News 2020
Five times winner of the BBC Award for Nautical Non-Destabilisation
Fifteen years on, historians may finally be reaching a consensus on how many collateral detrimentations occurred during the first two phases of the war on unpleasantness in Iraq. The war has traditionally been divided into three phases: liberation (March 2003), primary counterinsurgency (March 2003-January 2005) and strategic democratisation (2005-present day).
Historians now say that over 100,000 people may have been killed during the second phase alone. Precise figures are not available because the interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, neglected to order the US military to keep any.
The US government has expressed concern that the figures are so high and has questioned the methodology involved. The mortality rate of 100,000 resembles the figure arrived at by the British medical journal and hotbed of anti-Americanism, The Lancet, late in 2004. The methods used in the Lancet survey have been vigorously debunked by a number of commentators, and the survey is not much read nowadays.
The American Secretary of State said that the United States would "take very seriously on board" the lessons of the past. The US was always concerned to minimalise civilian casualties, he said.
Even during recent operations in Mosul and Basra, when fanatically shrieking toddlers hurled themselves into soldiers' line of fire, the hair-trigger instincts of the US Marines were so fine-tuned that almost none of the damagees lost more than one limb, said the Secretary. This claim was borne out by the reporting of the BBC's embedded journalist Butch Woodpile, who himself chalked up three confirmed kills during the incident.
In the seasonally adjusted figures for this month, peacekeeping forces have registered a total of 1,492 Iraqi casualties, including 974 insurgents, 229 actual and potential suicide bombers who were pre-emptively neutralised, 146 safe-house keepers, 58 high-ranking officers in numerous terrorist organisations, and 85 accidental and collateral detrimentations. The original figure was 107, but nineteen were re-graded as insurgents and three as terrorist leaders.
Fifteen years on, historians may finally be reaching a consensus on how many collateral detrimentations occurred during the first two phases of the war on unpleasantness in Iraq. The war has traditionally been divided into three phases: liberation (March 2003), primary counterinsurgency (March 2003-January 2005) and strategic democratisation (2005-present day).
Historians now say that over 100,000 people may have been killed during the second phase alone. Precise figures are not available because the interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, neglected to order the US military to keep any.
The US government has expressed concern that the figures are so high and has questioned the methodology involved. The mortality rate of 100,000 resembles the figure arrived at by the British medical journal and hotbed of anti-Americanism, The Lancet, late in 2004. The methods used in the Lancet survey have been vigorously debunked by a number of commentators, and the survey is not much read nowadays.
The American Secretary of State said that the United States would "take very seriously on board" the lessons of the past. The US was always concerned to minimalise civilian casualties, he said.
Even during recent operations in Mosul and Basra, when fanatically shrieking toddlers hurled themselves into soldiers' line of fire, the hair-trigger instincts of the US Marines were so fine-tuned that almost none of the damagees lost more than one limb, said the Secretary. This claim was borne out by the reporting of the BBC's embedded journalist Butch Woodpile, who himself chalked up three confirmed kills during the incident.
In the seasonally adjusted figures for this month, peacekeeping forces have registered a total of 1,492 Iraqi casualties, including 974 insurgents, 229 actual and potential suicide bombers who were pre-emptively neutralised, 146 safe-house keepers, 58 high-ranking officers in numerous terrorist organisations, and 85 accidental and collateral detrimentations. The original figure was 107, but nineteen were re-graded as insurgents and three as terrorist leaders.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home