A new World Health Organization study estimates the excess numbers of civilians killed in violence in Iraq from April 2003 through June 2006 at between 101,000 and 224,000. They settled on 151,000 or so as the most likely number. This number is an estimate of how many people died of violence beyond what you would have expected from the 2001-2002 baseline. Violent deaths increased 17 times over once the Bush administration invaded the country. As I read the AP article, the study actually found more like 302,000 excess deaths, but only attributed 151,000 to violence. It seems to me possible that some of the other 151,000 excess deaths could also be chalked up to the US invasion and the reaction to it, even if they are not violent. There have been disease outbreaks, shortages of medicine, poor medical care, displacement of populations to tent cities with poor sanitation, and difficulties in traveling to distant hospitals. Bears looking into.

The Lancet study found 600,000 excess deaths from violence. I'm not qualified to make a methodological judgment as to the virtues of the two studies. I don't think the validity of the Lancet estimate should just be dismissed by journalists or bloggers, for the same reason. If someone is a specialist in the public health field and a whiz at statistics, then I'd be interested in a judgment from that person. But I would point out that the last time Bush admitted his war had killed civilians, he quoted the figure of 30,000, and we can definitely dismiss such tiny numbers as woefully inaccurate. Bush has to face up to what he has done.

Passive gathering of death statistics from newspapers, which always misses a lot of unreported deaths, such as at the Iraq Body Count site, came up with 47,668 civilian deaths in the same period. IBC is now up to about 84,000 civilian deaths. If the 3 to 1 discrepancy between reported and unreported deaths visible in the WHO study held steady, that would take us to a further 100,000 or so deaths in the past 18 months, and to roughly 250,000 excess deaths through violence since the war began.

There is also the question of how many Iraqis have sustained significant or crippling injuries from the same violence that has left so many dead. For US troops, the ratio is nearly 4,000 killed to nearly 10,000 severely wounded, or 2.5 times. If the same rate held true for Iraqi civilians in the war, and if it is true that 250,000 have by now been killed, it would equal 625,000 severely wounded.

One of the arguments warmongers gave for overthrowing Saddam Hussein was that his regime was responsible for the violent deaths of some 300,000 civilians between 1968 and 2003. That estimate now appears exaggerated, since the number of bodies in mass graves has not borne it out. But what is tragic is that in 4 1/2 short years, a foreign military occupation has unleashed killing on a scale achieved by the murderous Saddam Hussein regime only over decades. Bush did not kill all those people directly, of course, but he did indirectly cause them to be killed, since these are excess deaths beyond what you would have expected if there had been no invasion and occupation.

I am often struck by how clueless the American public is to the vast destruction we have wrought on Iraq and its people, directly or indirectly. It strikes me as a bitter joke that 4 million are displaced, often facing hunger and disease, and the rightwing periodicals and presidential candidates are talking about how the"surge" has"turned things around." For whom? How many orphans have we created? How many widows? How many people who weep and cry every night while trying to fall asleep on straw mats? I estimate on the basis of a UN study of refugees in Syria that as many as 600,000 or 700,000 Baghdadis were ethnically cleansed from the capital under the nose of the American troops implementing the surge. There is an old Chinese proverb,"Children throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs die in earnest."

See our Global Affairs blog for more on this issue, and for recent postings on Iran and Pakistan.

Bush has gutted American civil liberties, and turned us into a hateful nation of spies, torturers, bigots, and colonialists occupying someone else's country. (See Tomdispatch.com for an impassioned argument on how this was accomplished. And he has managed to unleash a maelstrom of violence in the Middle East that has wiped out the population of a medium-sized city. Surveying civilian deaths in Iraq is like walking through Lincoln, Nebraska, after it was hit by a neutron bomb, with everyone dead. Everyone.

art eckstein - 1/18/2008

None of the above paranoid delusions from Omar about all-powerful Jews constitutes EVIDENCE from Omar in support of his thesis. Unsupported and paranoid assertions do not constitute evidentiary support for initial unsupported and paranoid assertions.

