February 2003

I am sitting in an easy chair in the watery sunshine streaming into Matt’s office. Matt is the Officer Commanding (OC) of the detachment of military police, the ‘Redcaps’, in Catterick Garrison. The Army must have thousands of these chairs; you can find them all over the world. I can remember sitting in one with the same insipid floral pattern in a makeshift Officers’ Mess in Bosnia. I sip my scalding coffee and Matt makes easy, relaxed conversation. He is lean, early 30s and he seems very relaxed in his role as leader; I feel he is one of the good guys. His office is lined with photographs; alongside the standard parade ground floating heads and stern faced thousand yard stares of unit official photographs there are photos of his wife and child on his desk. His dog lols lazily at his feet.  I think it’s a labrador but I’m hopeless with dogs and it could be a retriever, pointer or plain mongrel. The dog is stereotypical but Matt is no caricature of a plummy officer.

The WMD dossier had been published in September 2002 and the threats of WMDs are rife so, over coffee, we discuss the disease of anthrax and the practicalities of giving vaccines to his troops. He asks sensible questions about the vaccine and is keen to ensure his troops are fully prepared for Op Telic. There are a lot of concerns amongst the soldiers about side-effects and he asks the same questions he knows they will want answering. Yes, I reply, there are side-effects and, yes, I will be having the vaccine myself. I meet him again a couple of weeks later as I give a presentation to the RMPs and he lends his full support to protect his troops.

The ground war is yet to start. That month two million march on London to protest against the imminent invasion of Iraq.

April 2009

The issue of civilian deaths in Iraq is in the medical literature again.

The Iraq Body Count is one of the bleaker websites on the internet. Bleak, but no less valuable. It is a genuine attempt to quantify the human cost of the Iraq conflagration. It deals purely with violent deaths of non-combatants and relies on media sources. This week the NEJM reported on some further analysis of the data that the IBC has collected. It’s a good example of how the media can distort your picture of the world. I would have assumed that more deaths were caused by explosive devices and suicide bombers. However, adding up roadside bombs, suicide bombers and vehicle bombs accounts for 28% of the deaths, whereas executions account for 33% of the deaths.

If it’s possible, this seems to heap an extra intensely personal layer of horror for families coping with deaths of loved ones. It gets worse.

The greatest proportion of victims – 19,706 of 60,481, or 33% – were killed by execution after abduction or capture. Of the bodies of those who were executed, 5760, or 29%, showed marks of torture, such as bruises, drill holes, or burns. (A typical media report about this particularly appalling form of violent death reads: “The bullet-riddled bodies bore signs of torture and their hands were tied behind their backs.”)

In January 2008 the NEJM reported the findings of the Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group which suggested that the number of violent deaths was in the range 104,000 -223,000. The Lancet had previously reported the number of deaths as being as around the 600,000 mark in their two studies in 2004 and 2006.

Anthrax, or indeed any WMD, was ultimately never an issue in Iraq. Cochrane have just published a review of the evidence of the efficacy of the anthrax vaccine and the thought of it took me straight back to that room. I did have my jags but it was a god-awful vaccine and, like most soldiers, I had a day or two of fever to suffer after it.

Sometimes epidemiology and all the guff that comes with medical evidence can seem dry and dusty. Students are more attracted to the literal blood and guts, the high drama of the emergency department or the operating theatre. Of course, as a clinician, it is easy to bring the issues back to reality – there is usually a patient sat in front of you who has more than an academic interest in the outcome. I still find it slightly mysterious that students are so unmoved by the real basic science of medicine. It’s not anatomy or physiology but epidemiology. Good epidemiology can expose the incompetent, ill-informed decisions of our elected leaders. Epidemiology can stride confidently into the wider world, change countless thousands of lives and influence political policy.

Postscript: Back to August 2003

The BBC report that Major Matthew Titchener RMP, Officer Commanding, 150 Provost Company was killed when a vehicle drew up alongside his civilian jeep and ambushed it with small arms fire and grenades. Two other soldiers Warrant Officer Colin Wall, from County Durham, and Corporal Dewi Pritchard, from Bridgend in south Wales, were also killed.
At the time of his death his son was 2 years old and his wife was 5 months pregnant.

