Category: Violent world

The Iraq Body Count project has analysed the new Johns Hopkins/Lancet study and disagrees with it. It’s worth noting, of course, that the apologists for the war who have attacked the Lancet also get hysterical about the Iraq Body Count. Sane people agree that tens of thousands of civilians have been killed as a result of a morally indefensible war; the only disagreement is over the exact number. The IBC view:

There has been enormous interest and debate over the newly published Lancet Iraqi mortality estimate of 655,000 excess deaths since the invasion, 601,000 of them from violence (and including combatants with civilians). Even the latter estimate is some 12 times larger than the IBC count of violent civilian deaths reported in the international news media, which stands at something under 50,000 for the same period (although the IBC figure for this period is likely to considerably increase with the addition of as yet unprocessed data). The new Lancet estimate is also almost the same degree higher than any official records from Iraq. This contrast has provoked numerous requests for comment, and these are our first observations.
The researchers, and in particular their Iraqi colleagues who carried out the survey, should be commended for undertaking it under dangerous circumstances and with minimal resources. Efforts like theirs have consistently highlighted that much more could be done by official bodies, such as the US and UK governments, to assess the human suffering that has resulted from the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
However, our view is that there is considerable cause for scepticism regarding the estimates in the latest study, not least because of a very different conclusion reached by another random household survey, the ILCS, using a comparable method but a considerably better-distributed and much larger sample. […]
What emerges most clearly from this study is that a multi-methodological approach and much better resourced work is required. Substantially more deaths have occurred than have been recorded so far, but their number still remains highly uncertain.

John Quiggin also has some interesting thoughts about the continuing air war in Iraq, based on the US Air Force’s own reports. (Apparently the mainstream media doesn’t think it’s worth reporting. Liberal bias, innit?)

Andrew Sullivan quotes Vladimir Bukovsky on the consequences of the toleration of torture by Russian leaders:

… in its heyday, Joseph Stalin’s notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria’s predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.
So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling?

Andy then observes:

It is one of history’s great tragedies that American conservatism, born in part in resistance to Soviet torture, should end by endorsing it in America, by Americans. And not just endorsing it, but brandishing the use of it as a tool to gain re-election and maintain power.

But this what happens when an amoral, historically ignorant clique takes power and seeks to exploit fear for partisan political ends. With the capitulation of McCain and his Republican colleagues, Edmund Burke’s words ring truer than ever….

From Capitol Hill Blue: How many more have to die?: “An internal memo circulating at CIA headquarters at Langley says more Iraqi civilians have died since the American invasion than died at the hands of Saddam Hussein over the past decade.”

As I write this, the official number of US military dead in Iraq is 906. But many soldiers die without being added to the casualty list. Over at Democracy Now! you’ll find a gut-wrenching interview with the parents of a 23 year old Marine Reservist, Jeffrey Lucey. (It’s also mirrored here, at John Fabiani’s blog.) The Hermit summarised it on Terry’s blog like this:
[This is] the story of a family whose son went to Iraq at 18 [actually 21] and came back and hung himself. He had two sets of Iraqi dogtags that he wore to honour the two men (prisoners) that he had been ordered to shoot, close range, unarmed. He told his sister he was a murderer and could no longer live with himself. The VA committed him at his father’s insisting and released him after 3 days despite his telling them of four ways he was considering using to die. He got told he was weak, to suck it up, and get on with his life. His father found him hanging in the cellar.

An e-friend from the Al Stewart mailing list, Terry Karney, has posted a couple of detailed articles on technical/legal issues arising from interrogations in the prison in Baghdad. He knows what he is talking about: he was over there, in military intelligence, until he was evacuated for medical reasons.
As he writes elsewhere:
…right now I am ashamed of my profession… I’m an interrogator, and while only MPs and officers… have been implicated, it was said to be in the interest of people in my line of work…. I feel dirty, unclean, with spotted hands.
The full piece is poetic, tragic. My heart goes out to him.