Iraqi group: Civilian toll now 37,000

[nola]

Iraqi group: Civilian toll now 37,000
By Ahmed Janabi


An Iraqi political group says more than 37,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003 and October 2003.

The People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony, movement said in a statement that it carried out a detailed survey of Iraqi civilian fatalities during September and October 2003.

Its calculation was based on deaths among the Iraqi civilian population only, and did not count losses sustained by the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces.

The deputy general secretary and spokesperson of the movement told Aljazeera.net he could vouch for the accuracy of the figure.

"We are 100% sure that 37,000 civilian deaths is a correct estimate. Our study is the result of two months of hard work which involved hundreds of Iraqi activists and academics. Of course there may be deaths that were not reported to us, but the toll in any case could not be lower than our finding," said Muhammad al-Ubaidi.

"For the collation of our statistics we visited the most remote villages, spoke and coordinated with grave-diggers across Iraq, obtained information from hospitals, and spoke to thousands of witnesses who saw incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by US fire," he said.

Detailed figures

Al-Ubaidi, a UK-based physiology professor, provided a detailed breakdown of the 37,000 civilian deaths for each governorate (excluding the Kurdish areas) relating to the period between March and October 2003:

Baghdad: 6103
Mosul: 2009
Basra: 6734
Nasiriya: 3581
Diwania: 1567
Wasit: 2494
Babil: 3552
Karbala and Najaf: 2263
Muthana: 659
Misan: 2741
Anbar: 2172
Kirkuk: 861
Salah al-Din: 1797.

The People's Kifah said the process of data gathering stopped after one of the group's workers was arrested by Kurdish militias and handed over to US forces in October 2003. The fate of the worker remains unclear.


http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F.htm


This reminds me of the Vietnam War where Vietnamese deaths outnumbered American deaths 50 to 1 yet all we ever hear about is the American deaths.

[SunWuKong]

woh, are those numbers correct? the total number of Iraqi deaths (combatants and civilians combined) just a few months ago was only 10,000.

[nola]

this is al-jazeera and it's probably accurate.

a few months ago it was estimated by western sources to be 10,000 civilians not including military.

[SunWuKong]

this is al-jazeera and it's probably accurate.

a few months ago it was estimated by western sources to be 10,000 civilians not including military.

well, there seems to be some discrepancies between what different people are saying.

according to the article:
The only serious independent attempt to collate war statistics is the Iraq Body Count Project, which involves both US and British academics. The project's website currently places Iraq's civilian toll at between 11,000 and 13,000.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net

[Chester]

Its calculation was based on deaths among the Iraqi civilian population only, and did not count losses sustained by the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. Does it count the losses sustained due to actions of Iraqi paramilitary forces? I.e., when Iraqi insurgents kill innocent civilians with indiscriminately-placed car-bombs, are those deaths counted?

[Martino]

woh, are those numbers correct? the total number of Iraqi deaths (combatants and civilians combined) just a few months ago was only 10,000.

I too find that a staggering figure. Frankly I'm very suspicious. 37,000 people is more than half the total number of British civilian deaths of World War 2 - something like 60-62,000 people killed in German bombing raids over a period of six long years of total war.

[nola]

The Arab world's news source is pretty reliable. The US and British say 11,000 to 13,000 civilians.

But an analogy would be Hurricane Charley in Florida. We have heard that 16 have died but Floridians know that in Punta Gorda thousands of trailers in parks were destroyed. We believe the sources that say 350 have died. Jeb is covering his ass by saying only 16 have died which is impossible.

[Martino]

The Arab world's news source is pretty reliable. The US and British say 11,000 to 13,000 civilians.

But an analogy would be Hurricane Charley in Florida. We have heard that 16 have died but Floridians know that in Punta Gorda thousands of trailers in parks were destroyed. We believe the sources that say 350 have died. Jeb is covering his ass by saying only 16 have died which is impossible.

That's a pretty poor analogy. The number of victims of a natural disaster in America or Europe can be very easily verified.

I'm anti war, but c'mon, look at the way this information has been gathered: "For the collation of our statistics we visited the most remote villages, spoke and coordinated with grave-diggers across Iraq, obtained information from hospitals, and spoke to thousands of witnesses who saw incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by US fire," he said. In other words, they gathered anecdotal evidence from third person sources in areas where anti-American feelings would quite obviously run high. This is totally unreliable data that could not possibly be verified by any impartial source.

Not to mention the fact the figure, as stated previously, is far higher than Nazi Germany's concerted effort to kill British civilians during World War Two over a far longer period of time.

[nola]

Okay but the people from the trailer parks have not been counted because they are not in the system.

[Martino]

Okay but the people from the trailer parks have not been counted because they are not in the system.

So you are saying they have no relatives, don't pay tax, or collect benefits, don't have credit or debit cards, don't have telephone accounts, not subscribed to clubs or associations, and so on ad infinitum?

[SunWuKong]

i would believe those numbers are valid if verified by an independent group. (although i realise that it's very difficult to be unbiased with something like this.)

[nola]

my biased hunch is around 20,000 dead iraqi civilians.

[Martino]

i would believe those numbers are valid if verified by an independent group. (although i realise that it's very difficult to be unbiased with something like this.)

It goes without saying if the Red Cross, Red Crescent or the UN produced results of an actual body count then I would believe it - the point is, this figure has been arrived at through anecdotal evidence through suspect sources. You might as well pluck any figure you want out of the air.

[nola]

Think what you will about independent media but I found this which is also from eyewitnesses close to the scene:

I'd guess 200 people died from Hurricane Charley.


August 16, 2004

What an eye awakening day this was. I thought that I had seen it all having been involved from Viet Nam to the beginning of Desert Storm in my military and civilian law enforcement career, but today I learned about a new part of the shame game.

For those who won't bother to read all this report, let me spell out the body counts that 6 of us (all retired military and/or law enforcement) went out to confirm today in different areas. These are confirmed bodies in the trucks, restaurant refers, or refer vans, and they are NOT missing persons� or animals:

Charlotte Harbor areas 58 dead as of 5pm today;
Fort Myers & the barrier islands 21 deaths as of 3pm today;
Punta Gorda 275+ deaths;
Desoto County 36 deaths, expected to increase;

These figures came from our own eyes, medical personnel, various county sheriff's deputies, and eye witnesses or residents from the worst devastated areas. CNN and the rest of the world biased and controlled media are fooling none of us who live here. The current CONFIRMED body count in our 3 county area on the west coast of Florida is near 400 as I write this.

Readers should know right up front who fails to pass the grade:

Failing grades go to:
1. FEMA, the government loan people.
2. John Ellis Bush (JEB, the corporate Governor of Florida).
3. The untrained and unequipped remnants of the Florida National Guard.
4. George Walker Bush, the non-elected and appointed U.S. President.
5. Recycling firms who are stealing aluminum siding from destroyed mobile homes.
6. Those selling bags of ice for $10.
7. Thieves from Miami taking personal belongings from demolished homes.
8. Those thieves demanding money up front to file fake insurance claims.

Here's some of what went on today...

