"About 50,000 people were killed since the start of the uprising," Colonel Hisham Buhagiar, commander of the anti-Gaddafi troops who advanced out of the Western Mountains and took Tripoli a week ago, told Reuters.
He assumes all missing are dead. I'm skeptical that this is accurate. Fifty thousand seems rather high for the small numbers of fighters involved and the careful nature of NATO bombing.
Whatever it is, we can compare it to Iraq where perhaps 127,000 died (from all violent causes) during 8-1/2 years of war in a country with about 4 times the population of Libya.
So about 15,000 per year in Iraq (still counting) versus 100,000 per year in Libya (statistically, of course, since the fighting has so far gone on for just 6 months--and the actual toll will go up).
That's a rate about 6.7* times higher in Libya than in Iraq with the rebel numbers.
As a burden, since Libya's population is a quarter of Iraq's, we can say that the intensity of killing is 26.7* times higher in Libya than in Iraq.
Thank goodness we have a Nobel Peace Prize-winning president and not a cowboy warmonger in the Oval Office. Otherwise, pacifists might have a reason to complain about the body count. As I understand the concept, the excuse that he was just
I'm happy we won, mind you. And we did win (what we do as follow-up is a separate question). My commentary is directed at the President's starry eyed supporters and not him.
NOTE: *I corrected the math since I failed to correct the multiples from the raw numbers to full-year rates the first time.
