Thread: Deadly Hubris A million Iraqis dead – for what?

February 1, 2008

Deadly Hubris
A million Iraqis dead – for what?

by Justin Raimondo

The UK's Opinion Research Business has released another statistical study of Iraqi casualties since the launching of the American invasion, one that updates, revises, and essentially confirms their earlier estimate of a million-plus dead. The price of "liberation" is indeed high, but was it worth it? The Iraqis have a simple answer: some 60 percent tell pollsters attacks on US and allied military personnel are justified. So much for being greeted with garlands of flowers and hailed as "liberators."

The Americans have a similar, if less emphatic answer: a recent poll asking if the invasion and subsequent occupation "was or was not worth the number of U.S. military casualties and the financial cost of the war" yields a resounding no, with 59 percent – up three points.

A million dead – and for what?

So that the neoconservatives could stand astride Washington and the world, bellowing threats and beating their chests in the wake of 9/11, braying that everything – everything – had changed, especially the basic rules of human decency. Because it was "doable," as Paul Wolfowitz put it. Because our foreign policy is in large part built around the concept of making the Middle East safe for Israel. And, most of all, because of the sheer hubris of those who thought themselves above the laws of God and man – who thought they were gods, and let loose American thunderbolts with reckless abandon, with deadly consequences.

The response to the last ORB data release was vehement: the US government, which doesn't even bother counting Iraqi dead and wounded, derided it, and the neoconservative pundits lit into it as "propaganda" and an exaggeration, whilst the more ambitious assailed the methodology of every attempt to measure the vast war crime that the killing fields of Iraq represent.

Yet the results of the ORB study have been expanded, to include estimates from rural as well as urban areas. The major criticism of the previous study was that the emphasis on conducting interviews in urban areas skewed the results in the direction of an overestimation: the revised study meets this critique head on, covering all areas of the country except for Karbala and Al Anbar, for safety reasons, and also Irbil – for political reasons. It seems Kurdish regional government officials weren't eager for a full accounting of the war dead, for reasons best known to themselves: the interviewers were barred from conducting interviews in the area. The impact of these omissions pushes their estimate downward, and yet the number is astonishing.

Think of it: a million plus dead. A full 20 percent of all Iraqi households have endured a death in the family not of natural causes, the great majority of these being Sunnis.

In light of this horror, I couldn't help but think of John McCain's remarks the other night at the Republican debate, defending his stated contention that we could and probably should stay in Iraq for a hundred years:

"We are going to be there for some period of time, but it's American casualties, not American presence. We've got troops right next door in Kuwait. We'll probably have them there for a long time. We have troops in Bosnia. We've had troops in South Korea for some 50 years. By the way, President Eisenhower didn't bail us out of Korea.But the point is that we need to protect America's national security interest. It's not a matter of presence. It's a matter of casualties."

American, not Iraqi casualties: the latter don't even figure into McCain's moral calculus, such as it is.

As long as Americans aren't dying in any great numbers, it's okay to drive us into bankruptcy, alienate the peoples of the world, and fuel the fires of anti-American terrorism. Since our national security is so often invoked by McCain and his ilk to justify their policy of perpetual war, it needs to be emphasized that the tactics employed by suicide bombers and other terrorist acts have historically been responses to military occupation by a far superior force. Yet McCain looks forward to extending our suzerainty over Iraq for a hundred years. How many more Iraqis will die in the span of Iraq's American century?

McCain is not so much of a maverick that he doesn't bother looking at the polls: he knows how many Americans think the war wasn't worth it, and he knows he can't win unless he confronts this sentiment. So he's going out there with his line about how "it's a matter of casualties." For all his self-promoted concept of himself as some sort of crusading idealist, in this instance at least his cold political calculation is that Americans just care about American dead, and screw the Iraqis.

Except it isn't true. Soldiers are coming home with terrifying tales of the war and the level of violence, which is not declining but visibly rising after a brief lull even as the neocon pundits sing paeans to the surge. The American people are horrified by what Bush and his neocon brain trust have wrought in Iraq, and they aren't going to be anything but repulsed by this kind of moral blindness, which only takes into account our own costs, both human and material.

