655,000 dead in Iraq

[Marxist-Anarchist]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15215574/

[LuXe]

I belive we already have a thread like this.

[ReD_ReBeL]

So we all see tht the new figures of deaths in Iraq is now 655,000 ,but do u think the majority of these deaths r directly caused but the coalition forces or do you think the majority is by the extremeists like Al-Queda who blow themselfs up inside markets etc?

[Phalanx]

I'm not entirely sure if it's an accurate count, but if it is remember that the US used cluster bombs in the initial war. Many thousands were registered as missing after the major confrontations as well. I'm guessing many were from the initial invasion, but it's a definate possibility that many killed by al Qaeda have gone unreported.

[Janus]

I belive we already have a thread like this.
In OI.

Anyways, merged.

[Tekun]

Neither, the majority of these deaths have been caused by the US supported Iraqi government death squads that are intesifying the sectarian violence

The US knew of the sectarian hostility b4 they invaded, and it has been this invasion which has intensified and increased the hostilities between sectarian groups, between one that is supported by the US and another which is marginalized by the coalition forces

[Joby]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 03:04 AM
Neither, the majority of these deaths have been caused by the US supported Iraqi government death squads that are intesifying the sectarian violence

The US knew of the sectarian hostility b4 they invaded, and it has been this invasion which has intensified and increased the hostilities between sectarian groups, between one that is supported by the US and another which is marginalized by the coalition forces
The United States had absolutely no plan when they invaded. shit. they didn't really have a reason.

They were going to invade regardless of any information presented to them, and the blame for the deaths rests solely with them.

All that will happen is it will be a democracy were anyone who questions the head guy is shot. They will control it like the British controlled India and Saddam controlled Iraq.

[Tekun]

The United States had absolutely no plan when they invaded. shit. they didn't really have a reason.

They were going to invade regardless of any information presented to them, and the blame for the deaths rests solely with them.

I never said they had a plan for a post-invasion Iraq
What I said was that the US was aware of the sectarian hostility b4 they invaded, and this hostility has only intensified since the US took sides in this regional conflict between Sunni's, Shiites, and Kurds

I totally agree with u, but it seems that you aren't understanding my post

[emma_goldman]

http://www.washingt onpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/ article/2006/ 10/10/AR20061010 01442_
pf.html

Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; A12

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more
people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than
would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling
of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by
other groups, including Iraq's government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that
President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the
estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq
Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the
invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a
worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and
civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's
mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from
violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the
study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the
country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at
Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings
are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in
the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than
expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000
more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then -- a finding
likely to be equally controversial.

Both this and the earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality in
Iraq using scientific methods. The technique, called "cluster sampling," is
used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters.

While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it
is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for
immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the
researchers confidence in the methods. The great majority of deaths were
also substantiated by death certificates.

"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns
Hopkins physician and epidemiologist.

A Defense Department spokesman did not comment directly on the estimate.

"The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in
Iraq or anywhere else," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "The coalition
takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries."

He added that "it would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine
the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity.
The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its
records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq."

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the
survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate
of mortality we have."

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights
Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or
the accuracy" of the survey.

"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I
think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people
realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."

The survey was conducted between May 20 and July 10 by eight Iraqi
physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. They
visited 1,849 randomly selected households that had an average of seven
members each. One person in each household was asked about deaths in the 14
months before the invasion and in the period after.

The interviewers asked for death certificates 87 percent of the time; when
they did, more than 90 percent of households produced certificates.

According to the survey results, Iraq's mortality rate in the year before
the invasion was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people; in the post-invasion period
it was 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The difference between these
rates was used to calculate "excess deaths."

Of the 629 deaths reported, 87 percent occurred after the invasion. A
little more than 75 percent of the dead were men, with a greater male
preponderance after the invasion. For violent post-invasion deaths, the
male-to-female ratio was 10-to-1, with most victims between 15 and 44 years
old.

Gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of violent deaths, with car bombs and
other explosions causing 14 percent, according to the survey results. Of
the violent deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were caused
by coalition forces or airstrikes, the respondents said.

Burnham said that the estimate of Iraq's pre-invasion death rate -- 5.5
deaths per 1,000 people -- found in both of the Hopkins surveys was roughly
the same estimate used by the CIA and the U.S. Census Bureau. He said he
believes that attests to the accuracy of his team's results.

He thinks further evidence of the survey's robustness is that the steepness
of the upward trend it found in excess deaths in the last two years is
roughly the same tendency found by other groups -- even though the actual
numbers differ greatly.

An independent group of researchers and biostatisticians based in England
produces the Iraq Body Count. It estimates that there have been 44,000 to
49,000 civilian deaths since the invasion. An Iraqi nongovernmental
organization estimated 128,000 deaths between the invasion and July 2005.

The survey cost about $50,000 and was paid for by Massachusetts Institute
of Technology's Center for International Studies.

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[YKTMX]

Yeah, but at least they can watch repeats of Friends on their satellite dishes now.

[Janus]

Merged...again.

[Goatse]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 01:44 PM
Yeah, but at least they can watch repeats of Friends on their satellite dishes now.
You seriously think that's a consolation? You are sick! I bet if you were dead you wouldn't think Friends was so good.

[Janus]

You seriously think that's a consolation? You are sick! I bet if you were dead you wouldn't think Friends was so good.
I'm pretty sure that was meant to be an ironic joke.

[Keyser]

The United States had absolutely no plan when they invaded. shit. they didn't really have a reason.

Actually, the US government and it's corporate masters did have a plan and a good number of reasons in their decision to invade and colonise Iraq.

The plan and the reasons are as follows:

1.) To remove a regime (Saddam's Ba'athist system) that was in the process of switching the trade of it's oil from US Dollars to Euros. This was part of a process that a number of other nations with substantial oil reserves were thinking of too. Such a transfer would weaken the US Dollar even further than it's current weakend state and that would have been an intolerable situation for the North American capitalist elite. Iran is now doing the same and suprise, suprise, the US government now wants to either starve the Iranians into surrender or attack them.

2.) To establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, to give US imperialism an even greater reach and attack capability, to safeguard the US guard dog state of Israel and to keep Iran's growing influence in check.

3.) This one is related to point no. 1. To control Iraq's oil supplies for the benefit of a multitude of energy and engineering corporations. This at a time when other oil sources are now becoming unstable for exploitation, such as Venezeuala under Hugo Chavez and the military rebellion in the southern Delta region of Nigeria. This on top of securing more oil for the US in the face of a growing demand for oil and energy supplies from China and India.

4.) To gain control over all other assets in the Iraqi economy. This war is not just over oil, but every sinlge asset in Iraq which has a price tag attached to it. Wheat, water, gas, oil, cement, telecommunications, media, construction, metal industries, food, shops, you name it, the US has opened these assets up to the 'global market' in an orgy of corporate rape and pillage. What the US has done in Iraq in exploiting the country, it's labour and it's resources has not been done such a systematic way since the Europeans raped Africa in the late 19th century.

5.) To expand the 'war on terrorism'. Iraq is but one battle ground in the US war for global domination. To justify to the US public the need for an ongoing war which seems to have no end in sight, new enemies need to be made everytime the last enemy has been destroyed. First the Taleban in Afghanistan, then Ba'athist Iraq, now possibly Iran, though Iran may escape the US onslaught if the US decides to go after North Korea now after the North Korean nuclear test. This 'war on terrorism' has been good for the corporate energy industry, the weapons industry and the military elite of the US ruling class. They see no way for their interests to be expanded with a global peace, so they opt for a global war.

