1,168,058 dead in Iraq??

[W4d5Y]

Wow, I'd never have expected the causes to be THAT bad
I thought analysis went into 200,000 dead?
But this is really just disgraceful...
But, oh well, nevermind, let's not cry about dead Iraqis...Hey, isn't that Yussif over there?!

[The] study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The graphic above provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count.
...
The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.

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

 

[Musk]

Darn. I never expected it to be that high either =/

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Neither would I. Continues to prove what a pointless war it is.

 

[The Monkey]

I thought violence had decreased lately.

 

[Eejit]

War, it ain't nothing
But a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker

 

[Emporius]

This, children, is what we call CENSORSHIP and MEDIA MANIPULATION. And the American government is oooooh so good at it.

This is a horrifying number.

 

[Escaep]

Way too high.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2007/


Yearly civilian deaths from 2003-2007 adds up to only around 87,000. Why is there a 1,081,058 difference? The iraq body count is said to be the most accurate. Also, what i did myself is take the number of years the war has gone on (03-07=5) and multiplied that by 365 to get the number of days (assuming full years). Then i divided that number (1825) by your said 1,168,058 to get an average daily death toll of 640 people. I also looked at the highest month of casualties (Sep. 06) ((3543)) and divided that by 30 (number of days in month) and found an average of only 118 civilian deaths per day. Where in the world do those high number come from?

 

[Eejit]

If it's coming from the Lancet it might include indirect deaths due to things like infrastructure being destroyed, causing disease/starvation etc.

 

[Escaep]

If it's coming from the Lancet it might include indirect deaths due to things like infrastructure being destroyed, causing disease/starvation etc.

I still dont see 1,000,000 people dying from that.

 

[The Monkey]

If it's coming from the Lancet it might include indirect deaths due to things like infrastructure being destroyed, causing disease/starvation etc.

This one says "violent deaths", though.

 

[Eejit]

The Lancet one doesn't specify "violent", and says 600,000 (up to 2006)

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

 

[W4d5Y]

I thought violence had decreased lately.

you fool, of course violence is declining, however this is not a graphic on contemporary progress of attacks in Iraq, just the body count since 2003 so far....while those people, who didn't get killed in the last months, cannot resurrect the dead.

//edit: I believe the numbers have to be accurate, after all they even go into the lower decimals, as opposed to "some 87,000".
They must have sources for that, while I haven't yet checked how the hell they got that number, I think it must be accurate.

 

[Solaris]

]you fool,[/U] of course violence is declining, however this is not a graphic on contemporary progress of attacks in Iraq, just the body count since 2003 so far....while those people, who didn't get killed in the last months, cannot resurrect the dead.

**** off you arrogant prick.

 

[repiV]

The fact that everyone's getting into a hissy fit over the number of deaths in Iraq proves that noone has any real conception of the realities of war nowadays.
This war has gone on for longer than World War 2. The casualties are tiny, in the grand scheme of wars. Millions and millions died in Korea and Vietnam. 50 million died in WW2, most of those civilians.
1000 people died in the Falklands, a month-long war over some islands that only had a population of 2000. Some perspective is rather useful in not coming to the mistaken conclusion that Iraq is anything special.

 

[Solaris]

Yeah, It's only ONE MILLION dead people.

 

[Raptor_Jesus]

This, children, is what we call CENSORSHIP and MEDIA MANIPULATION. And the American government is oooooh so good at it.

This is a horrifying number.

lol:angel:

 

[repiV]

Yeah, It's only ONE MILLION dead people.

First of all, one million is at the "we're really milking this thing" end of the range of estimates.
Secondly, one million dead over six years is actually pretty low.
Thirdly, most of those deaths are caused by sectarian violence so the outrage usually directed at the US and UK is not only without context, but utterly misplaced too.

The study by the World Health Organisation and the Iraqi government puts the death toll at 151,000 - rather far removed from this "million". And by the most conservative estimate, 5,000 Iraqis were dying every month under the Ba'athists. So, four years at 5K a month puts the death toll had we NOT gone in at 240,000. And that's the conservative estimate - some human rights group put the tally at 10,000 a month.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

 

[Solaris]

Interesting post repriV.

 

[repiV]

Interesting post repriV.

Thanks.

Just for the record, I'm not saying that the amount of death and destruction in Iraq isn't tragic or ghastly.
What I am saying is that war is a part of life, and as far as wars go, Iraq is pretty damn tame. We all live pretty damn comfortable and sheltered lives here in the West - miserable lives, a lot of the time, but it's a pleasant kind of misery.
The world is a terrible place. Iraq really doesn't rate very highly on the scale of horrific things or even horrific wars, the only reason it garners so much outrage is because the media gives people very selective insights without wider context.
Even by the highest estimates which are in all likelihood wrong, Iraq is a low casualty war, and there are more reasons to celebrate the situation in Iraq than in most warzones. I think it's impossible to have a valid conception of horror without understanding the true scale of it.

 

[W4d5Y]

But by conceiving the scale with numbers, where is the alarm and surprise if it is just a few digits running across the screen? That isn't a scale...
The media should start digging up the dirt and get some real "scale", not just freshly painted new schools into the evening news!

Also, it doesn't really pay out trying to compare which warzone is the least miserable out of many, this is just ridiculous, try determine wether WWI was more "appreciatable" than WWII... There is no way comparing twenty million to a hundred thousand, because in each case you hide behind numbers and ignore the individual pain the death toll really causes, because that is the worst thing that can happen, having to leave people behind.
Anyway, if you go into comparison, you can only speak of military evaluation, however most deaths in iraq are related to the civil war, that's true, so that is neither a military matter, nor is it the attempt to cope with the horrors of war, so why are you even trying?
Any pursuit to come to a conclusion on the issue simply implies that you wish to state the horrors the iraqis face right now were not the horrors as we perceive them, but actually "not that bad", in comparison to any other war that is long a thing of the past and is in no way related and therefore cannot be related to what we face in the present.