by Gary Farber
We must talk about the the War Logs of Wikileaks.
The amount of data is staggering. Key stories abound.
Let us start with death.
The Guardian's breakdowns include a breakdown of lethal casualties of the Iraq war. (The New York Times approach is here; we'll get to that.)
America caused this. It's a map of every Iraqi war-related death documented by the Coalition.
Hooray for freedom.
Total deaths
• The database records 109,032 deaths in total for the period
• The database records the following death counts: 66,081 civilians, 23,984 insurgents and 15,196 Iraqi security forces
• The worst place for deaths was Baghdad - 45,497, followed by MND north (which is the region that goes from Baghdad up to Kurdistan) where another 34,210 died. The quietest place was the north east with only 328 deaths
Murders and escalation of force
• 34,814 people were recorded as murdered in 24,840 incidents
• The worst month was December 2006 with 2,566 murders - and 2006 was the worst year with 16,870 murders
• The database records 12,578 escalation of force incidents (where someone is shot driving too fast at a checkpoint, for instance) - and these resulted in 778 recorded deaths
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)
• There were 65,439 IED explosions over the period - with 31,780 deaths recorded on the database from those alone.
• There were another 44,620 IEDs found and cleared
• The worst month for IED explosions was May 2007 with 2,080 IED explosions
Spreadsheets and data. Large map.
|
YEAR
|
Coalition forces
|
Iraqi forces
|
Civilians
|
Enemy
|
TOTAL DEATHS
|
TOTAL WOUNDED, all categories
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 747 | 1,031 | 2,781 | 5,995 | 10,554 | 18,567 |
| 2005 | 856 | 2,256 | 5,746 | 3,594 | 12,452 | 24,850 |
| 2006 | 821 | 4,370 | 25,178 | 4,657 | 35,026 | 41,164 |
| 2007 | 919 | 4,718 | 23,333 | 6,793 | 35,763 | 55,804 |
| 2008 | 282 | 1,948 | 6,362 | 2,635 | 11,227 | 23,632 |
| 2009 | 146 | 873 | 2,681 | 310 | 4,010 | 12,365 |
| TOTAL | 3,771 | 15,196 | 66,081 | 23,984 | 109,032 | 176,382 |
But, of course, this data is still minimal, new as much of it is.
Iraq war logs reveal 15,000 previously unlisted civilian deaths:
[...] Iraq Body Count, a London-based group that monitors civilian casualties, told the Guardian: "These logs contain a huge amount of entirely new information regarding casualties. Our analysis so far indicates that they will add 15,000 or more previously unrecorded deaths to the current IBC total. This data should never have been withheld from the public."
[...]
The data cannot be relied upon as a complete record of Iraqi deaths. IBC, for example, had previously calculated that up to 91,469 civilians were killed from various causes during the period covered by the leaked database. While detailing the 15,000 previously unknown deaths, it also omits many otherwise well-attested civilian fatalities caused by US troops themselves. Nor does the Pentagon data cover any of the initial invasion fighting throughout 2003; IBC has identified 12,080 purely civilian deaths in that year.
The US figure is far lower than another widely quoted estimate of more than 650,000 "excess deaths" extrapolated on a different basis and published in a 2006 study in the Lancet.
A key example of the failure by US forces to record civilian casualties they have inflicted comes in the two major urban battles against insurgents fought in 2004 in Falluja. Numerous buildings were reduced to rubble by air strikes, tank shells and howitzers, and there were well-attested deaths of hundreds of civilians. IBC has identified between 1,226 and 1,362 such deaths during April and November. But the leaked US internal field reports record no civilian casualties at all.
One of the most publicised allegations was that a clinic in central Falluja was shelled on 9 November. Doctors claimed to international media that two strikes on the roof had killed scores of patients and staff. The IBC puts the total number of civilian deaths at 59.
The US military maintained these claims were "unsubstantiated", and the leaked database does not record any civilian deaths in the logs of these incidents.
But the logs do reveal corroborating evidence, furnished at the time by US troops involved in the fighting, that the clinic was a target for shelling. [....]
Heavy fighting is then detailed. And:
[...] At other times the troops record Iraqi deaths but invariably classify all the corpses as "enemy". When a helicopter gunship killed two Reuters journalists with a group of other men in a Baghdad street, in one notorious 2007 incident, all were listed as "enemy killed in action".