There are staging areas for FEMA (with their red and white signs to let you know they are there�), et al, that we could not openly enter into with photo and movie cameras having been discovered in our vehicles... our cars and pick-ups were searched in the sensitive areas where the worst devastation took place and where we were then refused entry. None-the-less, we still walked into most of these "off limits" areas at waterfront motels, I-75 restaurant/commercial areas, destroyed mobile home parks, and the temporary Charlotte morgue... to name a few. This is how we came up with the above figures for body counts. We spoke with medical personnel who have come from Miami to work triage and other temporary facilities, ambulance drivers (a special thanks to the Ambutrans people), homeless residents, and deputies from many different counties.

[Martino]

my biased hunch is around 20,000 dead iraqi civilians.

Well that's very nice for you.

:O/

[nola]

:-o

:-)

[Martino]

Think what you will about independent media

A Iraqi political group that calls itself the People's Kifah movement, for the 'Struggle Against Hegemony' , doesn't exactly sound independent. If it could be proved that fatalities were anything near 37,000, the anti-war media and opposition political parties in the West would have a field day.

[nola]

okedoke.

i just go for the middle ground between: american and british media vs. iraqi peoples' media and CNN vs. people from charlotte county.

[ShiningOne]

Let's not all forget about the 300,000+ that perished each year under the 7 year embargo.
That is a mindboggling figure. How many stadiums can you fill with those numbers?

[SunWuKong]

Let's not all forget about the 300,000+ that perished each year under the 7 year embargo.
That is a mindboggling figure. How many stadiums can you fill with those numbers?

well, it's arguable who should be taking the blame for that. Saddam wasn't exactly going to allow all humanitarian aid to go to his people. and even if there wasn't an embargo, it is questionable if some Iraqis would have lived under terrible conditions anyway under Saddam's rule. but for certain, with the embargo in place, many more people died.

[Mr.Lum]

That's a similar number to the people in my town!

[Kuchana]

well, it's arguable who should be taking the blame for that. Saddam wasn't exactly going to allow all humanitarian aid to go to his people. and even if there wasn't an embargo, it is questionable if some Iraqis would have lived under terrible conditions anyway under Saddam's rule. but for certain, with the embargo in place, many more people died.

What about the Oil-For-Food policy. That didn't have much of an effect?

[ShiningOne]

That's a similar number to the people in my town!
Hi Lumm, nice to see a familiar face from DDcom. What ever happened to those guys? One day I go to catch up on the forum and poof, no more. Oh well, much respect to you for your activism.

[Mr.Lum]

I have no idea.

[nola]

We think Cointelpro or DARPA made it vanish into thin air because it was too dangerously radical from the POC point of view.

MM.com on the other hand is not dangerous because it's too much of a joke to be taken seriously.

[SunWuKong]

because it was too dangerously radical from the POC point of view.


http://smilies.jeeptalk.org/contrib/blackeye/lol.gif

[yoMAMA]

THIS WAR MAKES ME SICK

:mad:

[nola]

http://smilies.jeeptalk.org/contrib/blackeye/lol.gif
There was too much good information (for POCs) on that site and the Man got scared! :) :) :)

[Martino]

Let's not all forget about the 300,000+ that perished each year under the 7 year embargo.

Source of your statistic?

[hooligan]

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0214-03.htm

Published on Friday, February 14, 2003 by the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/globe/)
What About the Death Toll?
by Derrick Z. Jackson
BETH OSBORNE DAPONTE is concerned that the White House has not told Americans how it will avoid massive deaths to civilians in an invasion of Iraq. Her concern should be alarming. Daponte was the woman who a decade ago was nearly fired by the government for her estimates on the Iraqi civilian death toll in the first Gulf War. ''Right now, it's just like it was in 1991,'' Daponte said by telephone. ''People were sold on the idea of clean war.''

Daponte showed how dirty the first war really was. She was an analyst in the Census Bureau's international division, whose normal job is to estimate the populations of other nations. Up until then, the senior President Bush, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and the Pentagon refused to make any public estimates of the Iraqi dead.

Daponte, a Middle East analyst, was assigned to come up with an estimate. She estimated that a total of 158,000 Iraqis were killed, with only 40,000 of them being soldiers in battle. The far greater death toll came afterward; Daponte estimated that 70,000 Iraqis died through easily preventable diseases that were suddenly made lingering and lethal by the bombing by the United States and its allies of water and power supplies, sewage systems, and roads.

Of the estimated 158,000 deaths, Daponte concluded that nearly 40,000 of the victims were women and 32,000 were children.

After the Associated Press ran the estimate in January 1992, Daponte was told by the Census Bureau that she was going to be fired on the basis of issuing ''false information,'' ''untrustworthiness,'' and ''unreliability.''

The Census Bureau backed down after Daponte received swift and strong support from civil libertarians and statisticians. A year later she published an even more refined report with even more grotesque numbers. In a study published in the quarterly publication of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Daponte estimated the final death toll to be 205,500. The war itself resulted in 56,000 deaths to soldiers and 3,500 to civilians. Another 35,000 people died in internal postwar fighting. The biggest single number of deaths again was to civilians after the destruction of the nation's infrastructure: 111,000.

In Daponte's second analysis, the number of women who died from health effects of the war went down, to 16,500, but the number of children who died soared to 70,000. In addition, 8,500 senior citizens died. If that number is anywhere close to true, that means that far more Iraqi children died than Iraqi soldiers.

Daponte now teaches population and policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Her estimates tell a story of two wars. ''What I showed was that it was true, we did minimize casualties from direct war effects,'' she said. ''There were relatively few deaths from hitting wrong targets. But what I also showed was the indirect casualties could be much greater. It is no different than as when the infrastructure of a city with the population of Washington or Boston is taken away by an earthquake.''

Those deaths occurred in what was a war meant only to force Iraq out of Kuwait and back behind its own borders. The war that the junior President Bush is threatening promises to strike deep into the heart of Iraq. Any sane person would bet that the civilian casualties this time will be much worse.

Because of that prospect, Daponte thinks the White House owes the nation projections of the damage to Iraq so Americans can make their own calculations of whether we have done everything to avoid war. Projections will be tough to come by: The White House has returned to Bush family control, and Dick Cheney has moved up from secretary of defense to vice president. Secrecy has already been established as a hallmark of the Bush administration, and if the Census Bureau back then was prepared to squash truth seekers like Daponte, one can assume that the current corps of government demographers are already looking over their shoulders.

''If you are not having a discussion about civilian casualties, we are probably not having a true discussion of whether this war is the best thing we can do,'' Daponte said. ''If our goal is to eliminate Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, I haven't seen any detailed plans on how we do that without destroying the infrastructure for the people of Iraq. . . . The idea of deaths in the drumbeat toward war just isn't there. It isn't part of the discourse on either side. It's as if the less that it is talked about, the assumption is zero deaths.''

Daponte said if Americans make the leap into war with that kind of calculation, ''that's the incorrect leap.'' When she says ''we need to be very careful about not buying everything that the government is saying,'' she is her own best evidence. When she did her calculations a decade ago, the government's response was to ''kill the messenger. They wanted to keep that discussion off the table.''

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company

http://www.sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/1695196.php
Ignoring Iraqi Death Toll Labelled a “Holocaust Denial”
by Dr Gideon Polya Tuesday June 01, 2004 at 04:48 AMAmerican authorities have consistently refused to quote casualties other than among Coalition troops (805 deaths, according to a current UN report). The UN puts the deaths of Iraqi soldiers at 11,000, while estimates of the collateral deaths of Iraqi civilians from the war have varied from 8,875-10,275 (UN) to 21,700-55,000 (Medact, UK, November 2003).Ignoring Iraqi Death Toll Labelled a “Holocaust Denial”

WorldNews.com, Tue 1 Jun 2004

Ignoring Iraqi Death Toll Labelled a “Holocaust Denial” As the international debate about the outcome of last year’s war in Iraq escalates, an Australian scientist has ignited the largely suppressed issue of the resulting death toll.

American authorities have consistently refused to quote casualties other than among Coalition troops (805 deaths, according to a current UN report). The UN puts the deaths of Iraqi soldiers at 11,000, while estimates of the collateral deaths of Iraqi civilians from the war have varied from 8,875-10,275 (UN) to 21,700-55,000 (Medact, UK, November 2003).

Now, in a conScience column in the June issue of Australasian Science magazine, published today, Dr Gideon Polya reports calculations of another measure from the “excess mortality” attributable to the war. He explains this is “the difference between the actual deaths observed in a country and the mortality expected for a properly run, peaceful society with the same demographics”.

Dr Polya has been researching and writing a scientific analysis of global mortality. This involves summarising mortality and its causes for all parts of the world throughout history. The ultimate aim is to address the avoidable human mortality that accounts for the approximately 20 million people who die each year from deprivation and malnourishment-related causes.

His startling estimate is that, for Iraq, excess mortality and infant mortality are “currently of the order of 100,000 per year, or about 300 per day”.

“Excess mortality and infant mortality have declined dramatically for nearly all developing countries outside Africa over the past 50 years. In Iraq, excess mortality and infant mortality reached a minimum in the 1980s. However, this decline reversed after the 1991 Gulf War.”

According to UNICEF, in 2001 the under-5 infant mortality was 109,000 in Iraq, which has a population of about 24 million, compared with about 1,000 in Australia (pop. about 20 million).

“The total excess mortality in Iraq, calculated using United Nations data, is 5.2 million since 1950 and 1.5 million for the period 1991–2004”, Dr Polya writes. “The huge excess mortality in Iraq since 1950 is similar in magnitude to that of the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) and the ‘forgotten’ manmade World War II Bengal Famine (4 million Muslim and Hindu victims).”

Dr Polya recently retired as a senior biochemist at La Trobe University. Deploring the lack of reporting of the real death toll in Iraq, he concludes: “The occupying Coalition, including Australia, is clearly responsible for the continuing excess mortality and infant mortality in Iraq . . . Ignoring mass human mortality in Iraq amounts to holocaust denial.”

Please cite AUSTRALASIAN SCIENCE MAGAZINE as the source of this story.

CONTACTS Dr Gideon Polya on (03) 9459 3649 [+61 3 9459 3649].

The full article can be downloaded as a PDF at http://www.control.com.au (http://www.control.com.au/)

For permission to reproduce the full text (500 words) call the Editor, Guy Nolch, on

(03) 9500 0015 [+61 3 9500 0015].

A photo of Dr Polya in his lab is available on request.

FULL TEXT OF COLUMN BY DR POLYA:

conScience

Iraqi Death Toll Amounts to a Holocaust

Gideon Polya calculates the “excess mortality” as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq

Whether a person dies violently or in bed, any death that is avoidable requires public assessment of causality, culpability and complicity in order to make the world a safer place. Of course, whether a person dies violently or dies from avoidable disease or deprivation, the end result is the same.

I have been researching and writing a careful analysis of global mortality. My scientific analysis involves summarizing mortality and its causes for all parts of the world throughout history. The ultimate aim of this analysis is to address the avoidable human mortality that accounts for the approximately 20 million people who die each year from deprivation and malnourishment-related causes.

My analysis is powerfully illustrated by the situation in Iraq. The UK has been militarily involved in Iraq on and off for 90 years and the largely Anglo-American Coalition has been combating Iraqis since 1991.

Whatever our positions on Iraq, we are morally obliged to assess the actual human cost of our involvement there. One powerful approach is to estimate “excess mortality”, which is the difference between the actual deaths observed in a country and the mortality expected for a properly run, peaceful society with the same demographics.

The total excess mortality in Iraq, calculated using United Nations data, is 5.2 million since 1950 and 1.5 million for the period 1991-2004.

The huge excess mortality in Iraq since 1950 is similar in magnitude to that of the Jewish Holocaust (six million victims) and the “forgotten”, man-made, World War II Bengal Famine (four million Muslim and Hindu victims).

My estimates of excess mortality for Iraq are consistent with the under-5 infant mortality in Iraq, estimated from UNICEF data to be 3.3 million since 1950 and 1.2 million in the period 1991-2004.

Excess mortality and infant mortality have declined dramatically for nearly all developing countries outside Africa over the past 50 years. In Iraq, excess mortality and infant mortality reached a minimum in the 1980s. However, this decline reversed after the 1991 Gulf War.

According to UNICEF, in 2001 the under-5 infant mortality was 109,000 in Iraq, which has a population of about 24 million, compared with about 1,000 in Australia, which has a population of about 20 million.

Rulers are responsible for the ruled. Accordingly the occupying Coalition, including Australia, is clearly responsible for the continuing excess mortality and infant mortality in Iraq. Both are estimated to be currently of the order of 100,000 per year, or about 300 per day.

John Valder, a former president of the Liberal Party, has recently called for war crimes trials of the leaders of the Coalition, adducing the illegality of the invasion of Iraq (The Age, 9 April, 2004). Mass mortality in a conquered population also constitutes a war crime, as well as a humanitarian tragedy.

The actual Iraqi death toll is not being reported and publicly discussed. Ignoring mass human mortality in Iraq amounts to holocaust denial.

--------------------------------------- Dr Gideon Polya recently retired as a senior biochemist at La Trobe University. He is the author of the pharmacological reference Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. conScience is a column for Australians to express forthright views on national issues. Views expressed are those of the author. http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Iraq_death_toll_111103.htm

i know this is the the veterans for peace website, but what they have to say is important.

Iraqi Death Toll, Health Perils Assessed by Medical Group
by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -- Between 21,000 and 55,000 people have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, according to a new report that also warned of rapidly deteriorating health conditions for those who survived. London-based Medact (http://www.medact.org/), the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), concluded that the war's continuing impact--particularly the failure of occupation authorities to ensure security-- has resulted in a further deterioration of the Iraqi population's health status. IPPNW's U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility (http://www.psr.org/), joined in the report's release Tuesday. The report's funding was provided by Oxfam and the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation.

"The health of the Iraqi people is generally worse than before the war," according to an executive summary of the 12-report, which noted that the state of health in Iraq was already poor by international standards. It said women and children were particularly at risk due to the breakdown in law and order and damage to infrastructure and that women were also being affected by the emergence of religious conservatism after the war.

