Iraq sanctions death toll estimates range from 250,000 to over 1.5 million.

Evidence

Estimates vary on the number of deaths in Iraq as a result of the sanctions. Low estimates are at about 250,000. In 2005 British MP George Galloway declared on CNN that millions of Iraqi’s died, many of them children, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRAN- SCRIPTS/0505/17/se.01.html. Columbia University professor Richard Garfield estimates 500,000 deaths between 1990 and 2002, www.casi.org.uk/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html. However, Michael Spagat has argued that Saddam Hussein’s regime likely fabricated the numbers to encourage easing of the sanctions. Spagat points out that the high estimates are almost as mythical as Saddam Hussein’s WMDs. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark charged the United States and others for crimes against Iraqis, causing the deaths of more than 1.5 million people, including 750,000 children under five, www.twf.org/News /Y1997/Ramsey.html. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1590

Categorization

• QUESTION: The political contest over sanctions death counts — who fabricated what, and which estimates now hold up — is worth chasing down the Spagat critique.
• XREF: Relates to the book’s central thesis about how contestable numbers shape representation and justifications for U.S. power. — connects to: US sanctions on 1990s Iraq killed over a million Iraqis — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 197