The New York Times similarly reports:
[...] But it was systematic sectarian cleansing that drove the killing to its most frenzied point, making December 2006 the worst month of the war, according to the reports, with about 3,800 civilians killed, roughly equal to the past seven years of murders in New York City. A total of about 1,300 police officers, insurgents and coalition soldiers were also killed in that month.
The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which American soldiers killed civilians — at checkpoints, from helicopters, in operations. Such killings are a central reason Iraqis turned against the American presence in their country, a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan.
The archive contains reports on at least four cases of lethal shootings from helicopters. In the bloodiest, on July 16, 2007, as many as 26 Iraqis were killed, about half of them civilians. However, the tally was called in by two different people, and it is possible that the deaths were counted twice. Read the Document »
In another case, in February 2007, an Apache helicopter shot and killed two Iraqi men believed to have been firing mortars, even though they made surrendering motions, because, according to a military lawyer cited in the report, “they cannot surrender to aircraft, and are still valid targets.” Read the Document »
The shooting was unusual. In at least three other instances reported in the archive, Iraqis surrendered to helicopter crews without being shot. The Pentagon did not respond to questions from The Times about the rules of engagement for the helicopter strike.
The pace of civilian deaths served as a kind of pulse, whose steady beat told of the success, or failure, of America’s war effort. Americans on both sides of the war debate argued bitterly over facts that grew hazier as the war deepened.
The archive does not put that argument to rest by giving a precise count. As a 2008 report to Congress on the topic makes clear, the figures serve as “guideposts,’ not hard totals. But it does seem to suggest numbers that are roughly in line with those compiled by several sources, including Iraq Body Count, an organization that tracked civilian deaths using press reports, a method the Bush administration repeatedly derided as unreliable and producing inflated numbers. In all, the five-year archive lists more than 100,000 dead from 2004 to 2009, though some deaths are reported more than once, and some reports have inconsistent casualty figures. A 2008 Congressional report warned that record keeping in the war had been so problematic that such statistics should be looked at only as “guideposts.”
In a statement on Friday, Iraq Body Count, which did a preliminary analysis of the archive, estimated that it listed 15,000 deaths that had not been previously disclosed anywhere.
The archive tells thousands of individual stories of loss whose consequences are still being felt in Iraqi families today.
[...]
According to one particularly painful entry from 2006, an Iraqi wearing a tracksuit was killed by an American sniper who later discovered that the victim was the platoon’s interpreter. Read the Document »
The archive’s data is incomplete. The documents were compiled with an emphasis on speed rather than accuracy; the goal was to spread information as quickly as possible among units. American soldiers did not respond to every incident.
And even when Americans were at the center of the action, as in the western city of Falluja in 2004, none of the Iraqis they killed were categorized as civilians. In the early years of the war, the Pentagon maintained that it did not track Iraqi civilian deaths, but it began releasing rough counts in 2005, after members of Congress demanded a more detailed accounting on the state of the war. In one instance in 2008, the Pentagon used reports similar to the newly released documents to tabulate the war dead.
This month, The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon in July had quietly posted its fullest tally of the death toll of Iraqi civilians and security forces ever, numbers that were first requested in 2005 through the Freedom of Information Act. It was not clear why the total — 76,939 Iraqi civilians and members of the security forces killed between January 2004 and August 2008 — was significantly less than the sum of the archive’s death count.
And remember Haditha?
[...] The reports were only as good as the soldiers calling them in. One of the most infamous episodes of killings by American soldiers, the shootings of at least 15 Iraqi civilians, including women and children in the western city of Haditha, is misrepresented in the archives. The report stated that the civilians were killed by militants in a bomb attack, the same false version of the episode that was given to the news media. [....]
There are so many other crucial stories generated by these logs.
How Growing Use of Contractors Added to War’s Chaos, but now Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Are Collapsing.
-
Iraq war logs: Apache crew killed insurgents who tried to surrender
-
Operation Steel Curtain and its 25 ignored civilian casualties
-
How coalition turned blind eye to detainee torture and abuse
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Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda: Why Iraq has the right to know the full death toll
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Detainees Suffered Most In Iraqi Custody, U.S. Logs Say
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A Mix of Trust and Despair Helped Turn the Tide in Iraq
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Iran’s Role in Aiding Iraqi Miltias Is Detailed in Reports
-
Tensions Remain High Along Kurdish-Arab Line
All these deserve long posts of their own.
