Stop counting!
- Thread starter Little Raven
- Start date
Little Raven
On Walkabout
I'm definately for counting. Heck, they've already started, and the information would be useful in determining how effective our tactics were. The only reason I can see for not counting is possible political embarressment, which is a stupid thing to let stand in the way of fact-gathering.
Knowing how many civilians were killed doesn't really do anything except tell the world how evil the big bad Americans really are 
Maybe if you could compile how many were killed, and how they were killed. But I don't really think that's possible.
Maybe if you could compile how many were killed, and how they were killed. But I don't really think that's possible.
Little Raven
On Walkabout
????
Of course this data could be useful! It's regional, so we could cross-reference it with attack plans and determine if certain types of ordinance coorellated with excessive numbers of civilian deaths. We might even be able to get some categorical data on the fatalities, which would help us refine our numbers even more.
Besides, pretending like they don't exist doesn't win us any favors. Everyone knows people were killed. The US military says it takes every effort to minimize civilian casualties, and I think the data would back them on that. Do you any reason to believe that it wouldn't?
I am hard pressed to imagine how collecting this data could be anything but good for us.
It's not quite that simple.
Let us look at a hypothetical version of say, Baghdad.
Lets say that in the actual attack we have the following weapons used, and the resulting civilian deaths from those weapons.
Weapon -- Civilians killed (vastly simplified, numbers pulled at random)
Bombs -- 20
Cruise missiles -- 15
ATGMs -- 5
Cluster bombs -- 100
Soldiers/vehicles -- 20
In your report all we know is that 160 civilians were killed. That doesn't do anything to tell us that the cluster bombs were by far the most harmful, causing over 60% of the casualties.
Pretending it doesn't exist is pointless, but there are more important things to be done now. Rebuild the country, then count to your heart's content.
Little Raven
On Walkabout
Of course it doesn't lay out in detail what killed who, but nor is it "pointless." We can learn a great deal from statistics, even generalized ones. Ask Neilson. They've made something of an industry out of it.
Why does the one exclude the other? Is the CPA so hopeless that it can't manage to do both at the same time?
I have always been puzzled by the way the official US attitude towards civilian casualties seems to shift depending on whom you ask and when. Of course they've been touting their fluffy-cuddly, civilian-friendly ways of war when PR requires it... and all of a sudden you get Colin Powell or someone like that saying that "we're not really even that concerned about dead Iraqis". Many ordinary Americans seem to be on the verge of orgasm when they see explosions on tv and get to imagine Arabs blown to bits. Which way is it?
It would be interesting to for once get a good US (and the so-called international community) vs. Saddam comparison of Iraqi body count, including the sactions of the 90s. Placing the exact blame is certainly difficult as one can point fingers both ways -- US wanting civilian-targetting sanctions, Saddam not making situation any easier... Saddam going to war against Iran, being USA's golden boy in that conflict... etc... but it would be interesting to attempt something like that!
The only certainty is that the only thing the Iraqi are guilty of is happening to live in a region that is strategically important to an empire...
It would be interesting to for once get a good US (and the so-called international community) vs. Saddam comparison of Iraqi body count, including the sactions of the 90s. Placing the exact blame is certainly difficult as one can point fingers both ways -- US wanting civilian-targetting sanctions, Saddam not making situation any easier... Saddam going to war against Iran, being USA's golden boy in that conflict... etc... but it would be interesting to attempt something like that!
The only certainty is that the only thing the Iraqi are guilty of is happening to live in a region that is strategically important to an empire...
MikeLynch
Just a Baker Street Muse
Well spoken Huck, though I must say I doubt the "majority" of Americans orgasm at the sight of Arabs being blown to bits. Some do, no doubts there, but if our entire populace was THAT racist, why, there'd be no reason for us to conceal these numbers, now would there?
Ossric
Hedonistic Ruler
i thought an estimate of 10.000 to 50.000 Iraqi's were killed in this years war. (not sure if that were soldiers or civilians or both)
Anyway, they just don't want to show that any war is durty. They rather prefer the embedded version of the war.
