A new study has concluded that the overall death toll as a result of the Iraq war was much higher than is commonly believed. Max Fisher summarizes:

An extensive new study into Iraq’s war deaths makes that storyline look a bit different. The study, conducted by four American and Canadian universities along with the Iraqi Ministry of Health, estimates that 461,000 Iraqi deaths can be attributed to the war, of which about two-thirds were direct violence; the other third is from indirect causes such as breakdowns of health-care systems that are attributable to the war. Those numbers are much higher than earlier estimated. Worse, they tick back up in the final years of the war – when things were supposedly getting better [bold mine-DL].

The different causes of death are illustrated in this chart:

There is not much that I have to add to this. It should be a sobering reminder of how horrific and destructive war is. Note that these numbers count only the fatalities, which doesn’t begin to touch on the number of those injured, displaced, and impoverished because of the war. It is important to remember how many innocent lives were lost and ruined because of the decision to wage an unnecessary war.