Iraqi Civilian Mortality

The New England Journal of Medicine has published an analysis of mortality among Iraqi civilians during the 5 year period from the inception of the war until March, 2008. It's fascinating. It's not quite a refutation of the Lancet/Hopkins study that talked about 600,000 "excess" deaths, but it is certainly an example of a non-hysterical approach to the subject.

The detailed data table give a breakdown of deaths by cause as well as children vs. adults, male vs. female. The most telling number is the high percentage of "executions" (33) and "executions with torture" (10). Various other nastiness from AIF (anti-Iraqi forces) accounts for an additional third, leaving at most a third of the 60,000 total civilian deaths at the doorstep of coalition forces.

I have argued against the inflated estimates of the Hopkins study. These estimates are much more convincing, but just to be clear, they represent a low-end figure.