new strategy in Iraq guarantees massive civilian casualties

[G_j]

A FORMULA FOR SLAUGHTER
Michael Schwartz, Tomdispatch.com

How the U.S. military's new strategy in Iraq guarantees
massive civilian casualties, not victory.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/30655/

A little over a year ago, a group of Johns Hopkins researchers reported that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the Iraq war during its first 14 months, with about 60,000 of the deaths directly attributable to military violence by the U.S. and its allies.

The study, published in The Lancet, the highly respected British medical journal, applied the same rigorous, scientifically validated methods that the Hopkins researchers had used in estimating that 1.7 million people had died in the Congo in 2000. Though the Congo study had won the praise of the Bush and Blair administrations and had become the foundation for U.N, Security Council and State Department actions, this study was quickly declared invalid by the U.S. government and by supporters of the war.

This dismissal was hardly surprising, but after a brief flurry of protest, even the anti-war movement (with a number of notable exceptions) has largely ignored the ongoing carnage that the study identified.

One reason the Hopkins study did not generate sustained outrage is that the researchers did not explain how the occupation had managed to kill so many people so quickly -- about 1,000 each week in the first 14 months of the war. This may reflect our sense that carnage at such elevated levels requires a series of barbaric acts of mass slaughter and/or huge battles that would account for staggering numbers of Iraqis killed. With the exception of the battle of Falluja, these sorts of high-profile events have simply not occurred in Iraq.

..more..

[Village Idiot]

1. Here you go:

Pretty simple to figure out WHY civilian casualty count is INCREASING:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=18986

Saturday, December 24, 2005

U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have surged this fall, jumping to nearly five times the average monthly rate earlier in the year, according to U.S. military figures.

Until the end of August, U.S. warplanes were conducting about 25 strikes a month. The number rose to 62 in September, then to 122 in October and 120 in November.

For most airstrikes in Iraq, U.S. crews have been employing 500-pound, precision-guided bombs rather than the 1,000- or 2,000-pound versions used in past conflicts, Peck said. The smaller bombs are intended to reduce the potential for collateral damage. In limited cases, the 100-pound Hellfire missile is used. "It won't knock down a house, but it can be effective in taking out a car," Peck said.

With the Pentagon preparing to reduce the level of U.S. ground forces in Iraq next year, some defense experts have speculated that U.S. airpower will be used more intensively to support operations by Iraq's fledgling security forces and protect U.S. advisers embedded with them. Indeed, American commanders have said that U.S. air forces in the region will not be drawn down as quickly as ground forces.

[G_j]

4. very disturbing. & more,

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GL16Ak02.html

Dec 16, 2005

The deadly skies over Iraq
By Dahr Jamail

The American media continue to ignore the increasingly devastating air war being waged in Iraq against an ever more belligerent Iraqi resistance - and, as usual, Iraqi civilians continue to bear the largely unreported brunt of the bombing.

When the air war shows up at all in the US press, it is never as a campaign, but as scattered bare-bones reports of individual attacks on specific targets, almost invariably based on military

A typical example was reported by Reuters on December 4: "Two US Air Force F-16 jets dropped laser-guided bombs which, according to a military spokesperson, killed two 'insurgents' after they attacked an army patrol near Balad, 37 miles west of Baghdad."

On the same day, Reuters reported that "a woman and two children" were "wounded when US forces conducted an air strike, bombing two houses in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad". And even this minimalist version of the American air war rarely makes it into large media outlets in the US.

Ignoring the obvious
Author and media critic Norman Solomon asked the following question recently: "According to the LexisNexis media database, how often has the phrase 'air war' appeared in the New York Times this year with reference to the current US military effort in Iraq? As of early December, the answer is: zero." Solomon went on to point out that the phrase "air war" had not appeared in either the Washington Post or Time magazine even a single time this year.
..more..

[bigtree]

2. Another story- US Airstrikes in Iraq Could Intensify

US Airstrikes in Iraq Could Intensify

Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/6685

Washington - US warplanes have carried out hundreds of air strikes in Iraq in the past two years, bombing and strafing insurgent fighters and targets almost daily. And the air war, which has gone largely unnoticed at home, could intensify once American ground forces start to withdraw.

>>>>Some analysts have raised questions about how effective air power can be in a counterinsurgency war. A key fear is that Iraq's mostly Shiite Muslim and Kurdish army will use American and allied bombing missions for revenge attacks on the Sunni Muslim Arab minority, which provides most of the insurgency's fighters.

"If we allow that to happen, then in essence we'll be doing the same thing we accused Saddam Hussein of doing," said Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA and State Department official. "We'll just be substituting one tyranny for another."

>>>>It's already difficult for American troops to distinguish friend from foe in Iraq. To wage a counterinsurgency campaign solely from the air would be virtually impossible.

full article:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/6685

[renate]

3. I guess that methodological problem still remains

Although the author explains how death on this unimaginable scale is possible, he still doesn't really explain how those numbers were arrived at. I certainly assume, since this was published in a journal like The Lancet, that the statistics were valid--I'm not disputing the estimate. But I think that's probably the basic reason there hasn't been a huge amount of attention: saying "100,000 Iraqi civilians have died" and being unable to back it up with rock-solid data allows the study to be sort of dismissed. Oh, there go those anti-war liberals again, making up ridiculously high numbers they can't back up.

Also, it's impossible for people who only get their news from the MSM to imagine that 100,000 civilians could have died without somebody (somebody mainstream, that is) reporting it. I mean, if 100,000 American civilians--heck, not even American, if 100,000 Italian, French, German, Brazilian, or Indian civilians--were killed over the course of a few years, we'd hear about it, right? (It might not be front-page news, of course, not while there are American runaway brides to cover. But we'd at least hear about it.) So, thinks Mr. and Ms. Average Non-Blogging Person, this number simply can't be true. How can this many people disappear without Brian Williams telling us about it?

[G_j]

5. The Corporate media would NEVER report Mass Murder

and that is what the Lancet study shows.
That is the number one reason why they have essentially censored the report, which is the most in-depth and detailed study done to date.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. Not that it's relevant to anything, but

how long after the release of the Lancet article were the London bombings?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. But, dismembering, or incinerating people with bombs isn't "terrorism".

It's "heroic" and deserving of monuments and medals. Just like torture is merely the antics of funloving soldiers.

[G_j]

8. k

[G_j]

9. ~~