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Today's
Stories
Jan.
31 / Feb 1, 2004
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
January
30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 31 / February 1, 2004
For Whom the Death
Tolls
Deliberate
Undercounting of "Coalition" Fatalities
By PAUL de ROOIJ
There is evidence of a concerted effort afoot
to obfuscate the number of casualties in the recent crop of US-led
wars. May 1st was the day the president Bush landed on an aircraft
carrier and declared the end to the war and the start of the
occupation of Iraq [1]. Since then many casualty numbers have
been publicized, most of them disingenuous fudges of the real
death toll. There are many reasons why the casualty toll is understated,
and these are dissected here.
The Bush regime is doing its best to
hide the human cost of its recent wars. Publicity of the soldiers'
deaths is bad during an election year, and would be bad for the
continued justification for the American occupation of Iraq.
If they are intent on hiding the casualty figures, then it behooves
us to uncover and amplify them.
Are We a "Coalition"?
The US propagandists and the media refer
to the term "coalition" when it suits them. When it
is important to show that the US didn't act alone without UN
authorization, then the virtues of the "coalition"
are extolled. When the purpose is to reduce the numbers of casualties
reported and to hide the death toll, then it is convenient to
count the US casualties exclusively. The fact that British, Danish,
Spanish, Polish, and Iraqis working for US aren't added to the
casualty tally used by the media is less than honest.
If one found that the US media focused
exclusively on US casualties, then this may be understandable.
The British are the second most important contingent in the so-called
coalition, and one would expect the British media to report casualties
of both the US and UK. However, when reporting on the seriousness
of the situation the BBC also separates the figures and focuses
on the US casualties. BBC Online has numerous articles dealing
exclusively with US casualties, and separately there are a few
articles on British casualties [2]. One can only interpret this
as an attempt to reduce the reported numbers and hide the scale
of the resistance against the "coalition". And downplaying
the British casualties even in British media is odd to say the
least.
Classification Fudge
If a soldier steps on a landmine, should
the victim be classified as a "hostile" casualty? How
about someone killed clearing mines? In order to arrive at the
media-reported fatality statistics, one must actually classify
several such deaths as "non-hostile" - which are
thus not reported by most media, as they only report the soldiers
killed by "hostile" action. Of course, the major news
groups are not required to use the propaganda compliant numbers
-- they keep extensive lists too. And if they aren't willing
to work out the numbers themselves, they could refer to Lunaville
(a good quality data source) [3]. However, the classification
currently used definitely results in a reduction of the number
of reported casualties. It is also clear that the Pentagon's
numbers are used widely; otherwise, one couldn't explain how
CNN's figures are the same as those reported by the BBC. Anyone
attempting to record casualty figures, distinguishing for cause
of death, would most likely have derived a different tally. Since
this is not the case with major media, one can only infer that
the use of propaganda compliant numbers serves to reduce the
reported toll.
There is also clear manipulation of the
data. For example, soldiers killed by hostile actions are subsequently
reclassified as accidental deaths [4]. The simple fact that this
manipulation is evident to anyone willing to investigate this
should be reason enough to report all the fatalities irrespective
of their reported cause of death, but this is not the case.
The graph below shows a relatively high
level of "non-hostile" deaths during May 2003. It looks
somewhat suspicious, and it may be an interesting question that
intrepid embedded journalists could ask of their Pentagon handlers.
Initially there were many deaths due to "Humvee rollovers"
- 17 to be precise; perhaps soldiers now wear seat belts
explaining why this cause of death has disappeared. A more likely
explanation is that the cause of death was really due to hostile
action, i.e., rollovers of an explosive kind. Even a simple eyeball
approach to statistics reveals an odd reduction of the "non-hostile"
deaths in the graph.
Honest reporting would require tallying
a casualty if the victim would be alive today had they not been
in Iraq. Dying of heatstroke, unexplained illnesses, clearing
landmines, Humvee rollovers, suicide, fragging [5], should all
be included in the tally. Only then is it possible to obtain
a better picture of what is happening on the ground, and estimate
what the real casualty figures may be like in the future. And
there is one argument that Americans will surely understand:
these numbers also indicate how costly this occupation is going
to be in dollar terms.
Some Statistics
It is curious that for a nation obsessed
with stock market charts virtually no news organization publishes
soldier fatality charts. The chart below merges the fatalities
of both the US and uk (yes, lowercase uk - the British contingent
is less than 10% of the total). It is clear that there is an
upward fatality trend, and this is surprising because all foreign
military forces in Iraq have reduced their exposure. For example,
this is what Patrick Cockburn had to say about this:
Overall, the capture of Saddam Hussein
seems to have made little difference to the level of resistance.
This is not immediately obvious, because the number of attacks
on US forces is down to about 17 a day now, compared with twice
that two months ago. But this is in large part because, eager
to cut their casualties, US commanders cut the number of patrols
they carry out by two thirds from 1,500 a day in November to
500 a day in December.
