VIENNA, Austria, Nov. 9, 2006
Official: 150,000 Iraqis Killed Since 2003
Iraqi Health Minister Says Three Injured For Every Person Killed Since U.S.-Led Invasion
-
-
Iraqi fire fighters remove debris following an explosion in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
-
An injured Iraqi is transferred to the Kindi hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
-
Injured Iraqis wait for treatment at the Kindi hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
-
Iraqis clean the scene following an explosion in central Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006. Bomb attacks on markets in predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad killed at last 16 people, among 38 Iraqis killed or found dead across the country on Thursday in the latest outbreak of sectarian violence. (AP)
-
-
Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
For every person killed about three have been wounded in violence since the war started in March 2003, Iraq's Health Minister Ali al-Shemari told reporters in Vienna.
The 150,000 — three times more than other estimates — was the first overall casualty figure for the war to be released by the Iraqi government, which took office on May 20.
Al-Shemari did not explain how he arrived at the figure or say whether that number included Iraqi soldiers and police, as well as civilians. Also unclear was if it included Iraqis killed in sectarian violence or only in insurgent attacks. But he said the count was of "innocent" victims, suggesting civilians only.
In October, the British medical journal The Lancet published a controversial study contending nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war — a far higher death toll than other estimates. The study, which was dismissed by President Bush and other U.S. officials as not credible, was based on interviews of households and not a body count.
Al-Shemari disputed that figure on Thursday.
"Since three and a half years, since the change of the Saddam regime, some people say we have 600,000 are killed. This is an exaggerated number. I think 150 is OK," he said.
Other estimates, largely based on body counts or media reports, have held that about 50,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the conflict.
A private group called Iraqi Body Count says it has recorded between 46,863 and 51,698 Iraqi civilians killed by military intervention in Iraq. The group says that includes civilian deaths due to U.S.-led military action as well as insurgents and other violence.
Al-Shemari, a Shiite ally of anti-U.S. radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr whose militia has been blamed for much of the sectarian violence, focused on insurgent attacks, saying they were exhausting his ministry's finances and that hospitals needed aid.
"We need help, we need donations," he said.
Accurate figures on the number of people who have died in the Iraq conflict have long been the subject of debate. Police and hospitals often give widely conflicting figures of those killed in major bombings.
In addition, death figures are reported through multiple channels by government agencies that function with varying efficiency.
In other Iraq news:
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Add a Comment See all 37 Comments
- Why would CBS present the unsubstantiated words of an Iraqi puppet official as news?
The number of innocent Iraqis killed so far has been most reliably estimated at around 655,000. More than 200,000 of those are attributed directly to U.S. military killings.
Of course, every single excess violent death in Iraq since the illegal 2003 invasion is the responsibility of the Bush regime and their collaborators. Credible estimates by a scientific study place the Bush Butchers' bill as high as nearly one million people.
The Bush regime have possibly killed more Iraqis in just a few short years, than Saddam was able to accomplish over decades. I look forward to the day when the Bush Butchers and their collaborators are brought to justice.
Many convicted Nazis were hung as punishment for doing very similar acts to what the Bush fascists have done. - Reply to this comment
- Ozilot, I like your spirit, you are absolutely correct pointing out the hypocrisy of the U.S. government.
Our government has an selective political agenda, they choose those countries, in which the American capitalists have to most go gain.
They don't legitimately seek out to democratized countries under authoritarian rule for the sake of creating democracy, but for self-aggrandizement. - Reply to this comment
Correction:
What we need to know is How many Iraq citizens have been killed BY suicide bombers?- Reply to this comment
What we need is a reliable estimate of how many Iraq citizens have been killed suicide bombers.- Reply to this comment
John Donne said it all:
SEND NOT TO KNOW
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS:
IT TOLLD FOR THEE.- Reply to this comment
- If not us, who, if not now, when, if not there where? I have no problem telling the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and these people are definitely on the side of wrong and evil; war is wrong, and killing is wrong, but sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to do some good work in this world. You have to begin somewhere and Iraq and Afganistan are just as good a plase as any to begin, so please excuse me if I allow my President a little lattitude in getting his hands dirty to bring some evil doers to their maker.
- Reply to this comment
- Thank God for the American soldiers. If these crasy religious fanatics were left to themselves they would have half the population of Iraq killed by know. Of course if we did not jump into their countries problem their may not be a large death toll. At least they could not be blaming America.
- Reply to this comment
- Excellent comments by uspatriot1. Obviously not looking to the left when direct focus is required to see the real situation.
Selah - Reply to this comment
- How many would have Saddam killed by now? Oh.....but that's an internal matter for Iraqis to worry about.
How much terrorism, murder, rape and kidnapping would his Baath Party and militias have perpetrated by now? In Iraq and around the world? Oh....but that's all just hypothetical.
Like the number 150,000. Pull all the soldiers out of the cities and put them safely away in their bases for two weeks and watch the Iraqis eat themselves. Their real mentality and violent culture would be immediately exposed for what it is.
These violent muslims, who were held for decades under the iron fist of Saddam, have only reverted to their true nature once the iron fist was lifted. Saddam is gone, and it's not up to coalition forces to teach violent muslims how to act like human beings. Withdraw for a while and watch them beg for the coalition forces to return.
Selah - Reply to this comment
- Just 2 comments then I'm gone.
Please do not compare Iraq to Viet Nam, Viet Nam was a political struggle between the US and China as displayed of military tatics. It was a "war" to generate the economy, it worked at a very high price.
There is no super-power backing the insurgents, no governments even acknowledge support. This is only mirroring Viet Nam because we are fighting by the same political rules we did back then. Also noteworthy, as more foreign fighters enter Iraq for this epic battle, fewer are alive to bring the fight to the US. Consider that part of the failed military stratagy.
