Iraqi Deaths Compared with Those in Other Nations

Politics International Politics
21

[quote=“Toe Tag”]Fred, if you can get another message from your parallel universe back here to the reality-based people on planet Earth, how do you keep pulling these conservative rags out of your nether regions? Could you tell us your reading list so I can have my internet filters block it? Well, I guess I don’t need that since nobody has even heard of or read them anyway? The New York Sun? Give us a break. How about the Washington Times? Is this one also owned by your Most Reverend Moon? Probably has only a few hundred subscribers too.

The Sun was created to establish a pro-free market conservative broadsheet in New York City to rival the New York Times. One of the founders of the Sun, in fact, previously established and edited a website devoted to issuing daily critiques of the Times. Like the Washington Times, which was launched as a conservative rival to the Washington Post, the Sun is close to the Republican Party and conservative intellectuals. Especially on foreign policy issues the Sun’s editorial opinions resemble those of the Jerusalem Post or the neoconservative The Weekly Standard magazine.

Here’s a good article from Salon debunking yet another of Fred’s famous sources:
dir.salon.com/story/news/feature … index.html

Give it a rest Fred.[/quote]
Wait a minute…you link to a story on Salon.com to debunk a conservative source given by Fred, and you accuse him of living in a parallel universe? You can’t be serious!

Though if you are, then I’ve got some black pots and kettles I’d like to sell you. Cheap.

I personally don’t agree with the conservative lament about what they think is the monolithically liberal media, but at the same time your patently spurious claim that Salon.com is a neutral adjudicator of partisan bias merely gives rightwingers grist for their mill.

22

[quote]Fred, if you can get another message from your parallel universe back here to the reality-based people on planet Earth, how do you keep pulling these conservative rags out of your nether regions? Could you tell us your reading list so I can have my internet filters block it? Well, I guess I don’t need that since nobody has even heard of or read them anyway? The New York Sun? Give us a break. How about the Washington Times? Is this one also owned by your Most Reverend Moon? Probably has only a few hundred subscribers too.

The Sun was created to establish a pro-free market conservative broadsheet in New York City to rival the New York Times. One of the founders of the Sun, in fact, previously established and edited a website devoted to issuing daily critiques of the Times. Like the Washington Times, which was launched as a conservative rival to the Washington Post, the Sun is close to the Republican Party and conservative intellectuals. Especially on foreign policy issues the Sun’s editorial opinions resemble those of the Jerusalem Post or the neoconservative The Weekly Standard magazine.

Here’s a good article from Salon debunking yet another of Fred’s famous sources:[/quote]

My source for the murders in Venezuela is the Washington Post. Got a problem with their coverage? haha

Second, do you have reliable evidence to prove that the statistics supplied on deaths in Iraq are not accurate? Feel free to supply. I am assuming a population of 27 million and 35,000 deaths from terrorist, murders, etc in three years. So 35,000 divided by three years equals 11,667. Now, if we take 27 million and divide by 100,000 (benchmark for murder rate) then we arrive at 270. If we take 11,667 and divide by 270 we get 43.21 per 100,000 for the murder rate which is still less than half that of Venezuela (100+). Did I miss something here?

Back to you… Regardless, let’s go back to Washington Post (very liberal). The report states that murders in Venezuela have soared and that the murder rate is higher than in Iraq. Why then should the concerned citizens of the left be marching against Washington and for Chavez? Most curious. I am having trouble wrapping my mind around this moral relativism and selective concern. What about you?

23

This line of “reasoning” sounds suspiciously like the Enron defense to me:

Ken Lay: “Your honor, Bernie Ebbers over at WorldCom stoled hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. I only stoled tens of millions of dollars. Why, by comparision, I’m nearly completely innocent. Besides, I had no clue my company was going down the tubes. It was only dumb luck that I liquidated all my stock holdings before the collapse.”

Judge: “Why, Mr. Lay, that makes complete sense to this court. I don’t know why you were even put on trial in the first place. Case dismissed. Not guilty by reason of imbecility and that fact that Bernie Ebbers was so much worse by comparison that you’re virtually innocent.”

Just be glad, Fred, that, unlike Mr. Lay, you don’t have to take your “case” before a jury.

