Casualties in Iraq

[johngalt1234]

The ratio of Iraqis dead as a ratio to American Casualties is 100:1.

For every soldier that died, 100 Iraqis died.

Can this be called a just war or a liberating war. Why are the Iraqis against us?

I think our presence there has done us more harm than Good.
In the Muslim world we are viewed as imperialist and therefore and enemy to be fought at all costs.
Every day I am sure there are hundreds of Muslims willing to give their lives so that America will get out of interefering in the Middle East.

Even George Bush admitted that winning the war on terrorism is next to impossible.
Should Kerry be elected I doubt we will see anything different happening

We need someone like Michael Badnarik, who will get our troops out of Iraq and puruse a non interventionist policy in foreign affairs.

I am voting for Michael Badnarik, Libertarian

[John Dibble]

Well, first I'd like to say that I don't think most Iraqis are actually against us, though there are many. Second, I don't think the worth of something can necessarily be determined by a body count.

I think in the long term, it will have done more good than harm, but that will take a while, decades at the least. For more good to be done, the region will have to stabilize - but for the region to stabilize I think we need to leave sometime within the near future, as soon as the Iraqi military is back up to speed. After we are gone things will either improve or there will be a full scale civil war in Iraq - one or the other will happen once we leave, and we will have to leave at some point. I say as soon as the government we have put in place has it's army and elections, we can leave the Iraqis to whichever fate they choose.

[Silent Hunter]

You're quoting the Lancet survey aren't you? The one of 1000 households, from which they extrapolated to claim the 100,000 civilian deaths figure.

It's at least four times the other estimates (Most estimate 14-15,000 civilian deaths) and a Human Rights Watch spokesman called it 'a reach':

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html

Slate article on this:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/

Iraq Body Count:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

[CollectiveInterest]

Whether the Lancet is right or wrong it sorta seems like the occupation forces should be concerned with the question, right? I mean Bush and Blair claim we're there to improve the lot of average Iraqis, right? It's kinda hard to persuade anyone of this if you are even counting the civilians killed to make their lives better.

I would like the US gov't to fund three US studies of civilian casualties and three UN studies. Then we could debate methodologies and come up with a high-end and low-end estimate.

If we are so indifferent to civilian suffering that we don't even ask the question, how can anyone take our claims of supporting democracy at face value? What kind of democracy is indifferent to civilians killed by the authorities?

[AuH2O]

People die in war.

In fact, war BY DEFINITION means people die.

So, claiming a war is bad 'because people die' is amazingly idiotic.

So either denounce WAR, or leave it alone.

And if you denounce war, then make sure you're consistent-- which I guarantee no one is.

[A18]

Collective, you've got a nice prediction map:

[shankbear]

DEBUNKED stats.