The report, entitled "Continuing Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq 2003 (http://www.medact.org/tbx/pages/sub.cfm?id=775)," is the follow-up to a pre-war study released last November that predicted at the time that between 49,000 and 261,000 people could be killed in an invasion of Iraq over three months.

The much lower estimated death toll in the seven months that followed the March 20 invasion is due primarily to the quick collapse of Iraqi military resistance and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were used.

The report says that 172 U.S. and British combatants were killed during the war period (March 20 to May 1) and another 222 died between May 2 and October 20. It estimates the number of civilians killed during the war at between 5,708 and 7,356. From May 2 to October 20, the report estimates civilian deaths resulting from hostilities at between 2,049 and 2,209.

The major unknown, according to the report, is the number of Iraqi military deaths during the war. As few as 13,500--or as many as 45,000--soldiers and paramilitary fighters are believed to have been killed, based on extrapolations from death rates of between three and ten percent found in the units around Baghdad, as well as U.S. military estimates that 2,320 Iraqi soldiers were killed in and around Baghdad alone.

In the absence of official body counts, "the final toll will probably never be known" the report concluded, noting that the Iraqi Red Crescent is currently exhuming mass graves to identify Iraqi war dead around Baghdad and elsewhere.

In addition, thousands of combatants on both sides, as well as civilians, suffered serious injuries, including amputations and mental trauma, according to the report. It noted that one source, Iraq Body Count, estimated at least 20,000 civilian injuries by July, of which 8,000 were in Baghdad alone. Deaths and injuries from unexploded ordnance have continued, and are likely to be under-reported, according to the independent Mines Advisory Group (MAG).

The report estimated the number of Iraqi military wounded at roughly three times the death toll.

The full health impact of the war, however, continues to be felt in a variety of ways that defy precise monitoring due to the lack of accurate data, the failure of occupation authorities to collect and record data, and the inability of the Iraqi health system to cope with the number of people who need treatment.

"Limited access to clean water and sanitation, poverty, malnutrition, and disruption of public services including health services continue to have a negative impact on the health of the Iraqi people," according to Dr. Sabya Farooq, the report's main author.

Environmental damage, including extensive pollution of land, sea, rivers, and the atmosphere--some of which may have spilled over to neighboring countries--is also a major concern covered by the report. Oil well fires created oil spills and toxic smoke, while military convoys disrupted the desert economy. Land mines and other ordinance have maimed people and animals and continue to pose a hazard in various parts of the country.

Particularly worrisome are the remains of some of the military debris, particularly depleted uranium used in weapons and armor, and material looted from nuclear power plant sites, much of which remains to be accounted for.

"The health and environmental consequences of the war will be felt for many years to come," said Medact president, Dr. June Crown.

The report expressed particular concern about the health of young children. While Iraq had built one of the most advanced health systems in the developing world before the first Gulf War in 1991, that war and the sanctions that followed had a disastrous impact on its performance. One in eight children under five died before their fifth birthday; one in four was chronically malnourished; a quarter of all newborns were underweight; while maternal mortality stood at 294 for every 100,000 births, roughly the same level as Peru and Bangladesh.

In the immediate aftermath of the most recent war, small-scale studies found a dramatic increase in waterborne diseases, including typhoid and cholera and a doubling of acute malnutrition or wasting--problems to which young children are particularly vulnerable.

The report makes a series of recommendations to the occupation authorities, noting that, with the influx of new resources and the end of sanctions, health services could be significantly upgraded once security is assured. But it expresses concerns about the heavy participation of for-profit companies, mostly from the U.S., that have been awarded contracts to provide services and technical aid in the health sector.

The successful post-World War II reconstruction of Europe and Japan, it notes, included substantial investment in public health systems. "On the basis of international evidence," it urges, "commercialization of health care should be avoided."

Reconstruction of the Iraqi health sector, the report recommends, should be based "on the principle that health and health care are fundamental social rights... and an important aspect of nation-building..."

Copyright 2003 OneWorld.net

well, there seems to be some discrepancies between what different people are saying.

according to the article:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net don't they only count military engagements? because if they only count these engagements for every death in battle there has to be countless deaths in the post-war iraq. wait, it's not post-war iraq yet. : P just denial of water, medicine, depleted uranium rounds (cancer, etc.) the body count's going to be horribly high. i'd agree with nola and the article.

the first article is trying to give you a scope of the first gulf war. haven't we done enough in iraq? i think we're going to raise the new generation of american hating people. : (

around 4000 people died on 9/11, but how do you justify 40,000 deaths in iraq? honestly, how does war avoid needless deaths? precision weapons my ass. someone said something that made a lot of sense, "we're using precision targeted 500 lb bombs, but a 500 lb bomb is still a 500 lb bomb."

http://www.mapw.org.au/mapw-commentary/press-releases/2003/11-11medact-report.html

Continuing Collateral Damage:


The health and environmental costs of war on Iraq
Full report click here (pdf) (http://www.mapw.org.au/iraq/2003/ippnwiraq/MedactIPPNW-ContinuingCollateralDamage.pdf) | Executive Summary click here (http://www.mapw.org.au/iraq/2003/ippnwiraq/11-11medact-reportexecsum.html) | Statement by Paul Barratt AO here (http://www.mapw.org.au/iraq/2003/ippnwiraq/11-11barratt-medact-report.html)

International Report Launch

Wed 12 November 2003

Photo opportunity

Canberra: 11.15am
ACT Legislative Assembly, Media Room
with the Chief Minister Jon Stanhope
and MAPW President Dr. Sue Wareham and MAPW member Prof. Bob Douglas (Chair of Board of Australia 21 and former Head of National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health)

Adelaide: 12.30pm
War Memorial on North Terrace with the Chair of IPPNW Board/MAPW Vice-President Prof. Ian Maddocks
and MAPW SA Coordinator Dr. Jason Garrood


Melbourne: 11.00am


Howard Florey Institute, University of Melbourne, 161 Barry St, Level 3


with the former Secretary of the Department of Defence - Australia, Paul Barrett AO
and MAPW President Elect Dr. Tilman Ruff The Medact report - “Continuing Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq 2003" concludes that between 21,700 and 55,000 people have died on all sides since the US/UK-led invasion, with the number of killed and injured continuing to rise.

Medact UK - the London affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) - undertook a comprehensive independent survey to assess the health and environmental impact of the war since March 2003. An international team of authors and advisers, all experts on health and conflict, carried out the research.

MAPW President Dr Sue Wareham (Canberra) says “Beleaguered Iraqi health services are unable to cope with the health crisis. For every Ali Abbas, the severely injured and orphaned boy now undergoing intensive treatment in the UK, there are thousands of maimed children with no safe access to adequate health services, let alone sophisticated rehabilitation.”

MAPW President Elect, Dr Tilman Ruff (Melbourne) notes “This authoritative report … documents the health, environmental and societal consequences of waging an ill-advised and illegal war. The US and the UK must not only protect the health of the Iraqi people by providing massive help in the reconstruction of the infrastructure the attackers have destroyed, but must also make certain that future US and British policies prevent pre-emptive wars.”

Chair of IPPNW Board/MAPW Vice-President Prof. Ian Maddocks (Adelaide) states “Limited access to clean water and sanitation, poverty, malnutrition, and disruption of public services including health services continue to have a negative impact on the health of the Iraqi people.

