600,000 killed by Bush's war in Iraq

[Proteus_MST]

Not too much, considering that you now have a population of around 24.000.000
and that before the invasion (according to the 2002 estimates of 6 deaths/1000 per year) you already get 400 death per day.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
Right, see for awhile I forgot that Iraqi lives were worthless

Do I really have to analyze this? *sigh*

I pointed out that there are many more factors than the body count involved in evaluating the success [or, implicitly, failure] of the Iraq war. You retort "but it's a great way to measure failure." Does that make any sense whatsoever? (No.)

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Do I really have to analyze this? *sigh*

I pointed out that there are many more factors than the body count involved in evaluating the success [or, implicitly, failure] of the Iraq war. You retort "but it's a great way to measure failure." Does that make any sense whatsoever? (No.)

The other metrics don't look too good either, and quite frankly we can't evaluate long-term success right now because we don't know where Iraq will be in 10 years, what we can evaluate are body counts.

[Kuciwalker]

The other metrics don't look too good either, and quite frankly we can't evaluate long-term success right now because we don't know where Iraq will be in 10 years, what we can evaluate are body counts.

You could have said that the first time, rather than coming up with a witty-sounding but meaningless retort. I agree that there are no particularly good metrics right now.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Tingkai


What people should be able to do and what they can do are often very different things.

.......

Let's see, should we trust your armchair observations, or a survey of of thousands of people who have actually experienced the carnage in Iraq. Which has the greater margin of error? Which will be closer to the truth.

What you should do and what you will do are always going to differ Tingkai. And it's my educated and experienced scepticism vs some people who say they've interviewed people who say they've experienced carnage or say they know people who have experienced carnage. I've seen too many supposedly bullet-proof studies, polls etc. that have fallen apart under scrutiny to not comment on what seem to be huge anomolies in the data set. None of the primary data I've seen support these levels of American lethality. I've talked to a good number of people who have served over there and read the accounts of hundreds more, and the impression I get from them is very similar to the impression I've gotten thus far from the media. That impression is one where Americans are more likely to be shot at / attacked then vice versa. Why then are our casualty rates (including wounded) so low?

It's possible that we have some confusion of terms (if for instance they are adding into the numbers people who were killed by the insurgency rather than coalition forces). I mean how was it determined by the respondents exactly how people were killed and by whom? I've seen many cases where locals claim that American missles blew this or that group of people up when it is patently obvious from the footage of the crater that no missle could have possible done so, and the probable cause of the casualties was an accidental detonation of an IED as it was being placed.

[Sikander]

Here's an interesting story on BBC's website regarding this report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6045112.stm


Here's a snippet from the above story which contains some of Iraq Body Counts objections / questions / doubts about the survey:

IBC response

The Iraqi Body Count response is as follows. Its says the Lancet report implies that:

#
On average a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every day in the first half of 2006, with "less than a tenth being noticed by any public surveillance mechanism."

#

Of 800,000 wounded people in the past two years, "less than a tenth received any kind of hospital treatment."

#

Over 7% of the male population has been killed; 10% in central region.

#

Half a million death certificates were issued to families but not officially recorded.

#

The Coalition has killed far more people in the last year than in the invasion and Falluja type-operations of earlier years.

The IBC says that such assertions suggested incompetence/fraud on a massive scale by hospitals and ministries, self-destructive behaviour by the wounded, an utter failure by agencies to notice decimation of the male population and an abject media failure to observe the scale of events.

The IBC concludes: "In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy."

'Missing' dead

One issue that arises is why, to speak crudely, the numbers of bodies being discovered do not match the Lancet figures.

If it is assumed that there were 601,000 violent "excess" deaths between March 2003 and July 2006 (about 40 months), that should produce an average of about 500 violent deaths per day.

This is not going to be so all the time, given the spikes of violence, but it is a rough criterion.

The latest figures from the Iraqi health ministry (reported by the Associated Press news agency on 11 October) stated that 2,667 people were killed in Baghdad during September, 400 more than in August.

This gives an average of about 86 per day in the capital.

Baghdad is not the whole country of course, but AP reported the United Nations as saying that in July and August, 6,599 people were killed across the country, of which 5,106 were in Baghdad.

This suggests that Baghdad has by far the highest number of actual and percentage dead.

So, if the current rate in Baghdad is about 86 and the countrywide figure should be about 500 according to the Lancet report, where are the "missing" dead?

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Anyway, the number is BS.

Anyway, god is BS.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by notyoueither
A death rate with a margin of error?

What's so odd about that?

[Chemical Ollie]

Does this mean that Iraq Body Count will get any official approvement from U.S? Or do they consider those numbers exagerated too?

[Straybow]

So where is all this happening, the 200k deaths directly attributed to US action? Why isn't there a ton of footage showing up on Al Jazeera of these murderous soldiers rampaging through the country killing 200 a day?

If only 1% were caught on tape we'd be seeing video of two deaths a day.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Straybow
So where is all this happening, the 200k deaths directly attributed to US action? Why isn't there a ton of footage showing up on Al Jazeera of these murderous soldiers rampaging through the country killing 200 a day?

If only 1% were caught on tape we'd be seeing video of two deaths a day.

It doesn´t matter.
Nobody said that these people were directly killed as a result of US action.
But by invading Iraq you created the environment in which people have a higher probability of dying than during the regime under Saddam.

You indirectly caused this mess by doing the wrong thing a couple of years ago (invading Iraq) and/or because you are doing not enough of the right things now (i.e. spend more money and/or manpower into creating a more stable and peaceful environment in Iraq)

[Dinner]

The Iraq Body count website has been debunked as pure speculative BS. You simply don't kill, wound, or maim 5% of a country's population without there being a very clear picture that is has occured. Especially since the claims made about the dead and/or wounded would equal 10% of the adult population and 20% of the adult male population.

Those numbers just don't add up.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The Iraq Body count website has been debunked as pure speculative BS. You simply don't kill, wound, or maim 5% of a country's population without there being a very clear picture that is has occured. Especially since the claims made about the dead and/or wounded would equal 10% of the adult population and 20% of the adult male population.

Those numbers just don't add up.

I thought the IBC was based on actual corpses registered in morgues, and thus presents a rather conservative estimate?

[Dinner]

I'm not sure if they adjusted their forumla but I recall back in 2004-2005 they got ass raped in the media her for having scientificly unsound estimate numbers which were radically different from even the UN's inflated guesstimites.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ramo
You mean, police state.

So they have a lot of organized political violence from a bunch of different sources instead of much less from one. Freedom

They get to choose who will kill them, and there's even a choice as to methods - bombing, shooting (with or without torture), or beheading. Freedom, and market choice.