14,000 Iraqis dead so far this year

Abuskedti

I know many of you proud supporters and politicians like to say we aren't the ones killing them....

well, among the several excuses for Iraq - a current favorite is that we can't leave them now. We owe it to them to stay and see this through.

What we are maintaining for these people is a lawlessness that yields some 60 or 70 innocent people killed every day.

Cree Nations

I hear what you are saying and I am not totally for the U.S. but the U.S. is not entirely responsible for killing all 14 000 of those Iraqis, a good chunk of that number is from Iraqis killing Iraqis (mainly Shia vs. Shiite....I think). Is the dictatorship of the U.S better than that of Sadam? Most likely but probably not by much.
war
war
war,
wtf?

SundaySilence

The conflict in the Middle East seems to be obscuring the expansion of the civil war in Iraq.

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Abuskedti

Cree Nations wrote:

I hear what you are saying and I am not totally for the U.S. but the U.S. is not entirely responsible for killing all 14 000 of those Iraqis, a good chunk of that number is from Iraqis killing Iraqis (mainly Shia vs. Shiite....I think). Is the dictatorship of the U.S better than that of Sadam? Most likely but probably not by much.
war
war
war,
wtf?

the criminals are free to gather plan and kill. this is wholly due to our presence, our control, and our complete indifference to their humanity. We can't be bothered to protect them. We don't need more troops in Iraq because we consider establishing law and order for the saftey of the conquered to be none of our concern.

Our behavior in Iraq is absolutely disgusting. We are barberic murderers - keeping the cess pool of death vibrant. It is the more shameful than our past atrocities because the only motive is a little political slant to get a few morons from the right club some votes.

it is shamefull sit by and contribute to the propaganda that allows this to continue.

RockinInCanada

Cree Nations wrote:

I hear what you are saying and I am not totally for the U.S. but the U.S. is not entirely responsible for killing all 14 000 of those Iraqis, a good chunk of that number is from Iraqis killing Iraqis (mainly Shia vs. Shiite....I think). Is the dictatorship of the U.S better than that of Sadam? Most likely but probably not by much.
war
war
war,
wtf?

Well....this is occuring under who's watchful eye...once again mission miserably failed....

But yes a lot of the deaths are Iraqi on Iraqi....and I would say equally as bad...just different in definition....

Heatherj43

Thank you to the OP. This Israel/Lebanon thing is a good smoke screen to divert our attention from this crap we are doing in Iraq.
How in the hell can anyone justify the US killing innocent civilians in a country we are supposedly there to HELP the citizens. Geez...some help, eh?
We have been brainwashed since we were toddlers watching Sesame street that the US is good and does no wrong and we are good citizens if we are patriotic. Screw that. We are taught that we only do these thinsg for noble and good reason...HAHA!!
Our leaders could give two shits about citizens getting killed and ...damn there is oil!!!!
They are the real terroists. Taking over a country , while killing innocent people for the almighty dollar.
The US government is probably one of the worse terrorists organizations in the world and have the most power..and we are all conned into believing they are good. BS!!!
We are not in Iraq to do good. We are there for our own selfish motives, so we can live better lives, while screwing them over!!!

rebornFixer

Abuskedti wrote:

I know many of you proud supporters and politicians like to say we aren't the ones killing them....

Well, in these people's defense (:)), its actually true. The vast majority of these deaths probably came from Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence ...
I agree that we need to look a bit deeper than that, and consider what effect the occupation is having on the situation. But in all honesty, where would the occupation be without an insurgency?

Hoon

Goodbye, blue sky
Look mummy, there's an aeroplane up in the sky"

Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the
promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue
sky?

Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
The flames are all gone, but the pain lingers on.

Goodbye, blue sky
Goodbye, blue sky.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.

"The 11:15 from Newcastle is now approaching"
"The 11:18 arrival...."

leethal

I mean this to be a legitimate question; there is no right or wrong answer and i don't have a slant. Anyway...

There is a belief that the US is committing terrorist acts in Iraq. My question is: do you think their is a difference between between unwillingly killing innocent civillians and deliberately targeting them.