Former Secretary of Department of Defence, Paul Barrett AO (Melbourne) remarks that "This report is important not simply because of the particulars it gives of the health impacts of the Iraq war, but because of the light it shines on all of the ways wars impact on the health of combatants and civilians. These impacts occur not just through direct casualties, but through the effects of all those factors which lead to higher rates of disease and malnutrition - the impacts of war on the environment, housing, law and order, health services, education, water and sanitation, electricity, food security and the like. Most important of all, it proposes steps to be taken to deal with the health situation in Iraq as it now stands."

Depleted Uranium (DU) – experts estimate that between 1,100 and 2,200 tonnes of DU were used by the US and UK during the conflict, compared with 350 tonnes in 1991. MAPW Executive Officer Giji Gya says “Quoting from the journal Military Medicine, Depleted uranium internal contamination presents a potential neurotoxic, endocrine, reproductive, nephrotoxic, and mutagenic hazard.InMAPW’s policy on uranium, MAPW calls on Australia to exclude its troops from any alliance that uses uranium munitions, a full ban on uranium munitions and cessation of uranium mining and export to those countries which produce or use uranium munitions.” (copies of MAPW policy on uranium munitions available on request or from the website www.mapw.org.au (http://www.mapw.org.au))

For comment/interview

ACT - Dr. Sue Wareham, MAPW President via EO 0413 594 717
VIC – Ms. Giji Gya, MAPW Executive Officer 0413 594 717
and Dr. Tilman Ruff, MAPW President Elect via EO 0413 594 717
SA – Prof. Ian Maddocks, Chair of IPPNW Board/MAPW Vice-President via EO 0413 594 717
NSW - Dr Gillian Deakin MAPW Vice-President via EO 0413 594 717

The report, an Executive Summary and additional material are available
at www.medact.org (http://www.medact.org/tbx/pages/sub.cfm?id=775) and www.mapw.org.au (http://www.mapw.org.au/iraq/2003/ippnwiraq/11-11medact-reportexecsum.html) after 8:00 am on November 11 (GMT).
well, there seems to be some discrepancies between what different people are saying.

according to the article:


http://www.iraqbodycount.net hey rad, in the mini-faq portion of their website.
Why is your web counter not increasing?

We put accuracy above speed and do not update the data base until we have located and cross-checked two or more independent approved news sources for the same incident (for more details see our Methodology (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm#methods)). If you want to submit news stories that could help us confirm an incident involving civilian deaths please email news item weblinks to news@iraqbodycount.org (the more specific and detailed, the better).

Still, your "maximum" count seems very low to me. Surely there must be many, many more civilian deaths than you've published.

We are not a news organization ourselves and like everyone else can only base our information on what has been reported so far. What we are attempting to provide is a credible compilation of civilian deaths that have been reported by recognized sources. Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war.

also on their website

3. Evasion, obstruction and racist double standards

The tactics by which the US and UK authorities have so far tried to contain and deflect concerns about casualties in Iraq are six-fold, which we examine in detail further below:

• repeated professions of ignorance and a denial of any possibility of gaining useful knowledge;

• denial of responsibility, placing this instead on convenient "others" at various points in time – e.g. Saddam during the war, Al Qaida for recent bombings;

• the establishment of narrowly-limited military "self-investigations," the majority of which are never completed or publicly reported;

• official focus limited to US and UK military deaths with wilful ignorance of the price paid by Iraqis;

• deliberate obstruction of Iraqis' own efforts to count their war dead;

• insultingly low token "compensation" payments to a small and arbitrarily-limited number of Iraqi claimants.

At the heart of all these tactics is an implicit double standard which values the life of a Westerner – whose death is always worth recording and investigating – far above the life of an Arab or Asian, whose death is of scant interest or concern.

We argue for two main conclusions:

• None of these tactics are defensible. There is detailed and accurate knowledge available to the Coalition about many of the victims, and more can be found through entirely feasible investigations. International law and natural justice makes the USA and the UK responsible for the vast majority of the deaths that have occurred. There is a clear moral obligation for heavy compensation to the families of Iraqi victims, on the same scale to those paid out by Germany after the Second World War, as the aggressor nation.

• Even if none of the moral and legal arguments are accepted, the tactics currently being adopted are not in the pragmatic self-interest of the USA and the UK . They are counterproductive in that they inflame long-term anti-US and anti-UK feeling among the Iraqi population and Arab nations, reducing the likelihood of a quick end to the conflict, and putting UK and US citizens at greater risk from paramilitary, political, and economic reprisals. :: straight from the horses mouth.

What about the Oil-For-Food policy. That didn't have much of an effect?
you mean, this lie?

Chalabi Raid Complicates Oil-For-Food Probe
Matthew Swibel, 05.20.04, 9:15 PM ET

WASHINGTON, D.C. - While the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal rages, yet another controversy is gathering steam, involving top U.S. accounting firms, powerful K Street lobbying firms and international oil companies widely held by institutional and individual investors (http://www.forbes.com/energy/2004/05/20/cz_ms_0520iraq.html#).

Senior congressional staffers, policy analysts and lobbyists are all pointing to mounting evidence that "utter chaos is reigning" in Baghdad over investigations into the Iraq oil-for-food program scandal, especially in the wake of today's raid by Iraqi police and U.S. forces on the home of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad al-Chalabi.

The purpose of the raid was not disclosed, but Chalabi himself later told reporters that among the items seized were files related to the oil-for-food program, which he and the council have been probing.

During the program established by the United Nations Security Council in 1995, the U.N. reportedly oversaw a flow of funds totaling $15 billion a year. Revenues were held in an escrow account run by BNP Paribas for the U.N. The oil-for-food program became a lucrative source of contracts for Russian and French oil companies, including Lukoil and Total (nyse: TOT (http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/compinfo/CompanyTearsheet.jhtml?tkr=TOT) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=TOT) - people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=TOT)), according to congressional testimony by Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation. The U.N. itself collected a 2.2% commission on every barrel of Iraqi oil sold, generating more than $1 billion in revenue. The U.S. Congress' General Accounting Office estimates that Saddam Hussein's regime siphoned off $10 billion while the U.N. oversaw the program.

The raid on Chalabi's home--characterized by the White House as resulting from an Iraqi-led investigation--may frustrate the ability of private accounting firm KPMG to complete a comprehensive audit into the oil-for-food program, which generated $67 billion in revenue for Iraq between 1997 and 2002, according to the Heritage Foundation. KPMG began investigating in February 2004 on behalf of the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, the Central Bank of Iraq, the Finance and the Trade Ministry and the State Oil Marketing Association.

Over the last several weeks, however, a growing feud has erupted between Chalabi and the rest of the Governing Council, and L. Paul Bremer, Iraq's U.S. civilian administrator, over Bremer's recent selection of Ernst & Young to begin a separate investigation on behalf of Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). A key difference between the contracts: The KPMG contract includes the recovery of the assets, while Ernst & Young's contract calls for recommendations on how the monies are to be recovered.

The stunning reversal of fortune for KPMG and Chalabi comes less than a month after Iraqi Governing Council consultant Claude Hanes-Drielsma told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee the "the CPA said that the process run by the IGC...would indeed stand."

