Iraqi War Death Toll Slashed By Three Quarters

New Scientist ^ | 1-9-2008 | Jim Giles

[blam]

Iraqi war death toll slashed by three quarters

22:00 09 January 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Jim Giles

The death toll in Iraq may be far lower than previously claimed, according to a team working for the Iraqi Ministry of Health.

The researchers estimate that the number of violent deaths in Iraq between the US-led invasion of March 2003 and the end of June 2006 to be between 104,000 and 223,000.

This loss of life is described as "massive", but is well below the figure of 600,000 violent deaths claimed by a team of Iraqi and US scientists in autumn 2006 (The Lancet, vol 368, p 1241).

The Lancet research, led by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, was hailed by opponents of the war as evidence of the huge human cost of the conflict, but attacked with equal force by supporters of the invasion. President George W Bush publicly dismissed the study on the day it was released.

Larger study

The methods used to produce the estimate have since come under intense scrutiny although many experts believe the research was as good as it could have been given the dangerous and unstable conditions within Iraq.

The latest study is, however, likely to increase doubts about the 600,000 figure, not least because the new survey is far larger.

[Steve_Seattle]

Many of our problems in Iraq stem from the fact that a society that lived under the arbitrary rule of dictatorship for several decades is not really ready for democracy and freedom; quite literally, they don't know how to do it, they don't understand it, they can't even imagine it, in many cases. That is why this has been so hard. The way they are learning it is - ironically - through their recent cooperation with the U.S. military.

Through this cooperation they are learning about altruism, cooperation among ethnic and religious groups (American soldiers are black/white/Catholic/Protestant/Jewish/atheist), and that we are not there to steal their oil but to give them an unprecedented opportunity for a better life than they ever had.