selected areas of Iraq; 92% of all those claiming deaths in the family could produce death certificates there and then; - conclusion is mortality rates have doubled since pre-war - seems reasonable to me.

No critic has come up with any methodological or statistical flaw - Bush just says 'nah I don't believe that' as do Blairand the Iraqi government. Hmmm.. which do I believe - the results of a scientific study performed by world renowned epidemioligists published in a peer-reviewed journal or the guys that are still denying global warming and evolution and whose political lives depend on convincing us that it's going OK in Iraq (and who have been very careful NOT to carry out any casualty assessments of their own)?

Not exactly a tough call is it?

The margin of error gives a 95% likelihood of 400-850k I think.

[low dough]

[excession]

[T-Rod]

[k3nt]

The point is not to apportion blame. At least, not to me. It's simply to point out the fact of the deaths, and think about what it might mean for the future.

It is sad to me that everybody in the discussion wants to take the article and twist it to fit their already pre-conceived notions about the way things are going. It's like none of us (me included, most of the time) have the ability to step back and really think about things. Even amazingly horrible things like 1/40 of the population of a nation dead, unnecessarily.

Somehow our intellectual filters and our need to be right about things are stronger than our empathy.

[excession]

Here's what we are supposed to conclude from this: 600k died that didn't need to if the US/UK hadn't invaded, so see the Iraq war REALLY is bad and unnecessary and those 600k lives are the US/UK's fault.

Well that is the obvious conclusion yes; you can argue that leaving Saddam in power would eventually have caused casualties when his regime collapsed but there is no guarantee that totalitarian regimes always collapse into bloodshed. Spain didn't; Romania didn't; USSR didn't (mostly); Yugoslavia did.

We interfered for no good reason and blew it.. that's the long and the short of it - these figures are being 'disputed' (in the same way that creationists dispute evolution - with no logical evidence) by the powers that be because they make clear the horrifying scale of their blunder

[NorthView]

If you don't learn from the mistakes of the past, you're destined to repeat them, and that implies that you need to understand what the mistakes were. If that's apportioning blame, so be it, call me a blame-apportioner - I don't care, as long as those responsible for this disgusting human tragedy are identified and held accountable for their actions.

Some chance - Blair will get a knighthood and Bush and Co will be pensioned off back into the oil industry they've served so well (or given high ranking Directorships at the likes of Halliburton as a thank you for putting so much business their way).

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
Stalin or Bush?

[excession]

"A single US death is a tragedy; a million other deaths we don't count."

FYP

[Rhound50]

Trod First the numbers are highly debated, but they are debated by people who have a personal agenda and have no scientific facts to back up. They kind of remind me of my ex when she lost a debate, she would have no logical comeback so she would just say "No your wrong."

To say we are saving lives by building infrastructure is a smoke screen, sure we are saving some people but 600k people are dead, I dont think anyone would say that without the war that we started those people would be still be dead. Sure there is a possibility that there would have been an attempt to overthow the governement anyways but there is also a chance that there would be peace.

Kent you say that you dont want to place blame but that is exactly what we should be doing. As Trod said the government is spending billions of our dollars on this war and to this point it has been almost a total failure. The government answers to the people, when they waste our money we should place blame on those who made the bad decisions to get us there in the first place, this is one of the major premises of democracy.

Finally Trod you say that the bad people are the terrorists that are blowing up US/UK/Iraq troops in guerilla warfare tactics. Sure you can say that but where are they all coming from? They are growing in numbers because in our failed attempt to turn Iraq into a democracy we have made conditions worse not better than they were before this war. Are these terrorists really the bad guys? Look back at some history, there was a very similar episode a couple hundred years a go a little closer to home. In this little scurmish some people used guerilla warfare tactics to raise hell and try to get rid of a governmental setup that the majority of people didnt want. We called this the revolutionary war and the people were called patriots, look at this through the eyes of the terrorists in Iraq is it really all that different?

[excession]