By contrast to Omar, both myself and N. Friedman have presented hard and specific EVIDENCE that the Israeli govt and intelligence services, including at the highest levels, OPPOSED the US invasion of Iraq.

This was all discussed conclusively three weeks ago.

omar ibrahim baker - 1/18/2008

Arnold
I note your statement that :
"It is only when this country's political elite has recognized that Israel can be used as perfect ally, essentially advancing the US ultimate goal of economical and political control of the Middle East region (as PART of the big picture mentioned above), the American governments reoriented their Mid Eastern policy towards virtually unconditional active support of Israeli respective policy. It happened at the end of 60s. "

While I agree that this statement correctly depicts the early stage of US /Israeli relations (roughly 1948/1956) I contend that it does NOT thence nor any more.

1956 was the turning point in that Israel was thwarted and severely warned by the USA against unilateral action and against any other alliance(s) in the Middle East.

Ever since, re the USA , Israel, while assiduously cultivating its relations with all US Administrations gave superior and primary effort to;
-having and planting "independent" individual supporters inside those administrations
-the establishment and empowering of "independent" institutional pro Israel bodies.

While , re the rest of the world, Israel simultaneously forged strategic relations with other powers mainly France, which yielded the A-bomb, and South Africa which helped greatly in the same endeavor.
All along while ensuring the continuation of American support, through its internal influence and sometimes against and despite US official inner and better judgment, Israel diligently developed a relatively independent policy re and from the USA.
Slowly the relation between the two powers evolved ( roughly 1967-1973) into an equal partnership that , under intense Israeli/Zionist internal pressures , slowly matured into Israeli dominance of USA policy in the Middle east.

And that is where US/Israeli relations stand now and has been ever since the rise of the neocons and the advent of the Bush administration

omar ibrahim baker - 1/18/2008

Arnold
To contend, as I do, that the invasion and conquest of Iraq was primarily motivated by, and to the benefit of, Zionist/Israeli desire, ambition and pressure does NOT negate nor deny that this very act was, equally, part of the US plan for universal hegemony starting with oil resources i.e. US imperialist interests.

(US imperialist interests and Israeli interests do and often did coincide and intersect primarily, but not exclusively, in the Middle East.)

What makes the conquest of Iraq a PRIMARILY Zionist demarche is the following rationale:

1-That Iraq had the wherewithal to be a serious potential rival to and to challenge Israeli predominance of the Middle East as pointed out in my earlier post: (Re: Excess Mortality... or Deficient Morality? (#118017)
by omar ibrahim baker on January 16, 2008 at 11:23 AM).

Evidently Iraq could NOT possibly be a rival to, or challenge, the USA.

2-That the possibility of a political Iraqi/US entente, as has been the case during the Iraq/Iran war, should be foreclosed once and for all, obviously an Israeli interest and NOT a US interest, something that dictates and could only be achieved through conquest ..

3-That US/Arab-Moslem enmity shall be deeply planted , engrained and nourished , as the Iraqi conquest did, to the degree to foreclose the possibility of any future substantial mutual understanding and cooperation between them ; being the long term Israeli strategy for survival and regional predominance

Evidently all three above factors indicate, primarily, an exclusive Israeli interest and NOT a US interest; imperialist or otherwise.
As to the actual facts of the matter namely;
1- That it was Iraq not, say, Iran or Venezuela, was chosen for conquest and domination
and
2- That the war, and its after math, was conducted in a manner to DESTROY completely Iraq, not just conquer, occupy and dominate and prevent any possibility of its resurgence.

All the above factors point out clearly to the PRIMACY of Israeli interests in the act as distinct from US interests that could have been attained in a different manner.

Not that oil, and the US desire to dominate it, did not play a role BUT that in this specific case OIL was of secondary importance to Zionist/Israeli interests and designs!

