Iraq Civilian Death Toll At Least 655 Thousand

While Bush insists these figures are all wrong - not that I think either the math OR the truth is exactly Dubya's forte, if you get my drift - a Johns Hopkins study of more than 18,000 families throughout Iraq list more than 655 thousand dead since U.S. troops rolled in. As Juan Cole said (to paraphrase): "So eighteen thousand Iraqi families all got together to conspire to report deaths that didn't happen?"

In my view, I suspect this is on the low side. I (very regretfully) suspect that American actions within Iraq have probably killed, including allowing the insurgency to develop and the sectarian violence to go ballistic, may be responsible for at least 10% of Iraqi civilians or 2.5 million people.

More than two years ago, for example, we were told the death count was over 200K. Violence in the past year, for example, has gone wild.