1.000.000 killed in Iraq since the invasion

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=Ravenman]
The number of police deaths by province is listed at theIraq Index, and it runs the gamut. Wasit Province has half a million people south of Baghdad and only 19 police casualties. Basra has 2.6 million people and 63 police killed. Baghdad, meanwhile, has 715 police officers killed. One could presume that police deaths would be fairly well tracked, and at least have some (but not perfect) correlation with the level of violence overall.
[/QUOTE]

I wuld not assume that police deaths was correlated with the overall death rate. It would depend in part on how much the police put themselves in the line of fire. In Baghdad it may be that both the Iraqi government and the American military put more pressure on the police to help maintain security, while with less suchg pressure in other provinces, the police intervene less and get killed less.

42

[QUOTE=RedFury]
Ravenmen, the following article should put away some of your doubts, or, at the very least, place them in proper perspective. Fact is – and not what your Government or press tell you – all of Iraq, except for the already mentioned Kurd North, is a killing field. Sadly, said fact goes largely unreported for the very reasons expressed below:
[/QUOTE]

Red…your cite just shows that there is violence throughout Iraq (if we exclude by and large the north)…it doesn’t do a single thing to make your case that the violence is by and large uniform.

I’m at work atm, but here is a cite showing a map (the info is from IBC)…if you read the chart it becomes clear that while, yes, there is violence all through the south, the majority of the killing is being done in and around Bahgdad. I have no idea how to insert that chart into this post, but looking at the numbers, the deaths in Baghdad more than equal those IN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY COMBINED. According to the chart, of the estimated 44,000 deaths, 28,154 were in Bahgdad and the surrounding areas.

If you dispute this, then you need to find another chart showing the estimated deaths in other regions compared to Bahdad…not just a cite showing that, yes, other parts of Iraq have folks getting killed too. Get it?

-XT

43

I obviously do, but apparently you don’t.

The refutation is in your own cite. Thus, if I may be so bold, I suggest you read it again. And then again. Until what that article says really sinks in.

Here’s the salient point should you need any help in finding it:

Way to wash the blood off your hands.

44

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
You weren’t?? Then how about this time??
[/QUOTE]
:smack: Sir, my apologies. I intended that post in which I first quoted you to be a general comment on the issue raised by the OP, and only now did I realize that I quoted you. You did indeed cast your lot with the 600,000 figure, and I was in error in referring to the one million figure since I quoted you in the same post. So again, I was wrong, and I did not mean to impute to you someone else’s views. I hate when people do that to me, so I hope you’ll take my word that I did it by accident, not intention. I spoke in haste and in error when I said I wasn’t referring to you, and frankly I’m pretty embarrassed about it.

RedFury: The point about Baker-Hamilton and the true number of attacks is very well taken: I think anyone could dismiss out of hand that there were only 93 attacks on a given day, and it is good to know that they uncovered a more realistic number. I’m simply under the impression that most of those attacks were concentrated in Baghdad and Anbar, since Baker-Hamilton also concluded that most of the violence was in Baghdad and Anbar. So I wonder whether we’re cherry picking intelligence here: one of their conclusions is dismissed because it is too favorable to Bush, another is heralded as a sharp insight into how the current situation is actually worse than Bush and others make it out to be.

Do I disagree that most of Iraq is dangerous? Absolutely. No question. Is most of Iraq just as dangerous as Baghdad? Not in my view at this point, but that doesn’t mean that places outside of Baghdad are not dangerous. (For example, DC is a dangerous city, and so is Detroit, but that does not mean that DC is as dangerous as Detroit.)

And as far as the article goes, it is indeed shocking, but I don’t think I ever said that Diyala is one of the more peaceful places. The journalist himself says, “Diyala is one of the most violent provinces.” And the Iraq Index I linked to says that 409 Iraqi policemen have been killed in Diyala, putting it second from the top in that category. I’m just not seeing that Diyala (or Baghdad) is representative of most other places in Iraq.

Giles: That is a possibility. The quality of police services is a big variable. I just have a hard time seeing that low police casualties are only indicative of bad policing, and don’t have any correlation with levels of violence at all.