I am saddened by the 150,000 deaths over 3 years. A very high number for a country enduring both a national & civil war. On the bright side, it's about half the number that died each year under the previous government. Please always keep in mind, the "invasion of Iraq" was about protecting the US and her allies from a dictator who used WMD on his own people to maitain control. He used death squads to inflict terror, problably the same ones now roaming the streets today. - Reply to this comment
- What a tragedy that we ourselves have not been tracking the numbers of dead Iraqi's...
Afterall these people are dying in a country we are occupying for goodness sake... In Iraq we have metrics for everything... we have number crunchers & excel spreadsheets & data collection systems by the score... they enable us to calcultate, compare and project against every conceivable measure....
Yet we don't know (or wont say what we know) about the number of Iraqi's being slaughtered in this war?... the irony & contradiction is surely a bitter one... is it not the Iraqi people who we are supposed to be protecting? How do we know whether we are achieving this objective? Yet in response to research reports as to the numbers of Iraqi killed in the war the administration can only say that they are "wide of the mark"... so what is "the mark"?
The fact is that we don't count (or claim not to count) Iraqi dead because the numbers would be closer to "the mark" than we would like to admit...
The figures are not collated (or published) by the administration because they would beg the question... is this all worth it?
Yet deceit is a double edged sword... the administrations failure to provide... even proxy numbers of Iraqi dead implies that in reality the life of an Iraqi is not worth that much to America... perhaps in the same way that the life of a Palestinian seems to be worth nothing either...
The guilt of this administration is unique in its enormity.. - Reply to this comment
- There always seems to have to be one nut case in the bunch and uspatriot1 is it! Someone who has spent far to much of their time listening to Bush propaganda and not enough using his brain or checking out facts! If we start invading every country who has a dictator, gasses people, tortures them and etc! We are going to be at war for the next 1000 years and still not solve the problem! Don't you think it's time for people like you to get some common sense uspatriot1? Which doesn't count the fact we qualify for some of those reasons! Do you propose the rest of the world take us out? Bush now torture's people and is our version of a dictator!
- Reply to this comment
- "Our troops belong in Iraq, maybe not in Bagdad, but in a safe area of Iraq so they can remain in a pre-deployed state to project power in the region."
Fine. But what will you say when the Iraqi government asks us to leave. "No"?
But of course! It worked in Cuba, and in Japan. we just cut off a chunk of land that is defensible and call it "Liberty Base" and stay put, FOREVER! It's just what they need to keep them from getting out of hand, and it gives us strategic locality in the region. - Reply to this comment
- uspatriot1 said "... 150,000 Iraqis dead, 3,000 US dead, 50:1, nothing like Viet Nam... Yep, Rumsfeld should have been fired... No, wait, those numbers are pretty good! Rummy, Come Back!!!!
----
If the weekly body bag count at Dover AFB is your argument for a successful policy, then not invading Iraq in the first place-- a country which originally posed no WMD or al Qaeda threat whatsoever-- comes out as a really brilliant strategy.
And since the Bush2 invasion of Iraq actually made it a showpiece of Islamic insurgent success-- an Iraq which NOW is an al Qaeda training base for urban warfare against the best the world's only superpower can muster-- the Bush2 prescription for Iraq becomes a policy for only military imbeciles. - Reply to this comment
- Now, Iraqi People must learn to live together and manage their country correctly.
- Reply to this comment
- The terrain is different and the casualty figures may not match, but what's similar is the quagmire aspect of it. The idea that there are no good options here. Withdrawing too early will produce a bloodbath. NOT withdrawing will produce a bloodbath. We screwed the pooch.
"Our troops belong in Iraq, maybe not in Bagdad, but in a safe area of Iraq so they can remain in a pre-deployed state to project power in the region."
Fine. But what will you say when the Iraqi government asks us to leave. "No"? - Reply to this comment
- Any Dictator who gases his own people like Saddam did to the Kurds deserves to have his country yanked out from under him, and any misguided soul who follows him, and tries to defend that leader deserves the same fate. I could care less about WMDs or whatever excuse got us into this war, all I care about is that the evil doer is done doing evil, and his evil cronies are next. Our troops belong in Iraq, maybe not in Bagdad, but in a safe area of Iraq so they can remain in a pre-deployed state to project power in the region. Let the Iraqis take care of the insurgents with the help of UN troops in the cities. Any of you who think President Bush is the bad guy is just as misguided as the insurgents and the militant islamists.
- Reply to this comment
- kchafey, I know nothing of what the Iraqi's will create. I met this Iraqi-American last year who had fled Iraq at 14 when Saddam killed his dad. The guy had been living on his own since 14. He was going back after 12yrs. and was frightened to enter the country as he suspected he would be killed by Saddam's cronies. He said the exact same thing that we've been told. He was totally grateful to America for freeing Iraq from Saddam and thought Americans would be greeted as liberaters.
- Reply to this comment
- Everyone here needs to go to the nearest library and check out two books AGAINST ALL ENEMIES and THE PRICE OF LOYALTY.Read them carefully as they were both written by republicans and have never been rebuked.Then download the NIE report and the 1999 War games for Iraq.After reading all of this see if you still see Iraq in the same light.I have never advocated Cut and Run or Stay the Course because they are equally bad policies.A new approach is needed to unravel this spider web we are entangled in.I do not have the answer.I do beleive that we need an Eisenhower in the oval office one that understands military and diplomacy.
- Reply to this comment
- I have nothing to say, you guys are military geniuses! What was I thinking trying to compare wits with the likes of you... 150,000 Iraqis dead, 3,000 US dead, 50:1, nothing like Viet Nam... Yep, Rumsfeld should have been fired... No, wait, those numbers are pretty good! Rummy, Come Back!!!!
- Reply to this comment
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
