Killing
15,000 Iraqis Every Month
By Michael Schwartz
06 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
A
state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue
of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded
that—as of a year ago—600,000 Iraqis had died violently
due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first
39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.
That wasn’t the worst
of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during
the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per
month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious
fighting associated with the current American surge.
The U.S. and British governments
quickly dismissed these results as “methodologically flawed,”
even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality
in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked
the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few
years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the
vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no
concrete reasons for rejecting the study’s findings, and they
ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted
by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including
Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear
enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments
to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that
it was “a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict
zones”; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).
Reputable researchers have
accepted the Lancet study’s results as valid with virtually no
dissent. Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized
it in a particularly vivid comment: “the US misadventure in Iraq
is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing
of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.”
Despite the scholarly consensus,
the governments’ denials have been quite effective from a public
education point of view, and the few news items that mention the Lancet
stody bracket it with official rebuttals. One BBC report, for example,
mentioned the figure in an article headlined “Huge Rise in Iraqi
Death Tolls,” and quoted at length from President Bush’s
public rebuttal, in which he said that the methodology was "pretty
well discredited,” adding that “six-hundred thousand or
whatever they guessed at is just... it's not credible.” As a consequence
of this sort of coverage, most Americans probably believe that Bush’s
December 2005 figure of 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (less than 10%
of the actual total) is the best estimate of Iraqi deaths up to that
time.
COUNTING HOW MANY
IRAQIS THE OCCUPATION HAS KILLED
These shocking statistics
are made all the more horrific when we realize that among the 600,000
or so victims of Iraqi war violence, the largest portion have been killed
by the American military, not by carbombings or death squads, or violent
criminals — or even all these groups combined.
The Lancet interviewers asked
their Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died and who was responsible.
The families were very good at the cause of death, telling the reporters
that over half (56%) were due to gunshots, with an eighth due each to
car bombs(13%), air strikes (13%) and other ordinance (14%). Only 4%
were due to unknown causes.
The families were not as
good at identifying who was responsible. Although they knew, for example,
that air strike victims were killed by the occupation, and that carbomb
victims were killed by insurgents, the gunshot and ordinance fatalities
often occurred in firefights or in circumstances with no witnesses.
Many times, therefore, they could not tell for sure who was responsible.
Only were certain, and the interviewers did not record the responsible
party if “households had any uncertainly” as to who fired
the death shot.
The results are nevertheless
staggering for those of us who read the American press: for the deaths
that the victims families knew for sure who the perpetrator was, U.S.
forces (or their “Coalition of the Willing” allies) were
responsible for 56%. That is, we can be very confident that the Coalition
had killed at least 180,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006. Moreover,
we have every reason to believe that the U.S. is responsible for its
pro rata share (or more) of the unattributed deaths. That means that
the U.S. and its allies may well have killed upwards of 330,000 Iraqis
by the middle of 2006.
The remainder can be attributed
to the insurgents, criminals, and to Iraqi forces. And let’s be
very clear here: car bombs, the one source that was most easy for victims’
families to identify, was responsible for 13% of the deaths, about 80,000
people, or about 2000 per month. This is horrendous, but it is far less
than half of the confirmed American total, and less than a quarter of
the probable American total.
Even if we work with the
lower, confirmed, figured of 180,000 Iraqi deaths caused by the occupation
firepower, which yields an average of just over 5,000 Iraqis killed
every month by U.S. forces and our allies since the beginning of the
war. And we have to remember that the rate of fatalities was twice as
high in 2006 as the overall average, meaning that the American average
in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or something over 300 Iraqis
every day, including Sundays. With the surge that began in 2007, the
current figure is likely even higher.
HOW COME WE DON’T
KNOW ABOUT THIS?
These figures sound impossible
to most Americans. Certainly 300 Iraqis killed by Americans each day
would be headline news, over and over again. And yet, the electronic
and print media simply do not tell us that the U.S. is killing all these
people. We hear plenty about car bombers and death squads, but little
about Americans killing Iraqis, except the occasional terrorist, and
the even more occasional atrocity story.
How, then, is the US accomplishing
this carnage, and why is it not newsworthy? The answer lies in another
amazing statistic: this one released by the U.S. military and reported
by the highly respectable Brookings Institution: for the past four years,
the American military sends out something over 1000 patrols each day
into hostile neighborhoods, looking to capture or kill insurgents and
terrorists. (Since February, the number has increased to nearly 5,000
patrols a day, if we include the Iraqi troops participating in the American
surge.)
