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Sunday, February 16, 2003

Estimates as to how many Iraqis died as a result of the Gulf War:

Iraqi soldiers killed

56,000 -- Beth Daponte / William Arkin
Daponte/Arkin estimate based on Arkin's computer modeling of Gulf War battles.

10,000-20,000 -- Army War College
"Army War College" is a consensus of scholars at the Army War College, the National Defense University, the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and a 1996 Air Power survey led by Johns Hopkins University Prof. Eliot Cohen, based chiefly on estimated losses of Iraqi military units in Kuwait.

1,000-6,000 --John Heidenrich / John Mueller
Heidenrich/Mueller estimate is based chiefly on extrapolations from number of bodies found, wounded treated, crew strength of vehicles destroyed.

Iraqi civilians killed

3,500 -- Daponte / Arkin
Daponte/Arkin numbers are based on Iraqi government figures and Iraqi eyewitness accounts.

2,248 -- Government of Iraq
Officials numbers cited by the government of Iraq.

1,000-3,000 -- Army War College
Army War College consensus estimates are based on Iraqi government figures, minus demonstrated or estimated exaggerations by Iraqi authorities.

Fewer than 1,000 -- Heidenrich/Mueller
Heidenrich/Mueller estimate emphasizes fact that five weeks into the six-week war -- long after U.S. bombing had stopped -- Baghdad radio claimed only 1,100 civilian deaths. Months after the war the Iraqi estimate doubled.

Indirect civilian deaths

111,000 -- Daponte Daponte has this field to herself. No other researchers have done detailed demographic projections. Even researchers who quarrel with her estimates of battlefield deaths think her methodology is reasonable.