655,000 Rorschachs
The new study compiled by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimating Iraqi civilian war deaths at 655,000 couldn't possibly be credible.
"I don't consider it a credible report," said George W. Bush. And if there's ever an expert on things not credible it is certainly Mr. Bush. Especially when it comes to Iraq.
In reality, no one knows how accurate or not this new report might be. We don't know because the U.S. government has made a point of not compiling Iraqi deaths. Some people count. And others...well...they simply don't exist. They just get liberated and should be, quite literally, eternally thankful.
At face value there is little reason to doubt the rigor employed by the researchers from MITÂ and Johns Hopkins who authored this staggering report. Offhand, they have to be given as much credence as, say, Don Rumsfeld, no?
If this report is anywhere remotely accurate it ought to be a sobering warning of what we have wrought in Iraq-- a slaughter on the scale or even greater than that unleashed by Saddam Hussein. Even if it overstates the death toll by double, it would still be five times higher than what most estimates have assumed to date.
I doubt, as a nation, that we will ever come to terms with such horrific numbers. We very properly memorialize the 52,000 American deaths in Vietnam. But how often do we stop to ponder that the same war cost the Vietnamese two, or is it three, million?
The new study will be hotly and fiercely debated in the days to come but the arguments themselves will mean little to nothing. Like participants in a massive Rorschach test each one of us will swear seeing in these statistics only what we wish.
October 12th, 2006 at 5:47 am
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html
Is a death certificate a “Rorschach Blot”? It seems that 92% of the households reporting a post-invasion death in the family were able to produce one.
This study is a Rorschach Blot mainly for people who don’t know a whole lot about statistics. The way this result is reported — even on the above-linked page–is yet another indicator of how abysmally English is still used when talking about statistical study results. You can’t accurately say that the study says that there were “at least” 655000 excess deaths when the study itself holds out a 5% chance that the numbers are less than 400,000 or greater than 750,000. There’s a difference between “uncertainty” and “open to any interpretation”, however. If the study’s methodology was reasonable, there’s only one interpretation: the number of excess deaths in Iraq greatly exceeds what it was under Saddam.
Now, that might seem incredible to those of us raised on stories of the harrowing Ba’athist regime. Consider: death rates were about 5 per 1000 before the invasion. That’s not good. But think of it in personal terms. Most of us have about 200 names in our little black books, personal e-mail folders, and extended family. How many of us should have scratched off one of those names because the person died some time in the last 3 years? Maybe something like half of us. If the rate were to quadruple over a 3-year period, we’d notice, of course, but life wouldn’t grind to halt.
What would make life grind to a halt is fear of going outside lest you become one of those morgue statistics. And that’s what’s happening. I read a heart-wrenching story recently in the Int’l Herald Trib, about kids in Iraq having to abandon their plans to go to college, and having to cut loose of friends who had become too radicalized along sectarian lines. I should be weeping tears for Congolese civil war victims, and Sudanese in refugee camps, not middle class kids in Baghdad. I guess. But those people in Congo and Sudan would have had pretty rotten lives anyway, and mostly for reasons not having to do with our direct involvement. Dreams are dying in Iraq BECAUSE of the U.S. invasion, an invasion predicated on lies. The death of human beings on a significant scale is serious, but such losses can be given meaning given the right outcome. The death of dreams on a large scale can be far more serious: it is what led from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich. For every person dying unnecessarily in Iraq, the dreams of ten more may be missing in action. And that would guarantee Iraq a very grim future indeed.
October 12th, 2006 at 6:28 am
Marc, you’re probably right about how we’ll all see this, but does anyone honestly, without rancour or undue skepticism, believe that Johns Hopkins and Lancet would make this sort of thing up? Its bad enough if its a third, even an eighth of that number, so there is no possible reason for it to be fraudulent, especially given the source. It puts egg on anyone’s face to question this.
October 12th, 2006 at 6:39 am
Possible motives are irrelevant unless you want to attempt to discredit the report via an attack on the authors/compilers (i.e.; confirmed and avowed anti-Iraq war-ites, etc.).
What I would like to know is whether the estimate in the report is accurate. It seems to me the best way to do this is to have comprehensive peer review of the methodology and conclusions.
The doubt about the veracity of the report in my mind comes from the fact that, if true, there are roughly 500 deaths per day in Iraq in excess of what is believed to have existed prior to the invasion. With all the anti-war folks on the ground in Iraq wouldn’t we have heard about these undeniably horrific numbers before now?
October 12th, 2006 at 6:44 am
We HAVE heard, if we’re listening, to these numbers. Andrew Cockburn and Pierre Sprey did a statstical study with less resources, and had a similar number a few months back.
And there are very little antiwar folks on the ground in Iraq anymore.
October 12th, 2006 at 7:08 am
Seems Bush has revised his estimate of deaths (downward?) from 30K to ‘alot’.
Whataguy!
October 12th, 2006 at 8:06 am
Cockburn current Counterpunch piece is delious and essential.
October 12th, 2006 at 8:10 am
“… comprehensive peer review of the methodology and conclusions.”
Are you suggesting that this study was not already “comprehensively” peer-reviewed? I guess it depends on what your definition of “comprehensive” and “peer” are. I doubt it was sent to VP Cheney’s office for a quick check.
“With all the anti-war folks on the ground in Iraq wouldn’t we have heard about these undeniably horrific numbers before now?”
While there aren’t that many “anti-war folks on the ground” in Iraq (by which I assume you mean foreigners, who are increasingly at risk no matter how good their intentions), why would you have heard about such numbers from them anyway?
Unless they’re doing a statistical study, they’re not going to come up with any numbers on the ground except “Some guys were shot the other day in the town, and they found 12 bodies on the streets last week.” And that’s called “anecdotal evidence,” easily dismissed as unrepresentative.
Reliable statistics don’t come automatically from being ON the ground, they come from COVERING a lot of ground–and collecting data in a rigorous and unbiased manner. That last condition is where the study is open to question–it was conducted in cooperation with a Baghdad hospital, and it’s not impossible that the Iraqi physicians they fielded have systematically (perhaps individually, i.e., not cooperatively) fudged the numbers upward. But THIS far upward (taking, say, Iraq Body Count as baseline)?
If Bush doesn’t like these numbers, why doesn’t he have his own? It’s not like U.S. forces and agencies in Iraq are relatively poorly positioned and equipped to conduct their own studies, compared to a public health department at a U.S. university and a hospital in Baghdad. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that they either don’t study the situation, or don’t release the results of the studies if they do, because they know the results cannot have any other effect except to embarrass their whole adventure.
Saddam was a dangerous, dangerous man with dangerous, dangerous weapons. But they didn’t find those dangerous, dangerous weapons, so then he became just a dangerous, dangerous man–but, heck, that was reason enough, right? Stop yer carping! However, what if he started looking less dangerous than an adventurous superpower that piled in on top of him, unseated him, and destabilized the country he was running in such a supposedly dangerous manner? How does it make the superpower look?
George W. Bush — a dangerous, dangerous man with dangerous, dangerous weapons. Impeach him. Down the spiderhole with him. Tomorrow isn’t soon enough for me.
October 12th, 2006 at 8:13 am
The report has the backing of Professor Sir Richard Peto
Who he? you may ask
http://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/~hps/biog_rp.shtml
Professor of Medical Statistics & Epidemiology at the University of Oxford. In . Professor Peto’s work has included studies of the causes of cancer in general, and of the effects of smoking in particular, and the establishment of large-scale randomised trials of the treatment of heart disease, stroke, cancer and a variety of other diseases. He has been instrumental in introducing combined ‘meta-analyses’ of results from related trials that achieve uniquely reliable assessment of treatment effects. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1989, and was knighted (for services to epidemiology and to cancer prevention) in 1999.
October 12th, 2006 at 9:54 am
These are horrible numbers, horrific.
I do have trouble believing them, because Iraq Body Count has been trying to count the bodies, and coming up with far less than this number.
Death certificates are important, but 4 000 MORE deaths each and every week, for 3 years, needs a bit more.
The deaths under Saddam include many mass graves. These numbers are much higher than the Iraqi hospitals.
But even if the real numbers are a third, some 200 000 — like Darfur. Horrible.