These thousands of patrols
regularly turn into thousands of Iraqi deaths because these patrols
are not the “walk in the sun” that they appear to be in
our mind’s eye. Actually, as independent journalist Nir Rosen
described vividly and agonizingly in his indispensable book, In the
Belly of the Green Bird, they involve a kind of energetic brutality
that is only occasionally reported by an embedded American mainstream
journalist.
This brutality is all very
logical, once we understand the purpose and process of these patrols.
American soldiers and marines are sent into hostile communities where
virtually the entire population is supports the insurgency. They often
have a list of suspects’ addresses; and their job is to interrorgate
or arrest or kill the suspect; and search the house for incriminating
evidence, particularly arms and ammunition, but also literature, video
equipment, and other items that the insurgency depends upon for its
political and military activities. When they don’t have lists
of suspects, they conduct “house-to-house” searches, looking
for suspicious behavior, individuals or evidence.
In this context, any fighting
age man is not just a suspect, but a potentially lethal adversary. Our
soldiers are told not to take any chances: in many instances, for example,
knocking on doors could invite gunshots through the doors. Their instructions
are therefore to use the element of surprise whenever the situation
appears to be dangerous—to break down doors, shoot at anything
suspicious, and throw grenades into rooms or homes where there is any
chance of resistance. If they encounter tangible resistance, they can
call in artillery and/or air power rather than try to invade a building.
Here is how two Iraqi civilians
described these patrols to Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar:
“Hussein and Hasan
confirm that the Americans usually ‘come at night, sometimes by
day, always protected by helicopters.’ They "sometimes bomb
houses, sometimes arrest people, sometimes throw missiles’”
If they encounter no resistance,
these patrols can track down 30 or so suspects, or inspect several dozen
homes, in a days work. That is, our 1000 or so patrols can invade 30,000
homes in a single day. But if an IED explodes under their Humvee or
a sniper shoots at them from nearby, then their job is transformed into
finding, capturing, or killing the perpetrator of the attack. Iraqi
insurgents often set off IEDs and invite these firefights, in order
to stall the patrols prevent the soldiers from forcibly entering 30
or so homes, violently accosting their residents, and perhaps beating,
arresting, or simply humiliating the residents.
The battles triggered by
IEDs and sniper attacks almost always involve the buildings surrounding
the incident, since that is where the insurgents take cover to avoid
the American counter-attack. Americans, therefore, regular shoot into
these buildings where the perpetrators are suspected of hiding, with
all the attendant dangers of killing other people. The rules of engagement
for American soldiers include efforts to avoid killing civilians, and
there are many accounts of restraint because civilians are visibly in
the line of fire. But if they are in hot pursuit of a perpetrator, their
rules of engagement make it clear that capturing or killing the insurgent
takes precedent over civilian safety.
This sounds pretty tame,
and not capable of generating the statistics that the Lancet study documented.
But the sheer quantity of American patrols—1000 each day—and
the sheer quantity of the confrontations inside people’s homes,
the responses to sniper and IED attacks, and the ensuring firefights
add up to mass slaughter.
The cumulative brutality
of these thousands of patrols can be culled from the recent inquest
into the suspected war crimes committed in the city of Haditha back
in November 19, 2005. The investigation seeks to ascertain whether American
marines deliberately murdered 24 civilians including executing with
point blank head shots nineteen unarmed women, children and older men
in a single room, apparently in retribution for the death of one of
their comrades earlier in the day. These horrific charges have made
the incident newsworthy and propelled the investigation.
But it is the defense’s
version of the story that makes the Haditha useful in understanding
the translation of American patrols into hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
deaths. First Lt. William T. Kallop, the highest ranking officer in
Haditha that day, told the military hearing that he had ordered a patrol
“to ‘clear’ an Iraqi home in Haditha after a roadside
bomb had killed a Marine” earlier in the day. Later, after the
firefight that this action generated, he went to inspect the home and
was shocked to discover that only civilians had been killed:
“He inspected one of
the homes with a Marine corporal, Hector Salinas, and found women, children
and older men who had been killed when marines threw a grenade into
the room.
“‘What the hell happened, why aren’t there any insurgents
here?’ Lieutenant Kallop testified that he asked aloud. ‘I
looked at Corporal Salinas, and he looked just as shocked as I did.’
It is important to keep in
mind that Lt. Kallop would not have been shocked if there had been one
or more insurgents among the dead. What made the situation problematic
was that all the fatalities were clearly civilians, and it led to the
possibility that they had not been in hot pursuit of an enemy combatant.
