Iraq insurgency has killed 6,000 civilians -- (US appointed Iraqi) govt

[NNN0LHI]

BAGHDAD, April 5 (Reuters) - Guerrillas and criminal gangs have killed 6,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years and wounded 16,000, according to the first comprehensive government estimate of the toll from the insurgency.

"These people in the insurgency are involved in looting, terrorism, killing, kidnapping, drug dealing, beheading and all that," Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told Reuters.

"There are around 6,000 Iraqis who have been killed by these people and 16,000 who have been wounded," he said, citing figures compiled from records kept by the health, human rights, interior and other ministries.

"We have also found that around 5,000 Iraqis have been kidnapped since the fall of the regime, which does not include those cases that have gone unreported," he said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BAK531849.htm

[leftchick]

1. even if this were true....

it is way behind the HUNDREDS of thousands the Awol** one has killed.

[NNN0LHI]

3. They are making excuses for the new mass graves the US is digging n/t

[whistle]

2. So the 100,000 plus dead Iraqis are primarily from U.S. military...

...actions.

<link> http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol364/iss9446/early_online_publication

[hack89]

21. The report actually says 8000 dead..

or 194,000, or any number in between. It was a statistical study. In the fine print their result was : "We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period." The (95% CI 8000-194 000)means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. 100,00 is simply and conveniently in the middle of that ridiculous range of numbers. The report does not prove that 100,000 Iraqis were killed.

[Vladimir]

4. Except that during the first year at least

these deaths were directly the responsibility of the occupying forces, as per various international treaties. Not to mention that 6,000 << 100,000+. What this proves is that the insurgency, far from systematically terrorising Iraqis, is far better at containing collateral damage than the occupying forces.

[Dhalgren]

5. Good point. But I would find any figures given out by the

quislings suspect. This thing is about to blow wide open. My prediction is that the "Iraqi War" is about to become very very much worse.

[Vladimir]

7. Well they claim a 20% decrease in insurgent attacks since the elections

but even if you believe this, the advertised methods used to combat it (public humiliation of insurgents and the wrongly acused, beatings and torture, 'pacification' of towns) may well cause a long-term increase in the insurgents' numbers, even if in the short term they appear to weaken. The root cause of the struggle is the occupation and the only cure is a total withdrawal.

[meganmonkey]

9. And there may be fewer in total numbers, but they sure seem to be

getting better at planning and implementing bigger, more serious attacks.

:(

[LynnTheDem]

16. Iraq insurgency has worsened: DIA

Though US President George W Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been giving the impression that the insurgency situation in Iraq is improving, the American Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), which monitors the situation daily, says it has worsened.

"The insurgency in Iraq has grown in size and complexity over the past year. Attacks numbered approximately 25 per day one year ago," DIA Director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington.

"Attacks on Iraq's election day reached approximately 300, almost double the previous one day high of about 160 during last year's Ramadan. Since the January 30 election, attacks have averaged around 60 per day and in the 1st two weeks dropped to approximately 50 per day," Jacoby said.

http://www.zeenews.com/links/articles.asp?aid=207678&sid=WOR

But with reporters being warned by bushCartel out of Iraq, you only hear what bush wants you to hear.

[shadowknows69]

6. drug dealing?

I don't remember reading much ever about Iraq being a major drug trading country.

[Frederik]

14. Apparently...

they became so after the US invasion. Don't have a link unfortunately, but I recently read that a third of the youngsters in Southern Iraq are addicted to heroin now. I think it was a DU thread actually. The explosion in production of Afghan heroin after the invasion of that country is probably a contributing factor.

[LynnTheDem]

18. CIA Hawking Heroin in Baghdad?

BAGHDAD: The city, which had never seen heroin, a deadly addictive drug, until March 2003, is now flooded with narcotics including heroin.

http://www.diggers.org/freecitynews/_disc1/00000070.htm

[shadowknows69]

24. it worked for them in this country.

seed the disenfrachised with hard addictive drugs and they'll be much easier to incarcerate and no doubt dispose of later.

[ckramer]

8. Well, dead Iraqis mean nothing to Bush

"It's worth it!"

[Zynx]

10. Eh, believable. Car bombs have high collateral damage

And some of the insurgents in Iraq *are* out and out terrorists who target Shi'a civilians en masse.

We've killed way more than 6,000, though.

[Roland99]

11. Probably at least that much in Falluja alone.

[Frederik]

15. I agree

6,000 sounds about right. Peanuts compared to what the occupation forces are responsible for.

[plasticsundance]

12. This blatant hypocrisy and dishonest ...

The Pentagon has halted the release of Iraq civilian casualties, but has no qualms about making political points in a release of questionable data. I mean, I understand there's propaganda in war, but do you think the Pentagon could be a bit more clever about it and less demonstrably desperate.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- 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 yesterday.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/152031_iraqdead11.html">Iraq halts release of civilian-casualty counts

A few days back I made note of the report in The Lancet on recently-completed research in Iraq of how death rates have changed in the months since 2002.

