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How many died in Iraq? How many lives did the Iraq war save?

1. How many enemy combatants have the allies killed? (good, the more the better)
2. How many civilians have the allies killed? (bad, and our moral responsibility)
3. How many allied troops have the enemy killed? (bad, but not our moral responsibility)
4. How many civilians have the enemy killed? (bad, but not our moral responsibility)
5. How many lives have been saved by deposing Saddam? (good)

(Note: I include in the "allies" the brave Iraqi troops and police fighting for their freedom, and dying in far larger numbers than their allies the western troops.)

How many died in Iraq?

• Iraq War dead counts (also here) ignore the killing that would be going on if Saddam was still in power. So they ignore the lives saved by the war.
• They also often confuse the issue by including enemy fighters killed by the allies, and they may even include killings by the enemy.
• The most prominent body counts also seem distorted due to political bias.

• The Lancet survey seems distorted by political bias.

• The Iraq Body Count also seems distorted by political bias - see here and here and here.
  • The Iraq Body Count includes killings by the enemy in its totals.
  • The Iraq Body Count displays its political bias for all to see. Its logo is a picture of a US plane dropping bombs. But why is it not a picture of a jihadi suicide bomber? After all, his killings are all included in their totals. The thinking seems to be that America is ultimately to blame when America's enemies kill, since America started the war in the first place. But why not blame the jihadis and Baathists for starting the resistance? If they had ceased resistance with the fall of Saddam in Apr 2003, then not a single civilian would have died since then. So again, why a picture of a US bomber? Why not a picture of a jihadi?

• Glen Reinsford attacks the moral corruption of Iraq Body Count:
  • "These ordinary Iraqis were victims of senseless violence. Were they killed by an American bomb or a Saudi suicide bomber? Hint: IraqBodyCount doesn't want you to know."
  • "enter IraqBodyCount.net, an anti-war organization that was envisioned even before the Iraq War began, with the heady ambition of documenting each and every victim of American aggression in order to turn public opinion against the action to remove Saddam ... Somewhere along the way, however, the harsh reality began to sink in that America was acting as no other country in history has ever acted to prevent civilian casualties in warfare. As a matter of fact, more American troops have been killed in the conflict than have civilians been killed by Americans. Americans are literally taking casualties to prevent casualties on the part of Iraqi civilians. Though mere mortals might be prompted to reconsider their prejudices at this point, the folks at IraqBodyCount reacted by quietly changing their mission to include the victims of terrorists - the very people that the Americans are trying to stop. Their dubious body-count even includes members of the Iraqi security forces, who are part of the coalition. ... Another big problem with IraqBodyCount's statistics is that it even includes the terrorists themselves. ... In fact, if you .. browse their database, you'll notice that the tables are conspicuously missing a column - the party responsible for each attack. There's a reason for this, as we discovered when we analyzed each incident to answer this question. It turns out that the vast majority of civilian deaths are caused by Islamic terrorists, and that very few are from American bombs and bullets. This is because (unlike the terrorists) the Americans aren't in Iraq to kill civilians. ... In 2006, the number of civilians who died in encounters between the Americans and the terrorists was about four times lower than the number of U.S. troops killed. In short, civilians in Iraq aren't dying from the war. They are being murdered by Islamic terrorists."

• justforeignpolicy.org displays its political bias for all to see. Its logo says, absurdly: "Iraqi Deaths Due to U.S. Invasion".
  • Why not: "Iraqi Deaths Due to Iraqi Resistance".
  • Or even better: "Iraqi Deaths Due to the Iraqi Resistance, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia".
  • They even say: "our leaders are directly responsible". No, you morons, the Iraqi jihad is directly responsible. You know, the ones who are actually killing people, rather than the ones who are trying to protect people. Given such obnoxious politicised bias, it's hard to take their numbers seriously.

How many dead enemy?

• Killing combatants is not a bad thing:
  • Victor Davis Hanson points out in 2005 that it is remarkable that no one is trying to count the number of Islamo-fascist jihadi fighters killed by the West in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere since 9/11 in 2001. It could be tens of thousands. These deaths are of course good news for anyone who cares about freedom and human rights. It is especially good news for liberal Muslims around the Middle East that all these jihadis are being killed.

