655,000 Iraqis dead so far

[Martin]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/10/D8KM6GL80.html

Study: 655,000 Iraqis Died Due to War
Oct 10 11:43 PM US/Eastern

By MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer

NEW YORK

A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.

The timing of the survey's release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it "politics."

In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.

"Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal.

An accurate count of Iraqi deaths has been difficult to obtain, but one respected group puts its rough estimate at closer to 50,000. And at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.

"They're almost certainly way too high," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.

"This is not analysis, this is politics," Cordesman said.

The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study _ that one was released just before the November 2005 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate.

Speaking of the new study, Burnham said the estimate was much higher than others because it was derived from a house-to-house survey rather than approaches that depend on body counts or media reports.

A private group called Iraqi Body Count, for example, says it has recorded about 44,000 to 49,000 civilian Iraqi deaths. But it notes that those totals are based on media reports, which it says probably overlook "many if not most civilian casualties."

For Burnham's study, researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.

The survey participants attributed about 31 percent of violent deaths to coalition forces.

Accurate death tolls have been difficult to obtain ever since the Iraq conflict began in March 2003. When top Iraqi political officials cite death numbers, they often refuse to say where the numbers came from.

The Health Ministry, which tallies civilian deaths, relies on reports from government hospitals and morgues. The Interior Ministry compiles its figures from police stations, while the Defense Ministry reports deaths only among army soldiers and insurgents killed in combat.

The United Nations keeps its own count, based largely on reports from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry.

The major funder of the new study was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[RadioactiveMan]

I'm pretty skeptical. Sounds like they made a lot of guesses and counted deaths that weren't directly caused by the fighting.

[Swiss Miss]

Yeah, President Bush says he does not consider report credible.

A new study has revealed that, during the course of the past three years, while the average American and British citizen was nonchalantly dithering over whether or not the invasion of Iraq by their government and military is ultimately a good thing, if Iraqis are "better off" without Saddam, if American and British "freedom and democracy" should be imposed on the Iraqi people, 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of the American and British invasion.

Just to put that in perspective: relatively speaking, if the American people had suffered the same death toll, almost 7.5 million American citizens would be dead, and the names of 1.5 million Britons would have been struck from the register, for ever. That makes the illegal Iraq invasion of Iraq by the Bush and Blair governments (with strong moral and tactical support from the Zionists) one of the biggest war crimes in recent times and an event which undoubtedly qualifies for an honorable mention in the ignoble roll call of historical acts of genocide against an innocent people.

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/...TollInIraq.php

[jumpinjoey]

Quit beating this dead horse. GOING TO WAR IS NOT NOR HAS IT EVER BEEN A CRIME. I got two words for you: Rape Room. Two more: Evil dictator.
This country-fried, bland set of talking points is not news. People die in war. If the world was all 'mexican cactus candies' and 'love stories from flowery meadows'; maybe this would be tragic news but an evil regime was just replaced with very little collateral damage- less than any other 'conflict'.
When I see posts similar to this about our mid-90's invasion of Bosnia (under Clinton) I may take them seriously, until then. Here's me clapping sacastically for your wisdom.
(not you but the 'news' reporter who wrote the article)

[Big Red 11]

Originally Posted by jumpinjoey

our mid-90's invasion of Bosnia (under Clinton)0

What was this now?

[jumpinjoey]

Originally Posted by Big Red 11

What was this now?

This will help....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War

notice: 'ethnic cleansing'... sound familiar? Wasn't Sadaam doing something similar?

[Big Red 11]

I don't see "US forces invade" anywhere in that article.

And no, Sadam wasn't doing ethnic cleansing on that kind of scale.

[jumpinjoey]

Originally Posted by Big Red 11

I don't see "US forces invade" anywhere in that article.

And no, Sadam wasn't doing ethnic cleansing on that kind of scale.

"US forces invade" is hidden under the use of the term NATO. NATO, at the time, had the guts to actually enforce their resolutions. We are the power behind their punch.
The same is true with the UN, we have been their power on most issues, only this time, unlike the first desert storm, the UN didn't have the guts to follow through so we had to do it for them and those who make money off Iraqi business and trade call us and our allies criminals even though we are the police for the laws THEY set up.
That article is just a quick overview of the Bosnian war, not the full story; posted by a lay user.


So... on your second point, unless a dictator passes a certain level on a scale his murders don't count? I would have thought one mass grave warranted action.

[Swiss Miss]

Okay jumpinjoey, I agree with what you say regarding the fact that we (the US) are the man behind the NATO and UN's curtain (so to speak...). But if you want to go that route in saying that the Bosnian war is even comparable to the current war in Iraq, then surely you must admit that Bush was retarded enough to not learn from the MISTAKES that were made in the approach of the latter which was led by Sir Will Clinton, yes? In fact, by Bush going through with a similar approach, he must think it's just a brilliant idea to teach the victims of these countries that the only measure of security that can be given to them is through invasions from "allies". Then we leave them to vote for their new psychopath leader to put up a decent front just well enough to get the "invaders" out of their country and only to return back to dictatorship step 1 when we have our backs turned. Not to mention, much like Bosnia, by time we pull out of Iraq, our aid will be well within the billions. Are we planning on giving IRAQI WELFARE for the rest of the existence of the world?

You know as well as I do that our intentions have nothing to do with Iraqi freedom. What pisses me off the most is that Bush has put us in a round about song and dance and is getting away with fooling everybody. That is the only discernment I would make between the two wars. Both are stupid, but at least Clinton's intentions there were more grounded than the Bush administration.

[Big Red 11]

Originally Posted by jumpinjoey

So... on your second point, unless a dictator passes a certain level on a scale his murders don't count? I would have thought one mass grave warranted action.

By similar logic, we can ignore the current war until we thoroughly examine this "invasion" of bosnia, which is basically what you said previously.

Wasn't Sadaam doing something similar?

I answered that question - no, he wasn't. I didn't say that his political murders and other atrocities don't count; they sure as hell do.