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365 Comments
- phnx0221, on 11/22/2007, -12/+125FTA:"The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago."
This figure, as well as the 641,000 killed as of the halfway point of the war, has been cited by several different sources. I'd be much more likely to believe them, than any official number coming out of the United States government, or any government for that matter. Government agencies have had a long history of distorting official numbers of deaths and injuries, until years later when it's finally safe enough to release a number that's much closer to the actual statistics.
I'll try to find the original sources from over the years, as the initial search led to blogs using those stats. I don't have the time to find them right now, but when I do, I'll post them. - BoogieManOh, on 11/22/2007, -9/+81What a shame that it isn't unacknowledged. The US death toll is smeared all over TV, but never the Iraqi deaths (not even Darfur, for that matter), and most of the dead Iraqis were innocent.
- speerross, on 11/22/2007, -9/+57INteresting article. Another example that lends itself clearly to the title "Holocaust denial, American style" is the continual denial of the Armenian Genocide circa 1914-1918 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
"On October 10, 2007, prior to a vote by the United States House of Representatives that would condemn the events formally as genocide, Rice was joined by the other eight living U.S. Secretaries of State in calling for the measure to be defeated, in order to protect American regional interests and maintain basing rights in Turkey for American efforts in Iraq. Turkey recalled its ambassador to the United States, in an apparent reaction to the upcoming vote in the House of Representatives.[131]"
Rice called for it's denial on the basis it would harm the current War on terror, but the current War on Terror is being faught in revenge for the deaths of a few thousands Americans at 9/11, a tragedy certainly, but should we sacrifice the memory of several MILLION Armenian deaths to help our current war?
Fortunately, some in the government do have sense:However the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved US House Resolution 106, a bill that categorised and condemned the Ottoman Empire for the Genocide, on October 10, 2007, by a 27-21 vote.[132] "While that may have been a long time ago, genocide is taking place now in Darfur, it did within recent memory in Rwanda, so as long as there is genocide there is need to speak out against it," said the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi [133]. - phnx0221, on 11/22/2007, -2/+40For those of you who are interested, here are some links regarding the detailed outlines of death statistics since the war began in 2003.
Iraqi deaths as of 2004: 100,000
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6596.html
Actual lancet study, along with details of how surveys are conducted and outlines of results collected - pdf
http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/ ...
Iraqi deaths as of October 2006 655,000 (written by washington post staff writer, and staff researcher about released statistics)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic ...
600,000 (details halfway down)
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11605289678 ...
Iraqi deaths as of September 2007 1,220,580
http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?New ...
1.2 million-written about a study conducted by the British Opinion Research business http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/725/37602
Congressman McDermott, delivering a speech on the house floor, quoted a study resulting in a toll of over 1,000,000.
http://www.mcdermottforcongress.com/91907IraqiDeat ... - basic0, on 11/22/2007, -3/+37Strange that politicians and the media seem to have no problem with random sampling when the results are good for them.
- fugazi, on 11/22/2007, -14/+46Im going to take a guess and say more were killed from insurgents than US soldiers. Also some are probably insurgents killed in battle, so the idea isnt entirely true. Thats like saying you add all the deaths to American, British, Russian, etc.. soldiers in WWII to the holocaust because they were in the same place.
- ZenMojo, on 11/22/2007, -0/+30These are the same numbers we used to get the Holocaust numbers and the Kosovo numbers. It's standard practice for tallying wartime losses.
- pimpbot1979, on 11/22/2007, -28/+55Thanks for proving that Digg users have no idea what the word Holocaust means or what such events were like in history.
- pulyx, on 11/22/2007, -5/+31Sad stuff
Civilians getting killed in war is such a waste of life. - leunghoi, on 11/22/2007, -5/+30Asking random people in Iraq is absolutely better. That's how census surveys works. In the John Hopkins survey, the conductors asks a few family from every village about the number of family members killed in the war. Then, unexpectedly ask for the death's death certificates to confirm the numbers. The scientists then projected the figures to the national levels. It can't be very different form the way census conducts it's surveys.
- Cyberen, on 11/22/2007, -5/+26No matter if those killed are by "insurgents" or by soldiers, the fact is that the U.S. started this war, and subsequently every death in the resultant blood-soaked anarchy is this government's fault.