Meanwhile, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, appointed last month by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to lead yet another inquiry, is pressing forward with his own investigation. Some say Annan must bear ultimate responsibility for the program's massive failings. "I think our investigation is the central, authoritative investigation," Volcker said at a press conference (http://www.forbes.com/energy/2004/05/20/cz_ms_0520iraq.html#) today. "I would like to think it's understood quite generally."

Far from it. Volcker lacks the necessary power to subpoena witnesses in an investigation, according to sources on Capitol Hill, policy experts and lobbyists. And despite today's raid, the Iraqi Governing Council doesn't appear to be giving up its fight for control over the oil-for-food audit. The council's finance committee is working with Patton Boggs, a well-connected Washington, D.C., law firm, to help it navigate the political system.

The U.S. Congress may want to conduct its own investigation, says the Middle East Media Research Institute and at least one senior congressional aide. Some observers have speculated that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may already by preparing to organize such an independent query. It is unclear, however, whether any congressional investigation would have the authority to compel testimony from United Nations staffers involved with oversight of the oil-for-food program.

It is possible that separate oil-for-food inquiries by the U.N., the CPA and the IGC could proceed separately. "One would not cancel out another," says a source close to the matter. "However, a coordination of efforts beginning with a conference involving reps from each would avoid a wasteful and redundant and inefficient three-ring circus approach. The recovery of this money is something that has to transcend all this political [nonsense]."


now why did they raid his house, stifling efforts to audit the program now?

[nola]

From Hooligan's article about the first Iraqi war:

She estimated that a total of 158,000 Iraqis were killed, with only 40,000 of them being soldiers in battle. The far greater death toll came afterward; Daponte estimated that 70,000 Iraqis died through easily preventable diseases that were suddenly made lingering and lethal by the bombing by the United States and its allies of water and power supplies, sewage systems, and roads. Of the estimated 158,000 deaths, Daponte concluded that nearly 40,000 of the victims were women and 32,000 were children. The Census Bureau backed down after Daponte received swift and strong support from civil libertarians and statisticians. A year later she published an even more refined report with even more grotesque numbers. In a study published in the quarterly publication of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Daponte estimated the final death toll to be 205,500. The war itself resulted in 56,000 deaths to soldiers and 3,500 to civilians. Another 35,000 people died in internal postwar fighting. The biggest single number of deaths again was to civilians after the destruction of the nation's infrastructure: 111,000. In Daponte's second analysis, the number of women who died from health effects of the war went down, to 16,500, but the number of children who died soared to 70,000. In addition, 8,500 senior citizens died. If that number is anywhere close to true, that means that far more Iraqi children died than Iraqi soldiers.Those deaths occurred in what was a war meant only to force Iraq out of Kuwait and back behind its own borders. The war that the junior President Bush is threatening promises to strike deep into the heart of Iraq. Any sane person would bet that the civilian casualties this time will be much worse.


From the indymedia website (about the second war):

American authorities have consistently refused to quote casualties other than among Coalition troops (805 deaths, according to a current UN report). The UN puts the deaths of Iraqi soldiers at 11,000, while estimates of the collateral deaths of Iraqi civilians from the war have varied from 8,875-10,275 (UN) to 21,700-55,000 (Medact, UK, November 2003).


From the Vet article (about the second war):

Between 21,000 and 55,000 people have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, according to a new report that also warned of rapidly deteriorating health conditions for those who survived. London-based Medact, the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), concluded that the war's continuing impact--particularly the failure of occupation authorities to ensure security-- has resulted in a further deterioration of the Iraqi population's health status. IPPNW's U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility, joined in the report's release Tuesday. The report's funding was provided by Oxfam and the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation. The major unknown, according to the report, is the number of Iraqi military deaths during the war. As few as 13,500--or as many as 45,000--soldiers and paramilitary fighters are believed to have been killed, based on extrapolations from death rates of between three and ten percent found in the units around Baghdad.


I'd agree with the racist reasons behind the underestimated counts and obstruction of counts:

Evasion, obstruction and racist double standards
The tactics by which the US and UK authorities have so far tried to contain and deflect concerns about casualties in Iraq are six-fold, which we examine in detail further below:
• repeated professions of ignorance and a denial of any possibility of gaining useful knowledge;
• denial of responsibility, placing this instead on convenient "others" at various points in time – e.g. Saddam during the war, Al Qaida for recent bombings;
• the establishment of narrowly-limited military "self-investigations," the majority of which are never completed or publicly reported;
• official focus limited to US and UK military deaths with wilful ignorance of the price paid by Iraqis;
• deliberate obstruction of Iraqis' own efforts to count their war dead;
• insultingly low token "compensation" payments to a small and arbitrarily-limited number of Iraqi claimants.
At the heart of all these tactics is an implicit double standard which values the life of a Westerner – whose death is always worth recording and investigating – far above the life of an Arab or Asian, whose death is of scant interest or concern.

[nola]

AP: Tens of Thousands of Iraqis Estimated Killed

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At Sheik Omar Clinic, a big book records 10,363 violent deaths in Baghdad and nearby towns since the war began last year — deaths caused by car bombs, clashes between Iraqis and coalition forces, mortar attacks, revenge killings and robberies.

While America mourns the deaths of more than 1,000 of its sons and daughters in the Iraq (news - web sites) campaign, the U.S. toll is far less than the Iraqi. No official, reliable figures exist for the whole country, but private estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 killed since the United States invaded in March 2003.

The violent deaths recorded in the leather ledger at the Sheik Omar Clinic come from only one of Iraq's 18 provinces and do not cover people who died in such flashpoint cities as Najaf, Karbala, Fallujah, Tikrit and Ramadi.

Iraqi dead include not only insurgents, police and soldiers but also civilian men, women and children caught in crossfire, blown apart by explosives or shot by mistake — both by fellow Iraqis or by American soldiers and their multinational allies. And they include the victims of crime that has surged in the instability that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime.

Adding to the complexity of sorting out what has happened, the records that have been kept don't always say whether a death came in a combat situation or from some other cause.

The prospect of violent death is the latest burden for a people who suffered through decades of war and a brutal dictatorship under Saddam, whose regime has been accused by human rights groups of killing as many as 300,000 Iraqis it deemed enemies.

"During Saddam's days killings were silent. Now the killing is done openly and loudly," said Ghali Karim Hassan, who lost his 31-year-old son, Ghaidan, last April.

He said Ghaidan was killed in Najaf when a demonstration called by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr led to a gunbattle with coalition troops, mainly Spaniards and Salvadorans. Ghaidan, who left a wife and three children, was one of 22 protesters killed.

In a country where the dead are often buried quickly without proper accounting by authorities, the real number of Iraqis whose lives were cut short in the Iraq conflict may never be known.

U.S. officials said they didn't have the resources to track civilian deaths during the U.S.-led occupation, which ended officially June 28. Iraq's central authorities also haven't reported comprehensive figures on civilian deaths — while record-keeping was meticulous under Saddam, the interim government didn't even begin trying to keep track until five months ago.

