One million dead

[Jos]

OVER A million Iraqis are dead from America's war.

That sentence is a cognitive litmus test. Some people's immediate reaction is, "That can't be right," because the United States couldn't do that. Or because crimes on that scale don't still happen. Or because they do happen, but only in horrible places that the United States hasn't rescued.

One million is a "Grandpa, what did you do to stop it?" number. It's a number that undeniably puts the American state among history's villains. Those who are not willing or able to accept this are physically unable to retain the fact that over a million Iraqis are dead. Their brains expel it like a foreign germ.

Noam Chomsky once wrote that the "sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of '**** You,' so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response."

That pretty much sums up the how the media reacted to the one million figure in 2007 when it was announced by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB). (In fact, the firm estimated 1,220,580 Iraqis had died, confirming and updating a separate study done the year before by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal.)

Take Kevin O'Brien, deputy editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Upon receiving a media advisory about the findings from ORB, whose clients include the British Conservative Party and Morgan Stanley, this was his response: "Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda."

One million dead :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [gd]

 

[syrenn]

Really?


The Americans killed one million iraqis?



nice get a reaction piece of shit....

 

[BluePhantom]

So what? We killed two million in Vietnam. It's a war. People die.

 

[jillian]

Really?


The Americans killed one million iraqis?



nice get a reaction piece of shit....

why would you ever expect her to post something that isn't a lie or distortion?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Actually less then 100,000 died and almost all of them due to terrorist bombings or Insurgent attacks. But hey never let a good lie die right?

 

[BluePhantom]

why would you ever expect her to post something that isn't a lie or distortion?

Well there has been over a million Iraqi casualties...at least if you include wounded in the count. Depending on the source you look at (which is only a google search away) some estimates are a million dead too.

My question is: "so what?" Just using wiki (yes I know wiki sucks but for this point it will do) we waxed about 2.5 million in Vietnam and almost 4 million in Korea (military and civilian combined). In World War II it was about 72 million. I'd say a 1 million body count is pretty low by comparison. And as I said...no one likes killing civilians, but civilians die in war. There's never been a war where civilians didn't get wasted and frankly the civilian body count is usually higher than the military body count.

War is a brutal thing. That's all there is to it.

Korean War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Jos]

Jewlian, still cant tell the difference between male and female

 

[alexa]

War is a brutal thing. That's all there is to it.

and 'liberating' people too, it would seem.

Here are some pretty full statistics

http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm

 

[DeeCee]

Don't we have to blame: Al Qaeda, Iran/Hezbollah and Saddam-ists?

 

[toomuchtime_]

OVER A million Iraqis are dead from America's war.

That sentence is a cognitive litmus test. Some people's immediate reaction is, "That can't be right," because the United States couldn't do that. Or because crimes on that scale don't still happen. Or because they do happen, but only in horrible places that the United States hasn't rescued.

One million is a "Grandpa, what did you do to stop it?" number. It's a number that undeniably puts the American state among history's villains. Those who are not willing or able to accept this are physically unable to retain the fact that over a million Iraqis are dead. Their brains expel it like a foreign germ.

Noam Chomsky once wrote that the "sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of '**** You,' so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response."

That pretty much sums up the how the media reacted to the one million figure in 2007 when it was announced by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB). (In fact, the firm estimated 1,220,580 Iraqis had died, confirming and updating a separate study done the year before by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal.)

Take Kevin O'Brien, deputy editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Upon receiving a media advisory about the findings from ORB, whose clients include the British Conservative Party and Morgan Stanley, this was his response: "Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda."

One million dead :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [gd]

These results are much, much higher than other studies, which place the number of violent deaths anywhere from about 60,000 to about 150,000. The World Health organization's study estimated 151,000 violent deaths and the Iraqi Health Minister believed this number was too high. Leaked classified US military estimates put the number at 109,000.