24

As usual spook your logic is impeccably wrong…

The better analogy is that the US government opened a bank in a shitty ghetto area, which provided jobs and security to hundreds of thousands. Should then the US government be criticized for deaths occuring at the bank from robbers who steal and shoot and kill?

Back to you… Try to make it something at least tolerably reasonable this time…

25

Different statistics from the Frontpagemag, but still a terrible indictment of selective outrage…

[quote]Iraqi civilian death statistics complied by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that, contrary to the impression made on the evening news, Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C., and pre-Katrina New Orleans. Iraq is also substantially safer than several foreign countries. After seeing media coverage of Iraqi violence King said: “I began to ask myself the question, if you were a civilian in Iraq, how could you tolerate that level of violence. What really is the level of violence?” King calculates an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.5 per 100,000 based on U.S. military and independent statistical sources. The remnants of Saddam’s socialist dictatorship in alliance with al-Qaeda are still able to kill Iraqi civilians in sufficient numbers so that their leftist allies in the U.S. can get the video footage they need to blame Bush—but fewer than they killed under Saddam.

As American leftists pretend to decry violence in Iraq, they celebrate the rise of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Pro-surrender activist Cindy Sheehan appeared with Chavez January 29. On the stage at the “World Social Forum” in Caracas, Sheehan noted that singer and activist Harry Belafonte recently called Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world,” and said, “I agree with him. George Bush is responsible for killing tens of thousands of innocent people.” Chavez encouraged Sheehan to run for President of the U.S. and he announced that Sheehan would again be protesting in Crawford, TX. Ironically, Venezuela has 31.5 violent deaths per 100,000 –14.5 percent higher than Iraq. It is Chavez who is responsible for “killing tens of thousands of innocent people.” The son of a recent Venezuelan murder victim explains, “The president is always saying it’s OK to steal in order to eat.” The world’s hand-wringing ‘humanitarians’ should demand that Chavez make Venezuela as safe as President Bush has made Iraq—or face impeachment by the Venezuelan Congress.

Venezuela is not alone in suffering at the hands of left-wing dictators or wannabe dictators: Columbia, hounded by leftist narco-guerrillas, every year looses 61.7 of its citizens to violence per every 100,000. South Africa, led by an increasingly corrupt African National Congress looses 49.6 per 100,000 to violent deaths every year. In Jamaica—ruled for decades by the socialist People’s National Party—it is 32.4. In Russia, as the Soviet system disintegrated, the count of violent deaths—outside the Gulags—soared. In 1998 there were 30.6 homicides per 100,000 population. Three years after end of Saddam’s socialist dictatorship Iraq is actually more peaceful than was Russia seven years after the end of socialist USSR.

But high murder rates are not limited to overseas leftist-ruled countries. In the American urban centers—where African-American loyalty to leftist Democrat politicians is ‘rewarded’ with dependency creating social programs—levels of violence top Iraq and Venezuela. In Washington, D.C., it is 45.9 violent deaths per 100,000. This means civilians living in Washington D.C.—home to many leftist operatives who spend all day scheming to undermine President Bush’s efforts in Iraq—are 63.5 percent less safe than Iraqi civilians. Other American cities with higher violent civilian death rates than Iraq include:
Detroit: 41.8 per 100,000
Baltimore: 37.7 per 100,000
Atlanta: 34.9 per 100,000
St. Louis: 31.4 per 100,000
They are all overwhelmingly Democratic.

The American city with the highest civilian death rate was New Orleans before Katrina—with a staggering 53.1 deaths per 100,000—almost twice the death rate in Iraq. With no sense of irony, corrupt Louisiana Democrats blame Bush for the Katrina disaster. What about an accounting for the disaster created by Louisiana Democrat corruption over the decades? New Orleans’ is represented by a typical Democrat dependency plantation overseer, Congressman William Jefferson, D-LA. Jefferson will likely soon be indicted for accepting bribes after FBI agents found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer. He is so far refusing to step down from the House Ways and Means Committee or resign from Congress. In his response to the President’s State of the Union speech, Jefferson complains about the rebuilding of New Orleans saying: “We need to be at the top of this nation’s priorities, not at the bottom.” While President Bush was dispatching Lt. General Russel Honore and the National Guard to evacuate people and clean up the post-Katrina mess, Jefferson made it clear what was at the top of his agenda. According to an ABC News report, Jefferson used two heavy National Guard trucks, a rescue helicopter and several National Guard soldiers for over an hour while he went back into his house to retrieve “a laptop computer, three suitcases and a box about the size of a small refrigerator.” (Or is that a freezer?)

