November 4-10, 2004

loose canon

100,000 Iraqi Civilians Dead

by Bruce Schimmel

As I write this, the American presidential election is still undecided. But the results of the American-led occupation of Iraq are in, and the death toll among civilians is that of a holocaust. Regardless of who now occupies the White House, the ongoing death of innocents in Iraq demands an immediate overhaul of American policy.

In 18 months since Bush marked the end of active fighting by declaring the "mission accomplished," at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a direct result of the American-led occupation. The population of Iraq is about 25 million.

A new study—conducted by Johns Hopkins University and published in the British Lancet—also concludes that most of the casualities are women and children and that violence associated with the occupation is now Iraq's leading cause of death.

The 100,000 figure is more than six times the previous 15,000 estimated by the Web site www.iraqbodycount.org. That site's count is based on media reports, while the Hopkins study comes from field interviews of thousands of Iraqis.

At present, these are the only figures available. The U.S. government doesn't track the deaths of Iraqi civilians, as commander General Tommy Franks has stated, "We don't do body counts."

Not counting civilian deaths might be an effective strategy during a war, but ignoring them now is a prescription for civil insurrection.

Put into perspective, the loss to Iraq is staggering. If the U.S. were to suffer proportionally, some 1.12 million American civilians would be dead. To date, some 1,100 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq.

Iraqi civilians, dying at a rate of 5,500 a month, are experiencing a morality rate that is higher than has ever been suffered by American soldiers killed in action—except World War II, where an average of just over 6,600 American soldiers died a month. In Vietnam, by comparison, some 58,000 soldiers over the 90 months of the conflict died, a rate of 644 a month.

By any measure, the Iraqi people are experiencing a wholesale slaughter under our occupation at an unprecedented rate —higher than under Saddam before the first Gulf War. Saddam is charged with the death of 300,000 civilians (and, variously, up to one million civilian and soldiers) since he took power in 1979.

The first order of business for the American president must be to acknowledge the human tragedy unfolding in Iraq and to end this slaughter. It is a humanitarian imperative, because there is nothing more morally repugnant or criminally culpable than to cause—and then ignore—the death of innocents.