US War Has Killed 655,000 Iraqis
by David Walsh
12 October 2006

According to a study published Wednesday in the British medical journal
the Lancet, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq are responsible for
the deaths of an estimated 655,000 Iraqis.

The survey of Iraqi casualties was conducted by a team of Iraqi
physicians under the direction of epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins
University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

The estimate of the researchers is more than 12 times the figure of
44,000 to 49,000 civilian deaths given by the British group Iraq Body
Count, and nearly 22 times the figure of 30,000, "more or less,"
mentioned by President Bush in a December 2005 press conference.

The number of estimated deaths of Iraqis since the invasion corresponds
to 2.5 percent of the population of Iraq. A matching percentage of the
US population of 300 million would be 7.5 million-nearly the entire
population of New York City.

The number of 655,000 represents the "excess" deaths caused by the
American invasion and occupation. This is the difference between the
number of people killed since March 2003 and the number of deaths that
would be expected on the basis of pre-war death rates.

Of the total number of war-related deaths, an estimated 600,000 died as
a result of violence, including gun shots, car bombs and other
explosive devices, and air strikes. An estimated 31 percent of these,
or 186,000, are attributed by the study directly to coalition
forces-that is, these Iraqis were killed by the American military or
its allies. According to the study, gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of
violent deaths-an extraordinarily high figure that points again to
the direct role of the US military.

An additional 24 percent of war-related deaths are attributed to other
sources, including sectarian killings and suicide bombings, while 45
percent are classified as unknown.

These figures give a partial picture of the consequences of a war crime
of vast dimensions. US imperialism has laid waste to an entire country
and killed a significant proportion of the population in order to seize
control of Iraq's vast oil resources and establish a hegemonic
position in the Middle East. The Lancet report stands as an indictment
not only of the Bush administration, but of the entire US political
establishment.

Death on such a scale was an entirely foreseeable result of the
invasion of Iraq. The US attack has produced a social catastrophe of
historical proportions.

The nightmare of death and destruction unleashed by the US gives the
lie to all of the claims, beyond the phony allegations of weapons of
mass destruction and Iraqi support for Al Qaeda, advanced to justify
the war-that it was launched to liberate the Iraqi people, that it is
a war for democracy and freedom, etc.

The report states that the US intervention has killed more than twice
as many Iraqis in the space of three-and-a-half years than were killed
by the regime of Saddam Hussein in the course of its 24-year reign,
based on the estimate by Human Rights Watch of 250,000 to 290,000
killings under the deposed Baathist government.

The occupying forces are responsible not only for those they killed
directly, but for all of the violence that has been unleashed by the
invasion. The US policy of supporting different ethnic groups and
pitting them against each other has led to the sharp increase in
sectarian killings over the past year. The ultimate cause of all the
deaths, as well as the uncounted injuries, lies in the decision to
launch the war itself.

The 55,000 additional deaths from non-violent sources are attributed by
the study to heart attacks, cancer, infant mortality and other
illnesses. This increase is directly related to the destruction of
Iraq's social infrastructure, including electricity, sanitation,
clean water and medical care.

The immediate response of the Bush administration to the Lancet report
was a predictable mixture of contempt and indifference. In a press
conference on Wednesday, Bush called the figure of 655,000 "not
credible" and said the methodology used in the study had been
"discredited." He did not bother to explain the basis on which he
dismissed the report.

For its part, the Pentagon responded by saying that it "regrets the
loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else." The pro-forma
character of this statement betrays the complete indifference of the US
military. The Pentagon went on to claim, "It would be difficult for
the US to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as
a result of insurgent activity."

This statement, as with virtually all official US statements on Iraqi
casualties, attributes the toll on Iraqi lives entirely to the
resistance, not to US violence. This is yet another in the mountain of
lies employed to justify the war.

Since the invasion, the US government has refused to release figures on
the deaths it has caused. The US-backed Iraqi government has
systematically underestimated the death toll, and has stepped up its
policy of concealment in tandem with the increasing carnage from US
military attacks, mass killings by death squads, and suicide bombings.
Beginning in September, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki barred the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry from
releasing their own reports on deaths.

The Lancet study is the most credible estimate of deaths available, and
is based on an entirely sound methodology. The figure of 655,000 is
much higher than numbers reported by other surveys, including Iraq Body
Count, because these other estimates rely on passive surveys of deaths
reported in the press. This method is known to vastly underestimate
actual deaths, since most killings go unreported. Iraq Body Count also
includes only civilian casualties, while the Lancet report includes all
deaths.

In an article on Wednesday, the Washington Post cited several
researchers who backed the survey's findings, including Ronald
Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, who said the survey
methods were "tried and true" and that the results were "the best
estimate of mortality we have" from Iraq. Sarah Leah Whitson, from
Human Rights Watch, said that there was "no reason" to question the
report's findings.

