Too Many Dead: End the Occupation Now

Since the U. S. invasion of March 19, 2003, at least 1,527 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq according to the Department of Defense.  During the same period, 5,871 have been seriously wounded.  These figures seem reasonably certain.  How many Iraqi people have been killed since 3/19/2003 as a consequence of the U.S. led invasion and occupation?.  This is a question with no clear answer; in part because of the occupation force's refusal to release believable statistics on Iraqi deaths.

According to a report issued by the Commonwealth Institute sponsored Project on Defense Alternatives, during the month of intense destruction between March 19 and April 20, 2003, approximately 15,000 Iraqis were killed, up to 4,300 of them civilians.  Higher numbers have been reported.

According to the Iraq Body Count website, using published government and hospital reports, between 11,388 and 12,001 Iraqi were killed during the period May 2003 through February 2005.  This, combined with the Project on Defense Alternatives figures cited above-both which may be assumed to be undercounts of some unknown degree-amount to somewhere between 25,000 and 27,000 Iraqi dead as a result of the U.S. invasion/occupation.  This, however, may well be only the tip of a grim iceberg.

According to the Friends Committee on National Legislation, for the period March 19, 2003 to February 2, 2005 ( 643 days of occupation ) a total of 41,000 Air Sorties, 15,500 Strike Sorties, and 27,000 bombs ( 65% precision guided ) were inflicted on Iraq and its people by U. S. troops and "coalition" forces.  Then there is the fact of cluster bombs.  Within about a month of the initial invasion the UK Ministry of Defense admitted to using more than 2,000 cluster bombs.  At about the same time ( April 18 ), US General Richard Meyers claimed that around 1,500 cluster bombs had been used in Iraq, adding "--war is not a tidy affair".  Indeed. Each cluster bomb-officially a Combined Effects Munitions ( CEM )-contains 202 explosive subunits or "bomblets".  These, after a CEM has been released, typically distribute over an area of roughly 100 x 50 meters.  Each bomblet has an antitank and antipersonnel effect, as well as incendiary capacity.  When a bomblet fails to detonate, a not uncommon event, it becomes in effect a land mine that can explode on touch.  CEM bomblets are about tin can size and have been known to be picked up by children as play things.  In other words, cluster bomb use invites civilian causalities.

In September 2004, a serious scientific attempt was made by civilian researchers to determine the approximate number of total Iraqi dead resulting from the Bush invasion and occupation.  Between September 8 and September 20, 2004, a team of public health scientists from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at the John Hopkins University and the College of Medicine at Al Mustansiriya University, Baghdad interviewed household members in 33 pre-selected locations ( household "clusters" ) across Iraq; in all, 872 households, representing 7868 individuals, were visited.  Data was collected ( using standard public health survey techniques ) on mortality rates and causes of death for 14 - 16 months before the invasion, and for the period March 19, 2003 to the date of the interviews.  Estimating from this sample data, and again using standard statistical methodology, it was determined that around 98,000 Iraqi had been killed between March 19, 2003 and September 2004 as a direct result of the U.S. led invasion and occupation.  The survey also found that while the major causes of death before the invasion had been heart attacks, cerebrovascular accidents and chronic illnesses after the invasion violence was the most common cause of deaths.  The results of the study were published in the October 29 ( online ) issue of the prestigious British medical journal Lancet.  The Lancet article indicated a war/occupation death rate much higher than any estimates made to date by other Western sources--although one nearer to what common sense might suggest.

Almost immediately after the John Hopkins/Al Mustansiriya study had appeared in Lancet, conservative Internet hacks began a campaign to discredit it.  It was as if some people wanted war but not the blood.  One example, as well as an example of the typical weakness of these attacks, came from Fred Kaplan, a commentator for Slate.  Kaplan noted that the study reports a 95% confidence level for an estimated war related death count of 8,000 to 194,000 Iraqis.  Jumping on this- and apparently not understanding research design very well-Kaplan claimed that the John Hopkins/Al Mustansiriya study was a "dart board" and could just as easily be interpreted as claiming confidence in a figure of only 8,000 war related deaths as 100,000.  Such an interpretation, however, only demonstrated Kaplan's apparent ignorance of standard scientific methodology.  As Daniel Davies pointed out in Crooked Timbers, the statement indicating a 95% confidence level between 8,000 and 194,000 given in the Lancet report did not mean that any and all figures within an 8,000 to 194,000 range were equally probable, but that the range indicated a curve with the highest probability resting at about 98,000 deaths.  Others attacks on the study have been equally weak.  Lila Guterman writing in the Columbia Journalism Review reports consulting ten biostatisticians and mortality experts, none of whom took issue with the study's methodology.

Actually, because of the "cluster survey" technique forced on the study by a wartime situation, the figures reported in the Lancet article probably underestimate the number of actual deaths.  Before March 19, 2003, monthly deaths by violence in Iraq could be counted in the hundreds.  Since that date, they have been in the thousands. The political, economic and resource issues which led the Bush Administration to invade Iraq should have been approached by other, nonviolent, means.  Too many have died.  It is time to end the "coalition" occupation, and bring American troops now