Anyway, they just don't want to show that any war is durty. They rather prefer the embedded version of the war.
MikeLynch
Just a Baker Street Muse
Ah, my bad.
You are right, many do indeed seem to.
Of course, it's likely that these are largely the same folks who enjoy seeing all manner of people blown up -- Chinese people, Russian people, African-American people, trailer-park people, Belgians.
It's sad, but I think the root of the problem is just a diminished respect for life, period. I wonder if it's as endemic in other countries?
You are right, many do indeed seem to.
Of course, it's likely that these are largely the same folks who enjoy seeing all manner of people blown up -- Chinese people, Russian people, African-American people, trailer-park people, Belgians.
It's sad, but I think the root of the problem is just a diminished respect for life, period. I wonder if it's as endemic in other countries?
jack merchant
Internationalist
In addition to opening the way to charges that the US (and the provisional government, but as it is no-one sees them as being able to act independently anyway) doesn't care about dead Iraqi's, I suspect that stopping the count may actually turn out to be counterproductive for another reason. As it is people have no idea how many people actually died, so any discussion on the Iraq war from now on is going to be based on wild speculation about the true number of casualties. Take Ossric's stated estimate of anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 casualties, for instance - where do those numbers come from ? Do they even mean anything if the range between the lowest and highest number is so wide ?
My guess is ending the count will more likely cause people to base their opinion of the war on a higher number of supposed deaths than actually may have occurred as a result of it. And obviously if the number does turn out to be high we need to know, too.
My guess is ending the count will more likely cause people to base their opinion of the war on a higher number of supposed deaths than actually may have occurred as a result of it. And obviously if the number does turn out to be high we need to know, too.
It's not something inherent in Americans, I would not suggest anything that foolish. All countries can sway in that direction when a taken over by a warlike sentiment.
What I do fear with America in particular though, is that war is becoming too easy for it, and a "warlike sentiment" is easy to fuel. What kept nations out of war previously was the extremely negative consequences for all participants. Modern war is increasingly more like a video game for the domestic audience in the US... even the American casualty counts of today are absolutely nothing compared to those of yesteryear. I don't mean to sound disrespectful or anything towards those who might have lost someone close, but... a few hundred dead in a war? 50 years ago that would not have been called a war in the first place.
Of course, the people of the "enemy" do most of the dying...
Ossric
Hedonistic Ruler
I got it from yahoo-news or something. But it was a while ago & i don't feel that the topic is so relevant to look for the source again. The wide range is just because i can't remember exactly how much the estimate was. Again, this is no finger pointing towards the war. That just something that happens in a war. Soldiers who are worse equipped than their enemies tend to die in a war.
It was in some article about the troubles in postwar Iraq where a lot of Iraqi women didn't know if their husbands were alive or not etc.
cgannon64
BOB DYLAN'S ROCKIN OUT!
Hey, we evil Americans are getting smarter. Instead of revising history, we stop it in the first place.
bobgote
Trousers
I'm sure that although some people have stopped counting, others will keep going. I'm sure some weapons analyst people will be getting effectiveness reports with this kind of stuff included. Just that their info won't be released to the public.
All this means is people can't point to stats to say how many died. Probably a bad thing I guess, but as has been said, once it gets to a certain point, the figure representing the number of deaths really doesn't matter.
Pontiuth Pilate
Republican Jesus!
Already the Iraqi government is doing wonders for its people. And the US-installed cabinet has worked yet another democratic miracle: stopping the count of civilians killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031210/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_civilian_casualties_3
Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead
...Iraqi Health Ministry officials ordered a halt to a count of civilian casualties from the war and told workers not to release figures already compiled, the head of the ministry's statistics department told The Associated Press on Wednesday...
...The health minister, Dr. Khodeir Abbas, denied that he or the U.S.-led occupation authority had anything to do with the order, and said he didn't even know about the survey of deaths...
..."We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn't agree with it," Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry's statistics department, said, adding: "The CPA doesn't want this to be done."...
...Abbas, whose secretary said he was out of the country, sent an e-mail denying the charge.
