Iraq civilian death toll nears 100,000

Nowhere discussed in the presidential debates, is the impact the continued US occupation of Iraq has caused. As the civilian death toll nears 100,000 (this is based purely on actual news items, so it is the lowest possible estimate), with no resolution in sight, the question remains.
What are we still doing there? Are we helping or hurting the situation? Our initial "mistaken" intent aside, we are creating a new generation of potential "terrorists" that grow with every passing day we remain.

160 of our own military personnel have committed suicide ... in addition to the over 3,000 casualties of war. When does this end? And why is it not a daily topic of discussion?


[Mod edit: image removed]

Source: www.iraqbodycount.org...

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* bold emphasis mine

[edit on 19-10-2008 by 12m8keall2c]

reply to post by uncover_the_truth


Is there another source to confirm that data. It is not that I do not believe you, its just more plausible with more sources.

your 1 million 400 thousand off as of july 2008 (LOW estimate)...check the human rights groups pages that are over there...most have now been kicked out. Due to the fact that they made it public, it was said to be an ethnic cleansing of enourmus scale with anyone who didnt conform being shot. Also look into "drop weapons". On youtube they have some bits of news stories of soldiers being ordered to carry them and how they actually used them.

I know about the Iraq Body Count site, and the fact that it only counts deaths from reports in the media, which doesn't seem the best way to me.

The report which caused a lot of controversy was the Lancet report, in association (I think) with John Hopkins, which reported over 1.2 million deaths in Iraq, and that was well over a year ago.

The Lancet used the same technique which was used in the former Yugoslavia to estimate casualties, based on surveys by doctors of patients and their family members.

In Yugoslavia (and in other conflicts) the process was shown to have an accuracy of +/- 2.5% in estimating the total number of civilian casualties, which to me seems better than counting only news stories.

Let's also not forget the estimated 4 million (probably more by now) displaced persons/refugees.

My own opinion is that Iraq is now a breeding ground for "jihadists" and "insurgents" simply because of the way the people have been treated over there.

The prisons where people are locked up and abused in a "guilty until proven innocent" manner has greatly contributed to both the insurgency and the threat of terrorism worldwide.

Of course there are theories which say that the intention was to create more terrorists simply to create the climate of fear in which our ever more repressive governments thirve, but I suspect that's a conversation for another thread

reply to post by uncover_the_truth

160 of our own military personnel have committed suicide ... in addition to the over 3,000 casualties of war. When does this end? And why is it not a daily topic of discussion? [Updated to 4,122 KIA as of 10/21/'08.
www.globalsecurity.org...] [On Army suicides, see Foot Note below.]

If anyone still cares to know what happened in Iraq in ‘03 and ‘04, to get us to where we are today, I recommend a book entitled “The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq” by Rory Stewart, OBE, the British Acting Governor headquartered in al Amarah, capital of Maysan, a province near Basra. 2006. RC63621.

Stewart was born of Scottish parents in Hong Kong and grew up in Malaysia and Vietnam. He was educated at Oxford and was a tutor for the two princes, William and Henry, the sons of Princess Diana. The 2 princes are second and third in line of succession to the British throne after their father, Charles, the Prince of Wales.

Stewart joined the Foreign Office and served in Indonesia and Montenegro before his assignment to Iraq. He came to Harvard in ‘04 as a Fellow at the Center for Human Rights after completing his tour in Iraq. He currently (2008) lives in Kabul and is the head of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a not for profit NGO working to re-establish the arts and crafts industry in Afghanistan. Stewart is passingly familiar with French, Persian - say Farsi - Indonesian, Serbo-Croat, Urdu and Nepali languages.

In his book, he described in detail the unbelievable disconnect between the L. Paul Bremer CPA - Coalition Provisional Authority - and the reality on the ground in Iraq. He describes how the initial planning for post-invasion operations in Iraq were done at the Pentagon without real time consultation with any of the Coalition Forces generals on the ground. Many of the young people who came out from W-DC lacked good judgment or linguistic qualifications. Most were graduated from “born again” colleges which seemed to be their primary qualification. Say Hello Sarah Palin. Come quick Sweet Jesus!


Foot Note.
WASHINGTON (CNN) Every day, five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves. Before the Iraq war began, that figure was less than one suicide attempt a day. The dramatic increase is revealed in new U.S. Army figures, which show 2,100 soldiers tried to commit suicide in 2007. "Suicide attempts are rising and have risen over the last five years," said Elspeth Cameron-Ritchie an Army psychiatrist.

Concern over the rate of suicide attempts prompted Sen. Jim Webb, D-VA, to introduce legislation Thursday to improve the military's suicide-prevention programs. "Our troops and their families are under unprecedented levels of stress due to the pace and frequency of more than five years of deployments," Webb said in a written statement

Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA, spoke Thursday on the Senate floor urging more help for military members, especially for those returning from war. "Our brave service members who face deployment after deployment without the rest, recovery and treatment they need are at the breaking point," Murray said.

She said Congress has given "hundreds of millions of dollars" to the military to improve its ability to provide mental health treatment, but said it will take more than money to resolve the problem. "It takes leadership and it takes a change in the culture of war," she said. She said some soldiers had reported receiving nothing more than an 800 number to call for help.

According to Army statistics, the incidence of soldiers attempting suicide or inflicting injuries on themselves has skyrocketed in the nearly five years since the start of the Iraq war. Last year's 2,100 attempted suicides -- an average of more than 5 per day -- compares with about 350 suicide attempts in 2002, the year before the war in Iraq began, according to the Army.
www.cnn.com...

[edit on 10/21/2008 by donwhite]