AP: Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031210/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_civilian_casualties&cid=540&ncid=1480

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq (news - web sites)'s Health Ministry has ordered a halt to a count of civilians killed during the war and told its statistics department not to release figures compiled so far, the official who oversaw the count told The Associated Press on Wednesday.


The order was relayed by the ministry's director of planning, Dr. Nazar Shabandar, but the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversees the ministry, also wanted the counting to stop, said Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry's statistics department.


"We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn't agree with it," she said, adding: "The CPA doesn't want this to be done."


A spokesman for the CPA had no immediate response.


The U.S. and British militaries don't count civilian casualties from their wars, saying only that they try to minimize civilian deaths.

more

[bobthedrummer]

1. They don't count.

n/t

[papau]

2. The 15 Afghan kids killed in 2 days also do not count -Do lies about war?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1103868,00.html



Afghan girls walk past the graves of nine children killed in a U.S. air strike in eastern Afghanistan. Photograph: Aijaz Rahi/AP


Six children die in fresh US blunder (15 kids in two days)

Wednesday December 10, 2003

The US military announced today that six children and two adults were killed during a US attack on a weapons compound in south-eastern Afghanistan, the second bungled operation in the country to leave child victims in as many days. The six children died on Friday during a night assault on a complex in Paktia province, where a renegade Afghan commander, Mullah Jalani, kept a huge cache of weapons ....(Friday's operation in Paktia, which involved both ground and air assaults on the compound, did not lead to the capture of Jalani, though nine other people were arrested, Lieut Col Hilferty said said)<snip>


The tragedy came the day before another serious US military blunder in neighbouring Ghazni province, when nine Afghan children were found dead in a field after an attack by an A-10 ground attack aircraft that was targeting a Taliban suspect..... <snip>



The US military originally claimed that Saturday's bungled operation in Ghazni had killed the intended target, former Taliban district commander Mullah Wazir, who is suspected of recent attacks on road workers. But the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said yesterday that they could no longer be certain that this was the case. Villagers say the man killed was a local labourer who had just returned from Iran, and that Mullah Wazir had left the area days before the attack. <snip>



Lieut Col Hilferty said today that less than 100 troops took part - far fewer than (the 2000 that) was reported yesterday. There was no information on (US) casualties, he added.

[bobthedrummer]

26. That is the same Hilferty that was over-enthused about the Office of

Strategic Influence/OSI and wound up demoted from DC to Afghanistan!
Admiral Poindexter's friend, Bryan Hilferty of the US Air Force, right?

[htuttle]

3. How are they going to manage basic public health issues...

...if they don't count the dead?

You know, dead bodies lying all over is a serious health problem in itself -- how will they figure out how many holes to dig? Perhaps they will just use a front-loader to move them to the crematorium?

How will they know which children are orphans? How will they know which families no longer have a means of support?

Obviously, these are secondary considerations to Proconsul Bremer. What's really important is keeping those damned pipelines flowing...and keeping a Public Relations lid on the immense disaster they've created in Iraq.

[pinto]

9. Yeah, and cause of death, say gunfire vs dysentery take a different

Public Health response as far as preparedness in ER's and clinics: supplies, etc. Obviously, as you say, Bremer sees this a a PR problem. That's pathetic.

[pinto]

4. Shabandar to Mohsen: "You should move far away from this subject"

Sounds like a (none too veiled) threat to me.

[54anickel]

15. Thought the same thing. Probably in big trouble for this article as well.

[grytpype]

5. Bush's America = Germany 1939

We must rise up and stop this monster.

[grytpype]

6. Don't forget to rate this article a 5!

[acmavm]

7. Oh screw the CPA and all the assholes that think that they can hide

how many innocent people we've murdered. And I do not use the word murder lightly. Others there will count the dead and wounded. Others will be there after we're long gone to tell us how many people died over lies and oil.

[Ernesto]

8. Heck, secrecy works!

Just look at 'Merica's rulers use of secrecy. "What the sheeple don't know won't hurt bushco"

[tom_paine]

13. Yes, the Nazi playbook never stopped working...

It was only the nearness in time of Hitler that made people shy away from it here in what was once the center of the Free World.

After the Busheviks are finsihed tranforming Amerika and the Tyranny "trickles down", will there even be a Free World?

One wonders...

[Say_What]

10. AI: Iraq: Civilian Deaths Need U.S. Investigation

<clips>

(New York, October 21, 2003) The U.S. military is failing to conduct proper investigations into civilian deaths resulting from the excessive or indiscriminate use of force in Baghdad, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report released today.

The 56-page report, Hearts and Minds: Post-War Civilian Casualties in Baghdad by U.S. Forces, confirms twenty deaths in the Iraqi capital alone between May 1 and September 30. In total, Human Rights Watch collected credible reports of 94 civilian deaths in Baghdad, involving questionable legal circumstances that warrant investigation. This number does not include civilians wounded by U.S. troops. The precise number of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. soldiers since the end of major military operations is unknown, and the U.S. military told Human Rights Watch that it keeps no statistics on civilian deaths.

