Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001533

by gruseom • 13 years ago

110 88 13 years ago

pippy• 13 years ago

It's nice to see some scientific work going into the causality count in the Iraq war. Most of the surveys/official estimations are way off, the Opinion Research Business survey reported over a million deaths while most US sources stated around 100k mark.

This report is somewhere in the middle, which is most realistic.

jnbiche• 13 years ago

There have been very serious studies done on Iraqi war mortality for quite some time, starting with Roberts and Burnham, who did two very credible epidemiological surveys of mortality in 2004 and 2006 (published in the Lancet) using a similar approach as the study referenced above. The later study estimated somewhere around 600,000+ (95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636) had already died by 2006 (and this before the renewed sectarian violence and US offensive in 2007).

It's notable that even this new study's lead author thinks their half-million figure is an underestimate:

""We think it is roughly around half a million people dead. And that is likely a low estimate," says Hagopian. "People need to know the cost in human lives of the decision to go to war."

gruseom7• 13 years ago

I remember that This American Life did a piece on the Lancet studies when they came out. They focused on how the widespread reaction (in the West) to their numbers was one of stubborn disbelief, despite the fact that these were the most credible researchers in the field and that they used standard techniques.

lambda3• 13 years ago

According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein'..., estimates of Iraqis killed by Saddam range from a quarter million to a million, and estimates of Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq are in a similar range. So, let's call his death toll a half million to two million.

About a decade after the Gulf War, which had pretty much put a stop to Saddam's killing spree, the US decided to invade Iraq again, on the pretext that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction. The evidence was quite flimsy, and it turns out not to have been true. In the process, the US and allies, plus the destabilization of the country after, managed to kill another half million Iraqis.

Think about that for a minute. A half million people, killed based on a flimsy pretext, that anyone with half a brain could see through (and no, I don't just say this in hindsight, I thought the justification was flimsy at the time as well). Somewhere between a quarter as many and as many people killed by the Iraq War as Saddam himself had killed.

How did we come to this? How is it possible that we have gone so far astray that we are slaughtering as many people as someone we vilify as part of the "axis of evil"?

arcadeparade• 13 years ago

Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5. It was called genocide by both men who were in charge of it, both of whom resigned in protest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimate...

I also find it interesting that many people who deny that this many people were killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion will have no problem believing the 100,000 figure of people who were killed in the Syrian Civil War so far, which has been a much smaller conflict than Iraq.

berntb17• 13 years ago

>Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5

Saddam wanted to get rid of the sanctions, it was in his direct interest to inflate the statistics. (There were reports of e.g. multiple funerals for a given dead child, too.)

His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot. These resources weren't used for that, as far as I've read.

I never got a good answer to my standard point, when this was a hot subject:

It is arguably bad to give in to extortion from dictators. In this case a dictator isn't using his resources to alleviate the suffering of civilians in his own country!

To let dictators get their will through by the suffering of their own civilians is obviously a very, very bad precedent.

mcantelon2• 13 years ago

Well, Western responsibility for the slaughter is less direct than Saddam's killings (although that doesn't help the victims much).

Yes, Iraq seemed to have been selected as a military target for reasons not disclosed to the public.

unclebucknasty• 13 years ago

Actually, the reasons were disclosed:

[1] http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

[2] http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses...

[3] http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm

You might find the signatories of [1] particularly interesting.

scaramanga• 13 years ago

It's incorrect to say the evidence on WMD was flimsy, it was very solid. That is to say that it was almost certain that Iraq had no usable WMD. The "evidence" to the contrary were fabrications, obvious at the time, without the benefit of hindsight. As was widely pointed out then.

mcantelon2• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

RockyMcNuts• 13 years ago

what, Iraq wants to join chemical arms ban organization? can't have that

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/world/to-ousted-boss-arms-...

MrZongle22• 13 years ago

As a country, it would appear that we lost our minds in the wake of 9/11.

Widespread government surveillance. Armed drones. Massive bills passing through Congress without being completely read. Amazingly intrusive security at airports, now filtering down to train and bus stations. Indefinite suspension of prisoners of war.

Yes, we have gone astray. For those of you old enough, could you imagine such things happening in the 70s, 80s or even the 90s?

thaumasiotes2• 13 years ago

Massive bills passing through Congress without being completely read.

I expect that to be the norm in the 70s, 80s, and 90s as it is the norm today and will continue to be in the future, for the same reasons.

I imagine armed drones coming into use essentially as fast as they're developed; I don't believe any past government would have abstained.

I'm with you on the widespread government surveillance, absurd "security" at airports and train and bus stations, and indefinite suspension, though to be fair, I'm not really old enough to have much of an opinion on what things were like (except for airports... truly, these are the end times :( )

speeder2• 13 years ago

Well, I live in Brazil, you never went astray after 9/11, you just became more obvious in your obviously oppressive ways against anyone that stands in the way of profit.

Everything that happened so far was very predictable...

By the way, when 9/11 happened, although obviously people were upset with the amount of life loss, many people here also became very happy because finally someone had the balls to drive the point home on US that they cannot keep screwing around and expect no punishment.

When the US started to irritate lots of countries because of Snowden, many people here were wishing the offended countries were strong enough to actually hit back (instead of just complaining on the UN assembly and whatnot)

phaus2• 13 years ago

There were over two dozen foreign intelligence agencies that agreed that Saddam either had or was attempting to build or purchase weapons of destruction. Nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to hide anywhere on earth, but many other types of weapons of mass destruction aren't difficult to dispose of.

That's not to say that the invasion turned out to be a good idea, or that we were justified in the attempt, but those agencies represent thousands of really smart people in positions of authority around the world agreeing that Iraq had them or was attempting to develop them, so its hard to argue that anyone with half a brain could have known the truth. If we were wrong, its because a good percentage of all western civilizations were wrong, not just the United States.

You also have to factor in the theory that Saddam himself wanted the world to think that he had them, in an attempt to dissuade Iran from thinking Iraq was vulnerable. Iraq's strange behavior that lead to the invasion can really only be explained in two ways: either he was pretending to hide weapons that didn't exist, or he successfully hid real weapons.

Finally, half a million people were killed in Iraq. Clearly every combatant on the battlefield shares a part of the blame, but that includes the enemy combatants. The overwhelming majority of American Soldiers attempt to avoid civilian casualties, often to their own detriment, yet the organizations we have been fighting against in Iraq deliberately target anyone they can. The larger the body count, the better. They view their fellow Muslims as traitors for failing to take up arms against the United States, and so they target them just the same as Americans.

mikeash• 13 years ago

"had or was attempting to build or purchase" is a pretty weak standard. Do I qualify if I put an ad on craigslist asking if anyone has some spare anthrax? How about if I doodle a nuclear weapon design on a napkin?

I don't doubt Saddam was trying to develop or purchase WMD. But absent the capability of doing so, such attempts mean nothing.

Regardless, it was obvious that Iraq was not a threat to the US. Even if Iraq had had a hundred nuclear bombs, there was no way to deliver them. If you're on the other side of the planet, WMD doesn't matter without ICBMs or long-range bombers to take them to the target.

Did two dozen foreign intelligence agencies go so far as to agree that Iraq was an imminent threat that needed to be stopped by overwhelming force? Somehow, I'm guessing they did not.

One can debate the specific details, but one can't really debate the question of whether Iraq was a threat to the United States in 2003. They were not, and it was patently obvious to anyone paying the least bit attention.

Vlaix• 13 years ago

The number of death is probably more an effect of the general destabilization of the country (which gave ample room, as an example, for various exactions on minorities in Irak besides the war, in particular on Christians) rather than direct casualties.

gruseom7• 13 years ago

I don't doubt for a moment that American and other Western soldiers were trying hard to avoid civilian casualties. It's deeply unfair to blame them for things they didn't do or for decisions they didn't make and never would have made had it been up to them. That being said, there are a couple problems with your argument. First, it's not the case that dozens of intelligence agencies believed the WMD propaganda. They would have been utterly incompetent if they had. They're far from perfect, of course, but no way are they that stupid and certainly not on that scale.