Meanwhile, Wikileaks is allegedly under net attack.
And the netkooks are latching onto this report of Noah Shachtman's to, of course, completely distort, as if to claim there was some real WMD program.
It should be needless to point out that possible war crimes must be investigated.
[...] The call, by the UN's chief investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, came as Phil Shiner, human rights specialist at Public Interest Lawyers in the UK, warned that some of the deaths documented in the Iraq war logs could have involved British forces and would be pursued through the UK courts. He demanded a public inquiry into allegations that British troops were responsible for civilian deaths during the conflict.
The Guardian has analysed the 400,000 documents, the biggest leak in US military history, and found 15,000 previously unreported civilian deaths. The logs show how US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and generally unpunished.
Nowak said that if the files released through WikiLeaks pointed to clear violations of the UN Convention Against Torture the Obama administration had an obligation to investigate them.
The logs paint a disturbing picture of the relationship between US and Iraqi forces. Nowak said that UN human rights agreements obliged states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse.
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Nowak, who has spent years investigating allegations of US participation in extraordinary rendition and the abuse of detainees held by coalition forces, said the Obama administration had a legal and moral obligation to fully investigate credible claims of US forces' complicity in torture.
[...]
As recently as December, the Americans were passed a video apparently showing Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. The log states: "The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him."
The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record "no investigation is necessary" and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are detailed in the logs.
We owe every Iraqi's family an investigation into every death. It isn't possible, and it won't happen, but it's what we owe, along with so much more, for our invasion and occupation of their country.
Next, everyone focuses on the deaths, few on the mere casualties of having limbs blown off, traumatic brain injuries, being blinded, and the like. We owe as much to all these people.
Finally, the United Nations High Commission On Refugees still reports that:
[...] More IDPs [internally displaced persons -- gf] and refugees are returning to their areas of origin in Iraq, although large-scale returns have not taken place. Some 300,000 IDPs and nearly 80,000 refugees returned spontaneously in 2008 and 2009. At the same time, the majority of some 1.5 million IDPs have not found solutions to their plight. There are also occasional reports of new displacements. Within Iraq there are some 40,000 refugees, including some 16,000 of Turkish origin. Most of the more than 10,000 Palestinians in Iraq are found in Baghdad, while around 1,400 live in the Al Waleed camp close to the border with the Syrian Arab Republic.
What about the external refugees, those who fled Iraq?
UNHCR poll indicates Iraqi refugees regret returning home:
[...] A UNHCR poll of Iraqis who have returned to Baghdad from neighbouring countries found that physical insecurity, economic hardship and a lack of basic public services has led the majority to regret their decision to return to Iraq.
UNHCR's chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, presenting the survey findings to journalists in Geneva on Tuesday, said it also found that 34 per cent of returnees were uncertain whether they would stay permanently in Iraq and would consider seeking asylum in neighbouring countries once again if conditions do not improve.
The survey of 2,353 Iraqis, or 537 families, who returned to the Baghdad districts of Resafa and Karkh between 2007 and 2008, was conducted by UNHCR staff from April to September this year in person and by phone.
[...]
The survey found that 61 per cent of those interviewed regretted returning to Iraq from their country of asylum, with 60 per cent of this number stating that this was mainly due to insecurity and personal safety concerns.
Almost 80 per cent of those that returned to Karkh and Resafa said they did not go to their original place of residence, either due to the general insecurity or because they still feared direct persecution. A total 11 per cent cited poor economic conditions and unemployment as reasons for not returning to their former homes and neighbourhoods.
Most Iraqi returnees who did not return to their original homes live with relatives, and in some cases stay with friends or have rented other accommodation. The majority, 87 per cent, said their current income was insufficient to cover their families' needs in Iraq.
One of the principal challenges for Iraqi returnees is finding regular employment. Inadequate access to public services, including health care, combined with infrequent electricity supply in many parts of the country, add to the hardship facing returnees.
