This was too important to let it be buried in the back of a comments thread of another post.

From the Liberty Belles blog, Kris, in response to someone from ASC, said:

"The Baathist regime averaged 60,000 Iraqi murders a year. During the past 3 years, 60,000 Iraqi civillians have died. Even if the majority of those civillians were killed by American troops (and Joe, I dare you to claim they are, really, I do), by my grim math that’s 40,000 civillians/year x 3 years = 120,000 civillians we’ve directly saved due to our invasion of Iraq."

Dearest Kris--

(Stats -- scroll down to Iraq)

Human Rights Watch estimates that 290K Iraqis were killed by Saddam's regime -- EVER. That's 24 years from 1979 to 2003. That's 12,083 a year. The US Govt says 300K. That's 12,500 a year. Keep in mind that this includes 1991, right after the US told the Shi'ítes and the Kurds "Go ahead and rebel, we'll back you up." They rebelled, they didn't get backed up, and they were crushed. 60K Shi'ites were killed. That'll teach them to trust the US. We also have no idea how many Ba'athist aparatchiks this includes -- dictators routinely purge their ranks.

There is also some questioning of the 290K number -- the Red Cross wouldn't even back it up. From John Laughland: "Their report speaks of an estimated 290,000 missing, 'many of whom are believed to have been killed.' In other words, their deaths have not been established..."

Even current Iraqi politicians, who have an incentive to lie and exaggerate, say that Saddam killed a million people. That's still 41,666 per year.

HRW even says "by the time of the March 2003 invasion, Saddam Hussein's killing had ebbed." By the time of the invasion, Saddam likely wasn't killing much of anyone but major rivals and outspoken opponents, like Muqtada al-Sadr's father. Certainly nothing like crushing rebellions. So in reality, the US has greatly accelerated the killing.

Pretty much all you had to do in Saddam's Iraq was shut the hell up and mind your own business. Before sanctions, the economy was one of the best in the Arab world, women's rights were lightyears ahead. That was before the US and UK bombed and sanctioned Iraq for 12 years, decimating the economy and causing at least a million to die due to malnutrition and limited access to basic drugs for easily-curable diseases. The US killed a million Iraqis before they ever stepped foot on that patch of dirt.

Add all this to the fact that the war is crushing the Iraqi economy, the fact that the insurgents are attacking precisely because the US is there, and you have a veritable holocaust -- triggered by the United States of America. Furthermore, the insurgency is widely backed by the general population (or else it couldn't exist). Journalists report civilians helping out, too. For example, a man who has lost a son to a trigger-happy hick will, after a long day of tending his date palms, plant a roadside bomb for US troops, and then head home to the rest of his devastated family.

And that's just how the war is fucking up IRAQ.

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The reason this is so important is because there are all kinds of people spouting off many different numbers, plenty of which, like Kris', seem to have come right out of their asses in an attempt to further demonize Saddam and make the US look like angels simply because they have killed less people. There are other factors to take into account, like the fact that the people who were killed by Saddam knew how to avoid it. They knew it was coming at some point (and just to preempt some of the simpleminded out there who think I'm praising Saddam -- no, this did not make it okay). Saddam was the hurricane to the US earthquake.

The people killed by US troops and the insurgents attacking because of the former's presence have absolutely no idea how or when or where they will be killed. The news is filled with stories about Baghdadis who never leave their house, and go out once a month on a militarily-planned run for food. I mean, this is great for concrete barrier and razor wire manufacturers, but I think most people familiar with the most basic econ know this puts the Iraqi economy squarely in the gutter -- along with Iraqi life. Life under Saddam's regime was immeasurably more enjoyable and normal than the complete disaster Iraqis are forced to suffer post-Saddam. Couples went on dates, women could wear what they wanted, bookstores had poetry readings at 2am, fine restaurants served gourmet cuisine, kids ran around the streets eating ice cream in the hot summers, and went home to their fully-electrified, air-conditioned home. It wasn't London or Paris or New York by any stretch of the imagination, but it was infinitely more so than staunch US ally Riyadh. And that was WITH 12 years of sanctions that crushed Iraq's poorest underfoot but which left Saddam unscathed.

What is being created right now in Iraq is a government that will be some amount more socialist than Sweden or France but in the personal freedom sphere will be some amount better than Iran. And that's just in the short period of time before Iraq splits into 1000 clandoms, which, face it, is gonna happen. And then it's a short time before Iraq is the next Somalia -- but a richer, more important version. It will be the first big stick of dynamite the State will have planted in its own fat ass. There will be many more. It didn't have to be this violent. But nobody who isn't a moron ever said the State was intelligent.