Rather, what happened is that political leaders pressured the leaders of the intelligence agencies (essentially political positions in their own right) into delivering reports that gave the "right" (i.e. the wrong) answers irrespective of what their professional analysts really thought. Few intelligence agencies could withstand the overt political pressure that was applied to the CIA and others (largely out of the Vice President's office, as I understand it) in the run-up to that war—after all, ultimate power resides with the political leaders in a democracy for obvious reasons. Note, however, that when the same leaders tried to do it again a few years later, enough of the professionals' real opinions was leaked to make a repeat manipulation impossible. I have in mind the unanimous assessment of US intelligence agencies in 2007 that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons (an assessment that still stands, incidentally, and is still unanimous, though you'd not guess it from the news). When political pressure started to be applied to distort that opinion, someone leaked a summary of it to the press, and that put an Iran war off the table for the rest of the GWB administration. Bush writes about that in his memoirs.

The other problem with your argument is that by the Nuremberg standards, war of aggression is understood to be the "supreme international crime" that encompasses all the evils that take place as a result of the war [1]. That is, the Nuremberg standard of justice considers all the secondary consequences of war (such as Iraq underwent with bombings, civil war, etc.) to be subsumed under the original crime of a war of aggression. This arguably makes sense, since without the invasion, there wouldn't have been a civil war. By this standard, soldiers are not responsible for atrocities they didn't commit, but the leaders who started the war in the first place actually are. Since that is the standard of justice that we (rightly) apply to others, we ought not to reject it or minimize it when it applies to ourselves. (The standard won't be applied in this case, of course, but that's a separate issue.)

The above is how I understand it from the sources I've read, anyway. Factual corrections are more than welcome.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression

speeder2• 13 years ago

Here in Brazil when the USA started its war movements, I do not met a single person that believed the "intelligence" agencies around the world, people here believed that it was all fake to steal more oil...

When they found no WMD on Iraq, people here was like: "A ha! I told you! US people are just evil liars that steal from people!"

In fact, I really, really, really do not understand how someone can believe that bullshit. Or your countries out there have incredibly stupid people on intelligence agencies, or your population is incredibly stupid and believe agencies that lie all the time. To us here the behaviour of US population supporting whatever crap CIA says is just baffling.

Theodores• 13 years ago

At the 1975 OPEC meeting in Algiers a new treaty was agreed on for the Iran-Iraq border. This was in Iran's favour, and, in those days Iran was a US client. The deal was that Iraq would cede territory in the Shatt al Arab area and in exchange Iran would stop arming Iraqi Kurds. This on-going border dispute (which had gone on for centuries) was important to what happened next.

In 1979 a lot of stuff happened. There was the Iranian revolution. Also, around this time, not fully understood at the time, there was also the hostage crisis, Iran-Contra scandal and an election in the USA.

On 4 September 1980 Iran shelled Iraq, marking the start of the war. On 22 September Iraq full on invaded Iran along the whole length of the border on the assumption that it would be a good idea to do so given that the 'revolutionary' Iran would have so much internal turmoil etc. that their defences would be down. Hence, Iran 'started it' so that particular war wasn't exactly Saddam's devising.

You will find this Wikipedia article on the Iran Iraq war to be quite an eye opener:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_...

Read it carefully and I think you will see that, much like WW1, the Iran-Iraq war started for silly reasons but then developed into a situation where those that sought to profit through arms perpetuated the war. As they say, 'war is a racket'. Sure Saddam was there commanding conscripts to their deaths and it was all his fault, but it is not as simple as that, is it?

In England we know what these sorts of shenanigans are as we are the grand masters of it. We call it 'divide and rule'.

Sometimes you have to look at a situation and ask 'who benefits?'. As ever in war, the arms companies, their financiers and those that run off with the loot.

P.S. Why are people on first name terms with Saddam, even in his death? People aren't chummy in quite the same way with Barack, Vladimir, Dave, Angela or even Adolf for that matter. Why is the former Iraqi President afforded first name status when every other Great Leader gets to have a surname?

infinitone• 13 years ago

In regards to your P.S.

Because Hussein, Saddam's last name, is attributed to a greater person (where the name originated from): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_ibn_Ali

Just a hypothesis though..

thaumasiotes2• 13 years ago

Well, Vladimir, Dave, and Angela are fairly nondistinctive names (and in fact, I have no idea who you mean by "Dave").

But in general if I were looking for why something went by a certain name, I'd expect the answer to be "that's how it was learned in the beginning". People hate changing the name they use for things, and even just words for things can persist for so long that there is no knowledge of their origin other than "it's always been that way". (Obviously, they usually don't... but they can. The english word "wheel" is a good example, with an incredibly long line of descent straight from PIE; contrast the word "cycle", which descends from the same PIE root, but has the straightforward (?) origin "borrowed from the Greek".) I'm pretty sure you're referring to the guy as "Saddam" because you've observed that that's normal practice. It might be very difficult to find an example where that wasn't the entire justification.

lambda3• 13 years ago

Regarding your PS, it's because Saddam is his name, Hussein is his father's name, it's not a family name. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein#Youth or http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/sep/22/israel for details.

lazyant2• 13 years ago

Since you mentioned the Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq war, the US and other western countries were an ally of Iraq while they knew Saddam was gassing Iranians with chemical weapons, their hypocrisy is astounding.

rayiner• 13 years ago

There is a bit of a conceptual leap from "started a civil war that got a bunch of people killed" to "slaughtered." The question of "how did we come to this?" obviously has a different answer in the two contexts. In the former, more accurate, characterization, it can simply be explained as: Americans are an optimistic bunch that continually underestimate how deeply dysfunctional Middle Eastern society happens to be and how deep the fissures within run.

vacri• 13 years ago

The US fighting Iraq was more about being able to defeat a tangible foe and make it look like something was being done in the wake of the WTC attacks - punching ghosts in Afghanistan wasn't providing the balm the politicians were looking for.

The invasion of Iraq was more about that "Mission Accomplished" banner for the domestic market than actually doing anything for Iraqis and their neighbours.

diminish• 13 years ago

that's the best tl;dr summary.

aric3• 13 years ago

How did "we" come to this? You're asking the largest military wielder and prison population and the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on real people, people going about their contained lives wanting to wake up to see another day, how "we" came to this.

- Hiroshima

- Nagasaki

- Vietnam

- Constant US policy to support genocidal dictators around the world who mass slaughter "their" people, so long as US corporate interests gain over sovereign interests.

Millions of killings later directly and indirectly from US hands, entire lands and societies literally poisoned into waste at US policy over the past 70 years, and one asks how invading Iraq (and Afghanistan) on imaginary and unjustified pretexts was possible. The answers are shocking and simple.

There are a couple classic "American ways" in spirit. The first has some idealistic value (e.g. individual freedom, can-do attitude). Then the second is one that silences all else: hear no evil, see no evil, support our troops (i.e. in reality, support the political monsters who use them). The simplest answers to your question are related to deeply rooted combinations of nationalism, racism, pride, intolerance, regional proximity to other nations, and systems of governance that are both insufficiently compartmentalized and that run on forced funding (taxation). Guaranteed funding, especially with only the masking of "democracy," was a fast path for a super power that thinks itself a "super hero" in the world's eye -- and largely was seen as such to those who didn't face the brunt of its violence -- to guarantee its continued exploits and an accelerating industry of war. Elections put little if any checks/balances upon a congressional network of plunderers who mostly serve the same corporate and violent interests, policies, and strategists, but through lightly varying vocabulary come election. Paranoia that the US could reasonably claim in that last 'new century' and into this one is dismissed by policies that become brutal and offensive.

1. Google the American timelines and legacy of its direct and proxy imperialism: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+imperialism

2. Oliver Stone's Showtime series, "Untold History of the United States," is quite worth watching in full. Sure, we can all find faults with it. It's not intended to give a "balanced" account. Rather, it's a crash course in provoking thought about the seldom discussed or even known aspects of US policy compared to the general public and its vapid historical accounting of its negative actions. It's 10 episodes. http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-u...

briandear2• 13 years ago

"Largest prison population" sorry but China wis that award.

briandear2• 13 years ago

I'm curious why you leave Pol Pot, Rwanda, the Soviet Union out of your statement. The US doesn't have a monopoly on killing people or supporting bad actors. I also see no criticism of the EU that has supported their share of dictators. The anti-American tripe that constantly gets brought up by people that have actually never lived under true oppression is just silly without applying context. You mention Hiroshima -- what about the Nanjing Massacre? You mentioned Vietnam.. The reeducation camps run by the Communists were pretty brutal. Know anything about the Cultural Revolution in China? What about human experimentation conducted by Germans and Japanese? What about 1989 in China? How about the Turks and Greeks? Chechnya? Serbia? Kosovo?

Your one-sided rant reads like a freshman regurgitation of a Robert Jensen lecture. You can't blame America for everything, despite your desire to do just that.

bpodgursky• 13 years ago

"95% uncertainty interval 48,000–751,000"

I understand the value in trying to quantify this, but it's difficult to really conclude anything useful when your upper and lower confidence intervals vary by 15x

Brakenshire• 13 years ago

I agree, although I feel like it gives a slightly better feel of the uncertainties to look where that figure came from:

The wartime crude death rate in Iraq was 4.55 per 1,000 PY (95% UI 3.74–5.27), more than 0.5 times higher than the 2.89 ((95% UI 1.56–4.04) death rate during the 26-mo period preceding the war. By multiplying those rates by the annual Iraq population [43], we estimate total excess Iraqi deaths attributable to the war through mid-2011 as about 405,000 (95% UI 48,000–751,000).

mynameishere• 13 years ago

That happens after most wars. At least it wasn't deliberate policy as with the world wars. The real crime was that that war even happened. I remember how laughable the propaganda leading up to it was. GWB couldn't go two sentences without saying "weapons of mass destruction" or "Al-quada". Right down the memory hole. Pretty sad.

russell_h• 13 years ago

I haven't read the whole thing, but is this missing anyone who died in Iraq whose family lives elsewhere?

segmondy• 13 years ago

or entire families that got wiped out.

beloch2• 13 years ago

I still remember the chill that ran through relations between Canada and the U.S. after Paul Martin refused to join the war in Iraq (despite still be embroiled in the war in Afghanistan). U.S. pop culture mostly ignored Canada, as per usual, but what few mentions there were soon lumped Canada into the same boat as "French surrender-monkeys", again in spite of the fact that Canadian troops were fighting and dying in Afghanistan. Bush pursued a policy of economic protectionism that could easily be confused for retaliation against Martin's government if it wasn't that in fact. This is how the U.S. treated its closest ally and biggest trading partner. A decade of madness indeed! The continued expansion of the TSA and homeland security as well as the NSA scandals indicate the insanity has dug itself in deep.

lazyant2• 13 years ago

yep, thank god Harper wasn't PM then or we would be still in Iraq

beloch2• 13 years ago

Or Ignatieff. Honestly, I suspect Harper's stand was just one of the usual efforts of the opposition party to differentiate themselves from the ruling party despite having basically zero real platform differeces. It would be great if this country's politics started being more about policies than personalities again!

macspoofing2• 13 years ago

It was actually Jean Christian who refused to go to Iraq

macspoofing2• 13 years ago

*Jean Chretien

Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

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