COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
Yes, there were many attempts to estimate the dead, and all
the credible ones come up with a large number.
I think the best was around half a million.
I also think though that you must include all the chaos and
death since the end of initial hostilities.
None of it would have happened without the damned invasion.
That likely brings us to around a million.
By the way, it has long been an American practice to hide
any statistics showing the real effect of American aggression.
In the previous Gulf War, tens of thousands of Iraqi
soldiers - mostly poor conscripted farmers - were crushed by B-52 carpet
bombing. Their bodies were just bulldozed into the desert without accounting.
Again, in the no-fly zone and embargo imposed afterwards,
many tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and a lot of children, died
miserably. The US never bothered to investigate, and we have the ghastly,
memorable words of Madeleine Albright when asked it that "we thought it
was worth it."
Readers may enjoy a piece written some years ago on the
topic. The numbers used in it were conservative in light of later knowledge:
