100,000 Iraqi Civilians have died in current war

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by lookout123

Actually, most of the senior military leadership were NCO's and Jr Officers in Viet Nam - the war of the body count. They saw firsthand what happens when body counts are a priority. body counts make the headlines, then they take on a life of their own. at some points in the war there were body count expectations, so patrols would go out, pop off their loads and because it was impossible to accurately count the dead in the jungle - they applied a simple formula - X number of rounds multiplied by XX% = # of dead enemies.

as young men they saw the foolishness of such methods and refused to allow it under their command, first in Desert Storm, then Afghanistan, then Iraq.

Minor point: The Vietnam body count was about enemy combatants. The controversy in this case is about civilian ones. I don't think our boys would go shoot off rounds in the streets of Baghdad to inflate the counts.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Schrodinger's Cat

Yeah, Bruce? And? (This is a 5 year old American child)

Wow. My friend's kid had to wait until he was 10 to get his own. Outshoots adults at matches

(He had a single shot .22 at age 5 or 6, and I think mom and dad have started his 4 year old brother already.)

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by Schrodinger's Cat

Yeah, Bruce? And? (This is a 5 year old American child)

The difference being that the latter child is at a shooting range with a bunch of other people shooting at paper targets.*

The prior picture is of a child being indoctrinated to kill the infidel/invader.

*And I'm jealous too, I wish I had somebody with the money to buy me a CAR-15...

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

"Not everyone wants democracy." - tw, two weeks ago

We bow to this remarkable visionary who truly understands how things are.

Since you cannot prove your point, you instead post irrelevant facts? What is your point? That democracy proves those 98,000 were not killed?

Schrodinger's Cat makes some good points about the reliabiltiy of that study published by The Lancet. UT 'feels' the facts must be wrong. Therefore the facts are wrong? Again, were is the logic?

Its easy to hide 100,000 bodies. They get buried. 25 million people will have no problem burying 100,000 bodies. But statistics - asking those people who died - can count those buried bodies - as the study published in The Lancet has done.

[jaguar]

Whether this election was a success isn't decided today, or tomorrow or in 3 months time. It's if the country doesn't colapse into civil war within 6 months of US troops leaving. Of course it looks like they'll be going east not west.

[Undertoad]

No T, the aluminum tubes are 2.5 years past relevant, and from now on, each time you mention them I will include your quote about Democracy in my following post. Let's have a lesson on shelf-life.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

No T, the aluminum tubes are 2.5 years past relevant, and from now on, each time you mention them I will include your quote about Democracy in my following post. Let's have a lesson on shelf-life.

Please keep posting it. For that matter, include a phrase that I owe you an apology. I always enjoy a good joke.

Not everyone wants democracy. Democracy cannot be imposed. If everyone wanted democracy, then democracy would be thriving in places like Hati, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, and Myramar.

You swore those aluminim tubes were for weaspons of mass destruction because you just knew - facts be damned. Same reasoning used to challenge Schrodinger's Cat. You just know he is wrong - which really only insults his thoughtful responses. To just know something - facts be damned - is also called 'intelligent design'.

If you have problems with the 100,000 dead due to America, then put up solid facts that dispute that well researched and peer reviewed citation. As demonstrated previously, even body counts in a war are not as accuratae. Please explain the morality in killing 100,000 Iraqis. Please explain how the looting also did not happen. Please explain what happened to all the phase four planning - necessary so that people do not die.

Once we eliminate those administration lies and the "I know it must be wrong - therefore it is wrong" reasoning, then we are left with a fact. America caused the death of about 98,000 Iraqis.

[tw]

Originally Posted by jaguar

Whether this election was a success isn't decided today, or tomorrow or in 3 months time. It's if the country doesn't colapse into civil war within 6 months of US troops leaving. Of course it looks like they'll be going east not west.

When asked when US troops can pull out, the administration becomes coy. They don't want US troops out of Iran 1+ years from now. Those troops will be necessary for the invasion of Iran - and to create the instability to justify an invasion of Iran. George Jr administration has declared their objectives quite clearly. They intend to 'fix' the world. They have listed the countries they intend to impose democracy upon. They call it 'moral'. History calls it a 'crusade'.

[Undertoad]

You just know he is wrong - which really only insults his thoughtful responses. To just know something

That's insulting to me. That's not what I was doing here and not what I did with the tubes. I thought what I thought with the tubes because it was the best explanation given the information I had. To be complete about it, at the time, I listed all the information that I had.

But I was wrong!

I often am. I admit this so freely. It was in my user title for a while.

It does not, however, mean that I am wrong each time you bring them up. As proof, each time you do I will bring up something you wrote that you were wrong about. I have many choices, this is only the most recent of them.

[Schrodinger's Cat]

The problem is that people end up arguing belief systems. By definition, you can't argue a belief. We have far too little hard data and far too much nebulous, anecdotal reporting in regard to the Iraqi situation. The study in The Lancet is the first one I have seen that uses solid research methodology and has actually been subjected to peer review.

I am not happy to read its results. If Undertoad or Richlevy or anyone else knows of a reliable study which shows a smaller civilian death toll, I would be delighted to see it. The US military seems very proud of its precision weaponery. If US weapons and technology are indeed as precise as claimed, General Franks should be able to firmly assert a minor loss of civilian lives. Instead, he refuses to make any comment either way.

As a scientist, I am left with only the Lancet article to go by.

[Carbonated_Brains]

tw: It is unbelievable, the disjointedness of your posts. Be it the fact that english may not be your first language, your thought processes carry more emotion than is necessary, or any of a host of mental ticks...your thoughts are rambling, disjointed, and serve to slash your credibility. Which is a shame, because you have made good points in the past, fogged by the rest of whatever paragraph they were in.

Shrodinger's Cat: You're relying too much on a single study. The Lancet, although peer reviewed and respected, is not infallible. One single study by one statistician, whatever his methods, does not constitute an entire ironstrong moral argument toward the idea that 100,000 civilians have been killed. The Iraqis don't live in huts and caves; they are documented citizens and records will eventually show how many have gone missing and been killed. As a scientist, you should respect the ideal of holding each and every study up to the light before you form a solid opinion.

Undertoad: Every single thing you have said in this thread, should be taken with a grain of salt. You, along with everyone else here, have offered no cites to any of your statistics (2:1 injured to killed, 1/3 combatants, etc). These are random, random numbers. Everything you've typed appears to be primarily motivated by "feeling" and logic, with no thought to the fact that conventional logic can't possibly apply to a situation where you speculate on a country your government is currently at war with. Like it or not, every statistic you are exposed to has a political bend, everything on the news is calculated. Regardless of what you believe, this sphere of influence DOES affect your conclusions. This is not conspiracy theory jargon, this is the nature of modern journalism and society.

How can you be sure that 100,000 bodies cannot be hidden quickly? Buried in mass graves, burnt, carried off? You also assumed that the study focused on deaths caused by Americans, which is false, unless I'm enormously mistaken. Included in that figure should obviously be civilian deaths as a RESULT of the war, including those caused by insurgents.

Now, personally I believe far less than 100,000 civilians have died. Hell, the researcher hired Iraqis...what stopped them from inflating the figures? How does HIS credibility extend to the Iraqi employees he hired to collect the numbers?


But, what is the point? This conversation breached the realm of debate long ago. I would wager both sides are ironfast in their convictions, regardless of what statistics appear (likely uncited ) in the rest of this thread.

[Undertoad]

<b>CB:</b> 2:1 injured to killed is a rule of thumb. It's NOT random. In every war we have fought, including this one, the ratio is much higher even - more like three or four injured to one killed.

The paper claimed that most of the deaths were due to violence and most of the violence was coalition air strikes. If you drop a 500-lb bomb on something, the thing it hits will die, as will everything within 20 meters. Within 500 meters there is a chance for death or injury. If you kill 100,000 people with bombs there will be a massive amount of very obvious damage and people will missing limbs and eyes and shrapnel leaving quarts of blood in the streets. People will notice, and report on it.

The paper claimed that most of the people killed were women and children. But bombs simply don't discriminate in this way. This is not violating math and statistics, it is violating common sense. I don't attack it from the perspective of what it takes to create a good study because I'm sure it IS a good study. And I'm 100% certain that we could examine back issues of The Lancet and find studies that were equally well-received and peer-reviewed in great detail... that were completely incorrect.

[jaguar]

The truth laid bare
Hypocritical, incompetent, corrupt, liars, thieves and vandals.

[Carbonated_Brains]

The area of Iraq is 438,317 square km.
The population is (1997) 22,219,289 people.(1)

This puts the overall population density at 51 people per square km.

Take into account that half of the country is mostly uninhabited, contrasted with the fact that large numbers of the populace fled urban areas during the war, and you get a populated area of about half of the whole country (2)

22219289 / 219158 = 101 people per square km of inhabited country

So what if you wanted to map 100,000 dead?

100,000 / 219158 = 0.45 people per square km = less than 1 person per 2 square kilometers.

Take Baghdad alone. Population density of 950 people per square km (3)

That means Baghdad is 5900 km (give or take, this is based on a combination of two of the above cites). If 100,000 deaths occured in Baghdad alone, you'd have 17 dead people per square kilometer, obviously clustered in areas that have been bombed.

These statistics are certainly trivial and not properly devised, but they illustrate (to me at least) that you wouldn't have buckets of blood flooding the streets, with 100,000 deaths.

[Undertoad]

With 950 people per square km, assuming that you killed all of them, in order to kill 100,000 people in Baghdad alone you would have to carpet-bomb 105 square km of Baghdad, or roughly twice the area of Manhattan. Again, I think someone would take notice.