Under William Jefferson and the rest of Louisiana’s corrupt Democrats, New Orleans’ pre-Katrina citizens were 93 percent more likely to suffer a violent death than Iraqi citizens are today. Americans should demand that Democrat politicians stop meddling overseas and make their parts of our country as safe as President Bush has made Iraq.[/quote]

This also reveals a lot about New Orleans and why none of us who know the city would have ever dreamed of blaming the federal response. New Orleans is not only a “Chocolate City” but also a city right out of Congo or Zaire or Nigeria…

26

“On average, nearly 80 Iraqis were killed or wounded every day from mid-February through mid-May, up from the previous quarter’s 60 per day.”

Things must really be bad in Venezuela currently.

27

When was it again that the Bush administration invaded Venezuela under the promise it will “bring something better to Venezuela and thus influencing the region toward greater security”?

I’m just asking because my canteen offers apples and oranges after lunch today and I am as yet not sure what to pick.

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Just for perspective:

[quote]Iraq’s Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves

USAID report, ‘Iraq’s Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves’ - Click to download report Download the report in PDF format

Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.

“We’ve already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein’s regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. “Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been ‘disappeared’ by the Iraqi government over the past two decades,” said the group in a statement in May. “Many of these ‘disappeared’ are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq.”

If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

Please note: This report contains some graphic images and descriptions, including first-hand accounts from three Iraqis who survived the mass murders.

To view PDF files, download(files also available at link)
usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html[/quote]

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[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Just for perspective:

[quote]Iraq’s Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves

Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. …[/quote][/quote]

Saddam is now the benchmark? That’s the level you feel comfortable at comparing the U.S.? Why?

30

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Just for perspective:

If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.[/quote]

Ahem . . .

Mao Ze-Dong: 49,000,000 (“great leap forward” and “cultural revolution”)

Jozef Stalin: 13,000,000 (the purges)

Adolf Hitler: 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)

Hideki Tojo: 5,000,000 (civilians WWII)

Pol Pot: 1,700,000

Kim Il Sung: 1,600,000 (purges and concentration camps)

Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78): 1,500,000

Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915): 1,200,000 Armenians

Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970): 1,000,000

Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982): 900,000

Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994): 800,000

Suharto (East Timor, 1976-98): 600,000

Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88): 600,000

31

Turns out this is just the latest neoconservative propaganda-spin cottage industry:

"In her New York Sun column, Alicia Colon cites some interesting figures about Iraq, offered by Rep. Steve King of Iowa:

According to Mr. King, the violent death rate in Iraq is 25.71 per 100,000. That may sound high, but not when you compare it to places like Colombia (61.7), South Africa (49.6), Jamaica (32.4), and Venezuela (31.6). How about the violent death rates in American cities? New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina was 53.1. FBI statistics for 2004-05 have Washington at 45.9, Baltimore at 37.7, and Atlanta at 34.9.

Rush Limbaugh also picked this up, though the item on his Web site has gone behind the subscription wall. We thought it sounded too good to be true, and we were right. We called Rep. King’s office and asked for the sources of the figures. Here they are:

* The Iraq rate is a ratio of civilian death figures, taken from this site, to population, taken from this site. According to King aide Summer Johnson, the number is 27.51; two digits were transposed in Colon's column. (We used the figure of 8,745 civilian deaths since April 28, 2005, given on this page, annualized it to 8,312, and came up with 31.03 per 100,000 per year--a higher rate but within the same general range.)

* The figures for other countries are homicide rates, taken from this page, which is based on U.N. reports that can be found here.

* The figures for U.S. cities also are homicide rates, taken from this chart.