A similar survey on the Syrian and Jordanian borders was released last week by UNHCR. It indicated that the majority of Iraqi refugees living in Syria and Jordan were not considering returning permanently to Iraq in the near future due to continuing political uncertainty and security instability.
"UNHCR does not envisage widescale returns to Iraq in the short term," Fleming said, adding: "While UNHCR does not promote returns to Iraq, it continues to assist refugees who voluntarily express their wish to return, in close coordination with the Iraqi authorities."
This assistance covers 100 per cent of transportation as well as a small cash grant. More than 2,960 Iraqis voluntarily returned to Iraq from neighbouring states with UNHCR help during 2007 and the first 10 months of 2008.
According to Iraqi government statistics, 18,240 Iraqi refugees returned from countries of asylum in the first eight months of this year, while 89,700 people displaced inside Iraq returned home in the same period. [....]
Yeah, we owe them, too. Meanwhile, Iraqi refugees in Syria constitute one of the largest urban refugee populations in the world.
Iraqi refugees in Syria reluctant to return to home permanently: survey.
[...] "Of 498 families, representing more than 2,000 individuals, 46 per cent cited political uncertainty, while 15 per cent blamed unstable security conditions. A further 13 per cent said they are holding back because of poor educational opportunities, and six percent cited housing shortages," Melissa Fleming, UNHCR's chief spokesperson, told journalists in Geneva.
"Most people crossing the border – 89 per cent – said it was for a short trip only. In 42 per cent of cases this was for visiting family members, 18 per cent said they were checking conditions on the ground, 15 per cent to obtain documentation and 10 per cent to check on property," she added.
A similar survey on the Iraq-Jordan border among 364 families (about 1,450 people) found that none were returning to Iraq permanently. Similar reasons were cited.
Syria hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees in the region. Since the start of the war in Iraq, UNHCR has registered more than 290,000 Iraqis. [....]
The Dalai Lama, my good Facebook buddy, posted today:
Theoretically, one could imagine a situation where armed intervention at an early stage might prevent large-scale conflict. The problem is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict the outcome of violence. That it will be just is not guaranteed at the outset – it will only become clear in hindsight. The only certainty is that where there is violence, there is always and inevitably suffering.
This guy may be on to something.
UPDATE, 3:42 p.m.: Steve Hynd notes the importance of Frago 242, which I mentioned above:
[...] A frago is a "fragmentary order" which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, "only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ".
This key order has been noted in some of the other stories I've linked, as it should be. It appears to be the key order allowing U. S. military to look the other way when officers chose to.
UPDATE, 9:41 p.m.: ABC reports:
[...] Al Jazeera, which also got an advance look at the documents, reported a total of 285,000 war casualties on its Arabic-language website, a number that included both dead and wounded. It also reported that the documents said 681 Iraqi civilians were killed at U.S. checkpoints, 180,000 Iraqis were arrested during the war and 15,000 Iraqis were buried without being identified.
At least my feeling intestinally ill today, and semi-sleepless, and not up to going out on errands, and generally feeling sick, enabled me to get this out.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 24, 2010 at 02:41 PM
Hey, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
And the omelette will be arriving.... any day now. Imminently. I'm sure.
Posted by: Jacob Davies | October 24, 2010 at 02:58 PM
I just think it's an embarrassment to the mainstream media that WikiLeaks is now our best source of information on what happened in Iraq. How pathetic.
Posted by: Ara | October 24, 2010 at 04:07 PM
Impressive work, Gary.
Posted by: Miep Rowan O'Brien | October 24, 2010 at 05:19 PM
According to the data listed at the Guardian, "Close Air Support" killed 5 civilians, but 776 insurgents. Huh?
Posted by: Christian G. | October 24, 2010 at 05:32 PM
But didn't the Lancet report 600,000 war-related deaths through 2006? Now we're hearing that it was 109,000 through 2009 - are you saying that the Lancet made up their numbers?
Posted by: FuzzyFace | October 24, 2010 at 06:05 PM
"Now we're hearing that it was 109,000 through 2009 - are you saying that the Lancet made up their numbers?"
