100,000 reasons

[Pirate]

What does the exact number matter? The fact that there are any number of thousands of innocent people that have been killed by this war makes it a tragedy.
At what point does it become "worth it" to take Hussein out of power? 100,000 innocent deaths? 50,000 innocent deaths? 3,000? 10? How do you draw that line?

 

[Ramius75]

What does the exact number matter? The fact that there are any number of thousands of innocent people that have been killed by this war makes it a tragedy.
At what point does it become "worth it" to take Hussein out of power? 100,000 innocent deaths? 50,000 innocent deaths? 3,000? 10? How do you draw that line?

Every life counts, the matter of fact is do we care. We care about our family, our friends our neighbours and ppl we know by faces.

Do we care if anyone that we know dies ?Yes of coz, so the answer is everyone counts.

Innocent civilian death should be avoided at all cost. But when Blair made the decision to go to war, one of the audience in a talk show asked him, will there be civilian death and blair told her that they will do the best to minimize death, of coz now we know that both Bush and Blairs are liars.

If the figures are true, then this is a great tragedy for mankind and our humanity. Seems like we still a long way to go.

 

[basta72]

What does the exact number matter? The fact that there are any number of thousands of innocent people that have been killed by this war makes it a tragedy.
At what point does it become "worth it" to take Hussein out of power? 100,000 innocent deaths? 50,000 innocent deaths? 3,000? 10? How do you draw that line?

It does matter. Because we are repeatedly told that every possible step is taken to preserve civilian lives. But if it’s more than 100.000 dead civilians, as this report says, then it’s more of a massacre.

Imagine all the friends and family of those 100.000 dead civilians. They would probably add up to a very significant percentage number of the total population in those areas. People that are directly affected by this.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Nah. Remember what Tassadar told us: 100k civilian dead is not much.

 

[Little Raven]

It's important to note that this survey is not measuring who was killed.

It's measuring the perception of who was killed.

Of course, given that we're battling an insurgency, the perception is probably more important than the reality anyway.

 

[Elgalad]

The righteous anger expressed by those who feel civilian deaths as a result of the Iraqi Liberation is no less justified than the righteous anger expressed by those whose families were butchered under Saddam's terrorist regime. The fact is, many thousands of people are dead and that Is a tragedy, a horrible tragedy. Innocent deaths can never be justified, even one life lost is one too many.

Before the logical conclusion is drawn however, that this is sufficient evidence that the Liberation itself is misguided, perhaps we should also tally up the costs of all the innocent lives that were lost during World War II as well. Because it is one thing to decry the horror of war, and another entirely to deny that it is sometimes necessary. And when it comes to assigning blame for the deaths in Iraq, it might also be wise to remember that many many times these numbers reported for civilian casualties were also reported before the Liberation began. And many times more than that would yet to have been reported in future if Saddam had been allowed to continue his genocidal actions. Therefore it is best to correctly assign the blame (if this is so necessary) to Saddam himself and the Terrorists who continue to prolong this conflict.

Let's try to keep some sense of perspective, shall we?


-Elgalad

 

[Scuffer]

It's important to note that this survey is not measuring who was killed.

It's measuring the perception of who was killed.

No, they interviewed people and asked them about births/deaths/visitor who stayed in their house for at least 2 months. Some death certificates were asked for to help ensure they weren't making it up.
It's true they didn't go body counting, but it is not perception-based.

 

[Little Raven]

No, they interviewed people and asked them about births/deaths/visitor who stayed in their house for at least 2 months. Some death certificates were asked for to help ensure they weren't making it up.
It's true they didn't go body counting, but it is not perception-based.

No, it is perception based. They're basically calling people are asking if they know anyone who was killed. That's fine, but it won't stand up to scrutiny. In most cases, no body or proof of body is being produced, simply someone saying "I know this person was killed."

Maybe the person was actually killed. Maybe they weren't. Maybe they were killed, but not by American forces. We can't know for sure.

This doesn't make the survey any less useful. In fact, it may be more useful than actually counting bodies for some purposes. After all, the reality on the ground is dictated by what people believe to be true, not how many bodies they can actually point to. But this survey is most definitely perception based.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Maybe they were killed, but not by American forces. We can't know for sure.

Near as I can tell, they're trying to estimate all "excess deahts", not only those caused by American forces.

 

[Scuffer]

No, it is perception based. They're basically calling people are asking if they know anyone who was killed. That's fine, but it won't stand up to scrutiny. In most cases, no body or proof of body is being produced, simply someone saying "I know this person was killed."

Maybe the person was actually killed. Maybe they weren't. Maybe they were killed, but not by American forces. We can't know for sure.

This doesn't make the survey any less useful. In fact, it may be more useful than actually counting bodies for some purposes. After all, the reality on the ground is dictated by what people believe to be true, not how many bodies they can actually point to. But this survey is most definitely perception based.

I have the actual paper here, in front of me.
They went and actually visited rather than called them up and they are talking specifically about family members or long term guests. In 81% of cases where a death certificate was asked for, one was produced.

You could, I suppose, argue that knowing if your son was dead was a perception. I would say it goes beyond perception. Whether they were killed by coalition forces is more perception based, although if they were found dead in a building hit by a missile, I would call that convincing evidence.

 

[Pirate]

The righteous anger expressed by those who feel civilian deaths as a result of the Iraqi Liberation is no less justified than the righteous anger expressed by those whose families were butchered under Saddam's terrorist regime. The fact is, many thousands of people are dead and that Is a tragedy, a horrible tragedy. Innocent deaths can never be justified, even one life lost is one too many.

Before the logical conclusion is drawn however, that this is sufficient evidence that the Liberation itself is misguided, perhaps we should also tally up the costs of all the innocent lives that were lost during World War II as well. Because it is one thing to decry the horror of war, and another entirely to deny that it is sometimes necessary. And when it comes to assigning blame for the deaths in Iraq, it might also be wise to remember that many many times these numbers reported for civilian casualties were also reported before the Liberation began. And many times more than that would yet to have been reported in future if Saddam had been allowed to continue his genocidal actions. Therefore it is best to correctly assign the blame (if this is so necessary) to Saddam himself and the Terrorists who continue to prolong this conflict.

Let's try to keep some sense of perspective, shall we?


-Elgalad

Thank you for at least getting to the heart of the issue. People are squabbling about whether the body count was 100000 or 50000 as if the issue were the exact number. The fact is that thousands of people are dying and the justification for it is contentious. This was not WWII where the choice to start the war was made by the aggressors. This war was started by Bush against a nation that had not attacked us. This is entirely different than WWII.

 

[Yom]

Burned this question to death. Repeatedly. In many threads.

Sites trying to count Iraqi dead in current violence are plagued with problems: duplicate counts, second-hand hearsay, people being buried without even being properly identified.

People disputing my numbers on Saddam's body count before we invaded ran along the same lines. However, I'm certain his number is seven figures.

This isn't just some site counting bodies. The research was done by Johns Hopkins, a premier American university. The 15,000 counts from earlier probably didn't have the same resources that this research team did.

 

[MajII]

So. What does the scale look like?

1 000 Perfectly Acceptable
5 000 Slightly Irritating
10 000 Bothersome
20 000 Worrying
30 000 Concerning
50 000 Alarming
75 000 Frightening
100 000 Outrageous

Anyone else want to take a stab at it? Utilitarianism is fun until you're the victim.

 

[BasketCase]

Sites trying to count Iraqi dead in current violence are plagued with problems: duplicate counts, second-hand hearsay, people being buried without even being properly identified.

This isn't a website, but a piece of research in a leading mediacl journal that actually involved going over to Iraq and interviewing people. To control people making it up, they asked to see death certificates in some cases. Sure there are other problems but don't try to discredit the work unless you have at least read it.

I DID READ IT.
And my conclusions were: duplicate counts, second-hand hearsay, people being buried without being properly identified. Included in these three categories are such problems as cases where it wasn't known WHO fired the missile that got someone killed, and cases where the person killed was an insurgent who was misidentified as a civilian.

Plus this one, which I just noticed: "Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja....". Extrapolating the sample out to the whole nation, that means two thirds of 100,000 people died in Fallujah after the invasion--in a city of only 250,000 to 300,000 people. The city would have had to have been bombed halfway off the map.

I was tempted to include the fact that the sample size is somewhere between 2,000 and 8,000 people in a nation of 25 million, but I wasn't paying attention in statistics class in college, and I don't know what constitutes a good sample size in this case, so unlike some of the armchair statisticians around here who have had even fewer classes in statistics than I've had, I am gonna keep my mouth shut because I DON'T KNOW.

Oh yeah--I also wasn't paying attention in English class, so I sometimes have a problem with run-on sentences....

 

[Scuffer]

Sorry, assumed you hadn't becasue of the 'sites' word. Reading papers is (part of my job) my job, and I take their interpretation seriously.
All the same, it does state clearly that they left the Falluja data out, because it would have distorted the figures. I did point this out as well, but in a stack of text, so perhaps was missed.

It does not include Falluja data, which was regarded as an outlier because the increase was very large.

The 100,000 figure is the increase in deaths, rather than those civilians killed by coalition forces (CKBCF). I worked out the estimate of CKBCF is 33,000 ish, which is not so different from the 15,000 on the bodycount site.
The methodology should eliminate most duplication, and unidentified dead figures, because it only applied to family member or long-term guests.
No, it's not a great sample number (6000 odd), but it represents a decent sample - if it weren't The Lancet wouldn't have published it. You mess up in there and your name is mud.