After a lot of speculation on this number, it's good to finally see some hard facts. Note that of the 25,000 total, only 37%, or approx. 9,250 were caused by coalition forces and of those only 20%, or approx. 1850, were women and children. A far cry from the vague "hundreds of thousands" of civilian casualties we hear bandied about all the time. That is not to say those deaths are not regrettable, however. From CTV:
A British-American advocacy group puts the civilian cost of the Iraq war at about 25,000 lives."We were fearful that there would be many lives lost," said John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Project on Tuesday.
About 30 per cent of the casualties occurred in March and April 2003. On May 1, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat operations to be over in Iraq.
But if one looks at the post-invasion period, there were almost twice as many killed in year two (11,351) to year one (6,215).
Here is a breakdown of who's doing the killing:
U.S. and allied forces: 37 per cent
Criminal attacks: 36 per cent
"Unknown agents" attacking non-military targets: 11 per cent
"Anti-occupation" forces: Nine per cent
The two most dangerous places in Iraq are Baghdad, where almost half (11,264) of all deaths occurred and Fallujah, with 1,874 deaths.Fallujah has been an insurgent stronghold. U.S. forces conducted a major battle there last November.
The most lethal weaponry is explosives, accounting for 53 per cent of all deaths. Of deaths due to explosives, almost two-thirds were due to air strikes.
Children were most affected by air strikes, suffering disproportionate deaths, especially from unexploded ordnance like cluster bomblets.
Women and children account for 20 per cent of civilian deaths.
The number of wounded is estimated at 42,500, with 40 per cent of those occurring during the invasion phase...
Its still sad to see people being killed like this and who will pay? but remember you will always hear all kinds of numbers in a war.
U.S. and allied forces: 37 per cent
Criminal attacks: 36 per cent
"Unknown agents" attacking non-military targets: 11 per cent
"Anti-occupation" forces: Nine per cent
Two question:
1) Total: 93%. What about the remaining 7%?
2) On what basis do they distinguish those "criminal attacks" from the terrorism of the other two categories ("unknown agents" and "anti-occupation forces")?
I heard the compiler of the list explaining his "method." If more than one newspaper or other source listed a particular death, then that was regarded as sufficient proof of that particular death. But don't newspapers, all the time, copy one another, or share news-wires? How many Western journalists are reporting from anywhere in Iraq outside Baghdad, and in Baghdad, from anywhere other than their hotels and a few carefully selected and very secure places?
But even if one were to accept the totals, now we have another problem. How is that the figure of 37% of the total being attributable to "coalition forces" was arrived at? If Iraqis on the spot claim that the Americans are responsible, does anyone check? How?
Just tonight, I heard on NBC News (I think it was NBC) a correspondent in Iraq, Kimberley Dozier, describe how many Iraqis are absolutely convinced -- and nothing will unconvince them, ever since the story was fabricated by a most insistent and sincere-looking fabulist -- that the American soldiers deliberately lured Iraqi children near them by offering them candy, so that the children would offer a kind of "security" for the cruel Americans, willing to endanger the lives of Iraqi children.
This nonsense, of course, is par for the course. Think of how it really goes in Iraq, where American soldiers, trying desperately to befriend that one group of Iraqis not yet sufficiently islamized, or brainwashed, to hate them or at least regard them with hostility as Infidels -- the children -- and often risking their lives, and paid with their lives as well, for continuing to hand out toys and candy. It is a pathetic, and noble effort (it ought to stop, completely, because not one more American soldier's life is worth it). But in the Iraqi view, the Americans are arch-villains.
And in the same broadcaset, Dozier explained that the current view is that the Americans -- the Americans! -- are deliberately encouraging the attacks by the Sunni "insurgents" in order to find an excuse to stay. In the crazed Iraqi view, the Americans are stirring up trouble.
And the Iraqi government does not denounce these rumors, does nothing to defend the American soldiers -- although Jaafari was sly enough to utter all the right phrases of feigned gratitude on his Washington trip -- oh, they'll perform while visiting some Infidel who can supply them with aid, or other kinds of support. But at home, their attitudes, as their hopes and dreams, are not at all what the Infidel Americans think they are.
These are awful people. Full of rumors and lies, always with the Americans depicted as the vicious ones, when it is only the Americans who have brought what little civilized behavior has been in Iraq in the last 80 years. One's disgust at these people is limitless -- and one's fury that American soldiers, and American money, are being wasted on these people, with their nonsense and lies and conspiracy theories, their primitive, hopelessly primitive, world-view.
For god's sake let us get out and then let them see if it was really the Americans who were "deliberately" whipping up attacks by one group on another, when in fact the Americans -- completely wrongly, in my view -- are working toward the opposite goal.
CAIR's USA website countered the London slaughter by the 4 muslim suicide bombers with the usual denial of them being Muslims and the follow-up rants based on their paranoia , but when that cheap ruse was discovered to be so stale it was Ibrahim Hooper that resorted to posting their claim the "128,000" civilians
killed in Iraq since the occupation by the American's.
When any group has a legitimate concern over a perceived injustice or oppression it is the media that should back the reporting of factual
claims and unite the community to correct a wrong, but as we see in the propaganda by the pro-Whahabbi Islamic Org.'s in the West like self-professed civil liberty defenders "CAIR" , the method of overt lies and padding the "Hate-crime" statistics has created the "Muslims who cried wolf" reaction by decent freedom-loving Americans that no longer accept most of the "Islomophobia" and racism claims .
BTW,that suicide bomber in Iraq that waited for a fuel truck to near him before activating the bomb , this was exactly what the "Plan-B" was for the "Millenium bomber" Ahmed Ressam that lived for 5 years in Canada collecting welfare as a "Refugee" fleeing an oppressive homeland.
Transcripts and an re-enactment of a immigration and Security forces interview was aired on a CBC special called "The trail of a terrorist" and it is still on the CBC archives to search the story to confirm it , while CAIR-Canada reserved any condemnation of Ahmed until the proof showed he was a Muslim and that he did have bomb material in the trunk of the car he drove to enter the USA, they did avoid a comment on Ahmed's "Plan-B" to blow-up a fuel truck fully loaded with gasoline right outside a Jewish temple after a Saturday service as to maximize the deaths in the Jewish area of Montreal .
Ressam boasted about how he expected to slaughter over 4000 Jews for Islam and die doing Jihad for the Islamic cause.
This was a plan going back to before Afghanistan and Iraq , it was motivated by the verses in the Quran and the teachings by Muhammed so the defence by Muslims that the London murders for Allah was un-Islamic and caused by Bush and the great Satan that is in Iraq , it doesn't work anymore because the facts show a history of violence to force Islam on all people and death to those that reject it.
KNOW ISLAM - KNOW SATAN
I wonder if this British American advocacy (hate?) group will be so concerned when they are roasting under some Mulla's nuclear bomb in their Western capital.
Sooner or later these peace loving Muslims will trade rusty nails and black powder for uraniam, and we will all be their Kebabs - if we keep on carrying on with our heads in the sand.
Sheesh. They are assuming that anyone under the age of 19 is a civilian "child" and is therefore counted as such. So the coalition kills include most of the teenage jihadis who are killing the coalition soldiers. There are 12-year old kids wielding AK-47s over there, so yeah, they are going to get whacked by Marines when they are encountered.
Another problem with this tally is that the fatally wounded and DOA jihadis are brought into the hospitals sans weapons so they are also assumed to be civilians.
The numbers are still skewed for the percentages, year 1 (yes we were blowing up all kinds of stuff) but year 2 now, who is blowing up what? If they broke the percentages out by year. Crime would be the big winner for both years I think, and the "insurgency" percentage would be a "tad" higher. The Iraqis need to be reminded of the fact that we really saved them from the Sons of Saddam, who made pop look good and benevolent. And if we pull out now, that 25,000 will seem light.
To support Ala-Sux's comments about CAIR's announced figure, here's the link:
http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=37177&theType=NB
American Muslim News Briefs
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
128,000 Iraqi Civilian Casualties
Source: World Peace Herald
Click here to view full text ...
BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003. Mafkarat al-Islam reported that chairman of the 'Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, said that the toll includes everyone who has been killed since that time, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under. 'Iraqiyun obtained data from relatives and families of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals in all the country's provinces. The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared. The number includes those who died during the U.S. assaults on al-Fallujah and al-Qa'im. 'Iraqiyun's figures conflict with the Iraqi Body Count public database compiled by Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. According to the Graduate Institute of International Studies' database, 39,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of combat or armed violence since March 2003. No official estimates of Iraqi casualties from the war have been issued by the Pentagon, which insists that it does not do "body counts.
I understand the egregious Mollie Ivens recently had to eat some public crow for having claimed that US soldiers had, far and away, killed more Iraqis than Saddam. The number of US-caused she used in her "apology" was 20,000, so even that was quite inaccurate.
OK, if 20% of US Military caused so-called "civilian" deaths are women and children, which includes all women and anyone under 19 (the median age in Iraq), then statistics would predict that approximately 10% of the total (actually, 10% is higher than the 7% statistics would predict) should be truly civilian adult men, if these deaths are truly random and accidental. Accidental deaths in warfare don't kill more men than women and children, they are evenly dispersed. Thus 70% of these so-called "civilian" deaths were not accidental byproducts of war.
This jibes with the statement that about 30% of casualties happened before the active war was over.
Those against the war will take this disparity and state that the US military murders men for no reason. Those who live in the reality based community will note that this is really showing that 70% of so-called civilian deaths are actually the deaths of non-uniformed soldiers, aka terrorist pigs, and they all deserved to die. If they died from bombs it was because they blew themselves up or because they decided to become targets for a MBT. As Hulegu Khan points out, if they were counted as civilians it's because they weren't carrying their weapons when they were taken to the morgue.
Reworking the numbers I come up with something like this.
TOTAL DEAD 25,000 100.00%
Caused by US 9,250 37.00%
Women 617 2.47%
Under 19 1,233 4.93%
Innocent Adult Men 925 3.70%
Other Adult Men 6,475 25.90%
TRUE CIVILIAN DEATHS 2,775 11.10%
HIDDEN TERRORIST DEATHS 6,475 25.90%
Shame on the people who compiled this study for pretending to be objective.
Pangloss:
Thanks for the analysis. A little reminiscent of the way the pro-Palestinian types gloss over what truths lie beneath the tallies of Palestinian dead vs Israeli dead.
To put things in perspective, we need to keep in mind that for the Iraqi population of about 27 million, 25,000 violent civilian deaths since March 2003 works out to approximately 40 per 100,000 annually. That is the same as the murder rate in cities such as New Orleans, Detroit, St. Louis or Baltimore.