• Terrorist Death Watch (formerly here) - Count of jihadi dead, in Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2006 only. About 5,000 jihadis are being killed per year.
• Iraq updates - U.S. Army says 3,200 jihadis killed in action, Jan-May 2007.
• British troops alone killed 7,000 Taliban jihadis in Afghanistan in 2006-08.

The Lancet

• The Lancet medical journal, established 1823.
  • The MMR controversy (also here)

• The Lancet published a survey of Iraq War dead (also here), 2004, claiming 100,000 had died in Iraq in 2003-4.
  • Natalie Solent expresses my basic disbelief at the idea of 100,000 civilians killed accidentally by the allies: "Why the devil should a war in which the side making the running, in this case the Americans, had every motive to minimise civilian casualties, kill at a higher rate than wars where the dominant side either did not give a fig for civilian well-being or actively sought to kill civilians? A killing rate in Iraq comparable to Darfur .. or to the Dutch Hongerwinter of 1944? It doesn't seem likely." It is not likely.
  • Perhaps the 100,000 were killed by the "resistance". But even that seems incredible.
  • So what is wrong with the survey?
    1. It is based on interviews.
    2. It mixes civilian deaths with combatant deaths, and makes no attempt to distinguish them. So even if the count was accurate, it would still be worthless. Combatant deaths are not something we should be worried about. If they don't want to die, they should not be fighting.
    3. It is not an actual count of the dead, but an estimate based on extrapolation.
    4. It is an extrapolation from tiny figures. e.g. It only actually found 61 deaths that were even claimed to be caused by the allies. This could include lies, and combatants.
    5. You cannot take interviews at face value without checking the claimed facts. The dead may not exist. The dead may have been killed by the Iraqi side, not by the allies. The dead might be combatants. The dead may have died of natural causes. As Natalie Solent says, there are many motivations to lie or embellish the truth: "I think some of the interviewees falsely claimed to have lost relatives .. in the hope of getting compensation. I think some of the interviewees exaggerated .. in order to feel important, to gain the psychological payoff of being hard done by, to restore their pride, and to pay out the Americans for defeating them in war. (This bundle of motives could be shared by those who felt that the American invasion was a good thing, as well as those who thought it was a bad thing.)"
  • This "survey" is clearly the product of wishful thinking and trendy politics (also here). The Lancet is willing to risk its ancient reputation for something like this?

• 2nd Lancet study (and here and here), Oct 2006, claims 650,000 Iraqis have died.
  1. Same as before. Still based on interviews. Not a count of everyone who died since 2003. Rather an extrapolation from a survey to a postulated death rate for the whole country. Then an estimated pre-war death rate. Then the difference between the two gives 650,000 more deaths than you would "expect" since 2003.
  2. A total of 288 actual deaths from violence were discovered from 2003 to 2006. These could include lies, Middle Eastern boasting and exaggeration, and so on. It also could include Saddam's army during the war, civilians killed by Saddam's army and police in his last days, Saddamite postwar remnants, jihadi fighters, sectarian death squads, foreign (non-Iraqi) jihadis, civilians killed by jihadis and death squads, Iraqi police and army killed fighting jihadis, civilians killed by Iraqi police and army, deaths from criminals, deaths from domestic violence, honour killings, and so on.
  3. Far more males die than females, and most male dead are young men. Not children, not the old, and not women.
  4. Of the 288 violent deaths, a total of 94 deaths were found which were alleged to be caused by the allies. Again this could include lies, and could include Saddam's army during the war, Saddamite postwar remnants, Iraqi jihadis, foreign jihadis, sectarian death squads, criminals and looters.
  5. So by the magic of extrapolation and white man's guilt (the allies, not the jihad, are responsible for everything bad that has happened since 2003), we have a conclusion where 94 deaths alleged caused by the allies becomes 650,000 deaths that the allies are responsible for.

  6. The study says over 90 percent of deaths were supported by a death certificate. Can the Iraqi government confirm they issued over 550,000 death certificates? Could somebody count funerals? Count death notices? Count graves dug? Get some confirmation of this amazing number?
  7. The study genuinely believes 600,000 deaths have been caused by violence since 2003. This implies there must be many, many days when over 1,000 died in one day. When were these days? Can we have some examples?
  8. They estimate that the allies have killed around 200,000 people. Can we have examples? Can we have a ranked list of the worst single incidents since liberation in which the allies killed say more than 100 civilians at a time? There must be many such incidents, if what this study says is true.