Arnold Shcherban - 1/17/2008

Omar,

As it clear from the persistent point
made in your notes you've become a victim of own super-concentration on
one particular aspect of the US foreign policy, while loosing the view of the Big Picture.
That Big Picture is this country's persistent and continuing strife for world hegemony on land, on water, in air, and in cosmos, which started as early as in the mid of 20th century.
Do all US policies and interventions/agressions in Latin and Central America, Europe, South-East Asia, Africa, Atlantic and Pacific oceans look and sound to you as the consequences of pro-Israeli dominance in formation of the US foreign policy?
If your reply is that you were talking
just about the US policies in Middle East, it is not going to stick either, 'cause I will immediately remind you about UK-France-Israel agression against Egypt, in which the US sided with the USSR(!), using its heavy influence on its European allies to stop the agression, instead of supporting it or participating in it.
It is only when this country's political elite has recognized that Israel can be used as perfect ally, essentially advancing the US ultimate goal of economical and political control of the Middle East region (as PART of the big picture mentioned above), the American governments reoriented their Mid Eastern policy towards virtually unconditional active support of Israeli respective policy. It happened at the end of 60s.
So to remain more or less objective
observers/analysts we have to evaluate
the US actions in Middle East as mainly arranged along this country's global strategic design, which just happened to coincide with the goals of Israel's policy in that region over
the last 50 years.
As far as your principal point that those policies has nothing to do with
promoting democracy, peace and stability (unless on pro-US terms) in the region is concerned, I always stated the same, as one can easily check browsing through all my comments
on HNN. And, yes: Israeli lobby has a way stronger influence on the contemporary US policies in Middle East that any unbiased American citizen would like to see.

A. M. Eckstein - 1/16/2008

The Israeli govt opposed the Iraq project, and that includes Sharon, who was publicly reprimanded by the British Foreign Secy for being unenthusiastic.

It wasn't out of altruism--they thought Iran was the bigger threat to Israel. But the above are publicly facts, all thrashed out previously on HNN.

Unfortunately, as we all know, Omar is impermeable to facts.

omar ibrahim baker - 1/16/2008

No it is NOT the oil!
It is Israel, first second and hundredth, and then the oil!
The value of the oil is in selling it not hoarding it and Iraq has, had, as much of an interest in selling it to , and through, the USA as to any body else.

Iraq in the Zionist handbook was another matter altogether.
It was the only Arab country with the agricultural, mineral and human resources that could lay the foundations for sustained economic and technological growth that supports a regional power to challenge Israel's regional super power status.

The beauty of the whole thing , from the Zionist and Israeli perspective is that Israeli objectives were achieved by and through the USA with only the USA bearing the human and material cost .

Now that Iran is the new challenger it is obvious who is most eager for war against her.
And , should the USA do it again, who would pay for it!

omar ibrahim baker - 1/16/2008

To read some of the comments above I suppose that many more than just "Bush has to face up to what he has done." and that they support the act , including Abu Ghraib and the killing, directly and indirectly and the man!
The invasion, conquest, destruction and devastation of Iraq is a crime committed by the USA ,both nation and state.

Stephen Kislock - 1/16/2008

We will wait for history, to Number the total number of Iraqi's deaths attributed to the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

Why No mention of Depleted Uranium? With a half-life of millions of years, and Millions of pounds of DP munitions use in Iraq, the Cradle of Civilization, will be the bed of Horrible Deaths to all generations to come.

Killing the victim, to save him, must be some Neo-Con's really stupid logic!

And yes it's the OIL!

Arnold Shcherban - 1/14/2008

According to all available figures the situation in Iraq is much worse now than it was in the sanctioned
Saddam Hussein's Iraq before the US invasion and occupation. At the best estimate of several most prominent Human Rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch the number of just children's deaths caused by the sanctions came to about
five hundred thousands, I would estimate the total amount of deaths caused (directly or indirectly) by occupation as one million.
This is not mentioning about two million of refugees fled from US bombings, sectarian killings and terrible living conditions, in general.
Since the US occupation and religious strife will not end in a foreseeable future, at the end (in 10-15 years) the number of deaths will by far exceed the total amount of untimely deaths under all 20 years of Saddam's
reign, including the Iraqi victims of Iraq-Iran war.

