1/20 We open this thread with a poll on a real poll from 3 Apr 2003 that asked the US public if they’d say the war in Iraq was “successful if it removed Saddam… and fewer than [N] Iraqi civilians were killed”.

Guess the number above which the majority judged “not successful” 2/20 It is 20 years later, and today IBC updated its documented violent civilian death toll to 186,797–210,166. Which stands in desperately sad and bitter contrast to the result of the 2003 L.A.Times poll: 500, an answer that may astound many people today. rand.org/pubs/monograph…

Numbers and statistics can become abstract all too quickly. Humans are not interchangeable, and representing their deaths solely as a statistic obscures this. Whenever possible, iraqbodycount.org records and publishes demographic and personal details of victims. We continue our series marking 20 years of the #IraqWar on the importance of case-by-case documentation in giving a human face to the victims of this war. As we wrote earlier:

https://twitter.com/iraqbodycount/status/1625841555675258881?s=20

.@iraqbodycount begins a series of posts marking the 20th anniversary with a version of its timeline at iraqbodycount.org/database indicating #civilians killed not as an additive but an aptly subtractive graph, with bars showing the loss in civilian lives each month. #Iraq #IraqWar The violent #civilian death toll of the 20 year old #IraqWar continues to grow. @iraqbodycount has monitored this from the beginning, giving totals and continuous updates on a public website detailing the incidents and individuals killed in them. iraqbodycount.org/database/incid…

@iraqbodycount begins a series of posts marking the 20th anniversary with a version of its timeline at iraqbodycount.org/database indicating #civilians killed not as an additive but an aptly subtractive graph, with bars showing the loss in civilian lives each month. #Iraq #IraqWar The violent #civilian death toll of the 20 year old #IraqWar continues to grow. @iraqbodycount has monitored this from the beginning, giving totals and continuous updates on a public website detailing the incidents and individuals killed in them. iraqbodycount.org/database/incid…

Casualty recording: an unending task in a time of endless wars

20 yrs ago, on Feb 15th 2003, IBC’s UK-based volunteers and founders joined the huge demonstrations against the looming war. Like others we hoped the war and its cost in civilian and military lives could be averted. Part of our response, should the worst happen, was to prepare to accurately document as many of the civilian casualties as possible.Our website—already live at iraqbodycount.org—had actually recorded its first civilian death on Jan 1st, a US airstrike killing one civilian.

1/11 There is nothing to ‘commemorate’ about the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, but it needs remembering in every civilian life-destroying detail. This thread is about those deadly first weeks, drawn from @iraqbodycount analyses summarised in iraqbodycount.org/analysis/refer… 2/11 The rate at which civilians were killed by invading US-led forces in the 21 days from 20 March–9 April (invasion to “fall of Baghdad”) was 315 per day – so high compared to the following 2-year period it could not fit on the same intensity graph: