mousey musings

It's time to estimate the Iraq War toll again. According to MSNBC 5,558 Iraqi civilians have been killed under occupation. Add to this the 3240 documented cases from the invasion period and we have 8798. Now consider that major battle sites like Fallujah are excluded from both totals. A rough estimate of 10,000 dead civilians seems reasonable (probably an underestimate). Now for the battle-deaths. Allied forces have suffered 913 fatalities, according to the best Iraq War Casualties site. What about the Iraqi Army, pro-Allied police, and insurgents? Well the Iraq Army and associated militias seemed to have suffered in the neighborhood of 3000 killed, give or take a few thousand, by October 2003. Casualty ratios since them seem to be something like 5:1 or 10:1, suggesting that a period that has witnessed the death of 400 or so Allied troops also cost the lives of perhaps 2000 to 4000 insurgents. The last figure we need is Iraq police serving the Allies. Many hundreds have been killed according to press accounts, perhaps as many as 1000. If we add all of this together we get: Civilians: 10,000 Iraq Army / Iraqi insurgents: 5000 to 7000 Allies: 913 Pro-Allied Iraqi Police: 1000 making the total number of people directly killed by this war somewhere in the neighborhood of 18,000 -- almost certainly between 15,000 and 20,000.

posted by Jeffrey # 5/25/2004 05:56:00 PM