Richard Engel on NBC Nightly News (10/21/11), speaking about the end of the Iraq War:
The training wheels off, Iraq will have to succeed or fail without American troops on the ground to guide the way.
That’s quite a metaphor—invading and occupying a country for eight years as “training wheels.”
Engel’s report includes this reference to the death toll:
Iraqi deaths, almost 150,000, but many Iraqis believe it’s a million.
Of course it’s not just Iraqis who believe this—the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB), which has worked for the BBC, the British Conservative Party and the International Republican Institute, conducted a survey that arrived at the 1 million estimate. A survey published in the Lancet medical journal (10/11/06) estimated that the war caused 600,000 violent deaths between March 2003 and June 2006.
The “almost 150,000” number that Engel puts forward as reality appears to be based on the Iraq Family Health Survey, a joint effort by the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government, which actually estimated that there were 151,000 violent deaths (and some 400,000 total excess deaths—MedPage Today, 7/23/08) as a result of the war—between March 2003 and June 2006.
Apparently some Americans believe the war hasn’t killed anyone in the last five years.
Well, in their eyes, it hasn’t killed anyone that mattered.
I still think this would be a far better site if FAIR would remove all direct links to other sites from these comments. FAIR solicits contributions, as well it should, but then it lets vendors such as moncler (above) and any birdbrain with a blog post “comments” here, which are advertisements for themselves and just another form of trolling, and yes, it disrupts the discussion.
I keep hearing that there are other groupings in that as well.
WTF is happening with these comments?
All we need now is a some incomprehensible, self-referential drivel from the FAIR troll. Go, team!
I just always ignore those things above, with links embedded in the name. Never follow them. (What’s “moncler”?) If, however, an amusing troll comes in with a link that sounds like it might be fun to follow, I’ll do that, depending upon the amount of ale I’ve consumed. Invariably the links lead to some nutzoid ranter that proves that the troll is exactly what he likes to think he isn’t–a crazed, ignorant, dense, prejudiced numbskull.
Do expect the FAIR troll, though. He usually doesn’t report for duty until late Saturday or early-to-late Sunday. Like acid rain or another illegal war, though, he will show up.
Too many dead Iraqis and it’s all OUR fault???? Bullshit. That “honor” still goes to the Iranians (remember the 80’s) and second place to the now-oppressed and newly disgruntled Sunnis and fueda-types who like to blow up markets for the hell of it.
@Bob Walton – Recall the U.S.was warned by many parties – NGO’s, faith-based groups, the Vatican, etc. about the danger of invading Iraq. And it was former Secretary of State Colin Powell who warned Bush and friends “if you break it; you have to fix it”.
While it’s true many parties in and outside of Iraq are responsible for the deaths – call it American exceptionalism v. original sin…the abject failure, ignorance and arrogance of Bush Team to heed calls to wisdom is at least partially responsible for the chaos engendered in Iraq since March 2003.
Besides the deaths, how many people were injured? How many have permanent injuries? How many fled the country and still have not returned?
The invasion of Iraq was on the “must do” list for neoconservatives, long before Bush became president.
@ TimN: What are you, clairvoyant or something? There came the FAIR troll at 11:57 a.m. Saturday morning (next posting above), as self-referential, ungrammatical, fact-free, vague, off-point and broadly incomprehensible as ever. Sigh.
no way the US pulled completely out.I’d bet my life that there is a sizable force close to the oil fields to protect our interest in the 30 yr oil contracts we got for killing a half a million people,5000 of our own and wrecking our economy to do it.
@Joe, I wish FAIR had a “Like” or “Recommend” button, because your post deserves one. And you are right about forces remaining behind to protect our interests; they’re called military contractor security forces. So, while all of our troops will be withdrawn, we taxpayers STILL get to foot the bill for making sure all that black gold is protected.
Obama must remove troops.It certainly is past time.But he must not loose what was gained at so much loss.Truly i feel for him.
I think Engel is more likely referring to this analysis combining IBC and the WikiLeaks Iraq war logs:
“Additionally, IBC calculates that over 150,000 violent deaths have been recorded since March 2003, with more than 122,000 (80%) of them civilian.”
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/warlogs/
Or perhaps other recent studies like this:
“By our estimate, at least 137,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
http://costsofwar.org/
And likely not the Iraq Family Health Survey, as you surmise.
Also, the ORB poll claiming “1 million” killed has been debunked. See here:
http://w4.ub.uni-konstanz.de/srm/article/view/2373
and
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/exaggerated-orb/
The Lancet survey has also taken quite a beating from a wide range of sources, including the IFHS, and the other paper referenced in the last link above (footnote 3) to name just a couple.
Thanx Arthur for those links.It is more proof that inflated claims have bounced about ,as is common in any war.More proof that war causes carnage.No proof that America targeted civilians.Our entire military is built today on minimizing collateral damage.More proof how well that works.You can’t call the bullet back.