Again, to all, I’m not saying that “Iraq is better than the media make it out.” I think the war has been a disaster and I’ve been opposed to it from day one. I’m just not seeing that claims of 600,000 plus Iraqis killed makes sense to me.

45

BTW, if you read the post of mine you’re responding you might have also noticed that one of the passages I underlined came straqight from the ISG. It seems to support the high mortality figures of the recent Lancet study.

Here’s the original quote in full:

And June was not, AFAIK, significantly more violent than any other months. If there could be 1,100 “acts of violence” on one day in a ‘normal’ month, 600,000 dead over the course of four+ years does not seem implausible at all. Quite the contrary actually.

But you’re welcomed to keep imbibing propaganda.

46

Ravenman,

Thank you for at least acknowledging what I thought was the most pertinent point made in that post. And no, I don’t see how it can be called “cherry-picking” in context of the current discussion.

Btw, no one has mentioned Basra and the complete state of disarray there.

47

[QUOTE=RedFury]
BTW, if you read the post of mine you’re responding you might have also noticed that one of the passages I underlined came straqight from the ISG. It seems to support the high mortality figures of the recent Lancet study.
[/QUOTE]
Uhhh. Yeah. I know. That’s why I said it was good that they uncovered more than the obviously lowballed 93.

And if you don’t think June 2006 was an especially violent month, I don’t know what you’re comparing it to. I don’t think anyone can say with a straight face that things have not been getting worse over time, especially during 2006. Are you saying you think there was the same amount of violence in June 2006 as there was in June 2003? That just strikes me as sheer nonsense.

At the very least, we should be able to agree that things are not staying the same in Iraq, things are getting worse. If things are getting worse, that means that the past was marginally better. Taking a snapshot of the violence in June 2006 and carrying back that level of violence all the way to the beginning of the war just doesn’t pass the laugh test. And odds are, in my view, that June 2007 will be even worse than June 2006.

How you can say I’m imbibing propaganda from the Iraq Survey Group when you yourself held their study up as a citation is just beyond me. Talk about double standards.

48

[QUOTE=RedFury]
Ravenman,

Thank you for at least acknowledging what I thought was the most pertinent point made in that post.
[/quote]
Again, I apologize for it. That could be the dumbest thing I’ve said on the Dope (though others may disagree, obviously).

I don’t see why not. The ISG says there are more attacks that the Administration acknowledges, but the violence is generally centered around Baghdad and Anbar. Why is one conclusion accepted at face value and the other rejected out of hand? How is that not cherry-picking?

Well, those must be those signs of success that Dick Cheney hailed as progress that allows the British troops to go home. :rolleyes:

But seriously, I’m missing the part where anyone is claiming that Basra or anywhere else is an okay place to visit. Is Basra gripped in a wave of violence foolishly unleashed by an ill-considered war? Yes. Is Basra as bad as Baghdad? When the US military is calling in frequent airstrikes to battle insurgents in Baghdad, I’ve got to say Baghdad is worse. I’m just puzzled as to why you reject any differentiation between areas that are dangerous and areas that are extremely dangerous.

49

From Shock & Awe to the ‘surge’ without end

Forgetting the part “that the real extent of the violence could be much greater,” let’s take The Pentagon’s word and do some math with their numbers…

I’ll even round-down the casualties to, say, 125 a day.

Thus we have 4+ years at said daily rate, or 1,408 days X 125 deaths per, which equals 176,000 dead Iraqis.

Now, that’s a monstrous number in and of itself (and waaay above the much – conveniently – quoted IBC estimate), but to even believe that one, one would have to believe in The Pentagon first. Given all the lies we’ve seen coming out of the warmongers throughout these past four years, I don’t.

Beats me as to why anyone else would.

50

Erm, I’m a moron. The reference to the apology in my previous post was directed at my incorrect statements toward RTFirefly, and so far as I know, I haven’t caused offense to RedFury. I can say little in my defense but that I’m interested in this debate and distracted while posting at work.