That's a very irritating passive aggressive way to make your point. Obviously you think the numbers in these leaked government documents are evidence against the Lancet figures, so why don't you just say so? It's a fair question, one I raised at another blog. The question is whether one would expect the US government to have tried to determine as accurately as possible how many civilians were being murdered--if so, then yes, the fact that they "only" counted 109,000 would be an argument against the Lancet number. It wouldn't necessarily show that they "made up" their numbers--it might demonstrate that it's very difficult to determine total death tolls in a situation where the government responsible for keeping the mortality statistics is also running death squads.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | October 24, 2010 at 06:20 PM
Incidentally, what the wikileaks documents do demonstrate is that US documents cannot be relied upon to produce accurate counts of civilians killed by American forces, as pointed out in the Guardian article regarding what happened at Fallujah and in the NYT article regarding Haditha.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | October 24, 2010 at 06:23 PM
I would be delighted to discuss any of my own past opinions.
If you're not asking me about my own opinions, but someone else's, whose opinions am I supposed to be responsible for, precisely?
Apparently you also haven't bothered to read this post, either.But I'll be here when you get back to me with my quotes about the Lancet that you have in mind. I greatly look forward to seeing your citations on my contradictions.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 24, 2010 at 07:53 PM
I realize it's a long post, but I already quoted right near the top:
Etc. I kinda thought I covered the relevant point here, but, then, again, it's a long post, even if you don't click any of the links.Posted by: Gary Farber | October 24, 2010 at 07:57 PM
"then yes, the fact that they "only" counted 109,000 would be an argument against the Lancet number. "
Correcting myself--the 109,000 includes non-civilians.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | October 24, 2010 at 08:01 PM
Fuzzy Face, the Lancet report was about 'excess' deaths caused by the war. It includes the children who died because of bombed sanitation and hospitals, the dialysis patients ditto, the deaths in childbirth etc. These are caused by the war but are not the same as actual deaths from being shot. Two different things.
Posted by: Emma | October 24, 2010 at 08:01 PM
Nice to see you again in these parts, Donald.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 24, 2010 at 08:05 PM
The invasion of Iraq (staying in Afghanistan is a close second) was the single worst event in US history. It will prove to be the downfall of the country. The economy cannot continue to sustain unlimited expenditures for both wars not to mention over 700 military installations worldwide.
The US, we, killed thousands upon thousands of innocent people for absolutely nothing.
Was Lancet right? Was the DoD right? Seriously? You want to quibble over how many we killed for nothing?
It was an illegal war under any reading of the international law. Hell even the pope (not this one) said it was illegal. He was bound to be right about something.
Posted by: Tom M | October 24, 2010 at 08:07 PM
Thanks Gary. And I've been very happy to see you blogging here. It's long overdue, IMO.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | October 24, 2010 at 08:27 PM
this should be put on the record somewhere, so here it is
Posted by: DaveC | October 24, 2010 at 10:13 PM
DaveC-- Why did the Marines claim that 15 civilians were killed by an insurgent bomb when in fact they were killed by the Marines? Why not just say that they followed the rules of engagement and as a result they shot 15 civilians?
Posted by: Donald Johnson | October 24, 2010 at 10:41 PM
Let's, in fact, put in the record:
Frank Wuterich is the only person involved who remains in legal jeopardy.His attorney says:
I don't know why a patriotic Marine would want to have a devastating impact upon the Marine Corps and its image, but I hope that doesn't occur.Posted by: Gary Farber | October 24, 2010 at 11:20 PM
The old website that detailed the events of that day,
http://www.justinsharratt.com/
is now defunct, advertisements for shoes. The web is not real good for retaining things. Most of the info I originally saw about this on Sharratt's site was from North County Times, which is also gone. Wikipedia does have a reference to this page, but that's about all I have. You would have to dig for the details, which I can't do with my free time.
Posted by: DaveC | October 24, 2010 at 11:25 PM
"The old website that detailed the events of that day...."
I would have assumed that this means that it detailed Justin Sharratt's version of the events of the the day, not that of God Almighty, or any omniscient observer.
Not being either, I've never known what happened on that day in that town, and I always pointed that out in the face of, ah, claims otherwise.
That makes at least one of us who has never made a claim about the guilt or innocence of anyone involved, and who does not know the truth of anyone's guilt or innocence, as regards the events in Haditha.