His family have been involved in setting up a charitable organisation to help dependent children who lose a parent whilst serving with the Armed Forces.

The Forces Children’s Trust

Armed violence, such as that in the ongoing conflict in Iraq, is a threat to global health.¹ It causes serious injuries and deaths of civilians, makes orphans of children, traumatizes populations, and undermines the ability of communities to provide adequate medical care even as it dramatically increases health care needs. Moreover, indiscriminate or intentional harm to civilians violates humanitarian principles and basic human rights. Believing that a careful assessment of the effects of different kinds of weapons on civilians in Iraq was needed, we used the database of the Iraq Body Count (IBC), a nongovernmental organization that documents civilian violent deaths in Iraq,² to determine the nature and effects of various weapons on civilians in Iraq. The patterns we found convince us that documenting the particular causes of violent civilian deaths during armed conflict is essential, both to prevent civilian harm and to monitor compliance with international humanitarian law. Unlike surveys that do not distinguish between Iraqi combatants and noncombatants among the dead,³ the large-scale IBC database attempts to specifically identify civilians, whose deaths are of particular concern from a public health and humanitarian standpoint.^1,4 Recent findings from the Iraq Family Health Survey support the validity of the IBC database by showing similar regional trends and distributions of violent deaths.³ The IBC has monitored direct civilian deaths daily since the Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, with the invasion by U.S.-led coalition forces. IBC sources are primarily reports in the professional media, including reports translated from Arabic, supplemented by reports from hospitals and morgues. Deaths are added to the database when sources report the number of civilians killed, with time and location described adequately to avoid double counting. Also recorded are the perpetrator, the target, the weapons used, the primary sources, and whenever possible, each victim’s age, sex, occupation, and name. Although the IBC records injuries as well as deaths, we limited our analysis to deaths, which are more consistently reported by the media.² “Civilian” deaths include those of most women, children under 18 years of age, noncombatants, and police officers killed during regular, but not paramilitary, activities, since police are considered part of normal civil society. Database entries are systematically error-checked by three IBC volunteers before publication on the IBC Web site (www.iraqbodycount.org).²

We based our data set on the number of Iraqi civilian deaths recorded as of June 13, 2008, for the 5-year period of analysis, March 20, 2003, through March 19, 2008. Of the total of 91,358 Iraqi civilian deaths from armed violence recorded for this period, we excluded 10,027 deaths from prolonged violence (e.g., the two sieges of Fallujah and prolonged episodes of violence during the invasion of March 20, 2003, through April 30, 2003), and 20,850 deaths recorded only in aggregate reports from morgues and hospitals, since these deaths were not reliably linked to specific events of a weapon’s use. As our table shows, we focused on the remaining 60,481 deaths of Iraqi civilians and the causative weapons in 14,196 armed-violence events considered to be of short duration (lasting up to two calendar dates), occurring in an identifiable location, and directly causing one or more reported civilian deaths. Each death included in the table is of an individual noncombatant and is linked to a type of weapon used in a specific time and place; these are not estimates extrapolated from a sample.

View this table: [in this window] [in a new window] Numbers of Iraqi Civilians, Female Civilians, and Children Killed by Particular Weapons in Short-Duration Events of Armed Violence, March 20, 2003, through March 19, 2008. (See interactive table.)

