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One Million Dead in Iraq
Our Own Holocaust Denial
By Mark Weisbrot
11/22/07 "ICH' -- -- Institutionally unwilling to consider
America’s responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional
media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis
killed since the invasion.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s flirtation with those
who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met
with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with
little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American
believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the
US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the
media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been
killed is most likely more than one million.
This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur
and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.
The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was
confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling
firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580
violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with
the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns
Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago.
Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain’s leading
medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to
violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths
since the study, this estimate would also be more than a
million. These estimates do not include those who have died
because of public health problems created by the war, including
breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of
medicines, etc.
Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some
politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based
on random sampling of the population rather than a complete
count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for
their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods
and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it:
if you don’t believe in random sampling, the next time your
doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all
of it.
The methods used in the estimates of Iraqi deaths are the same
as those used to estimate the deaths in Darfur, which are widely
accepted in the media. They are also consistent with the large
numbers of refugees from the violence (estimated at more than
four million). There is no reason to disbelieve them, or to
accept tallies such as that the Iraq Body Count (73,305 -
84,222), which include only a small proportion of those killed,
as an estimate of the overall death toll.
Of course, acknowledging the holocaust in Iraq might change the
debate over the war. While Iraqi lives do not count for much in
US politics, recognizing that a mass slaughter of this magnitude
is taking place could lead to more questions about how this
horrible situation came to be. Right now a convenient myth
dominates the discussion: the fall of Saddam Hussein simply
unleashed a civil war that was waiting to happen, and the
violence is all due to Iraqis’ inherent hatred of each other.
In fact, there is considerable evidence that the occupation
itself - including the strategy of the occupying forces - has
played a large role in escalating the violence to holocaust
proportions. It is in the nature of such an occupation, where
the vast majority of the people are opposed to the occupation
and according to polls believe it is right to try and kill the
occupiers, to pit one ethnic group against another. This was
clear when Shiite troops were sent into Sunni Fallujah in 2004;
it is obvious in the nature of the death-squad government, where
officials from the highest levels of the Interior Ministry to
the lowest ranking police officers - all trained and supported
by the US military - have carried out a violent, sectarian
mission of “ethnic cleansing.” (The largest proportion of the
killings in Iraq are from gunfire and executions, not from car
bombs). It has become even more obvious in recent months as the
United States is now arming both sides of the civil war,
including Sunni militias in Anbar province as well as the Shiite
government militias.
Is Washington responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the
question that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the
holocaust is denied
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