• More responses
  • A comment notes that this study claims: "that a (comparatively) low intensity war has somehow killed more people than the entire strategic bombing effort against Germany in WWII."
  • The brave Iraqi freedom fighter Omar Fadil (of the blog Iraq the Model) is unimpressed by them inflating the number of deaths of his fellow Iraqis in their struggle for freedom against the jihad: "To me their motives are clear, all they want is to prove that our struggle for freedom was the wrong thing to do."
  • Even the anti-war Iraq Body Count thinks these numbers are crazy.

• Lancet editor Richard Horton speaks at the extreme left-wing Stop the War Coalition demo, Manchester, Sept 2006. A few points:
  1. Even if he believes the Lancet study of Iraqi deaths, why does he scream that it is "thanks to the arrogance and delusion" of Blair? Surely it is thanks to the jihad? After all, if the jihad had not resisted the arrival of democracy in Iraq, not one person would have died since 2003. All the allies ever wanted to do was set up one-man one-vote democracy in Iraq. Why couldn't the jihad allow that?
  2. Why didn't the Iraqi "resistance" stand for election? If people support them, there's no need for violence. They can just stand for election, win, form a government and then ask for allied withdrawal. Why didn't they do that? Why do they suicide bomb mosques and marketplaces instead? If, leftie morons, you can answer this question, then finally you will understand what this war is about.
  3. Horton implies that the brave allies want to kill Iraqi children. He attacks the Blair government "that prefers to support the killing of children instead of the building of hospitals and schools."
  4. He attacks Israel for the war in Lebanon. This at a march containing open support for Hizbollah and Hamas.
  5. He describes the allies as an "Axis of Anglo-American imperialism", pursuing policies of "hate", responsible for third world poverty, and so on like a foaming Noam Chomsky. What a nutcase. I think I understand where the Lancet "survey" is coming from now.

• The British Medical Journal includes politicised rhetoric:
  • Bitter Medicine: Inserting anti-Israel rhetoric into ostensibly neutral medical journals and academic literature (or via here)
  • British Medical Journal's Faulty Prescription
  • British Medical Journal asks: "Should we consider a boycott of Israeli academic institutions?" What is this politicised rubbish doing in a scientific journal?

• Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion?, Anjana Ahuja, The Times, March 5, 2007.
  • The article notes the excuse for not collecting the information we need: "It was deemed too risky to ask if the dead person was a combatant or civilian".
  • A critic gives reasons for lying: "Professor Rosling told The Times that interviewees may have reported family members as dead to conceal the fact that relatives were in hiding, had fled the country, or had joined the police or militia."

• Data Bomb, Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon, National Journal, Jan 4, 2008.
  • Melanie Phillips

The Lancet - Discussion

• The problem is the whole issue is politicised for both left and right:
  • The study complains that we don't dispute similar estimates for Sudan, Congo or North Korea. But there is little dispute in the west about Sudan, Congo and North Korea, and little incentive to exaggerate. Different death tolls will not score points for the left against the right, or vice versa. This is not true with Iraq. The left has enormous incentive to exaggerate Iraq deaths, and the right has massive distrust of the left's data and motives.
  • Les Roberts, co-author of both studies, is a Democratic Party political activist, who has himself campaigned for office.
  • The Republican pollster Steven E. Moore says the survey: (a) had much fewer cluster points than similar surveys in other countries, and: (b) did not gather demographic information on the respondents to prove they are representative of the population by cross-referencing to, say, the 1997 Iraqi census. "This would be the first survey I have looked at in my 15 years of looking that did not ask demographic questions of its respondents."

• Blaming the allies for the killings:
  • One of the strangest things about this is the sleight-of-hand whereby the allies are blamed for the killings by the jihad. Couldn't one equally blame the WW2 allies for the deaths caused by WW2?
  • Comment: "So who is doing the majority of killing of Iraqis outside of the invasion itself and subsequent military operations, ie. mostly civilian deaths? Obviously insurgents, various militias and some criminals. Yet it is the coalition that is vilified. I would be more impressed by those who opposed the war if they attacked those who are doing the killing."
  • Followup: "it still remains; the majority of Iraqis are being killed by fellow muslims not the coalition. These continual attacks on the coalition for the current death toll are giving tacit support to those who are slaughtering innocents everyday."
  • Indeed, they encourage the insurgents to keep going. Richard Horton's approach of blaming the allies for the killings by the insurgents, and blaming them more the more the insurgents kill, encourages the insurgents to kill more. "The more you kill, the more we will urge our side to surrender", he is telling the insurgents.
  • "The enemy is violent. Therefore he must win." seems to be the proposal from the left. No matter what the Iraqi people want.

