Remembering the Iraq Invasion

 March 19 marks 15 years since the U.S.-U.K invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the American and British people still have no real idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed. Millions of human beings have been butchered, maimed, displaced and undone in those 15 years since the 2003 invasion and occupation. We simply don't talk about it. General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the initial invasion, bluntly told reporters, “We don’t do body counts.” Numbers are numbing, especially numbers that rise into the millions. Please remember that each person killed represents someone’s loved one. These are mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters. One death impacts an entire community; collectively, they impact an entire nation.

Calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion.

 The killing is still going on today. Since several major cities in Iraq and Syria fell to Islamic State in 2014, the U.S. has led the heaviest bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam, dropping 105,000 bombs and missiles and reducing most of Mosul and other contested Iraqi and Syrian cities to rubble. At least 40,000 civilians were killed in the bombardment of Mosul alone, with many more bodies still buried in the rubble. A recent project to remove rubble and recover bodies in just one neighborhood found 3,353 more bodies, of whom only 20 percent were identified as ISIS fighters and 80 percent as civilians. Another 11,000 people in Mosul are still reported missing by their families.

The prestigious The Lancet medical journal, 2006 study estimated that about 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 40 months of war and occupation in Iraq, along with 54,000 nonviolent but still war-related deaths. The Lancet study was conducted over 11 years ago, after only 40 months of war and occupation. Tragically, that was nowhere near the end of the deadly consequences of the Iraq invasion.

In June 2007, a British polling firm, Opinion Research Business, conducted a further study and estimated that 1,033,000 Iraqis had been killed by then. While the figure of a million people killed was shocking, the Lancet study had documented steadily increasing violence in occupied Iraq between 2003 and 2006, with 328,000 deaths in the final year it covered. ORB’s finding that another 430,000 Iraqis were killed in the following year was consistent with other evidence of escalating violence through late 2006 and early 2007.

Just Foreign Policy’s “Iraqi Death Estimator” project was discontinued in September 2011, with its estimate of Iraqi deaths standing at 1.45 million.

The Bush/Blair Iraqi invasion which destabilised the entire Middle East region was based upon a lie and both war-mongers continue to justify their war-crimes and have never be brought to account.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-iraq-death-toll-15-years-after-the-u-s-invasion/