How many Iraqi citizens would have been killed if there was no war?

Question

considering Saddam was still in power. would it be in the hundreds of thousands?

Answer 1

The death rate in Iraq prior to the war was approximately 94,000 people a year. There have been 645,000 deaths since the begining of the war. if you do the math march 2003 to march 2007 is around 376,000 for the last 4 years showing a difference of 269,000 so there is a substantial rise. However, you cannot account for deaths since there are no projections as to what saddam would have done as far as further genocide. or sectartian violence between shia, sunni, and kurds

Answer 2

Before it handed over power to the Iraqis, the CPA and various human rights organizations worked together to try to put together some kind of estimate of how many people had died violently at the hands of the Revolutionary Guard, the Iraqi police and others at the command and/or behest of the Saddam government.

They came up with a number between 100,000 and 250,000 over a period of 20 years. Some of this was based on real evidence (mass graves) but most on anecdotal evidence because many official records were looted or destroyed shortly after the US invasion.

The dead cannot tell us anything, so there is only hard evidence and records to rely on. If neither evidence nor records survives, then one can only rely on the word of living witnesses. And, with all due respect to any living witness of the kinds of atrocities Saddam committed against the Iraqi people, they are not very reliable when you're trying to get a handle on the extent of the genocide.

War must be viewed in a different way than government-sanctioned mass murder. It is possible that more Iraqi civilians have died violently since the US invasion than under 20 years of Saddam's terror, but improbable. It is estimated that a couple thousand at least died in US bomb attacks, then after a brief lull the Sunni insurgency started killing on average 60 to 70 a day, and since the bombing of the mosque at Samarra and the counter-insurgency by Shia militias, the number has increased slightly.

Do the math. 1400 days of non-stop killing; average of, say, 70 civilians a day in different parts of the country - that's nearly 100,000 civilian deaths in a four year period. Over 20 years, that would be half a million dead. But I reiterate - that is war. War always creates extreme casualty numbers.

Something that you may find of interest is the estimated death toll as a result of sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War - 2 million civilians, many of them if not most of them children - died of starvation and disease in 10 years.

If War is Hell, then what are sanctions?

PS: You should also remember that whatever Saddam did after 1992, he could only do it in select parts of the country, because the south and the Kurdish sector were both protected by US and UK overflights.

Answer 3

Maybe a few hundreds -- Saddam was pretty much done with his genocides by the time we invaded. And it was Bush 1 that encouraged the Shia to revolt after the first Gulf War and then abandoned them to be killed by Saddam. Also, Saddam was our ally in the 1980's when most of the killings were done due to the fact that he was at war with Iran. Look it up.

Answer 4

Hundreds of thousands for sure and maybe even as many as millions. Saddam didn't care about his people as long as he had a comfortable place to plant his butt.

Answer 5

The first rate Pentagon sort (which purely incorporates people who die immediately from American weapons or bombs) is one hundred twenty,000. The UN sort (which incorporates anybody that has died as an instantaneous results of the invasion and occupation) is around a million.2 million. There weren't terrorists in Iraq till we unsecured the borders. Saddam Hussein did not like extremist, fundamentalist Muslims. it quite is arguable if there are any terrorists there now. most of the warring parties there are in simple terms people scuffling with for the liberty of their us of a...scuffling with off their oppressive occupiers...style of like the youngsters in pink dawn did. honestly everyone seen them heroes, yet people in Iraq doing the comparable element are referred to as terrorists.

Answer 6

Thousands were killed all the time by the insurgents and Saddam had several killed by his own hands and his followers!!

Answer 7

I don't see why not. He killed thousands in the past. Add all the people up that he killed or caused the death of and ya hundreds of thousands is about right.

Answer 8

Probably about the same number as any other country during times of peace ........ from car accidents, murders etc.

Had we not invaded their country, not only would hundreds of thousands of people still be alive, but the millions that fled their home land would still be there living productive lives caring for their families.

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Answer 9

He may kill thousands., but what bother me is that he will do a lot of things to harm us here. Do you think he will ask for nuke power like N Korea and Iran now?

Answer 10

Today they're being offed at about 100 a DAY.