“It’s a tragedy that U.S. soldiers have killed so many civilians in Baghdad,” said Joe Stork, acting executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “But it’s really incredible that the U.S. military does not even count these deaths. Any time U.S. forces kill an Iraqi civilian in questionable circumstances, they should investigate the incident.”

Thus far, the military says it has concluded only five investigations above the division level, ordered by the deputy commanding general, into alleged unlawful deaths. Of these, soldiers were found to have operated “within the rules of engagement” in four cases. In the fifth case, a helicopter pilot and his commander face disciplinary action for trying to tear down a Shi`a banner in Sadr City in Baghdad, an incident that provoked a violent clash with demonstrators on August 13.

http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/10/iraq102103.htm

[Just Me]

11. How come "pro-lifers" don't jump all over this kind of,...

,...vile disregard of human life? This makes me sick!!! :puke:

I just,...I just,...oh, God, the words escape me. What was it Barbara Bush said about avoiding subjecting her "beautiful mind" to such things? How heartless,...and brainless, too!!! If reincarnation exists, I hope these heartless/brainless ones get recycled right back into the shoes of those victims they intentionally ignore. Maybe we should stand in front of the white house with over-sized shots of the mangled bodies that the Bushes and their entourage refuse to acknowledge.

Geez,...I just don't hate people,...but it's getting harder and harder to separate hating actions from hating those people.

[tom_paine]

12. More Soviet stytle behavior from the Busheviks

As unsurprising as the sun rising in the morning.

Totalitarians are allergic to the truth, in all it's varied forms.

[cosmicdot]

14. cake or death?

just take a census every 5 - 10 years to see who to collect taxes from ... maybe it will just become a corporate feudal society tax ... i.e. a Halliburton tax?

heck, let's dust off the ol' le guillotine, and ask our elite rulers if they prefer cake or death?

this is so barbaric

changing hearts and minds the old medieval fashion way

the article's editor must have gotten the title from Rove ... blame it on "Iraq"

[RedEarth]

16. This makes me think of a Dylan song...."With God on our Side"

"For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side"

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/withgod.html

[Ksec]

17. wonder if they're going to count this one? video of execution

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5365.htm

[NNN0LHI]

27. Please don't make me click on the link. Who gets executed? Thanks n/t

[thebigidea]

18. Bush responds to the critics...

"Now we're saying that numbers - ah, the numbers - the COUNTING - of ahm, numbers... can be codified, countificated - considered... as a roadblock, a roadblock - uh - to progress, which we're making plenty of and its good kinds, good kind... uh - of progress, which makes things easier to understand, to observe the liberationizing of the people of Iraq is a good thing, but to get uh - so considerized, so uh - focused... on numbers, which can change from day to day - uh, and I'm not denying that numbers uhhh have a habit of changing. When they do, it means that progress has determined - uh - that the numbers differ. No further questions, lunch is getting cold."

[pagan_athiest]

19. Answer= "Well, you know, war is war, people die"

Question= What is a typical right-winger's rote response regarding the thousands of slaughtered civilians in Iraq?.............those asshole scumbags...

[thebigidea]

28. will more people die? YOU BET.

20. WTF?

[RPG-7]

21. obviously the CPA is horribly interested in Iraqis

These people seriously make me ill. They make the Vichy French look like patriots.

[htuttle]

22. Well, at least most of the Vichy French...

...actually lived in France. The same can't be said of the CPA and Iraq.

[Rex]

23. They stopped counting because when the total numbers came in today

they realized that it is WE who are now the mass murderers.

Rest easy America.

[RPG-7]

24. Bush is outpacing Saddam for daily death average by a wide margin

If he is over there for as long as Saddam ruled he will make the Hussein regime seem like a golden age.

[trapper914]

25. Yes, but...

...I'm sure they'll continue to give estimated body counts of those found in mass graves in Iraq. Gotta make sure we stay "on message," don't we?

[bobbyboucher]

29. Cause the toll is about to rise exponentially.

They are bringing back the Seals, Delta, more Marines and their gonna start killing indescriminately. You know, we're going after the bad guys.

It's about to get real ugly over there, especially if you're Iraqi.

[wildwww2]

30. They try to minimize reports of civilian deaths? I know for a fact that

they don`t give a crap about the civilian deaths. They are just poor brown people of a different religion. Just like Vietnam. And I was close enough to that mess to know that what I say is true. Again our leaders do not give a crap about civilian deaths. And they try to minimize attention to the dead and maimed troops that happen to be some of our relitives who are pawns in this mess. Bu$h and his maggot pals are guilty of war crimes. Sad that this administration`s most towering achievement is the high number of dead people they can create worldwide. "We create dead people" that should be Bu$h Inc.`s motto. In my opinion.
Peace
Wildman
Al Gore is My President