Putting Iraqi Civilian Deaths Into Perspective

As of this moment, Iraq Body Count says that between 23,589 and 26,705 Iraqi civilians have died since the United States invaded Iraq.  Let's average that out, even though their method for counting deaths is extremely conservative and there is, I think, good reason to believe that the actual number of dead is higher than their high estimate.  The average is 25,147.

The CIA World Factbook says that the population of Iraq as of July 2005 was 26,074,906.  At the same time, the population of the United States was 295,734,134.

So, if someone invaded the United States and the same proportion of the civilian population had died as a result, the number of people killed would be 285,210.

285,210.

Or think of it this way: on September 11, 2,986 people died.  The equivalent of what has happened in Iraq is the equivalent of September 11th repeated 95 times.

Comments

[el s]

but freedom is on the march man, why do you hate america?

[darrelplant]

And nobody's counting the wounded. If they have a higher mortality rate than the troops, that's still probably 100,000 wounded Iraqis (using IBC's numbers) or something like half a million (using Lancet's).

[ohdave]

Let's put it into further perspective by remembering the Johns Hopkins research that concluded thusly:

Excluding information from Falluja, they estimate that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred. Eighty-four percent of the violent deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery.

This study was published nearly a year ago.

Think about that for a moment. Nearly a year ago.

AND as noted above, they adjusted DOWNWARDS to make sure that Fallujah didn't skew the numbers. So the 100,000 is a conservative estimate.

Which makes the 26,000 estimate on IBC seem downright miserly in its caution.

And let's not forget that we have littered Iraq with radioactive debris which will cause birth defects and cancers for longer than I can estimate because I know precious little (OK, nothing) about nuclear chemistry.

Here is the link.

My first post on this blog, whatever its name is, so be gentle, good souls.

[mild mannered alter ego]

I hate sitting around wringing my hands over this, not because it doesn't deserve hand-wringing, but because it deserves so much more. It's becoming actually physically uncomfortable for me not to be doing anything about this.

[Troy]

Even without the scaling, 25,000 dead is like California suffering 10 9/11s, or each major city (San Diego, LA, Orange County, Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto, Sacramento, SF, Oakland, San Jose) having their own 9/11.

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

Yes, but they're only brown people. They don't even speak English, for God's sakes.

Why do you hate America?