AP IMPACT: Secret tally has 87,215 Iraqis dead

[steven johnson]

Source: Associated Press

Iraq's government has recorded 87,215 of its citizens killed since 2005 in violence ranging from catastrophic bombings to execution-style slayings, according to government statistics obtained by The Associated Press that break open one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war.

Combined with tallies based on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and an in-depth review of available evidence by The Associated Press, the figures show that more than 110,600 Iraqis have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The number is a minimum count of violent deaths. The official who provided the data to the AP, on condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, estimated the actual number of deaths at 10 to 20 percent higher because of thousands who are still missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without official records.

A more controversial cluster study conducted between May and July 2006 by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, published in the Lancet medical journal, estimated that 601,027 Iraqis had died due to violence. The authors said roughly 50,000 more died from nonviolent causes such as heart disease and cancer because of deteriorating health conditions caused by the war.



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAQ_DEATH_TOLL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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There are many who feel the deaths in Iraq since the US invasion have been grossly underestimated.

The Belgian philosopher, Lieven De Cauter, the initiator of the BRussells Tribunal, writes: ‘During six years of occupation, 1.2 million citizens were killed, 2,000 doctors killed, and 5,500 academics and intellectuals assassinated or imprisoned. There are 4.7 million refugees: 2.7 million inside the country and two million have fled to neighbouring countries, among which are 20,000 doctors. According to the Red Cross, Iraq is a country of widows and orphans: 2 million widows as a consequence of war, embargo, and war again and occupation, and 5 million orphans, many of whom are homeless (estimated at 500,000).’


http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4589.shtml

[Ian David]

1. They're what President McCain would have called "Posthumously Liberated." n/t

[struggle4progress]

2. Media Ignore Credible Poll Revealing 1.2 Million Violent Deaths In Iraq (2007)

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/070918_the_media_ignore.php

[Barrett808]

3. Iraq Body Count has 91,466 - 99,861

http://www.iraqbodycount.org

These estimates are the absolute floor -- the actual number is certainly very much higher.

[struggle4progress]

5. IIRC IBC demand two independent hardcopy or permanently cached webpage media reports

before it counts a death. By that standard, almost nobody has actually died here in my town in years. IBC has also repeatedly attacked other estimates and has repeatedly refused to attempt to double-check the quality of their estimates by comparing with other sources of information. "Coverage of non English-language reports is currently limited to those that are available from proficient translators" and, of course, there are very few English-language media in Iraq nowadays

[rcsl1998]

4. The Invasion Of Iraq Began in March, 2003 - NOT 2005 nt

[struggle4progress]

6. ' ... the People's Kifah, involved hundreds of academics and volunteers in a survey conducted

in coordination with "grave-diggers across Iraq." The group said it also "obtained information from hospitals and spoke to thousands of witnesses who saw incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. fire."

The project was abandoned after one of the researchers was captured by Kurdish militiamen and handed over to U.S. forces. He was never seen again. But in less than two months' work, the group documented about 37,000 violent civilian deaths up to October 2003.

The Baghdad central morgue alone accounts for roughly 30,000 bodies annually. That is besides the large number of bodies taken to morgues in cities such as Basra, Mosul, Ramadi, Kirkuk, Irbil, Najaf and Karbala ...'

IRAQ: Baghdad Morgue Overflowing Daily
By Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed
BAGHDAD, Apr 14 <2006> (IPS)
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32897


Almost 2,000 bodies taken to Baghdad morgue
By Alister Bull, Reuters
Published: Wednesday, August 09 2006
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Almost 2,000 bodies were brought to Baghdad's morgue last month, an official said on Wednesday ... http://www2.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=bad9aa87-970d-4297-a01a-e2b7bb97a7b7&k=59083

[New Dawn]

7. Actually, the real total is around 1.3 million. With millions more displaced.

The 800,000 to 1.3 million figure was found using the same survey methods that were used for calculating fatalities in the Rwanda genocide in the 1990s. No one in the US corporate media ever questioned those figures. However, when it comes to Iraqis murdered by Neocon war criminals' illegal war of aggression, the corporate press helps them cover up the genocide.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/tirman

Finally, the "government of Iraqi" is not a sovereign state. Its orders come from the Pentagon. That is the real "source" claiming less than 100,000 dead.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. I suspect the real total since 2003 is at about 250,000

I do think he's probably right at 90,000 + 20% since 2005. You'd have to double that and then some to account for 2003-2005 record keeping. Which is incredible enough, given that none of this was necessary. When you give children and imbeciles big guns and no guidance, a lot of people end up dead.

[Tartiflette]

9. The dismissal of the John Hopkins estimate is troubling

Given that it used methods that are routine, and have been used to provide estimates in numerous other disasters/war zones world wide. Dismissing this either assumes that raqis are liars, or that the methodology is suspect, which would necessitate a re-evaluation of those figures quoted for all other instances where this methodology has been used.

[glitch]

10. 1.3M -- What's worse is that before the invasion the average age of Iraqis was 14 years.

Due to the war with Iran and the Clinton years sanctions.