A study estimates that well over 600,000 civilians have been killed in the Iraq war. ⇒
11 October 2006, evening time
Which would imply the US war effort and the civil war that has followed has killed more civilians in the few years it has been at war than Saddam managed to in the 20 years he was in power. (It is important to note that the way this figure was determined was by sampling the population and extrapolating; I'm not sure what sort of error this produces.) This is also being covered on MetaFilter. Update: "The attempts to rubbish the Lancet study on the massive Iraqi death toll are devious hack-work."
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
That number seems a little outrageous. I’d probably wait for something better then this extrapolation.
by Victor on October 11 2006, 9:07 pm #
This report does not mean that the US has killed 600,000 civilians. It means the US invasion is responsible for the deaths of those civilians. Some of these deaths are from errant (or not errant) US bombs and bullets. But many of them are from insurgent terrorist attacks. As the occupying force the US is responsible for protecting those innocent civilians killed in the attacks. For that they have failed miserably. But they did not kill the civilians in the same sense that the insurgents did.
[ed. I've fixed the wording of the post. Thanks for pointing that out.]
by Jeff on October 12 2006, 5:54 pm #
Re: the edit. Exactly. Cool.
by Jeff on October 13 2006, 1:00 am #