Arnold Shcherban - 1/14/2008

Sorry, should have typed "contra-insurgency" and "overwhelming".

Arnold Shcherban - 1/14/2008

So, his generation <got this one wrong.>
Then, since American national hero
General Le May belonged to that generation too, he was also wrong by
proudly stating: "We bombed every city
in North and South Korea into the ground." We have to believe that you know better... or that he meant just a few civilian deaths.
Now, of course, you specifically mentioned Vietnam, not Korea (or Cambodia). But what's the compelling reason/evidence for us to believe
that in all others, except Korea, the US official record was right?
And why do we have to discard not only
his generation's conclusion, but the evidence supported by thousands of international observers and hsitorians?

Arnold Shcherban - 1/14/2008

First of all, even by US army estimates the percentage of foreign, Al Qaeda-type fighters is about 6%.
(Of course, under "monstrous" Saddam Hussein whose brutal dictatorship neither Cole nor me never apologized for its crimes that number was about zelch.)
On the other hand the so-called sectarian violence that so cherished by you Bush clique named as the main source of violence and deaths in Iraq has been well held in bay by the same Saddam regime, but has outbroken with
the US occupation. Therefore there is no <distortion> in the relation of the occupation to the number of deaths in Cole's brief analysis.
Moreover, according to the ovwewhelming majority of non-imbedded American and European journalists (all
of whom are undoubtedly and viciously anti-American on your list of good and bad guys) the number of civilian
victims of the American (non-Iraqi) military has been greatly diminished
by Pentagon. (Quite understandably performed in the best traditions of all US occupations/wars, be it Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, or Panama.)
Actually Cole did not do even a fairly good job in this article in revealing much more sinister truths.
One of those is that following the traditional and well-exposed tactics
of international imperialism "divide-and-conquer", invented centuries ago and then succesfully employed by the US loayal leutenant Great Britain, the Iraq occupiers deliberately triggered sectarian violence in 2004. It is hardly coincidental that Mr. Negroponte and some of his collegues -anti-insurgency "experts" - long ago linked to the worst human rights violations in Salvador and Nicaragua were brought by that time into Iraq.
So, noone was trying to accuse Americans for ALL extra civilian deaths, but just for those they are clearly responsible for bombings, unlawful killings, Shiite death squads and occupation, in general .

Shaphan K MacKenzie - 1/13/2008

Mr. Moise, you have made a career based on minimizing the calamities and atrocities of one tyrannical regime. Now another?

Your quote:
"I think it is reasonable to treat their operations [AQ] as consequences of the US war."
The brutality of the regime that was brought down was no less horrififc in character than that of the would-be tyrants who are attempting to 'behead' and 'detonate' their way to power. For all the idiocy displayed by our own government in Iraq, the reality of life under the Saddam regime and the potential state of affairs in a future regime dominated by terrorists was and is of a totally different order. The beauty of tyranny and totalitarianism is that it allows people of 'sound mind' to confuse cause and effect. The bodies that are being dug up - daily - in Iraq are a small indicator of the horror of that regime. The more recent 'excess' deaths that Mr. Cole would like to assign to DC and London are the direct result of a totalitarian order imploding combined with the zealous opportunism of regional terror networks. Bush might have "opened the door", but he did not hand out the swords or convince people to brutalize their neighbors, or to soak children in gasoline.

Mr. Moise I was raised on your work, and have used your 'bib' for my own work on Vietnam for many many years. Having spent the better part of the last fifteen years in the SE Asian region, I am qualified to say that your generation got 'this one' wrong. Terribly wrong. Please don't do it again in Iraq.

art eckstein - 1/13/2008

My sources are BBC News, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New Yorker. Look up Jim Muir, BBC, 8-24-02; S. Peterson, CSM 4-2-02; J. Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02

Edwin Moise - 1/13/2008

I don't believe Ansar al-Islam was an offshoot of Al Qaeda. But it was an Al Qaeda type organization.

