Violence In Iraq Is Beyond Our Control
One might also compare the civilian fatality reports from Iraq with the reliably documented details of violence in Baltimore. In 2006, there were 275 murders in the city, which has a population of about 650,000. The same murder rate, scaled up to the Iraqi population of 27 million, would produce 11,500 violent deaths per year and 45,500 killed over four years of conflict.
Reports based on Pentagon and Iraq Body Count sources estimate that about 75,000 civilians were killed in Iraq over the first four years of the conflict. This suggests that Iraq is less than twice as violent as Baltimore. In stark contrast, the Johns Hopkins estimate of 600,000 violent deaths over four years suggests that Iraq is 10 to 15 times more violent than Baltimore. The latter is intuitively more consistent with qualitative impressions.
