Official: 150,000 Iraqis killed by insurgents

Now this statistic will give you the chills. From MSNBC:

VIENNA, Austria - About 150,000 Iraqis have been killed by insurgents since the U.S.-led invasion more than three years ago, a senior Iraqi official said Thursday.

For every person killed about three have been wounded in violence since the war started in March 2003, Iraq’s Health Minister Ali al-Shemari told reporters in Vienna.

The 150,000 — which is three times most other estimates — was the first overall casualty figure for the war to be released by the Iraqi government, which took office on May 20.

Al-Shemari did not explain how he arrived at the figure or say whether that number included Iraqi soldiers and police, as well as civilians. Also unclear was if it included Iraqis killed in sectarian violence or only in insurgent attacks. But he said the count was of “innocent” victims, suggesting civilians only.

In October, the British medical journal The Lancet published a controversial study contending nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war — a far higher death toll than other estimates. The study, which was dismissed by President Bush and other U.S. officials as not credible, was based on interviews of households and not a body count.

[...]

Other estimates, largely based on body counts or media reports, have held that about 50,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the conflict.

A private group called Iraqi Body Count says it has recorded between 46,863 and 51,698 Iraqi civilians killed by military intervention in Iraq. The group says that includes civilian deaths due to U.S.-led military action as well as insurgents and other violence.

Al-Shemari, a Shiite ally of anti-U.S. radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr whose militia has been blamed for much of the sectarian violence, focused on insurgent attacks, saying they were exhausting his ministry’s finances and that hospitals needed aid.

In one sense, whichever casualty figure you choose--be it Al-Shemari's, The Lancet's or even the Iraqi Body Count--the Iraqi dead have been piling up during these past four years of the U.S. war, and the insurgency. Staying the course is a failure. Somehow, the Bush administration and the newly-elected Democratic Congress are going to have to find a common policy for pulling the U.S. out of Iraq.