100,000 Iraqi Lives for Saddam's WMD?

Jason Zengerle, in the New Republic's blog "The Plank" has a post on the President's remarkable reply to a question about Iraqi civilian casualties. Here's the exchange, as posted at the White House website:

Q: Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.

Zengerle rightly gives Bush credit for being forthright as well as well-informed since many people think the 30,000 figure is a reasonable guess (although better information might be available if Rumsfeld had any interest in collecting the data).

However, what about the Lancet article and the estimate of 100,000 mentioned below in an earlier post by my good friend Marigolds2? Zengerle mentions a recent episode of This American Life, in which that estimate is discussed. In my case, listening to that piece was enough to convince me that the 30,000 may well be a dramatic understatement of a terrible tragedy.

To listen to the archived edition of TAL, go here.

| +Save/Share | |