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Iraq
34,452 Iraq Civilians Said Killed in '06
2007-01-17
Twin car bombs tore through a leading Baghdad university as students left classes Tuesday in the deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly two months, and the United Nations reported 34,452 civilians were slain last year, nearly three times more than the government reported.
Doesn't surprise me. I wonder if they dwell on the fact that most of them were bumped off by devout Islamists?
A total of 142 Iraqis were killed or found dead Tuesday, in what appeared to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgent violence against Shiite targets. The sharp uptick in deadly attacks coincided with the release of U.N. figures that showed an average of 94 civilians died each day in sectarian bloodshed in 2006.
The worst thing that we've done in this war was to go in and not kill large numbers of bad guyz. Had they been ruthlessly hunted down and killed in droves then the casualties would have been confined to the guys in uniform or who should have been in uniform, with fairly minimal collateral casualties.
The blasts wrecked two small buses as students at Al-Mustansiriya University were lining up for the ride home at about 3:45 p.m., according to Taqi al-Moussawi, a university dean. The attackers stationed a man wearing a suicide belt in the expected path of fleeing students to take even more lives, but he was spotted and shot by security men before he could blow himself up, the dean said. "The only guilt of our martyred students is that they pursued education. They belong to all religions, sects and ethnic groups," said an angry al-Moussawi, himself a Shiite. "The terrorists want to stop education. ...Those students had nothing to do with politics."
Posted by:Fred

#8  One of the problems tallying the number of deaths is that there is a large overlap between "insurgents" and simple criminals (this was also true in WWII). The number of criminal murders in Iraq can easily explain the discrepency in the two estimates.

By the way, when the Lancet estimated that 600,000 Iraqis had died, Strategy Page showed that 550,000 Iraqis had died from natural causes.

This is how you get wildly inflated casualties. You just fudge on the cause of death and compare apples to oranges.

Al
Posted by: Frozen Al   2007-01-17 16:57  

#7  I suspect that the UN's source, the Health Ministry and various regional offshoots, counted dead insurgents as "civilians."
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy   2007-01-17 15:25  

#6  I call BULLSHIT. This would be apx. 2900/month or almost 100/day, which is most definitely NOT the average.
Posted by: Brett   2007-01-17 12:44  

#5  ...Along the same lines, CNN ran a story this AM about how Congress is mifed that there's not sufficient 'accountability' for the funds that are disbursed to Iraqi families when someone dies under circumstances that could be ascribed to US military action. The way it works is that the local US commander hears the case, comes up with a number, and authorizes disbursement of funds.
Sen. Leahy says there must be 'better record keeping' - translation: we want a civilian body count that we can beat the Administration over the head with.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2007-01-17 08:11  

#4  We tried to take the high road and we got screwed for it. I hope this will be the topic of West Point classes for years to come. Maybe they could bring in some Ethiopian instructors or something.
Posted by: bigjim-ky   2007-01-17 06:18  

#3  Gee, only 34,452? What about the 600,000 dead claimed by the 'study'. Why wasn't Johns-Hopkins asked to comment on the UN report?

Hey, UN! How many killed in Darfur, again?
Posted by: Bobby   2007-01-17 05:57  

#2  WOT > about inducing = forcing anti-US OWG + National-Global Socialism on America. America must "fail" no matter what it does, no matter even iff it actually is winning or victorious. The burden is on the USA to save and justify every -ISM before surrendering andor being destroyed by same.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2007-01-17 03:47  

#1  FOX + CNN > WH reportedly will anounce its gener disbelief in the number of 34, 452.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2007-01-17 03:40  

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