I, for one, certainly remember the 600 000 number in Vietnam — that’s the estimate of how many S. Vietnamese were murdered by the N. Vietnamese after they surrendered (after N. Vietnam violated the Peace Accords, with no response from Pres. Ford (R).)
What do these deaths mean?
a) that the US should not have invaded,
b) that if the US invaded, they should have planned for a US supported police state, er, puppet strongman state (e.g. Chalabi the new dictator),
c) that Liberation, instead of Occupation, gave the Arabs a chance for freedom — and too many of them have used their chances to kill other Arabs (especially their Shia-Sunni counterparts).
For the last two years, most of the deaths have been Iraqis murdering Iraqis (or other Arabs supported by local Iraqis).
I do believe the 3000 or so number of US soldiers killed. I claim that if “more troops” had been used, that would have resulted in more US deaths, though quite likely less Iraqi deaths over the last 3 years.
Any Bush-bashers willing to accept more US deaths to reduce Iraqis murdering other Iraqis? At about what ratio?
There’s still only three strategic choices:
More troops, fewer troops, about the same troops.
Since Bush-bashers can’t even agree on whether more, or fewer, there’s no big need to argue against either — so Bush’s “stay the course” still seems right.
And horrible.
For the Iraqis.
To be blamed on the responsible Iraqis. It’s their sovereign country, they have to live with each other. Or kill each other. Or stop their own group from killing the other group.
And we remain there so that the elected Iraqi gov’t can win any battle they are willing to fight (eg against a Shia militia) — IF there is political Iraqi will.
The Iraqi – Iraqi murders are an Iraqi problem, and the Iraqis have to solve it.
Lt. Hegseth in WSJ calls for more troops; my analysis of our Vietnamization policy of supporting corrupt, incompetent cowardly S. Viet officers helped them lose in blitz fashion. The US needs to support brave competent Iraqis (2 of 3 is best we can do) — and reduce corruption thru more transparency in reconstruction contracts.
Where are the Dems on anti-Pork transparency in the US? quiet. But such transparency should also be used in Iraq.
October 12th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Here’s a canned response from the Keyboard Kommand at it’s worst (or close, because there’s always some nazified, malkinesque trashmouth on the right who can make a rogerlsimon or glennreynolds seem cogent by comparison):
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2006/10/lancet.php
IIncluded in that link is the suggestion that Iraqi blogger “Iraq the Model” will give an in-depth response. He does, which is also linked there. “Iraq the Model” has considerable experience in providing cogent analysis of statistical and polling information coming out of Iraq. Here was his response to the revelation that 60% of Iraqis approve of deadly attacks on U.S. troops:
“I can say that having 40% of Iraqis who disapprove of attacks on US troops is actually a surprising figure (in a good way) and it’s not that bad at all. I mean the numbers indicate that war has more support in Iraq than it has in the UK itself or in countries in the Middle East where America is not waging a war!”
I was astounded by the stupidity of that commentary on about three different levels. His PJMedia-sponsored attack on Lancet is just an ad hominem rant. I myself don’t think this study can be taken as anything more than a snapshot of the level of violence. I don’t think interviewing in a war zone can provide mathematical accuracy, nor do I think that matters much or is really the claim. But this method can certainly provide a window into the extremity of the violence and chaos that has descended on Iraq. The war-related deaths must be in the hundreds of thousands. The methodology is what it is. Claims that Lancet is a propaganda sheet are, frankly, grotesque. One might criticize or contextualize this method and point out difficulties, but If even half of the people interviewed were providing fairly accurate information that could be extapolated to the general population it means Bush, who calls this a “guess”, is himself merely “guessing” and guessing low by a factor of ten. He is, of course, what’s known in research circles as a disinterested party with no ulterior motives or imbedded narratives, despite his authority and deep knowledge of Iraq at ground level.
rogerlsimon, et. al. can make their noises, but they are really outing themselves as the shameless propagandists and dead-end hacks if their best response to this is a sneer. We have reached the point where such sneers are a sign of serious political, if not personal, pathology. The unbridled ego trumps both the mind and the heart in certain circles.
October 12th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Tom Grey’s response is insane. Simple as that.
“I just shit my pants. Although it appears I have no way of cleaning it up, anyone who criticizes me had damn well first come up with a their own plan for my pants. Come to think of it, now that it’s a fait accompli, it’s really become a matter between the shit and the pants. If they can’t work it out, the hell with them. Oh yeah. Vietnam. Darfur!!! And what about Dems, pork, more transparency and reg turning his pottymouth on me.”
October 12th, 2006 at 10:54 am
AsI said yesterday we have achieved the trifecta in Iraq with more deaths, more torture, and a lower living standard (no electricity etc.) than Saddam. And it becomes increasingly difficult for the apologists of this debacle to deny it.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Marc, where are you getting the figure of 2-3 million civilian casualties in Vietnam? I recently read Dave Maraniss’ Pulitzer-winning *They Marched Into Sunlight*, and he notes there that contemporary estimates ran from 300,000-500,000 *total*, and that includes both North and South Vietnamese, i.e., including those killed by the Vietcong.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
I have long held on to the view that all this chaos and mayhem and death was Rumsfeld’s fault (I still think that), and that had this war not been conducted in the grip of that man’s ideology, i.e, if more forces and the existing occupation plans acutually used, that the chaos would be far less. The most recent Vanity Fair has an article about Haditha, and it makes the claim that this mess may well have existed no matter how many troops sent. One compelling example, a rooftop lookout set-up by marines that allowed them to see into yards where women worked unveiled produced massive outrage in the neighborhhod. The claim is we were so culturally insensitive and clueless that this was bound to happen.
I keep wanting to cling to the idea that there was something noble or worthwhile in all this. That it was worth it that another despot bit the dust, but this thing has been fucked up from the beginning to the end, and the end is nowhere near.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Thank you Mr. Cooper for hosting this discussion on the recent Iraqi causalty figures report. I too, can only echo your smart acknowledgement on realizing one’s own basis as one looks on upon the statistics.
Trying to appreciate that and the comments before this one, I think it is interesting to note some of the boundaries that have already gotten laid down here when the matter of such grimness is discussed. My small note is to wonder why the US military didn’t keep records on deaths in the first place. And yes I’m aware of the arguments about how the military leaders wanted to avoid the ‘body count’ analysis & criticism of V.Nam. Still…
Everyday that we are an occupier we are losing this war. A fact of occupations, no? I say this percisely while thinking about the recent statement out the Pentagon that the military is going to plan on keeping on the order of 140K troops in Iraq through 2010. Thus we we’d be continuing to do so some more ‘losing’ for another 3 plus years. Time is not our friend. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the US government is entrenching itself in a hellish positition to have to tell the American people why this losing streak must be continued. The military has to plan for its sacrafices, while the rest of the nation is only asked to increase the glory of the market. I’d love to have to pay higher taxes on whatever and whereever necessary to help with this mission. We’ve got a historically underinspiring Administration leading this war effort…Yet for right now, I don’t know any other way to proceed other than the current grind. I actually do agree with some to a bunch of what Tom Grey says, although I not sure I go along with all of Tom’s extrapoliated conclusions.
October 12th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
“I’d love to have to pay higher taxes on whatever and whereever necessary to help with this mission. We’ve got a historically underinspiring Administration leading this war effort…Yet for right now, I don’t know any other way to proceed other than the current grind.”
I’d love to pay higher taxes to make this thing better – for them, us or whoever – as well. Any ideas as to how we could pool a bunch of money and have Iraq turn out reasonably well ? Seems we’ve already tried throwing money at this thing. You know, like the liberals always do. No ? If you do have any ideas for spending more money than we’re already spending, is there any chance this “historically underinspiring Administration” will follow your sage advice ? How does that square with “I don’t know any other way to proceed other than the current grind” ?
I’m not trying to be a shit, but when is enough, enough ? And where does “the current grind” lead other than more of the same grind ? And, if we’re fucking up by being an occupation force, what should we have done and when, given that we invaded the country ? Is there a way to invade a country and not occupy it ? And how would any alternatives have squared with the spin that the Bushniks (who, yes, I hate – mostly for what they’ve done in Iraq and not done in Afghanistan) apparently saw as essential to selling their project. (Remember when Condaleeza was denying that there was an insurgency ? Remember when the right-wing blogosphere was “debunking” the notion that the country was breaking down into civil war ? Remember the Purple Finger triumphalism ? Remember when people like me who claimed that Iran was clearly winning the war in Iraq were considered crackpots ?
