Iraq: "We Don't do Body Counts"
Lieutenant General Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during his time as head of US Central Command, once announced, "We don't do body counts." This blunt response to a question about civilian casualties was an attempt to distance George Bush's wars from the disaster of Vietnam. One of the rituals of that earlier conflict was the daily announcement of how many Vietnamese fighters US forces had killed. It was supposed to convince a sceptical American public that victory was coming. But the "body count" concept sounded callous - and never more so than when it emerged that many of the alleged guerrilla dead were in fact women, children and other unarmed civilians.
Read the rest of What is the real death toll in Iraq? here
Links to death toll reports:
The Lancet reports are here: 2004
and the 2006 follow up report
Les Roberts:
Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit
Ignorance of Iraqi death toll no longer an option
Blairwatch: Blair And Bush Hit By Friendly Fire
The ORB report: More than one million Iraqis murdered
posted by legofesto at Wednesday, March 19, 2008
2 Comments:
Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. The civilian infrastructure is essentially destroyed--electricity, water and sewer systems, medical care and schools. Depleted uranium is everywhere poisoning everyone, including US troops. There is no economy, and half or more of Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi family has escaped an injury or a death as a consequence of the US invasion. Millions of Iraqis have become displaced persons. A developed country with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The Bush Regime's lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent American public.
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This is a brilliant blog. A fantastic idea to get messages across in a world where the right ones don't get through.
Great work, fantastic ideas!
Sigbhu
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