Common Dreams – by Sarah Lazare
How do you calculate the human costs of the U.S.-led War on Terror?
On the 12th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, groups of physicians attempted to arrive at a partial answer to this question by counting the dead.
In their joint report— Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror—Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded that this number is staggering, with at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001.
However, the report notes, this is a conservative estimate, and the total number killed in the three countries “could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.”
Furthermore, the researchers do not look at other countries targeted by U.S.-led war, including Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and beyond.
Even still, the report states the figure “is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs.
In Iraq, at least 1 million lives have been lost during and since 2003, a figure that accounts for five percent of the nation’s total population. This does not include deaths among the estimated 3 million Iraqi refugees, many of whom were subject to dangerous conditionsduring this past winter.
Furthermore, an estimated 220,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, note the researchers. The findings follow a United Nations report which finds that civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2014 were at their highest levels since the global body began making reports in 2009.
The researchers identified direct and indirect deaths based on UN, government, and NGO data, as well as individual studies. While the specific number is difficult to peg, researchers say they hope to convey the large-scale of death and loss.
Speaking with Democracy Now! on Thursday, Dr. Robert Gould, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and co-author of the forward to the report, said:
“[A]t a time when we’re contemplating at this point cutting off our removal of troops from Afghanistan and contemplating new military authorization for increasing our operations in Syria and Iraq, this insulation from the real impacts serves our government in being able to continue to conduct these wars in the name of the war on terror, with not only horrendous cost to the people in the region, but we in the United States suffer from what the budgetary costs of unending war are.”
According to Gould’s forward, co-authored with Dr. Tim Takaro, the public is purposefully kept in the dark about this toll.
“A politically useful option for U.S. political elites has been to attribute the on-going violence to internecine conflicts of various types, including historical religious animosities, as if the resurgence and brutality of such conflicts is unrelated to the destabilization cause by decades of outside military intervention,” they write. “As such, under-reporting of the human toll attributed to ongoing Western interventions, whether deliberate of through self-censorship, has been key to removing the ‘fingerprints’ of responsibility.”
1.3 million lives. Just practicing.
“How do you calculate the human costs of the U.S.-led War on Terror?”
Human costs are irrelevant to the jews.
They only count profits.
Oh #1, I beg to differ, these creatures thrive on the spilling of blood. Witness the celebration of the Israeli troops gunning down Palestinian children, then you’ll know where they’re coming from. Or we could always refer to “the dancing Israelis” of 911. They “get off on it” like an eight grader dreaming about his girlfriend.
Again, those aren’t ‘costs’ to them.
More profits, just of a different SICK nature.
Are they including the atrocities committed against us via poisoning of air, food, water? I find it pretty terrible.
If they are including it,that number is only a fraction of the death toll.
They truly are of the synagogue of satan and I can not put into words how strongly I loathe and detest them for their crimes against humanity.
It’s in their DNA and that bloodline needs serious purging.
These god-damned Zionist Jew bastards need to be expunged from the planet Earth. Total eradication is our only hope for survival. Until the rest of the planet wakes up, we will have to endure their sorcery, deception, and total disregard for their fellow man.
Perfect, Millard. An inch of leniency or compassion towards these creatures has only ever led to a mile of murder and treachery directed by them. I’ve never believed so strongly that a group of beings could be so evil!
“I’ve never believed so strongly that a group of beings could be so evil!”
They have the perfect role model for that, Martist.
The more I read about them in books such as “The Synagogue of Satan” and “The Controversy of Zion”, the more I can’t believe no one has “hunted them down” like George Washington once said. They are 1000% pure evil.
Hey NC, up here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin they have a “token” Jew Boy in every town affiliated with the local Masonic Lodge, of course. They sit down in their secret meetings behind closed doors and there’s a reason they do that. If the general public really knew what these boys represent, there would be public hangings all across the Great Plains spreading from coast to coast. These secret societies are “secret” for a reason.
And people in the US of A wonder why the people in the Middle East hate us and want us destroyed. I cannot blame them.