6.) Every single person in the US military, political, diplomatic and economic elite knew Iraq did not have any WMDs. The reason the US invaded Iraq was because of their lack of WMDs, not the fact that Iraq may of had them. The reason being in that ever since the Vietnam war, the US ruling class had their hands tied up a bit by the US public's refusal to enter any war where the US military would suffer a high death toll. Iraq was an easy and defenceless target with an unpopular and extremely isolated regime which would easily fall under a week or so of military assualt. Other nations with regimes the US did not like that were in a better position to defend themselves from the US, such as Libya, saw what happened to Iraq and finally went on their hands and knees like dogs to beg for repentence to the US imperialist system. Iraq got invaded as part of a propoganda stunt, to scare more stronger nations to the will of US imperialism.

7.) For the first 14 months after the defeat of Ba'athist Iraq in April 2003, Iraq was ruled directly by the US under the 'Coalition Provisional Authority-CPA'. The CPA made a substantial number of laws which cannot be revoked by any post-CPA Iraqi puppet government based in Baghdad. Most of the CPA lwas and decrees dealt with abolishing the Iraqi welfare state, wholly opening up Iraqi markets to corporate control, banning Iraq from exercising any control over trade, incomes policy, currency policy, labour relations policy and preventing any future nationalisation attempts by any future Iraqi puppet government. The imperialist occupation of Iraq served not only as an orgy of corporate plunder, but also as an ideological experiment in establishing a wholly free-market system, this goes even beyong the term and concept of neo-liberalism and Iraq is a testing ground for a brutalistic and naked form of capitalist exlpoitation that may be used by the US in any future plan they may have in implementing, wither in other nations or the USA itself. Imperial/Fascist Japan did a very similar ideological experiment with it's puppet state of 'Manchukou', otherwise known as Manchuria in northern China. There, from 1931-1945, the Japanese tried to develop a fascist 'utopia' with a policy similar to the Nazi's 'back to the soil' policy. Of course the experiment failed in Manchukuo, but nevertheless, it was used as a testing ground and now Iraq is a testing ground for a new and just as ugly a ideology.

Bush is not stupid, nor are the other members of the US capitalist class. If they were, then our job would be a lot easier, if not done already!

Bush and Co. simply act for their own class interests and lie in the process of doing so, so the fools who buy their lies are content and wage-slave away like normal and don't cause any trouble for the ruling class.

[Keyser]

I was watching the news this morning (BBC News 24) and of course President Bush and General Casey made some shitty press conference about how the 655,000 dead Iraqis figure was 'too high' and said that 'only' 50,000 Iraqis had died. :rolleyes:

I suppose that makes it fucking OK then. Shit, they talk of 'only 50,000 dead' as if it were an achievement, fucking sick bastards!!! :angry:

Saying that, I trust the 655,000 dead figure anytime over the fucking pentagon's 'statistics'.

[Janus]

Saying that, I trust the 655,000 dead figure anytime over the fucking pentagon's 'statistics'
The reliability of those "statistics" was shown during the Vietnam War. I'm guessing they either have some superstitious ritual or they have a program that spits out random even numbers. :lol:

[Marukusu]

How many soldiers from the coalition forces have died since the invasion of Iraq? Are there any reliable numbers?

[Kamraten]

or do you think the majority is by the extremeists like Al-Queda who blow themselfs up inside markets etc?

Either way the US is to blame, Al qaeda did not exist in Iraq before the invasion. And my personal belief wich is shared by some is that Al qaeda is just a hoax. I mean look at this dangerous leader al zarqawi who couldent even manage his own weapon. Al qaeda is bull , yes there are probably some blowing up themself in markets and giving the resistence in Iraq a bad name. But the fact is that most of the bombs are aimed at US and Allied forces. the US try to blame the Iraq Resistance on Al qaeda and terrorism but thats bullshit. Its just proud iraqis fighting for theire country wich is under controll of the American imperialism. Freedom fighters resisting an Imperium have always been called Terrorists by the imperialists.

So even though this saddam psycho is gone 665 000 people, a half of a million have died on 3 years. Whos responsible for theese massgraves, the west as always.

