Shrinking the Gap is all about discounting the future threat
■"As Iraqi Terror Rises, Businessmen Find Niche in Life Insurance: New Policies Offer $3,500 To Heirs of Those Killed; Mr. Jabouri's Near Misses," by Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal, 19 August 2005, p. A1.
Interesting article about how life insurance is being sought out more and more by Iraqis. It's a bit ghoulish, not unlike marketing life insurance to kids living in gang-ridden urban ghettoes in the U.S. (remember that scene from John Singleton's "Boyz in the Hood"?).
The best stuff in the piece is the statistics.
Some outside groups have claimed that 100,000 Iraqis have perished in the war and resulting occupation. But the best and most credible estimates put that number somewhere just south of 25k for the period March 2003 to March 2005, or roughly 1 in 1,000 people in a country population of 25 million.
Of that total, it's estimated that over one-third were victims of crime (9k), equating to a homicide rate of 1 in 2,800, much worse than America's 1 in 18,000 rate, and we do plenty of homicide here.
But if these numbers from two British groups, Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group, are good, then we're talking roughly 16,000 dead Iraqi civilians from the war and insurgency violence, or roughly 1 in 1,500 Iraqis.
Some perspective.