In a guerrilla war without front lines, where teenagers confront tanks with rocket-propelled grenades, establishing who was an innocent civilian and who was a legitimate combatant makes the process of compiling detailed figures on civilian deaths problematic.

"It is difficult to establish the right number of casualties," said a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, Nicole Choueiry. Her London-based human rights organization estimates more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians died in the first year of the conflict alone.

However, Amnesty's figure was based in part on media reports that often simply repeated claims of American and Iraqi officials. Iraq is as large as California and much of the country is too dangerous for independent teams to investigate more than a handful of death claims.

Iraq Body Count, a private group that bases its figures in part on reports by 40 media outlets, puts the number of civilian deaths since the conflict began at between 11,793 and 13,802.

Hazem al-Radini at the Human Rights Organization in Iraq said his group estimates the toll at more than 30,000 civilian deaths. He said the group didn't have any statistics and based the figure on reports by Iraqi news media.

Iraqi authorities have begun trying to determine overall death figures, though they face formidable problems. Insurgent groups are either reluctant to report death figures for security reasons or inflate them to win public sympathy. And some Iraqi families bury their dead quickly, without reporting them.

The Iraqi Health Ministry began tabulating civilian deaths in April, when heavy fighting broke out in Fallujah and Najaf. The ministry's figures indicate 2,956 civilians, including 125 children, died across the country "as the result of a military act" between April 5 and Aug. 31. Of those, 829 were in Baghdad, the ministry figures say.

In some cases, it is uncertain whether individuals were killed by insurgents or soldiers or were killed by criminals or rivals who used the turmoil of war as a cover for settling scores. And even in cases where the cause was known, records sometimes don't specify.

However, Iraqis argue, even those killed by criminals could be considered indirect victims of a war that destroyed Iraq's security services and brought a spike in crime.

"Our work here multiplied by at least 10 times compared to prewar periods," said Dr. Abdul-Razzak Abdul-Amir, head of the Baghdad coroner's office.

Al-Radini at the Human Rights Organization in Iraq agreed. "The main responsibility behind these Iraqi civilians deaths lies with the occupation because those victims would not have fallen had there not be an occupation," he said.



If the high estimates of 250,000 for Iraq War I and 50,000 for Iraq War II are put together it would be more than killed by Saddam's hands.

[John0101]

Wow, that is an incredible body count. With 1000 U.S. loses already you would expect the Iraqi civilian kill totals to be much higher.

37,000 sounds a bit much though. I would question who these numbers came from and their motive.

[Faithless]

Thought provoking commentary on how we view to situations --
* The dead of the Tsunami disaster,
* The dead civilians in the Iraq War.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Iraqi commander Tommy Franks both said, "We don't do body counts."

Iraqi civilians the uncounted victims (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/207308_jackson11.html)

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

DERRICK JACKSON
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Secretary of State Colin Powell tours tsunami-stricken Banda Aceh and says, "I cannot begin to imagine the horror that went through the families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave."

Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a resolution that said: "The tsunami disaster constitutes a humanitarian tragedy of incredible proportions. ... My heart goes out to the victims of this tragedy."

Last and hardly least, President Bush said: "The devastation in the region defies comprehension. ... Our flags will fly at half-staff to honor the victims of this disaster. We mourn especially the tens of thousands of children who are lost. We think of the tens of thousands more who will grow up without their parents or their brothers or their sisters. We hold in our prayers all the people whose fate is still unknown."

In the abstract, the outpouring was appropriate. In context, the sympathy was a stench unto itself. Tens of thousands of people die by an act of nature and we say we cannot imagine the horror. We say it defies comprehension. We call it a catastrophe.

In Iraq we kill off perhaps tens of thousands of innocent civilians with our own hands, and we reject any attempt to comprehend what we have done. Countless Iraqi civilians are homeless. We call it liberation.

Bush quoted all the numbers for the tsunami: 150,000 lives lost, including 90,000 in Indonesia; perhaps 5 million homeless; millions vulnerable to disease. That stands in hypocritical contrast to the refusal to count the Iraqi civilians killed in his invasion over false claims of weapons of mass destruction and the crime-ridden chaos of an occupation that did not plan on an "insurgency."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Iraqi commander Tommy Franks both said, "We don't do body counts." Then, right in our faces, Powell said civilian casualty figures were "relatively low." Central Command spokesman Pete Mitchell hailed the invasion for its "unbelievably low amount of collateral damage and needless civilian death." Paul Bremer, Bush's former civilian reconstruction envoy, said, "We have freed people with one of the great military battles of all time, in a period of three weeks, with almost no collateral damage, very few civilian deaths, and they are now free."

The White House left the counting to journalists, doctors, think tanks and human rights groups. The numbers range from conservative guesses of 3,200 in the first few weeks of the war and occupation estimates ranging from 15,000 to 100,000. No matter if the number was 3,200 or 32,000, this atrocity of silence makes the torture in Abu Ghraib pale in comparison.

No flags have been flown at half-staff for Iraqi civilians. There have been no moments of silence in Congress. There have been no speeches by Bush mourning "the tens of thousands of children who are lost." Americans have not been asked to think of the "tens of thousands more who will grow up without their parents or their brothers or their sisters."

In a nation that supposedly re-elected Bush on "moral values," there have been no prayers from the White House for "all the people whose fate is still unknown" in Iraq. This was a bipartisan hypocrisy. Even Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, fell into the trap of favoritism, fueling the appearance that this war was a religious crusade.

At the beginning of the war she said, "We pray for the swift and successful disarmament of Iraq with the least possible loss of life among our forces and the civilians of Iraq." But then she closed her message with: "May God bless our courageous forces and their brave families. May God bless the president of the United States. And may God bless America."

Not once did Pelosi or any American politician say in the last two years, "God bless Iraqi civilians" or any variant. Only one time has Bush uttered "God bless the people of Iraq," and that was in announcing Saddam Hussein's capture. Not once has he asked God's blessing for the courageous civilians and the families of Iraq who had no choice but to brave our bombs.

Let us do what we can for the victims of the tsunami. But no matter how much we weep for them, no matter what donations we spare, the offerings will not spare us from history's judgment, if not God's. Lugar said his heart goes out to the victims of the tsunami. No hearts have gone out to Iraqi civilians in this heartless cover-up.

Powell said of the tsunami, "The power of the wave to destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its path is amazing." He said, "I have never seen anything like it in my experience."

Yes, he has. It was in Iraq. The tsunami was us.

[Faithless]

More crappy news from Iraq. The civilian death count getting more of an official count.

So, what would the Bush spin be?

"See, it aint like it was 37,000."

Militants' toll is 12,000 civilians (http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/111779309463940.xml&coll=7)

Friday, June 03, 2005 * ELLEN KNICKMEYER

BAGHDAD -- Insurgent violence has claimed the lives of 12,000 Iraqis in the past 18 months, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Thursday, putting the first official count on the largest category of victims from bombings, ambushes and other increasingly deadly attacks.

At least 36 more Iraqi civilians, security force members and officials were killed Thursday in attacks that underscored the ruthlessness and growing randomness of much of the violence. The day's victims included 12 people killed when a suicide attacker drove a vehicle loaded with explosives into a restaurant near the northern city of Kirkuk.

