[lbo-talk] casualties

[Doug Henwood]

I know that some people on the left have been skeptical about 
estimates of how many Iraqis the US has killed. This is from an 
article by John Mueller in the forthcoming Nov/Dec issue of Foreign 
Affairs - a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, and so 
not exactly a radical source:


>By some estimates, the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of 
>the invasion has reached six figures -- vastly more than have been 
>killed by all international terrorists in all of history. Sanctions 
>on Iraq probably were a necessary cause of death for an even greater 
>number of Iraqis, most of them children.

I'm guessing that "necessary" is in the logical sense of causation, 
not that the sanctions were themselves "necessary."

Recall that Foreign Affairs had an article several years ago arguing 
that the sanctions had killed more Iraqis than all the weapons of 
mass destruction had in all of history.

Doug