Wednesday, October 11, 2006

The Iraqi trail of Death


/ massacres: ongoing /



A new study published in the respected medical journal "Lancet", recounts and revises the death toll in post-invasion Iraq.

Its findings? Let's put it this way: If one were to line up carefully the corpses on a road, they would extend from Brussels to Marseille (or from Chicago to DC).

Or another way: given that the costs of this war run at 200 million dollars per day, that's about 400.000$ spent per dead Iraqi, putting an end to the notion that the Bush administration doesn't value Iraqi lives.

Yet another way: Since the invasion, the total number of Iraqi casualties is approximately equal to four 9/11 death tolls (that no Iraqi played a part in) for every state in the US.

Or if one made a pyramid out of the sculls of the dead, its height could be over 20 meters (and its base 40x40m).

Or even: the casualties in Iraq are about the same in number (but twice in proportion to the population) as the total casualties in France during WWII.

Or plainly:

Pre-invasion mortality rates were 5·5 per 1000 people per year (95% CI 4·3–7·1), compared with 13·3 per 1000 people per year (10·9–16·1) in the 40 months post-invasion. We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654,965 (392,979 –942,636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2·5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601 027 (426,369 – 793,663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How thankful the Iraqis must feel that we saved them!

Frank Partisan said...

Really good post, with very clear morbid visual analogies.

LeftyHenry said...

Good post but umm how'd you figure out that the bodies would go from DC to Chicago.

-LeftyHenry

talos said...

leftyhenry: At 1,5 m (that's 4' 11") per person, times 650.000, that's 975 km which is approximately the distance from Chicago to Washington DC (now that I think about it I'm not sure if that distance is as the bird flies or actual road distance). In the case of Marseilles to Brussels it's road distance I'm talking about.