Iraq Death Toll Since U.S.-Led Invasion Many Times Higher Than U.S

[cal04]

Iraq Death Toll Since U.S.-Led Invasion Many Times Higher Than U.S

The number of Iraqis who have died violently since the U.S.-led invasion is many times larger than the U.S. military death toll of 2,000 in Iraq. In one sign of the enormity of the Iraqi loss, at least 3,870 were killed in the past six months alone, according to an Associated Press count.

One U.S. military spokesman said it is possible the figure for the entire war could be 30,000 Iraqis, which many experts see as a credible estimate. Others suspect the number is far higher, since the chaos in Iraq leaves the potential for many killings to go unreported. The losses are far larger than most analysts and Pentagon planners expected before the war and mean Iraqi civilians are bearing most of the suffering.

"We may never know the true number of the Iraqi public that has been killed or injured in this war," said the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan. "The Iraqi public has taken the brunt of the casualties." Every day claims more victims: A car bomb targeting American troops that kills Iraqi passers-by. An insurgent attack on a police station. Sectarian militias dumping blindfolded corpses in the Euphrates River.

Civilians made up more than two-thirds of the Iraqis killed in war-related violence since the country's first elected government took power on April 28, according to the AP count. The rest were Iraqi security personnel. Boylan said the U.S. military keeps its own tally of Iraqi dead, but does not release it. He said he had asked U.S. authorities to see the estimates of Iraqi dead himself, and was refused.


http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBV727V8FE.html
so unnecessary
:cry:

[illflem]

1. The new Iraqi Army has lost over 3700

soldiers this year alone.

[bluestateguy]

2. This is the harsh reality of it all

The reason people have turned against this war is because of the American lives lost, the cost to American taxpayers and the war's effect on American security. I don't think for a moment that your average wishy washy swing voter in suburban St. Louis who now realizes that this war was wrong believes that because of the war's cost to Iraqis. I don't think the American people give a hoot about the war's toll on civilians, in part because we have not had to fight a war on US soil in 140 years. If 1 million Iraqis were killed, I think that would be fine with most Americans as long as the cost to American troops and taxpayers was light.

Hence I always urge war opponents to emphasize the war's toll on Americans when trying to persuade a wavering person.

We may not like it, but that's how it is. I deal in the real world.

[bixente]

3. this is a great source of annoyance for me

2,000 deaths here, 2,000 deaths there, 2,000 deaths here, ect. ect. ect. It annoys me that 3 American troops killed in a roadside bomb is given more attention than...40-50 Iraqis killed by a suicide bomber. Of course, American forces are more superior, more important or whatever word you want to use, than just some Iraqi citizens. Even @ DU, American casualties are given more attention, a higher importance than Iraqi deaths. Of course, this is natural, these are your countrymen. You feel a greater sense of kinship with your fellow countrymen than those foreigners you have no sense of connection to.

Sorry, ramble off.

[Breeze54]

4. ONE DEATH, FOR A LIE, IS TO MANY!

ONE DEATH FOR A LIE IS TO MANY!

Edited for content and language.

Signed;
Mother of a 'stop-lossed' soldier serving in Iraq

:evilfrown:

[ninkasi]

7. That, I guess, is my problem...

You say : "You feel a greater sense of kinship with your fellow countrymen than those foreigners you have no sense of connection to. "

I do feel a sense of connection to them. They are mothers, fathers, children, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles...the list goes on. I can put myself in the place of a grandmother in Iraq, who hears that her cherished grandchild has been killed either by American troops, or because we are there.

I can feel the anguish of a sister, trying to find help for a wounded brother, when it's too dangerous to get to a hospital, and there is no medicine to be found. Being born in different countries does not diminish the bond of humanity, at least for me. My sense of kinship comes from our common bond of being human, and sharing this planet.

I have no more right to my life than the lowliest peasant anywhere in the world has to theirs. Before the universe, before God, we are equal. Because we are bound by our ties of humanity, I mourn each life, and curse many times the evil men who chose this war. The irony is that they will never feel the sense of pain and shame that most of us do. They wanted it, we opposed it, and we all suffer, except for them.

[gorbal]

10. Well protests were planned for the 2,000th death

That is one reason people are discussing it.

[FVZA_Colonel]

5. Iraqi Death Toll Much Higher Than U.S. Military

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_re_mi_ea/the_iraqi_toll

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 12 minutes ago

The number of Iraqis who have died violently since the U.S.-led invasion is many times larger than the U.S. military death toll of 2,000 in Iraq. In one sign of the enormity of the Iraqi loss, at least 3,870 were killed in the past six months alone, according to an Associated Press count.

One U.S. military spokesman said it is possible the figure for the entire war could be 30,000 Iraqis, which many experts see as a credible estimate. Others suspect the number is far higher, since the chaos in Iraq leaves the potential for many killings to go unreported.

The losses are far larger than most analysts and Pentagon planners expected before the war and mean Iraqi civilians are bearing most of the suffering.

"We may never know the true number of the Iraqi public that has been killed or injured in this war," said the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan. "The Iraqi public has taken the brunt of the casualties."

[IndianaGreen]

6. 100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq

This is a WaPo article on the highly respected Lancet Report, widely published overseas, and widely ignored in the US (Page A16 of WaPo, for example):

100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 29, 2004; Page A16

One of the first attempts to independently estimate the loss of civilian life from the Iraqi war has concluded that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the U.S. invasion.

The analysis, an extrapolation based on a relatively small number of documented deaths, indicated that many of the excess deaths have occurred due to aerial attacks by coalition forces, with women and children being frequent victims, wrote the international team of public health researchers making the calculations.

<snip>

The estimate is based on a September door-to-door survey of 988 Iraqi households -- containing 7,868 people in 33 neighborhoods -- selected to provide a representative sampling. Two survey teams gathered detailed information about the date, cause and circumstances of any deaths in the 14.6 months before the invasion and the 17.8 months after it, documenting the fatalities with death certificates in most cases.

The project was designed by Les Roberts and Gilbert M. Burnham of the Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore; Richard Garfield of Columbia University in New York; and Riyadh Lafta and Jamal Kudhairi of Baghdad's Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine.

Based on the number of Iraqi fatalities recorded by the survey teams, the researchers calculated that the death rate since the invasion had increased from 5 percent annually to 7.9 percent. That works out to an excess of about 100,000 deaths since the war, the researchers reported in a paper released early by the Lancet, a British medical journal.

The researchers called their estimate conservative because they excluded deaths in Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that has been the scene of particularly intense fighting and has accounted for a disproportionately large number of deaths in the survey.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html

[libodem]

9. Holy cow

100,000 that's even more staggering....but as the writer above stated: one is too many....and the other poster Americans wouldn't care if it were a million, sadly that could be right as well....

[libodem]

8. 30,000

staggering....I wonder if the gereral public has any idea? Does anyone think they really wanted this? My god I hope the freedom and democracy significantly improves their daily lives enought to account for all of those deaths. I can only imagine that the relatives of those dead civilians will never have their hearts and minds won. Man, if you add that 30,000 to the military casualties and the police you'd likely have a far greater number than whatever So Damn Insane had murdered....man, all these deaths for vengence how could there ever be justification for any of it....