On the Other hand,

According to The New York Times, "he [Saddam] murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule".[9] Others have estimated 800,000 deaths caused by Saddam not counting the Iran-Iraq war.[10] Estimates as to the number of Iraqis executed by Saddam's regime vary from 300-500,000[11] to over 600,000,[12] estimates as to the number of Kurds he massacred vary from 70,000 to 300,000,[13] and estimates as to the number killed in the put-down of the 1991 rebellion vary from 60,000[14] to 200,000.[12] Estimates for the number of dead in the Iran-Iraq war range upwards from 300,000.[15]

Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So it is reasonable to assume that the US invasion of Iraq saved Iraqi lives overall.

 

[alexa]

OVER A million Iraqis are dead from America's war.

That sentence is a cognitive litmus test. Some people's immediate reaction is, "That can't be right," because the United States couldn't do that. Or because crimes on that scale don't still happen. Or because they do happen, but only in horrible places that the United States hasn't rescued.

One million is a "Grandpa, what did you do to stop it?" number. It's a number that undeniably puts the American state among history's villains. Those who are not willing or able to accept this are physically unable to retain the fact that over a million Iraqis are dead. Their brains expel it like a foreign germ.

Noam Chomsky once wrote that the "sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of '**** You,' so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response."

That pretty much sums up the how the media reacted to the one million figure in 2007 when it was announced by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB). (In fact, the firm estimated 1,220,580 Iraqis had died, confirming and updating a separate study done the year before by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal.)

Take Kevin O'Brien, deputy editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Upon receiving a media advisory about the findings from ORB, whose clients include the British Conservative Party and Morgan Stanley, this was his response: "Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda."

One million dead :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [gd]

These results are much, much higher than other studies, which place the number of violent deaths anywhere from about 60,000 to about 150,000. The World Health organization's study estimated 151,000 violent deaths and the Iraqi Health Minister believed this number was too high. Leaked classified US military estimates put the number at 109,000.

On the Other hand,

According to The New York Times, "he [Saddam] murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule".[9] Others have estimated 800,000 deaths caused by Saddam not counting the Iran-Iraq war.[10] Estimates as to the number of Iraqis executed by Saddam's regime vary from 300-500,000[11] to over 600,000,[12] estimates as to the number of Kurds he massacred vary from 70,000 to 300,000,[13] and estimates as to the number killed in the put-down of the 1991 rebellion vary from 60,000[14] to 200,000.[12] Estimates for the number of dead in the Iran-Iraq war range upwards from 300,000.[15]

Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So it is reasonable to assume that the US invasion of Iraq saved Iraqi lives overall.

very strange idea there. The last guy killed them so doesn't matter if we do too - just as long as we make sure the 'public' back home don't know.

Civilian Casualties: Hundreds of Thousands in Iraq, Tens of Thousands in Afghanistan But Who's Counting? | LA Progressive

Look at the difference between coalition and Iraq statistics on deaths. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf

Lieutenant General Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as head of US Central Command, once announced, "We don't do body counts." This blunt response to a question about civilian casualties was an attempt to distance George Bush's wars from the disaster of Vietnam. One of the rituals of that earlier conflict was the daily announcement of how many Vietnamese fighters US forces had killed. It was supposed to convince a sceptical American public that victory was coming. But the "body count" concept sounded callous - and never more so than when it emerged that many of the alleged guerrilla dead were in fact women, children and other unarmed civilians.

-snip-

The results range from just under 100,000 dead to well over a million. Inevitably, the issue has become a political football, with the Bush administration, the British government and other supporters of the US-led occupation seizing on the lowest estimates and opponents on the highest.

What is the real death toll in Iraq? Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg report | World news | The Guardian

The below article states that although 100,000 are quoted, likely the real number is nearer 600,000 and what about Private Contractors. They have not exactly gone to die and yet 180,000 of them have, apparently not included under civilians

Iraq War Facts, Statistics at November 30, 2011 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending

Sadly for too many as we have seen in this thread, it just doesn't matter. I mean they weren't us, were they. I have just realised this evening that a lot of people I meet on boards were brought up with this killing and lack of care in their childhood and see it as the norm.................

