Where does the number 600,000 Iraqi deaths come from?

Question

Here are the figures recently published by the University of California Press, "The State of the Middle East: An Atlas of Conflict and Resolution":

May, 2003: 554 deaths
Jun, 2003: 573 "
Jul, 2003: 633 "
Aug, 2003: 781 "
Sep, 2003: 543 "
Oct, 2003: 485 "
Nov, 2003: 460 "
Dec, 2003: 524 "
Jan, 2004: 562 "
Feb, 2004: 580 "
Mar, 2004: 953 "
Apr, 2004: 1227 "
May, 2004: 612 "
Jun, 2004: 829 "
Jul, 2004: 746 "
Aug, 2004: 812 "
Sep, 2004: 893 "
Oct, 2004: 894 "
Nov, 2004: 1490 "
Dec, 2004: 882 "
Jan, 2005: 993 "
Feb, 2005: 1148 "
Mar, 2005: 734 "
Apr, 2005: 955 "
May, 2005: 1181 "
Jun, 2005: 1188 "
Jul, 2005: 1393 "
Aug, 2005: 2078 "
Sep, 2005: 1211 "
Oct, 2005: 1100 "
Nov, 2005: 1192 "
Dec, 2005: 916 "
Jan, 2006: 613 " (estimated)
Feb, 2006: 524 " (estimated)

I get 30,259 by the end of Feb, 2006.

Why is it, do you think, liberals are motivated to inflate these numbers?

(Currently, the Brookings Institute estimates the total number of Iraqi civilian casualties related to the war at 54,000 by the end of 2006.)

Out of these 54,000, how many deaths were caused by Muslim "freedom fighters" who aren't even Iraqis but traveled to Iraq with the sole intention of murdering civilians?

If you think about it, the US and allies have fought an impressive and extremely merciful war. It really makes the America-haters look silly.

Thank you, Vaugn, you give me hope.

The number comes from liberals at this website, liberal (and democrat) web logs, democrats in Congress (believe it or not), and media "estimations".

And if you think 30,000 is too many, you should be thanking every man and woman in an American uniform for putting a stop to it, considering at least 2/3 of these casualties were at the hands of terrorists.

John C: I took your advice and found nothing but liberal web logs. Can you provide an actual study by Johns Hopkins University? Since the U of C uses actual numbers instead of guesses, I have to go with the facts, not the emotional outbursts.

Fox News Watcher: when it says "sample" of 2000 households, it's an estimate. The U of C counted actual casualties.

Thanks for the source, it confirmed my hunch. Liberals go around Iraq asking households in the worst neighborhoods and try to make those representitive of the entire country, as they do in election poles.

Iraq is diverse enough that no sample is representitive of the country.

John R: do you know the difference between an "estimate" and an actual body count?

And how in the world do epidemiologists make a credible estimate? Wouldn't you rather have information from the medical examiners who write the death certificates?

Answer 1

its 655000 let me get u the info

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Answer 2

Nobody really knows exactly how many Iraqis have died since 2003 - all the reports are estimates. IBC seems to have a fairly solid estimate of verifiable reported deaths, that number is 62,613 today. Other estimates range higher and lower. Where did you hear 600,000?

Answer 3

Inflation :)

oh wait, when it is over-inflated figures not prices, it would be exaggeration by our media to make the governments in support of Bush as well as our own government look heartless and cold.

Answer 4

I do not know where that figure came from. It does not pass sanity checks. Your numbers are more sensible, and agree with estimates I have seen elsewhere.

Answer 5

The majority of casualties and deaths do not get reported. Do you honestly think that post war Iraq has the capability of tracking such statistics. The 600,000 figure cam from several organisation who interviewed families who had lost people in Iraq and these families reported no official contact with any government bodies and no medical care. Thus they had lost people in the war and simply buried them. Whole families of people. When these results were extrapolated the figure came to around 600,000 unreported deaths in Iraq!

Your figure of 30,259 is ridiculously low for a 3 year war with suicide bombings every day. Think about it. The figure of 600,000 is propably inflated and maybe settling on a figure of around 300,000 might be better to call it evens. Either way 30,000, 300,000 or 600,000 - that is a hell of a lot of innocent lives too many!

Answer 6

I'm a liberal, but I also had only heard somewhere around 30,000 -- who said 600,000? Clearly it's not all liberals.

In any case, 30,000 is still ten times what we lost in 9/11. It's too much without anyone inflating anything.

Answer 7

They pulled the number out of the sky. I think it grows every time they talk about the war, actually.

They are opposed to the war. They do not understand the seriousness of terrorism as a world threat.

They think the ends justify the means.

Answer 8

Look this up on any search engine:

johns hopkins iraqi death study

Answer 9

To try and make the troops and our government to look like monsters. Liberals tend to do stuff like this a lot. Best to ignore some of what they say (and criticize the rest!).

Answer 10

I think it comes from the Liberal's butts. Just like most of the air they expend because they are always talking out their...