51

I read on another message board that an american analyst have said that USA would have to stay in Iraq until 2014 and that 2-6 million iraqies would be killed and 50.000 us soldiers (but I don’t have any link or name)

have anyone heard about this?

52

[QUOTE=Wildfire**MM]
I read on another message board that an american analyst have said that USA would have to stay in Iraq until 2014 and that 2-6 million iraqies would be killed and 50.000 us soldiers (but I don’t have any link or name)

have anyone heard about this?
[/QUOTE]
I suspect what you read was that the U.S. would have to stay in Iraq until 2014 and that that many casualties would need to be incurred in order to repeat the Vietnam experience. In other words, it was not a predicition of what will occur, but a comparison of what would be required to occur in order to make an equivalent comparison. According to the person you were reading, it would be invalid to make a comparison to Vietnam until 2014.

I would suggest that before you wander back to the SDMB looking for support for various odd beliefs, you should probably take the time to understand what you have read and then perform some basic searches on your own.

53

When I said the phrase “the media’s fault” I meant that people are blaming them for what they see as a false public perception of the war in Iraq. To conservatives, the media is failing to report all the good things going on there and only reporting the bad thereby giving the public the “false” impression that the war is much worse than it actually is. On the other side of the coin, as seen in this thread we have the media (or the English-speaking media) accused of painting far to rosy of a picture by drasticallyunderreporting the number of dead in Iraq.

Think about this, we don’t have very good numbers on the (battlefield only) death toll from the Iran-Iraq war and that’s been over for almost twenty years.

54

Just another day in Iraq:

Tuesday: 143 Iraqis, 5 GIs Killed; 124 Iraqis Wounded

You won’t find it in the headlines of the mainstream press – they’ve stopped doing so years ago – but if you dig a bit, you’ll notice that this kind of butchery is an everyday affair in current Iraq.

Suddenly, if you do, The Lancet numbers will begin to add-up.

55

I added up the numbers that website reported for February. It came to 2,818, which in itself is a shocking number. That’s still HUGELY short of the 35,000 monthly deaths that the Johns Hopkins study concludes were the average between June 2005 and June 2006.

The numbers are indeed growing, but they are not yet “adding up.”

56

[QUOTE=RedFury]
Just another day in Iraq:

Tuesday: 143 Iraqis, 5 GIs Killed; 124 Iraqis Wounded

You won’t find it in the headlines of the mainstream press – they’ve stopped doing so years ago – but if you dig a bit, you’ll notice that this kind of butchery is an everyday affair in current Iraq.

Suddenly, if you do, The Lancet numbers will begin to add-up.
[/QUOTE]

Please explain how. The Lancet report numbers have been widely discredited, so why should we take for granted the ‘1 million’ or so deaths which have been so called reported?

This kind of morbid facination of the number of dead and how various pollsters with dubious credentials annoys me, it merely dresses Iraq for them as a dart board, plastered with numbers, and a lucky throw to ascertain the number of civilians dead in the conflict for maximum press coverage. Yet these are the same people we’re supposed to believe ‘care’ about what’s going on in that country.

I’m with Xstime (again) on this one, hell I’ll even go with Iraqbodycount, which mirrors somewhat the UN report of 35,000 deaths. That sounds 100 times more accurate than the wildy ranging figures Lancet and this Aussie guy are throwing around. I’ll even throw in an assumption that the majority of violence is in Baghdad and Anbar, and Diyala, anywhere where there is an even number of opposing sides of Shia/Sunnis/Kurds of Coalition forces.

57

http://icasualties.org/oif/

This page is filled with articles about daily events in Iraq

58

todays events in Iraq (the last 24 hours or so): (date 20. march - 21. march)

“Civilian killed as Iraqi police detonate a truck full of explosives”

“AP: Two policemen found dead in Diwaniyah”

“Reuters: Policeman killed, 8 wounded in clashes in Diwaniya”

" Reuters: Mortar round wounds 2 in Baghdad"

“Reuters: Gunmen kill a former army brigadier in Falluja”

“Reuters: Roadside bomb wounds 4 in central Baghdad”

“Reuters: US forces say destroy bomb factory in Iraq, kill 5”

