<I do not suppose you have given much thought to the deaths that have occurred in Iraq as a direct result of the containment?>
It's hard to make a comparison of war vs. a comprehensive sanctions/embargo. One choice is a "what-if", since the sanctions were always very leaky. For the war choice, it's hard to get accurate numbers, since our government has (as a deliberate policy), not counted the bodies. (That wouldn't be as uplifting a story, as showing videos of blonde female soldiers being "rescued".)
One estimate of the deaths in Round One of Saddam vs The Bushes:
40,000 Iraqi soldiers killed in the conflict
13,000 civilians were killed directly by American and allied forces
30,000 deaths in the post-war rebellion of Shiites in the South and Kurds in the North
70,000 civilians died subsequently from war-related damage to medical facilities and supplies, the electric power grid, and the water system
153,000 total, for the war option.
(This estimated total, was later revised up, to 205,000.)
(The Defense Intelligence Agency eventually estimated 100,000 Iraqi military were killed in the war, plus or minus 50,000.)
216.239.57.104
Would a total embargo (nothing in, nothing out) have killed more than that, before Saddam gave in and left Kuwait? |
