Nicked from Supergee

[james_davis_nicoll]

Comments

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Seems to be missing Iraqi military casualties (presumably in the tens of thousands at least?) and US-allied military casualties (understandable if the author had decided that ~0.15% was too small to bother including, but a pet peeve of mine if they just forgot the existence of allies).

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Agreed; the Iraqi military folded as fast as the poor guys on the ground could manage it, but quite a few must have gotten hurt. This graph needs a few more categories.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I suspect the source they're using for 'Iraqi civilian casualties' may actually be counting all Iraqi casualties*, but in that case it needs better labelling.

*Assuming 'casualties' is being used throughout as a nice word for 'deaths', and not in the broader sense. I don't think anybody's attempted to calculate figures for permanent disability etc. for the Iraqi/Afghan populations.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

There hasn't been a single Afghan or Iraqi combatant killed since the beginning of the war? Dear me, the wars are going worse than I thought.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

I'm just surprised 9/11 is visible at all...

[marith.livejournal.com]

*Thank* you. I have been looking for some pithy response to the weekend's nonstop vapid coverage, and this will do nicely.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Did you see this?

(http://doonesburyc.livejournal.com/619181.html)

Yes, Yes I have

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

And as a WTC Responder with NYRRT-1, I agree with BD.

BD's become a lot less annoying since he got back from Iraq, as a character.

--Hawk

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

There's a reason I've always liked Doonesbury. I think it's encapsulated in this one strip.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Whoa.

On the other hand, it would have more impact with the military casualties of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But, still: whoa.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

And the military casualties from all the other nations.

This is a pretty shitty US-centric graph. Disappearing the Afghani and Iraqi combatants, not to mention combatants from Canada, the UK, Europe, and other allied nations, is crap.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Also, even if one only worries about Westerners, it's missing the people killed in Bali, London, Madrid, and probably others that have slipped my mind just now.

Granted, 9/11 was bigger, but I'm kinda tired of hearing "your country wasn't attacked so your opinions are invalid" type arguments. If we're going to participate in the USA's follies it would be nice if we at least got some credit from the USA, because the Other Guys certainly remember our involvement...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

An excellent point; I appreciate that reminder, too.

[seawasp]

I'd note the error bars on that graph are HUGE, based on the Wiki article you link to. F'rex, the largest bit -- Iraq casualties -- is from 62,570 to 1,124,000, depending on who's doing the estimating and defining. The above graph appears to use the top-end numbers.

[(Anonymous)]

62,570 is not an estimate, it is an outdated Iraq Body count number. IBC now gives over 100,000, which is confirmed by US government counts from Wilileaks (though this estimate does not include 2003). But we know from previous experience that counting bodies in this manner underestimates the total death toll enormously - five to twenty percent of the deaths are captured in this way, generally closer to five.

Statistical methods (which are employed and accepted by the US government in places other than Iraq) do have large error bars. The last Lancet paper estimated something like 650,000 plus or minus 300,000. There were several bad years after that, so a million is not a bad guess, though the error bars would be even larger.

Not all the excess deaths are violent. The destruction of the Iraqi health system (yes, there was one) and the failure of sewage treatment after the war doubtless killed many. Refugees, and there are millions, also tend to die in higher than usual numbers.

I'd be surprised if the excess death toll is as little as 500,000. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it is over a million.

William Hyde