Here Was a Royal Fellowship of Death
Posted on | October 12, 2006
Crooked Timber comments on the recent estimate:
The Lancet paper by Burnham et al. study estimates about 655,000 excess deaths in Iraq for the period of March 2003 to July of 2006, of which about 600,000 are directly attributable to violence—an appalling number. Right-wing reaction has been, understandably, that the 600,000 estimate is unbelievably high. (Tim Lambert gives a roundup.) Convincing those critics who see this number and declare “that can’t possibly be right,” or “my gut says no” or “this doesn’t even pass the smell test” is difficult. This is partly because some will just think that any estimate that sounds bad must be false, and take refuge in old saws about lies, damned lies, and what have you. But it’s also partly because six hundred thousand violent deaths since the war began seems huge—and, frankly, it is. As this typical guy says, that’s equivalent to 3 to 10 Hiroshima atomic blasts, 6 to 20 Nagasaki atomic blasts or 10 Dresden bombing campaigns….
To put the number in a more current context, it’s equivalent to 200 September 11th attacks. Sure, the figures are astonishing and revolting, but
…is it really so inconceivable that ten times as many people might be dying violently on any given day in Iraq than in the United States?