The Post noted, "Both this and the earlier [Johns Hopkins] study are
the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods.
The technique, called 'cluster sampling,' is used to estimate
mortality in famines and after natural disasters."

To arrive at their estimate, the researchers selected a random
population sample across different regions of Iraq and then calculated
the number of deaths since the invasion of March 2003 in that sample.
In total, 1,849 households were visited, and a member of the household
was asked to report on deaths in the family from the period beginning
14 months before the invasion of Iraq through to the present.

To verify the reported deaths, the interviewers requested death
certificates 87 percent of the time. Of those asked, 92 percent were
able to give certificates.

After calculating the number of post-invasion deaths among the
households sampled, the resulting figure was used to estimate the
number of deaths for the population as a whole. Based on pre-invasion
death rates, the researchers calculated the expected deaths during the
same period. The difference between these two figures yielded the
"excess" deaths produced by the invasion and occupation. The
655,000 number is a middle figure. The researchers reported that they
were 95 percent confident that the actual number of deaths was between
393,000 and 943,000.

Even if one assumes that the low-end of their estimate is correct, the
death toll is staggering, with the US military directly responsible for
more than 110,000 violent deaths.

Claims that the Johns Hopkins research methods are unsound were also
used in an attempt to discredit an earlier report that estimated
100,000 excess deaths in Iraq from March 2003 to September 2004. The
new study gives independent confirmation of that figure, yielding on
the basis of an independent sample an estimate of 112,000 during that
same period.

In answering a question on the Lancet report during his press
conference on Wednesday, Bush's comments reeked of stupidity,
indifference and imperial arrogance. Acknowledging that "a lot of
innocent people have died," Bush said he applauded the Iraqi people
"for their courage in the face of violence."

"This is a society which so wants to be free that... there's a
level of violence they are willing to tolerate," Bush said. The truth
is the exact opposite. The violence is a product of colonial
subjugation of a population that overwhelmingly opposes the presence of
foreign troops in Iraq. Recent polls have found that at least 60
percent of the population supports attacks on US military forces.

At the same time, Bush indicated that the level of killing will
increase in the coming period. He declared that it is "time for the
Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods"-a
reference to US demands for a violent crackdown on Iraqi resistance,
particularly on anti-American Shiite militias. Last weekend, US forces
carried out a major action in Diwaniyah, a city south of Baghdad,
against militias associated with Shiite fundamentalist cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr.

Also on Wednesday, the US Army said that it planned to keep troop
numbers at current levels through 2010. Army Chief of Staff Peter
Schoomaker said the move was intended to insure that "I can continue
to shoot as long as they want us to shoot."

Washington has used the alleged killing of smaller numbers of people by
other governments as a pretext for military attack. The Clinton
administration and the media made vastly exaggerated and entirely
unsubstantiated claims of Serbian killings of Albanian Kosavars in
early 1999 to justify the US plan to launch an air war against the
former Yugoslovia. At that time, figures in the area of 100,000-200,000
were tossed out and the regime of Slobodan Milosevic was roundly
accused of genocide.

However, following the air war, the Tribunal on War Crimes in Kosovo
issued an estimate of Albanian deaths from Serb attacks plus the US-led
NATO bombing campaign at between 2,000 and 3,000. This figure is
obviously dwarfed by the death toll resulting from the US rape of Iraq.
But there are no charges from any section of the US political
establishment, from either of its two parties, or from the media of
genocide in Iraq.

While Milosevic, at the behest of Washington, was put on trial at the
Hague for war crimes, the very suggestion that Bush and the top policy
makers-Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz-who conspired to
launch an unprovoked war against Iraq should suffer a similar fate
would be denounced on all sides as nothing short of treason.

The scale of death and destruction in Iraq has been systematically
concealed from the American people, with the complicity of the mass
media and the Democratic Party.

There has been very little reporting on the recently launched military
operations in Iraq, in both Shiite and Sunni areas. US troops have been
conducting neighborhood sweeps, seizing and arresting an untold number
of people. How many thousands of people have been killed during the
latest round of military aggression? Without any independent reports of
what is going on, it is impossible to know.

The silence of the media and both parties reflects the American ruling
elite's contempt for human life in general, and the lives of Iraqis
in particular.

The attitude of the Bush administration and the Democrats stands in
sharp contrast to the sentiment of broad sections of the US population,
who are increasingly disgusted, horrified and shamed by the brutality
unleashed by the US invasion in the name of the American people.

"mozark" <swooning@gmail.com> wrote in news:1160659632.537081.182730
@c28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Allow me to predict the right-wing hand-waving excuses:

1) "Estimated"?

2) How many people did Clinton kill in Iraq [with sanctions]?

3) Saddam could have avoided war if he had cooperated and complied with
1441.

4) War is hell, deal with it.


--
If I were a cactus, I wouldn't need so much water

> Allow me to predict the right-wing hand-waving excuses:

And don't forget their favorite:

5) They're towelheads anyway. Who cares?