Not that McCain, whose self-confessed difficulty with economic issues comes as a surprise to no one, cares much about the latter. He grimaced and rolled his eyes during the debate, as Ron Paul laid out the economic consequences of the McCainiac hyper-interventionist foreign policy. In answer to a question about whether we're better off now than we were eight years ago, the Texas troublemaker averred:

"No, no, we're not better off. We're worse off, but it's partially this administration's fault and it's the Congress. But it also involves an economic system that we've had for a long time and a monetary system that we've had and a foreign policy that's coming to an end and we have to admit this. … We were elected in the year 2000 to have a humble foreign policy and not police the world, and yet what are we doing now? We're bogged down in another war. We're bankrupting our country and we have an empire that we're trying to defend which costs us $1 trillion a year."

It's coming to an end, and we have to admit this, because the markets are roiling as the prospect of an American super-recession takes shape, and the central bank acts with unprecedented boldness to shore up the shaky foundations of an economy built around artificial bank credit expansion. This, after all, is how states finance wars, and especially wars of choice (i.e. wars of aggression) such as Iraq: the invisible taxation of bank credit expansion, i.e. inflating the money supply. Without the link to gold, or some other commodity or basket of commodities, governments are free to debase their own currencies, and thus destroy the very basis of commerce.

The three branches of the federal government are bound by the chains of the Constitution, and yet when gold was separated from the value of the currency the government was "freed" from its bounds, and unchained it went forth – to make war.

Financing wars, especially unpopular wars, is a tricky business: direct taxation is the least desirable option. It might create undue awareness of the war's real costs. Much better to exact the invisible tax of inflation, which eats into people's savings and takes its highest toll on those least able to afford it. It's the most regressive tax of all, yet both political parties support it fulsomely. They'd rather sell the country's assets off to the Chinese than give up their bipartisan delusions of Washington as the Imperial City, the capital of a rising world empire. Paul's dark warning that we have "a foreign policy that's coming to an end and we have to admit this" certainly rings true as the financial markets quiver on the edge of a massive meltdown.

Our empire is a bubble that's about to burst, along with the economic bubble the Federal Reserve lives in mortal fear of. Whether this is punishment from on high, or simply economic "blowback" rebounding from our fiscal and foreign policies, is a matter of taste and disposition. I'll leave it to the secularists and the faithful to argue it out, and simply note that we're about to pay the price of our deadly hubris.



http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12296

A million lives is highly overstated and left wing propaganda.I was for the invasion of Iraq ,but not the occupation.I thought we should have turned it over to the UN and let it be known if they put any more crazy people in we would be back.The UN could inspect for the weapons and if they were not there that is great news,but we would be watching if it looks like they were moved to Iran or any other neighbor.Also,we did go there to prevent Sadam from giving or making any more weapons of mass destruction,but once we found the bodies of hundreds of thousands of people,even children and babies everything has changed.We know know Sadam was more of a threat to human life than we could have believed before.We came here to begin with because of US security but now it would be selfish to not admit this monster had to be stopped for the benefit of the world .We went to bosnia to stop the murder of people, but nothing has been discovered on this scale.sadam built palaces while people staved,he built roman type mini stadiums to watch people fight each other and animals to the death.He had rape rooms and even had small theatres to watch films of his victims arms cut off or throw from concrete bridges to the highway below.Whether you were for the Iraq invasion or not in the begining, there is no denying that not stopping this mad man would have been like letting Hitler remain in power after learning he was a mass murderer.

Actually I voted for the war before I voted against it. That is because I believed our leaders that they were building WMD. I was a fool!

The UK's Opinion Research Business has released another statistical study of Iraqi casualties since the launching of the American invasion, one that updates, revises, and essentially confirms their earlier estimate of a million-plus dead.

This is a revised study that essentially confirms earlier estimate. I haven't a clue weather it is from a liberal source and I bet you don't either.

We are on our fourth excuse for being there.

Do you think that estimate of a million plus doesn't include children and babies also.

Certainly Saddam was an evil man, but there are many evil men in the world and their atrocities are greater. We can not take care of all of them at the expense of our Men and Women. Besides bankrupting the USA.

Do you think the Iraqis who probably lost a loved one somewhere in their family are happy because we supposedly brought them democracy. I think not.

In light of this horror, I couldn't help but think of John McCain's remarks the other night at the Republican debate, defending his stated contention that we could and probably should stay in Iraq for a hundred years:

Soldiers are coming home with terrifying tales of the war and the level of violence, which is not declining but visibly rising after a brief lull even as the neocon pundits sing paeans to the surge. The American people are horrified by what Bush and his neocon brain trust have wrought in Iraq, and they aren't going to be anything but repulsed by this kind of moral blindness, which only takes into account our own costs, both human and material.

This is an unpopular war and most Americans want it to end. Bring our Troops home.

Originally Posted by Darlene

The UK's Opinion Research Business has released another statistical study of Iraqi casualties since the launching of the American invasion, one that updates, revises, and essentially confirms their earlier estimate of a million-plus dead.

I don't believe your figure of a million plus dead. One study doesn't change my mind either. How many civilian casualties in Iraq are due to OTHER muslims killing them (i.e. terrorist activities)?

That's your prerogative, believe or don't believe.

I didn't commission the study.

How many civilian casualties in Iraq are due to OTHER muslims killing them (i.e. terrorist activities)?

I'm sure this is part of it also.

I guess you can call it collateral damage, but dead is dead.

This doesn't even go into how many are maimed.

We have no business being there.

Here's the same story for Reuters News

Iraq conflict has killed a million Iraqis: survey
Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:55pm EST


LONDON (Reuters) - More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain's leading polling groups.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

ORB originally found that 1.2 million people had died, but decided to go back and conduct more research in rural areas to make the survey as comprehensive as possible and then came up with the revised figure.

The research covered 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Those that not covered included two of Iraq's more volatile regions -- Kerbala and Anbar -- and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work.

Estimates of deaths in Iraq have been highly controversial in the past.

Medical journal The Lancet published a peer-reviewed report in 2004 stating that there had been 100,000 more deaths than would normally be expected since the March 2003 invasion, kicking off a storm of protest.

The widely watched Web site Iraq Body Count currently estimates that between 80,699 and 88,126 people have died in the conflict, although its methodology and figures have also been questioned by U.S. authorities and others.

ORB, a non-government-funded group founded in 1994, conducts research for the private, public and voluntary sectors.

The director of the group, Allan Hyde, said it had no objective other than to record as accurately as possible the number of deaths among the Iraqi population as a result of the invasion and ensuing conflict.

(Reporting by Luke Baker; editing by Andrew Roche)


http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNew ... dChannel=0

I too find it very difficult to believe that NATO forces have exterminated 1 million innocent civilians in Iraq. We are talking about innocents aren't we? Geez, I hate it when war propaganda finds its way on to ALIPAC.

I'm betting Saddam Hussain killed many more of his own people by design
than the coalition has by accident. I don't think anyone knows how many Saddam killed during his regime, but I have heard that the number would be in the millions (women, children, babies, etc.).

Darlene wrote:

Certainly Saddam was an evil man, but there are many evil men in the world and their atrocities are greater.

Please name three.

You may find this rather disturbing:

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/18714.htm

Originally Posted by MW

I too find it very difficult to believe that NATO forces have exterminated 1 million innocent civilians in Iraq. We are talking about innocents aren't we? Geez, I hate it when war propaganda finds its way on to ALIPAC.

I'm betting Saddam Hussain killed many more of his own people by design
than the coalition has by accident. I don't think anyone knows how many Saddam killed during his regime, but I have heard that the number would be in the millions (women, children, babies, etc.).

I'm wondering if this "study" includes military dead from coalition forces as well. I wonder if it includes the innocent civilians who had their heads chopped off by Islamic terrorists?

Sam-I-Am wrote:

I'm wondering if this "study" includes military dead from coalition forces as well. I wonder if it includes the innocent civilians who had their heads chopped off by Islamic terrorists?

To come up with a cool million I suspect they also used heart attack victims.

