Official: 150,000 Iraqis Killed Since 2003

Iraqi Health Minister Says Three Injured For Every Person Killed Since U.S.-Led Invasion

(CBS/AP)  Previous casualty figures provided by Iraq's Health Ministry, which are based on counts provided by hospitals and city morgues, have been much lower than al-Shemari's estimate. The ministry said earlier this year, for example, that 4,024 civilians deaths were reported for all of 2005.

But the government reportedly has barred the Health Ministry from releasing figures after they gained widespread international attention in July, when they showed that some 6,000 Iraqi civilians had died over the previous two months, or about 100 people a day amid spiraling sectarian violence.

The man who runs Baghdad's main morgue said Thursday that it received approximately 1,600 bodies in October. Dr. Abdul-Razzaq al-Obaidi said that figure did not include victims of sectarian violence who are taken to Baghdad's many hospitals and whose deaths are not officially added to the death totals.

Al-Shemari said Iraq needed at least 10 years to rebuild its infrastructure and the medical situation in the country was "gloomy." Medical supplies were lacking and sometimes took months to reach the country from abroad, he said.

The minister said that because of roadblocks, sick people could not get to hospitals.

No hospital has been built in Iraq since 1983, he said, adding that the country's 15,000 available hospital beds were well short of the 80,000 beds he said would be needed to handle the number of casualties.

Al-Shemari also noted that many Iraqi doctors had fled the country and that primary care and emergency medical services needed urgent assistance.

Al-Shemari is a controversial figure and some U.S. officials have complained that his ministry has diverted supplies to al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.

Last August U.S. troops arrested seven of his personal guards in a surprise pre-dawn raid on his office. The United States never explained the reason for the raid but Iraqi officials said Americans suspected the guards were part of a militia.

[feelfree1]

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.

[kailumego1]

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.

[ptw41]

Correction:

What we need to know is How many Iraq citizens have been killed BY suicide bombers?

[ptw41]

What we need is a reliable estimate of how many Iraq citizens have been killed suicide bombers.

[ptw41]

John Donne said it all:

SEND NOT TO KNOW
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS:
IT TOLLD FOR THEE.

[sflew2s]

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.

[burnedupinok]

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.

[bob_burd]

Excellent comments by uspatriot1. Obviously not looking to the left when direct focus is required to see the real situation.

Selah

[bob_burd]

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

[dualdragons]

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.

[heetseeker]

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..

[grumpas]

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!

[sflew2s]

"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.

[alphaa10-2009]

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.

[POLMARDDaniel]

Now, Iraqi People must learn to live together and manage their country correctly.

[shingles1]

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"?

[sflew2s]

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.

[bellal-2009]

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.

[radiob-2009]

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.

[sflew2s]

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!!!!