10 Policemen Killed in Kirkuk Bombing;
85% of Iraqis Killed by US Aerial Bombing Women and Children
A parked car bomb in the northern oil city of Kirkuk killed 10 policemen in a passing convoy and wounded 20 other persons on Wednesday.
Kirkuk is the object of a lively struggle among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. The Kurdistan Regional Government wants to annex it, and struggles over the status of Kurdistan have delayed provincial elections there. A group of parliamentarians on Wednesday advised postponing the elections for two months
Meanwhile, a study of Iraq War deaths at King's College and Royal Holloway College in the UK has found that 85% of the deaths caused by US aerial bombardment of targets in Iraqi cities have been women and children.
I have long maintained that it is likely a violation of the Geneva Conventions for the US air force to systematically bomb cities that the US military is already occupying. Typically such close air support in urban areas is called in by infantry or armor patrols to deal with snipers atop tenement buildings. But since families live in the tenement buildings, taking out a sniper or two often results in significant civilian deaths. It is likely that the death toll of women and children is much greater than the Iraq Body Count suggests, since pulberized buildings are not always cleared away in a slum, and when they are, bodies are not always exhumed.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/16/2009 02:00:00 AM
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8 Comments:
As Thucydides stated: "The strong do as they wish and the weak suffer as they must."
The US cannot drop bombs fast enough in Iraq, Afghanastan, and Pakistan. Do Americans know we are ALSO bombing Pakistan on a regular basis? I think that is something the average American does not know about, or sadly, care about. After all, if someone is not American or Israeli, it is as if they are only 3/5 human.
I was reading What Happened to the Egyptians Today by Galaal Amin. When reading about the involvement in the Iraqi government's role in all of this, I was struck by the irony of a famous Egyptian saying I just read, which he quotes often in the book:
"?? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ?????"
I thought you might appreciate that.
That's sort of an odd summary of the data. Because IBC explicitly excludes combatants, one would expect a high proportion of the men killed in airstrikes to be suspected insurgents, and therefore excluded from the count. Let's say a house includes 20 men, five women, and five children. It is bombed from the air. All 30 die, but only 10 deaths are logged by IBC for analysis.
In fact, what the study suggests is that air attacks were responsible for about 4,000 of the 90,000 civilian deaths logged by IBC (IBC-logged deaths with unknown causes appear to have been excluded from the study).
However, because IBC excludes those dubbed combatants, the actual number is probably somewhat higher, as it would exclude adult males killed in airstrikes who were falsely believed to be combatants.
It's a terrible toll, in any case, and the basic argument -- that air attacks in built-up areas will cause civilian casualties -- is not diminished.
Cue the spin machine. Most likely this study will be buried just like the Lancet study. A real shame, that.
Let's say a house includes 20 men, five women, and five children.Well, I don't really understand what is the point of your comment. Are you criticizing the Lancet study ? the IBC ? or what ?
The IBC offers largely underestimated counts, because it is only relying on the death reported in the western newpapers and those who are reported are only a small part of the count. The lancet study is methodologically much better grounded.
Now, just for the record, I think that your supposition is totally biased : why do you assume that the house contains 20 men, 5 women and 5 children ? the number of men, would greatly depend upon the hour of the day. During the day, men are more likely to be busy outside of the home and women would clearly outweight them. During the night I'd assume that the proportion of men and women should more or less be equal, or slightly under (given mortality data). But the number of children would certainly be much higher, givent the natality data. So why are you doing such extreme supposition ? what do you want to demonstrate ?
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Is the State Department still run by Bush loyalists ?
Of course the Department rejected the suggestion to form a Commission to collect reports and data on the losses suffered by the Iraqi people, when the Secretary of State was a Bush appointee and Bush loyalist.
But now that there are supposedly loyal Americans running the show, what's preventing a return to accountability, openness and standards of conduct ?
Who is covering up, and what are they covering up ?
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Further to Abu Silawa's comment, the information does require additional detail, analysis and context. If airstrikes account for four of 90,000 civilian deaths, what/who accounts for the remaining 84,000 casualties? I would be interested in an accounting of how many civilian deaths are the result of insurgent attacks, suicide bombs, etc. that are specifically targeted at civilians.
Also would be good to know how many of the bombing deaths were during the initial phase of the war vs. during the subsequent ground war? I would also echo Mr. Silawa that each of these deaths is tragic.
Re Kings College study on how weapons kill non-combatants. On the face of it, two reasonable propositions pop out:
1. Our army relies on indirect fire weapons that traditionally are the major killers in our favored type of war.
2. Execution by pistol/rifle and command mines should be more target specific than indirect fire.
The higher woman/child percentage of casualties from car vs suicide bombing is a tragedy worth understanding. It would seem to indicate that the suicide attack is more careful than the car-bomb triggerman or timer. Other possibilities are that the type of killing field is different; suiciders may aim for high value damage, get among recruits, or inside a police station. Or that some casualties attributed to car bombs are due to other causes, like suppressing fire from troops at the facility or convoy that was hit- as happened at Haditha.
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