I think whatever the hell the actions of the U.S., the Iraqis are going to face worse rather than better in the foreseeable future. I also think that al Qaeda’s worst nightmare in Iraq would be for the U.S. to withdraw from Sunni sectors and let the old Saddamists hold sway. I doubt that al Qaeda would last six months. Because they’d be facing folks with a serious interest in consolidating their power who were as ruthless as they are. (That last one should come with an “armchair crackpot analysis” alert – but I’ll but my armchair crackpot analysis up against Dick Cheney’s, Bill Kristol’s, Don Rumsfeld’s or Condi Rices’ when it comes to Iraq any day of the week. In fact, I should have been getting paid at least twice what they have, based on any metric other than tons of bullshit shoveled on a daily basis or lie to a camera.)
I don’t know anything we can do to keep things from getting worse. Neither do you. Neither does Tom Grey. Neither does GWB or The Don of The Dick. At this point, it seems like an argument for redeployment if not withdrawal. The alternative strikes me as the definition of insanity. Is it down to James Baker figuring out how to “fix” this one ? What does that say about this administration…or the country for that matter…and doesn’t that notion seem almost as crazy as everything else we’ve seen on this to date ?
October 12th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Tom Grey: “Liberation, instead of Occupation, gave the Arabs a chance for freedom — and too many of them have used their chances to kill other Arabs (especially their Shia-Sunni counterparts).
For the last two years, most of the deaths have been Iraqis murdering Iraqis (or other Arabs supported by local Iraqis).”
Now that it looks like the blood will be on your hands, and you are being condemned by your own deontology, you seem to be coming around to my point of view. I think there’s validity to this argument that a large portion of these deaths lie at the hands Iraqis themselves. The Bush administration didn’t force Iraqis to start killing each other. Iraqis are not children and should be held responsible for their own actions.
I do have one question though, Tom: Does this mean you are going to place blame for the murders committed by the Khmer Rouge at the feet of the Khmer Rouge itself now and stop blaming American opponents of the Vietnam War for, in your opinion, creating a situation in which the Khmer Rouge could do what it did?
If American opponents of the Vietnam War have blood on their hands because their actions resulted in the withdrawl of U.S. troops from the region and created a situation that allowed the Khmer Rouge (or the North Vietnamese or whoever) to commit mass murder then it logically follows that supporters of the Iraq war have blood on their hands because their actions have created a situation that allowed Iraqis to engage in sectarian warfare.
October 12th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
What a horrific number. It’s outrageous that our government chose not to try and count Iraqi deaths. It’s a transparent and shameless attempt to avoid accountability.
Tom Grey has often asked how many deaths are worth a democratic and peaceful Iraq. How much collateral damage is justifyable? It’s a crude question, but not without merit. And there’s no objective anwer and there’s no answer above zero that doesn’t come with the guilt of knowing you were willing to sacrifice another person’s child. But that our politicians have chosen ignorance over anguish is disgusting. Let each American know the costs of war and decide at the voting booth if they are worth the benefits (remember, there were supposed to be benefits!). I don’t know if this pursuit of ignorance comes from a belief in divine guidence (and infallibility) or just political machinations, but I do know it’s no way to run a democracy.
October 12th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I think whatever the hell the actions of the U.S., the Iraqis are going to face worse rather than better in the foreseeable future. I also think that al Qaeda’s worst nightmare in Iraq would be for the U.S. to withdraw from Sunni sectors and let the old Saddamists hold sway. I doubt that al Qaeda would last six months. Because they’d be facing folks with a serious interest in consolidating their power who were as ruthless as they are.
reg, interesting point. You might be on to something. I’m not quite sure how you can be so sure about AQ not lasting six months. Some more of that Syria Darkly stuff?…
How do we spend more money in Iraq? Primarily we’d have sent more troops or be sending more now or in the near future. I know this would be incredibly difficult, because this line of frankness basically says, “…well actually the mission(s) not completed, the Iraqi’s voting 3 times aint enough, and because the GWOT is really important to win…therefore the tax breaks — give ‘em back and them some…” In a war, even an asysmetrical war such as we have, if we’re in for a penny, we oughta be in for the pound.
Plus I’m sure, reg, you (or anyone) should be well able to display a whole anthology of shoddy work & reconstruction done by all the private, ideology driven contractors in Iraq. If there should a need for an immediate withdrawl of anybody, perhaps it ought to be the contractors who seem to make more hazzards for our military than any problems they’re supposedly solving.
Lastly, though I’ve tried to give GWB as much support for this war as possible, I now have to believe the only way to make even the most minor improvements in the prosecution of this war, is to have the Democrats win the House (and preferalbly the Senate, too.) A Democratic Congress is the only real way that there will be any possible change to this war. There ought to be hearings on the war’s conduct…all of it. Fire, replace, whatever, Rumsfeld, all of it. The Frist/Hastert roll over and follow the President regime aint good enough. The burden of managing a war will be a hell of a challenge and the Democrats don’t completely inspire. Best we might have right now…
October 12th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Oh, yeah. About those Iraqis. Hope today’s suicide murderer harms only themself.
October 12th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
It’s a luxury to consider the number.
October 12th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
“Marc, where are you getting the figure of 2-3 million civilian casualties in Vietnam? I recently read Dave Maraniss’ Pulitzer-winning *They Marched Into Sunlight*, and he notes there that contemporary estimates ran from 300,000-500,000 *total*, and that includes both North and South Vietnamese, i.e., including those killed by the Vietcong.”
I can’t remember a single posting where WJA got it right, and I don’t think this one breaks the pattern. Maraniss’ figure cited above would, if I’m not mistaken, be from a book he wrote that was closely focused on two localized events, over periods of three days each, one in Vietnam, another in America, in 1967. So perhaps, in the spirit of what journalists call “fact-checking”, WJA could go back and check to see if Maraniss was talking about figures from the beginning of the Vietnam War up to a point (1967) before its peak, rather than about the total deaths for the entire war?
I’d also ask Tom Grey to check his facts, but I know that’s pointless.
October 12th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Just in case you thought it couldn’t get any worse for Bush and company there come news from the UK that the new Chief of Staff of the British Army advocates the withdrawal of all of Her Majesty’s troops from Iraq. Oh those cut and runners!
October 12th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Oh, hell, pointless as it is, I’ll take on Tom Grey anyway.
600,000 Vietnamese killed by the North after the Fall of Saigon? I tried to find support for this number from likely sources, and failed. Finally, I went to http://www.state.gov, no friends of Vietnam there! But all I get there is that “hundreds of thousands” were … sent to reeducation camps. And that there were lots of boat people. Hey, Tom, when your arduous research turns up a solid number, inform those nice folks at State, wouldja?
Saddam’s mass graves? Progress so far on establishing numbers has yielded a pretty consistent pattern: far fewer bodies in them than anybody’s estimates. Last I checked, they had managed to substantiate about 17,000. I suppose it could go as much as three times higher than that number, but that leaves you far short of the total claimed just for Anfal. I guess if your picture of Saddam is of a lunatic who occasionally looks up from the latest trash novel he’s writing and asks his massacre perpetrators whether they’ve met quota that week, you can rationalize any number. More likely, though, he preferred the lowest number that he could be sure would still make him look like the ferocious dictator he was,and killing a few thousand here and a few thousand there would probably have been more effective to that end than killing ten or a hundred times that number. Kill too many, and there’s nobody left to intimidate with your murderousness. What’s the point of that?
“But he gassed the Kurds!” Yeah, well, so did the British when faced with a Kurdish uprising. Saddam had no more conscience in the 80s and 90s than European colonial powers did in the 20s–he was, perhaps, a mere 60 years behind the rest of “civilization” in his concern for human rights. Or maybe 30 years.
October 12th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
WJA: My figures come from my interview with one Robert McNamara. I think he’s a rather credible source on this issues, don’t u?