The figure for Iraq, then, is not the “violent death rate”; it is only the rate of violent death from war. (The equivalent figure for the other countries and cities presumably would be zero.) To arrive at a “violent death rate” for Iraq, we would to add in the civil homicide rate.

The most recent such figures we could find from Iraq are on page 777 of this PDF document, which says that between 1990 and 1994, the annual homicide rate (for Iraq) was between 5.66 and 7.28 per 100,000. These figures don’t tell us much, though, since (a) in those days Iraq had a criminal regime, and criminal regimes are not in the habit of accounting for their own crimes, and (b) the greater freedom in Iraq since 2003 might well have affected the rate of civil homicide.

Furthermore, even if war deaths in Iraq vs. civil homicides elsewhere were a valid comparison, the King figures are a lowball estimate of the former. That’s because the numerator–the number of Iraqi “civilian” deaths–excludes soldiers and policemen. But civil homicide rates do include policemen and soldiers murdered in the line of duty–as several hundred of them were on 9/11.

In addition, the comparison with U.S. cities poses a problem of scale. Just as some municipalities here have high concentrations of crime, Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities have high concentrations of military, guerrilla and terrorist activity. A comparison of Baghdad with Los Angeles or a similarly sprawling U.S. city would be more enlightening than a comparison of Iraq as a whole with cities of well under a million people.

We of course sympathize with the broader point King and Colon are making. But it’s important to be careful with numbers. Without meaning to, they have painted a misleadingly Pollyannaish picture of Iraq, and that’s the wrong way to counter the liberal media’s misleadingly Cassandrian one."

– The Wall Street Journal

32

Excellent point from the Wall Street Journal as always…

I totally accept the findings and questions posed by the person in question…

Why would Fred be so willing to do so?

Well, then, since the high figures that I have provided were supplied by very leftwing organizations like Human Rights Watch and others… guess what?

Many of the deaths that have been included in the 35,000 I used to give you the 41 not 25 deaths per 100,000 (see my earlier article) do in fact include the victims of robberies, kidnappings and terrorist violence. BECAUSE these leftist organizations duly inflated the victims of the war to include these criminal acts to make their point that the US had unleashed a reign of violence in Iraq.

Now, you cannot have it both ways so please choose. Should the 35,000 deaths in Iraq include the victims of many of these criminal acts or ONLY military operations involving US forces…

If yes, then the 41 out of 100,000 figure stands. Also there seems to be some discrepancy on the deaths in Venezuela. See my earlier report from the Washington Post (hardly one of our friends) which puts those deaths at 100+ out of 100,000. Either these numbers stand OR we lower the 35,000 civilian death toll in Iraq to perhaps half of what it is now. Your choice.

33

This is a quick take from a traveling man from other statistics sources but:

The Brookings Institute appears to estimate the “current” death rate from violent crime per 100,000 in Iraq at 95/100,000 (page 12) which makes it clear that “real progress” has indeed been made in Iraq. Compare that to the estimated rate in Iraq in the three years prior to the invasion of approximately 7 per 100,000. Or the current death rate due to violent crime in neighboring countries: Saudi Arabia: 0.71, Libya: 2.08, Jordan 6.33, Lebanon 3.38.

As the saying goes: “We’re from the Government and we’re here to help.”

34

I just love statistics… from your report…

[quote]Iraq Index
(assume 5,630-10,000 Iraqi civilians killed from
March 19, 2003 – April 30, 2003
as reported in detail by Iraq Body Count)
Not including deaths from crime as of February 2, 2006:
17,000 – 29,900
Including deaths from crime as of February 2, 2006:
40,300 – 81,700[/quote]

So let’s see including all deaths from terrorism, military, war, crime etc. we have 40,300 to 81,700 right? So right off the bat, how many would you like to attribute to the war? and how many would you like to attribute to crime? Remember that you are now in the no win situation of responding with a lowball figure for the war then what becomes of your argument regarding how destructive this war has become OR if you choose to emphasize the war levels you will have to downgrade the crime situation. Take your pick.

