Pentagon: 26,000 Iraqi casualties

[ECH1969]

WASHINGTON - In a rare look at how the Defense Department tracks non-U.S. casualties in the war in Iraq, the Pentagon is estimating that 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded by insurgents since Jan. 1, 2004.

The Pentagon, in response to questions from congressional staffers, provided daily casualty estimates _ those killed and wounded _ over six time periods, the most recent period ending Sept. 16 of this year. Applying those daily estimates to the number of days in each period results in nearly 26,000, a total not included in the Pentagon report to Congress.

In the most recent period, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 16, an estimated 64 Iraqis became casualties each day, the report indicated. The rate increased in four of the last five periods.

26: Jan. 1-March 31, 2004.
30: April 1-June 28, 2004.
40: June 29-Nov. 26, 2004.
51: Nov. 27, 2004-Feb. 11, 2005.
49: Feb. 12-Aug. 28, 2005.
64: Aug. 29-Sept. 16, 2005.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/13031667.htm

[davidinalameda]

1. anyone else thinks this is low

just asking

[swag]

3. That's the number they're blaming on "insurgents."

[zbird]

4. Looks like that's the number killed by the "insurgents"...

not the "coalition". The number killed by the "coalition" is likely 5 to 10 times that amount.

[zann725]

14. Judging from past "down-sizing" of casualties, I'd say add a zero

...move the comma over one.

[jayctravis]

19. lowballing is apparently all the rage.

Hurricane victims...war victims...they don't give a fly regarding accuracy.

[Mr_Spock]

2. Interesting.

Republicans just love to murder people.

[wtmusic]

5. Wow, they're about 2,000 behind the US

Of course, we have the lead in technology

http://iraqbodycount.net/

[Endangered Specie]

6. Notice how it says "Killed or wounded BY INSURGENTS"

in other words, this isn't counting those that we have killed, either mistakenly or not, as well as the thousands that have just plain starved to death, or died from disease, or what have you.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Scientists: 100,000 Iraqis have died since war (Lancet Report)

Pentagon is undercounting civilian deaths by a wide margin in an effort to disinform the American people.

Scientists: 100,000 Iraqis have died since war
October 29, 2004 - 2:24PM

Deaths of Iraqis have soared to 100,000 above normal since the Iraq war, and many victims have been women and children who died violently, experts from the United States said.

Airstrikes by planes and helicopters by the US-led coalition have been big killers.

There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, though some estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 compared with 1,081 US military deaths.

"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland said in a report published on the internet by The Lancet medical journal.

"Violence accounted for most of the excess death and air strikes from (US-led) coalition forces accounted for the most violent deaths."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/29/1098992290312.html?oneclick=true

Study puts Iraqi toll at 100,000
Friday, October 29, 2004 Posted: 1:10 AM EDT (0510 GMT)

LONDON, England -- Public health experts have estimated that around 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the United States invaded Iraq in March last year.

In a survey published on the Web site of the Lancet medical journal on Friday, experts from the United States and Iraq also said the risk of death for Iraqi civilians was 2.5 times greater after the invasion.

There has been no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began 18 months ago, but some non-government estimates have ranged from 10,000 to 30,000.

The researchers surveyed nearly 1000 Iraqi households in September, asking how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002.

They then compared the death rate among those households during the 15 months before the invasion with the 18 months after it, getting death certificates where they could.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/iraq.deaths/

[Zodiak]

8. I would like to point out

That this figure of 100,000 is from a year ago. The article admits that there was a large margin of error, but as a year passes from the time of analysis, the number of dead did not go down.

In other words, if we weren't at 100,000 then, we probably are now.

[jseankil]

10. The methology of the 100,000 is very weak, wouldn't go around quoting that

number as it's easy to discredit it.

[IndianaGreen]

11. and you choose to believe the Pentagon?

I'll bet you also believe in the Tooth Fairy...

[tabasco]

13. Go ahead and post more reliable numbers.

We can compare methodologies.

Even the most conservative estimates of civilian KIA by US forces is 35,000. Is this acceptable??

I'm a soldier and I am ashamed.

[TheWatcher]

20. But you would go around quoting

Every talking point fed to you by the Pentagon wouldn't you.

Just leave. NO ONE is buying crap like this anymore.

[NickB79]

23. Actually it's not weak except to those who want to call it weak

The right-wingers have tried to claim it's weak by saying the study has a range of 8900-198,000, and then saying it could be just as likely that only 10,000 died as 100,000. However, that is not what the study says. The graph follows a bell curve, with a peak number of 80,000-100,000 being most probable. There is a 90% probability that the number is above 44,000 alone. The author of this study debunked this myth pretty effectively yesterday on NPR.

[justjones]

24. I heard that story on NPR too....

As I recall, the "confidence interval" is what people are so-called having a problem with, because it is somewhere between the numbers you quote (8,900-198,000)

But you are right, the author of the study debunked this myth AND said that the confidence interval can be narrowed even further with a follow-up study. I hope he does it.

[leesa]

9. And exactly WHO are insurgents? General Karpinski said 90% of the

"insurgents" at Abu Graib were innocent Iraqis and simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, no charges at all. So who are these insurgents they are always blathering about?

[uppityperson]

12. Number killed by coalition: >100,000

wtf is this "insurgents" they talk about?