Be nice to have a generation which respects life again.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

One million dead :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [gd]

These results are much, much higher than other studies, which place the number of violent deaths anywhere from about 60,000 to about 150,000. The World Health organization's study estimated 151,000 violent deaths and the Iraqi Health Minister believed this number was too high. Leaked classified US military estimates put the number at 109,000.

On the Other hand,



Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So it is reasonable to assume that the US invasion of Iraq saved Iraqi lives overall.

very strange idea there. The last guy killed them so doesn't matter if we do too - just as long as we make sure the 'public' back home don't know.

Civilian Casualties: Hundreds of Thousands in Iraq, Tens of Thousands in Afghanistan But Who's Counting? | LA Progressive

Look at the difference between coalition and Iraq statistics on deaths.

Lieutenant General Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as head of US Central Command, once announced, "We don't do body counts." This blunt response to a question about civilian casualties was an attempt to distance George Bush's wars from the disaster of Vietnam. One of the rituals of that earlier conflict was the daily announcement of how many Vietnamese fighters US forces had killed. It was supposed to convince a sceptical American public that victory was coming. But the "body count" concept sounded callous - and never more so than when it emerged that many of the alleged guerrilla dead were in fact women, children and other unarmed civilians.

-snip-

The results range from just under 100,000 dead to well over a million. Inevitably, the issue has become a political football, with the Bush administration, the British government and other supporters of the US-led occupation seizing on the lowest estimates and opponents on the highest.

What is the real death toll in Iraq? Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg report | World news | The Guardian

The below article states that although 100,000 are quoted, likely the real number is nearer 600,000 and what about Private Contractors. They have not exactly gone to die and yet 180,000 of them have, apparently not included under civilians

Iraq War Facts, Statistics at November 30, 2011 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending

Sadly for too many as we have seen in this thread, it just doesn't matter. I mean they weren't us, were they. I have just realised this evening that a lot of people I meet on boards were brought up with this killing and lack of care in their childhood and see it as the norm.................

Be nice to have a generation which respects life again.

And yet the Iraqi Government which has the DEATH certificates says less then 100,000. Which would suggest the US figure is close to accurate. You are aware that the million figure was a poll that interviewed people and then extrapolated as if it represented the whole country? And has been completely debunked

 

[alexa]

These results are much, much higher than other studies, which place the number of violent deaths anywhere from about 60,000 to about 150,000. The World Health organization's study estimated 151,000 violent deaths and the Iraqi Health Minister believed this number was too high. Leaked classified US military estimates put the number at 109,000.

On the Other hand,



Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So it is reasonable to assume that the US invasion of Iraq saved Iraqi lives overall.

very strange idea there. The last guy killed them so doesn't matter if we do too - just as long as we make sure the 'public' back home don't know.

Civilian Casualties: Hundreds of Thousands in Iraq, Tens of Thousands in Afghanistan But Who's Counting? | LA Progressive

Look at the difference between coalition and Iraq statistics on deaths.

Lieutenant General Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as head of US Central Command, once announced, "We don't do body counts." This blunt response to a question about civilian casualties was an attempt to distance George Bush's wars from the disaster of Vietnam. One of the rituals of that earlier conflict was the daily announcement of how many Vietnamese fighters US forces had killed. It was supposed to convince a sceptical American public that victory was coming. But the "body count" concept sounded callous - and never more so than when it emerged that many of the alleged guerrilla dead were in fact women, children and other unarmed civilians.

-snip-

The results range from just under 100,000 dead to well over a million. Inevitably, the issue has become a political football, with the Bush administration, the British government and other supporters of the US-led occupation seizing on the lowest estimates and opponents on the highest.

What is the real death toll in Iraq? Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg report | World news | The Guardian

The below article states that although 100,000 are quoted, likely the real number is nearer 600,000 and what about Private Contractors. They have not exactly gone to die and yet 180,000 of them have, apparently not included under civilians

Iraq War Facts, Statistics at November 30, 2011 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending

Sadly for too many as we have seen in this thread, it just doesn't matter. I mean they weren't us, were they. I have just realised this evening that a lot of people I meet on boards were brought up with this killing and lack of care in their childhood and see it as the norm.................

