1.000.000 killed in Iraq since the invasion

[RedFury]

PS-And the numbers keep climbing as we speak:

Tuesday: 93 Iraqis Killed, 165 Wounded

Wonder how many of those 165 injured will survive, what with the condition of Iraqi hospitals? Drip, drip, drip…600,000 in four years of hell doesn’t sound that far-fetched at all.

[RedFury]

@gonzomax

The dead are not all the damage we have caused. A couple million have fled. They are the educated and wealthier. If we ever leave how do they put it back together. The army is disbanded ,cops gone. middleclass and wealthy gone,homes destroyed ,nonworking infrastructure. What a mess we made of it.

And still you’ll find that roughly 27% of all Americans support your madman in charge. Where do these people live? Under rocks?

[Ryan_Liam]

Widening Schism between insurgents and Al Queda.

Gunmen in Iraq Kill Tribal Opponent of Al Qaeda (Published 2007)

While Anbar Province has been the epicenter of the Sunni Arab insurgency, a coalition of Sunni tribes last September banded together to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. This month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki made his first official visit to the province to hold talks with the tribal leaders.

The Iraqi government, led mostly by Shiites, is attempting to quell sectarian violence and has embarked on several aspects of reconciliation with Sunni Arabs, who dominated the government of Saddam Hussein.

On Monday, Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani announced that they plan to introduce a proposal that would allow thousands more former members of Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party to serve in the government.

Wonder how many of those 165 injured will survive, what with the condition of Iraqi hospitals? Drip, drip, drip…600,000 in four years of hell doesn’t sound that far-fetched at all.

It sounds far fetched when Iraq body count, which records the body count of every death reported, put it around 50,000 in the death toll. If the count was around 600,000, and the Sunni minority is around 5 million, wouldn’t we see most of the adult population of the Sunnis in Iraq decimated? This is taking out the equation the amount of people who’ve fled abroad.

[Ravenman]

@RedFury

Iraqi deaths survey ‘was robust’ … Therefore, I am aligning myself to a “powerful and/or sound” study. And to that you counter with…skepticism?

Bloody good retort, mate…as I believe the Brits themselves would say.

Oh, for pete’s sake, let’s drop the word games. You conveniently left out that the article says that “the study’s design was ‘robust,’” probably in order to leave the implication that the MoD said that the conclusions of the study were “robust.” That is simply disingenuous, and you ought to acknowledge that the MoD apparently has NOT endorsed the 600,000 figure.

And at least read down to the part of the article which says that one of the emails says, “We do not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate. . . . However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.” Other emails apparently point out that there is “considerable debate” among scientists about the “accuracy of the figures.”

Which is pretty much exactly what I and the other “skeptics” here are saying: the methodology may be fine (I leave that to experts and wouldn’t really dispute their views anyway) but even the experts in this very field have doubts about the accuracy of the reports conclusions.

I’m still puzzled at your insistence that today’s casualty figures are representative of the rate of deaths for the last four years. You are probably the only person on earth (perhaps excepting Dick Cheney?) who seems to be implicitly arguing that the level of violence in Iraq is static and not getting worse.