Study estimates nearly 500,000 Iraqis died in war

[alp227]

Source: LA Times

New research on the human cost of the war in Iraq estimates that roughly half a million men, women and children died between 2003 and 2011 as a direct result of violence or the associated collapse of civil infrastructure.

In a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, researchers concluded that at least 461,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths occurred in the troubled nation after the U.S.-led invasion that resulted in the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein. Those were defined as fatalities that would not have occurred in the absence of an invasion and occupation.

The study's release follows several controversial and widely varying estimates of Iraq war deaths. It is the first analysis published since 2006, the bloodiest period of the war.

Lead author Amy Hagopian, an associate professor of global health at the University of Washington, said the analysis was limited by a lack of accurate health and census reporting in Iraq. However, she said, it was a duty of public health officials to assess the effects of war.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-iraq-war-deaths-20131016,0,6128082.story

[ForgoTheConsequence]

1. They hate us for our freedoms.

[SoapBox]

2. Blood is all over the hands of Bush and Co.

[kentauros]

3. Hell, they're bathing in it at this point!

Now if only it was boiling blood...

(for those that don't get the reference, it's to whatever part of Hell that's a river of boiling blood.)

[madrchsod]

17. add in clinton during his presidency.

[Auntie Bush]

19. and a Biden and many other Democrats

Can't just blame Clinton....not fair!

[mallard]

4. Re: This conservative toll estimate helps put that of ...

... the 9/11 attacks - which were cited and used in the call for invasion - into fair perspective.

Notions that allowing 2,400 people to perish in the name of political maneuvering is or was 'unthinkable' are more of same: heavy-handed political maneuvering. The truth was very effectively vanquished. 9/11 deaths were to become only a small fraction of the total, still continuing, event-related casualties.

That 9/11 was used to make war acceptable is a far more compelling point than the immediate pro-war portayal of suicidal madmen trying to teach America a lesson for supporting Israel, evoking hatred of their kind and demanding huge retaliation. The question remains. Who really pulled off the 9/11 attacks?

Does the lack of any ringing truth about 9/11 perhaps suggest underlying deceptions deemed too dark to uncover?

The price still being paid by Iraq for having suffered under bad leadership is truly beyond belief. It was a peaceful if not economcally-strained country before the great 'rescue' operation. It's not as if the those leading the disaster just found out there would be bad results!

[dreamnightwind]

6. Excellent points

That is the kind of cold reasoning I would expect from the neocons. 2,400 people, martyrs for the larger cause. One of Asimov's Foundation books had a similar event.

The "cause" was much larger indeed than 2,400 deaths. Half a million Iraqi deaths in the first act of the remaking of the middle east. That doesn't prove MIHOP, but it does put things in perspective, which I think is too difficult for most people to grasp, they keep thinking that 2,400 of our own is too much madness to attribute even to the neocons.

Never underestimate your opponent, the neocons think big. No doubt about that, either, the PNAC document spelled out clearly just how big they were thinking.

[reddread]

10. Willie Brown was given fair warning

America was not.
Although news articles were published quoting sources as
"not a matter of if, but a matter of when"
the Bush junta was permitted to pretend they had no idea something like that would happen.
It did not come down to a particular briefing being ignored.
Crime of the century.
right out of the gate.

[dreamnightwind]

12. Yes, odd that.

Wasn't Ted Olson's wife Barbara Olson killed on one of the planes? Ted was Bush's Solicitor General. You'd think she would have been tipped off too. I googled it and ran into all sorts of truther sites, so stayed away, apparently there's a lot of CT around her death or non-death.

Not allowed to go very far down this rabbit hole, it violates some DU rule, or at least I know that was the case several years ago. I have no idea what happened, I just liked the thinking in the post I responded to, seemed to fit how I think of the neocons, and I try to keep an open mind about 9/11.

[sakabatou]

5. All due to lies

[Niceguy1]

7. from the article

" the study attributed 35% to coalition forces, 32% to sectarian militias and 11% to criminals. "

43% of the excessive deaths were from their own people..

Not a very good place to live.

[Ash_F]

8. There was a civil war when the US started unilaterally banning political parties

and candidates. Many of which had nothing to do with the former Baath party. Iraqi citizens were arrested by US forces for so little as having political reading material. They banned everyone that did not acquiesce to foreign management of the oil.

It is funny how crushing democracy in that manner can lead to a civil war. Don't you agree?

[Niceguy1]

9. Iraq wasn't a democracy

When we invaded....Saddam was a brutal dictator....the hatred between the different factuons in that country was always there...it was just represed by Saddams iron rule.

[reddread]

11. Either read the comment more carefully

or twist it to your comfort.

[Ash_F]

14. If Iraq wasn't a Democracy before, the US State Department should be banning political parties?

I'm not sure if you are trying to make this argument, but it makes little sense. Maybe you do need to read more carefully, as the other poster mentioned.

The point is that people were forcibly and violently disenfranchised, by the US, for not wanting to become puppets. This obviously led to conflict with people whom they viewed as being puppets of the US, as well as the US government itself.

It is not as simple as saying it was a sectarian Shi'a/Sunni conflict where the Shi'a supported the US. This viewpoint is ignorant of the facts. There were predominately Shi'a groups that were banned from participating in elections by the USgov, through no credible process, and subsequently went underground to take up arms.

[dreamnightwind]

13. K & R

I think that's an excellent way to determine war deaths. I don't know their method in any detail, but the approach of estimating how many deaths would have been expected under pre-war circumstances and comparing it to the current population numbers makes a lot of sense.

edit to add:

from the OP article:

"Of those deaths determined to be the result of direct violence, the study attributed 35% to coalition forces, 32% to sectarian militias and 11% to criminals. Contrary to public perception of mayhem in Iraq, bombings accounted for just 12% of violent deaths. The overall majority of violent deaths, 63%, were the result of gunfire."

Reading the article, the number looks pretty questionable, even if the approach is good. They interviewed 2000 random households and asked them to recall any family members that had died from 2 years before the war through 2011, got a prewar death rate and a wartime death rate from those interviews, and extrapolated those to the roughly 32 million people in Iraq.

Some possible problems with that:

some people, and in some case entire households, leave the country as refugees during a war

people may not remember all of the deaths over such a long period. On the other hand i wonder how they keep from counting deaths twice as people move around to different households yet report on their earlier household, etc., i worked the census and this is actually pretty hard to sort out, especially in a place like Iraq.

They had no accurate census pre or post war. I don't think that's much of a problem since their technique is based on death rates, and they probably have a good ballpark population estimate.

So not a definitive death toll, but maybe a pretty good one.

[Sunlei]

15. add to that Iran, Afghans,

Now the infrastructure, the health problems birth and mental health defects. Even our own military so many hurt. War is a disaster, a huge suffering that never ends. To me this seems like it was all done for the benefit of war profiteers. I do not understand why the world tribunal won't call for justice. They let them live out their lives, immune, wealthy and in comfort.

[madrchsod]

16. i noticed no one wants to add the dead during the sanction years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq

[Aristus]

18. AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!!!

We're #1 in butchering innocent people! Yay! American exceptionalism!

America: Getting away with atrocities we condemn other nations for committing for over 60 years!...