Groundhog Spat with Johann

I was sorry to see my friend Johann Hari (below), who once supported the invasion of Iraq, repeating some of the most awful and untrue anti-war propaganda in a Groundhog post on this blog. He says that the war “has led to the death of a million people”.

He has said it before (only it was 1.2 million then), and was reprinted enthusiastically and in full by the Daily Mail (for an excellent article on “why the Daily Mail is poison”, see here). And he has said it before (when it was 1.15 million).

There is no credible basis for any of these figures, which overstate the level of violent deaths in Iraq since the invasion by a factor of about 10. The methodology of the once widely-cited figure of half that number, 600,000, published in The Lancet, has been exposed as unreliable. As I have said many times, the death toll in Iraq is terrible enough for it not to require wild exaggeration by those who disagreed, or who now disagree, with the invasion.

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• LancashireLad

  I’m glad you’re sorry!

• Blagh147

  If you think it is less then 1 million you are crazy.

• Blagh147

  If you think it is less then 1 million you are crazy.

• Blagh147

  If you think it is less then 1 million you are crazy.

• http://www.tumblr.com/blog/spitefuel Spitefuel

  It’s OK Rentoul you can haggle over the numbers; you’re still complicit in supporting and being an apologist for mass-murder. Do carry on trying to make excuses. Here’s hoping you wake up in Baghdad with no means of escape.

• petersimplex

  Given the unpalatable choice of reading Hari or you, I would opt for you every time, Mr Rentoul. (which might be rephrased in a QuTWTAIN). I don’t know what’s eating Hari.
  You choose some very odd friends.

• Oscar Weird

  Ah, so the death of one Muslim is an irrelevance, the death of a million is a statistic. What a bizarre thing to argue over. Or, are you working towards saying that no one died in Iraq, and you hero succeeded in invoking a Christian peace and democracy?

• JohnJustice

  And I hope that you wake up as a Shia or a Kurd in Saddam’s Iraq with no means of escape.

• http://www.tumblr.com/blog/spitefuel Spitefuel

  Oh you’re one of those sheep who uses the “Saddam was a bad man argument”. I take it you’ll be advocating we invade Saudi Arabia then? Oh hang on you’re probably one of those hypocrites like Rentoul who tries to pretend the Saudi’s (the country REALLY behind 9/11 – look at the passports of the hijackers alone) aren’t worse than Saddam.

  So noob explain why we didn’t invade Saudi Arabia but did invade Iraq?

  I hate hypocritical scum like you who try to justify a criminal war after the fact but can’t explain it without looking even more idiotic.