And that 600k is over 2% of the population. Something to dwell on - we’ve killed 2 in every hundred. That translates to 6, 000,000 Americans or 1.2 million Brits.
Go us.
600,000.
What redemption can there be for those who made this happen and those who helped.
What accounting, court or disclosure could be adequate? With eyes wide open and fully informed did the public back this. There was no demagogue, no reparations overhanging, no residue of weakness, nothing to mitigate the action.
The identity of the nation that did this is never, never to be forgotten.
Apparently, doctors are fleeing Iraq in droves, just when they’re needed the most. Not that I blame the docs, I mean, if you’re an OBGYN and you want to practice your love of women, you’re certainly not going to want to do it in a place where you’re at risk of being blown up.
A deci-holocaust. May history forgive you.
No - it’s a mere comma. The Great Leader said that a couple of weeks ago.
I was unusually bothered by Pres. Bush’s response to the report:
I understand and expect him to disagree with the numbers involved. But, to me, calling the report, “not credible,” is pretty strong language. It will probably be lost on the general public, but it seems to me that he was basically saying, “This report was put together by a bunch of talentless, ignorant hacks and it has no basis in reality.” I wish a reporter would have asked the President something like, “So, Mr. President, which part of the methodology do you dispute? Or did you find an error in the statistical analysis itself?” Again, it’s something that would be lost on the typical listener/viewer, but I would have enjoyed the response.
I try very, very hard to not be the stereotypical Bush-basher and jump all over everything he says. This just hit me as the latest example of the dismissive, condescending attitude Bush takes toward anyone who disagrees with him or says something unfavorable about his policies.
Ethilrist:
Gee, I used to think so too. But a couple of weeks ago, Dick Cheney said that, had they known there were no WMD, it wouldn’t have changed a thing, and they still would have invaded. Of course, Cheney’s a well-known kidder with a wonderful sense of humor.
Who is this “we” of which you speak? “We” did not kill 2 in every hundred. As fucked up as our policy is, and as much as we share some of the blame, let’s not lose sight of the fact that most of the killing is Iraqi on Iraqi.
Wrong. WE. WE invaded illegally. We screwed up the occupation. We released the hounds.
Anyway - WE apparently can be directly fingered for a third of the 4-6 hundred k. No comfort whatesoever.
The killing is horrible, and nothing can take the guilty away from the murderers th. That said, if we hadn’t invaded it wouldn’t be happening. I hope that’s self-evident. This kind of chaos would not have existed.
You sure as hell facilitated every single one of those extra deaths no matter what the actual figure.
These people would not be dead if the invasion hadn’t of happened. Your* war, your responsibility.
- Your, as in your country’s and since it is a democracy it’s also yours to a degree whether you agreed with the war or not.
The invasion was legal under US law. Whether it was legal under international law is debatable. It was certainly as legal as the invasion of Afghanistan. Besides, would the blame shift to someone else if the UNSC had approved the invasion?
Which is why we share in the blame.
We killed many Iraqis, yes. However, we did not kill, for example, the people who died in the al Aksari Mosque bombing. It’s no comfort whatsoever that we killed so many people, but it’s also no excuse to shift the blame from those who actually did most of the killing to us. That’s all I’m saying.
You broke it, you bought it. Unfortunately, someone else gets to pay.
I am included with this “we” stuff? I voted against Bush, and never supported the war, privately or publicly. What was I supposed to do to not share blame? Stage a coup?
The thing is, responsibility is neither a legal nor a moral fixed-sum game. If I hire someone I know to be a child molester to work at my day-care center, then he’s fully responsible molesting any children he molests there - and so am I.
Same thing here: we’re responsible for opening the floodgates so that a lot of nasty people could operate in Iraq. They’re morally responsible for the killing and torturing they do, and so are we. 
Marley answered that in post 13 - +/- 200 K. I doubt that is from sample size, but rather from the possible non-uniformity of the population. Did they teach you about the 1936 Literary Digest fiasco?
A poll predicted that Landon would beat Roosevelt - not quite what happened. The poll was conducted by telephone, and, back then, those with telephones were richer than the general public, and more likely to be Republicans. Link.
I’m sure they were not able to survey all of Iraq, and I’m sure that there were significant pockets of lower than average casualties and higher than average casualties that they might have missed - and I suspect the large uncertainty (much larger than I’d expect from a sample of 1900) is due to this.
The alternative counts, from media reports and morgue records, are also uncertain, but they’re biased low.
That was also me. My question is just about confidence: are they saying “we are 95 percent certain that it’s between 420,000 and 790,000,” or “we are 100 percent certain,” or what figure exactly? I could swear I remember that there was an equation to calculate that.
When there is a riot against some unliked group, and the police stand by, how do you apportion the blame? If the mob is attacking our embassy, and the police do nothing, do they get just a share of the blame, and is it almost all the mob’s fault? It’s not just the invasion - it is how the Administration watched thing go to hell, and did nothing useful. Yeah, they may have honestly thought we would be greeted with flowers, but it’s a little late to be calling it an honest mistake.
Nothing useful? Surely you exagerate. Surely you grossly exagerate.
So, here’s a question. Don’t you think that if we pulled out all our troops, Iraq would errupt into a full blown civil war with massive casualties-- ie, people dying in pitched battles, not just random car bombings and the like. If we pulled our guys out, and the killing increased, would you also say we “killed” all the people who would die? If so, can how can you justify backing such a plan?
See post above, please, Voyager.