[Janus]

How many soldiers from the coalition forces have died since the invasion of Iraq? Are there any reliable numbers?
Here's a link.

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/PieCountry.aspx

[Goatse]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 10:25 PM

You seriously think that's a consolation? You are sick! I bet if you were dead you wouldn't think Friends was so good.
I'm pretty sure that was meant to be an ironic joke.
I know. I'm joking. :P

[Joby]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 07:21 AM

The United States had absolutely no plan when they invaded. shit. they didn't really have a reason.

They were going to invade regardless of any information presented to them, and the blame for the deaths rests solely with them.

I never said they had a plan for a post-invasion Iraq
What I said was that the US was aware of the sectarian hostility b4 they invaded, and this hostility has only intensified since the US took sides in this regional conflict between Sunni's, Shiites, and Kurds

I totally agree with u, but it seems that you aren't understanding my post
My apologies. I agreed with what you said, just wanted to take it a step further.

[Joby]

Originally posted by Anarchism [email protected] 13 2006, 12:46 AM
[QUOTE]
7.) For the first 14 months after the defeat of Ba'athist Iraq in April 2003, Iraq was ruled directly by the US under the 'Coalition Provisional Authority-CPA'. The CPA made a substantial number of laws which cannot be revoked by any post-CPA Iraqi puppet government based in Baghdad. Most of the CPA lwas and decrees dealt with abolishing the Iraqi welfare state, wholly opening up Iraqi markets to corporate control, banning Iraq from exercising any control over trade, incomes policy, currency policy, labour relations policy and preventing any future nationalisation attempts by any future Iraqi puppet government. The imperialist occupation of Iraq served not only as an orgy of corporate plunder, but also as an ideological experiment in establishing a wholly free-market system, this goes even beyong the term and concept of neo-liberalism and Iraq is a testing ground for a brutalistic and naked form of capitalist exlpoitation that may be used by the US in any future plan they may have in implementing, wither in other nations or the USA itself. Imperial/Fascist Japan did a very similar ideological experiment with it's puppet state of 'Manchukou', otherwise known as Manchuria in northern China. There, from 1931-1945, the Japanese tried to develop a fascist 'utopia' with a policy similar to the Nazi's 'back to the soil' policy. Of course the experiment failed in Manchukuo, but nevertheless, it was used as a testing ground and now Iraq is a testing ground for a new and just as ugly a ideology.


This is probably the biggest giveaway of all our intentions is Iraq, and the region.

People ***** and scream when you call it a 'war for oil,' saying 'why haven't we gotten any of it over here?'

Well, dipshit, wen they invaded they weren't just thinking of today but also of tomorrow. Do you hobnestly believe they would throw that much money at it if there wasn't any profit involved?

Besides, you're going to be paying for it in a couple of years and do you really think they're going top charge you less for gasoline? hahaha

Of course, anyone over there who thinks Iraq should actually get some money from ...their oil is terrorist scum.

[Marukusu]

Here's a link.

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/PieCountry.aspx

Ok, so approximately 3000 coalition soldiers and more than half a million iraqis have died because of the invasion. For nothing but oil and profit.
Also, a lot of people support this shit. Damn these fools.
The great revolution just seem to go farther and farther away.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

These statistics are the most accurate.

They are based on actual death cirtificates from families etc. This is the same way that Darfur casualties and all large scale tragedies are counted.

[emma_goldman]

Why is the American press silent on the report of 655,000 Iraqi
deaths?

By Joe Kay and Barry Grey
13 October 2006

Use this version to print
<http://www.wsws. org/articles/ 2006/oct2006/ iraq-o13_ prn.shtml> | Send
this link by email <http://www.wsws. org/cgi-bin/ birdcast. cgi> | Email
the author <https://www. wsws.org/ phpform/use/ comments/ form1.html>

The US media is virtually silent on a new scientific study that
estimates the Iraqi death toll from the US war at 655,000. The study,
conducted by Johns Hopkins University&#39;s Bloomberg School of Public
Health and funded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was
posted Wednesday on the web site of the British medical journal, the
Lancet.

