The cost of war

At least 85,000 people have been killed in Iraq by bombs, murders and fighting from 2004 until 2008, Iraq's human rights ministry says.

The government released the draft figures on Tuesday based on death certificates issued by the health ministry.

It said 147,195 people had been wounded in the same four years. The number of undocumented injuries and deaths could be far higher.

"These figures draw a picture about the impact of terrorism and the violation of natural life in Iraq," the rights ministry said.

'Terrible figures'

"Outlawed groups through terrorist attacks like explosions, assassinations, kidnappings or forced displacements created these terrible figures, which represent a huge challenge for the rule of law and for the Iraqi people."

The report did not distinguish between civilian deaths and others, and a senior government official said the findings did not include missing persons, believed to be around 10,000 people.

In depth

Death tolls in Iraq Iraqi Human Rights Ministry: 85,000 from 2004-2008  Iraq Body Count: 102,071 from 2003-2009  Lancet: 601,000 from 2003-2006

It said some 15,000 unidentified bodies were also found within the time period. "Thousands of Iraqis killed since 2003 without being identified by their relatives were buried in special cemeteries called unidentified body cemeteries," the report said.

The figures in the report are lower than that of the Iraq Body Count project run by a group of academics and peace activists.

The project estimates that 102,071 civilians have died in the violence so far since 2003.

The group took its figures from media reports, which it then cross checked with numbers from hospitals, morgues and local non-governmental organisations.
 
But the figures from both the Iraqi government and the Iraq Body Count project are lower than the numbers from a 2006 study by The Lancet, a British-based medical journal.

People like Liz Cheney think the Iraq War made the US safer. It has been a blood bath for Iraq, a country that harboured no terrorists, had no yellow cake or owned any Weapons of Mass Destruction. This war also had a big impact on the US infrastructure. 

The $800 billion that the Bush Administration spent on the Iraq War could have paid for a 'fair and just' healthcare system in the US. Both Iraq and the US lost out in this war, but the human toll on Iraq was far worse than the economic losses in the US.


See the complete story at  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/2009101320124344577.html


The Lancet estimates 601,000 people were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2006.


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