The greatest proportion of victims — 19,706 of 60,481, or 33% — were killed by execution after abduction or capture. Of the bodies of those who were executed, 5760, or 29%, showed marks of torture, such as bruises, drill holes, or burns. (A typical media report about this particularly appalling form of violent death reads: “The bullet-riddled bodies bore signs of torture and their hands were tied behind their backs.”) Iraqi civilians also suffered heavy tolls from small-arms gunfire in open shootings and firefights (20% of deaths), apart from executions involving gunfire, and from suicide bombs (14% of deaths). In events with at least one Iraqi civilian victim, the methods that killed the most civilians per event were aerial bombings (17 per event), combined use of aerial and ground weapons (17 per event), and suicide bombers on foot (16 per event). Aerial bombs killed, on average, 9 more civilians per event than aerial missiles (17 vs. 8 per event). Indeed, if an aerial bomb killed civilians at all, it tended to kill many. It seems clear from these findings that to protect civilians from indiscriminate harm, as required by international humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions),⁴ military and civilian policies should prohibit aerial bombing in civilian areas unless it can be demonstrated — by monitoring of civilian casualties, for example — that civilians are being protected.

Suicide bombers in Iraq are mainly used strategically by sectarian or insurgent forces, with deployment at targets after apparently coordinated planning.⁵ Although the bomb’s blast is undiscriminating, the individual bomber is not. A suicide bomber on foot acts as a precision weapon — a close-quarters “smart bomb” whose pattern of killing many civilians at a time can result only from either disregard for civilians when targeting opposition forces or direct targeting of civilians. When combatant forces intentionally target civilians, they commit a war crime and violate international humanitarian law pertaining to both international and civil armed conflicts.⁴

Among victims of known sex — that is, those identified as male or female, regardless of age — the proportion of female civilians killed varied according to the weapon used, as did the proportion of children killed among victims of known age. Because the media may tend to specifically identify female and young victims more readily than male adults among the dead, which could inflate our findings for the percentages of female civilians and children killed, these findings should not be considered absolute proportions; they are, however, relatively robust indicators of the varying demographic characteristics of civilians killed by different weapons. Female Iraqis and Iraqi children constituted the highest proportions of civilian victims when the methods of violence involved indiscriminate weapons fired from a distance: air attacks and mortars. That air attacks, whether involving bombs or missiles, killed relatively high proportions of female civilians and children is additional evidence in support of the argument that these weapons, like mortars, should not be directed at civilian areas because of their indiscriminate nature.

By contrast, the methods that resulted in the highest proportions of male civilians among victims of known sex were the relatively close-quarter, precise methods of gunfire (91% male civilians), execution (95% male civilians), and execution with torture (97% male civilians). Execution with torture, the most intimate, brutal method of killing, was used the most selectively against male (rather than female) civilians and against adults (rather than children). By nature, execution is precise and deliberate — the highly controlled, usually planned killing of a captured person. The character of this form of killing, combined with our findings that a great many civilians were killed by execution, in many events, with strong selection according to the sex and age of potential victims, supports the assessment that executions have been applied systematically and strategically to civilians in Iraq.⁵

Certainly, different perpetrators can use similar weapons in different ways, with different effects on civilians. Nevertheless, our findings regarding the rates of Iraqi civilian death resulting from different types of weapons reveal stark differences in the effects of various weapons on civilians, in terms of both the numbers and the demographic characteristics of those killed. Weapons that kill relatively high proportions of Iraqi civilians, female civilians, or children are particularly hazardous to public health. Such indiscriminate or intentional effects from armed conflict must be radically curtailed to comply with international humanitarian law.⁴ We believe that all combatant forces and governments should implement policies of routine and transparent collection and release of verifiable data on the civilian casualties of military actions. Such monitoring would facilitate timely reparative action and must inform planning if armed combat is to be prevented — as much as possible — from harming noncombatants. Policymakers, war strategists of all persuasions, and the groups and societies that support them bear moral and legal responsibility for the effects that particular combat tactics have on civilians, including the weapons used near and among them.

No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
Source Information

Dr. Hicks is an honorary lecturer in the Department of Health Service and Population Research, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London, and is an unpaid nonexecutive board member of Conflict Casualties Monitor, the nonprofit organization that manages the IBC. Mr. Dardagan is a cofounder and principal analyst, Mr. Bagnall a software architect and developer, and Dr. Sloboda a cofounder and analyst at the IBC. Dr. Sloboda is also a professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway College, University of London, London. Ms. Guerrero Serdán is a Ph.D. candidate and Dr. Spagat a professor in the Department of Economics, Royal Holloway College, University of London, London.

References

1. Coupland R. Security, insecurity and health. Bull World Health Organ 2007;85:181-184. [CrossRef][ISI][Medline]
2. Iraq Body Count home page. (Accessed March 27, 2009, at http://www.iraqbodycount.org.)
3. Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group. Violence-related mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006. N Engl J Med 2008;358:484-493. [Free Full Text]
4. Hicks MH, Spagat M. The Dirty War Index: a public health and human rights tool for examining and monitoring armed conflict outcomes. PLoS Med 2008;5:e243-e243. [CrossRef][Medline]
5. Hafez MM. Suicide terrorism in Iraq: a preliminary assessment of the quantitative data and documentary evidence. Stud Conflict Terrorism 2006;29:591-619.

Speaking of Not Work Safe Political Commentary, Shanoah, here’s something Chris Rock had to say about Iraq War: First Blood, Part Two.

Courtesy of Alikante.

But wait a minute! Surely the war has gotten better since this was aired, right? To which I respond: oh yeah! The war was, like, totally worth it! I’m not sure if the 90,000 Iraqi war casualties, 4,251 U. S. war dead (176 by self-inflicted wounds) and 31,010 U. S. war wounded wounded would agree. But hey, can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple thousand eggs… or spending $600 billion (but hey, that’s, like, not even one bank bailout - chump change, really).

Elderly Iraqi mourns death of a relative – Photo AP

Iraq’s Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

02.02.2009 | alternet.org
By John Tirman, The Nation

Now that Bush is gone, perhaps we can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush’s war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards — “stability” — the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it’s too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis — more than half of them refugees — or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 “excess deaths” (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths — from health emergencies, for example — or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million “excess deaths” as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead — in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.

By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

By John Tirman, The Nation. Posted February 2, 2009

www.alternet.org

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush’s war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards — “stability” — the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it’s too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis — more than half of them refugees — or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 “excess deaths” (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths — from health emergencies, for example — or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million “excess deaths” as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead — in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.

By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

We are now able to estimate the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration. Looking at the empirical evidence of Bush’s war legacy will put his claims of victory in perspective. Of course, even by his standards — “stability” — the jury is out. Most independent analysts would say it’s too soon to judge the political outcome. Nearly six years after the invasion, the country remains riven by sectarian politics and major unresolved issues, like the status of Kirkuk.

We have a better grasp of the human costs of the war. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are about 4.5 million displaced Iraqis — more than half of them refugees — or about one in every six citizens. Only 5 percent have chosen to return to their homes over the past year, a period of reduced violence from the high levels of 2005-07. The availability of healthcare, clean water, functioning schools, jobs and so forth remains elusive. According to Unicef, many provinces report that less than 40 percent of households have access to clean water. More than 40 percent of children in Basra, and more than 70 percent in Baghdad, cannot attend school.

The mortality caused by the war is also high. Several household surveys were conducted between 2004 and 2007. While there are differences among them, the range suggests a congruence of estimates. But none have been conducted for eighteen months, and the two most reliable surveys were completed in mid-2006. The higher of those found 650,000 “excess deaths” (mortality attributable to war); the other yielded 400,000. The war remained ferocious for twelve to fifteen months after those surveys were finished and then began to subside. Iraq Body Count, a London NGO that uses English-language press reports from Iraq to count civilian deaths, provides a means to update the 2006 estimates. While it is known to be an undercount, because press reports are incomplete and Baghdad-centric, IBC nonetheless provides useful trends, which are striking. Its estimates are nearing 100,000, more than double its June 2006 figure of 45,000. (It does not count nonviolent excess deaths — from health emergencies, for example — or insurgent deaths.) If this is an acceptable marker, a plausible estimate of total deaths can be calculated by doubling the totals of the 2006 household surveys, which used a much more reliable and sophisticated method for estimates that draws on long experience in epidemiology. So we have, at present, between 800,000 and 1.3 million “excess deaths” as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.

This gruesome figure makes sense when reading of claims by Iraqi officials that there are 1-2 million war widows and 5 million orphans. This constitutes direct empirical evidence of total excess mortality and indirect, though confirming, evidence of the displaced and the bereaved and of general insecurity. The overall figures are stunning: 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, about 1 million dead — in one way or another, affecting nearly one in two Iraqis.

By any sensible measure, it would be difficult to describe this as a victory of any kind. It speaks volumes about the repair work we must do for Iraqis, and it should caution us against the savage wars we are prone to. Now that Bush is gone, perhaps the United States can honestly face the damage we have wrought and the responsibilities we must accept from it.

John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT’s Center for International Studies.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/123818/

Iraq’s Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans

By John Tirman, The Nation. Posted February 2, 2009.

MORE HERE

Documented civilian deaths from violence according to Iraq Body Count.

90,329 – 98,605

Civilian death toll in Iraq dramatically decreased during the year 2008. Fortunately, the expected overt civil war did not break out in Iraq. Anyway, I have especially expressed my disgust  for several female or even teenage suicide bombings on the occasion of Shi’a festivals here on this blog.

President G. W. Bush’s legacy will be a burden not only for his successor in the White House. His initial statement ‘mission accomplished’  has been attenuated to ‘term accomplished’ with most if not all questions left unanswered and new problems, in particular with Iran’s role in the region, emerging. The proxy war in Gaza insufficiently conceals that the  arch enemies Israel and Iran have lined-up already for new military conflicts in the near future. Coming-in President Barack Obama will have to learn that regional powers may not be kept under control by drastically economically weakened United States which have completely lost their moral reputation (if they ever had it) in the Middle East. 

But that might be a chance as well. Obama may set the stage for confidence-building measures by quickly declaring the end of the ‘War on Terror’, even before closing down Guantanamo Bay. International collaboration and diplomacy even with Iran and Syria is overdue after years of solo actions of the previous US administration and attempts to force allies into ‘coalitions of the willing’. Due to his background, Obama might have much more intercultural competence and an open, not restricted and fundamentalistic, mind as regards to cultural and religious matters.

It is clear that Israel’s new war in Gaza is intended to quickly set the scene in order to prevent Obama from starting his diplomatic initiative. Let’s see what his first steps will be next week.

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has said attempts to indict him for war crimes could derail peace efforts in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

Prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) could also have a “catastrophic impact” on regional stability, he said.

The ICC is trying to indict Mr Bashir over attacks in war-torn Darfur.

Sudan has rejected the allegations, and African nations have urged the UN to block any prosecution.

But ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, who asked judges to issue an arrest warrant against Mr Bashir in July, said last week that he will continue to push for charges.

He said he had evidence that Mr Bashir was controlling attacks against civilians in Darfur.

Local people had been raped and killed by both the Sudanese army and Janjaweed pro-government militias, he said.

The ICC is expected to rule on how to proceed before the end of this year.

‘Negative signal’

The Darfur rebellion began in 2003 when mostly non-Arab groups took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, accusing it of discrimination.

Up to 300,000 people have been killed and as many as 2.5 million have been forced from their homes.

Mr Bashir’s government has denied mobilising the Janjaweed militias, accused of widespread atrocities against Darfur’s black African population, and on Thursday he said any prosecution could derail peace efforts.

“It impedes the Darfur peace talks by sending negative signals to Darfur rebel movements to distance themselves from the negotiating table,” he said during a diplomatic summit in Accra, Ghana.

“It also threatens the democratic transformation in Sudan where political parties have braced themselves for elections next year, and will have a catastrophic impact on stability in the entire region,” he said.

But he added: “In spite of all this I wish to affirm our commitment to implement the peace agreements and settle the Darfur conflict through negotiations.” 

Source: BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7650123.stm)

————————————————————————————–

I have always maintained that ‘two wrongs do not make a right’.  On the one hand the West accuses Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of war crimes but on the other hand fails to even speak of indictment of US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who both authorised an illegal war in Iraq, without the approval of the UN and any concrete prove that Iraq had violated any international law that warranted an illegal occupation of another country.

