Friday, September 14, 2007

Iraqi Civilian Death Toll May Top 1 Million

Two recent estimates put the total number of Iraqi deaths due to the war at over 1 million.

JustForeignPolicy.org uses the estimate made by the British journal The Lancet in 2006 of over 600,000 as a starting point and then uses estimates from the media to project forward. It estimates total deaths at 1.044 million.

A new survey of Iraqi households, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, by ORB, a British polling agency, uses a statistical projection as well to estimate that as many as 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war.

Because no accurate record of civilian deaths has been kept by the Iraqi government or the US military occupation forces, these estimates are the best statistics so far. That the data has been collected independently and has arrived at similar figures suggests that the estimates have merit as fairly accurate.

The outrageous number of over 1 million deaths combined with the ongoing humanitarian crisis Iraqis face as a result of the occupation indicate that far from saving Iraq form an evil tyrant, the US has imposed a far worse life on the Iraqi people. Is this what democracy looks like?

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