You might find this all interesting from Pollack's book:
How Many Iraqis Have Died Since 1991?
Unfortunately, the answer is: we just don't know. . . . That said, there are a number of things that we do know and that are worth saying.
First, however many people have died, the numbers that the Iraqui regime is disseminating--and that many well-meaning people and even U.N. agencies are recirculating--are clearly wrong.[1] Iraq's claims are grossly contradicted by the regime's own demographic data. In 1997, the Iraqi regime conducted a census, and two years later it. . . . . . . stated that Iraq's population had increased from 16.5 million in 1987 to 22 million in 1997. Baghdad also claimed that had it not been for the U.N. sanctions, the population figure would have been 23.5 million but that 1.5 million people (1 million of them children) had died prematurely as a result of sanctions. Although this was the headline of the census, all of the other numbers in it controverted this lurid claim. The census figures indicate a population growth rate of 33 percent over ten years, a very high rate . . . by itself. If one were to add back the 1.5 million . . . (and the 500,000 who fled the country. . .), it would produce a ten-year growth rate of 45 percent--which is phenomenal and would have put Iraq among the fastest-growing populations in the world. However, Iraq was not know to be one of the fastest-growing populations in the world prior to the Gulf War. . . .
Amatzia Baram has demonstrated that the Iraqi figures themselves belie the assertions of the regime. . . . [T]he census figures show Iraqi population growth rates remaining stable over the last thirty years, and the decrease in population growth rates the regime claims was produced by the sanctions would not have been big enough to create the actual population increase had 1.5 million people already died. Thus, the census figures for population growth by themselves indicate that the Iraqi claims as to deaths from sanctions are significantly inflated. [2] To explain this discrepancy, Baghdad claims that there was a quantum leap in Iraq's birthrate in 1991-97, which not only offset the deaths but produced the growth. Interestingly, the census does not present any data to support this contention. . . . According to unofficial U.N. statistics, Iraq's birthrate continued to decline right through 1997. . . .
If the ludicrous assertions of the Iraqi regime are clearly false, it still leaves unanswered the question of how many Iraqis truly died. Unfortunately, all we have is a good guess. At present, the most comprehensive, thorough, and sensitive analysis has been conducted by Richard Garfield of Columbia University. Gardfield's research was exhaustive, and his methodology is the current gold standard. based on this work, Garfield concluded that between August 1990 and March 1998, anywhere from 106,000 to 227,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died as a rsult of the war, the intifadah [Various uprisings against Sadam which Sadam conducted punitive reprisals targeting women and children.--Ed.], and its aftermath. . . . [T]he number is probably closer to the high end . . . but . . . roughly 25 percent of those who died were killed during the Gulf War and the intifadah. [3] Since Garfield also estimates that 1,000 to 5,000 Iraqi civilians died during the Gulf War, the vast majority of the children under the age of five killed in combate were therefore probably killed in the intifadah--an estimate that squares with the numerous accounts of the brutality of Saddam's forces and their slaughter of women and children in suppressing the revolt. [4]
So the best estimate we have is that roughly 135,000 to 150,000 Iraqi children died in the first seven years after the war. . . . Regardless of whether one blames these deaths mostly on the sanctions or mostly on the regime's manipulation of and reaction to the sanctions, this is still a very heavy cost. Given that the Gulf War itself probably caused no more than 10,000 to 30,000 Iraqi military casualties and another 1,000 to 5,000 civilian casualties, it raises the question of whether full-scale combat is a more humane policy than draconian sanctions.
Pollack, KM. The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. New York: Random House, Inc., 2002, pp. 137-139.
References Cited in Book:
1. For World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the UN FAO repeating or arbitrarily modifying Iraq's made-up numbers, see Cockburn and Cockburn, Out of the Ashes, P. 137; Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends, pp. 129, 177.
2-3. Baram, "The Effects of Iraqi Sanctions," pp. 195-198.
4. Garfield, "Executive Summary," pp. 1-2.