However, I don't have to assume anything about Lance Corporal Justin Sharrat's site, since it's">http://www.justinsharratt.com/">it's right here.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 24, 2010 at 11:41 PM
I just see the shoes when I click on anything.
Posted by: DaveC | October 24, 2010 at 11:45 PM
This is the main page for the entire DEFEND OUR MARINES site, which is entirely focused on defending the Haditha defendents, along with a little branching out into a Fallujah case.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 24, 2010 at 11:47 PM
Look, after many, many posts by Charles here, and you at your place, I would have liked to have seen at least something, anything, supporting our Marines' story about that day. Wouldn't that be fair? And retract the (various bloggers) will have to apologize to John Murtha statements. That is all. I don't want to re-live this mess.
Posted by: DaveC | October 24, 2010 at 11:54 PM
"I don't want to re-live this mess."
No, that would mean I'd have to bother looking up your exact quotes lying about Hilzoy and myself and others and what we'd written, and you'd have to again be asked to substantiate your claims about our traitorous nature, and then we'd have to drag out your explanations from TIO on exactly why you deliberately acted maliciously here, and it could all be very unpleasant indeed.
I like to read that our military are always just and good, too.I also like to learn as close an approximation of truth as possible.
That's what I think is fair.
So, by all means, link to any unfair statement I made in any of my Haditha posts.
Was Haditha really the first thing you wanted to bring up in conversation with me since Hilzoy finally, after months of your attacks on us, booted you?
Why, yes, turns out it was. I win my bet with myself.
Sample nostalgia from DaveC:
And so on and so forth. Good times.Not so much.
Incientally last week:
Meanwhile, those Sunni Taliban in Basra continue to be exactly as threatening, and non-existent, in Basra, as ever.And to quote someone with ten thousand times my credibility, one Hilzoy:
That's enough nostalgia for now, I think.Posted by: Gary Farber | October 25, 2010 at 12:20 AM
ohfergoonesssakes, look at what was being said back then
Sure, the Iraqi govt isn't functioning right, 4 years on, but that horrifying civil war hasn't yet happened either.For the record, I was not in favor of letting evrything go to hell, and I stood up and said so. Maybe that was too harsh, but I think I was right. Now, it is still an issue for President Obama, who specificly identified Pakistan as a problem. I think the current administration is doing the best they can to prevent these awful civil wars from happening, to prevent a strong-man regime from taking over. To me, that is good and necessary.
Posted by: DaveC | October 25, 2010 at 12:51 AM
Well, DaveC, you're entitled to assert and discuss any views you have, within the posting rules.
That is, when you get frustrated with people you see face to face, you don't decide, after you've had a few, to come here to take it out on the imaginary people in your head who turn out to be real people who don't take kindly to endlessly personal accusations about how we don't care about genocide, want to see American troops killed, are against democracy, wanted to see Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union, are stinkers who side with America's enemies, and so on.
Don't do that, and argue whatever you like about Iraq, or anything else, and you're fine.
I don't think attempting to explain that you really truly were provoked into month after month after month after month of calling us traitorous, pro-genocide scum, etc., on the other hand, would be productive, but if you'd prefer to use your time explaining why you were justified and accurate, why, that's up to you, too.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 25, 2010 at 08:33 AM
Not wanting to keep adding to an already long post with what could easily too many updates, I'll put this in comments for the dedicated:
But, of course, this was nothing like Vietnam.The fascinating thing is that the people who are most fixated on the idea that you can't trust the government, and that people from the government lie, don't notice that the military happens to be one of the Biggest Parts of Big Government, and is made up of government employees.
Our military is made up of individuals. Most are highly honorable.
Our military places these individuals into a system that incentivizes in ways good and bad.
Most individuals respond honorably, and many intelligently.
Being human, not all do, and sometimes atrocities will result.
That's war.
And war, particularly war that is going badly, always provokes governmental lying.
If conservatives understand their own philosophy, they should have no problem grasping this concept.
It's not an attack on America, or American soldiers. It's an attack on war, and it's an attack on aspects of the American military system.
If that's unpatriotic, tell it to David Hackworth's ghost.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 25, 2010 at 10:35 AM
Recent revelations by Wikileaks show how top American leaders lied, knowingly
Now there is a news flash.
My only comment on all of this is "What the Dalai Lama said".
