10th Anniversary Of US Iraq Invasion: 2.7 Million Iraqi Deaths

By Dr Gideon Polya

20 March, 2013
Countercurrents.org

This week it is exactly ten years after the US , UK and Australia illegally invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003 on the utterly false and illegitimate excuse that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).  The invasion occurred after over 12 years of deadly sanctions, war and bombing that had devastated the infrastructure of Iraq , violently killed 0.2 million Iraqis in the Gulf War and killed 1.7 million Iraqis through war-imposed deprivation (see “Genocide in Iraq . The case against the Security Council and member states” by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani; for review see: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080213.htm ).

The subsequent US-led invasion and occupation was associated with 1.5 million violent deaths (see the US-based "Just Foreign Policy": http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq ) and an estimated 1.2 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, now available for free perusal on the web: 
http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html ).

In the period 1990-2011  Iraqi deaths from violence or from violently-imposed deprivation totalled 4.6 million, a horrifying  number commensurate with the deaths in the World War 2 (WW2) Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from imposed deprivation; see Sir Martin Gilbert, “Atlas of the Holocaust”). While 1.5 million Jewish children were killed by the German Nazis in WW2, the under-5 year old infant deaths in Iraq totaled 1.2 million under sanctions (1990-2003), 0.8 million under occupation (2003-2011) and 2.0 million overall (1990-2011), 90% avoidable and due to gross violation by the US Alliance of the Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention.

The US-based organization Just Foreign Policy, which has a board composed of former elected politicians, academics, and human rights experts, has estimated that 1.5 million Iraqis have died violently since the US Alliance invasion of Iraq, this being based on  estimates by the UK ORB organization and by top US medical epidemiologists  from 36-Nobel-Laureate Johns Hopkins University and 82-Nobel-Laureate Columbia University. Just Foreign Policy states: “ The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003 ”  (Just Foreign Policy: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq ).

In stark contrast to science-based estimates of 2.7 million post-invasion Iraqi deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation,  Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist-subverted Mainstr4am media purvey the 18-27-fold lower estimate of circa 100,000-150,000 post-invasion violent Iraqi deaths that comes from the utterly discredited “Iraq Body Count” (see: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/  ) that incorrectly bases its estimates on media and related reports, a methodology that has been trenchantly criticized by  Johns Hopkins and Columbia University epidemiologists who in 2006 estimated up to 0.6 million Iraqi violent deaths (Burnham et al, “The human cost of the war in Iraq. A mortality study, 2002-2006”:http://web.mit.edu/cis/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf ) .

Thus, for example,  the ABC (Australia's equivalent of the UK BBC), Australian SBS,  the UK BBC, and the UK New Statesman refer to the circa 100,000 estimate of Iraq Body Count. James Rodgers in an article entitled ““It's the occupation stupid”: what wrong in Iraq ” (New Statesman, 19 March 2013:http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2013/03/its-occupation-stupid-what-went-wrong-iraq ) opines: “ Iraq Body Count has calculated that more than 100,000 civilian deaths followed the 2003 invasion. ” Even worse, Caroline Wyatt, BBC Defence correspondent, in an article entitled “ Iraq ten years on: the human cost” ” (BBC, 18 March 2013: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21823016 ) fails to mention any of the 2.7 million Iraqis who died.

Sensible, humane people  will not have a difficult time deciding between the credibility of (A) top medical epidemiologists from the world-leading Bloomberg School of Public Health at 36-Nobel-Laureate Johns Hopkins University, the top medical journal The Lancet, the leading UK commercial polling organization ORB (Opinion Research Business), the eminent American Just Foreign Policy organization and the UN Population Division (in 2003-2011, 1.5 million Iraqi deaths from violence, 1.2 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 0.8 million under-5 infant deaths) versus (B) genocide ignoring, holocaust ignoring, genocide denial and holocaust denial from Iraqi Body Count, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist-subverted Mainstream media, neoliberal war criminal politicians and anonymous bloggers (100,000-150,000 Iraqis killed).

Holocaust denial is utterly repugnant because it insults the victims, egregiously offends the survivors and greatly increases the probability of recurrence of holocaust and genocide atrocities. Thus deaths from violence or from violently-imposed deprivation in Western invaded Muslim countries that total 4.6 million (post-1990 Iraq ), 5.6 million (post-2001 Afghanistan ), 2.0 million (post-1936 Palestine ), 2.2 million (post-1992 Somalia ) , 0.1 million (post-2011 Syria ), 0.1 million (post-2011 Libya ), and goodness knows how many in the Yemen , Mali , and Pakistan .(see "Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide":https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).

France has criminalized holocaust denial in relation to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and the WW1 Armenian Genocide (1.5 million killed). Some years ago Germany proposed widening the net of holocaust denial and genocide denial to include other atrocities over the last century. However the importance of freedom of speech for scholarship and for rational societal risk management argues that the sole punishment of holocaust deniers would be the ignominy of public exposure. With the obvious exceptions of decent people like Baroness Jennifer Tonge and Bradford MP George Galloway, most UK Lords and Commons MPs are guilty of holocaust commission and holocaust denial and should, together with the genocidally racist Zionists, neocon Americans and  pro-war,  neoliberal  and US-beholden  politicians around the world, be excluded by utter public disgust from public life, as have already been like racists such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis , Apartheiders and KKK.

However the human cost of the Iraq War does not stop there with 2.7 million Iraqi deaths that are overwhelmingly ignored by Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist-perverted Mainstr4am media. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz (82-Nobel-Laureate Columbia University) and Professor Linda Bilmes (75-Nobel-Laureate Harvard University), co-authors of "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict." , have estimated an accrual cost of over $3 trillion for the Iraq War (see “The true cost of the Iraq war: 3 trillion and beyond”, Washington Post, 5 September 2010:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html ) and the accrual cost of the War on Terror for Australia has been $125 billion, immoral, profligate and deadly financial commitments that are linked to annual preventable deaths totaling   1 million (the US) and 66,000 (Australia) i.e.  American and Australian preventable deaths since 2001 totalling 12 million and 0.8 million, respectively (see Gideon Polya,  “Endless War on Terror. Huge cost for Australia & America ”, MWC News, 14 October 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/22149-endless-war-on-terror.html ).

While 4,486 Americans and 2 Australians died in the Iraq war, an estimated 6,000 US veterans suicide each year and about 50,000 have suicided since 2001 ( see Rob Hotakainin, The News Tribune, 26 May 2011:http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/05/26/1680716/concern-grows-over-epidemic-veteran.html  and Gideon Polya,  “ One million Americans die preventably annually In USA ”, Countercurrents, 18 February 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya180212.htm  ).

In his 2005 Nobel Prize Acceptance speech (see “Art, Truth and Politics”, Countercurrents, 8 December 2005: http://www.countercurrents.org/arts-pinter081205.htm ), outstanding, anti-racist Jewish British playwright Harold Pinter stated: “The 
invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law... How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice."

4.6 million? More than enough, I would have thought. Not just Bush and Blair but all the US Alliance leaders, politicians and their military, propaganda and intelligence agents complicit in the Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide should be arraigned before the International Criminal Court. From top to bottom in the genocidally racist US Alliance there is culpable involvement in both holocaust commission and holocaust denial.

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007:http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010:http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see:http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others:http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see:http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ andhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .