In the middle of the comments on another thread, someone asked about where we had heard that we are responsible for the deaths of 100,000 people in Iraq. Even though it’s old news, I think it’s worth repeating, especially since it got relatively little mainstream media coverage.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad compared the death rate in Iraq before the war and after the war, and the conclusion they came to, using sound scientific methods, was that we killed 100,000 Iraqis. The study was published in The Lancet, a preeminent peer-reviewed medical journal. All medical researchers should be so lucky to get a publication in The Lancet.
If we keep up a pace anywhere close to that, we’re going to beat Hussein himself soon.
Here’s a pdf of the Lancet article.
Here’s a CNN piece about it.
A quote from a Marine Lieutenant in combat…In Vietnam, circa.1968: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it”
What have I been saying about history?
Thanks for bringing this important information back to the surface, Tracy.
The Lancet study covered only dates through September 2004. Seven months have passed since then. How have died since?
Oh, now, come on. Don’t you know that the Pentagon doesn’t keep statistics on that? Therefore, no one has died! (Wink)
Yeah, and remember the Republican rhetoric: Everyone who is killed by Americans in Iraq is a terrorist. Who knew there were over 100,000 terrorists in Iraq, just sitting there, waiting, seeming to lead ordinary lives, just waiting until the Americans invaded to launch their evil schemes? Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Another memory of Vietnam: If they run, they’re VC…If they don’t run, they’re WELL-DISCIPLINED VC…Attributed to a 1st Air Cavalry Door Gunner. The more things change, the more they look the same…
Read the link to the CNN article closley…partial propaganda published here again…
OK, I’m reading the link to the CNN article closely. It says “Here’s a CNN piece about it.”
OMIGOD! You are SO right.
Hoosier Texan, what in the heck are you talking about? Be specific.
tracy, if you haven’t figured out that this is a hate site against anyone withoout Progressive values…I can’t help you dear.
Hoosier, you patronizing, sexist twit.
I’m going to stick to the high road, Hoosier Texan. I don’t know how many of the authors here you’ve actually asked whether or not they hate anyone without Progressive values, but you sure haven’t asked me. I don’t hate anyone without Progressive values. In fact, my Mom and Dad are moderate Republicans, and I love them very much. They’re great people, if wrong about a few things. I don’t even hate George Bush. I hate his policies. They suck, and they give me plenty to work against without resorting to hate of the man.
I repeat my question. What the heck propaganda are you talking about? Be specific.
By the way, don’t ever call me dear.
Of course, you know that that Lancet-published study was absolutely crushed as being scientically meaningless, right?
You also know that no other hypothetical study or actual count was above 16,000 right?
There is a reason the MSM didn’t carry it, and that reason is that the Hopkins/Lancet study was discredited.
So much for your intellectual honesty, at any rate.
so the hoosier texan and the confederate yankee’s point is what? the calculations were bad, there may have only been 30,000 iraqi people killed by bush’s war and not 100,000? well that makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing. thanks boys!
Oh, yeah, Confederate Yankee – it was crushed, by what? By Talon “News Service”? Lots ‘o Laughs.
This is just another case where a conservative refutes evidence with a mere assertion. Haven’t you heard that someone, um, somewhere, refuted that the Earth is round?
Besides, the real story here is that Hoosier Texan has revealed his secret. He’s a Canadian! Catch how he pronounces without. He spells it “withoout”! It’s aboot time he comes clean aboot his national identity.
Y’know, this talk is beginning to sound horribly familiar…Oh, yeah, now I remember! the rebuttals made by Hoosier Texan and Confederate Yankee are similar to the REALLY Far-right-wing crap that my uncle used to read..now, understand, here’s a man who regarded Richard Nixon was a “Closet Pinko”, and the John Birch Society was too liberal for him..getting the picture? Okay…The literature he read offered up the notion that the holocaust was a Zionist lie, that the actual number of deaths in the concentration camps never exceeded two hundred thousand… my, my…that certainly takes the onus off those poor, misunderstood Nazis, huh? These two need to hear another old Texas saying that fits this argument to a “T”: “don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining!”
First off, I was raised in Indiana and now live in the DFW area of Texas. That was a typo you goof Paul.
Secondly, I am a moderate and far from the right. Just not as far from it as most here.
Lastly, calling you “dear”, Tracy, wasn’t by any means done in an affectionate way. I was being polite, but Progressives wouldn’t know too much about that.
By the way, the authors of the study in the CNN article are anti-war. And the 100K total was those killed period. Insurgents have kills many innocent Iraqi’s, but you won’t see any of the Cook brothers or P Wood calling for their heads. As far as they are concerned, Christians of any sort are much more dangerous than any Muslim…
Hoosier: Yes, insurgents have killed many innocent Iraqis. But do you think that would have happened if the U.S. hadn’t invaded a sovereign nation and forced that kind of civil unrest? Sure, it might have happened eventually…but we’re talking about death rates over the last two years…and those rates are undoubtedly higher because the U.S. invaded Iraq. Again, I’m not saying that the U.S. soldiers were/are the only people killing innocent Iraqis—I’m saying that U.S. intervention has been the direct and indirect cause of higher death rates among Iraqi civilians.
So are you saying that the Iraqi people of Iraq were better off under Sadaam?
Hoosier Texan,
How do you know the authors of the Lancet study are anti-war? Did you ask them? Did you read an interview? Or was is simply that they dared to study how many deaths we are responsible for in Iraq?
I suspect it’s the last one, but correct me if I’m wrong. Why wouldn’t we want to know how many deaths we are responsible for? Are you trying to hide from the consequences of our actions? Please address this point and be specific.
You said: “the 100K total was those killed period. Insurgents have kills (sic) many innocent Iraqi’s…”
By this I assume you mean that the insurgents are responsible for a big enough portion of that 100K figure, that it mitigates our responsibility for the lion’s share of that number.
My response is that based on the weaponry available to us and to the insurgents, we are most certainly responsible for a HUGE portion of those 100,000 deaths. What’s gonna kill more, a home-made car bomb weighing less than a ton, or a several ton bomb manufactured by the world’s most powerful military and dropped from a military airplane? So let’s say, we’re directly responsible for 90%, and they’re directly responsible for 10%. That’s still 90,000 Iraqi deaths we’re responsible for. Or let’s say we’re only directly responsible for 80% – 80,000 people, Hoosier Texan. My home town could fit in that almost four times.
And I think Becca’s point was a good one. War is hell, and we should have been able to figure out that the Iraqi’s are a proud people. We should have been able to figure out that the country would fall into chaos, and become a magnet for any two-bit fundie Muslim with a grudge against us. In other words, we should have figured out there would be an insurgency. History tells us so. People who believed the flowers and chocolate would not give way to protests and worse, and who believed that we would all live happily ever after were seriously fooling themselves. I should clarify here that I think what the insurgents are doing is wrong and horrible. They are mostly hurting the Iraqi civilians, who they obviously don’t care about. So, I don’t support the insurgency, but we should have known it was coming.
Right after the slaughter and mutilation of those American contractors in Fallujah last year, which I thought was horrid (lest you think I supported it!), I heard an interview on the radio with a military wife who was so shocked at the intensity of the anti-American feeling on the street there. It took her as a complete surprise that we would be unwelcome. I thought, “What a raging fool she is!”
Are we so sure of our own county’s glory, that we really believe that other places in the world are not also proud of their own ways of life? Are we so sure of our own culture’s righteousness, that we can’t comprehend that someone else might not want to be part of it? That makes us terribly terribly arrogant, and wrong, too. It reminds me of those New Yorkers who are sooooo in love with their city, that they can’t even understand how there are any other parts of the country even worth thinking about, much less visiting. They would be shocked and offended if they went to rural Indiana and discovered that the people there didn’t give a rat’s ass about their high fashion, and their double tall skinny cafe mocha with whipped cream on top, and their $2000 chairs, and their $300 meals where you have to dress a certain way. Now, I think NYC is a fantastic city, but it’s not the only worthwhile place in this country by a long shot, and New Yorkers who think like that are arrogant and deluded.
We should have known there would be an insugency.
And here’s the thing: we can only control our own actions, not the actions of others. We can predict others’ actions and reactions, but we can’t control them.
My point in all that is to say that we are indirectly responsible for the deaths directly caused by the insurgents because it was entirely predictable that an insurgency would happen. We broke it, we own it. So now we’re back to 100,000.
By the way, I’m doing research into the critiques of the Lancet article posted in your above comment. I’ll get back to you on that.
By the way, of course I knew you didn’t call me dear in any affectionate way. You weren’t being polite, you were being condescending. Do you take me for a fool?
So I’ll repeat it: don’t ever call me dear.
Actually, no, Tex, I wouldn’t. I also would’nt enjoy having some 1500 brave American Service men and women dead from a war that didn’t have to be fought in the first place, but was…and all under false pretenses. Oh, dubya and his cabinet can bleat about “intelligence failures”, then quickly change thew subject and point to the “new threat”: the “insurgents”. Question: How come when we support them they’re called “Freedom Fighters”, But if they don’t like us, they’re “Insurgents”?
Question: where are all the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons stockpiles that Saddam was gonna use against us?
Question: When are the crowds gonna greet our troops as liberators?
Question: When are Iraq’s oil supplies gonna pay for this war? Shall I go on? I’m sure you’ll point out that the oil pipeline seems to be attacked regularly by the “insurgents”. Who repairs the oil pipeline? HALLIBURTON! Want me to go on? On a report the other night, one general pointed to the fact that many of these attacks are being conducted by “people who were paid to do so ” by an unknown shadowy force..How’s this for a scenario: Halliburton pays some out-of-work Iraqi $1000 to blow up the pipeline…then charges the US government $100,000 to fix it…Not too shabby a deal, eh? Don’t honk to me about wanting Saddam back, Tex, we already have our own criminal empire here. Oh yeah…Tex? I’ve been to war…Been shot at, too… didn’t care too much for the experience. So, which branch did YOU serve in?
Tracy, if you’ll allow an old Vietman Vet to say it: you ROCK, Dear! And I say that with affection and respect!
Hoosier wrote: “So are you saying that the Iraqi people of Iraq were better off under Sadaam?”
No, you ass. If you’d actually read my post, you’d know that I clearly stated my point: “I’m saying that U.S. intervention has been the direct and indirect cause of higher death rates among Iraqi civilians.”
Tracy and Mike, thanks for elaborating on this topic so I don’t have to—y’all both said it much more politely than I would’ve!
I know that they were anti-war, because I read the article linked to CNN and one of them said so!!!
Mike,
Many of the people there have greeted us as liberators. Do you not read or watch the news. My cousin just went back there. He has been there from the beginning. So I get my news first hand. He also says that all the negative press that is reported here about it is very biased and no the way it is everywhere over in Iraq.
I’m sure that there are many who did initially greet us as liberators…the fact is, though, that most now view us aas occupation troops, and are acting exactly as we would if a foreign army had come to “liberate” us, then stuck around for two years…and showed no sign of leaving. Now, before you start on me for not supporting our troops, I KNOW what that feels like from my treatment on my return from Vietnam. I will ALWAYS suppore our troops, and encourage every other American to do so as well.
I do NOT support our government’s policies in Iraq. Anyway, what about all the OTHER issues I brought up? By the way, my best wishes and prayers go out toward your cousin. May it be a safe tour of duty.
And here we are, a year and a half later, and indeed, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has killed more people in a little over three years than Saddam Hussein’s government managed to do in 20 years.
Here’s the score:
Saddam Hussein’s government, over 20 years: 290,000 dead
The USA, in three and a half years: 400,000 to 800,000 dead