Do you really believe that the U.S. has murdered a million Iraqis?

[Philosoraptor]

I keep hearing this staggering figure quoted by several sources, first heard it several years ago and didn't quite believe it, people quote figures all the time. Do you think this is possibly true?

And if you think this is a fact, then how do you feel about it, and what should be done about it, if anything?

Were they ALL terrorists? Did we actually kill a million of them, or just a few hundred thousand? How the hell could we know, we've been totally locked out of all knowledge or real coverage of the war(s).

I know the U.S. has already murdered millions of people in it's short history, but these million murders all happened in the last 6 years under bush's regime, yet, almost no one ever mentions it. A million souls, a million, that's a Hitlerian figure, almost.

Is it truly true, that the United States military under bush has killed a million men, women and children in the last 6 years? If you mention this to anyone, they give you the million mile stare, it is an incomprehensible number, and an incomprehensible crime against humanity, if it is indeed true.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Yes. And over 2.5 million Iraqis became refugees.

[ck4829]

2. Probably more.

There is no way that only 10's of 1000's of innocent people are dead.

[EFerrari]

3. I think of that number whenever someone says the Iraqis need to stand up. n/t

[asjr]

5. I believe the number. The atrocities of

the Bush administration know no bounds. And if they are ever brought to account it will be when a piece of the moon falls off into someone's fondue pot.

[EFerrari]

9. The Lancet is a respected journal. n/t

[renie408]

4. What I remember reading...

was that it was a million people all total when you consider all the people who died who wouldn't have if we had not invaded Iraq. This means that we are responsible for the people killed in sectarian violence, the people who died due to illness and of secondary causes of war, etc.

But YES, I do believe that the US is responsible for all those deaths. Those people died because George Bush and company were determined to go to war with Iraq before they ever stepped into the White House.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Nah, it'd be well more now.

The 1.2 million number is pretty old.

[babylonsister]

7. I believe it. The Lancet Report from 2006 iirc. And no, not all were terrorists.

I'd venture to say most weren't.

[leftyladyfrommo]

8. I think it is one million dead as a direct result of the conflict.

That is a little different - but the end result is the same. They are all dead.

[Forkboy]

10. Not murdered directly, but I don't see the number being that far off through,

Combine the number of displaced refugees that have died or will die, the number of those who don't get any medical treatment or even clean water due to destruction of the infrastructure. The effects of DU ammo down the line. The violence that we triggered. All that on top of the direct killing we've done and I see the number as being within the range of possibilities, if not a low ball number.

[Sanity Claws]

11. Depends on your definition of "murder."

Actually bomb them or gun them down, no.
However, if you include people who died due to lack of medical care, poor nutrition, exposure to the elements, and other indirect results of Bush's war, yes, I do believe it.

[dorkulon]

12. Yeah, but they didn't mean it.

You see, it's okay to kill innocent civilians, as long as your stated target is terrorists.

[panader0]

13. I don't think the US has murdered a million Iraqis

But I think a million Iraqis have died since our invasion. Deaths that would not have occured otherwise. Two or three years ago,
Lancet said there had been 600,000 deaths. The number of refugees is a lot higher. The number of wounded, blinded, maimed, is huge.
The rest of the population gets to live with a few hours of electricity a day, polluted water, blown up bridges etc, etc.
To me, the war remains issue number one, and I'm very broke.

[JuniperLea]

14. I'm betting that's a very conservative estimate

Note when the media speaks of Iraqis killed, the people are called "insurgents" and it's left at that. These are Iraqi citizens that want us out of their country, and they are fighting back for their country.

Think about it, if you were in a country under siege, your leader has been killed and your army is in disarray, and some militant terrorist organization says, hey, we hate those rat bastards too. How about working with us to get them to leave? What would you do?

These poor people. What was done to them is beyond criminal.

