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November 2, 2005
The Butcher's Bill
A reader took issue with my estimate of the Saddam regime causing 20,000 deaths/month in Iraq, so I thought I'd explain my thinking.
Counting the Butcher's Bill can be complicated.
There's the issue of neglect as well when it comes to totalitarian states. During the Oil-For-Palaces program and prior to that, Saddam made choices that lead to the deaths of many Iraqis, so I count those as well. The way I see it, if 1,000 Iraqis starved that year because Uday bought a Ferrari, then Saddam killed 1,000 people plus the 5 or so that Uday ran over directly with his new toy.
That is, I'm counting the indirect deaths as well. Estimates of total direct and indirect deaths for the Saddam regime were 2.5 million people over the last decade, which is 250K/year, or 20K/month.
So that's where I get my 20,000/month.
I could probably argue it even higher:
There are the deaths from the Iran/Iraq war as well. Note that I said citizens, which is actually more inclusive then the numbers reported by IBC which only reports civilians. I would say that Iraqi soldiers killed during the invasion would go to to the US Butcher's bill, but deaths in the Iran/Iraq war go to Saddam, as would deaths to throw him out of Kuwait.
Of course, you can and should count those indirect deaths caused by the coalition actions (i.e. if damage to a hospital causes someone to die), but then you would have to count actions taken by Iraq in Kuwait (the dead Kuwaitis), not to mention people killed by Saddam's funding of terrorism, the Iranian side of the Iran/Iraq war and so on. And of course where do sanctions fit into all that? Or the US aiding both Iran AND Iraq during the war?
The original sanctions caused the Iraqis hardship, leading to the Oil-For-Food program, which Saddam willfully used to subjugate the populace even more. If the UN imposes sanctions, but Saddam keeps building palaces, who pays the butcher's bill?
Here's an article from the NYT saying 1,000,000 at least
Using only direct costs though:
Going over to Iraq body count, they have 30K on the high end for direct deaths. So out of the last 32 months (since March 2003), that's 937.5 deaths/month, or 11,250/year.
But do insurgent caused deaths count towards the Coalition butcher's bill? I don't think you can make that argument, because then it NEVER makes sense to intervene in a civil war or genocide. That is, if the Sudanese genocide is 5,000 deaths/month, and the UN intervened and cut that down to 1,000 deaths/month, it seems to me like the UN should get credit for a 4,000 death decrease. So counting insurgents kills towards the coalition total doesn't make sense either. According to IBC, only 37% of the first 25K were from US-led forces, 36% were from “post-invasion” criminal violence.
Even so, by all accounts Saddam killed more Iraqis towards the end of his regime then the beginning. If I remember correctly it was like 2-1. So if you take the estimates that Saddam killed only 300,000 Iraqis during his Presidency, that's 12,000 year, but probably more like 24,000 towards the end of his reign.
So the 11,250 doesn't seem so bad now.
Posted by the at November 2, 2005 3:55 PM
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