My personal belief is that the families of innocent casualties could not care less if their loved ones had been killed 'by accident.' They are dead. They may understand that it was an accident but they would see the killing as heartless and unneccessary even if accidental.

For an observer of the war however, their is a fundamental difference between accidental killing and terrorism. Despite bearing the same consequences, the latter is much worse.

This is only my opinion, give yours.

Abuskedti

reborncareerist wrote:

Well, in these people's defense (:)), its actually true. The vast majority of these deaths probably came from Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence ...
I agree that we need to look a bit deeper than that, and consider what effect the occupation is having on the situation. But in all honesty, where would the occupation be without an insurgency?

it is true, i agree. But it is not reasonable to associate the criminals doing the killing with Iraqis.

We had riots in Los Angeles over the Rodney King situation for example. We sent in the National Guard among others to put a stop to it. Had we not done that - it would have escalated. If we did not have a military - or a strong government - the criminals would have taken over and spread. Without law enforcement - America would deteriorate into what Iraq is very quickly. Perhaps worse due to our arrogance.

We have taken away their identity - as well as their army - their criminals are in control - we do nothing about it - and we sit in judgement of them as a people.

those deaths are on our hands - regardless of who is actually carrying them out.

Byrnzie

reborncareerist wrote:

Well, in these people's defense (:)), its actually true. The vast majority of these deaths probably came from Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence ...
I

Wrong! Read on....

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2006/davies0206.html

Burying The Lancet Report

By Nicolas J. S. Davies


February 2006 Volume 19 Number 2


Over a year ago an international team of epidemiologists, headed by Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, completed a “cluster sample survey” of civilian casualties in Iraq. Its findings contradicted central elements of what politicians and journalists had presented to the U.S. public and the world. After excluding any possible statistical anomalies, they estimated that at least 98,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the previous 18 months as a direct result of the invasion and occupation of their country. They also found that violence had become the leading cause of death in Iraq during that period. Their most significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent deaths were caused by “coalition” forces using “helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry,” and that almost half (48 percent) of these were children, with a median age of 8.

When the team’s findings were published in the Lancet, the official journal of the British Medical Association, they caused quite a stir and it seemed that the first step had been taken toward a realistic accounting of the human cost of the war. The authors made it clear that their results were approximate. They discussed the limitations of their methodology at length and emphasized that further research would be invaluable in giving a more precise picture.

A year later, we do not have a more precise picture. Soon after the study was published, U.S. and British officials launched a concerted campaign to discredit its authors and marginalize their findings without seriously addressing the validity of their methods or presenting any evidence to challenge their conclusions. Today the continuing aerial bombardment of Iraq is still a dark secret to most Americans and the media present the same general picture of the war, focusing on secondary sources of violence.

Roberts has been puzzled and disturbed by this response to his work, which stands in sharp contrast to the way the same governments responded to a similar study he led in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2000. In that case, he reported that about 1.7 million people had died during 22 months of war and, as he says, “Tony Blair and Colin Powell quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the precision or validity.” In fact the UN Security Council promptly called for the withdrawal of foreign armies from the Congo and the U.S. State Department cited his study in announcing a grant of $10 million for humanitarian aid.

Roberts conducted a follow-up study in the Congo that raised the fatality estimate to three million and Tony Blair cited that figure in his address to the 2001 Labor Party conference. In December 2004 Blair dismissed the epidemiological team’s work in Iraq, claiming, “Figures from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is.”

This statement by Blair is particularly interesting because the Iraqi Health Ministry reports, whose accuracy he praised, have confirmed the Johns Hopkins team’s conclusion that aerial attacks by “coalition” forces are the leading cause of civilian deaths. One such report was cited by Nancy Youssef in the Miami Herald of September 25, 2004 under the headline “U.S. Attacks, Not Insurgents, Blamed for Most Iraqi Deaths.” The Health Ministry had been reporting civilian casualty figures based on reports from hospitals, as Blair said, but it was not until June 2004 that it began to differentiate between casualties inflicted by “coalition” forces and those from other causes. From June 10 to September 10 it counted 1,295 civilians killed by U.S. forces and their allies and 516 killed in “terrorist” operations. Health Ministry officials told Youssef that the “statistics captured only part of the death toll,” and emphasized that aerial bombardment was largely responsible for the higher numbers of deaths caused by the “coalition.” The breakdown (72 percent U.S.) is remarkably close to that attributed to aerial bombardment in the Lancet survey (79 percent).

BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson, in another Health Ministry report covering July 1, 2004 to January 1, 2005, cited 2,041 civilians killed by U.S. and allied forces versus 1,233 by “insurgents” (only 62 percent U.S.). Then something strange happened. The Iraqi Health Minister’s office contacted the BBC and claimed, in a convoluted and confusing statement, that their figures had somehow been misrepresented. The BBC issued a retraction and details of deaths caused by “coalition” forces have been notably absent from subsequent Health Ministry reports.

Official and media criticism of Roberts’s work has focused on the size of his sample, 988 homes in 33 clusters distributed throughout the country, but other epidemiologists reject the notion that this is controversial.

Michael O’Toole, the director of the Center for International Health in Australia, says: “That’s a classical sample size. I just don’t see any evidence of significant exaggeration…. If anything, the deaths may have been higher because what they are unable to do is survey families where everyone has died.”

David Meddings, a medical officer with the Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention at the World Health Organization, said that surveys of this kind always have uncertainty, but “I don’t think the authors ignored that or understated. Those cautions I don’t believe should be applied any more or less stringently to a study that looks at a politically sensitive conflict than to a study that looks at a pill for heart disease.”

Roberts has also compared his work in Iraq to other epidemiological studies: “In 1993, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control randomly called 613 households in Milwaukee and concluded that 403,000 people had developed Cryptosporidium in the largest outbreak ever recorded in the developed world, no one said that 613 households was not a big enough sample. It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces.”

The campaign to discredit Roberts, the Johns Hopkins team, and the Lancet used the same methods that the U.S. and British governments have employed consistently to protect their monopoly on “responsible” storytelling about the war. By dismissing the study’s findings out of hand, U.S. and British officials created the illusion that the authors were suspect or politically motivated and discouraged the media from taking them seriously. This worked disturbingly well. Even opponents of the war continue to cite much lower figures for civilian casualties and innocently attribute the bulk of them to Iraqi resistance forces or “terrorists.”

The figures most often cited for civilian casualties in Iraq are those collected by Iraqbodycount, but its figures are not intended as an estimate of total casualties. Its methodology is to count only those deaths that are reported by at least two “reputable” international media outlets in order to generate a minimum number that is more or less indisputable. Its authors know that thousands of deaths go unreported in their count and say they cannot prevent the media misrepresenting their figures as an actual estimate of deaths.

Beyond the phony controversy regarding the methodology of the Lancet report, there is one issue that does cast doubt on its findings. This is the decision to exclude the cluster in Fallujah from its computations due to the much higher number of deaths that were reported there (even though the survey was completed before the widely reported assault on the city in November 2004). Roberts wrote, in a letter to the Independent, “Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we did a survey estimating that 285,000 people have died due to the first 18 months of invasion and occupation and we reported it as at least 100,000.”

The dilemma he faced was this: in the 33 clusters surveyed, 18 reported no violent deaths (including one in Sadr City), 14 other clusters reported a total of 21 violent deaths and the Fallujah cluster reported 52 violent deaths. This last number is conservative because, as the report stated, “23 households of 52 visited were either temporarily or permanently abandoned. Neighbors interviewed described widespread death in most of the abandoned homes but could not give adequate details for inclusion in the survey.”

Leaving aside this last factor, there were three possible interpretations of the results from Fallujah. The first, and indeed the one Roberts adopted, was that the team had randomly stumbled on a cluster of homes where the death toll was so high as to be totally unrepresentative and therefore not relevant to the survey. The second possibility was that this pattern among the 33 clusters, with most of the casualties falling in one cluster and many clusters reporting zero deaths, was an accurate representation of the distribution of civilian casualties in Iraq under “precision” aerial bombardment. The third possibility was that the Fallujah cluster was atypical, but not sufficiently abnormal to warrant total exclusion from the study, so that the number of excess deaths was somewhere between 100,000 and 285,000. Without further research, there is no way to determine which of these three possibilities is correct.

No new survey of civilians killed by “coalition” forces has been produced since the Health Ministry report last January, but there is strong evidence that the air war has intensified during this period. Independent journalists have described the continuing U.S. assault on Ramadi as “Fallujah in slow motion.” Smaller towns in Anbar province have been targets of air raids for the past several months, and towns in Diyala and Baghdad provinces have also been bombed. Seymour Hersh has covered the “under-reported” air war in the New Yorker and writes that the current U.S. strategy is to embed U.S. Special Forces with Iraqi forces to call in air strikes as U.S. ground forces withdraw, opening the way for heavier bombing with even less media scrutiny (if that is possible).

One ignored feature of the survey’s results is the high number of civilian casualties reported in Fallujah in August 2004. It appears that U.S. forces took advantage of the media focus on Najaf at that time to conduct very heavy attacks against Fallujah. This is perhaps a clue to the strategy by which they have conducted much of the air war. The heaviest bombing and aerial assault at any given time is likely to be somewhere well over the horizon from any well-publicized U.S. military operation, possibly involving only small teams of Special Forces on the ground. But cynical military strategy does not let the media off the hook for their failure to find out what is really going on and tell the outside world about it. Iraqi and other Arab journalists can still travel through most of the country and news editors should pay close attention to their reports from areas that are too dangerous for Western reporters.

A second feature of the epidemiologists’ findings that has not been sufficiently explored is the one suggested above by Michael O’Toole. Since their report establishes that aerial assault and bombardment is the leading cause of violent death in Iraq and, since a direct hit by a 500 pound Mark 82 bomb will render most houses uninhabitable, any survey that disregards damaged, uninhabited houses is sure to underreport deaths. This should be taken into account by any follow-up studies.

Thanks to Roberts, his international team, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and the editorial board of the Lancet, we have a clearer picture of the violence taking place in Iraq than that presented by “mainstream” media. Allowing for 16 months of the air war and other deaths since the completion of the survey, we have to estimate that somewhere between 185,000 and 700,000 people have died as a direct result of the war. Coalition forces have killed anywhere from 70,000 to 500,000 of them, including 30,000 to 275,000 children under the age of 15.

Roberts has cautioned me to remember that whether someone is killed by a bomb, a heart attack during an air strike, or a car accident fleeing the chaos, those who initiated the war and who “stay the course” bear the responsibility.

As someone who has followed this war closely, I find the results of the study to be consistent with what I have seen gradually emerging as the war has progressed, based on the work of courageous, mostly independent reporters, and glimpses through the looking glass as more and more cracks appear in the “official story.”

Nicolas J.S. Davies is indebted to Medialens, a British media watchdog group, for some of the material in this report. This article was first published by Online Journal.

PaperPlates

Coalition forces have killed anywhere from 70,000 to 500,000 of them, including 30,000 to 275,000 children under the age of 15.

Well, with such seemingly accurate 'guesstimates' and narrow numbers how can they NOT be correct? 70,000-500,000........sounds factual and accurate to me. Pffft.

Abuskedti

PaperPlates wrote:

Well, with such seemingly accurate 'guesstimates' and narrow numbers how can they NOT be correct? 70,000-500,000........sounds factual and accurate to me. Pffft.

Its difficult to walk the streets in Iraq and count. The United States is free to kill people after labeling them insurgents. And the United States will not leave until there are people in power willing continue to hide those facts.

Byrnzie

PaperPlates wrote:

Well, with such seemingly accurate 'guesstimates' and narrow numbers how can they NOT be correct? 70,000-500,000........sounds factual and accurate to me. Pffft.

Did you actually read the article or just the two small parts that I highlighted? I'm getting really bored with reading posts by people like yourself who make pointless comments about things they haven't read, and about subjects of which they know nothing. Can I ask you to do me a favour? Can you post just one - yes one! - comment which says something constructive?

PaperPlates

Byrnzie wrote:

Did you actually read the article or just the two small parts that I highlighted? I'm getting really bored with reading posts by people like yourself who make pointless comments about things they haven't read, and about subjects of which they know nothing. Can I ask you to do me a favour? Can you post just one - yes one! - comment which says something constructive?

Yes I read the entire article. I chose to comment on the part that stood out to me. Those numbers are meant to shock and draw attention. However, I felt they are a little vague and sound alot like guesswork.
Im really bored with sanctimonious people who read a few articles that are clearly biased and suddenly consider themselves experts that know so much more than the common man.


Midgets are people too.

There, that was constructive. Happy?

Better yet.


The usa sucks. Its evil. Israel is a terrorist nation. The usa sucks.

There, that was about as constructive as the lot of you. Happy yet?

hippiemom

PaperPlates wrote:

Well, with such seemingly accurate 'guesstimates' and narrow numbers how can they NOT be correct? 70,000-500,000........sounds factual and accurate to me. Pffft.

I found this regarding deaths under Saddam:

"Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power" (http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_deathsundersaddamhussein42503.html)

We have now been in Iraq for 1,217 days. If we accept the absolute low estimate of 70,000 Iraqis and add the 2,781 coalition soldiers who have been killed, that gives us an average of about 60 deaths per day ... better than Saddam, but not by much. If the number of civilians killed is towards the low end of the middle of the range given in the article (which it probably is), let's say 200,000, that shoots our deaths-per-day number all the way up to 166. Hooray for freedom!

NCfan

hippiemom wrote:

I found this regarding deaths under Saddam:

"Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power" (http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_deathsundersaddamhussein42503.html)

We have now been in Iraq for 1,217 days. If we accept the absolute low estimate of 70,000 Iraqis and add the 2,781 coalition soldiers who have been killed, that gives us an average of about 60 deaths per day ... better than Saddam, but not by much. If the number of civilians killed is towards the low end of the middle of the range given in the article (which it probably is), let's say 200,000, that shoots our deaths-per-day number all the way up to 166. Hooray for freedom!

The thing your are ignoring is that our actions are providing an opportunity to have something better. It's giving the Iraqi people a choice other than a dictator or a theocracy.

Whether we can hold things together long enough and whether the Iraqi people make this work is yet to be seen.

One thing is for sure, we are helping to give Iraq a chance to stop these needless deaths permanently... and if we had never gone there Uday and Qusay would still be waiting in the wings to take up their fathers murderous legacy for generations to come.

mpg82

how many wouldve died under saddam? <14000 i'd say.

Abuskedti

hippiemom wrote:

I found this regarding deaths under Saddam:

"Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power" (http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_deathsundersaddamhussein42503.html)

We have now been in Iraq for 1,217 days. If we accept the absolute low estimate of 70,000 Iraqis and add the 2,781 coalition soldiers who have been killed, that gives us an average of about 60 deaths per day ... better than Saddam, but not by much. If the number of civilians killed is towards the low end of the middle of the range given in the article (which it probably is), let's say 200,000, that shoots our deaths-per-day number all the way up to 166. Hooray for freedom!

what seems funny to me is "needless war with Iran".

hippiemom

Abuskedti wrote:

what seems funny to me is "needless war with Iran".

I know, how silly! We needed that war! How else would we have worked out that arms to the Contras thing? That war was absolutely necessary!

You raise a good point ... of those Saddam killed, the U.S. has blood on their hands for a good number of them. The Kurds? Where'd he get the chemicals he gassed them with again? War with Iran? Which country was it that was arming both sides to keep that one going as long as possible?

rebornFixer

hippiemom wrote:

I know, how silly! We needed that war! How else would we have worked out that arms to the Contras thing? That war was absolutely necessary!

You raise a good point ... of those Saddam killed, the U.S. has blood on their hands for a good number of them. The Kurds? Where'd he get the chemicals he gassed them with again? War with Iran? Which country was it that was arming both sides to keep that one going as long as possible?

Actually, the short answer is that Iraq got its chemicals from many sources, including the Soviets and the Chinese. They got manufacturing technologies from the U.S., granted.