"Iraqi security forces cracked down on traffic in Baghdad neighborhoods Friday, stopping even vehicles carrying bodies of some of the 51 people killed by a car bomb the day before at a Shiite Muslim funeral." Yahoonews.
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I have lost track of the total in the butcher's bill in Iraq over the last few weeks. We need to keep a running total as a record of the aftermath of the political triumph that we have wrought in that country. Someone please work it out. BTW, IMO the bill should be sent to Cheney and the neocons like, Perle, Michael Rubin, Wolfowitz and their acolytes such as Jack Kean, Rice, Hadley and the lovely Megan O'Sullivan. pl
http://original.antiwar.com/author/updates
It happens almost daily but the MSM only reports the biggest slaughters.
Posted by: Racan | 28 January 2011 at 10:13 AM
I don't understand this post. Didn't Mr Obama assure us on Tuesday that the level of violence in Iraq is down? Would he lie to the American people?
Posted by: Phil Giraldi | 28 January 2011 at 10:40 AM
But six people died in Tucson. Six. Oh, the horror of it. A national trauma that we will not soon recover from, and that requires that we pass a whole bunch of new laws to assure that it naver happens again.
Posted by: Bill H. | 28 January 2011 at 11:02 AM
and for Mammonite-Americans --
http://costofwar.com/en/
Posted by: rjj | 28 January 2011 at 11:04 AM
I hope whoever counts it up compares it to the numbers Saddam racked up during his reign of terror and identifies the perpetrators.
The press likes to depersonalize the perps who are our enemies when they should be very clear who is behind these killings and let us decide who is right/wrong. We (rightly) ID the perp if a US Soldier kills a civilian. Not pinning civilian deaths on the ones who made and detonated the bomb gives them a pass for craven brutality.
Like the report in December that over 30,000 Mexicans had been killed since the government started cracking down on drug families. Who killed them? Sounds like the government. Also sounds like there hadn't been killings before that.
Journalistic malpractice.
Posted by: Charles | 28 January 2011 at 11:53 AM
Charles
Give me some verifiable numbers on how many Iraqis the Baath government killed as opposed to how many died in the Iran-Iraq War. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 28 January 2011 at 11:59 AM
How many bombs need to go off before the Iraqi government "asks" us to stay?
Alternatively, I guess we want them to negotiate with terrorists, i.e., allow the Sunnis back into power, and then the bombing will stop?
Posted by: Matthew | 28 January 2011 at 12:07 PM
its design isn't as catchy, but warnewstoday.blogspot.com
is imo a little more thorough than antiwar.com in reporting casualities in both wars.
Posted by: Ken Hoop | 28 January 2011 at 12:10 PM
Since the US supported Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war, and before, it's more than a little disingenuous for Iraq War apologists to attack Saddam's brutality during said time period by way of making their case.
Only non-interventionism of the Buchanan variety comes off without a mark.
Posted by: Ken Hoop | 28 January 2011 at 12:14 PM
If you're going to send a bill, don't forget Tony Blair. He was indispensible to the whole operation and may have made up his mind that Iraq needed to be invaded even before Bush and Cheney did.
Posted by: Carl O. | 28 January 2011 at 01:53 PM
Here's something with the Figures for under Saddam:
http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_deathsundersaddamhussein42503.html
Posted by: Adam L Silverman | 28 January 2011 at 02:23 PM
I hope some of the butcher's bill will also be sent to James Baker and 5 Supreme Court Justices who worked separately to get Cheney installed in the Old Naval Observatory (as well as Bush in the White House).
Baker especially knew very well who Cheney's friends and co-conspirators were, and Baker knew exactly what Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their neoconservative associates wanted.
Posted by: different clue | 28 January 2011 at 02:48 PM
Of course the numbers are hard to verify, but the number of mass graves we found in Iraq indicate the numbers were substantial. Using conservative estimates I am comfortable that we can attribute at least 50k during the Anfal Campaign, another 50k Kurds and 75k Shii after the Gulf War. We can't count the number who died from malnutrition and lack of medical care while the UN's graft for oil program was in place, so haven't even tried to count them.
Although the numbers are imprecise, we can be sure they aren't zero and should be included in any analysis of whether things are better or worse....
Posted by: Charles | 28 January 2011 at 02:50 PM
Adam
"500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran." Yes, well it was a national war wasn't it? A hell of a lot of people died in Lincoln's War as well. As for the Kurds, should Iraq have allowed Kurdistan to secede? Maybe that would have been a good idea that also would have had parallels.
As for "political science" as a discipline, you can defend all you want. I know you are an anthropologist and criminologist, but "political science" is such a fraud that it is indefensible. it professes to be a science like physics or chemistry with reproducible experiments and developing "rules" for human development? What crap! pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 28 January 2011 at 04:41 PM
Ken Hoop
or whatever you are... There was no relationship between the US Iraq between 1967 and the Iran-Iraq War.
You (it) are amazing. I un-ban you and you immediately begin to distort the truth once again. I asked for reliable data. adam Silverman sent me some. if you want to send me more, make sure it does not come from some Ziocon front. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 28 January 2011 at 04:53 PM
Charles,
Who's next on the list to invade to take out a brutal dictator? North Korea? I'm sure that regime has killed many of its citizens. Of course there is no link to them and 9-11 either. As to Condi's ' we can't wait for the evidence to be a mushroom cloud' threat, well they, unlike Iraq, have nukes.
The only analysis is what would actually improve American security. Virtually none of the neocon pre-war justifications for the war have turned out. The US certainly isn't any safer.
It wasn't worth a day of service from Bush's kids or Cheney's. It certainly isn't worth the life of any of mine.
Posted by: Fred | 28 January 2011 at 05:08 PM
Sir,
Those aren't my numbers. You asked if someone could find something pertinent and that was the one item I found that was the least squishy.
Posted by: Adam L Silverman | 28 January 2011 at 05:35 PM
Colonel: Seems these guys keep pretty good track on a daily basis.
http://icasualties.org/Iraq/IraqiDeaths.aspx
Posted by: Kim Viner | 30 January 2011 at 05:53 PM