[Lerkfish]

15. no I believe that the actual number is very much higher.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

16. Yes and this doesn't include refugees and those who will die down the road from depleted uranium.

[Winterblues]

17. No when we go to "War" we only kill uniformed soldiers and I doubt

we killed a million soldiers. D'oh no uniforms......mostly women and children....can't be....Is this what "War" has come to? Slaughtering women and children...Our troops must be so proud...

[AtomicKitten]

18. Yes, I do.

:(

[movonne]

19. I believe and then some...

[peace13]

20. Yes. Look, we have been at war for six years. That's what wars do.

They kill soldiers, adult citizens, babies and young people. Before the war over 50% of Iraq's population was children. How many died we don't know. We do know that the pictures CNN showed the world the day we marched into Iraq were different than the ones we saw on our screen. There was blood, there was death and that is what happened. WE are all responsible for this travesty and we are responsible for getting someone in the WH who can stop the bleeding.

[backscatter712]

21. Yes, I do.

IIRC, those figures were put together from statistical estimation procedures used normally for disaster areas, such as earthquake areas where hundreds of thousands of people have died, but because of all the destruction, there's no way to find and count all the corpses.

The math's pretty rigorous, the sampling methods are sound - there's science behind those numbers.

We started a war that killed over a million people in Iraq, and the vast majority of them were innocent civilians.

[Cleita]

22. You want the Bush administration to be brought to justice?

If the Iraqis file a complaint with the War Crimes World Court at the Hague, I'm certain they will listen to the complaint and put everyone involved on trial. Even if the USA won't hand any of them over to the Hague, it will effectively make it impossible for any of them to travel outside of the country. If Vincent Bugliosi gets trials against them here in the USA, they will have no where to go. Unfortunately, Congress didn't do their job, but maybe the enablers can be brought up on charges themselves. These are long shots but anything could happen.

[lame54]

23. After the overkill of "Shock & Awe" they said...

"We don't do body counts."

[onehandle]

24. I have an alibi.

I voted for Gore and Kerry.

My hands are clean. However Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and Condi?

Not so much.

The troops did their jobs.

The Bush Administration murdered a million Iraqis.

[Solly Mack]

25. Yes

due to the invasion/occupation..as a direct result of the violence brought to Iraq by the invasion by America

and more when you count the Iraqis that died because of sanctions


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2375595

[Duende azul]

44. Sanctions

Most disturbing to me: How can a politician with a mindset like that still be respected?
In no way better then the current regime.

From your link:

In a famous interview with Madeleine Albright, then US representative at the United Nations, Leslie Stahl of the television show 60 Minutes said: “We have heard that half a million children have died . . . is the price worth it? Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” (2)


Note that she did not question the number.

[noamnety]

52. Hillary was never questioned about the sanctions

at least that I can remember, during the campaign. I don't recall any of the dems talking about that during the primaries - it's been wiped from the memory banks. The lack of accountability on that is one of the reasons that although I support affirmative action for women in the cabinet, I am disappointed/disgusted about Hillary in the SOS spot.

[Solly Mack]

60. I saw the interview and heard her say it

It's one of those things that linger in the mind...

I doubt the number mattered - her answer would have been the same.

[MountainLaurel]

26. In a heartbeat n/t

[Idealism]

27. Here is a link that cites several sources, and one study by a British company

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occupation/

We have killed over a million easily. Most were not directly us, but indirectly simply by being there still indicates our involvement.

And when our military commanders declared whole cities "fire free zones" and literally wiped a city off of 50,000 off the face of the earth, yes I do believe we caused this

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

62. So do you believe that is murder?

[unhappycamper]

28. Yes, and we've made another 4,000,000 homeless.

Seems to be a trademark of *.

[bdamomma]

29. Yes, they have.

[iamahaingttta]

30. I don't believe the US has killed a million Iraqis

I certainly think a million Iraqis or more have been killed, but I don't the US killed them all.
Many or most have been killed by "insurgents" and infighting.
Is the US responsible for all those deaths?
That's the question...

[Junkdrawer]

31. Empires have used Divide-and-Conquer to control invaded people....

since antiquity.

The Iraqi civil war started in earnest after a brief period when Sunnis and Shia united to expel us.

Then mosques on both sides started to be attacked.

About that time, British secret agents were captured on their way to a mosque, dressed as Arabs, with a bomb. British tanks knocked down the jail where they were held and freed them.

[zorahopkins]

32. Likely Lots More

*ith Bush/Cheney running this *ar, and giving orders, can anyone doubt that the US has likely murdered many, many more than 1 million innocent Iraqi people -- many of (perhaps most of) them *omen and children?
Bush/Cheney are nothing but blood-thirsty monsters who surround themselves with equally noxious monstrous people.

*hat should we do about it?

If *e cannot impeach them NO* -- then at least *e ought to indict, try, CONVICT them -- and thro* THEM into JAIL!!!!

NOTE: As a *ay of protesting the fact that Bush/Cheney still occupy the *hite House, I REFUSE to use the letter that comes bet*een "V" and "X".

[Beam Me Up]

33. Even one death was one too many.

Numbers aren't called numbers for nothing -- they have a way of numbing the heart and mind, especially when applied to body counts. Usually the bigger the number (anything past our toes and fingers), the number we get.

Whatever the number of Iraqi dead, it is an outrage. It is doubly an outrage that we don't KNOW! And it is even more of an outrage that so many thousands of Americans have been killed and wounded and become victims of PTSD as a consequence. But on and on it goes and everyone is still acting like the "war on terror" has some reasonable credibility, that it is something other than human slaughter for the financial gain of a few well placed people.

Sick, sick, sick.

[goforit]

34. The Prescott Bush, GHWBush and GWBush, were all into depopulation theories.

And war has always carried a legal reason to do it.
Prescott supported Hitler.
GHWB supported Vietnam, Iraq, Bosnia, Iran-Contra-Ahganistan, Iraq 1 & 2
W supported the destuction of the axis of evil, which yes , it has taken millions of lives.

None of them has ever shed one tear over it.

And we let them do it.

[Thothmes]

63. Lyndon Johnson supported Vietnam

He got 36,000 Americans killed, 200,000 wounded, and may be as many as 4,000,000 killed or wounded. We let him do it.

[Hydra]

35. My guess is that we're working on 2 million

And ironically, I was ridiculed over the years for pointing out the fact that we were working on Hitlerian totals. As someone pointed out at the time,

"How many millions of dead are required before it's called genocide?"

I argued that we need to stop this war and pull all of our troops out as soon as the evidence came in that the war was initiated illegally. I was told that the deathtoll would be higher.

How many millions could we have saved by not going along with this?

[Vidar]

36. The perpetrators of the war should be tried for treason, genocide & crimes

against humanity--someplace where the death penalty applies. Oh hell, just give to the Iraquis.

[mimitabby]

37. yes, in many ways we've killed them

[Iggo]

38. So, what if it was only a hundred murdered?

Would that be okay?

[Posteritatis]

39. I believe the US created a situation in which a million Iraqis could get murdered (nt)

[lunatica]

40. Shock and Awe and Fallujah makes Bush a monster

Shock and Awe was, as defined, massive aerial bombing on civilians on a scale that lasted for days and which was meant to terrify the residents into giving up any idea of resisting the superior forces which were soon to invade. This bombing was done on Bahgdad which is a very large city with millions of residents. How many people would survive such an assault in, say, Washington DC? San Francisco, Houston, Pittsburgh, or Boston

Fallujah was another city which was basically bombed and poisoned with lethal weapons to drive out all the residents in an attempt to get a handful of 'insurgents'. In my opinion both bombings were our Guernica

[BB1]

41. six years is 2160 days, give or take.