Later, however, Lt. Kallop
decided that even this situation involved no misbehavior on the part
of his troops, after questioning Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who had
led the patrol and commanded the military action:
“Sergeant Wuterich
had told him that they had killed people [in that house] after approaching
a door to it and hearing the distinct metallic sound of an AK-47 being
prepared to fire.
“‘I thought that was within the rules of engagement because
the squad leader thought that he was about to kick in the door and walk
into a machine gun,’ Lieutenant Kallop said.”
According to Kallop, the soldiers were thus following the rules of engagement
because if the squad leader “thought” that he was going
to be attacked (based on recognizing a noise through a closed door),
he was authorized and justified to use the full lethal force of the
patrol (in this case a hand grenade), enough to kill all the people
huddled within the apartment.
The critical distinction
has to do with intentionality. First Lieutenant Max D. Frank, sent to
investigate the incident somewhat later, explained this logic: “It
was unfortunate what happened, sir,” Lieutenant Frank told the
Marine prosecutor, Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, “but I didn’t
have any reason to believe that what they had done was on purpose.”
Translated, this means that
as long as the soldiers sincerely believed that their attack might capture
or kill an armed insurgent who could attack them, the rules of engagement
justified their action and they were therefore not culpable of any crime.
Note here that other alternatives
were not considered. The soldiers could have decided that there was
a good chance of hurting civilians in this situation, and therefore
retreated without pursuing the suspected insurgent. This would have
allowed him to get away, but it would have protected the residents of
the house. This option was not considered, even though many of us might
feel that letting one or two or three insurgents escape (in a town filled
with insurgents) might be acceptable instead of risking (and ultimately
ending) the lives of 19 civilians.
Later in the hearing, Major
General Richard Huck, the commanding officer in charge of the Marines
in Haditha, underscored these rules of engagement in more general terms,
—and also ignored the unthinkable option of letting the insurgents
get away—when he explained why he had not ordered an investigation
of the deaths:
“They had occurred
during a combat operation and it was not uncommon for civilians to die
in such circumstances. ‘In my mind's eye, I saw insurgent fire,
I saw Kilo Company fire,’ Huck testified, via video link from
the Pentagon, where he is assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies
and operations. ‘I could see how 15 neutrals in those circumstances
could be killed.’”
For General Huck, and for
other commanders in Iraq, once “insurgent fire”—or
even the threat of insurgent fire—entered the picture (and it
certainly had earlier, when the American soldier was killed), then the
actions reported by the Marines in that Haditha home were not just legitimate(if
they reported them honestly), but exemplary. They were responding appropriately
in a battlefield situation, and the death of “15 neutrals”
is “not uncommon” in those circumstances.
Let’s keep in mind,
then, that the United States undertakes something over 1000 patrols
each day, and lately this number has surged to over 5000 (if we also
count patrols by the Iraqi military). According to U.S. military statistics,
again reported by the Brookings Institute, these patrols patrols currently
result in just under 3000 firefights every month, or just under an average
of 100 per day (not counting the additional 25 or so involving our Iraqi
allies). Most of them do not produce 24 Iraqi deaths, but the rules
of engagement our soldiers are given—throwing hand grenades into
buildings holding suspected insurgents, using maximum firepower against
snipers, and calling in artillery and air power against stubborn resistance—guarantee
a regular drumbeat of mortality.
It is worth recording how
these events are reported in the American press, when they are noted
at all. Here, for example, is an Associated Press account of American/British
patrols in Maysan province, a stronghold of the Mahdi army:
Well to the south, Iraqi
officials reported as many as 36 people were killed in fierce overnight
fighting that began as British and Iraqi forces conducted house-to-house
searches in Amarah, a stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia.
This brief description was
part of a five paragraph account of fighting all over Iraq, part of
a review under the headline “U.S. and Iraqi forces Move on Insurgents.”
It contained brief accounts of several different operations, none of
them presented as major events. There were 100 or so engagements that
day, and many of them produced deaths. How many? Based on the Lancet
article, we could guess that on that day—and most days—the
incident in Amarah represented perhaps one-tenth of all the Iraqis killed
by Americans that day. Over the course of June, the accumulated total
probably came to something over 10,000.
