Thursday, August 25, 2005
Death, Numbers, and Short Memories
"[Deaths of civilians and police in Iraq are currently...] running at the rate of about 45 dead per 100,000 population per year [...]"
"[...] During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year. This does not include the several hundred thousand killed during the war with Iran in the 1980s. There are other parts of the world that are more violent than Iraq. Africa, for example, especially Congo, Sudan and South Africa. Only South Africa has a sufficiently effective government to actually keep track of the death rate, mostly from crime, but it’s over 50 per 100,000. It’s worse in places like Congo and Sudan, but the numbers there are only estimates by peacekeepers and relief workers. In southern Thailand, a terror campaign by Islamic radicals has caused a death rate of over 80 per 100,000 [...]"
"[...] During the 1990s, Saddam used access to food and medical care as a way to keep the Shia Arabs under control, but this process caused at least twenty thousand or more excess deaths a year (from disease and malnutrition). Foreign media, especially in Sunni Moslem nations, played down Saddam’s homicides, just as they play up the current death toll in Iraq (which is still largely the result of violence by Sunni Arabs.) [...]"
Some may not like the military oriented source of the preceding quotations and statistics (found through The Tanuki Ramble) . Military imagery aside, I not only find the information believably accurate but I haven't seen anything from the "anti-war" crowd that would indicate otherwise -- they simply don't address the issue of deaths before Saddam Hussein's removal from power (they really do miss him that much).
"[...] During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year. This does not include the several hundred thousand killed during the war with Iran in the 1980s. There are other parts of the world that are more violent than Iraq. Africa, for example, especially Congo, Sudan and South Africa. Only South Africa has a sufficiently effective government to actually keep track of the death rate, mostly from crime, but it’s over 50 per 100,000. It’s worse in places like Congo and Sudan, but the numbers there are only estimates by peacekeepers and relief workers. In southern Thailand, a terror campaign by Islamic radicals has caused a death rate of over 80 per 100,000 [...]"
"[...] During the 1990s, Saddam used access to food and medical care as a way to keep the Shia Arabs under control, but this process caused at least twenty thousand or more excess deaths a year (from disease and malnutrition). Foreign media, especially in Sunni Moslem nations, played down Saddam’s homicides, just as they play up the current death toll in Iraq (which is still largely the result of violence by Sunni Arabs.) [...]"
Some may not like the military oriented source of the preceding quotations and statistics (found through The Tanuki Ramble) . Military imagery aside, I not only find the information believably accurate but I haven't seen anything from the "anti-war" crowd that would indicate otherwise -- they simply don't address the issue of deaths before Saddam Hussein's removal from power (they really do miss him that much).
