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Post by HStorm on Oct 15, 2006 19:44:41 GMT
Last week, an independent investigation by the Lancet Journal into the Iraq war and after came to a shocking conclusion; that the death toll in Iraq as a result of the 2003 invasion and the civil war that followed now stands at a bewildering 655,000, and is still climbing.
Lancet calculated back in 2004 that the death toll as estimated back in 2004 was undercounted by as many as 98,000. These new figures contrast horrifyingly with the forty-odd thousand suggested by Western figures.
Western Governments have retorted that the new figures are wildly exaggerated and completely unreliable.
Whose figures do we believe?
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Post by modeski on Oct 16, 2006 9:18:43 GMT
How long is a piece of string? I'm torn on this issue. 655,000 is a horrific figure, and apparently the science is reliable, depending on who one believes. I don't think this debate is particularly helpful, however, as a figure as extreme as that could actually undermine those of us arguing against the war, and advocating withdrawing our troops.
We've all heard those who like to decry people who question our current tactics in Iraq as lunatics, now they can point to this and say, "see, the can't even get their sums right!".
I tend to think that the often-touted figure of 100,000 seems to be more realistic, but whatever the true number is, focusing on this aspect draws our attention away from other questions. Questions such as - why didn't the US bother counting the number of Iraqi casualties from the very start? Why are we refusing to declare the current situation as civil war? And so on.
1 innocent civilian killed is an outrage. This should be cause enough to question what we're doing.
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Post by HStorm on Nov 22, 2007 22:49:54 GMT
A new survey run by polling organisation ORB concluded that, as of mid-September, the number of violent deaths in Iraq since the invasion of 2003 went past a mind-numbing 1.2 million. (It must be emphasised that the criteria for this survey were far broader than the ones used for the Lancet survey mentioned above.)
If these figures are even remotely accurate, the occupation of Iraq has produced a humanitarian catastrophe of World War proportions, with a death total already higher than that of Rwanda in 1994.
Typically, this news was effectively hushed up by almost all the US and British media.
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Post by modeski on Nov 23, 2007 6:19:43 GMT
What a senseless waste of life. I fear that the full extent of this invasion will only be investigated properly when the Bush administration is long gone. History will judge this era harshly.
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Post by Naselus on Nov 23, 2007 10:43:16 GMT
A new survey run by polling organisation ORB concluded that, as of mid-September, the number of violent deaths in Iraq since the invasion of 2003 went past a mind-numbing 1.2 million. (It must be emphasised that the criteria for this survey were far broader than the ones used for the Lancet survey mentioned above.) If these figures are even remotely accurate, the occupation of Iraq has produced a humanitarian catastrophe of World War proportions, with a death total already higher than that of Rwanda in 1994. Typically, this news was effectively hushed up by almost all the US and British media. 1.2 million is, effectively, equivilent to 4% of Iraq's total population.... |
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