The Lancet had numbers around 600k, but that included the wider context of deaths due to the temporary collapse of society, medical services, electricity supplies, ongoing violence and insurgency, and so on.
The long consequence of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions was providing Russia with a pretext for its own interventions, from the various caucasus states to Syria to Ukraine.
Still, "over 100,000" is technically correct if it's more than 100,000. Since this subject isn't the main point of the article and the Iraq war is generally acknowledged to have been disastrous, I suppose he chose a safe figure so as not to derail the article with disputed estimates at the outset.
Yes, it is a very low-ball estimate. The more accurate estimate is that Iraq lost 5% of its population, and in many areas, Iraq continues to lose babies born with birth defects due to the use of depleted uranium.
Not really, it’s the lower end of what we can be confident about from direct evidence per things like the Iraq body count project. There are statistical estimates that are higher but they have very large error bars. Over 100k is completely defendable and plenty high that any reasonable person should be horrified by it!
The long consequence of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions was providing Russia with a pretext for its own interventions, from the various caucasus states to Syria to Ukraine.