So, if the exposure to potential threats
has diminished, and the casualty rate is up, then this only means
one thing: the resistance is growing fiercer. The overall average
rate of fatalities stands at 1.5 per day for the May 1 through
Jan. 27, 2004 period. The rate in the last month stands at 1.8,
and the forecast for the fatality rate in May 2004 is 2.1/day.
The rate of fatalities is increasing. Whereas during the first
four months of the occupation the reported "hostile"
causes of fatalities stood at 50%, now this has risen to 66%
for the period May 1st thru Jan. 27, 2004.
Curiously, no media organization publishes
the racial composition of the fatalities. Find a table below,
this refers to the May 1, 2003 through Jan 27, 2004 period.
Race/ethnic group of US-uk soldiers (1/v/03 27/i/04)
KIA
| White |
283 |
67% |
| Black |
53 |
13% |
| Hispanic |
37 |
9% |
| Other |
8 |
2% |
| NA |
39 |
9% |
| Total |
420 |
|
| Women |
10 |
2.4% |
Classification done by author from
photographs. This is an imperfect means of classification, but
no other source is available.
The racial composition of the casualties
remains roughly constant, with a slight increase in the number
of whites killed (this has gone from 65 to 68% of the total).
The average age and the average military
rank of the fatalities are also increasing. The explanation for
this is that frontline troops tend to be younger and have lower
rank. So, when the conflict changes from a hot war to occupation
there is a shift in the nature of casualties: these go from frontline
soldiers to reserve duty soldiers; the latter tend to be older
and have higher rank. Furthermore, the Iraqi resistance's methods
to attack the troops also explain this pattern. Mortars lobbed
into military camps give everyone an even chance of getting hurt;
the same holds for military convoys hit by "IEDs" (a
new military term for: improvised explosive device).
Finally, for a culture obsessed with
financial or weather forecasts, it is odd that no one forecasts
the military fatalities. In an article in September 2003, I forecasted
that the US-uk fatalities from May 1st to Dec. 31st would be
378; the actual number turned out to be 374. Again, this isn't
rocket science, it just requires some basic statistics. The forecast
for the May 1, 2003 until May 1, 2004 is of 610 US-uk military
fatalities, although it is likely that it will be somewhat lower
since the Iraqi resistance is running out of explosives and ammunition.
A forecast around 560 fatalities is more probable, unless the
Iraqis manage to bring down a transport plane - the one
hit on Jan. 8th had 69 military personnel on board, but fortunately
it wasn't shot down.
Today's Miracle Workers
There have been thousands of soldiers
transferred to Germany or the US for medical treatment. Initially,
one found the occasional report of a soldier who subsequently
died of his wounds in hospital. During the past few months, there
have been only three reports of such deaths even though the casualty
rate has increased. Either such fatalities are now classified
as medical malpractice, or the doctors are performing miracles
and keeping all wounded soldiers alive. At least two suicides
of returning soldiers at a military hospital were treated as
local casualties. One thing is certain, there is ample dishonesty
creeping into the counting of the death toll by refusing to count
those dying at hospitals such as the Walter Reed Medical Center
in Washington.
Mercenaries
Another important factor influencing
the tally are the mercenaries. The number of mercenaries has
increased markedly. If one travels to the Baghdad airport one
finds many Gurkhas in guard posts. There are 300 Fijian mercenaries
in Iraq hired by a private contractor, and there are other private
security personnel working elsewhere in Iraq. When these folks
are killed, many of them also American citizens, then their numbers
don't inflate the casualty toll. A recent BusinessWeek
article on the mercenary industry reported the deaths of some
of the employees of a Haliburton subsidiary; these deaths will
not inflate the death toll statistics. The attitude seems to
be that they were just paid to do a risky job; if they were killed,
tough luck! With this situation, it is impossible to obtain the
true death toll.
On August 20th a translator wearing a full US Army uniform was
killed, yet his death doesn't count as a fatality statistic in
the CentCom press releases. The translator must have been on
a contract with the US Army, and although he was an American
citizen, his death won't count. CNN or the BBC also don't count
this victim, and this can be easily determined by checking the
extensive lists kept by both these news organizations. By excluding
such deaths from their tallies, both CNN and BBC remain propaganda-compliant.
Errors and Omissions
Anyone trying to make sense of the casualty
numbers reported by CentCom or DefenseLink will find increasingly
that there are reporting errors [6]. For example, dates are sometimes
wrong, the archive records are incomplete (e.g., DefenseLink
October listing is incomplete and until recently one could not
retrieve early records) and the number of casualties in one of
these sources doesn't match the other. CentCom failed to report
altogether the 17 deaths from a helicopter collision on Nov.
15th. On Nov. 2nd, sixteen soldiers were reported killed in the
recent downing of the Chinook helicopter, while the initial CentCom
report only listed 15, and it was not updated; when one adds
up the confirmed deaths in the DefenseLink website, then one
only counts 14. The other little errors are simply boring but
it points to a concerted effort to obfuscate the death toll.
Only dead count?
It is rather odd only to be concerned
about counting the dead.
There are plenty of soldiers maimed and
their lives ruined. Although the number of these casualties is
putatively available, it is only made available if requested
by journalists. One can only conclude that there haven't been
too many requests, thus explaining the difficulty in obtaining
these statistics.
Some soldiers may not appear in any statistic
yet, but many are near areas where Depleted Uranium munitions
[aka, DU ammo] were used - this even occurred in the middle
of Baghdad, where even a water treatment plant was demolished
with DU-ammo. Vast stretches of Iraq have been poisoned from
the reckless bombing of chemical and nuclear sites, and now soldiers
are expected to work there. The war departments of both the UK
and US are intent on hiding the numbers of new Gulf-War-Syndrome
cases, but a court case in London has revealed that there already
are some. Given that many more soldiers died from this syndrome
than on the 1991 Gulf War battlefield, then one must expect a
new death toll to emerge in the months to come, and it will likely
not appear on the CNN tally. Soldiers are forced to work in a
toxic soup [7] and when soldiers die of horrible diseases this
will likely be in the US, and thus will not be counted.
Callousness: Exhibit
1.
President Bush exhibits some unexplained
callousness when confronted with the soldier casualties; the
likely reason for this may be that he is empathy-impaired. He
has not attended any soldier funerals, and he has seldom visited
wounded soldiers in the hospital so much for "supporting
our troops". It is also clear that the White House is doing
its best to hide the statistics or references to the soldier
casualties. The wounded soldiers are flown in at night, and journalists
are barred from reporting on the arrival of coffins, or their
burial. Again, mention of the casualties is bad for the justification
of the continuation of the occupation of Iraq, and it is bad
for politics during an election year.
Soon at a Mall Near
You.
Military analysts report a very high
incidence of suicides in Iraq when compared to other conflicts,
and there have been some evacuations of soldiers due to mental
distress. The period of service is long, the stress is very high,
and therefore we can expect large number of mental disorders
to develop. When these soldiers return to the US, to a society
that is not supporting them or assisting them with their mental
condition, we can then expect a shooting rampage or two. These
are true ticking time bombs, soon to boost a death tally.
How about the Iraqis
CNN and BBC rarely report on the "coalition"-Iraqi
soldiers or policemen killed. They make a statistic the day a
bomb explodes, but then there is no running tally for them. This
privilege of appearing in a tally is reserved only for American
or British casualties.
The number of other Iraqis killed is
also not reported, and journalists are barred from visiting the
morgues to determine this side of the ghastly death toll. It
is important for us to know this statistic simply to know if
the locals have a legitimate grievance and if the occupation
is sitting on top of an unmanageable situation. Again, the release
of such information is taboo to the new owners of Iraq.
Blood-Soaked Cake
The neocons cheered on the war against
Iraq claiming it would be a cakewalk. When questions arose about
the wisdom of this war, they recited the "support our troops"
mantra, and now they are squabbling among themselves to determine
which country to target next. These dogs of war are safely ensconced
in their air-conditioned think tanks, not really giving a damn
about who is being killed or who is paying for all of this, and
now they are banging the war drums for their next foray. The
execrable Richard Perle also stated that "we" are in
Iraq for the long haul no matter the cost [8].
Unfortunately, there are many Americans
who seem to be content with this state of affairs and who don't
seem to mind the terrible cost exacted from the people in the
area. The only thing that seems to matter is the number of American
(and possibly British) soldiers killed, but even that real interest
is not adequately answered. As shown in this article, the propagandists
are intent on obfuscating these statistics and are even seeking
to hide the arrival of the coffins back in the US. To avoid further
wars, to truly "support our troops," and to rein in
the insufferable neocons, it is essential that the population
at large be made aware of the costs of these wars.
Everyone should be made aware of the
terrible toll in terms of blood and money.
Paul de Rooij
is a writer living in London. He can be reached at proox@hotmail.com
(NB: all emails with attachments will be automatically deleted.)
Endnotes
[1] To be propaganda compliant one would
have to state that on May 1st the president declared that the
US halted "major combat operations." Given the mounting
casualties post-May 1st, the White House emphasizes that it didn't
declare an end to the war then, but an end to the hot war.
[2] BBC Online keeps a list of all the
fatalities, but then this only refers to the American fatalities!
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3019552.stm
[3] http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx
NB: the data used for this report overlaps to a great extent
with this data source. The difference between the two is that
some errors have been corrected, and some casualties have been
added that are not available in the official record, but only
in the media accounts.
[4] Predictable
Propaganda, CounterPunch September 2, 2003.
[5] Shooting the commanding officer is
called fragging. There already has been one such incident.
[6] After a fatality occurs CentCom issues
a simple press release. These can be viewed here: www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews.
Some days afterwards DefenseLink will issue a press release stating
the name of the victims with a brief explanation. These releases
can be viewed here: www.defenselink.mil/releases/
[7] Discussed in the January 1, 2004
interview with Doug Rokke, an Army Reserve Major, conducted by
Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints (www.flashpoints.net/index.html).
[8] If Perle deems fit to refer to an
eminent journalist as the "execrable Robert Fisk",
then it is fair game to label him likewise.
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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