Channel 4 news: "650,000 Iraqis dead as a result of the USA-led invasion"

[Lio]

Feeling quite horrified about this. What would be the least-worst thing for the US/UK governments to do?

[purplemonkeydishwasher]

and they say that saddam hussein was evil...

[Callisto]

I would firstly question the numbers and how they came to them because I am pretty sure that the numbers of Iraqis killed by US/UK forces is no where near 600,000. The Iraqis are very efficient at killing themselves and Saddam was evil fgs and it can only be a good thing that he is no longer killing Iraqis himself.

[Piffle]

Complete ignorance of how Iraq was run - Saddam aside have led to much of the civic breakdown
they left a stupendous power vacuum, which allowed fundamentalists in.
There is no easy way out, they have a duty to restore a certain way of life and stability. it could take 20 years or more IMO
An callista not people killed by US UK forces - people who have died because of the invasion.
this could mean poverty, terrorism by other groups - all as a result of the actions of the US UK coalition.
Obviously in context, you can break down how you like.
But that is too many dead bodies to ignore.

[Callisto]

Totally agree that we cannot cut and run as a civil war next door to Iran would be a very bad thing, quite apart from the fact that many more than 600,000 would die in the ensuing chaos. I do think that the Iraqi govt need to sort themselves out and start leading the country instead of argueing about who gets what title and who has got a bigger office. They are worse than a sixth form council at the moment.

It would be interesting to get a projected death toll had Saddam been left in power.

[donnie]

they do have a duty piffle but I'm betting that the US is trying to find a way as we speak of handing over to the Iraqi government - such as it is - so they can withdraw.Because Bush and Rumsfeld no know that they will never ever conquer Iraq, plus they are not up to the hatred which clearly exists between the sunni and shia.

Itake Callisto's point though - there is a clear difference between being an insurgent because you despise the ' occupiers' ( the allies) and fighting againt that, and being a shia blowing up women at market places and beheading busloads of students because they are sunnis.Or indeed vice versa.

[kandi]

That's a shocking statistic

[figroll]

I know absolutely nothing abour Iraq, but I am shocked that this war went ahead, so many people died and our fg govt was in support of it. It makes me sick. I read an article the other week in the Times about two soldiers who were killed in Iraq sometime ago and I felt so sad about it. What the hell were they doing there in the first place? It should never have happened.

George Bush is about the worst thing that ever happened - I remember thinking he was a warmonger when he first got into power and he certainly lived up to my expectations. Disgusting.

[Spidermama]

It's a complete disaster. I'm also that Tony Blair bulldozed ahead with this spectacularly shit bit of foreign policy despite a total lack of support from anyone but the US.

I told him so. I was on the march of a million. He didn't listen.

I truly think he would have gone down in history as a great prime minister had it not been for this enormous, tragic cock up.

[Callisto]

So, to play devil's advocate a bit, what would you all have done about Saddam? Left him in power to kill several hundred thousand more Kurds?

[SenoraPostrophe]

I don't think saddam killed anything like "several hundred thousand" did he? there certainly isn't evidence for that many. on brutal numbers Iraq probably would have been better off with saddam, and Al Quaeda wouldn't have their best recruitment tool.

But anyway the thing that pissed me off most about the war was the idea that the only choices were presented as being invade or do nothing. Diplomacy is not nothing. sanctions are not nothing. they may not be hugely effective, but then neither are US invasions are they?

[bluejelly]

Most of the people being killed are men. Makes me so sad that so many kids are growing up without fathers/brothers/uncles etc.
Iraqi society is being torn apart and there is no end in sight.
Feel really

[Callisto]

No probably not that many, though I am still haunted by the images of mass graves found after Saddam was ousted and although I think the way it was done was idiotic, Saddam out of power is a good thing.

As for what to do now? It has to be the British hearts and minds campaign on a grand scale. In Afganistan the British Army is giving local people tractors and other ways of earning a living in return for info about Taliban and assurances that the locals won't harbour Taliban fighters. It is working very well by all accounts.

[bluejelly]

Sadly not Callisto, there are loads more suicide attacks in Afhganistan nowadays and the taliban are growing in strength.

[Callisto]

That's not what I have heard/read but news can be so subjective these days. Very sad if you're correct Blue.

[franca70]

I'm afraid that suicide attacks are increasing considerably in Afghanistan, and in many areas the talibans are getting stronger and stronger. I reckon that Iraq has been and is a complete disaster, being disastrous also the failure of diplomacy.

[Callisto]

Obviously I have been reading the wrong things - it was probably a govt issue news report...

I still think the hearts and minds approach is a good one though.

[Lio]

How they came up with the figure follows. Gist is that lowest likely figure is 392,979, highest is 900,000+. Mortality rate has more than doubled since the war began. Here it is:

The epidemiological research was carried out on the ground by teams of doctors moving from house to house, questioning families and examining death certificates. Between May and July this year, they visited 1,849 households in 47 separated clusters across the length and breadth of Iraq. The doctors asked about deaths among members of the household in a period before the invasion, from January 2002 to March 2003, and about deaths since. In 92% of cases, they were shown death certificates confirming the cause.

A total of 629 deaths were reported, of which 547 - or 87% - occurred after the invasion. The mortality rate before the war was 5.5 per 1,000, but since the invasion, it has risen to 13.3 per 1,000 per year, they say. Between June 2005 and June 2006, the mortality rate hit a high of 19.8 per 1,000.

Thus they calculate that 654,965 Iraqis have died as a consequence of the invasion. It is an estimate and the mid-point, and most likely of a range of numbers that could also be correct in the context of their statistical analysis. But even the lowest number in the range - 392,979 - is higher that anyone else has suggested. Of the deaths, 31% were ascribed to the US-led forces. Most deaths were from gunshot wounds (56%), with a further 13% from car bomb injuries and 14% the result of other explosions.

[bluejelly]

Calisto i monitor Afghan news as part of my job-- sadly it has deteriorated significantly in the last year. I think the domestic news doesn't reflect this well enough

[Callisto]

Blue - why do you think it is so bad now? Has anything happened to trigger this situation?

[bluejelly]

A lot of people resent the presence of foreign troops in their country-- you are talking about very conservative, very traditional societies who have been invaded countless times. They have a fierce independent streak and don't like to be bossed around by anyone.
Disappointment with the Karzai govt-- karzai talks the talk that western donors love, but failed to deliver much outside of Kabul...
Many of the unstable places are huge opium producing areas. The taliban will buy the opium, western troops and governments would rather destroy it.

So it's a combination of economic, social and military factors.
(In my humble opinion)

Good quote I heard was an Afghan man saying something along the lines of:

' At least under the taliban, life was harsh but we had law and order. Now our there are criminals everywhere and our houses are being blown up. No-one can plan for the future.

[Callisto]

[bluejelly]

I know. The only good thing about the situation in afghanistan is that it's not as bad as Iraq...

[Heathcliffscathy]

it's twice as many as died because of saddam's regime in the 25 years he was in powere iirc from newsnight last night.

what makes me spit with rage is the whitehouse dismissing the figures as 'unreliable'.

they have taken a totally random sample of families (interviewing several thousand people) and followed up every single death to find the death certificate documentation..

the range of error goes from around 400K to nearer a million.

either way the fact of the matter is that hundreds of thousands of iraqis have died as a direct result of the invasion.

The bush regime's attitude to these figures is an insult to those deaths in that all that matters is approval ratings.

[franca70]

yes, the opium trade has always been one of the major problems. it's always been used to fund buying weapons, also during soviet union invasion.