"I have no knowledge of a civilian war casualty survey even being started by the Ministry of Health, much less stopping it," he wrote. "The CPA did not direct me to stop any such survey either."
"Plain and simple, this is false information," he added....
...Despite Abbas' comments, the Health Ministry's civilian death toll count had been reported by news media as early as August, and the count was widely anticipated by human rights organizations. The ministry issued a preliminary figure of 1,764 deaths during the summer....
...The U.S. military doesn't count civilian casualties from its wars, saying only that it tries to minimize civilian deaths...
...The Associated Press conducted a major investigation of Iraq (news - web sites)'s wartime civilian casualties, documenting the deaths of 3,240 civilians between March 20 and April 20. That investigation, conducted in May and June, surveyed about half of Iraq's hospitals, and reported that the real number of civilian deaths was sure to be much higher...
...Abbas, the minister, suggested such a study wouldn't be feasible.
"It would be almost impossible to conduct such a survey, because hospitals cannot distinguish between deaths that resulted from the coalition's efforts in the war, common crime among Iraqis, or deaths resulting from Saddam's brutal regime," he wrote...
That's the new line of our Bush-born government in Iraq: civilian casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom were really Saddam Hussein's fault.
From the total discoordination between statements in different departments, it's obvious that they haven't got the coverup procedure down pat like our own democratic Administration does. Note that one Iraqi says the count was not stopped by the USA and then denies that there ever was a count; another says the CPA stopped the count; the Prime Minister feigns innocence and says he never heard of a count in the first place. Iraq has a while to go before they can start producing Nixons and Deep Throats.
I'm just astonished this wasn't the CPA's first move after gaining power. I guess the oil rigs merited more attention.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031210/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_civilian_casualties_3
Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead
...Iraqi Health Ministry officials ordered a halt to a count of civilian casualties from the war and told workers not to release figures already compiled, the head of the ministry's statistics department told The Associated Press on Wednesday...
...The health minister, Dr. Khodeir Abbas, denied that he or the U.S.-led occupation authority had anything to do with the order, and said he didn't even know about the survey of deaths...
..."We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn't agree with it," Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry's statistics department, said, adding: "The CPA doesn't want this to be done."...
...Abbas, whose secretary said he was out of the country, sent an e-mail denying the charge.
"I have no knowledge of a civilian war casualty survey even being started by the Ministry of Health, much less stopping it," he wrote. "The CPA did not direct me to stop any such survey either."
"Plain and simple, this is false information," he added....
...Despite Abbas' comments, the Health Ministry's civilian death toll count had been reported by news media as early as August, and the count was widely anticipated by human rights organizations. The ministry issued a preliminary figure of 1,764 deaths during the summer....
...The U.S. military doesn't count civilian casualties from its wars, saying only that it tries to minimize civilian deaths...
...The Associated Press conducted a major investigation of Iraq (news - web sites)'s wartime civilian casualties, documenting the deaths of 3,240 civilians between March 20 and April 20. That investigation, conducted in May and June, surveyed about half of Iraq's hospitals, and reported that the real number of civilian deaths was sure to be much higher...
...Abbas, the minister, suggested such a study wouldn't be feasible.
"It would be almost impossible to conduct such a survey, because hospitals cannot distinguish between deaths that resulted from the coalition's efforts in the war, common crime among Iraqis, or deaths resulting from Saddam's brutal regime," he wrote...
That's the new line of our Bush-born government in Iraq: civilian casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom were really Saddam Hussein's fault.
From the total discoordination between statements in different departments, it's obvious that they haven't got the coverup procedure down pat like our own democratic Administration does. Note that one Iraqi says the count was not stopped by the USA and then denies that there ever was a count; another says the CPA stopped the count; the Prime Minister feigns innocence and says he never heard of a count in the first place. Iraq has a while to go before they can start producing Nixons and Deep Throats.
I'm just astonished this wasn't the CPA's first move after gaining power. I guess the oil rigs merited more attention.
cgannon64
BOB DYLAN'S ROCKIN OUT!
And I count two threads on this subject.
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