Darlene's quoted statistic of one million dead in Iraq is highly controversial and debated even by the Iraqi government:

Main article: Casualties of the Iraq War
See also: Suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003, Foreign hostages in Iraq, List of Coalition forces killed in Iraq in 2006, and List of insurgents killed in Iraq

See also Casualties of the Iraq War, which has casualty numbers for coalition nations, contractors, non-Iraqi civilians, journalists, media helpers, aid workers, wounded, etc.. The main article also gives explanations for the wide variation in estimates and counts, and shows many ways in which undercounting occurs. Casualty figures, especially Iraqi ones, are highly disputed. This section gives a brief overview.

U.S. General Tommy Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi casualties as of April 9, 2003.[193] After this initial estimate he made no further public estimates.

In December 2005 President Bush said there were 30,000 Iraqi dead. White House spokesman Scott McClellan later said it was "not an official government estimate", and was based on media reports.[194]

There have been several attempts by the media, coalition governments and others to estimate the Iraqi casualties:

* Iraqi Health Ministry casualty survey. In January 2008 the Iraqi health minister, Dr Salih Mahdi Motlab Al-Hasanawi, reported the results of the "Iraq Family Health Survey" of 9,345 households across Iraq which was carried out in 2006 and 2007. It estimated 151,000 violence-related Iraqi deaths (95% uncertainty range, 104,000 to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006. Employees of the Iraqi Health Ministry carried out the survey for the World Health Organization.[34] The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.[33][35][36]
* Iraq's Health Minister Ali al-Shemari said in November 2006 that since the March 2003 invasion between 100,000-150,000 Iraqis have been killed.[195] Al-Shemari said on Thursday, Nov. 9, that he based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals.[196]
* The United Nations found that 34,452 violent civilian deaths were reported by morgues, hospitals, and municipal authorities across Iraq in 2006.[197][198]
* The Iraqi ministries of Health, Defence and Interior said that 14,298 civilians, 1,348 police, and 627 soldiers were killed in 2006.[199] The Iraqi government does not count deaths classed as "criminal", nor those from kidnappings, nor wounded persons who die later as the result of attacks. However "a figure of 3,700 civilian deaths in October 2006, the latest tally given by the UN based on data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, was branded exaggerated by the Iraqi Government."[200]
* The Iraq Body Count project (IBC) has documented 73,264 - 79,869 violent, non-combatant civilian deaths since the beginning of the war as of September 20, 2007. [201] However, the IBC has been criticized for counting only a small percentage of the number of actual deaths because they only include deaths reported by specific media agencies.[202][203] IBC Director John Sloboda admits, "We've always said our work is an undercount, you can't possibly expect that a media-based analysis will get all the deaths."[204]
* An Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey conducted August 12-19, 2007 estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths due to the Iraq War (range of 733,158 to 1,446,063). Out of a national sample of 1,499 Iraqi adults, 22% had one or more members of their household killed due to the Iraq War (poll accuracy +/-2.4%).[205] ORB reported that 48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from car bombs, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance. It is the highest estimate given so far of civilian deaths in Iraq and is consistent with the Lancet study.[206][57] On 28 January 2008, ORB published an update based on additional work carried out in rural areas of Iraq. Some 600 additional interviews were undertaken and as a result of this the death estimate was revised to 1,033,000 with a given range of 946,000 to 1,120,000.[2]
* The 2006 Lancet survey of casualties of the Iraq War estimated 654,965 Iraqi deaths (range of 392,979-942,636) from March 2003 to the end of June 2006.[31][32] That total number of deaths (all Iraqis) includes all excess deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc, and includes civilians, military deaths and insurgent deaths. 601,027 were violent deaths (31% attributed to Coalition, 24% to others, 46% unknown). A copy of a death certificate was available for a high proportion of the reported deaths (92 per cent of those households asked to produce one).[31][207] The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56%), car bomb (13%), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13%), accident (2%), unknown (2%). The survey results have been criticized as "ridiculous" and "extreme and improbable" by various critics such as the Iraqi government and Iraq Body Count project.[208][57][209]

Source: wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

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The Lancet study attributes 70% of civilian deaths to causes other than
coalition forces. Maybe Darlene should pay more attention to terrorist actions in Iraq and less attention to the evil US forces and Islamic propaganda.