For one million people to be killed, they'd need to get killed with almost 500 per day. I'm not sure if that would not be close to the truth.

It's sad, however many people were killed. In Iraq and Afghanistan. The world should have stepped up.

[WhiteTara]

42. yes. n/t

[readmoreoften]

43. Yeah but don't they believe in that "terrorist religion"?

They couldn't possibly be average people just like us. No way. Not with such exotic headgear. And that funny language they speak. Come on, it doesn't even make sense. They put "Al" in front of everything instead of "the". Why can't they just use the word "the" like "normal" people?

[pleah]

45. Yes.

:(

[eridani]

46. If someone blows up your hospital and other infrastructure with the result that

--you die from some treatable illness, you are just as dead as if you had been shot or blown up directly. That's the epidemiological concept of "excess deaths," which includes all sequelae of war, not just being a direct victim of violence.

[Alamuti Lotus]

47. No, that figure is a low estimate

And it should be noted that none of this begins or ends with Bush the Lesser.

[barbtries]

48. i think it is very possibly true

and we may never know the actual numbers. the bush administration is a murderous one.

[diane in sf]

49. Yes, the numbers came from research published in a medical journal several

years ago, so it's more dead by now.

[slipslidingaway]

50. Not directly, I believe the term used in the Lancet study is excess

deaths.

:(

[snot]

51. Are you really just now asking that question?

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

[JVS]

53. More like manslaughtered, but murdered would probably be applicable to quite a few cases.

[tuckessee]

54. You must not be counting the years of sanctions. n/t

[unkachuck]

55. yes, I believe it....

....and our fascist shadow government has gone slightly underground to resurface in 8 years to do it all again somewhere else....they control, govern and profit with fear and an iron fist....

....there's money to be made in making dead bodies and our fascists are war-mongering professionals....Are we STILL in Iraq?

....Out of Iraq, NOW!! (like anyone's listening)

[Canuckistanian]

56. Even that's a lowball estimate

Two years ago it was VERY reliably reported that 600k had died.

And that was BEFORE "The Surge"

[Philosoraptor]

57. .................

[Judi Lynn]

58. Absolutely, not a shadow of a doubt. n/t

[BlooInBloo]

59. Something like that is the best available estimate. Why - do you have a better one?

[proud2BlibKansan]

61. Yes I believe it

[sofa king]

64. Consider this:

The United States has ruled Baghdad with an iron fist for five years now. The city's traffic is bisected and re-routed by American patrols, road blocks and checkpoints. The nation's highway transportation industry is largely controlled by American contractors, like Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR.

If you've been reading Juan Cole's weblog regularly, you know that scarcely a month--indeed, barely a week--has passed in those five years without Cole mentioning yet another story like this one from two days ago:

* BAGHDAD - Police found 15 decomposed bodies in a mass grave in northern Baghdad's Ur district, police said. Some still had visible marks of gunshot wounds, they said.

Okay. So can anyone show me a single story in the past five years which shows that American troops--or for that matter, anyone--have intercepted a truckload of dead bodies? I haven't seen such a thing, and I would very much like to, so please don't be shy about posting them if you know of them.

In fact, the closest thing I have seen to that is mention of the fact that a KBR truck was accused of shipping decomposing bodies, then a month later the same trailer was used to haul ice for the troops.

So what we know is:

* Dozens of dead bodies in mass graves are discovered and reported every single month in Iraq.
* Stories of trucks caught delivering those dead bodies are nonexistent.
* The Americans have ultimate control and oversight over the roads of Iraq.
* The only trucks that are known to be carrying dead bodies in Iraq come from Dick Cheney's former company.
* The only trucks in Iraq which are virtually guaranteed to not be stopped and searched are those same KBR and Halliburton trucks.

We're doing it. We opened up a Phoenix Program in Iraq and we have pursued a policy of mass murder there.

[mmonk]

65. Some are indirect casualties resulting from bombed out infrastructure

and hospitals.