655,000 dead Iraqis because of invasion and occupation

[Extra Stout]

NASCARdad is a troll. Pay no mind.

With regard to that troll, in East Texas, reality exceeds the parody.

[George Gervin's Afro]

After hearing from the likes of Yoni/xrayzebra and their defense of the Iraq war : "we fight them there and not here", "this is the central front of the war on terror". It seems to me that the reasons and justifactions for this war have evolved into the above mentioned ideas. I wonder what the Iraqis must me be thinking now because all along we have been telling them we wanted to give them their freedom..yet we have put them right in the middle of our war on terror? we fight them in their country because we don't want to fight them in our country. Now put this into context of this story..no wonder the majority of them want to kill Americans... 8,7,6,5,4..until Yoni/xrayzebra call me a cut & runner.. wanting america to lose because I have the audacity to question the necessity of this war.

[RobinsontoDuncan]

WTF!?!? Would you rather it be Americans!!?? Sorry, but I say better them than us.

And how, pray tell, would it be us?

Im glad you responded the way you did though, at least now I can finally understand exactly how far the xenophobia and ignorance goes in the nascar community.

Every day I post here it seems like I read something that makes me sick to my stomach

[RobinsontoDuncan]

Wonder why so many are dead in Iraq? Could it be their religious
leaders? Naw, Muslims are peace loving and don't believe in that
sort of thing. The Muslim leaders on have their militias because it
is the thing to do and in vogue now days.

Did anyone else notice that Xray seems to mistake cause and effect quite a bit?

Let's see:
Cause: US invades Iraq, topples a secular (yes a bad one) dictator in a country with long standing ethnic mistrust and animosity.

Effect: Sectarain war.

[RandomGuy]

See boutons' post. 3000-4000 a month over 3.5 years would amount to 150,000 or so. But the insurgency has not been this intense all 3 1/2 years.

All you get is within an order of magnitude. Several hundred thousand is an order of magnitude too high.

50,000 to 100,000 is still a lot of dead Iraqis for no good reason. There is no need for BS embellishment.

Have you read the study?

It didn't seem like it was embellished. They did admit to a lot of possible factors both upwards and downwards, that could have affected the results.

I think they got fairly close to the truth.

The problem with the current estimates are that they rely almost solely on media reports that don't include a lot of the other violence like criminal gangs and so forth. These are hardly scientific methods.

You are correct that the deaths have been increasing in number and the rates in the report reflect that.

Think about what is happening. We see the big bombings and troop deaths, to be sure.

But think about what goes on outside of what is reported there:

Small scale attacks and gunbattles in crowded areas. One or two americans killed in a firefight means that both the insurgents and coalition forces were firing in both directions.

Hit squads don't make the news in the ones and twos that some operate in.

Murderous robberies by the massive numbers of unemployed don't make the news either.

Add it all up and the figure starts geting more believable.

One has to remember that Iraqis are dying on BOTH sides of this civil war. In a gunbattle between insurgents and the Iraqi military/police, it is mostly Iraqis doing the dying. Factor in tribal killings, criminal killings, religious killings, revenge killings, and you have a lot more going on that meets the eye just by reading US media accounts.

[Extra Stout]

Have you read the study?

I do not need to read the study. This group and that have been releasing easily-debunked reports with grossly exaggerated body counts since 2003. Congratulations on getting sucked in yourself.

There are about 26 million people in Iraq. 655,000 dead represents almost 3% of the population.

If Iraq had been in a state of all-out civil war, with many of its cities reduced to rubble, for the last 3 1/2 years, that degree of civilian deaths might be believable, on the high end. France, Germany, Japan, and China did not lose so high a percentage of civilians in the Second World War, which depending upon the combatants, lasted six to ten years.

Leaning upon specious data as a bulwark for a moral argument that does not need such specious data is rhetorically perilous. If one were attempting to spin the Iraq war in favor of the President, one might float such a ridiculous number out there in hopes that gullible opponents would latch onto it and eviscerate their own credibility.

[George Gervin's Afro]

There are about 26 million people in Iraq. 655,000 dead represents almost 3% of the population.

If Iraq had been in a state of all-out civil war, with many of its cities reduced to rubble, for the last 3 1/2 years, that degree of civilian deaths might be believable, on the high end. France, Germany, Japan, and China did not lose so high a percentage of civilians in the Second World War, which depending upon the combatants, lasted six to ten years.

Leaning upon specious data as a bulwark for a moral argument that does not need such specious data is rhetorically perilous. If one were attempting to spin the Iraq war in favor of the President, one might float such a ridiculous number out there in hopes that gullible opponents would latch onto it and eviscerate their own credibility.

Karl Rove is giggling.

97% of the Iraqi population has survived the Iraq war!!!

Karl Rove

[Extra Stout]

97% of the Iraqi population has survived the Iraq war!!!

No, 99% of the population has survived the Iraq war! See, you just can't trust those liberals -- they make the situation in Iraq look worse than it is!

Karl Rove

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Silly little liberals.

By latching onto a indefensibly high number, you make it possible for neocons to spin 100,000-150,000 civilian deaths as relatively low.

[clambake]

How many deaths are acceptable in a war you were tricked into fighting? When your children and money were stolen to do it?

[RandomGuy]

I do not need to read the study. This group and that have been releasing easily-debunked reports with grossly exaggerated body counts since 2003. Congratulations on getting sucked in yourself.

There are about 26 million people in Iraq. 655,000 dead represents almost 3% of the population.

If Iraq had been in a state of all-out civil war, with many of its cities reduced to rubble, for the last 3 1/2 years, that degree of civilian deaths might be believable, on the high end. France, Germany, Japan, and China did not lose so high a percentage of civilians in the Second World War, which depending upon the combatants, lasted six to ten years.

Leaning upon specious data as a bulwark for a moral argument that does not need such specious data is rhetorically perilous. If one were attempting to spin the Iraq war in favor of the President, one might float such a ridiculous number out there in hopes that gullible opponents would latch onto it and eviscerate their own credibility.

Ouch. I never said that I fully believed their numbers. Let me correct that bit now: I think it is a bit beyond common sense.

I DO think that the number is MUCH higher than this administration would be willing to admit to.

I merely wanted to point out that I think the numbers are a lot higher than most believe if they only read western media accounts.

Spectacular bombings and attacks make headlines, but when Marwan the cab driver gets machine gunned for his fare money, or Jabila gets hit by a stray bullet from fighting in her bedroom, those deaths do not.

Read the study. There are a number of factors that might comprimise the results, but I think this is closer to the actual number than some would like to admit. Dismiss it only after reading it.

Another thing to remember is that this is over 3 full years of increasingly intense fighting and violence, and the data tables in the report reflect that.

[Condemned 2 HelLA]

How many deaths are acceptable in a war you were tricked into fighting? When your children and money were stolen to do it?

Game, set and match.

[RandomGuy]

How many deaths are acceptable in a war you were tricked into fighting? When your children and money were stolen to do it?

Good questions that need to be asked.

[RandomGuy]

They surveyed a population of about 12,000 people.

650 or so deaths were recored.

Surveyors asked to see death certificates in 545 of these and got death certificates in 501 cases. Patterns of death were no different in those without certificates than those with.

These people didn't know they were going to be sampled, but somehow the majority of them had death certificates to back up their claims of a death in the houshold?

[RandomGuy]

As I said before there are a lot of potentially confounding factors, many of which were addressed in the study.

I think the main one was simply that the study over-represented people who lived in high mortality areas but who subsequently moved to lower mortality areas (people moved to places that were safer).

This would cause the number to be higher, and also dovetails with some interviews that I have seen/heard with Iraqis themselves.

I think the actual number is somewhere between 200-300K, were I to guess. This would be the number of Iraqis that would have not died had we not invaded and failed so spectacularly at what we attempted to do.

[NASCARdad]

So just because I'm not PC correct I'm a troll? I'm straight forward about how I feel. Label me a redneck I don't care. I'm sick of those who won't say what they feel because they may offend somebody.
Guess what? People will be offended even if you try to be politically correct so why not just say how you really feel and cut to the chase?
I may hate Boutons and NBADan but they don't hide the fact that they are left-wing, liberal nut jobs.

[Oh, Gee!!]

well at least we found the WMDs. Ooops, those are in N Korea

[Extra Stout]

So just because I'm not PC correct I'm a troll? I'm straight forward about how I feel. Label me a redneck I don't care. I'm sick of those who won't say what they feel because they may offend somebody.
Guess what? People will be offended even if you try to be politically correct so why not just say how you really feel and cut to the chase?
I may hate Boutons and NBADan but they don't hide the fact that they are left-wing, liberal nut jobs.

You're right. I tried to conjur a redneck troll once, but you just can't summon the full microcephalic copro ic simian idiocy of the real thing unless you are one.

[clambake]

Can't stop laughing!!!!!!!!^^^^^^

[RobinsontoDuncan]

wow..... that war rather funny.

(translation for Nascardad, he in essence equated being a redneck to following a small brained eating ape like ideology)

assuming im right about copr ic, it's been a while since i've heard it

[Drachen]

I do not need to read the study. This group and that have been releasing easily-debunked reports with grossly exaggerated body counts since 2003. Congratulations on getting sucked in yourself.

There are about 26 million people in Iraq. 655,000 dead represents almost 3% of the population.

If Iraq had been in a state of all-out civil war, with many of its cities reduced to rubble, for the last 3 1/2 years, that degree of civilian deaths might be believable, on the high end. France, Germany, Japan, and China did not lose so high a percentage of civilians in the Second World War, which depending upon the combatants, lasted six to ten years.

Leaning upon specious data as a bulwark for a moral argument that does not need such specious data is rhetorically perilous. If one were attempting to spin the Iraq war in favor of the President, one might float such a ridiculous number out there in hopes that gullible opponents would latch onto it and eviscerate their own credibility.

why does a percentage matter? Its a war in a relatively small country. Russia lost around 20 million people in WWII so even if they were in the war for the full 10 years (which they were not) that would be 2 million a year. As opposed to the 187000 per year here.

[RandomGuy]

So just because I'm not PC correct I'm a troll? I'm straight forward about how I feel. Label me a redneck I don't care. I'm sick of those who won't say what they feel because they may offend somebody.
Guess what? People will be offended even if you try to be politically correct so why not just say how you really feel and cut to the chase?
I may hate Boutons and NBADan but they don't hide the fact that they are left-wing, liberal nut jobs.

Not so much a troll as a characature.

If you are real, everything I said stands, traitor.

If you are satire, then you are a good one, if a little sad that people actually are ignorant/morally bankrupt enough to say something like that.

[RobinsontoDuncan]

why does a percentage matter? Its a war in a relatively small country. Russia lost around 20 million people in WWII so even if they were in the war for the full 10 years (which they were not) that would be 2 million a year. As opposed to the 187000 per year here.

You are misunderstanding his position. Everyone here agrees that 3% of a population is an astronomical figure, extrastout is saying that this number is too large to be true, and spouting off this type of number allows republicans to spin the anti-war types as alarmists and out of touch with reality

[Drachen]

I can understand if you are argueing that the NUMBER is too high, but to me it doesnt make sense to base your arguement on a percentage. If you took the amount of people killed in Japan in the nuclear attacks and extrapolated them over a year, Im sure that would yield a high percentage too. Im just saying argue the number, not the percentage.

[Ocotillo]

655,000 or 65,000. Either way that is way too many dead people.

From what I heard on the radio, the methodology used probably was not the best. Nonetheless, a lot of Iraqis have died because of our invasion.

[PixelPusher]

Not so much a troll as a characature.

If you are real, everything I said stands, traitor.

If you are satire, then you are a good one, if a little sad that people actually are ignorant/morally bankrupt enough to say something like that.

the moniker "Nascar Dad" seemed a little too obvious to me, but who knows. "SecurityMom" is sure to follow...