“MCT: Mortar fire kills 6 civilians in Baghdad’s Abu Disheer neighborhood”

“MCT: 32 bodies found in Baghdad”

"MCT: Two bodies found in Al Touz "

“MCT: Two truck drivers kidnapped east of Tikrit”

“Reuters: 39 gunmen, 9 tribal fighters, 8 policemen killed in Amiriya”

“Reuters: Car bomb kils 1, wounds 3 in Baghda’s Ubaidi district”

“Reuters: 1 policeman killed, 1 found dead in Kirkuk”

“AFP: Iraq insurgents used children in car bombing”

“Roadside bomb strikes MND-B patrol (confirmed)”

“AP: Roadside bomb kills two U.S. soldiers and wounds another”

“Xinhua: Bomb destroys U.S. Humvee in Baghdad”

“Reuters: Mini bus bomb wounds 4 in eastern Baghdad”

“dpa: Mortar fire wounds 4 in Baghdad’s Walid residential district”

“dpa: Iraqi soldier killed in western Baghdad”

“Reuters: Gunmen kill man in al-Zab”

“Reuters: Car bomb kills 5 in Baghdad”

“Reuters: 30 Bodies found in Baghdad”

“Reuters: Body found in Falluja”

“Reuters: Iraqi army soldiers kill three insurgents”

“Reuters: Car bomb kills 3, wounds seven in Baghdad”

59

[QUOTE=Ryan_Liam]
Please explain how. The Lancet report numbers have been widely discredited, so why should we take for granted the ‘1 million’ or so deaths which have been so called reported?

This kind of morbid facination of the number of dead and how various pollsters with dubious credentials annoys me, it merely dresses Iraq for them as a dart board, plastered with numbers, and a lucky throw to ascertain the number of civilians dead in the conflict for maximum press coverage. Yet these are the same people we’re supposed to believe ‘care’ about what’s going on in that country.

I’m with Xstime (again) on this one, hell I’ll even go with Iraqbodycount, which mirrors somewhat the UN report of 35,000 deaths. That sounds 100 times more accurate than the wildy ranging figures Lancet and this Aussie guy are throwing around. I’ll even throw in an assumption that the majority of violence is in Baghdad and Anbar, and Diyala, anywhere where there is an even number of opposing sides of Shia/Sunnis/Kurds of Coalition forces.
[/QUOTE]

:::yawn:::

I think you mean “disputed” not “discredited.” Because it simply hasn’t been. To wit:

Co-Author of Medical Study Estimating 650,000 Iraqi Deaths Defends Research in the Face of White House Dismissal

And, by the way, you should do some research into the John Hopkins Institute, before you say they have “dubious credentials.” For they are as prestigious an institution as you’re likely to find anywhere in the world.

Sorry if you don’t like to read about the carnage you so enthusiastically continue to support.

60

Let’s consider the facts here, if 650,000 Iraqis have died because of our actions, it would surmount to like people have said before, to around 400 people being killed in Iraq every single day.

We’re in the middle of an insurgency, which bears striking resemblence to the casualty figures which cropped up after the US left Vietnam. I for one don’t believe the 650,000 figure, since much of the violence would pretty much wipe out nearly all of the Sunni population, if it is a credible figure.

Presitigious maybe, but what slant do they carry when they do this body count? Everyone has an agenda, what makes you think they couldn’t of exaberated the deaths in order to gain media coverage?
Hell, it worked for lancet, but if they’re the correct body counts, then why is it the UN is only putting out death figures of around 35,000 an organisation which has more resources and people on the ground who have the ability to monitor such violence? They might not be in Iraq, but I’m sure the UN officials who surveyed the bodycount they brought up are more along the lines of accuracy than the Lancet and John Hopkins reports.

Yes, because the Iraqi Government is exactly like the South Vietnamese government we’re so enthusiastically supporting.

I for one don’t support ‘carnage’ as much as you don’t support the war on a tactic (TWOT) I support an effort to bring about stability. So if you think we should withdraw immediately, fine, but tell me how that’s going to bring the stability without adequate security forces in place which can help alleviate the deaths in Iraq.