[HuffleClaw]

15. *cough cough* CRAP *cough*

ok, this is becoming just silly. i can think of NO reason to believe any of their figures. they've been caught a few too many times 'adjusting' and 'revising' and besides, i EXPECT the military to lie. propaganda, nothing more, and poorly planned propaganda at that. it pales in comparison to iraqi deaths at the hands of the us military.

[lebkuchen]

16. Why did we kill these people?

[OneBlueSky]

17. extrapolating from the numbers, be they 26,000 or 100,000 . . .

can there be ANY Iraqi still alive who has not lost a family member or friend as a direct result of the American invasion and occupation? . . . and what are the implications of that going forward? . . .

[MisterP]

18. and don't forget the family branches obliterated entirely by

shelling, air raids on weddings, clan and civil warfare, Brits in fake beards lobbing plastique, machine-gunnings of family convoys, etc., etc., etc.

[Up2Late]

21. US military estimates Iraqi toll from insurgency (Reuters)

(Yes, this IS the first Pentagon Estimate, and NO, It's NOT a complete count, it leaves out a LOT of people, mostly the one's that WE killed.)

US military estimates Iraqi toll from insurgency

Sun Oct 30, 2005 04:15 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has estimated that nearly 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded in attacks by insurgents since January 2004, with the daily number increasing fairly steadily. A Pentagon report to Congress said casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces rose from about 26 a day between January 1 and March 31, 2004, to about 64 a day between August 29 and September 16, 2005, just before the referendum on the Iraqi constitution.

The Pentagon has not previously provided such a comprehensive estimate of the Iraqi casualty toll from insurgent attacks. It also refuses to release data on the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded by U.S. forces. "Approximately 80 percent of all attacks are directed against Coalition Forces, but 80 percent of all casualties are suffered by Iraqis," the report said. It was made available on the Pentagon's Web site.

The report noted that attacks by insurgents increased as expected in the runup to the referendum. Weekly attacks numbered just under 200 in the first quarter of 2004, and rose to over 650 a week as the referendum approached. The daily figures were presented in a bar graph covering six time periods since January 2004.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, told The New York Times in Sunday's editions that the report was not a comprehensive accounting of Iraqi casualties. He said the count did not provide separate figures for the number of killed or wounded and how many of those were civilians, police officers or soldiers.

<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=10096831&src=rss/topNews>
(more at link above)

[Up2Late]

22. Army admits keeping eye on rising Iraqi toll (SMH)

(As I said above, this count leaves out a LOT of people!)

Army admits keeping eye on rising Iraqi toll

October 31, 2005
The Sydney Morning Herald

Baghdad: In the first public disclosure that the US military is keeping track of some of the deaths of Iraqi civilians and security forces, it has released rough figures for Iraqis who have been killed or wounded by insurgents since January 1, 2004.

The estimate, though incomplete, was significant because the US military had previously avoided virtually all public discussion of the issue.

According to the information, contained in a single bar graph, Iraqi civilians and members of the security forces were killed and wounded by insurgents at a rate of about 26 a day early in 2004, and at a rate of about 40 a day later that year. The rate increased in 2005 to about 51 a day, and by the end of August had jumped to about 63 a day. No figures were provided for the number of Iraqis killed by US-led forces.

Though the information - provided by the Pentagon in a report to Congress this month - gives only daily partial averages of deaths and injuries of all Iraqis at the hands of insurgents, it shows that the US military has a far more accurate picture of the war toll than it has been willing to acknowledge.

<http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/army-admits-keeping-eye-on-rising-iraqi-toll/2005/10/30/1130607150355.html>
(more at link above)

[merwin]

25. kick

[berni_mccoy]

26. Pentagon Admits 26,000 Iraqi Casualties since Jan. 2004

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.casualties/index.html

(CNN) -- A recent U.S. military report estimates that nearly 26,000 Iraqis were killed or wounded by insurgent attacks from January 1, 2004, through September 16, 2005.

"Approximately 80 percent of all attacks are directed against coalition forces, but 80 percent of all casualties are suffered by Iraqis," the Pentagon report said.

Ok, did I get this right? 80% of X = 26,000 which means X = 32,500.

That means 6,500 casualties were not Iraqi.

[RoyGBiv]

27. Casualties ...

A casualty is anyone wounded, killed, or captured/missing, i.e. a person taken out of action.

So, that actually sounds low to me. Definite numbers on coalition casualties is hard if not impossible to find since the Pentagon doesn't freely release this information regularly and uses creative methods of defining a combat casualty when it does so. I've seen estimates of coalition casualties in the tens of thousands since the war began.

I'll put it this way. I thankfully don't yet know anyone who has been killed in Iraq. I know several people who have been wounded and am starting to see people in my daily routine who have been casualties.

[Tab]

28. Correct but...

If they are using "killed or wounded" as the criteria for a "casualty", then 6,500 of ours is not out of line.

In fact, we believe it to be much higher than that (when counting the wounded).

[berni_mccoy]

30. I agree, but...

Since Jan 2004, 1220 U.S. soldiers have died due to hostile action. (source again, CNN at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html)

That means, according to this report, 5280 soldiers have been wounded due to attacks in that same time period. But the U.S. is also reporting 15,220 wounded IN ACTION for the entire war. Something doesn't add up here...
That is I don't believe this recent report by the Pentagon.

It sounds like they are under reporting causalties by as much as a factor of 3. That means the Iraqi death toll may be around 75,000 instead of 26,000 from these attacks...

[AKing]

29. Sorta takes the wind out of the claims of right-wing nuts....

that the casualties are "negligible"