How many people have died in Irag since Saddam Hussein stopped being in power?

[Oneeyedvic]

Since Saddam went into hiding, how many people have died in Irag, and can this be broken down into Number of coalition troops; number of Iraqi innocents (killed by car bombs etc) and number of Iragi "bad people" ie terrrorists. I am just curious as to how many this compares to killed under the brutal dictator.

[WaldoMcFroog]

I don't believe that I have seen stats on the number of Iraqis killed - as in the Vietnam war, where 58,000 US soldiers are known to have died but estimates of Vietnamese casualties, including civilians range between 2-4 million depending on whose doing the counting - it's possible to get an exact breakdown for Allied Troops, but less simple for the Iraqies. As of 7th September, there were 1,000 American dead.

[Quizmonster]

It's obviously quite a wild guess, but when newspapers try to put a figure on Iraqi casualties, they generally opt for about 10,000.

[Oneeyedvic]

Appreciate the kurd situation etc. Really was curious as to the number of people killed in the year before we went to war. We were told there were many reasons for going to war - obviously wmd is false. Just curious as to how many people were killed just before the invasion in comparison to how many in the same period after.

[EliPledge]

Don't appreciate the Kurd situation. As far as I was aware the Kurds were caught in a gas crossfire between Iraq (our friens then, our enemies now) and Iran (enemies then, friends now). Do peope really believe US/Uk went to war for the Kurds - 15 years late??? And who says saddam massacred all these people - might be Coalition propaganda - heard it before haven't we? Kuwaiti babies pulled from incubators, Japanese ate my gall bladder, lamp shades, IRA just a "few bad men" etc. etc.

[EliPledge]

Before the liberals blow a gasket: "However, recently Stephen Pelletiere wrote in the New York Times that Iran, not Iraq, gassed the Kurds of Halabja. This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target. And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time. [Pelletiere, "A War Crime, or an Act of War?" The New York Times, January 31, 2003]

[Oneeyedvic]

When I said I apprecisted the Kurd situation, I was not trying to open up a new can of words - but thanks for the info. I suppose the real question is that if you take the last 3 years on its own, is the world a safer place without Saddam? I am not convinced.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Although plenty of people (both here and in society in general) were happy to use the disengenous arguement that anyone anti-war was therefore pro Saddam's gassing the Kurds and his human rights abuses, I don't think there was actually a great deal of dissent over the idea that Saddam was an evil f**k. So, purely in those terms, I'm sure that Iraq in the long term will be safer that it was.

Is the world any safer? Well, it was always highly debatable whether Saddam was a threat to the world at large (for which read the US and it's allies) anyway. Now that the balance of opinion seems to be that WMD didn't exist (damn those 'intelligence errors', eh?) and that the 45 minutes claim referred to battlefield munitions etc. etc ad infinitum, that threat seems less and less impressive.

[Philtaz]

Whatever the figure is it pales into insignificance to the hundreds of thousands he had murdered, tortured, raped and mutilated.

[bernardo]

A figure quoted on the TV news a few days ago was "between 11,000 and 20,000" as the number of Iraqis killed. Saddam Hussein killed something like 1 or 2 million during his 24 years in power (depending on whether you count the 1 million or so Iraqis who died in the Iran-Iraq war). So Saddam's killing rate averaged out at about 80,000 p.a. compared with c. 7,000 p.a. since the Liberation.

[EliPledge]

Bernardo - where's the proof that saddam killed all these people? It strikes me as odd that saddam was the most brutal dictator ever/Iraqi people lived in terror etc. etc. - yet 18 months on we are still hearing of Saddam loyalist insurgents! Wonder how many loyalists Blair could muster to fight under his name if the boot was on the other foot.

[geedogg]

Go to www.iraqbodycount.net The number of dead Iraqis stand between approximately 13000 and 15000 so far.

[BuddyGC]

Iraq Body Count between 12,976 - 15,033 killed since military ation taken. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/

[bratranec]

 unfortunally at least 35000 Iraqis must have been killed in last two years

we all must realise that the military does not tell the real numbers because they believe that they are hidind important (unpleasant) informations

peace to all killed iraqis

stop using oil 

destroy all corporations instead

ave

[JaneSage]

I just came across an article today that an estimated 100,000 Iraqie civilians have been killed by airstrikes. Bush has been in power for four years. I wonder how many people Saddam had killed during his first four years.

[JaneSage]

I suspect the number of people Saddam killed are exaggerated to promote war in Iraq.

[jppasche]

According to a study by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore Maryland, and just published in the Lancet, the civilian death toll in Irak has reached 100 000 since March 2003. That is a rough average of 200 civilian deaths per day. 200 innocent deaths a day to promote freedom around the world?