- lolwaffle, on 11/03/2008, -8/+29Everyone has their own non-compatible statistics. Arguing over numbers distracts from the message, that either way, it's morally wrong, and not something that you can just brush off as "welp, that's the cost of freedom".
- northernmunky, on 11/22/2007, -5/+26One Million People for something they call 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'
- BattleChimp, on 11/22/2007, -15/+35As long as its in the name of democracy! Remember people, God's on our side!
- bremstrong, on 11/22/2007, -3/+23What do you propose to do to find the actual number? Interview every single person, collect all records to one location, locate every Iraqi of the 3 million that has left the country and see if they are still with us?
The best that can be done is to make a statistical study by doing careful interviews of enough people in Iraq, use that as a representative sample to estimate the total number. This is Statistics 101 concepts. The result will have an "error bar" indicating the uncertainty in the estimate. More 101 concepts.
That's what the researchers have done, using the best known methods, and they get a sobering number. Everyone should be calling for additional careful studies if they don't think this estimate is accurate enough. - Aggaman, on 11/22/2007, -3/+22And if some other country had invaded the USA on the back of a pack of lies, toppled its government, destroyed its infrastructure, and removed the police and military that were stopping people like the militias, gangs and other domestic gun owners from running amok, killing people and settling old scores, then I'm sure that once a million Americans had died, that you'd be vociferously telling everyone that only a small fraction of the deaths were directly caused by the invaders. I'm sure you'd be running up and down the street telling people this.
People like you, who make excuses like this, are the enemies of humanity. - diggerphelps, on 11/22/2007, -9/+27Um, I oppose the war and all, and I am no fan of Dubya, but the vast number of Iraqis were not slaughtered by American troops or allies, so this doesn't exactly qualify as a case of genocide.
Still, the damage we have done (in the pursuit of what exactly again?) to that nation and her people has been unconscionable, and I am ashamed for our nation. - ShnowDoggie, on 11/22/2007, -1/+19I do not think that people are saying that all the deaths are being directly caused by US soldiers. The point is those people might still be alive today had we not invaded Iraq. Sooner or later Sadden would have lost power. But could it have happened in a way that was less costly? I think it is fair and responsible to ask this question. Part of answer is finding out how people were killed by the way the United States removed Saddam. It is possible that with no US invasion there may have been an even worse Civil War. But it is also possible that with the right prodding and poking Saddam would have lost power with very little loss of life. We need to ask these questions, and we need to accept the truth of we find, so that we are more educated next time.
- cherwilco, on 11/22/2007, -1/+16of course their is a margin for error just like any poll but even if the margin is very high 10% we are still talkin like 900,000 to 1.1million deaths? How again is this not bad?
- inactive, on 11/22/2007, -1/+16whats scary is i cant tell if battlechimp is joking
- notque, on 11/22/2007, -0/+15To save you we may have to kill you.
For freedom you may have to die. - Michael9636, on 08/04/2008, -1/+15@jmcbain - clean up your act. Throwing around the word "*****" - like you do - eliminates you from any serious consideration, no matter how brilliant your comments may or may not be. Com' on. You can do better than that. Homophobia has no place in this discussion, and the word "*****" has no place in your comments, or in your vocabulary for that matter.
- notque, on 11/22/2007, -1/+15Iraqi deaths that are the direct response to our invasion and occupation of a sovereign country.
It's the supreme war crime of aggression. Apologizing for it is just sick. - tuxidomasx, on 11/22/2007, -1/+14the secret service is just THAT good
- LittleDas, on 11/22/2007, -1/+13Well, the question is who's responsible for the deaths.
I mean, lets say, theoretically, I start a civil war in some poor sub-Saharan country.
Maybe I didn't kill anyone with my own hands, but I'm responsible for the rest of the bloodshed. - ddcrandall, on 11/22/2007, -5/+17at the risk of sounding crazy and stupid like one of THOSE people, the united states only condemns genocide when it is in their own interests to do so. consider, for example, the armenian genocide, in which over a million people were slaughtered by the turkish government. for almost a century, america refused to recognize this ethnic cleansing for what it really is: a genocide. last month, some progress was made in the form of a bill that would have recognized the armenian genocide, but now it looks like it might fail. we do the same thing with nuclear weapons (see egypt, india, and pakistan vs iran) and a host of other issues. our government is filled with hypocrites. it would have been more surprising to me if they HAD admitted to the killing of iraqi civilians. in fact, i don't think i would have believed it.
