"These Statistics Demonstrate US Military Can Track Civilian Casualities"

[chlamor]

"These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties"

Recording and publicly releasing Iraqi civilian casualty numbers

by Marla Ruzicka
USA Today 18 April 2005
www.globalresearch.ca 27 April 2005

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUZ504A.html

Aid worker's words — just a week before she was killed

BAGHDAD — The writer, a 28-year-old humanitarian aid worker from California, was killed Saturday in Baghdad when a suicide bomber aiming for a convoy of contractors pulled alongside her vehicle and detonated his explosives. Her driver also died. She filed this piece from Baghdad a week before her death.

<snip>

Recently, I obtained statistics on civilian casualties from a high-ranking U.S. military official. The numbers were for Baghdad only, for a short period, during a relatively quiet time. Other hot spots, such as the Ramadi and Mosul areas, could prove worse. The statistics showed that 29 civilians were killed by small-arms fire during firefights between U.S. troops and insurgents between Feb. 28 and April 5 — four times the number of Iraqi police killed in the same period. It is not clear whether the bullets that killed these civilians were fired by U.S. troops or insurgents.


These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The military should also want to release this information for the purposes of comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year. It suggested that since the U.S.-led invasion there had been 100,000 deaths in Iraq.

[Wizard777]

1. It' s a Court Martial Offence

Before the start of the invasion Bush prohibited the Pentagon from tracking Iraqi casualties. If anyone in the Pentagon or military has a number to offer. They have violated a direct order from the commander and chief and could be subjected to court martial.

[struggle4progress]

2. kick