During the hearing about
Haditha one of the investigators addressed the larger question that
emerges from the sacrifice of so many civilians to the cause of chasing
and catching insurgents in Iraq. Lieutenant Max D. Frank, the first
officer to investigate the deaths, characterized is an “unfortunate
and unintended result of local residents’ allowing insurgent fighters
to use family homes to shoot at passing American patrols.” Using
a similar logic, First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, the executive office of the
company involved, argued against issuing an apology to local residents
for the incident. Mathes advocated that instead they should issue a
warning to Haditha residents, that the incident was “an unfortunate
thing that happens when you let terrorists use your house to attack
our troops.”
The Merriam Webster dictionary
defines terror as “violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed
by groups in order to intimidate a population….” The incident
at Haditha was just such a violent act, and was one of about 100 that
day that Lt. Mathes hoped would intimidate the population of Haditha
and other towns in Iraq from continuing to support insurgents.
[1] Lancet 061012 – Burnham et al – Mortality after the
2003 invasion of Iraq
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/
article/PIIS0140673606694919/fulltext
The Lancet Early Online Publication,
12 October 2006
The Lancet DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69491-9
Mortality after the 2003
invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey
Prof Gilbert BurnhamMD a
, Prof Riyadh LaftaMD b, Shannon DoocyPhD a and Les RobertsPhD a
[2] CBS 051212 – 30,000
Iraqis Killed in War
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005
/12/12/politics/main1117045.shtml
Bush: 30,000 Iraqis Killed
In War
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 12, 2005
(CBS/AP)
[3] DemocracyNow 061012 –
Roberts – Co-author o f Medical sTudy estimating 650,000 deaths
defends research
http://www.democracynow.org/
article.pl?sid=06/10/12/145222
Co-Author of Medical Study
Estimating 650,000 Iraqi Deaths Defends Research in the Face of White
House Dismissal
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
[4] TomDispatch 070515 –
Johnson – ending the empire
Johnson, Chalmers, “Tom
Graham: Chalmers Johsnon, Ending the Empire, Tom Dispatch May 15, 2007
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=194902
[5] Cole, Juan 061011 –
Cole – Hopkins Study
Informed Comment - Oct 11,
2006 http://www.juancole.com/
http://www.juancole.com/2006/10/
interview-with-rajiv-chandrasekaran.html
by Juan Cole
655,000 Dead in Iraq since
Bush Invasion
[6] BBC 061011 – Huge
rise in Iraqi death tolls.
Wednesday, 11 October 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6040054.stm
'Huge rise' in Iraqi death
tolls
[7] CBS 051212 – 30,000
Iraqis Killed in War
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/
2005/12/12/politics/main1117045.shtml
Bush: 30,000 Iraqis Killed
In War
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 12, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS/AP)
[8] http://www3.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf,
p. 9
[9] Page 1 of 2 ROVING IN
THE RED ZONE Inside Sadr City By Pepe Escobar
May 11, 2007. Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE11Ak01.html
[10] Schwartz on Haditha
[11] NYT 070509 – Zielbauer
– Officer says civilian toll in Haditha was a shock
http://www.expose-the-war-profiteers.org/
archive/media/2007-2/20070509.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/world/
middleeast/09haditha.html?ex=1336363200&en=
54a116d97b245e27&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
New York Times
May 9, 2007
Officer Says Civilian Toll
in Haditha Was a Shock
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
[12] NYT 070530 – Zielbauer
– Two Marines deny suspecting Haditha war crime
http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers/NYTimes/
DefendOurMarines-NYTimesStoneHearing51707.htm
New York Times, May 31, 2007
Defend Our Marines main page
2 Marines deny suspecting
Haditha war crime
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
[13] NYT 070511 – Zielbauer
– US general says his staff misled him on Haditha killings
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/11/africa/11haditha.php
U.S. general says his staff
misled him on Haditha killings
By Paul von Zielbauer
New York Times
Friday, May 11, 2007
[14] http://www3.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf
p 7
[15] AssociatedPress 070618
– Hurst – US and Iraqi forces move on insurgent
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4900061.html
June 18, 2007, 5:56PM U.S.
and Iraqi forces move on insurgents
By STEVEN R. HURST Associated
Press Writer © 2007 The Associated Press
[16] NYT 070530 – Zielbauer
– Two Marines deny suspecting Haditha war crime
http://warchronicle.com/TheyAreNotKillers
/NYTimes/DefendOurMarines-
NYTimesStoneHearing51707.htm
New York Times, May 31, 2007
Defend Our Marines main page
2 Marines deny suspecting
Haditha war crime
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
[17] http://m-w.com/dictionary/terror
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