Off Target:The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq

[pinto]

http://hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/

Principal Findings

U.S. President George W. Bush called the war in Iraq “one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history.”1 Yet thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed or injured during the three weeks of fighting from the first air strikes on March 20 to April 9, 2003, when Baghdad fell to U.S.-led Coalition forces.

Human Rights Watch conducted a mission to Iraq between late April and early June 2003 with two objectives: (1) to identify and investigate potential violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) by the parties to the conflict, and (2) to identify patterns of combat by those parties which may have caused civilian casualties and suffering that could have been avoided if additional precautions had been taken.

Human Rights Watch did not undertake this mission to determine the number of civilian casualties. Rather, it sought to understand how and why civilians were killed or injured in order to assess compliance with international humanitarian law, with a view to lessening the impact of war on civilians in the future.

this report spares neither the US military nor the Iraqi military from an objective overview of the invasion.

http://hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/3.htm#_Toc57442227

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. As balanced as yuo will find

by the way, one thign not mentioned in the report

Both sides commited this violation

SHOWING enemy soldiers faces on TV... They did it, we did it... I emailed CNN et al, and they changed it, to their credit... quoted from the conventions

The Iraqis commited first degree murder, we did thrid degree, but we did it as well

[Malva Zebrina]

2. Excuse me, but Bush called this "humane"?

that is the schtick and that is what those who cannot parse or think critically will believe. We "saved" the Iraqi people! Taaa daaaa! and Bush takes a bow behind a banner that says "peace and freedom from Bush"

I will never forget the details of how bush attacked a nation that was not a threat at all to this country and murdered thousands of it's civilians in order to get their 'stuff".

I will never forget that--I see it every night as I drift off to sleep and I see it when I awake again at 2am--I see those children, so vulnerable , so innocent and killed by our leader and our soldiers. I see that all.

This is humane? What can you expect from a serial killer but lies?

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. The issue is NOT bush, here but the conduct

of the war

HRW is not getting into the political reasons for going to war

Only who violated what

The Iraqis did their share, we did ours..

And yuo can bet the ICRC is keeping notes on other things such as
housing of POWs... and that YOU WILL NOT GET TO SEE.

[FloridaPat]

4. There was one group who went to Iraq and went door-to-door

to get the names of the dead. They estimated 40,000 killed during those three weeks. I wonder if anyone is keeping track of what is going on now. Of course, we can't even get truthful information about the troops, so it would be harder to get the civilian information. This whole thing is criminal. No one is saying a word.