For what it’s worth the Wikipedia cites several figures, including 3.2 million from the same Mr. McNamara. Some reports cited in the same entry place total casualties at 5 million:
“The lowest casualty estimates came out immediately after the war and North Vietnamese claimed that over 600,000 of its troops were killed and based on North Vietnamese statements (now discounted by Vietnam), are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. The number gradually increased over the years, and the Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs released figures on April 3, 1995, reporting that 1.1 million fighters—Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers—and nearly 2 million civilians in the north and 2 million in the south were killed between 1954 and 1975. Robert McNamara, in his regretful memoir of the war, references a figure of 3.2 million. The number of wounded fighters was put at 600,000. It remains even more unclear how many Vietnamese civilians were wounded. The Vietnamese list over 200,000 of their own soldiers as missing in action.
However, according to declassified informations by the Vietnamese government in the late-1990’s, as well as the admission of the Vietnamese government officials who participated in the war, the actual number is much higher. In the documentary aired by The History Channel in the early 2000’s, numerous Vietnamese officials confirmed the latest number from the declassified information during interviews, and the North Vietnamese casualty is around 5 million, including 2 million killed in action, 300,000 missing in action. However, the non-combat related death is greater than MIA & KIA combined: nearly 2 and half a million North Vietnamese troops died as a result of disease (malaria was the major cause) and non-combat related accidents (such as falling, drowning, and snake bites). The number of POWs was uncertain, because during the war, defections were common. The number of wounded was also uncertain because many fighters were wounded multiple times and it was difficult to track by keeping historical records especially for the communist forces in the southern Vietnam”
So?
October 12th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
“I’m not quite sure how you can be so sure about AQ not lasting six months. Some more of that Syria Darkly stuff?…”
That was solely in reference to al Qaeda “foriegn fighters” in Iraq, which presumably bases itself mostly in the Sunni triangle. And I added an “armchair crackpot” alert to that comment (unlike most of the armchair crackpots who’ve been having at it and presuming themselves informed.)
October 12th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
So if you “can’t know” how can you get that large number?
October 12th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
To lend some perspective beyond Viet Nam, and yes MacNamara is THE sorce on that conflict, in the battle for the Huertgen Forest in Germany in WWII they lost 33,000 Americans in three weeks. And that was a small battle prior to the Bulge.
October 12th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Iraq the War-Porn Supermodel wrote somewhere: “I can say that having 40% of Iraqis who disapprove of attacks on US troops is actually a surprising figure (in a good way) and it’s not that bad at all. I mean the numbers indicate that war has more support in Iraq than it has in the UK itself or in countries in the Middle East where America is not waging a war!”
Reg responded: “I was astounded by the stupidity of that commentary on about three different levels.”
I suppose that one of the stupidity levels on which you were astonished was the dank, dark, oil-streaked basement parking lot in which we get mugged by a kind of implicit accusation: that opposition to British troops in Iraq from Brits is morally equivalent to those war-opposed Brits planting IEDs to blow up their own troops.
OK, my logic is flawed there, I admit it. But it’s no worse than Iraq the War-Porn Supermodel’s logic. Man, these guys are digging real hard to find that pony, aren’t they? And what are they getting covered with, in the process?
October 12th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Um, no, Marc, neither Robert McNamara (who has personal demons to wrangle, and far as I know, has never sourced that claim) nor the Vietnamese government (for obvious reasons) are credible at face value. Even assuming the latter *is* credible, what are we to make of this:
“However, the non-combat related death is greater than MIA & KIA combined: nearly 2 and half a million North Vietnamese troops died as a result of disease (malaria was the major cause) and non-combat related accidents (such as falling, drowning, and snake bites).”
OK, so the Vietnamese government is saying 2.5 million *troops* died? Where’s the civilian casualty rate from military action? I’m calling BS on this, until I see a better source. And it’s evident you (like most people, including me, until I came across the Maraniss cites) have been tossing around the 1-3 million figure without a legitimate source. Don’t you think it’s at least slightly possible the 1-3 million figure was introduced by Vietnamese and anti-war propogandists, and over time, became received wisdom? Mysteriously, I don’t ever see a figure for the number of South Vietnamese civilians who died at the Viet Cong’s hand, only the number that the US is supposed to be culpable for. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?
For what it’s worth, Maraniss notes (page 534 footnotes) a ‘71 Senate report that estimates a million civilian deaths *in South Vietnam*– i.e. in large part at the hand of the Vietcong. Also, from the *Vietnam War Almanac*, that: “North Vietnamese deaths from American bombing totaled some 65,000.” On Page 71, Maraniss says, “The number of civilian deaths during the entire war, which lasted another 6 years [from the time of the book] has never been resolved. Most estimates placed the number between 300,000 and a half million.”
So again, Marc, where’s your credible, rigorous study that says 1-3 million Vietnamese civilians were killed the US?
October 12th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
WJA… ur a perfect example of what I mean by the Rorschach effect. See what u please. The Vietnamese lost 5 milliion people in the war… civilian casualties, however, were only light to moderate. By the way, it was also a Noble Cause, one of America’s Finest Moments, and we definitely Fought With One Hand Behind Our Back. Oh yes. and Bob McNamara was (back then) the Architect of Victory but nowadays is but an addled apologist for the DRV.
October 12th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
“So again, Marc, where’s your credible, rigorous study that says 1-3 million Vietnamese civilians were killed the US?”
Marc stated that the Vietnam war cost the Vietnamese 2-3 million lives. Your introduction of “civilians” and “killed (’by’, presumably) the U.S.” renders your challenge bogus. I don’t have a source on this and think it borders on moot given what sane people know about the futility of the Indochina wars, but it would be nice if you actually chose to argue with Marc’s actual allegation rather than the straw man of your choice.
October 12th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
You’re attacking a straw man, Marc, I’m merely asking for a credible source. McNamara is racked by guilt, and it’s reasonable to suspect he’s accepting at face value the highest civilian casualty figure as part of his self-selected penance. I don’t dispute that the Vietnamese war was horribly brutal and not worth the cost we paid in lives, but it is one thing to say that, and another to gratuitously take on the burden of unjust accusations.
The willingness to accept without clear evidence or skepticism the worst indictments made against us is also a Rorschach of a different kind, don’t you think?
October 12th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
> Marc stated that the Vietnam war cost the
> Vietnamese 2-3 million lives.
The clear implication is that we were their killers.
For consider, if many or even most of those lives were our allies’ civilians killed by our enemies, what sense what would the statement make? Consider if that same formulation was made regarding WWII:
“We very properly memorialize the hundreds of thousands of American deaths in Europe. But how often do we stop to ponder that the same war cost the Polish two, or is it three, million?”
And in any event, while Marc’s statement was somewhat ambiguous, many are all too willing to accuse the US of murdering 2 million Vietnamese. Surely you’ve heard them before.
October 13th, 2006 at 12:19 am
Let’s see:
Free Fire Zones
Ranchhands (Agent Orange)
Strategic Hamlets
Testimony from the “Winter Soldier” Hearings
Body Counts (If its dead its VC)
Reports from the ICC and UN Agencies
In sum the total civilian casualties in Vietnam start at one million and go up from there.
But let us assume you are right. How does that affect the Johns Hopkins report in the LANCET? I have not heard any major critiques of their methodology that would call the figures into question.
So put up or shut up as they say at the tables.
October 13th, 2006 at 4:29 am
“For what it’s worth, Maraniss notes (page 534 footnotes) a ‘71 Senate report that estimates a million civilian deaths *in South Vietnam*– i.e. in large part at the hand of the Vietcong.”
Is that “i.e.” *your* inference, WJA, or *their* conclusion? Remember, the U.S. dropped a lot more bombs on South Vietnam than it ever dropped on North Vietnam. And it dropped a whole lotta bombs in Indochina (more tonnage than in all of WW II on all sides, as I understand it.) Citing figures for South Vietnam still leaves you North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the last two having been even more intensely bombed than the North. I think it was about a ton per head of population in the case of Laos. Maybe some of those tons took out some civilians, considering that Laos was an infiltration route and (for a while) safe harbor for North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong insurgents following Mao’s doctrine of guerilla warfare: swimming in the sea of the people?
If Maraniss is citing the Senate report I’m thinking of, it was issued by the Senate Committee on Refugees (headed, I believe, by Ted Kennedy). From what little I’ve been able to turn up, civilian casualties in South Vietnam were estimated at that point at around 400,000. But that leaves out North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, where much of the carnage was still to come, in 1971.
