Still looking for hard data on Iraqi casualties under Saddam Hussein

[0rganism]

I started a thread about a week ago, wondering if anyone had seen any direct sources for the new numbers the rightwingers are touting -- averaging 55,000 to 70,000 murders annually, a full order of magnitude greater than previous estimates by human rights organizations. The hawks are variously claiming that these huge numbers come from Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, but I can't find anything to that effect on any of their publications I've searched so far.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2810617

I smell psyops.

In brief, here is my theory. Since the WMDs and Al Qaeda ties are no longer selling points for the war, they need to justify the war on the basis of Saddam's incredible cruelty to the Iraqi people. After the Lancet published the Johns Hopkins study on a dramatic increase in violent deaths post-invasion, placing it at around 100,000 in 18 months, this angle is starting to wear thin, too. So the Bushies and the Allawi regime have some contractors (nominally journalists) going through Ba'ath party records, trying to bump up the number of disappeared. They're pushing the higher estimates through blogs and hearsay and unnamed sources, but no one's giving solid references to the actual data that suggests this higher body count.

If anyone has any primary sources or links to Amnesty or HRW documents or anything else with credibility that can give some hard, itemized numbers, it would assist my line of inquiry. I will bet anyone here $10 that we're hearing these statistics in the mainstream press by the time Congress goes into its 2005-06 budgeting session.

[jmowreader]

1. I do not think you will find what you seek

The Ba'ath party doesn't seem like the kind of people to keep records on that kind of thing.

Besides, that's something like seven percent of the July 2004 population of Iraq. Unless they're claiming that every single person who died in Iraq between the time the US installed Saddam and the time the US captured him was murdered by Saddam Hussein, and I wouldn't put it past them to claim this, they've got to be pulling numbers out of their asses.

Clearly Saddam murdered a bunch of people. That's one of the things dictators do. But SEVEN PERCENT of the population? No way.

[0rganism]

6. It's looking that way, but there's always a chance that someone has a tip

> The Ba'ath party doesn't seem like the kind of people to keep records on that kind of thing.

On the other hand, I've heard that very scrupulous records were kept of Saddam's opposition and the actions taken to keep them "in line". This should be true for at least some of the disappearances, which would give a "baseline" of sorts for establishing a verifiable minimum.

> that's something like seven percent of the July 2004 population of Iraq.

Yes, it's outrageous. The high-end estimates of the massacres of Kurds during the '88 uprising are about 120,000, only twice what certain folks are claiming for an annual average of Saddam's murders. It puts Saddam's Iraq into death-toll competition with the Darfur insanity, every year.

[wtmusic]

2. You are absolutely right

but there is no hard factual data on the numbers (I attempted this last year). Once you're in Estimate Land, you might as well just pick a number.

[0rganism]

5. *sigh* that's what I'm afraid of

It's going to end up with pre-war estimates vs. revised numbers from Bush&Allawi's bunch, and we know who wins that little media game.

[Sara Beverley]

3. I hope you find the numbers on the Iraqis killed by the Kurds also.

I doubt that you will find the truth. The numbers killed by Saddam (and this was during a war) were highly exxagerated. Plus, those graves in Iraq hold thousands of bodies of Iraqis killed by the US and Iran. Getting true numbers will be impossible.

[0rganism]

4. Good point. We tend to lump the Kurds in as "his own people"

when a lot of them were in open rebellion against Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war and after the first gulf war. It's a very tangled situation, with respect to what does and doesn't get counted.