- cherwilco, on 11/22/2007, -3/+15sad when some p.o.s. comes in here and diggs you down for making probably the most peaceful comment on this thread.
- TheConfusedOne, on 11/22/2007, -0/+12Would "ethnic cleansing" be a more fitting word? It seems a lot of energy is being spent on convincing Americans that invading Iraq was a good idea; that Bush knows best.
Do we ignore the situation in Darfur because it's not done directly by the U.S.? - catbeller, on 11/22/2007, -1/+13The problem here is America's utter willful ignorance of facts on the ground in Iraq. No reporter dare step outside; all these "facts" except the dead count are fed to us by political hacks in uniform. The objective fact is: we killed them; imprisoned them; tortured them; mistook them for some paramilitary organization that is located in Pakistan. And then, we installed Chalabi, or tried to; he looted and took over the secret police records; we stole the oil outright, looted their museums, bombed their power and water supplies; we fired the entire goddam army; we outright stole all that was worth stealing; looted the treasury; treated them like a cross between a crazed pack of murderers and retarded children; never bothered to even learn their language; we flew in American contractors, who overcharged and didn't do the work while at the same time refusing any contracts to the Iraqi locals who had the know-how and equipment to rebuild; their water is laced with raw sewage, they have no air conditioners in 120 degree summers and crap for food, hyper inflation, and naturally the collaborators with the invaders are killed, so they can't start a police force which would simply be the invader's clown troops anyway. And we treat them like they are an army attacking us while we are fully armored troops occupying a hostile and proud nation.
The violence on the ground is caused by us, asshat step by asshat step since we nuked their society. They've nothing left anymore, and the Lord of the Flies rears its head. And it's THEIR FAULT, those subhuman Islamicists, I see. - ZenMojo, on 11/22/2007, -3/+14People seem to want to mitigate America's involvement by bringing up the post-invasion numbers. But the actual invasion numbers are well over 100,000 lives lost in bombing runs alone...and those are purely from American ballistics.
- gudnbluts, on 11/22/2007, -0/+11The Johns Hopkins study checked Death Certificates for over 90% of the deaths in their random samples.
- miketrin, on 11/22/2007, -3/+14People like masterm1nd really concern me. I assume he's one of the 20% of Americans that approve of what war criminal bush has done. I never thought I'd see one.
- azharcs, on 11/22/2007, -4/+14 "The Greatest enemy of Knowledge is not Ignorance, It is the Illusion of Knowledge" - Stephen Hawking.
This is what most of the average American's and the rest of the brainwashed world is facing.They assume to know what is happening in Iraq and blame it on Iraqi's for it.The only mistake Iraqi's did was they were born in Iraq.When will you realize, Iraq was a better country before Americans invaded it and destroyed the whole civilization or is on the verge of destroying it. - Terr01, on 11/22/2007, -0/+10By the way, do you have ANY statistical evidence to back up your claims?
Assume 1m killed. Now you said "most", so assume 50% of those killed are insurgents.
Assume a generous 25% mortality rate over 5 years for insurgents. (5% chance of death per year.) Obviously it can't be too high, or we'd have won by now.
That means that the insurgency is on the scale of 2 million people.
And THAT means that you are estimating that somewhere between seventy and one hundred times more insurgents than US commanders believe exist.
So... how do you reconcile that? You know, facts, math, history, all that boring political stuff? - notque, on 11/22/2007, -1/+11Killing people is too. And that you can control if you aren't brutal savages.
- ShnowDoggie, on 11/22/2007, -3/+13You are an idiot if you think Saddam had anything to do with 911. Removing him has made a repeat, not less, but more likely.