Iraq presented no credible threat to this country. None.
We invaded Iraq in order to re-engineer the political landscape of the Middle East into something more to our liking.
Employing war as a way to effect constructive political change is, as best as I can make out, like attempting brain surgery with a chainsaw.
Next time somebody talks about "omelettes" and "breaking eggs" we should hand them a rifle, a plane ticket, and politely invite them to lead the charge.
Or maybe we should just commit them, immediately, to a hospital for the criminally insane.
Because that is what they are.
Posted by: russell | October 25, 2010 at 10:48 AM
Sure, the Iraqi govt isn't functioning right, 4 years on, but that horrifying civil war hasn't yet happened either.
That depends on how you define a horrible civil war.
4.2 million Iraqis, out of a population of about 25 million, have been displaced internally and externally.
There have been hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Sounds pretty bad as is.
As for Lancet:
1. As Emma noted, Lancet measured "excess deaths" not violent deaths. Thus, a partial tally of violent deaths should be smaller than Lancet's number, even if Lancet's number isn't accurate.
2. The violent deaths tallied by IBC and the US gov do not include deaths of Iraqi military personnel and others during the initial invasion.
However, those Iraqis were also...er...Iraqis, and thus would show up in a study counting all Iraqi deaths.
Posted by: Eric Martin | October 25, 2010 at 11:37 AM
What Russell and Eric said.
(Yes, it's group mindish. It's all because of the daily memos we receive from The Left.)
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 25, 2010 at 11:44 AM
What Eric said. Seems to me the civil war pretty much happened, despite US occupation forces.
I get the whole "it would be worse if we leave!" argument, but I think it's wrong. As much as I'd hate to see a civil war erupt post-withdrawl, the fact is that disintegration of Iraq was a possibility from the moment the US invaded and tore the lid off the place.
The idea that a supporter of the Iraqi adventure could manage to convince himself that the people who were opposed to it are the ones who don't care about Iraqis... man, that's some SERIOUS projection.
Iraq was a geopolitical experiment. The jerkwads running our government really are THAT arrogant. The US military (and the UK military, etc) was a tool to be used for sculpture. What could go wrong?
Posted by: Rob in CT | October 25, 2010 at 11:51 AM
Outstanding post, Gary. Your effort ought to be archived somewhere besides here.
I think, though, the Wikeleaks documents will ultimately play an unfortunate role in the final act of the drama, when we finally extricate ourselves somehow from this mess. The plot line will be this: the reason things did not go well is that our loyal and brave front-line troops were stabbed in the back by traitorous Democrats (cf Vietnam, Ellsberg, etc.) So, ultimately, the totally predictable failure of this tragic and absurd imperialistic adventure will not be the fault of the idiots who ordered it. And, the Wikileaks documents will somehow actually serve as evidence of the treason of those who opposed it all along. Or, up is down.
Posted by: Chris J | October 25, 2010 at 11:58 AM
Again: DaveC, link to any post or comment I've ever made saying any such thing.
You can't, because I never once ever said any such thing. Why do you want me to retract statements I never made? Why are you still falsely accusing me of making statements I have never made?
And, to return again to a long ago point in our relationship, for the first of what I hope will be the last time: please stop.
Back on substance, I, also, second Donald Johnson's question to you, DaveC:
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 25, 2010 at 11:59 AM
Rob in CT: "The US military (and the UK military, etc) was a tool to be used for sculpture."
I'm not sure "in fairness" are the best words, but it probably should be noted that certainly Rumsfeld's interest did not lie in remaking the Middle East, or Iraq, into democracies, but simply in knocking off Saddam Hussein, and then assuming a pro-American regime would be installed or emerge, and the U.S. military would have been done with fighting pretty much by the time Bush, you'll recall, did his "Mission Accomplished" oooh, so sexy, fly-in.
The idealistic stuff about democracy can be attributed to Wolfowitz, Bush himself, and some others, while others, such as Rumsfeld, clearly were indifferent at best to the notion.
I'm not sure there's enough public evidence to make any claims about Cheney's thinking on the importance or relevance of Iraqi democracy, but my suspicion is that it was not among his top priorities.
