U.S. Begins Bombing Tikrit, Delays Afghan Pullout as War on Terror Toll Tops 1.3 Million

"Democracy Now!" airs weekdays at 9 a.m. PT on KCET.

As the United States begins bombing the Iraqi city of Tikrit and delays a withdrawal from Afghanistan again, a new report has found that the Iraq War has killed about one million people. The Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other groups examined the toll from the War on Terror in three countries -- Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The investigators found "the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around one million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan, and 80,000 in Pakistan. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts, and decision makers are aware. ... And this is only a conservative estimate." The true tally, they add, could be more than two million.

"Democracy Now!" is joined by two guests who worked on the report: Hans von Sponeck, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who resigned his post in 2000 in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime; and Dr. Robert Gould, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.