Iraq, nearly a decade later

It has been another grim year in Iraq, according to Iraq Body Count, which has tracked violent deaths since the invasion in 2003.

It recorded 4,471 civilian deaths in 2012, bringing the cumulative total of Iraqi deaths since the invasion, and including combatants, to 168,103. This is the first year since the withdrawal of US combat troops.

The continuing level of violence in Iraq is depressing, although extraordinarily it is not so much worse in some respects than in the United States.

The rate per 100,000 population of deaths from firearms in Iraq was 5.0 in 2012. In the US it was 3.6 for homicides and 10.3 including suicides.

The rate of all violent deaths in Iraq was 14.4 (most of the rest from explosions), which compares with the total homicide rate in the US of 5.2.*

As I have said many times before, the death toll in Iraq since the invasion has been much too high, and it does not need to be exaggerated by those who opposed the war, who often cite the discredited Lancet figure of 600,000 or an unreliable opinion poll figure of 1.2m.

*The death rate in the US from drugs was 12.9, excluding from alcohol, 8.4.

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• creggancowboy

  It is obscene to horse trade in the number of deaths, Mr Rentoul. Fair enough to state that Blair and Bush got Hussein out, yet let us not be led astray about why, it was not to install democracy (after all Airstrip One has none) it was for US oil interests.

• BlairSupporter

  And now most of the oil in Iraq is SOLD (sold mark you, not given) to Russia, China and others who stood back while the **** hit the proverbial. (Missing you on twitter big Ron, btw. You’ll LOVE my recent tweets, I’m sure.)

• bobbellinhell

  John Rentoul says the 600,000 figure is ‘discredited’? He knows whereof he speaks when it comes to claims being discredited!

• bogwart

  And why do you imagine Russia and China “stood back”? Could it be that they, like everyone else, knew the invasion was illegal and immoral? But they, unlike everybody else, refused to participate in the destruction of the country?
  I don’t know why, apart from the obvious reasons, you are gladhanding the current situation. You seem neither to know nor care that the average house in Baghdad still, after almost ten years, gets only three to fours electricity a day, or that people still queue for hours to buy petrol.
  American oil refiners are making a tidy profit, I have no doubt that the USA is being as greedy as usual in their demand for reparations and any balance goes to the corrupt al Maliki and his cronies.
  This story is a long way from being over

• bogwart

  Don’t expect him to let the truth get in the way of more Blair romance.

• creggancowboy

  Illegality and immorality never bothered Peking, look at Tibet. Bog you must forgive BS a surfeit of eels at Xmas?

• bogwart

  Apples and oranges. I suspect if people knew the true situation in Tibet, with a “monkocracy” in some ways as bad as China was then, their opinion would change. In any case it has nothing to do with Baghdad’s miraculous rise to Rentoul’s version of normality.

  So far as the well-named BS is concerned, it is a pity he didn’t choose lampreys instead of eels. It worked for Henry 1.

• creggancowboy

  Tibet may not have been perfect under the Dalai Lama but it was Tibet. John still has not told us which regiment Euan will be with in Iraq?

• JohnJustice

  “And why do you imagine Russia and China ’stood back’?” That’s an easy one. Birds of a feather flock together.