- catbeller, on 11/22/2007, -3/+12Sorry. So six million will do, then? Ten? What number makes you happy? Sorry we misnamed it. Perhaps a conflagration, or perhaps a burning of the backyard leaves. Or is it the kind of people killed that matters? A million Iraqis is equivalent to perhaps 10 Americans, or as one rightist I heard said, all of them aren't worth even one American life. Perhaps it's their lack of humanity, or that they don't love Jesus. Or perhaps they were in the way of half the world's remaining easily removed oil reserves. Oh, yes, I recall -- the Preznit imagined that they were about to kill us with model airplanes with Semtec on, so therefore we slaughtered 60 thousand outright, and a million dead after the humilin went bad in the non-powered refrigerators and we burned them and shot them and bombed them and drove them mad enough to turn on each other.
And yes, we do know history. You apparently don't know the present. - Terr01, on 11/22/2007, -0/+9"Doing something about Darfur", implying more than symbolic action.
- ShnowDoggie, on 11/22/2007, -2/+11There is some evidence that Bush was planning for an invasion BEFORE 911. There is some evidence that he WANTED to invade before 911 happened. 911 was the excuse that Bush needed so that he could invade. Had it not happened Bush would have looked for another reason.
- sanman, on 11/22/2007, -2/+11And the most effective and brilliant way to "liberate" the people is by putting a carbomb in the marketplace where they shop, to blow them to smithereens, and then blame the Yankees for causing all the strife. What fabulous logic. You'll go far in life.
- notque, on 11/22/2007, -0/+9Then you disagree with the Nuremberg trials, and I think incorrectly. The Nuremberg trials clearly state that the supreme war crime of aggression is responsible for all the crimes that are committed because of it.
It makes perfect sense. If China invaded us right now, and the situation was so bad that there was violence in today's ghettos would you really be eager to accept the cause of your misery?
Saddam was bad, but killing them with fighter jets doesn't make them hate us any less than him. - Terr01, on 11/22/2007, -5/+14I believe the argument is that the unprovoked (yes, when you consider the scale involved) invasion and disruption of existing order is a root cause.
I mean, you can't really go the other direction and use the US government statistics where car bombs mysteriously count as "violence". - bradcrc, on 11/22/2007, -8/+17but we are there to SAVE them. even if we have to kill em all in the process.
- notque, on 11/22/2007, -1/+9So that's the moral level we seek to achieve? Not being as bad as a brutal dictator?
Are you serious? - mikecc, on 11/22/2007, -4/+12Digger's - I am truly sorry for the quadruple post. It was not meant to convey my opinion more than the usual comment. Although my opinion GREATLY differs from the normal digg user's comment, again, I did not quadruple post on purpose.
- Terr01, on 11/22/2007, -5/+13I'd love to see Bush impeached and jailed for constitutional violations (by way of clarifying my general stance), but I don't think much about the bill.
If there should be any talk of "genocide" in Congress, we should be talking about doing something about Darfur, not dredging up issues of how another country acted 90 years ago and of events probably gone from living memory. At this stage it's something that Turkey has to wrestle with in it's own political conscience, not something we can help with by making denunciations from afar. - Terr01, on 11/22/2007, -0/+8"Are you ***** brain dead? Most of the dead "Iraqis" were foreign fighters and insurgents."
Well, first off, most of the insurgents are NOT foreign fighters, that's a tiny percentage of it--we're seeing a domestic power struggle.
Secondly, the majority of the dead are NOT foreign fighters or insurgents, because statistically speaking those won't be the people don't get blown up by a car bomb while buying bread. - phnx0221, on 11/22/2007, -0/+8Did you read the PDF that outlined how the research was conducted, as well as the outlined details of their results? Did you read the comment at the top of this thread made by "leunghoi" also describing how these researchers conduct the surveys? This research company is also used by the mainstream media to release death toll statistics. That was also in the list of links I included.
- ZenMojo, on 11/22/2007, -0/+8If it's so bad even pos3r finds it hard to swallow, then you know it's sarcasm.
- yobrodude, on 11/22/2007, -6/+141 million iraqis were dead before we even went in thanks to sanctions from 1990. Are you ppl really this dense and short term thinking? Sorry to diss, but I see so much War praising and Islam bashing on digg I can't believe this article is being critiqued for margin of error. Even if you add the numbers from google it's still a horrendous amount of ppl dead and NO COVERAGE in US media is near TREASON. Soul-less America, Polarized Nation, Living like the Monroe Doctrine but acting like Globalization, disgusting.
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