Iraq's Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced

[balantz]

Iraq's Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

By John Tirman, The Nation. Posted February 2, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/story/123818/


Now that Bush is gone, perhaps we can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.


We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush's war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards -- "stability" -- the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis -- more than half of them refugees -- or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 "excess deaths" (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths -- from health emergencies, for example -- or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million "excess deaths" as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

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[babylonsister]

1. Recommend, because no one should forget this. nt

[aquart]

2. Can we call Bush The Butcher of Baghdad now?

[Diclotican]

12. aquart

aquart

Atilla the Hun, Djengis Khan - and now George Walker Bush have all razed what is today Iraq to the ground. The last time it took the area centuries to rebuild, becouse the infrastructure needed to rebuild was destroyed.. And the same is happening today, when Mr Bush was in office.. He is no rather than a modern type of the two types.. Djenghis Khan, and Atilla the Hun..

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Diclotican]

14. guitarislife321

guitarislife321

He claimed to have dismantled his WMDs, but whenever we sent a UN inspector over to Iraq, they were forcibly removed from the country

After the Central Intelligence Agency in 1998, had going long away from their real work, to try to topple the government of Iraq, true.... After that many CIA operators had been arrested, inside Iraq, spying for a foreign nation, aka the United States of America.

It is true that Saddam Hussein was a bad person who had the bad habit of killing everyone who was in his way, but compare him to Hitler is little wrong, even that Hussein was a great admirer of Hitler, and specially how the security apparatus worked in Germany.. But no he was no Hitler, because he was doing all the wars, all the gassing of kurds, iranians and murders of iraqi civilian, because the WEST was given he right to do so. If it was not for the fact that USA and UK had given him many of his tools, to murder, to go to war and the like, then IRAQ would never had the means to do it. If it was not for the Weapons of Mass destruction he was been given by the same government who in 1991 and to a less extent to the former Administration of mr Bush jr, he had not the industry, and the equipment to produce the weapons necessary to gas anyone. If you believe a 3 world country like Iraq on their own would had the necessary tools to produce weapons of mass destructions?.. Hey EVEN the Soviets was not that DUMB that they wanted to sell chemicals that they KNOW would be used to kill people to Iraq. Most of the WMD stuff the Iraq had in 1991, was either german, French - and from US. And for the most part even the germans and french was relucty to sell the chemicals to Iraq, but was given green light no other than from the State Dept of United States of America.. Every angel you see it, Uncle Sam had a clue of what happened, and why Iraq was given all this WMD stuff?.. Because USA wanted to kill the Iranian revolution who in 1979 was beating the hell out of YOUR friend, and ALLIED... After the SHAN was been trowing out. Your best BUDDY in the middle east was not other than Saddam Hussein al Tikriti.. The man President George Walker Bush claimed in 2003 to be so dangerous, and with so much WMD that the world had to wage war to trow him off his throne.. Now, almost 7 year later, no WMD weapon found. NO prove that Iraq was the bad apple your FORMER PRESIDENT CLAIM IT TO BE.. Instead we have a country who is going down the tube, just keeping toghter thanks to 150.000 foreign soldiers who for the most part is _hated_ by the Iraqi population.. A country where WATER are a scarce resource who are rationalized every day.. Before the war - water was running 24/7 365 days a year

O yes, your PRESIDENT GEORGE WALKER BUSH JR have indeed made the country a liberated country. More or less ruled by the mullahs, who is very friendly to your other enemy Iran. More than ONE MILLION IRAQIS have been killed, as result of YOUR OCCUPYING OF IRAQ. Even in Nazi-Germany, after the war you doesn't managed to KILL ONE MILLION GERMANS just because you had no clue how everything worked in Germany... You HAD A BLUEPRINT TO HOW THINGS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING AFTER WAR. But YOU choose not to do it, and the result is catastrophic for Iraq of today.. You can claim Iraq to be a democracy all you want but it is just bullshit, and you know it. If ONE STRONG MAN emerged from the ashes that Iraq are today, and promised peace, stability and freedom from foreign influence (aka US and UK) then most iraqi would be happy to trow all of americans out of Iraq tomorrow. And they would not care if they had to endure a rather authority regime where many had been put into prison... As long as they was getting their food on the table every day, and a stable work... You know this is what happened when you ruin a country, and choose not to do a dam thing when all hell broke out

Children are not coming out to play anymore, in fact most kids are today locket up inside the family home because most iraqi is afraid they would be kidnapped for ransom.. Most iraqi who send their kids to school are not doing that in Iraq, but rather in Nambour country - or if possible also in Europe.. Because they are far safer there, than in Iraq where violence and killing is rampant, and where for the most the mean of living have not improved for the last 7 year.. You can claim that it have been a lull in violence, but that is because it is WINTER. And if you had a clue about how things work in that ara of the world, you would fint out sooner enough that in the winter, they tend to be far more peacefully than in the summer, where the violence would spike.. But not take my word for it, just wait... It Will explode in april/may or something there... Because in iraq, it can be surprisingly cold in winter...

But, I guess it is near impossible to talk to a "republican" about this, it is maybe more hope of talking to the stone I have in my back jard - well it is covered by snow now, but when the snow is not there the stone is pretty clearly wisible... (It is more than 1.5 meter snow in my back yard now..

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language.