Without full, in-context quotes from impartial sources, you’re not going to get anywhere in this debate, WJA. (Nor, might I add, will anyone else. Rorschach Blot indeed!)
October 13th, 2006 at 4:33 am
The major critique of the Lancet estimate is that of the missing bodies — most days do NOT have the 500 or so additional deaths by violent means required by the Lancet estimate.
In the last 1000 days, Lancet is claiming an average of about 500; over 3000 every week. The reported news notes a few dozens on bad days, hundreds in the week. Where are the thousands of bodies? They’re not in Iraqi hospitals or morgues — I wonder how many death certificates have been made (and who makes them).
M. Turner is right that I have found no source for my 600 000*(unsubstantiated) number; I’ll note that status in the future talks on murders by the N. Viet after surrender. Implicitly he was looking for a better number, but also didn’t find one.
As WJA points out, both McNamara and the Vietnam gov’t have reasons to be less than accurate.
The US gov’t should have been trying to keep track of all Iraqi deaths. I’ve always been uncomfortable about this lack, but it shows an excessive US-centric approach. (Same in Vietnam, 58 148 is official number of US soldiers killed, +114 in captivity.)
So tell me, somebody, how many civilians DID the N. Vietnamese kill thru the war, and after?
http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html#ALMANAC
This statistics site says , thru 1973, they “assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499″
But this site doesn’t continue after 1975, except in citing the 1996 Information Please Almanac that:
“There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 then there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam.”
In Iraq, the choices are: more troops, less troops, same troops (~what Bush+generals say).
I’m voting same troops, and the failure of the Dems to agree on either more (and more US deaths?), or less (and more Iraqi deaths?), is an indication of the problem — wimpy Dem intellectual opposition with no coherent, consistent alternative.
Oops, there are two consistent threads: Bush is wrong (whatever he does), and American capitalism isn’t very good (even if there’s no offered alternative).
October 13th, 2006 at 4:35 am
Doubts about Death Numbers in Iraq, but not in Darfur…
Between 392,979 and 942,636 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred, is the conclusion of a survey by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at the Johns…
October 13th, 2006 at 6:03 am
Why do right-wingers enjoy killing and destroying families?
October 13th, 2006 at 8:15 am
“The reported news notes a few dozens on bad days, hundreds in the week.”
Actually, in news over this summer, we often had over 100 a day reported in Baghdad alone. And Baghdad has perhaps a quarter of the population of Iraq. Those 100 per day are typically found in the street. Not all bodies end up in the street. Many end up in the river. And not every body is that of a murder victim, remember.
What this Lancet study reports on isn’t limited to victims of direct violence. A baby who dies because of unsanitary water supplies, a grandfather who has a heart attack when a bomb goes off a few blocks away, a patient who dies on the operating table in what should have been a routine operation, because the power went out–these count, too.
In Islam, bodies are supposed to buried before sundown on the day of death, if possible. Therefore, the 100 or so per day found on the street as victims of retail violence on a particularly bad night in Baghdad and other epicenters of violence, or collected after wholesale daylight violence when emergency responders arrive, will be those that weren’t subject to the usual treatment–their bodies might still require identification by next of kin. Eventually, of course, most families of those who feel safe reporting a death to the authorities will want a death certificate. Well, the Lancet study canvassers asked for death certificates for substantiation. In 92% of cases, they got them. Not much room for error there, I think. So your “how come we don’t hear about it in the news?” counterargument is pretty meaningless–news is about dramatic events, it’s not actuarial science.
“There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 then there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam.”
Well, that would require substantiating the supposed Cambodian Autogenocide, which killed anywhere from 1.5 to 3 million people, depending whose sourceless fabrications you believe. Good luck with that project, Tom. Every couple years, I try to get that one pinned down, and most of the hard data that has emerged since the Vietnamese left Cambodia points in the other direction. The Yale Genocide Project likes to total up numbers based on estimates of the numbers of mass graves and how many might be in them. Strangely enough, they never get around to any of the exhumations and forensics that would determine likely causes of death or actual mass-grave body counts. And nobody else does either. Why check in with reality when you’ve got such a great bogeyman myth going? Why settle for substantiated figures that might be in the range of 150,000-300,000 Khmer Rouge murders when you can be the steward of one of the great genocide-story legacies of the 20th century? Why embarrass the U.S. government, the source of so much Cambodian foreign direct assistance these days, with a rough estimate of the number of bodies riddled with bomb shrapnel from B-52 runs that dumped maybe a quarter ton of bombs per capita on the countryside?
October 13th, 2006 at 9:42 am
“The clear implication is that we were their killers.”
Talk about Rorshachs…
Well, one thing certain about the current war. We won’t see Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney spending the rest of their lives wracked by guilt over their misbegotten war. They don’t have that degree of moral complexity in their character.
“Oops, there are two consistent threads: Bush is wrong (whatever he does), and American capitalism isn’t very good (even if there’s no offered alternative).”
(The following paragraph is an exercise in futility, but what the hell…maybe I just miss Woody.)
Again Tom Grey demonstrates a near total lack of coherent thought. “Bush is wrong” IMHO based on real outcomes of real policies. If you can’t grasp the critique of Bush’s actually, existing record in Iraq – on everything from abuse of intelligence analysis to troop levels to assumptions about the U.S. ability to impose a political construct in the Middle East and evade regional history/culture, to the steady denial of serious problems as they actually arose – but need to construct some Democratic netherworld of your own imagination as an alternative to dealing honestly with the concrete and real, so be it. It’s a symptom of your nuttiness, but why expect anything else.
And where the hell does the “American capitalism isn’t very good (even if there’s no offered alternative)” come from in this context. It’s also a straw man in any context, in that the liberal critique of capitalism is that it’s in fact very good at economic fundamentals but not very good as a totalizing moral center to all social endeavor. If you can’t grasp that – and in true libertarian fashion believe that markets are the be-all and end-all of societal interaction – you really need to STFU about morality, because it’s obvioius you have none beyond the most crass and dubious materialism. Laissez faire libertarianism is a cult of selfishness and market efficiency as the Higher Power. At least Ayn Rand was honest about it and detested anything associated with a Judeo-Christian ethic toward her fellow man. The only societies in human history that actually have worked with a reasonable degree of personal liberty, attention to the common good and the economic productivity necessary to sustain both are the modern liberal capitalist democracies. Laissez faire capitalism is a historical artifact that was found wanting – a dead-end into precisely the “alternative” that libertarians should fear most – economic breakdown and social polarization most likely followed by authoritarian reaction. “Libertarianism” as an alternative to modern liberalism and/or social democracy is a sophomoric conceit that most people grow out of when they realize that The Fountainhead, et al, isn’t just bad literature but childish, ahistorical philosophy. It’s also interesting that when you send guys who preach the “virtues” of unregulated capitalism to the Beltway, they become the paragons of crony capitalism at its worst, using the power of the state, their lobbyist connections and the network of insider perks to reward themselves and their friends. But why would that be any surprise ? It’s just a reflection of the moral landscape from whence they spring.
October 13th, 2006 at 9:58 am
I think the entire problem here is Americans being taught John Locke as the sin qua non philosopher of American liberalism, combining property fetishism with the absolute right to kill foreigners. Its the American way.
October 13th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
well cummings, at least you’re really good at reductionism. Bravo.
October 13th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
I could reduce it even more. The entire thing is because of that motherfucker Columbus, but perhaps also PT Barnum.
October 13th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Useful comment on Lancet study…
http://tinyurl.com/yblqhk
October 13th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Where does that “decent leftist” in the piece just linked get his fact that “most of the deaths were caused by insurgents.” I doubt this is the case, its probably 60/40 in terms of America and insurgents, and a lot also being quasi-America backed militias, disease for lack of medical care, plus heat, etc.
Even if it were the case that most of the deaths (or more of the deaths than caused by Americans) are insurgent caused, that hardly is justification for leaving the troops there. To lcall anything written by someone who can see these numebrs and feel steely-spined confirmed in his support of this immoral, murderous lost war is like linking someone who preferred ot talk about Algerian terrorism (which existed and help them win) than French torture and mass murder in the war in Algeria.
