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655,000?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Science, War

If you haven’t heard the newest excess death totals yet, find out about it here. Basically, that number represents the additional people who have died because of invasion. And it doesn’t simply count violent deaths. The researchers factored in increased mortality due to poor economic conditions, etc.

And in the interest of equal time, Right Wing NutHouse has some counterpoints here, although they are just opinions from a blogger. :- D

Take a look at both and see what you think.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 and is filed under Science, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “655,000?”

Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
October 11th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Thats 3% of the entire Iraqi population killed off in 3 years. Thats worse that What happened to the Japanese during WWII, including hiroshima and nagasaki. I guess the wing-nuts who say we should “nuke-em all” actually may have a humantiarian side to the argument!

Gateway pundit makes a good observation:

This latest Lancet Study released today claims that 555,000 Iraqis have died in the last two years since their last controversial study! That comes to around 770 violent Iraqi deaths each day on average!!! So, does this mean all of those headlines of 18 or 30 deaths were off by 700 or so?
Justin Gardner Says:
October 11th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Gateway Pundit, as always, focuses on one side of the argument and doesn’t take into account all facts of the situation.

Remember, this group was including deaths that came from economic situations as well. The headlines talked about violent deaths. And so, you have a disconnect that GP is trying to confuse his readers with.
DosPeros Says:
October 11th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Basically, that number represents the additional people who have died because of invasion.

The word “because” is an interesting choice. I wonder how attenuated the causation. I have this feeling that the ’study’ is good for one thing and one thing only…politics.
sleipner Says:
October 12th, 2006 at 1:37 am
Frankly I do think that the Iraqi death toll has been seriously underreported, but not necessarily by this huge a margin. The difficulty is that many deaths are never reported – people disappearing and corpses never found.

I strongly believe that the number of Iraqi dead per annum is far higher since our invasion than it ever was during Saddam’s dictatorship.
Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
October 12th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Hey justin, Gatewaypundit is not confusing his readers. from the Ap report on the study:

In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.

Only about 55,000 of the total 655,000 were the “non-violent deaths” you alluded to. In fact, the report claims: “…of the violent deaths that occured after the invasion, 31 percent were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes.” Thats nearly 190,000 deaths!! Thats more dead than the fire-bombing of Tokyo, the bombing of Dresdin, and the Nagasaki nuclear strike combined!

C’mon Justin, this blog is supposed to cut through all of the partisan BS out there, and you are actually considering this guy and his “study”may be right?
gal Says:
October 12th, 2006 at 8:31 am
I’m interested to know what skeptics of this 600K-ish number think would be a more accurate count. And why? Any reputable sources?

Even if it’s only half that number, 300,000 is still a huge, tragic number of deaths.
Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
October 12th, 2006 at 10:16 am
gal:

The one everyboby points too is Iraq body count which is a running tally based on newspaper reports, morgues, military information and civilian accounts. They have decent guidelines on what does and does not count as a casualty of war, plus, the founders of the site are anti-war activists yet their relative accuracy is espoused by pro-war pundits as well.

So far they have estimated there are between 43000 and 49000 civilian deaths, but these also include deaths caused by insurgents.

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