The study is the only systematic estimate of the number of Iraqi
civilians and military personnel to have died as a result of the US
invasion and occupation to be brought to the attention of the American
and international public.

Unlike previous estimates, which were based on reviews of media reports
or tallies made by the US-backed Iraqi government, the Johns Hopkins
study was carried out by Iraqi physicians who interviewed- often at great

personal risk-nearly 2,000 families spread across the country, utilizing

standard and widely used statistical methods to arrive at an objective
estimate of the death toll from the war and occupation. The vast
majority of the reported deaths were substantiated by death
certificates.

The study concluded with a 95 percent degree of certainty that the
number of "excess deaths" in Iraq since the invasion-the number of
people who have died in excess of the number that would be expected on
the basis of pre-invasion mortality rates-is between 393,000 and
943,000. The figure of 655,000 is given as the most likely number. This
represents an astonishing 2.5 percent of the entire Iraqi population.

The researchers further estimated that about 600,000 of the deaths were
due to violence in some form, including gunshots, air strikes and
bombings. They concluded that US and allied military forces directly
caused at least 31 percent-or 186,000-of the violent deaths.

Some 336,000 people, or 56 percent of those killed in violent actions
since the invasion, died from gunshot wounds. The study also found that
the number of violent deaths in Iraq has steadily increased every year
since the invasion. In the period from June 2005 to June 2006, the
researchers found a nearly four-fold increase in the mortality rate
relative to pre-invasion levels.

There can be no legitimate doubts about the credibility of the study.
Lancet is one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical
publications in the world. The Johns Hopkins public health school is the

largest in the world, and regularly ranks as the top public health
school in the United States. The journal article was reviewed and
approved for publication by four independent scientific experts in the
area.

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the report, even if
one assumes its low-end estimate of 393,000 Iraqi deaths to be correct.
It demonstrates that the American intervention in Iraq has produced a
social and humanitarian catastrophe of historical dimensions, with vast
political implications not only in the Middle East, but throughout the
world and, above all, in the United States itself.

By any objective standard, the report merits front-page coverage in
every major newspaper in the country and extensive discussion and
reporting on television news broadcasts. Yet the response of the US
press has been to virtually ignore the report and limit its coverage to
news accounts on inside pages which report, uncritically,
unsubstantiated statements by government and military officials
dismissing the report as "not credible."

In burying the story, the New York Times and Washington Post have played

a particularly significant role. The original articles published by
these newspapers on Wednesday were relegated to the inside pages: in the

Times on page 8, in the Post on page 12.

The Post decided to bury the story in its back pages despite the fact
that the article it published vouched for the scientific validity the
Johns Hopkins study, noting that it, and an earlier report on Iraqi
deaths published by the same team, "are the only ones to estimate
mortality in Iraq using scientific methods." The "cluster sampling"
technique used by the scientists, the newspaper wrote, "is used to
estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters."

Minimal coverage in the press continued on Thursday, despite the fact
that the issue was raised by a reporter at a White House press
conference on Wednesday. President Bush contemptuously dismissed the
report, stating that it was not credible. He was not challenged and the
question was not followed up by any of the other reporters at the news
conference.

Bush&#39;s remarks were followed by statements from various supporters and
architects of the war similarly dismissing the Johns Hopkins study&#39;s
casualty figures. General George Casey, the commander of US forces in
Iraq, admitted that he had not bothered to read the report, but
nevertheless concluded that it did not have "much credibility at all."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the figure
of 655,000 killed is "not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate."
Iraqi government officials likewise declared that the figure was
"exaggerated. "

On Thursday, neither the Times nor the Post published an editorial on
the Johns Hopkins report, or even a follow-up article on the report and
the response of the Bush administration.