October 13th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
# jcummings Says:
I could reduce it even more. The entire thing is because of that motherfucker Columbus, but perhaps also PT Barnum.
Now THAT was good!
October 13th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
jcummings – not surprisingly you’ve completely misread this piece. The author invokes Nuremburg in calling for accountability for those who started what he clearly terms “aggression”. He also mocks the “Euston Manifesto” crowd who want to sweep this under the rug. I’m getting this feeling that you wake up everyday with the notion that “decent leftists” are lurking in your closets and under your bed…
October 13th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
If anyone hasn’t seen the first two episodes of this important new documentary (which I believe will be remembered as the non-fiction “Mrs. Miniver” of the Iraq war), by all means…
http://www.thewarofthewords.net/
October 13th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Locke Rules. Especially when compared to the Republican mascot Hobbes. It’s unclear who Cummings would put forth, but no doubt he wouldn’t be a Scotsman or the like. It’s the ideas that count.
October 13th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Would it be too early to begin to plan for the victory……uh, or defeat celebration guys? It gets confusing what to hell to call it sometimes doesn’t it?
In any case, don’t forget to invite the guests of honor. Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad really don’t care what you call it, as long as they get deserved recognition for turning the civilized world against itself, as predicted, using body bags and terrorism against innocent populations of their own people.
Al Capone is rolling over in his grave with jealousy of how these two thugs were able to gain control over a whole country, with cheering sections throughout the world, while he was limited to just one state and taken down with ‘tax evasion’. Embarassing.
Remember; no booze, no women, no laughing, and no fun. If you want to keep you heads.
Congradulations.
October 14th, 2006 at 12:58 am
How about David Hume? After all he did awaken Kant from his “dogmatic slumbers” and, lord knows, we could use a little of that about now.
October 14th, 2006 at 2:40 am
Among the better of many bad arguments against the new Lancet study is one I found linked from Little Green Footballs (yeah, yeah, I know: what the hell was I doing at a hate-speech site anyway?) Here it is:
One strike against the Lancet study is that it bases “excess deaths” on what seems like a rather low pre-invasion death rate. America is about 10 per 1000, Hungary about 13. How could Saddam’s subjects have suffered only 5-6 per 1000? Whether you’re with Ramsey Clarke about the tragedy of the sanctions, or with the neo-cons about what a genocidal monster Saddam was, or both (they aren’t mutually exclusive), your picture of sanctions-period Iraq is one of continuous funeral processions.
But let’s do some math. Maybe Gulf War I killed 50,000 Iraqi soldiers outright, and maybe the backlash against the uprisings in the Shi’ite south and the Kurdish north was up to 350,000 on top of that. What if years of Ba’athist killings and sanctions-related public health failures carried off an extra 10,000 per year for a decade? That adds up to about half a million. However, against a population of about 25 million, over 10 years, that’s maybe 0.2% per year, or an extra 2 deaths per 1000 added to Iraq’s ordinary death rate–whatever “ordinary” means in a country like that.
Well, what *would* “ordinary death rate” mean in a country like Iraq? Do we have comparison cases? Yes. Sort of. There’s The Other Ba’athist State, Syria, funding public health under more peaceful conditions but out of much lower oil earnings. They come in at 4.8 per 1000 according to the CIA factbook. Maybe Iran is a better point of comparison–second largest oil supplier in the world, but very large population too, and more poverty. They’re at 5.55 per 1000. Triangulating a little, take a look at Kuwait, a very rich petrostate indeed: 2.41 deaths per 1000.
How biased could Iraq’s figures be, if they were based on Ba’athist sources? Two propaganda agendas might have canceled each other out: the need to complain to the world about the inhumanity of the sanctions, versus a need to be touting the merits of Ba’ath socialism in providing for public welfare (which of course helped justify taking lives among Saddam’s state enemies in the name of lives saved by the Saddam’s benificent rule). Iraq certainly had the medical means for the latter, as well as the conditions for the former. It’s not well known, but for a while, Iraq was a mecca for those desiring cheap kidney transplants, not only because impoverished Iraqis were willing donors, but also because Iraq had, and still has, many skilled physicians. So I’d say it had war-and-sanctions-related public health disasters largely offset by good public health measures.
What explains odd discrepancies like a rich U.S. with 10 per 1000 death rates but a strapped, war-torn, dictator-saddled, sanctions-bound Iraq with something like half that rate? One is age structure. Almost 40% of Iraq’s population is under 15 years old, and only about 3% is older than 65. Amazing as it might seem to anyone with a wild teenage boy in the household, the young aren’t likely to die as soon as the aged. Japan’s death rate is around 9 per 1000, even though this is a much safer country than Iraq in terms of public violence, and most people ride the train to work rather than driving. But Japan also aging fast, and the birth rate is well below replacement rate. I suspect another factor pushing up some death rates is automobile use combined with alcohol abuse — Iraq is very much a car country (gas was around 5 cents a gallon in Saddam’s time) but alcohol-related traffic accidents were probably rare. I don’t know what traffic conditions were like, but one feature of police states is that they are very well policed. It’s said that Saddam used to don a fedora and take a junker out on the roads of Baghdad as camouflage, after he concluded that an escort of black bullet-proof limous, even with decoy units, made him still too much of an assassination target. Would he have done that if he thought driving around in Baghdad was more dangerous than driving around in Rome, Athens, or (shudder) Bangkok? Hungary, with its 13 per 1000 death rate, is probably a case of age structure (almost the same number of people over 65 as under 15) and Post-Soviet Syndrome: chronic male alcoholism. (There are about half as many Hungarian men as women in the over-65 age cohort, a strong indicator.)
In short, I don’t find a sanctions-period Iraqi death rate of 5-6 per 1000 so incredible, even under the worst assumptions made about Iraq in the sanctions period. Nice try. But no cigar.
October 14th, 2006 at 6:25 am
I have in my hands a list. On reread, Reg, you’re right.
October 14th, 2006 at 6:26 am
Hobbes and Locke are two peas of the same pod. I pick Giambattista De Vico, who they both cribbed from, Spinoza, Hegel, Marx etc.
October 14th, 2006 at 6:33 am
Supposed autogenocide?!
Michael Turner Says:
October 13th, 2006 at 8:15 a.m.
>…Well, that would require substantiating the supposed Cambodian Autogenocide, which killed anywhere from 1.5 to 3 million people, depending whose sourceless fabrications you believe. Good luck with that project, Tom. Every couple years, I try to get that one pinned down, and most of the hard data that has emerged since the Vietnamese left Cambodia points in the other direction. The Yale Genocide Project likes to total up numbers based on estimates of the numbers of mass graves and how many might be in them. Strangely enough, they never get around to any of the exhumations and forensics that would determine likely causes of death or actual mass-grave body counts. And nobody else does either. Why check in with reality when you’ve got such a great bogeyman myth going? Why settle for substantiated figures that might be in the range of 150,000-300,000 Khmer Rouge murders when you can be the steward of one of the great genocide-story legacies of the 20th century? Why embarrass the U.S. government, the source of so much Cambodian foreign direct assistance these days, with a rough estimate of the number of bodies riddled with bomb shrapnel from B-52 runs that dumped maybe a quarter ton of bombs per capita on the countryside?
http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/pol_pot1.html
By DAVID CHANDLER
>…His harsh, utopian policies, derived in part from Maoist China, drove an estimated 1.5 million Cambodians–or one in five–to their deaths from malnutrition, illness or overwork. At least 200,000 more were executed as enemies of the state. The ratio of deaths to population made the Cambodian revolution the most murderous in a century of revolutions.
On Chandler, Kiernan, Chomsky, Lacouture, Caldwell, Summers, and Porter
http://www.jim.com/canon.htm
The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia
Even Vickery says 750,000 deaths.
>…Ben Kiernan, noted academic and author of the serious and worth reading book How Pol Pot Came to Power (1985) and co-editor with David Chandler of such other notable works as Revolution and Its Aftermath (1983), will lead the U.S. State Department funded Yale University program that will create a database documenting Khmer Rouge genocidal crimes. We know from this thesis, however, that there is another story to Dr. Kiernan; the story of a young, idealistic graduate student, mesmerized by the idea of a people’s revolution and socialism. Ben Kiernan was a leading Khmer Rouge defender during Democratic Kampuchea.[268] With all due respect to him and the studied work he has done since 1979, he deserves to be canonized for being a leading proponent of the STAV on Cambodia.
In fact, it was not until Kiernan interviewed five hundred Cambodian refugees in the camps in 1978 or 1979 that he recognized that he had been “late in realizing the extent of the tragedy in Kampuchea.”[269] In what amounted to a mea culpa in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars in 1979, entitled “Vietnam and the Governments and People of Kampuchea,” he writes,
I was wrong about … the brutal authoritarian trend within the revolutionary movement after 1973 was not simply a grass-roots reaction, and expression of popular outrage at the killing and destruction of the countryside by U.S. bombs, although that helped it along decisively. There can be no doubting that the evidence also points clearly to a systematic use of violence against the population by that chauvinist section of the revolutionary movement that was led by Pol Pot. In my opinion this violence was employed in the service of a nationalist revivalism that had little concern for the
conditions of the Khmer people, or the humanitarian socialist ideals that had inspired the broader Kampuchean revolutionary movement. [Emphasis added.][270]
http://www.yale.edu/cgp/
The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country’s population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. As in Nazi Germany, and more recently in East Timor, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale.
Since 1994, the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program, a project of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, has been studying these events to learn as much as possible about the tragedy, and to help determine who was responsible for the crimes of the Pol Pot regime. In Phnom Penh in 1996, for instance, we obtained access to the 100,000-page archive of that defunct regime’s security police, the Santebal. This material has been microfilmed by Yale University’s Sterling Library and made available to scholars worldwide. As of January 2006, we have also compiled and published 22,000 biographic and bibliographic records, and over 6,000 photographs, along with documents, translations, maps, and an extensive list of CGP books and research papers on the genocide, as well as the CGP’s newly-enhanced, interactive Cambodian Geographic Database, CGEO, which includes data on: Cambodia’s 13,000 villages; the 115,000 sites targeted in 231,00 U.S. bombing sorties flown over Cambodia in 1965-75, dropping 2.75 million tons of munitions; 158 prisons run by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime during 1975-1979, and 309 mass-grave sites with an estimated total of 19,000 grave pits; and 76 sites of post-1979 memorials to victims of the Khmer Rouge.
To examine these, and other information we have discovered, click on one of the links on the sidebar.
For a more detailed introduction to the CGP, click here. Aid to Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), 1995-2005
October 14th, 2006 at 8:39 am
JR – any “congratulations” for handing Iraq off to Iran and offering al Qaeda the opportunity to recruit thousands to turn a country into chaos and humiliate the United States goes to your fearless leader. He and his cohorts should be run out of town, if not lined up and shot, for screwing us – and the Iraqis – royally. If you’re bitter at people like me, it’s because partisanship dictates that’s all you’ve got left. The only alternative is hating the real culprits (among Americans), who your side has spent years lionizing – and that’s a tough turn.
I assume there are evil nuts and real bad guys out there. What creeps me out is when people who are supposed to provide responsible leadership for our side completely blow it, with full knowledge that they’re playing fast and loose, and getting thousands of our kids killed for no gain in the process. If you’re bitter about this mess, you can bet your ass I’m far more bitter and have been for years as I’ve watched this mess keep getting worse. I knew this was a war of choice against a bad guy who was getting hyped by a faction of neocon crackpots. The Tora Bora fiasco aside, it was also obvious fairly early on that we were not putting full resources – special forces, etc. – in Afghanistan because war was being planned for Iraq. Now that one is falling apart too, because of decisions BushCo made in 2002.
I had bad feelings about the half-assed conduct of this damned thing in Iraq from the first weeks of the occupation. Now people who had some sense of where this was headed – although frankly it’s actually been even worse in many ways than I thought possible – have to be painted as culprits – somehow aiding bin Laden – in the world of the GOPer partisans and right-wing blowhardsphere. I guess it’s because we were afraid that a political and military disaster that has dealt bin Laden and Ahmenamijad aces might well turn out to be…a military/political disaster that would turn up aces for guess who? Yeah, we’re the culprits. Not the folks who hyped and planned and conducted this thing so wrongly and recklessly from day one. This bizarro world response is to be expected from a gang who’s only known expertise is in getting everything wrong and being absolutely shameless about it.
October 14th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Hobbes and Locke two peas in the same pod? I guess I will leave you to your dogmatic slumbers!
October 15th, 2006 at 2:35 am
“He and his cohorts should be run out of town, if not lined up and shot, for screwing us – and the Iraqis – royally.”
Ooh, just two knee-jerk inferences away from a threat on the life of the President, reg! Be careful–you might end up an Illegal Enemy Combatant.
James Baker, loyal opposition to Dubya among the Bush Family Faithful, is now chairing a bipartisan commission to come up with recommendations on how to get out of this mess. He’s an interesting choice.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Baker was, I believe, on the board of some beltway thinktank that issued a report warning that Iraq would be a mess. Which is consistent with the original cut-and-run: Bush Sr. deciding to not go all the way to Baghdad in Gulf War I, a squelched opportunity rejected as “mission creep” at the time, and as adventuring in what would be a “bitterly hostile land”. Not that he was opposed to Gulf War I. In the run-up to that war, which Baker apparently favored, he let loose with a faux pas, that it was about oil and jobs. (Later he retracted and said “the principal of national sovereignty.”)
Putting this all together, Baker now has a tough row to hoe. Whatever he recommends has to meet four criteria:
(1) It can’t make Dubya look wrong. If it did, and for Dubya to then act on it, he would either have to eat certain recent words to the effect that he has never been more convinced that he made the right decisions, or he has to make the almost-equally humiliating concession that he based those decisions on bad information from those closest to the decision, a few of whom are still right at his side: best-buddy Cheney and workout-buddy Condi. Dubya would probably accept the temporary humiliation of rejecting the Baker commission conclusions (the press would have a field day with it, and he’d lose some centrist Republicans) rather than back down either on his policy choices or on his personnel choices.
(2) It has to be about oil and jobs, even if it’s framed in some more ethical-sounding terms.
(3) In addition, it has to look like it’s merely “adjusting” the GWOT strategy, without evoking too much squawking and second-guessing from retired generals, nor from sitting ones either.
(4) It can’t involved firing the Selective Service system back up again. That’s political suicide for the GOP.
Ouch. I don’t know what this commission could “conclude” that wouldn’t amount major doubletalk and major doublethink. And I don’t think Baker’s a doubletalker, until political circumstances force him to be, anyway. Baker is clearly in the twilight years of his political career–he just put out an autobiography, “Work Hard, Study Hard, and Keep Out of Politics” (after some advice he got from a Baker patriarch). He doesn’t have to worry about burning political capital. On some other tennis court than George Sr’s, he might have been a moderate Democrat instead of a moderate Republican (he only changed parties to avoid frowns when he decided to pitch in for George Sr’s senatorial campaign). That leaves him well-equipped, I think, for bipartisan compromise on some sensible solution for Iraq. But that great resume won’t amount to much if there’s no solution to equations (1), (2), (3) and (4) above.
October 15th, 2006 at 8:27 am
Thanks Reg for not being to brutal on me….taking me to the Woody pile, so to speak.
I am damn mad Iraq was taken on before Afganistan was stabilized too. I destinctly remember being surprised and worried about it at the time, hoping they knew what the hell they were doing taking on two crazy Arab Countries at once. Turns out I guess they didn’t, unless of course Saddam really did have WMD we didn’t attack and bin Laden got a received a pass-off and NY City got a massive mustard gas attack in their underground transit system. In which case, Bush and Rumsfeld would be heros….wouldn’t they?
The difference between us lies in my principle belief the US is a basicly good country and by no
means was Bush doing anything but trying to protect America after one horrible attack. Put his decision in context and put yourself in his responsibility and put yourself with the same intel he had at hand.
The difference between us lies in my principle, being the facist
I am, to support my country even when things aren’t going well in a war. Because I believe in its basic goodness and good intentions. I put my country first, my politics second, and my family third 
.
Btw, it is heartbreaking to see that the lunatics may be succeeding in turning the Iraq’s against themselves in a bitter civil war. Just hearbreaking.