Be nice to have a generation which respects life again.

And yet the Iraqi Government which has the DEATH certificates says less then 100,000. Which would suggest the US figure is close to accurate. You are aware that the million figure was a poll that interviewed people and then extrapolated as if it represented the whole country? And has been completely debunked

Then produce the evidence. I don't know how many died. I understand pretty poor details were kept. The place which seems to give the count down with links is here

Iraq War Facts, Statistics at November 30, 2011 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending

Provide your evidence and I will have a look at it. People may well have died without death certificates.

 

[Trajan]

OVER A million Iraqis are dead from America's war.

That sentence is a cognitive litmus test. Some people's immediate reaction is, "That can't be right," because the United States couldn't do that. Or because crimes on that scale don't still happen. Or because they do happen, but only in horrible places that the United States hasn't rescued.

One million is a "Grandpa, what did you do to stop it?" number. It's a number that undeniably puts the American state among history's villains. Those who are not willing or able to accept this are physically unable to retain the fact that over a million Iraqis are dead. Their brains expel it like a foreign germ.

Noam Chomsky once wrote that the "sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of '**** You,' so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response."

That pretty much sums up the how the media reacted to the one million figure in 2007 when it was announced by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB). (In fact, the firm estimated 1,220,580 Iraqis had died, confirming and updating a separate study done the year before by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal.)

Take Kevin O'Brien, deputy editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Upon receiving a media advisory about the findings from ORB, whose clients include the British Conservative Party and Morgan Stanley, this was his response: "Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda."

One million dead :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [gd]

Tool kat says.....

 

[RetiredGySgt]

very strange idea there. The last guy killed them so doesn't matter if we do too - just as long as we make sure the 'public' back home don't know.

Civilian Casualties: Hundreds of Thousands in Iraq, Tens of Thousands in Afghanistan But Who's Counting? | LA Progressive

Look at the difference between coalition and Iraq statistics on deaths.



What is the real death toll in Iraq? Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg report | World news | The Guardian

The below article states that although 100,000 are quoted, likely the real number is nearer 600,000 and what about Private Contractors. They have not exactly gone to die and yet 180,000 of them have, apparently not included under civilians

Iraq War Facts, Statistics at November 30, 2011 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending

Sadly for too many as we have seen in this thread, it just doesn't matter. I mean they weren't us, were they. I have just realised this evening that a lot of people I meet on boards were brought up with this killing and lack of care in their childhood and see it as the norm.................

Be nice to have a generation which respects life again.

And yet the Iraqi Government which has the DEATH certificates says less then 100,000. Which would suggest the US figure is close to accurate. You are aware that the million figure was a poll that interviewed people and then extrapolated as if it represented the whole country? And has been completely debunked

Then produce the evidence. I don't know how many died. I understand pretty poor details were kept. The place which seems to give the count down with links is here

Iraq War Facts, Statistics at November 30, 2011 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending

Provide your evidence and I will have a look at it. People may well have died without death certificates.

you already have my source, the US Government and the Iraqi Government. Sorry if I don't do polls to determine dead. Perhaps YOU should ask where they got the numbers from since both my source4s have a means of actually counting the dead and not some paper **** up asking people in one area and the trying to claim it applies across the whole Country.

By the way, you may want to check out the total population of Iraq before the war and then how long the war was and how many dead would be piling up if it really were a million. Kinda hard to hide that many bodies. You are claiming that between a figure of 109000 and 1 million no one noticed the other 900000 bodies? And somehow 900000 died but not one of them was in a hospital, a funeral parlor or other facility to count them? NOT very likely.

 

[alexa]

And yet the Iraqi Government which has the DEATH certificates says less then 100,000. Which would suggest the US figure is close to accurate. You are aware that the million figure was a poll that interviewed people and then extrapolated as if it represented the whole country? And has been completely debunked

Then produce the evidence. I don't know how many died. I understand pretty poor details were kept. The place which seems to give the count down with links is here

Iraq War Facts, Statistics at November 30, 2011 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending

Provide your evidence and I will have a look at it. People may well have died without death certificates.

you already have my source, the US Government and the Iraqi Government.

Well if you look here fig 1 you will see that just for between Jan 2006 and May 2008 there is significant difference between the coalition statistics and the Iraqi ones

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf

Sorry if I don't do polls to determine dead.

Exactly who has presented a poll on the deaths. On the desire for Scottish Independence or Devo-Max maybe, on Deaths

Perhaps YOU should ask where they got the numbers from since both my source4s have a means of actually counting the dead and not some paper **** up asking people in one area and the trying to claim it applies across the whole Country.

I am remembering from early on. The US was not interested in the no of dead and the civilians were saying they were not being counted. We know that the US was giving out false information certainly before and for the first stages of the Iraq war. I remember one Russian saying the only difference between Western Media and Soviet was that they were aware they were being lied to.

By the way, you may want to check out the total population of Iraq before the war and then how long the war was and how many dead would be piling up if it really were a million. Kinda hard to hide that many bodies. You are claiming that between a figure of 109000 and 1 million no one noticed the other 900000 bodies? And somehow 900000 died but not one of them was in a hospital, a funeral parlor or other facility to count them? NOT very likely.

People likely buried them. I am not saying, which you still seem to have missed, that there were 1,000,000 dead. However as I can clearly remember the US saying they kept no note in the early years and the people saying no one was keeping any note, I would say that the likelihood is most strong that there were significant more Iraqi deaths than have been acknowledged. Numbers which have at times been estimated to be as large as a million. Did we care about deaths in Iraq of Iraqi citizens? Do we have an interest every day to hear of the on going terrorist attacks? That is as important in what I said. If we don't care about an Iraqi life then what makes you think we would have any interest in reporting the numbers correctly. The US itself admitted in the early years it did not even bother to count them.

Doubtless in a couple of decades, if Iraq manages to find any peace, we will find the real number.

 

[BluePhantom]

Doubtless in a couple of decades, if Iraq manages to find any peace, we will find the real number.

You dream. We will never know the actual number of dead. The US will minimize the estimate and the Iraqis and Muslim world will exaggerate the estimate. You also have to keep in mind that while the government will give out BS statistics so will the liberal organizations opposed to the war and both do it for political gain.

Also keep in mind what the criteria is for "wounded" when you are considering a casualty count that includes "dead or wounded". If one considers a "wound" to be something as small as a skinned knee or a minor cut, then sure...I would say there's almost certainly been more than a million dead or wounded. But that's a trick that organizations with an ax to grind will play. They will take that count and list it as simply "casualties" without specifically pointing out that it includes minor wounds as well. Then people read it and assume it means killed only.

So again I would point out that in historical context, after ten years of war the body count in Iraq is pretty damned low and I would reiterate Toomuchtime's point that Saddam killed a hell of a lot more than we did and the Gunnery Sgt's point that a lot of the civilian casualties came from insurgents and Muslim extremists themselves.

Now, I can assure you that if I were POTUS the body count would be much higher as I would loosen the ridiculous rules of engagement our soldiers are dealing with right now, but that's another argument completely.

 

[alexa]

Doubtless in a couple of decades, if Iraq manages to find any peace, we will find the real number.

You dream. We will never know the actual number of dead. The US will minimize the estimate and the Iraqis and Muslim world will exaggerate the estimate. You also have to keep in mind that while the government will give out BS statistics so will the liberal organizations opposed to the war and both do it for political gain.

Also keep in mind what the criteria is for "wounded" when you are considering a casualty count that includes "dead or wounded". If one considers a "wound" to be something as small as a skinned knee or a minor cut, then sure...I would say there's almost certainly been more than a million dead or wounded. But that's a trick that organizations with an ax to grind will play. They will take that count and list it as simply "casualties" without specifically pointing out that it includes minor wounds as well. Then people read it and assume it means killed only.