As a result according to the “Iraq Body Count” almost a million Iraqi civilians have died since 2003. We have not even added the millions already killed due to the sanctions imposed by the West on Iraq after the first Gulf War. As General Tommy Franks of the US Army declared “We don’t do body counts“.

The US does not do body counts because they know the West is above the law they proclaim to uphold. There is only one law that the West upholds and that is the law of ‘Self-Interest’.

wasapninworld

I can’t remember the details, but the overall memory I have of the beach retreat is sweet. I had the deepest conversations with people that understood the struggle of being a Jesus follower. I learned how to forgive myself for feeling unworthy of being saved…how to really accept him and how to look forward to a new life. This retreat was GRAND and life-changing, but I didn’t keep in touch with those great people I met. One of them was Joshua. I started talking to him after my brother befriended him. They were roommates and had a fabulous time making fun of everyone.

He was baptised along with his brother Manuel during the retreat which made me very happy since Josh told me he was going to enlist in the army. We wrote each other a couple of emails back and forth…but I stopped writing back. And I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for that. The last email he sent he said we would hang out the summer he was going to come back from Germany, where he ended up being deployed to, which was last summer. I’m really upset I didn’t keep in touch…because now I won’t ever see him or hear from him.

He died serving for this country in March. I found out before July 4th.

Thanks for my freedom, Josh…thank you.

Well you know the people running round in circles
Don’t know what they’re headed for
Everybody’s crying peace on earth
Just as soon as we win this war — Mose Allison

This morning, the American press is focusing on the U.S. military death toll in Iraq hitting the 4,000 mark. It’s a grim statistic, but at least the war is dominating the headlines and not Britney, Lindsay, or Angelina.

Even though we are mourning the 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq, let us also say a prayer for the nearly 90,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. The Web site www.iraqbodycount.org estimates the number of civilian deaths in Iraq from violence could be as high as 89,867. Let’s not forget about these victims as well as the many young men and women who have been injured by improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

My heart goes out to the families (American and Iraqi) who have lost loved ones in this latest misadventure of the U.S. military. I’m an Army brat myself. My father did two tours as an infantryman  in Vietnam, my brother was heading for the first Iraq war when it ended, and my nephew will be deployed in October.

I’m especially sad for the families of dead men and women who joined the National Guard never dreaming that they would end up on foreign shores. As you might imagine, my brother the former B-52 bomber pilot doesn’t share my sympathy. “That’s the risk you run when you sign up to serve your country,” he says.

As an Army brat, I have conflicting feelings about when and where war is justified. I actually think it’s possible to “support our troops” but acknowledge that the mission was a mistake from the get-go. And it goes without the saying that I’m a firm believer in military strategy: having a plan when you go in and having an exit strategy.

That’s why one of my heroes is retired General Eric Shinseki, the former U.S. Army Chief of Staff who told Congress and the President that several hundred thousand troops would be necessary to secure Iraq following our demonstration of shock and awe. Too bad our Commander in Chief didn’t have the wisdom to listen. Basically Shinseki’s honesty cost him his job. Where is he today? He’s a visiting professor at West Point, where I hope that cadets are all ears.

I haven’t seen Kimberly Peirce’s new film Stop-Loss, starring Ryan Phillippe as a patriotic Texan who gets fed up after being told he’s being sent back to Iraq for a second tour, but it’s on my list. I was blown away by Peirce’s debut Boys Don’t Cry, for which Hillary Swank nabbed a best actress Oscar. Based on that film, I know Peirce doesn’t shy away from disturbing topics. I’m glad someone is calling attention to the demands that have been placed on our armed forces, which are not just unfair but beyond belief.

The strains on the families are unimaginable, especially for those whose soldier has been injured and who don’t have the money to travel to be near him or her. Contrary to popular belief, Uncle Sam doesn’t foot this bill. But you can help by donating unused airline miles to the Fisher House Foundation. The nonprofit aggregates those miles to provide tickets to families of wounded soldiers in an initiative it calls Operation Hero Miles.

