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Group: 162,000 Civilian Deaths in Iraq Since 2003 Invasion
After the U.S. formally declared an end to the Iraq war in December, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who led the 1st Armored Division in 2003, said the U.S. needed to know the outcome was worth the cost. "We've paid a great price here, and it's a price worth paying," he said.
DOD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo
Iraq Body Count (IBC), however, shows that great price has been paid in Iraqi civilian deaths.
IBC's newest analysis covers deaths from violence 2003 - 2011.
From their findings:
- The number of civilian deaths in Iraq in 2011 was almost at the same level as in 2010 – there has now been no noticeable downward trend since mid-2009. As observed in IBC’s previous annual report, recent trends indicate a persistent low-level conflict in Iraq that will continue to kill civilians at a similar rate for years to come. While these data indicate no improvement, time will tell whether the withdrawal of US forces will have an effect on casualty levels.
- Total deaths with combatants, combining IBC and official records: Combining IBC civilian data with official Iraqi and US combatant death figures and data from the Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks, we estimate the documented death toll across all categories since March 2003 to be 162,000, of whom 79% were civilians.
- From anti-government/occupation attacks: Civilian deaths attributable to anti-government/occupation attacks have noticeably increased in 2011: 1,172 in 2011, up from 888 in 2010.
A reminder of who bears the cost of war, IBC's analysis shows a staggering level of children as casualties: "Of the 4,040 civilian victims of US-led coalition forces for whom age data was available, 1,201 (29%) were children."
IBC's ful analysis can be found here: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2011/
54 Comments so far
Show AllYou rightly mention destruction of infrastructure, another major negative to the "It was worth it" claim. And never do those trying to minimize the damage to Iraq mention that millions of the refugees are Iraqi Christians, who evidently lived better lives under Saddam than in the wake of his deposition.
One can only hope that Iraqis, like millions of other survivors of U.S. military action and their descendants, will be able to accept apology and compensation from the U.S., should that ever be forthcoming.
You mention the Vietnamese, who for some reason don't now seem to harbor hatred of the U.S. as deep as some peoples in the Middle East. Similarly, we have good relations with the Japanese, whose nation suffered incineration by atom bombing and firebombing, and the Germans, whose nation also suffered incineration by firebombing, and even Jews, whose ancestors, along with others, died in concentration camps while U.S. forces somehow managed to overlook that carnage until the war was over. We have a long way to go before the same peaceful coexistence will be possible with nations in the Middle East.
What a strange, twisted mind PJM and so many others like him have. "Yes, the US killed a million civilians, but hey - Pol Pot killed 5 millions civilians." ???? As if one has anything to do with the other.
PJM, if your defense of the U.S. murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents rests on the fact that other nations or leaders have done the same thing, it is a measure of how pathetic and sad - and evil - you and this country truly are. All it really says is that when it comes to mass murder, the U.S. is in really good company.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html
Imagine an Iraqi teenage girl, frantic with her priority of saving her little sister who was hit by flying shrapnel from shock and awe. I doubt you've used your imagination in such a way, but maybe THAT might inform your sense of "priorities" as well.
Your insinuation, that the Iraq war, was somehow dictated by a sense of priorities, relative to, and in service of the Iraqis' well being, is nonsense.
A statiscal analysis of these statistics as was done by other groups puts the nyumber of Civilian casualties far higher at over 1 million.
The IBC study is fundamentaly flawed relying on data only from newspapers written in English. If it is not recorded in a newspaper written in English as a death, it is not counted.
The methodology used by Lancet was the same used to calculate the number of deaths In Cambodia and iin Rwanda. Very few of the names of those genocides were published in newspapers which hardly suggests they never happened.
thank you for that clarification. that's a huge discrepancy.
...peace...
In general, I agree with the overall sentiments expressed in your previous comments about the effects of patriarchy on our society. However - and please don't take this as anything more than a thought-provoking statement - I also wonder what we women would be like if we hadn't been shaped by a dominant patriarchal system for so many thousands of years. For instance, I've heard one feminist anthropologist expound on her belief that women with certain characteristics - physically weaker (relative to mate, although some were valued for their work in the fields), short (relative to mate, anyway), submissive, nurturing - have been selectively chosen as mates by men for thousands of years, which has helped to bring about (both via genetic and social means) sexual dimorphism in body shape/stature/strength and personality characteristics that we currently perceive as "male" or "female." If selective breeding hadn't occurred over the millenia (or perhaps the millions of years of primate evolution) in patriarchal-type social contexts, would we have more "aggressive", tall and physically powerful women today? Women who hunted and fought, as well as nurtured? "Amazons," in a way? Women who were strong in themselves and not submissive to men? In other words, I don't think testosterone is the only thing that promotes aggression in humans. And, Morticia had a good point when she suggested that aggression can manifest itself in many ways, not just through war-making. For instance, so-called "catty" behavior among women can be considered aggressive.
Just a thought.
The Lancet reports, which were published in 2004 and 2006, respectively (and are therefore a little outdated by now, as they represent underestimates for the current cumulative death toll), were written and data was collected by established experts in this type of analysis. The reports were also peer-reviewed. IBC gets its data from non peer-reviewed news "reports," in which death tolls have been heavily censored or influenced by the U.S. military.
162,000? I fear that estimate is a tad short. There was a report published right here on CD a while back (can't remember exactly when), that put the toll at an educated 1.2 million.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,3979621.story?coll=la-headlines-world
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/14/3839
Then there are these two reports/studies from the Lancet and John Hopkins (also years ago, I can't remember exactly when), that put the toll at much more than that even back then.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/news041025-20.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties
In addition, there is this other tally Just Foreign Policy is keeping which puts the toll (as of today) at 1,455,590
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq
As someone else already commented above, there is this report from Iran's PressTV (to name one as other sources have provided similar info) http://presstv.com/usdetail/199994.html that states "The study found that some 10 percent of the women in Iraq are widows, about 1.5 million of them. Of these, 59 percent lost their husbands during the period since the U.S. occupation began in 2003. [That number - however high-is almost half the number of the estimate of Iraqi widows as projected by the Iraqi government]."
You do the math! 162,000 doesn't even cover one year of the "conflict."