Sunday, October 31, 2004
100,000 Civilians Died in War in Iraq, Study Says
In our supposed response to 9/11, it now seems we've killed 100,000 people who had nothing to do with 9/11. To put this into perspective, "only" 70,000 people have died as a result of the Darfur conflict since February 2003 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3751554.stm). And the surviving Iraqi relatives now have 760,000 pounds of high quality explosives with which to plan their retribution. Welcome to Bushworld.
100,000 Civilians Died in War in Iraq, Study Says (Update1)
(Updating with Johns Hopkins location in second paragraph.)
By Angela Zimm
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- About 100,000 civilians have died as
a result of the war in Iraq, according to research from Johns
Hopkins University. The findings are the first scientific study
of the effects of war on Iraqi citizens, according to the Lancet
medical journal, which is publishing the research.
The study, based on a survey comparing mortality rates in
Iraq during the 15 months before and 18 months after the March
2003 invasion, found violence was the leading cause of death
after the invasion. The majority of the civilian deaths were
women and children, said the study, led by Les Roberts of Johns
Hopkins in Baltimore.
Most of the casualties occurred after the end of major
hostilities in May 2003, researchers said in the study.
Observations suggest that civilian deaths since the war are
mostly caused by air strikes, the survey said. Two-thirds of the
deaths were in the insurgent-held Sunni Muslim Iraqi city of
Fallujah, the study said.
``Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths, and air
strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent
deaths,'' Roberts said in the study.
Other estimates for civilian casualties are much lower.
Iraqbodycount.com, a Web site run by researchers including
University of New Hampshire professor Marc Herold, estimates that
between 14,160 and 16,289 Iraqi civilians have been killed during
and after the U.S.-led invasion.
Herold, author of a 2001 study on the human cost of the U.S.
campaign in Afghanistan, compiles data from media groups
including Fox News, the British Broadcasting Corp. and Al
Jazeera, and by aid groups including the Red Cross and Human
Rights Watch.
War Doubled Risk
The Johns Hopkins group found the war in Iraq more than
doubled the risk of death in that nation. Overall, the risk of
death was 2.5 times greater after the invasion, although the risk
was 1.5 times higher if mortality around Falluja was excluded,
the researchers said.
``Much of this increased mortality is a consequence of the
prevailing climate of violence in the country, and many of the
civilian casualties that are described were attributed to the
actions of coalition forces,'' Lancet Editor Richard Horton said
in a commentary accompanying the study.
The researchers interviewed Iraqi residents in 33 different
areas about births and deaths and recorded cases of violent
deaths. They compared deaths in the periods between January 2002
and mid-March 2003 and mid-March 2003 to mid-September 2004.
--With reporting by Caroline Alexander in London. Editors: Elser,
Merz
Story illustration: For stories on the war in Iraq see:
{TNI IRAQ WAR <GO>}
To contact the reporter on this story:
Angela Zimm in London at (44)(20) 7073 3409 or at
azimm@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor of this story:
Mark Rohner at (41) (1) 224 4106 or mrohner@bloomberg.net
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October 26, 2004
Making Things Worse
resident Bush's misbegotten invasion of Iraq appears to have achieved what Saddam Hussein did not: putting dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists and creating an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The murder of dozens of Iraqi Army recruits over the weekend is being attributed to the forces of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been identified by the Bush administration as a leading terrorist and a supposed link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That was not true before the war - as multiple investigations have shown. But the breakdown of order since the invasion has changed all that. This terrorist, who has claimed many attacks on occupation forces and the barbaric murder of hostages, recently swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed his group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
The hideous murder of the recruits was a reminder of the Bush administration's dangerously inflated claims about training an Iraqi security force. The officials responsible for these inexperienced young men sent them home for leave without weapons or guards, at a time when police and army recruits are constantly attacked. The men who killed them wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms.
A particularly horrific case of irony involves weapons of mass destruction. It's been obvious for months that American forces were not going to find the chemical or biological armaments that Mr. Bush said were stockpiled in Iraq. What we didn't know is that while they were looking for weapons that did not exist, they lost weapons that did.
James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported in The Times yesterday that some 380 tons of the kinds of powerful explosives used to destroy airplanes, demolish buildings, make missile warheads and trigger nuclear weapons have disappeared from one of the many places in Iraq that the United States failed to secure. The United Nations inspectors disdained by the Bush administration had managed to monitor the explosives for years. But they vanished soon after the United States took over the job. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was so bent on proving his theory of lightning warfare that he ignored the generals who said an understaffed and underarmed invasion force could rush to Baghdad, but couldn't hold the rest of the country, much less guard things like the ammunition dump.
Iraqi and American officials cannot explain how some 760,000 pounds of explosives were spirited away from a well-known site just 30 miles from Baghdad. But they were warned. Within weeks of the invasion, international weapons inspectors told Washington that the explosives depot was in danger and that terrorists could help themselves "to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."
The disastrous theft was revealed in a recent letter to an international agency in Vienna. It was signed by the general director of Iraq's Planning and Following Up Directorate. It's too bad the Bush administration doesn't have one of those.
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