Paul Wolfowitz, on the other hand, among a number of others -- Christopher Hitchens, a number of neo-cons and hawkish liberals, and various people in and out of government -- were, at best, sincerely self-delusional about the timeframe and costs of any kind of positive, idealistic, democratic, shining political example of the power of Democracy, Freedom, And American Exceptionalism, outcome beyond the destruction of the Hussein regime.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 25, 2010 at 12:32 PM
Dave C: Sure, the Iraqi govt isn't functioning right, 4 years on, but that horrifying civil war hasn't yet happened either.
Piling on, but this is really Big Lie, holocaust denial territory.
How do you suppose all those formerly Sunni neighborhoods became Shia enclaves, Dave? Somewhere between five and ten thousand people, mostly Sunni men, were buried in one big field in Sadr City, murdered by Shia militias.
This ObWi post from November 2006, an excerpt from the blog Healing Iraq recounting the events that led one Sunni to seek exile, was at the height of that civil war you seem to have missed:
Christopher Albritton reported in February 2006:
Facts are unlikely to penetrate impermeable propagandistic armor, I realized. But I foolishly thought this particular fact, the ethnic cleansing of Sunni Baghdad by Shias, was well established even among war supporters.
Posted by: Nell | October 25, 2010 at 01:17 PM
My reference above to the formerly Sunni neighborhoods was meant to have included a link to this map.
Satellite imagery told the same story:
Posted by: Nell | October 25, 2010 at 01:33 PM
Chris J, the claims of liberals backstabbing 'our' troops started even before the actual war this time*. And I have seen stacks of editorial cartoons that were more or less copies of those in Germany after WW1, sometimes down to fine details (it helps of course that US soldiers wear a helmet, "Fritz", that is a based on the German Stahlhelm). Add to that cartoon versions of some infamous Vietnam War photos with Bushies as the victims. I don't know whether this is some Rovian masterplot but these clusters seem to me to be more than just accidental or the result of lacking creativity on the side of the cartoonists.
*I have stated repeatedly that I believe that conservative speechwriters must have direct translations of German political speeches from the Weimar and Nazi era on their shelves ready for use.
Posted by: Hartmut | October 25, 2010 at 03:16 PM
Thank you for this post, Gary -- and it's good to see Donald Johnson and Nell pitching in here too. Keep making noise.
The economy cannot continue to sustain unlimited expenditures for both wars not to mention over 700 military installations worldwide.
Not if people keep insisting on luxuries like Social Security, decent schools, clean drinking water, and breathable air they can't. But fortunately Project Starve-the-Beast is in full swing: the guns are winning and the butter doesn't stand a chance. Why, Even The Liberal Barack Obama is ready to do some serious belt-tightening in order to ensure that tens of thousands of US troops can continue doing whatever the hell it is they're doing in Afghanistan, for however long it takes.
Posted by: Uncle Kvetch | October 25, 2010 at 05:13 PM
I would encourage anyone who wants a first-hand account of what the brutality and barbarism of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 looked like at ground level, to read the book "Generation Kill". Written by a journalist embedded with a forward Marine platoon, you read about American soldiers indiscriminately killing innocent Iraqis, shooting farmers off tractors, etc. Anyone who thinks the U.S. military are some sort of lily-white force of angels of mercy doing acts of kindness is delusional and misguided. Our soldiers are often sadistic, heartless criminals who create widows and orphans and leave behind thousands of crippled and broken people. This was not a noble effort, no matter how right-wing creeps try to spin it!
Posted by: Stephen Kriz | October 28, 2010 at 06:48 AM
"Our soldiers are often sadistic, heartless criminals who create widows and orphans and leave behind thousands of crippled and broken people."
"Often" is a vast over-statement, and the problem isn't individual soldiers, but the politicians who send them on unnecessary and criminal wars of aggression.
Posted by: Gary Farber | October 29, 2010 at 12:46 PM
I am opposed to both legal and illegal immigration. This country is overpopulated, and 21 million Americans are out of work.
Posted by: Don | November 02, 2010 at 09:24 PM
"This country is overpopulated"
That's actually a very difficult to defend notion, but I won't be able to repeat myself why for some weeks. I've written about it in comments on this blog in the past, at length, more than once, for what little that's worth.
Posted by: Gary Farber | November 02, 2010 at 09:58 PM