meta-roj

according to general news reports, today is 911 iraq parity day.

by my own post, the military death toll has to get to 2976; seems the current consensus number is 2974 and the current death toll in iraq is 2975, so maybe tomorrow, maybe today.

how’d you do?

bush’s off-the-cuff estimates and iraq body count have the iraqi death toll in the mid-five-figures. then come the scientists.

peer-reviewed and published in the lancet [pdf], this study suggests that the real death toll in iraq is in the mid-six figures.

Iraqi Death Toll Exceeds 600, 000, Study Estimates [wall street journal, 2006.10.11]

“Since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq’s population has died above what would have occurred without conflict,” the report said. The country’s population is roughly 24 million people.

Human Rights Watch has estimated Saddam Hussein’s regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over 20 years.

i’m going to be very generous and thumbnail some death rates from this quote. under us-occupied iraq, that means in 43 months (march 2003 to october 2006), the dead-iraqi-rate has been just a shade under 14,000 per month (600,000 / 43 = 13,953.5). under hussein, the dead-iraqi-rate was just a shade over 1200 per month (290,000 / 249 = 1208.3). that makes us-occupied iraq over ten times as efficient at killing iraqis than the evil saddam hussein regime.

this means that 14,000 families have a new reason to hate america every month, and some of those 14,000 families might just have some crazy cousin willing to do something about it.

it also means that at this rate, we will have depopulated the entire country in 1714 months, or about 140 years. is that your exit strategy?

Airport Almost Thwarts Rowling [scifi.com 2006.09.15]

“The heightened security restrictions on the airlines made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven, ” Rowling wrote. “A large part of it is handwritten, and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the U.S.” Eventually, she added, “They let me take it on, thankfully, bound up in elastic bands.”

i guess in this case, the tsa security measures ultimately failed, and we will ultimately have to deal with harry potter 7 exploding all over the world. at least we tried.

someone else has been watching the numbers, and with a slightly different methodology, has determined that we have already had iraq parity day.

by their count, 3015 dead americans in iraq as of september 9, 2006 (2,666 military and 349 civilians), compared to 2,973 on september 11, 2001. congratulations! we won! oh wait. that’s not a good thing…

as usual, reporting the dead iraqi bodies, now at least 41860.

and this gives me an opportunity to link to this news as well…

Iraq justifications faulted [detroit free press, september 9, 2006]

U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, Iraq, aren’t counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

U.S. officials said the number of deaths from sectarian violence fell by more than 52% in August over July. A morgue official said Friday that violent deaths for August totaled 1,526, down 17.7% from July.

more on iraq parity day here, here and here.

the good people at syracuse university have prepared a comprehensive report on the criminal enforcement against terrorists since the 9/11 attacks. you can see it here.

i’m not going to editorialize much on this, rather invite you to draw your own conclusions about how much safer we are in america (from terrorist attack), and how successful the “war on terror” has been.

i was curious, so a quick update on 911 iraq parity day.

9/11 casualties: 2976
iraq casualties: 2642

just 334 to go! with an average run rate of 2.04 ( 491 / 243 ) american deaths/day so far in 2006, that puts 911 iraq parity day just 163 days from now, which is…. 2/12/2007. did you place your bets yet?

someone’s still counting dead iraqis too… 41041, or approaching 14 dead iraqis for each dead american on 9/11. not that there’s any connection…

for yet another perspective on body counts, let’s look at percentages: 41041 / 26,783,383 = .153% of their population. .153% of our population (298,444,215) is 456.619 dead americans. that is pretty close to the annual death toll from tobacco in america (442,398 according to the CDC), or the entire population of the des moines, iowa or chattanooga, tennessee metro area (take your pick).

back in february, i introduced the concept of 911 iraq parity day, because while there is no connection between 911 and iraq, i guess we needed one. so, with the news that the american death toll in iraq has reached “a number” [according to white house press secretary tony snow], that number is now just 252 short of the number of americans killed on 911.

at the moment, the bigger number is between 38355 and 42747, but we don’t do body counts (we do do damage assessment).

so, i encourage you to drop in on the original post and get your bets in the comments. after all, at this rate (60-80/month), we’re just a few months away from 911 Iraq Parity Day.

there’s no end in sight, and we’re well above 2000 dead american soliders in iraq, so i figured it was time to start collecting best guesses on the day that the us solider body count in iraq reached 2976, which is 40 in pennsylvania, 184 in virginia and 2752 (the latest ‘official’ body count for new york that i found) in new york.

as i write this, the number of dead bodies brought back from iraq is 2283. i’m using the “confirmed by the department of defense” number, because i like to be all official-ish in matters of this type. one must maintain standards, after all.

the current gap is 693, and the question i have for you out there is: on what date do you think that difference will reach zero? drop your best guesses in the comments.

since i can’t quote without permission, i’ll just cut to the simple math (someone else has done the hard math).

an economist with some street cred among economists has published an estimate of the cost of war in iraq as high as $2 trillion.

visiting the population clock gives a current us population of 297, 869, 425 (give or take).

$2,000,000,000,000 / 297,869,425 = $6714 and change.

that is not entirely fair, since a good portion of the cost is being borne by non-us citizens, and i’m using the high estimate from the paper as opposed to the low estimate.

but, let’s put this in an historical context…

White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With Iraq[NY Times via The Iraq Foundation, 2 jan, 2003]

The administration’s top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion

in case you’re keeping track of the zeroes, that’s a little more than 33 times the white house estimate. 16 if you’re feeling conservative.

the independent has done a bit of a retrospective on 1000 days of war in iraq, including a most interesting “by the numbers” summary. some numbers…

$204.4 billion The cost to the US of the war so far. The UK’s bill up until March 2005 was £3.1 billion
2, 339 Allied troops killed
98 UK troops killed
30, 000 Estimated Iraqi civilian deaths
0 Number of WMDs found
8 per cent of Iraqi children suffering acute malnutrition
$35,819m World Bank estimated cost of reconstruction
53,470 Iraqi insurgents killed
67 per cent Iraqis who feel less secure because of occupation
$343 Average monthly salary for an Iraqi soldier. Average monthly salary for an American soldier in Iraq: $4,160.75
66 journalists killed in Iraq. Journalists killed during Vietnam war: 63
5 foreign civilians kidnapped per month
47% Iraqis who never have enough electricity
20 casualties per month from unexploded mines
20% Inflation rate 2005
25-40 per cent Estimated unemployment rate, Nov 2005
251 Foreigners kidnapped
70 per cent of Iraqi’s whose sewage system rarely works
183,000 British and American troops are still in action in Iraq. There are 162,000 US troops and 8,000 British with 13,000 from other nations
90 Daily attacks by insurgents in Nov ’05. In Jun ’03: 8
82% Iraqis who are “strongly opposed” to presence of coalition troops
15,955 US troops wounded in action

and, to add some meta-roj-math to these numbers… just for some skewed perspective on the effort:

$686 cost of the war to date for each us resident
£51 cost of the war to date for each uk residentiraqi resident (£3.1b = us$5.5b)

$54.4 billion iraqi gdp

3.86 price-to-gdp ratio, to date.

also worth noting is that president bush thinks it’s about 30,000 dead iraqis. the independent has 30,000 dead civilians, plus another 53,470 insurgents, for a total of 83,470 dead iraqis. there are even other estimates – more like 100,000, maybe 194,000.

update (2005.12.15): i just noticed that there are deaths caused by “unexploded mines” in this report. i can only imagine how dangerous the exploded ones are.