October 15th, 2006 at 9:12 am
I will add it has been heartbreaking also to see the political civil war within our own country, that started almost as soon as the Iraq war started, that has contributed greatly to the eventual civil war in Iraq.
I don’t believe the Iraq war was lost there. It was lost here. Vietnam anyone?
October 15th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Jim R.,
If we treated these thugs more like Al Capone and lesss like the USSR WWIII fantasy the neocons have been chasing for the past forty years, we’ probably be a lot better off. If the recent troubles with North Korea don’t give you a sense of priorities and how limitedly dangerous the “Islamofacists” really are in comparison to the power of states (and nuclear ones at that), then I don’t know what will.
October 15th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
“the political civil war within our own country, that started almost as soon as the Iraq war started, that has contributed greatly to the eventual civil war in Iraq.
I don’t believe the Iraq war was lost there. It was lost here.”
JR – I think you’re on drugs. A civil war in the U.S. contributed to the civil war in Iraq ? You’re even better at hallucinating your own self-serving version of this misadventure than the BushCo Crap Machine. Take some fucking responsibility for the failures of the policies and people you’ve been supporting. It’s called being an adult. It’s the conservative thing to do, even.
October 15th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
“Put his decision in context and put yourself in his responsibility and put yourself with the same intel he had at hand.”
And I’d have had to be (1) insane, (2) incredibly stupid or (3) a captive of crackpot ideologues with a chip on my shoulder toward my old man to come up with invading Iraq as #1 on my list of responses to 9/11 – and having no coherent plan for what to do when we made it to Baghdad in a couple of weeks. If you really want to make yourself sick, read these “Inside the Emerald City” commentaries by Rajiv Chandreskaran, who’d reported extensively on the way the occupation has been conducted by BushCo:
You can find them here -
http://www.tpmcafe.com/flexinode/list/10
Quit trying to find scapegoats on “the left” for the monumental screwups that your “heroes” have made time and time again. It’s lame. And quit acting like you’re a bigger patriot than the rest of us. You’re not. And the more you try to scapegoat fellow Americans who’ve been critics of this crap masquerading as “strategy”, recylcle defenses of the indefensible and rationalize the grotesque failures of an administration that has done serious damage to this country’s national security by dragging us into a disastrous and needless war, the less convincing your patriotism becomes and the more apparent your partisan blinders. I refuse to be abused.
October 16th, 2006 at 3:26 am
“… hoping they knew what the hell they were doing taking on two crazy Arab Countries at once.”
Afghanistan is an Arab country? Funny, I thought they not only weren’t Arab, but actually disliked Arabs for the most part. Lemme check [he googles around, under the assumption that, unlike some people, he doesn't know everything and also can't be trusted to properly remember what little he does know] … yeah, they are not Arabs and they seem to dislike Arabs. Though sometimes a rich Arab like, say, Osama bin Laden shows up and funds development projects that the U.S. should have funded after the Russians left. Then Afghanistanis make an exception.
Fallback hypothesis: Jim R doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Again.
October 16th, 2006 at 5:49 am
You miss Woody, don’t you Reg?
“A civil war in the U.S. contributed to the civil war in Iraq?”
Hard to comprehend Reg? What kind of luck do you think McArthur would have had trying to stabilize post war Japan and begin a democracy if the population got a steady diet of US newspapers and US News TV displaying division and discontent in the US as to whether the war was justified, and more importantly, whether we should be leaving Japan ‘now’?
What kind of luck do you think McArthur would have had trying to stabilize post war Japan if the population got a steady diet of US newspapers and US News TV programs from an out-of-control press roaming Japan streets looking for any miss-behavior or discontent by the population or our troops, promoting it to the headlines news story of the day, every day of the month.
You can’t run a fucking war this way, and you can damn well bet Eisenhower and McArthur would’nt have put up with it for one second…..ok, maybe 24hrs.
“And quit acting like you’re a bigger patriot than the rest of us.”
It ain’t an act Reg. It’s me, and it ain’t about trying to out-patriot anyone. It ain’t about trying to support Bush either. It is about supporting my country, in a time of need, in what I truly believe is a necessary battle for us and the poor Iraqi people to win.
I firmly believe the immature Jimmy Olsen “I got a scoop and I’m going to print it…..fuck everybody else including my country” US press corps and the “I hate Bush and want him defeated ….fuck everything else” political rivals are responsible for more lost Iraqi lives than all of our soldiers put together, by prolonging this war.
“I refuse to be abused.”
My comments are not personal to you Reg, But if somehow they strike a raw nerve that make you think they are, then that would be your association. As I understood it from past comments, you favored not leaving Iraq at a fixed date…..no?
October 16th, 2006 at 9:23 am
“You can’t run a fucking war this way”
No you can’t…nor should you start one this way. Of course, I put the responsibility on those who are actually running it…into the ground and using our kids as though war was some high school chemistry experiment. If you had your way, the New York Times would still be reporting that we would soon find Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. If you think a foreign misadventure demands that we have the kind of press common to fascist or communist states – “my regime, right or wrong”, fine. Just don’t follow that with a paragraph on how much you love your country.
October 16th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Incidentally, given the majorities that now see through the hype and denial that have characterized this war of choice, the dead-enders will inevitably mount a campaign to blame the manifest, predictable failures of a grotesquely incompetent administration on the “American people’s lack of will” – a strategy that puts them in the “Hate America” wackjob column, along with the crazy preachers and crackpot ideologues – like D’Nesh D’Souza of the Hoover Institute, Ward Churchill of the Univ. of Colorado and Jerry Falwell of God’s Little Acre – who have indicted their fellow citizens for the attacks of 9/11.
October 16th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Incidentally, JR, I think that your need to believe the press and the Democrats are responsible for the debacle in Iraq is so deeply felt – however irrational to the observer – that nothing you read or hear about how crazy this war was in both it’s “casus belli” and execution could possibly change it.
October 16th, 2006 at 11:34 am
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20061016/020303.html
[lbo-talk] Michael Turner picks apart Cooper’s “Rorschach” analogy
Stephen E Philion philion at hawaii.edu
Mon Oct 16 10:44:43 PDT 2006
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20061016/020307.html
[lbo-talk] Michael Turner picks apart Cooper’s “Rorschach” analogy
Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 16 11:31:03 PDT 2006
October 17th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
JimR makes the mistake of comparing anything in the realm of WWII to the farcical engagements since. Don’t do it. It’s a fool’s errand to make this false comparison including the internment aspect.
October 17th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
“Hobbes and Locke are two peas of the same pod.”
Bwaaa Haaaa!
Two opposite sides of the bean pole is more like it. Jefferson and Madison and our declaration and constitution came from the latter. Of course to folks as far out as Cummings they’re staunch right wingers. Such is the sad state of affairs around here and in the world in general wher eapparently blatant ignorance is the order of the day.
October 17th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
“JimR makes the mistake of comparing anything in the realm of WWII to the farcical engagements since.”
Thanks for your support Publius. My point exactly. You must be mature beyond your years. Else, you are one of the greatest generation.
January 15th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Hi! Very nice site! Thanks you very much! FFa37ExiEJWdtW
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:10 am
wwfjowm
May 24th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
http://hijywtl.com
June 30th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Paula…
As the proud owner of a laptop computer, you’ll want to keep your…
July 10th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Bai…
…
August 19th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
american car luxury used…
They donÂ’t preserve very much of the original sound, and they distort it quite a bit in the name of increasing the bass power….
November 29th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Excellent forum with fantastic references and reading…. well done indeed…
http://danuegonax.com
I Will be back!
November 30th, 2007 at 6:12 am
The Good lad an author! I much like site!
http://srubibablo.com
There was merrily!
January 1st, 2008 at 12:19 am
Really nice post – thanx for sharing
January 31st, 2008 at 8:42 am
Hi boys!3875acec86bd091dfa6659e9ca17f8be
March 7th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Yo!
lilli xene danni ashe christy canyon abby essien
March 20th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Hello
March 31st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Hello
Wasjust serfing on net and found this site…want to say thanks. Great site and content!
March 31st, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Hi
Wasjust serfing on net and found this site…want to say thanks. Great site and content!
February 1st, 2009 at 9:59 am
Hello. And Bye.