One of my activist colleagues chided me last Memorial Day when I sent out an e-mail asking people to donate miles over the holiday weekend because the airlines were matching the donations. She seemed to think I was championing the war, or at the least condoning it, by urging people to help military families. My response: “It’s an Army thing. You just wouldn’t understand.” 

When do we get to fold up our tents and go home? Let’s look at the chart cast for the U.S. invasion of Iraq five years ago on Mar. 20, 2003 at 5:35 a.m. in Baghdad. As I mentioned last week, I’m not a fan of 29 degrees of Pisces, which suggests sacrifice and the end of the cycle since it’s the last degree of the zodiac.

Well, guess where the Sun is in the invasion chart? Mercury is not far behind at 27 degrees of Pisces. Pluto will soon make a retrograde pass into Sagittarius and square that Sun/Merc conjunction. As bad as things are right now, they’re only going to get worse.My guess is May 2010, when Saturn goes retrograde and hits 28 degrees Virgo while opposing both Uranus and Jupiter at the end of Pisces.

On that depressing note (two more years!), here’s the chart, courtesy of AstroDataBank, with its uglyPluto/Saturn opposition in Sag/Gemini straddling the MC/IC:

What were they thinking?

Iraq Body Count is a display of over 3,700 white flags on the UNCA quad to represent the number of American soldiers that have died in the Iraq war thus far (since we ordered the flags, unfortunately even more casualties have occurred).

(more pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24156468@N06/sets/72157603986371022/ )

August 26, 2002: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

In the two years after September 11, 2001, President Bush and seven top officials in his administration made 935 false statements about the threat of Iraq to America. The above quote was made by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The aides and officials include Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell. The study, conducted by two non-profit groups was based mainly off of major speeches, government transcripts, and quotes from major news sources.

Bush himself made 232 statements regarding the now debunked theory that Saddam Hussein possessed and was developing nuclear weapons. He also made 28 additional false statements about al-Qaeda’s link to Iraq.

According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, Iraq suspended their nuclear program in 1991. This however did not stop the administration from making these statements and later invading the country. Does this sound like any other situation that happened recently? Possibly false statements regarding Iran’s nuclear program which was disabled in 2003?

Hopefully the American public and the United States Congress won’t have the curtain pulled over their eyes a second time and move to stop the administration from taking any military action against Iran.

I know Nancy Pelosi has stated that she will not bring impeachment proceedings against the President and Vice-President, and I understand that getting the support needed for the proceedings is unlikely. However, I believe there is sufficient evidence that the President and his advisers had the correct intelligence regarding Iraq’s lack of WMD’s and they knew the link between al-Qaeda was nonexistent. I just hope history judges those who stood by and did nothing as harshly as those who committed these injustices.

U.S. deaths in Iraq: 3931
Iraqi civilian deaths: 88,000-600,000

Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war- [CNN]

Casualty statistics here and here

Iraq Body Count

Since 2003’s USA intervention in Iraq, around 85,000 Iraqi civilians have been reported dead. On a daily basis, 15 civilians die from vehicle bombs and 35 die from executions/gun fire. That means that every 22 days, the population size of Scripps College is continually being swiped out.

Today, I read an article about a dead American girl. She was found around 5 minutes away from my house, 8 days after my 19^th birthday. She’s still at the morgue without a correct ID, age, history. She will be buried with a headstone reading “UNK W N,” for unknown woman.

I can’t image 85,000 headstones with “UNK.” Can you?

A relative of mine decided to start over at another city/state without telling anyone. She was only “missing” less than 48 hours, but all those hours were painful. I searched through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children today. I was hoping I could identify a missing child, and stop the grief for a family. Of course, I wasn’t able to help.

Families of missing relatives survive on the hope that their relatives are still alive. This is why I am a promoter of the Iraq Body Count. It keeps a note on every life taken due to USA intervention. It compels me to abhor war.

Should the cost of War depend on human lives? I wouldn’t want it to be.