Either way, I am statisfied with whatever conclusion you come to. Let’s take the average of the 17,000 to 29,900 provided… that would make an average of 23,450 so what happened to the 35,000 killed in Iraq? Maybe then some 12,000 were actually counted as war when they should be counted under crime? If we take the average of the ALL deaths, we get 61,000 so how would you like to divide that? If say 25,000 should be for the war that leaves you with 36,000 and um… that works out to what 12,000 per year for violent death. Assuming a population of 27 million and dividing this by 270 to get to the 100,000 used for these tables… what is your result? Did you arrive at 44.44 as I did? Then, looking back to my earlier remarks regarding violent crime and death we are now forced to move this from 42.7 to 44.4? Okay. I agree to do that. Let’s move up the violent death rate in Iraq to 44.4. I have no problems doing so. Tell you what… to give you the benefit of the doubt, I would be willing to raise it to 50. How would that be?

In the meantime, you will now agree that since you want a high death from crime rate that the new civilian death toll figures in Iraq after three years stand at 25,000. How’d that be? hmmm?

35

Assuming for a moment that neoconservatives have finally seen the light and stopped blatantly manipulating the facts to serve their agenda – that they’re finally telling the truth for once and Iraq really is a good deal safer than most major American cities, why are we still there then? Don’t we have bigger problems of our own to deal with?

36

"Definitive statistics are impossible to find in a country where the most violent provinces are out of bounds for journalists and human-rights workers, and where the state infrastructure–hospitals, morgues, police stations–is not up to the task of caring for the living, never mind counting the dead. . . .

What is the use of numbers?" asks Mithal Alussi, a secular, independent member of the Iraqi Parliament. “When you reach a point when every Iraqi can say that a member of his family or a close friend was killed, then statistics don’t matter anymore. You don’t need numbers to tell you it’s a national catastrophe.”

37

haha Spook… I see… Now, statistics no longer matter, there are no definitive statistics on Iraq blah blah blah. I will take that as an evasion since you do not like the ones that I have provided from your OWN report.

Like most American cities, there are certain neighborhoods in Iraqi cities that are best avoided. Shall we compare South Central LA with say your average death rate in Mosul? Kirkuk? Nasiriyah? Najaf? Karbala? Kut?

I naturally am leaving off Ramadi and Baghdad and Samarra since those are technically war zones, but that is the way that you wanted it right? A clear separation of deaths from war and those from crime? Sorry, but you seem to be all over the page on this. First disagreeing with statistics and supplying some of your own to now say that none of this matters since there are no clear figures. What is it?

38

[quote=“fred smith”]haha Spook… I see… Now, statistics no longer matter, there are no definitive statistics on Iraq blah blah blah. I will take that as an evasion since you do not like the ones that I have provided from your OWN report.

Like most American cities, there are certain neighborhoods in Iraqi cities that are best avoided. Shall we compare South Central LA with say your average death rate in Mosul? Kirkuk? Nasiriyah? Najaf? Karbala? Kut?

I naturally am leaving off Ramadi and Baghdad and Samarra since those are technically war zones, but that is the way that you wanted it right? A clear separation of deaths from war and those from crime? Sorry, but you seem to be all over the page on this. First disagreeing with statistics and supplying some of your own to now say that none of this matters since there are no clear figures. What is it?[/quote]

Nice straw man. Even looks a bit like me from a certain angle. :slight_smile:

39

Fine. Strawman…

So then do you or do you not want to use statistics to describe events in Iraq? I was merely using the statistics that you provided. Now, are you saying those statistics no longer matter since they seem to have confused your argument? Up to you, I am happy either way…

40

[quote=“fred smith”]Fine. Strawman…

So then do you or do you not want to use statistics to describe events in Iraq? I was merely using the statistics that you provided. Now, are you saying those statistics no longer matter since they seem to have confused your argument? Up to you, I am happy either way…[/quote]

I’ve never claimed to have any accurate statistics for the current violent death rate in Iraq and questioned the ability of anyone to do so over the internet from outside the country. That smacks of the same foolish hubris that got us into this mess in the first place.

I don’t think anyone really knows the overall facts at this point. The best guide is what people in Iraq say about the situation and I provided such a quote from a member of the Iraqi parliament. Maybe you can provide alternative quotes from people living in some typical major urban centers in Iraq as to how bad the violence really is.