I am aware that Colin Powell, in his February 2003 speech to the UN, gave the impression that Ansar al-Islam was linked to Saddam. But I am not aware of any evidence that this was actually true. Is Mr. Eckstein aware of such evidence?

art eckstein - 1/13/2008

Mr. Moise is wrong about al-Q not operating in Iraq under Saddam.

Saddam was supporting and using Ansar al-Islam, an al-Q offshoot, which had significant strength and had seized part of the area of Iraqi Kurdistan. Saddam supported them because he used them to make life hard on the Kurds. The Kurds were unable to remove the Ansar by themselves. The Ansar al-Islam fortified area was one of the first areas taken out in the 2003 U.S. invasion.

This is not to justify the U.S. invasion. it is simply to get the record straight.

Edwin Moise - 1/13/2008

Al Qaeda, and terrorists of the Al Qaeda type, were not operating in Iraq before 2003, because they could not. Saddam Husain was doing a pretty good job of keeping them out.

George Bush opened the door and allowed such people to begin operating in Iraq. I think it is reasonable to treat their operations as consequences of the US war.

Edwin Moise - 1/13/2008

I am in agreement with most of this essay. There is one issue that calls for a bit more analysis: how many Iraqis are likely to have been severely wounded.

Dr. Cole says that among the American forces in Iraq, almost 10,000 have been severely wounded and almost 4,000 have been killed so far, a ratio of about 2.5 to 1. He says that if the same ratio applied among Iraqi civilians, an estimate of 250,000 killed would imply 625,000 severely wounded.

My first thought on seeing this was that the same ratio would not apply among Iraqi civilians. US troops enjoy excellent medical care, which often enables them to survive truly horrific wounds. The medical care available to Iraqi civilians is not nearly so good. So of the Iraqi civilians injured by bullets, bombs, etc., the proportion who would end up in the "killed" column is much larger, and the proportion who would survive, and end up in the "wounded" column, is much smaller.

My second thought was that the difference in quality of medical care would mean that quite a lot of wounds that would be minor if inflicted on an American soldier, might end up being pretty serious if inflicted on an Iraqi civilian.

My third thought was that Dr. Cole's ratio of 2.5 severely wounded to every 1 killed, among the American forces, was way too low. Defense Department figures, updated regularly, are available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

Dr. Cole's figure of almost 4,000 American dead is a total for all American military deaths in Iraq, including those from accident and disease as well as those from violence. That is inappropriate, when what we are trying to construct is a ratio of killed to wounded among the victims of violence. He has compared this with an underestimate of the number of men seriously wounded.

As of last week, there had been 3,186 Defense Department personnel killed by hostile action in Iraq, and 12,918 seriously wounded. (The number with less serious wounds had been 15,952.) That gives a ratio of 4.05 seriously wounded to 1 killed by hostile action.

Bottom line: if the ratio of killed to seriously wounded has been 4 to 1 among US military personnel, it has probably been AT LEAST 2.5 to 1 among Iraqi civilians.

Bill Heuisler - 1/12/2008

Juan Cole has defended tyrants and castigated the US for many years. His saving grace is that he is so obvious.
To pass over the Lancet Study with faux skepticism and to demand that critiques only issue from statistical experts must pass for a really spiffy scholarly review in his small world of selective ignorance.
To copy Cole's solipsistic logic, the US was responsible for millions of civilian deaths in the 1940s due to our invasions of North Africa and of Normandy. What's more appalling is that he is printed in our own HNN and apparently taken seriously.
Bill Heuisler

Shaphan K MacKenzie - 1/12/2008

Cole, you are a genius. Did it ever occur to you to assign these "excess" deaths to those principally responsible? Does it make sense to distort the relationship between the invasion of Iraq and the most extreme and horrific forms of terror and persecution practiced by our adversaries there? I can just imagine the 'cheshire grin' on an Al Qaeda cell commander after reading your well-reasoned comments. Do you have a real day job?