New study on war-related deaths in Iraq during the period of US invasion and occupation, from 2003 to 2011.
This figure of 461,000 is close to the number I have used in the past (500,000; see below), and which is less than but not inconsistent with the figure produced by Johns Hopkins (published in the Lancet journal) in 2006. (One author from Johns Hopkins who worked on the 2006 report contributed to this new study.)
Regardless of the precise figure, what was done to that country will always be a mark of disgrace on American history, as well as a sparkling example of how easy it is to manipulate an uneducated population.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24547256
. . .
Excerpt from my August 9, 2012, blog post:
As one man mentions in the documentary, "it used to be that one person was killed, now a hundred are killed." Despite the man providing a figurative ratio for purposes of illustration - one not to be taken literally - his point is valid. Over the years 2003 to 2011, the death toll was conceivably in the range of half a million. Before the invasion, Iraq's mortality rate was 5.5 per thousand. This makes for 148,500 deaths a year, owing to the normal range of factors, 2 percent of which were caused by "violence" (taken generally). Therefore the number of deaths due to violence in prewar Iraq was roughly 2,970 annually. Given the half-million figure for the 2003-11 period, the average comes to over 55,000 per year. In other words, the rate of deaths due to violence increased by 1,800 percent from pre-invasion levels."[1]
[1] The Lancet-Johns Hopkins report arrived at a death toll figure of 650,000 in 2006. My use of 500,000 for 2003-11 hews close to this figure while at the same time falling between two respected but vastly differing studies: The British firm Opinion Research Business (ORB) conducted surveys indicating 1 million Iraqi deaths, while the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) reports 100,000. The IBC number, based on media reports, is in all likelihood low.
Sources:
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3962969.stm
Johns Hopkins: http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html
Hannah Fischer, "Iraq Casualties: U.S. Military Forces and Iraqi Civilians, Police, and Security Forces" (R40824), Congressional Research Service, October 7, 2010. PDF download: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R40824.pdf
