The folks over at Iraq Body Count (IBC) dismiss the much-publicized Lancet estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths since March 2003, which put that figure at 650,000, give or take 300,000. IBC defends their estimation of a much smaller range of noncombatant deaths, but one that nevertheless should disturb every American.

It should especially haunt those who, currently lusting after power in the District of Corruption, parrot the party line that the only problem with the war is how it has been “handled” and not whether it should have been undertaken in the first place. But it probably won’t.

IBC’s more realistic estimate should, of course, give no comfort whatsoever to the knaves who currently occupy that District’s den of iniquity. But it probably does.

They estimate, for reasons presented in “Speculation Is No Substitute,” that between 45,000 and 50,000 Iraqi noncombatants have lost their lives as a result of the war that the U.S.-led coalition instigated three years ago.

Not all Iraqi noncombatants, of course, have died as a direct consequence of U.S. and allied military action. Many have been murdered, and are now being murdered at a rate of 40 a day, by rival Sunni and Shi’ite militia. But the removal of Saddam Hussein’s monopoly on the means of coercion catalyzed the creation of those gangs, and for that removal we have coercive monopoly headquartered in DC to thank.

Without downplaying the cruelty of Saddam’s autocracy, we assume that almost all of those 45,000 to 50,000 human beings would be alive today were his gang still running the show in Baghdad. But to those men, women, and children—each of whom no doubt valued his or her life, such as it was—the Bush-Cheney gang imperially announced, in effect:

“You are better off dead (or wounded) under a ‘Saddam-free Iraq’ than alive (or whole) under Saddam.”

I invite criticism of that interpretation of U.S. Iraq policy. I also invite a defense of the notion that a person can be morally entitled to such a preference and then to enforce it. I fully expect variations on the theme that there is no exercise in depravity that the condition of war cannot excuse.

Let’s extrapolate IBC’s estimated range into an American context. The ballpark population figures are: U.S. 300,000,000; Iraq, 26,000,000 That is, the U.S. population is roughly 11.5 times that of Iraq.

Proportionally, therefore, an Iraqi noncombatant war-related death toll-range of 45,000-50,000 translates in U.S. terms to a range of from 517,757 to 575,285 noncombatants.

Consider that U.S. World War II battle deaths (all theaters) totaled 291,557. Adding 113,842 “other deaths in service” yields 405,399. A U.S. civilian death toll of Iraqi proportions would therefore be 20% greater than U.S. military deaths during World War II.

Or to bring things into the 21st century, consider that the civilian deaths resulting from the attacks on 9/11 number just under 3,000. Adjusting proportionately to a civilian body count that Iraqis have experienced, Americans would have to suffer between 172 and 191 days like 9/11.

But let us return to the urgent national debate over how the war in Iraq was “handled.” Perhaps we can then rationalize the re-empowerment of those who proudly wear the mantle of the gloriously idealistic Kennedy-Johnson Great Society “liberalism” that instigated the extinguishing, by machine-gun, bomb, and napalm, the lives of between two and four million Vietnamese noncombatants.

". . . killing the innocent, even if you know as a matter of statistical certainty that the things you do involve it, is not necessarily murder. . . . On the other hand, unscrupulousness in considering the possibilities turns it into murder.” G. E. M. Anscombe, “Mr. Truman’s Degree”