There was not one challenge in the establishment media to the official
attempts to disparage the report. Instead, the minimal coverage on
Thursday was largely devoted to reporting the statements by Bush, Casey,

Blair and the Iraqi stooge regime. The Los Angeles Times, for example,
published a story on its inside pages, "Iraq Disputes Claim of 600,000
War Dead," reporting the statements by the Iraqi government. The
newspaper added its voice to the chorus by remarking that it had
conducted its own survey and reached a figure of 50,000 killed.

The attempts to discredit the report are not backed up by any factual or

methodological arguments. The administration and its supporters assume,
correctly, that they can simply make unsubstantiated claims and the
media will not challenge them.

Lee Roberts, a co-author of the study, noted in an interview with the
radio program Democracy Now&#33; on Thursday that the cluster survey
approach the researchers used "is the standard way of measuring
mortality in very poor countries where the government isn&#39;t very
functional or in times of war." He pointed out that both the United
Nations and the US government have used the method in determining
mortality, including after the Kosovo and Afghan wars. "Most
ironically," he said, "the US government has been spending millions of
dollars per year... to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys
to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters."

With its silence, the media is once again taking its cue from the
government. It does not challenge Bush&#39;s ignorant and cold-blooded
dismissal of the Johns Hopkins report, just as it did not challenge
Bush&#39;s offhand remark at a December, 2005 press conference that 30,000
Iraqis, "more or less," had been killed since the March, 2003 US
invasion-an absurdly low estimate.

The corporate-owned- and-controlled media have buried this story because
they do not want the American people to know the truth of what is
happening in Iraq.

They want to conceal this truth-as they have done consistently since the

war began-because they are complicit in a massive war crime in Iraq, and

continue to support the bloodletting by the US military.

The Johns Hopkins report, by revealing the colossal dimensions of the
death and destruction wreaked by the United States in Iraq, shatters the

edifice of lies that has been erected in an attempt to deceive the
people and justify the war-from the phony claims of weapons of mass
destruction and Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, to the current claims of a war for
"freedom and democracy" and the overarching deception of the "war on
terrorism."

The report inevitably highlights the culpability of the media itself,
which has combined an acceptance of unprecedented censorship by the
military with self-censorship and deliberate misinformation in order to
whitewash an imperialist war for oil and geo-strategic domination of the

Middle East.

The scale of mass killing revealed in the Johns Hopkins study published
by the Lancet stands as an indictment of the entire American ruling
elite, both of its political parties-Democratic no less than
Republican-and all of its official institutions, among which the media
has played a particularly sordid role.

What the corporate, political and media establishment fear are the
explosive social and political implications of growing popular revulsion

over the crimes of US imperialism in Iraq and around the world, combined

with mounting anger over relentless attacks on working people&#39;s social
conditions and democratic rights. The entire political system is being
exposed and discredited before the eyes of the people. Such a process
inevitably brings with it revolutionary consequences.

See Also:
New study says US war has killed 655,000 Iraqis
<http://www.wsws. org/articles/ 2006/oct2006/ iraq-o12. shtml>
[12 October 2006]
Provocative US attack on Shiite militia in Iraq
<http://www.wsws. org/articles/ 2006/oct2006/ shia-o11. shtml>[11 October
2006]
US casualties soar as military intensifies violence in Baghdad
<http://www.wsws. org/articles/ 2006/oct2006/ iraq-o06. shtml>[6 October
2006]

[izquierda80]

I agree with Kamraten and others in that the U.S. is, ultimately, responsible for these deaths, for the simple fact that the vast majority of them are a direct consequence of the illegal and imperialistic U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The actual murderers vary, including both U.S. Army personnel, Iraqi puppet government forces, some parts of the legitimate Iraqi resistance (which isn&#39;t one single, unified entity, but a very fragmented movement), and opportunistic jihadists among others, and each is also responsible for its own crimes, but that in no way contradicts the basic premise: overall, the U.S. is responsible for causing this.