Did the allies kill 100,000 civilians in Iraq?

• If you really believe that the allies accidentally killed 100,000 (or 200,000, or more) civilians, then here's what you can do. If this is true, then there must be many incidents in which over, say, 30 civilians were accidentally killed at once. Collect a list of these larger incidents and then cross-reference them with what the allies were doing at the time, to try to explain them. For each of them, demand that the allied militaries explain the incident. Listen to their explanations, which will be things like:
  1. They weren't operating in the area at the time.
  2. The Iraqi side did it.
  3. The incident never happened.
  4. The dead were combatants.
  5. Iraqi combatants used civilians as human shields.
  6. We did it. It was a mistake. Here's how the mistake was made.
  and then classify all of these incidents. Rank them by the most damning incidents.
• Deal with real, dated incidents, instead of extrapolating numbers from surveys, and then people will listen to you. Explain how the allies did it, instead of just claiming that they did, and then people will listen to you.

The Haditha massacre

• The killing of 15 (or 24) civilians in Haditha, Nov 2005. If it is true that U.S. troops killed civilian women and children in cold blood in revenge, the soldiers should be hanged. I have no problem with that. If it is true. The US military has taken it seriously. The soldiers have been arrested and charged.
  • Defend Our Marines presents the evidence that it is not true.

• This is the worst incident?
  • But what I really want to focus on is this quote from TIME magazine, Mar 19, 2006: "Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began." At this point it was said 15 civilians were killed.
  • This is the worst? There are no other incidents where the allies deliberately killed even 15 civilians? The "resistance" deliberately kills 15 civilians every single day. How could the allies have killed 100,000 if you can't find a single incident where they even killed 15?
  • "If the accounts as they have been alleged are true, the Haditha incident is likely the most serious war crime that has been reported in Iraq since the beginning of the war", said John Sifton, of Human Rights Watch, May 2006, thus confirming (though he may not have meant to) that this has been a very clean war on the allied side, if this is the worst they can find.
  • Again, I'm not making light of this. If U.S. soldiers did this, then court martial them, execute them. They are a disgrace to the U.S. military.
  • I am merely pointing out what is not obvious - that this proves the allies could not have massacred 100,000 Iraqi people, if this is the worst incident anyone can find.

The Mahmudiyah massacre

• The Mahmudiyah massacre is proven:
  • U.S. soldiers raped and killed a 14 year old girl, and killed her family (including a 5 year old), at Mahmoudiyah (or Mahmudiyah) in Mar 2006 (total of 4 dead).
  • I said before the trials that if this was proven, "they should hang. If this is true, they are murderers, a disgrace to their country and their military, and they should receive the death penalty to demonstrate America's seriousness."
  • They were indeed faced with the death penalty. Good for the US military for taking this so seriously. All so far have pleaded guilty to try to avoid the death penalty.

• This is the worst proven incident?
  • Article: "The Mahmudiyah rampage is regarded as the U.S. military's most depraved atrocity in Iraq."
  • This is the worst? The killing of 4 people is the worst? How could the U.S. have killed 100,000 if the killing of 4 is the worst proven incident?
  • Again, I'm not making light of this. (I would support the death penalty for the murderers. Do you?) I am merely pointing out that this proves the allies could not have massacred 100,000 Iraqi people, if this is the worst proven incident anyone can find.

Other alleged or proven allied war crimes

• Other agreed crimes, charges brought:
  • Hamdania incident, 2006 (1 dead). US soldiers arrested, charged, plead guilty.

• Alleged crimes, that the US military denies:
  • The Ishaqi incident, 2006 (11 dead). US investigation found that US forces engaged in normal firefight and followed rules of war. Further investigations ongoing.
  • The Mukaradeeb "wedding party" incident, 2004 (42 dead). Wedding party apparently bombed by accident, possibly after celebratory gunfire. US forces claim they came under hostile fire.

• Events at Haditha don't change need for victory - Mark Steyn on the brutal truth, that we still need to win: "if you're one of the ever swelling numbers of molting hawks among the media, the political class and the American people for whom Haditha is the final straw, that's not a sign of your belated moral integrity but of your fundamental unseriousness. Anyone who supports the launching of a war should be clear-sighted enough to know that, when the troops go in, a few of them will kill civilians, bomb schools, torture prisoners. It happens in every war in human history, even the good ones. Individual Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians did bad things in World War II and World War I. These aren't stunning surprises, they're inevitable: It might be a bombed mosque or a gunned-down pregnant woman or a slaughtered wedding party, but it will certainly be something. And, in the scales of history, it makes no difference to the justice of the cause and the need for victory."

How many have the "resistance" killed?

Iraqi government estimates

• Iraq's Health Minister, Ali al-Shemari, claims 150,000 Iraqis have been killed by the "resistance" as at Nov 2006. But the source is suspect. Al-Shemari is an ally of Muqtada al-Sadr, whose death squads have probably killed thousands.

• Iraqi government estimate, released Jan 2008 estimates 150,000 Iraqi dead from March 2003 to June 2006.
  • It estimates 75,000 dead in Baghdad alone.
  • I am sure that the jihad "resistance" has killed tens of thousands since 2003. But there are still the same problems with this survey:
    1. Based on interviews, not death certs.
    2. Not an actual count of the dead, but an estimate based on extrapolation.
    3. Confuses combatants and non-combatants.
    4. Confuses killings by the "resistance" with killings by the allies.

The vast majority of killings of civilians in Iraq are by the resistance

• The Iraqi fascist "resistance"
• What is the Iraqi resistance?

• In the Northern Ireland conflict, when the results were all added up after 30 years, 90 percent of all civilians who were killed were killed by the paramilitaries. Only 10 percent were killed by the British army and security forces. The reason why is that western armies are restrained. Their opponents usually target civilians (e.g. NI loyalists) or civilian areas (e.g. NI republicans).

• Iraq I'm sure is the same. Since liberation in Apr 2003, probably 80 or 90 percent of the civilians who have died were killed by the jihad.
• Dan Hallagan
  • The Civilian Casualty Fable - The vast majority (over 80 percent) of civilian killings since the liberation of Iraq have been by the "resistance", not by the allies.

thereligionofpeace.com makes the point: Iraqi civilians killed (all deliberately) in 2006 by the Iraqi resistance: 16,791. Iraqi civilians killed (all accidentally) in 2006 by Americans: 225. In other words, the incredibly careful and skilled Americans have hardly killed anyone innocent since 2003, and those that have died have all been killed accidentally while engaged in street warfare with jihadis. Almost all the deaths in Iraq are at the hands of the resistance, not at the hands of the Americans. As Glen Reinsford says: "Iraqis aren't dying from war. They are being murdered by Islamic terrorists."

How many lives were saved by the Iraq war?

Lives saved by the Iraq War: This count is based on Saddam's average rate of killing when he was in power.

• The above count is from blogoram.com, which calls it the "NoBody Count" and explains the methodology.
  • Main post here or here.
  • Followup here or here.
  • Clock code from here.

• Dan Hallagan
  • Fuzzy Moral Math (and more) does a similar "NoBody Count".

• A Lifesaving War: The death toll in Iraq would have been vastly higher over the last year if Saddam had remained in power, by Gerard Alexander, 29 Mar 2004. "In 1979, when Saddam became president, violence in Iraq escalated dramatically."

Child mortality rates

• Under-5 mortality in Iraq fell by 62% between 1997 and 2006 according to UNICEF figures
• That means that sanctions - or, more likely, the way Saddam manipulated sanctions - really were killing large numbers of Iraqis.
• (Note I was never in favour of Iraqi sanctions. I was in favour of attacking Saddam.)

• This means that an extra 70,000 lives a year are being saved because Saddam and sanctions are gone.

1 million lives saved?

Even harder to calculate, history may judge that the Iraq War was the start of a process of reform of the Middle East that averted a full war with nuclear-armed Islamism. The Iraq War may have saved millions of lives.

The tragedy of humanity is that if we look through history, we can see many cases where war would have saved millions of lives. Who can not regret that the Allies did not go to war against Germany in 1933, for example? There is every reason to believe that the Iraq War is another such example - a war that has already saved lives, and will save more still.

Return to Iraq.