The study’s authors estimated that 100,000 more Iraqis had died in the months after the invasion that started in March, 2003 than would have died had the death rates in Iraq remained the same as their pre-war levels. This increased death rate was almost entirely due to deaths from war violence, and those deaths were overwhelmingly the result of coalition “aerial weaponry.”

This 100,000 number raised eyebrows, since until now, the closest thing to rigorous civilian mortality figures had been from sources like Iraq Body Count, and the press had gotten used to writing paragraphs juxtaposing the Iraq Body Count figures (at this writing: 15,285 ± 1,066) with the boilerplate Pentagon assertion that they do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties. (The Pentagon does not release its own estimates of the civilian casualties its actions cause, and in fact frequently insists that it does not even generate such estimates. The Iraq Health Ministry was doing its own counts for a while, but was ordered to stop.)

http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=01Nov04&showyear=2004">1 November 2004

What a sham is this entire absurd and incredulous Bush Administration and Pentagon scheme. First, hold a scam election in Iraq, which has done little to provide security, let alone stop the Iraqi resistance or the violence. Next, let the US-State-controlled-corporate-media, with its plethora of talking head lackeys and shills to harp and lie to the American public that democracy is on the way in the ME. Finally, even though not providing its own Iraqi civilian death statistics, the Bush Administration and Pentagon begin a campaign doomed to failure, somehow painting the resistance as the monster, as if Iraq wasn't the country belonging to these resistance fighters.

So, we may conclude, Iraq is the 51st State of the US, and Abu Ghraib never happened, including apparent evidence that the advice on torturing Iraqi prisoners went all the way up to ex-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and involved high ranking US generals.

Okay, shit now has legs and can jump about.

[daleo]

13. If they do that 20 times over, they will be close to Bush

Best estimates of civilians killed by coalition activities are around 100,000.

[Frederik]

17. And remember

that was in mid-2004 and excluded the Falluja area. Considering that they are steadily increasing the number of daily bombing missions (according to Sy Hersh and Dahr Jamail), which are continuously killing civilians, and considering the slaughter in Falluja etc, it's bound to be a lot more now. The John Hopkins people said back then that 100,000 was a fairly "conservative" estimate. The Iraq Body Count people concurred, if I remember correctly. Iraq Body Count, after all, only register deaths reported in the media.

[daleo]

19. I agree, that is a conservative estimate.

Throw in deaths that were indirectly caused by the invasion (lack of sanitation, etc.) and the numbers would probably be staggering. Bush should be struck by lightning at the pope's funeral.

[Frederik]

20. Perhaps he will be!

If we all pray together maybe our prayers will be heard.

[leesa]

22. Pure crap!

[Zappa]

23. Actors in the Insurgency Are Reluctant TV Stars

Actors in the Insurgency Are Reluctant TV Stars
Terror Suspects Grilled, Mocked on Hit Iraqi Show


BAGHDAD -- Iraq's hottest new television program is a reality show. But the players are not there by choice. And they don't win big bucks, a new spouse or a dream job.

Instead, all the characters on "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" are captured suspected insurgents. And for more than a month, they have been riveting viewers with tales of how they killed, kidnapped, raped or beheaded other Iraqis, usually for a few hundred dollars per victim.

Seated before an Iraqi flag, the dejected and cowed prisoners answer questions from an off-camera inquisitor who mocks their behavior. Some sport bruised faces and black eyes. Far from appearing to be confident heroes battling U.S. occupation, they come across as gangsters.

"I watch the show every night, and I wait for it patiently, because it is very revealing," said Abdul Kareem Abdulla, 42, a Baghdad shop owner. "For the first time, we saw those who claim to be jihadists as simple $50 murderers who would do everything in the name of Islam. Our religion is too lofty, noble and humane to have such thugs and killers. I wish they would hang them now, and in the same place where they did their crimes. They should never be given any mercy."

Broadcast on al-Iraqiya, the state-run network set up by the U.S. occupation authority in 2003, "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" has become one of most effective arrows in the government's counterinsurgency propaganda quiver.

"It has shown the Iraqi people the reality of those insurgents, they are criminals, killers, murderers, thieves," Interior Minister Falah Naqib said last week.

Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry spokesman, added, "The last few weeks have been incredible in terms of tips coming in from the public."

Officials launched the program, Kadhim said, after realizing that Iraqis did not believe that insurgents were being arrested. "Talking to people in the street, they say, 'Is it really true? . . . Why don't you show it?' " he recalled. "The demand for this came from the people."

The bruised faces and the death of at least one prisoner after his appearance on the show have raised questions about the men's treatment in custody. Kadhim denied the prisoners were being abused. "There is absolutely no motive for us to torture them," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26402-2005Apr4.html?nav=rss_world