In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a market area crowded with civilians, killing nine, the Defense Ministry said.

The U.S. military reported that two soldiers were killed Wednesday, by a bomb and by small-arms fire, in the western city of Ramadi.

Thursday's violence demonstrated the ability of insurgents to keep up attacks despite a week-old security operation in Baghdad billed as the most aggressive yet by Iraq's government, in office for less than two months.

The checkpoints and raids that leaders have dubbed Operation Lightning have brought all roads in and out of the capital under government control, said Jabr, the minister in charge of Iraq's police forces. The actions are meant to expose insurgent hideouts in the city, he told reporters from some foreign news organizations, adding, "Within the next few months, we can deal with all of the killings and assassinations."

Jabr said security forces had detained 700 "terrorists" and killed 28 during the operation. The Defense Ministry said Wednesday that 680 people had been detained but that all but 95 had been released for lack of evidence warranting prosecution.

Interior Ministry statistics showed 12,000 civilians killed by insurgents in the last year and a half, Jabr said. The figure breaks down to an average of more than 20 civilians killed by bombings and other attacks each day. Authorities estimate that more than 10,500 of the victims were Shiite Muslims, based on the locations of the deaths, Jabr said.

There have been 1,667 U.S. military deaths since the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to The Associated Press' official count. Bombings and other insurgent strikes have killed thousands of Iraqi security force members. No official totals have been released for those dead, or for the total number of civilian casualties since the start of the war.

Jabr said the government figures showed that Shiites had suffered the bulk of insurgent attacks. No Sunni Muslim mosques, for example, had been destroyed, he said.

Iraq's insurgency is led largely by members of the Sunni Arab minority that was toppled from power with Saddam Hussein. Foreign Arab fighters are largely blamed for the suicide bombings that now claim most of the lives.

Jabr, in some of his first extended remarks to reporters since becoming interior minister, said he saw no legitimacy in the cause of the Sunni Arab fighters.

"I have not seen any 'resistance,' " Jabr said in response to a question about clemency for so-called resistance fighters who lay down their arms. "There is terror, and all sides have agreed that anyone raising guns and killing Iraqis is a terrorist."

[Faithless]

American Rhythms | Our responsibility in Iraq (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/11648292.htm)

Officially, the U.S. government doesn't even keep track of the numbers.

"We don't do body counts," Gen. Tommy Franks famously said when he was in charge of U.S. Central Command in Iraq.

A British medical journal late last year put the civilian death toll at 98,000, a number many discounted as too high. The nonprofit Iraq Body Count Web site on Friday said it was between 21,523 and 24,415 - which reflects uncertainty whether some of the dead were civilians or insurgents.

By not counting, not noticing, the inescapable conclusion is: We don't much care.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/

http://reports.iraqbodycount.org/a_dossier_of_civilian_casualties_2003-2005.pdf

Posted on Sun, May. 15, 2005 * By Jane Eisner

Last Sunday, when 270 Iraqi civilians had died in just eight days, I had hoped that the upsurge of violence would subside. Instead, the carnage continued for another week. On Tuesday, attacks killed more than 60. Wednesday, 72 dead. Another car bomb took the lives of 21 more people Thursday. Friday's news in Iraq listed more deaths from car bombs, a mortar attack, a roadside bomb, and an ambush.

The hard numbers don't begin to reflect the grief and devastation, the mother wailing at her child's makeshift funeral, the son sobbing over a parent's body. And they don't account - and nothing or no one seems to be accounting - for the thousands maimed and injured.

The civilian death toll in Iraq doesn't seem to bother many Americans, so inured has this country become to the destruction committed by someone else "over there." The scenes have become numbingly routine, the news relegated to some forgotten corner while make-believe survivors, pregnant superstars, and runaway brides take center stage.

Officially, the U.S. government doesn't even keep track of the numbers.

"We don't do body counts," Gen. Tommy Franks famously said when he was in charge of U.S. Central Command in Iraq.

A British medical journal late last year put the civilian death toll at 98,000, a number many discounted as too high. The nonprofit Iraq Body Count Web site on Friday said it was between 21,523 and 24,415 - which reflects uncertainty whether some of the dead were civilians or insurgents.

By not counting, not noticing, the inescapable conclusion is: We don't much care.

Neither, it seems, do the neighboring Arab nations that might be assumed to have an interest in stopping Muslim from killing Muslim.

From time to time during the more than two years of violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein, I've struggled with this question: What, if any, moral responsibility does America share for the growing number of civilian casualties in Iraq? They are not dying at our hands. Surely, we can't be responsible for the kind of inhuman drive of men who strap explosives around their bodies and kill dozens of innocent people.

Taking full blame for the civilian deaths would shift the focus and absolve the insurgents who are planning and committing these atrocities, and that I cannot do. Yet I can't walk away, either. There is something deeply unsatisfying about using others' awful acts as an excuse to ignore one's own complicit behavior.

Ours is not the sin of full responsibility. Ours is the sin of negligence.

The current official American justification for starting this war was to unseat a tyrannical dictator and help liberate an oppressed people. It is a noble justification, even if it's only now expressed in bold type because the other given reasons - Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda - have proved false.

But if that's the reason for the deaths of more than 1,600 U.S. troops and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, if the well-being of the Iraqi people was first on our list of priorities, then the mission was not accomplished. Even supporters of the war are critical of the U.S. failure to establish law, order, and the stability and trust that make politics, the peaceful resolution of communal issues, possible. For too many Iraqis, the promise of the January elections has been painfully unfulfilled.

To say that it was worse, far worse, under Saddam's brutal regime is obvious, but that's also an ethical cop-out. We fought a war on humanitarian grounds - only to say to the world, "Well, at least we're better than him"?

The Bush administration's disinclination to plan realistically for the war's aftermath did not directly cause the bloody insurrection that, on some days, looks as if it's about to transform into full-fledged civil war. No, the insurgents and those who support them are to blame for the inexcusable destruction of lives, property and hope.

But that doesn't absolve the United States and its citizens of our own responsibility, for dismantling a regime without the troops, resources, intelligence or honesty to prevent what is daily unfolding before our averted eyes.

[Faithless]

U.S. Air Force commander: Some incidents of Iraqi civilian deaths were staged (http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=4145681&nav=3YeX)

(Dubai, United Arab Emirates -AP, Nov. 20, 2005 8:30 PM) _ A top U.S. Air Force general said Sunday that reports of civilian casualties in Iraq as a result of American military action were exaggerated.

"I would tell you first off I don't believe most of it and I am very much aware that some of that has been staged," said Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan III, Commander of the 9th U.S. Air Force and U.S. Central Command Air Forces.

Buchanan, speaking to The Associated Press on the sidelines on the annual Dubai Air Show, said the U.S. Air Force was doing everything necessary to minimize civilian casualties.

"We are very, very careful, and we use precision-guided munitions. We only drop the weapons we have to and they are always the smallest weapons possible," he said.

There are no official figures on civilian casualties in Iraq. A U.S. military spokesman told the AP last month that as many as 30,000 Iraqis may have died during the war, which began with the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

"We control the collateral damage, and we have very strict rules of engagement to guide us through minimizing noncombatant injuries and death," Buchanan said.
...