[lit-ideas] Re: Willie Pete's Role Reversal

  • From: John Wager <johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 23:55:12 -0600

Eric Yost wrote:

Andreas: "Actually, the US military's records show that on any given day, the US military kills about twice as many civilians as the insurrgents kill."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.casualties/
(CNN) -- A recent U.S. military report estimates that nearly 26,000 Iraqis were killed or wounded by insurgent attacks from January 1, 2004, through September 16, 2005.


Using Andreas' estimate, the US has therefore killed or wounded 52,000 (noninsurgent) Iraqis in the same 18-month period. Is this true?

The NPR program "This American Life" from WBEZ in Chicago had an episode (10/28/2005) that interviewed two people who were involved in determining the casualties in Iraq. The segment is available as a "real audio" or Windows media stream here:


 http://www.thislife.org/pages/archives/archive05.html


In one segment, a military person whose job in the Pentagon was to determine whether a "target" would have too many civilian casualties to be bombed. He says that for each bomb, if more than 30 civilians were killed, then the bomb wouldn't be dropped. So up to 29 civilians are "acceptable" per bomb, according to one of the persons in the Pentagon whose job it was to prepare those targets. If you look at the thousands of bombs dropped in Iraq, the "care" with which the military avoids casualties is shown to be a sham.





--
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence and ignorance." -------------------------------------------------
John Wager johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx
Forest Park, IL, USA



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