Here they argue the very opposite. That with respect to the dead they only give the numbers for those who died immediately. They did not give the number who later died. Hence giving a considerably smaller number.

Unknown*News | Helen & Harry's cranky weblog of news and opinion | unknownnews@inbox.com

So again I would point out that in historical context, after ten years of war the body count in Iraq is pretty damned low and I would reiterate Toomuchtime's point that Saddam killed a hell of a lot more than we did and the Gunnery Sgt's point that a lot of the civilian casualties came from insurgents and Muslim extremists themselves.

Far, far too many civilians were killed in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq your argument about insurgents and extremists goes nowhere as it was known by both US and British intelligence before they went in that there were no Al Qaeda working there but that the one thing which would make them active there was an attack on Iraq.

With Afghanistan the choice was made to attack rather than provide evidence as to why Bin Laden was implicated which would have resulted in him being handed over. The US chose to make Bin Laden into a war hero (war on terror/war on Muslims) rather than a criminal wanted for, according to the UN, crimes against humanity. Furthermore the US was warned by Abdul Haq that the killing of civilians in Afghanistan would only give the Taliban who were extremely unpopular and weak, support. He asked the US to hold off for a while as he had been receiving calls from all over Afghanistan saying just give us a nod and a wink and we will topple the Taliban. The Taliban were hated. Abdul Haq believed they could be overthrown largely through psychological means but that if the US started bombing, people would put family needs first and those willing to help would go to look after their family and/or move towards the Taliban. He was of course completely correct. The US ignored him and furthermore left him to be murdered when he was captured by the Taliban. He was probably the one person left who could have united the Afghans of all clans because he was way above such stuff and was known for his integrity - he also was known to be nobody's puppet.

Now, I can assure you that if I were POTUS the body count would be much higher as I would loosen the ridiculous rules of engagement our soldiers are dealing with right now, but that's another argument completely.

100,000 is ridiculous considering after 3 years reputable organisations were suggesting it was already 1,000,000.

'Body Count' seems to be what everyone relies on

As the cornerstone of its work, IBC counts only Iraq civilian deaths that are reported in newspapers or on television. In a nation ravaged daily by violence, it seems unlikely that reports of every man, woman, and child killed -- or even most Iraqi deaths -- would be mentioned in that nation's media.

Furthermore, as IBC states,

"We have not made use of Arabic or other non English language sources, except where these have been published in English. ... It is possible that our count has excluded some victims as a result."

"It is Possible..."? The principle languages of Iraq are Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Armenian. English is a fairly common second language in Iraq, but few of that nation's newspapers or newscasts are in English, the only language IBC is reading. Thus it's impossible to imagine that many casualties are not being excluded.

Also, IBC's methodology ignores even English-language media reports of Iraqi civilians' deaths, unless matching reports of the same casualties are published by at least "two independent [English-language] agencies."

Unknown*News | Helen & Harry's cranky weblog of news and opinion | unknownnews@inbox.com

 

[BluePhantom]

100,000 is ridiculous considering after 3 years reputable organisations were suggesting it was already 1,000,000.

'Body Count' seems to be what everyone relies on

Well I am not quite sure who Helen and Harry are or why anyone would take what they say on their blog as gospel, however, you miss the point. Even if it is 1,000,000 dead that's a ridiculously low body count for 10 years of war compared to other major military operations.

On top of which (and I speak only for myself here)...personally I don't care if it was 1 million or 5 million. I will happily sacrifice 100,000 foreign civilians to protect a single American soldier. Perhaps that makes me a ruthless, heartless prick. So be it. But don't you think it's interesting how the Muslim world screams about civilians killed by the American military but they don't seem to say a whole lot about civilians killed by other Muslims who walked into a crowded market with a bomb strapped to their ass.

Regardless, war sucks and people get killed. To win a war you take and hold more land, and kill the enemy and their supporters. To quote General Patton "no one won a war by dying for their country. They won it by making the other son of a ***** die for his."

 

[Steiny]

That's like the enitre population of the state of Maine.