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xchrom

(108,903 posts) Fri Oct 18, 2013, 08:32 AM Oct 2013

The Iraq War and Its Side Effects Killed Half a Million Iraqis

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/the-iraq-war-and-its-side-effects-killed-half-a-million-iraqis/280607/

A man cries during a funeral for a relative killed in a bomb attack in northern Baghdad's Shaab district. (Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters)

Estimating casualties of war is a difficult science. Exact counts are nearly impossible to achieve, especially in areas where violent conflict continues long after the last of foreign troops have withdrawn. Determining a death toll for Iraqi civilians during the eight-year U.S.-led occupation has proven especially challenging. Multiple attempts by different organizations have covered only a few years of the war, and the resulting tallies range from as low as just over 100,000 to as high as 600,000.

The latest estimates, detailed in a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, come from an investigation into the total number of Iraqi deaths between 2003 and 2011 by the University of Washington Department of Global Health. Nearly 40 percent of deaths in Iraq that occurred in that time period were a result of the U.S. conflict, researchers say, putting the death toll at about 461,000.

Researchers visited 2,000 randomly selected homes throughout the Middle Eastern country. They asked adults to recount births and deaths within their immediate and extended family since 2001. Through this canvassing, the researchers estimated 405,000 deaths could be attributed to the war through mid-2011. They made up the remaining several thousands in their final number by estimating mortality rates for about 2 million people who fled the country during the conflict.

Researchers say 60 percent of the 461,000 deaths are directly attributed to violence, such as gunshots (62 percent), car bombs (12 percent), and other explosions (9 percent). Nonviolent deaths were attributed to health problems stemming from crippled health care, clean water, nutrition, and transportation systems. For every three people killed by violence, two died as a result of crumbling infrastructure that supports these areas, according to the study.

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The Iraq War and Its Side Effects Killed Half a Million Iraqis (Original Post) xchrom Oct 2013 OP

The architects of the Outrage warrant46 Oct 2013 #1

Bush, Cheney et al should be locked up for the rest of their lives malaise Oct 2013 #2

+1 xchrom Oct 2013 #3

Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime G_j Oct 2013 #4

warrant46

(2,205 posts)

1. The architects of the Outrage

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Fri Oct 18, 2013, 08:42 AM

Oct 2013

malaise

(269,054 posts)

2. Bush, Cheney et al should be locked up for the rest of their lives

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Fri Oct 18, 2013, 08:44 AM

Oct 2013

It was genocide for oil.

xchrom

(108,903 posts)

3. +1

Reply to malaise (Reply #2)

Fri Oct 18, 2013, 08:53 AM

Oct 2013

& they dragged the rest of us -- many kicking & screaming -- along with them.

it really is a shame.

G_j

(40,367 posts)

4. Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime

Reply to xchrom (Original post)

Fri Oct 18, 2013, 09:09 AM

Oct 2013

Last edited Fri Oct 18, 2013, 09:43 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml

Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 09 November 2004

Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote: "No political or economic situation can justify" the crime of aggression. He also said: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

Between 10,000 and 15,000 U.S. troops with warplanes and artillery have begun to invade the Iraqi city of Fallujah. To "soften up" the rebels, American forces dropped five 500-pound bombs on "insurgent targets." The Americans destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of town. They stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.
..more...
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Statement by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals

August 12, 1945
on War Trials Agreement; August 12, 1945

There are some things I would like to say, particularly to the American people, about the agreement we have just signed.
For the first time, four of the most powerful nations have agreed not only upon the principles of liability for war crimes of persecution, but also upon the principle of individual responsibility for the crime of attacking the international peace.

Repeatedly, nations have united in abstract declarations that the launching of aggressive war is illegal. They have condemned it by treaty. But now we have the concrete application of these abstractions in a way which ought to make clear to the world that those who lead their nations into aggressive war face individual accountability for such acts.
<snip>

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which
their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the
war, but that they started it. And we must not allow
ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war,
for our position is that no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced
and condemned as an instrument of policy."
<snip>

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
Chief U.S. Prosecutor
at the Nuremberg Tribunals
August 12, 1945

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