Death and Casualties in Iraq – Thank God Somebody Is Doing the Math

Let’s do a little mid-summer review:

1758American troops dead in Iraq
93UK troops dead in Iraq
101‘Other’ coalition troops dead in Iraq
1963Coalition dead in Iraq (as of July 12th)

13438 Coalition wounded

25000Iraqi civilian dead
42500Iraqi civilian wounded

The UK based organization Iraqi Body Count has just released a 28-page dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq 2003- 2005, and it makes for chilling reading. Here are some highlights:

-37% of all non-combatant deaths were caused by US led coalition forces.
-9% deaths were caused by insurgents
-10% deaths were children
-30% civilian deaths occurred during the ‘invasion phase’, post invasion civilian deaths were twice as high in year two as year one.
-43% deaths occurred in Baghdad
-Most adults killed left orphaned children
-in Tikrit one in every 90 people has been killed.

Professor John Sloboda, one of the authors of the report, said:

“The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq. On average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003. Our research shows that no sector of Iraqi society has escaped….it remains a matter of gravest concern that, nearly two and a half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed.”

To re-phrase the Downing Street memo: “How will the policy ever fix these facts?”