Iraq Bodycount
File under: "Lord help us." From the Web site www.iraqbodycount.org, comes a new report, "A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005." (FYI, the current civilian death toll is up to 26,264.)
"A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005" is the first detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict. The report, published by Iraq Body Count in association with Oxford Research Group, is based on comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 media reports published between March 2003 and March 2005.Findings include:
Who was killed?When did they die?
- 24,865 civilians were reported killed in the first two years.
- Women and children accounted for almost 20% of all civilian deaths.
- Baghdad alone recorded almost half of all deaths.
Who did the killing?
- 30% of civilian deaths occurred during the invasion phase before 1 May 2003.
- Post-invasion, the number of civilians killed was almost twice as high in year two (11,351) as in year one (6,215).
What was the most lethal weaponry?
- US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims.
- Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims.
- Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths.
- Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.
How many were injured?
- Over half (53%) of all civilian deaths involved explosive devices.
- Air strikes caused most (64%) of the explosives deaths.
- Children were disproportionately affected by all explosive devices but most severely by air strikes and unexploded ordnance (including cluster bomblets).
- At least 42,500 civilians were reported wounded.
- The invasion phase caused 41% of all reported injuries.
- Explosive weaponry caused a higher ratio of injuries to deaths than small arms.
- The highest wounded-to-death ratio incidents occurred during the invasion phase.
posted by ze roberto @ 8/03/2005 07:45:00 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
More details about the estimated 3-5 hundred thousand killed by Hussein and his administration would provide interesting context to use for comparison.
Are more or fewer people dying?
I would certainly hope that in two years less Iraqis have perished than under Hussein's 20 years in power. Although, by these numbers, if we keep going 20 years, we'll be close to his numbers.
However, I think the bigger issue is that the number of deaths has increased in year two, not decreased.
I think your first comment was right, Rob. Lord help us.
Well, the big difference between these numbers and the number of Iraqis killed under Hussein is that he wasn't killing them under the auspices of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. He killed his people because he was an evil, despotic tyrant.
I think it's interesting to note that 30% of these casualties were killed during the initial invasion (with most dying in air strikes) and that 37% were killed by US-led coalition forces.
The site has an obvious agenda -no surprise there- and I clearly don't expect to change any opinions found in the anti-Bush crowd - that is futile.
I will point out that if you dig into it and look at the sources you will see that in addition to the AP and BBC, they rely on anti-war sources such as counterpunch.org, and a host of local or regional media organizations.
In researching their special Falluja section, I found citations from groups such as the Green Left Weekly.
We might fairly conced that the Green Left Weekly & Counterpunch may have an agenda, but I certainly cannot judge the credibility of the Arab Times.
I can reasonably assert that the numbers are dubious, but the truth is that none of us can really know.
Hussein was killing an average of around 25,000 a year. (Tony Blair would pile on another 400,000 (20,000/yr) in starving children if he was the judge).
According to the site, the current rate of death is 12,433/yr _if_ you attribute the deaths caused by insurgents (2,238) and criminals (8,951). You can certainly blame the US for these if it helps get the numbers up.
...Hmmn...I suppose there wouldn't be suicide bombers in Iraq if it wasn't for the US. Didn't we create Al-Qaeda in the first place? I know we invented the machine-gun...I'm not sure though if we came up with criminal violence...I wonder....
Using the 37% figure, I calculate that the coalition has killed 9,200 people... a third of which happened when they bombed Baghdad... according to a website called "iraqbodycount"... that includes leftist and incredible sources...
Along with other Americans (and Schmoliticians), I pray for the troops, the people of Iraq, and our enemies every Sunday, but I won't suspend reason to inflate a preconceived "anti-war" or "blame America first" opinion as I think many of these websites do.
Too much talk of the war has become purely political. I look forward to the day when the 'body count' ceases, but I doubt that picking up tomorrow morning and bringing everyone home will bring the rate down.
My point in my first post was that we have not grasped the concept of a government that killed dozens of thousands of its people a year - sometimes 100,000 at a time. Within this context, 9,200 casualties may be a sad, but hopeful sacrifice to a better way.
Although I would never try to change the opinion of a Bush supporter (also futile), there are a couple of points I would like to make and grant.
Points granted:
1. Saddam Hussein was a very bad man who killed many people during his regime.
2. Many of the sources trying to post estimates of Iraqi casualties turn to anti-war, liberal-slanted sources.
Points asserted:
1. There are many horrible leaders in this world right now. Our justification for invading Iraq was that they had WMD's and were an imminent threat to us. You may recall the controversy surrounding our policy of "preemption" toward Iraq. Our purpose in Iraq was not to free the Iraqi people from Saddam. That justification only came about after we invaded, when it turned out there was no imminent threat. Otherwise, we would be saying that our policy as a nation was to go around invading countries with evil dictators who kill their own people. We don't have enough soldiers to take on that task.
2. The numbers of deaths in Iraq, both civilian and military, are not diminishing, no matter the numbers. The point is that things do not appear to be getting better.
And, just to be clear, I don't blame America. I blame this administration that sold us a crock of shit, and sent our soldiers over to a country that wasn't a threat to us, and then tried to dress it up as a humanitarian mission.
I have no doubt that the Iraqis are better off now. The more important question to me is, are we?
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