[balantz]

15. This was a war for resources and political control.

If you agree with that being a successful venture I guess you can say "Job well done."

There were countless other ways to handle Hussein the dictator our government helped to raise in the first place years before.

Over a million dead, five million orphans and etc. for profit and control should hardly elicit "Job well done."

[Lerkfish]

17. your standards are very odd: 1 million dead, 4.5 million displaced, destroyed infrastructure

thousands tortured. thousands of our own troops dead, many more thousands maimed and injured, a huge suicide rate amongst our own troops.

all this to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the old friend of Rumsfeld that used to work for our CIA against Iran?


surely there was a way to do that without completely destroying a country and slaughtering its civilians just to get their OIL, which is the real reason for this, and if you delude yourself it is not, you are either lying or a fool.

[aquart]

18. The way was to wait.

Saddam was in his sixties, even with a pact with the devil, he was going to die sometime. No way in hell his sons could rule after him. The country was waiting for an inevitable civil war. IF WE'D HAD THE BRAINS TO STAY OUT OF IT until Saddam croaked all by himself or with the help of his friends, we could have come in as honest broker and walked away with all the oil contracts we ever wanted, but noooooo. Now China, India, and Russia stand to benefit from our total ineptitude. China especially has been setting down friendly roots in the MidEast. They have no deadly history, no ancient vendettas to mar transactions. Until this, we were pretty clean too, except for helping Israel and the realists in the MidEast don't have a huge problem with that because they expected it. But now? We drip Arab blood. China looks like the driven snow.

Weren't we clever? We made enemies for the next ten thousand years with this moronic, pointless, useless, ill-planned war.

[Lerkfish]

19. who is the "we" you refer to?

it was always the neocons.

[Botany]

3. Never Forget

[JeffR]

4. K & R.

We're coming up on the sixth anniversary of the commencement of this criminal enterprise.

For the sake of all these ghosts, the maniacs who conceived and conducted this obscenity must be brought to justice.

[corpseratemedia]

5. 5 million orphans

five MILLION

war criminal=EPIC FAIL

[balantz]

6. What's happening with these children?

The media doesn't report on the orphans' status, to them they are non-existent.

[earth mom]

7. Get used to it. Obama has NO plans to end the war.

:cry:

[Peace Patriot]

9. I really don't know what Obama's plans are.

What he SAID during the campaign was that he was going to move the Forever War to Afghanistan, where more civilians have already been killed by U.S. bombs under his watch, during his first three weeks in office. However, he then apparently told the Joint Chiefs he wants to see a PLAN--goals, exit strategy--before he authorizes a "surge" (more troops--30,000?) for Aghanistan.

It's clear what the "military-industrial complex" wants--endless war. And if they can't justify more killing in Afghanistan to fight (i.e., inflict) terrorism, then they'll switch to the "war on drugs"--as I just saw the other day in some Pentagon missive. They want to bomb the poppy fields. Interestingly, the Taliban shut down the heroin trade. It took the U.S. military to start it up again. Now they want to make "war" on it. Jeez.

Anyway, I don't think you can say, definitively, that Obama "has NO plans to end the war"--if you mean the Iraq War. That war was all about getting the oil contracts signed. Now that they're signed, U.S. military presence will be used to protect the contracts, at whatever level of force that takes. If our puppet government survives, it may be a minimal force (or removal to nearby bases in Kuwait, etc., to maintain the threat of force). That's the oil giants' plan. I really don't know what Obama thinks of this. Diebold & brethren significantly shaved his mandate, and inflicted him with a "Blue Dog"-infested Congress (whose program is to cut everything in the budget but war profiteering). Obama's on a tight corpo/fascist leash, I think. He may want peace, disarmament and social justice, like most earthlings, but he can be tossed, in a cold minute, by Diebold, et al, or other means, and I think he's a very smart man and well aware of it.

All we can do, at this point, is keep reading the entrails--for the real goings on in our Byzantine government--and work on election reform, so that, if Obama is a good guy--and I think it's a strong possibility that he is--we can re-elect him in 2012 (and give him a better Congress).

[Gregorian]

8. Blatant war crime! The world see it. The world knows it.

Even if America is slow.

This is going to be a long legal trial. The dominoes will fall.

[Peace Patriot]

10. Front, center--always! One million innocent people slaughtered for their oil. nt

[Diclotican]

11. balantz

balantz

I guess this is the Iraqis that the neo-cons claim to have liberated in Iraq.. This and the 4 million who are displaced inside Iraq, and more than 2 million other who are not in the country, but in Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait, and Syria (most are in Iran and Syria) And the number of them is just counting upwards..

Mission accomplished mr President. You have really made Iraq a safe, more Democratic country :sarcasm: In fact I doubt that Attila the Hun, or Djengis Khan could possible have doing a more worse job than mr Bush have been doing for the last 6 year... And neither Atilla the Hun og Djengis Khan was famous for their humanity.. You who have no clue what the I am talking about, do your history... Then you Will know what type of men this was..

Off the two, maybe Atilla was the worst.... The story here in Europe, was that where the horse of Atilla had stepped, the Grass was never to grow again... A myth true.. But after more than 1800 year he is still infamous in large parts of europe. And small kids who are behaving bad are even treated with his name still in part of Eeasten europe..

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language.

[GeorgeGist]

16. Capitalism is full of wonder ...

isn't it. Profits are Free of sanity.