King’s College London has released a study related to the Iraq Body Count (IBC) collection of data on civilian deaths, cross referencing it with information from hospitals, NGOs, and official figures to provide an overall picture of the source of “violent civilian deaths” over the first five years of the US-led occupation.
The IBC count puts the toll for that period at 92,614, with the vast majority related to gangs and sectarian violence. But the study also found 12 percent of the violent deaths of innocent civilians were caused by “coalition forces,” which virtually exclusively means US and British forces in the context of Iraq.
This means that the US and its allies, excluding the Iraqi government forces themselves, directly killed over 11,000 innocent civilians over that period. This means the occupation forces, on an average day, killed six innocent civilians.
That’s an unfathomable amount, indeed neither the Taliban nor the occupation forces in Afghanistan could lay claim to such a grim number of innocent victims. The 11,000 US-led killings were bolstered by another 10,000 or so slain directly by the Iraqi government forces.
Of course, when one discusses the IBC it must be pointed out that the toll provided by them is extremely conservative, covering only direct violent killings, and that other other studies have put the “excess deaths” in the period in the high hundred thousands or more. That includes those who died by virtue of the disastrousness of life post occupation Iraq.
The 11,000+ civilians directly killed would have been an unthinkable claim to make a couple of years ago, even if the study’s data surely backed it up. Since the release of WikiLeaks’ Iraq War documents, however, the evidence of wholesale civilian slaughter seems all the more plausable, as killing innocent people seemed to be an all-too-common occurance.
Jason,
You write "when one discusses the IBC it must be pointed out that the toll provided by them is extremely conservative, covering only direct violent killings,"
You should have of course added " and reported by English language press".
Previous studies have shown that the press normally only manages to cover about 10% of casualties.
Then there is the fact that regardless of how many 'direct' kills there were, as an illegal war of aggression, those who started it: Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Blair bear direct responsibility for all deaths, as per Nuremberg which called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing…to initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
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During the first 5 years of the US war against Iraq, there were hundreds of different US contractors, NGO's, IO's and others criss-crossing the country daily. Almost all of them had Mercenaries providing them with "security."
4 Contractors were collecting unexploded ordnance in a program called "Captured Enemy Armaments." These 4 contractors either hired their own Mercenaries, or subcontracted this work out.
The approach taken by Zapata Engineering was typical: any time a vehicle or convoy was traveling in Iraq, there was a gun jeep in front, often more than one. As they approached any kind of structure or terrain feature that could give cover or concealment to an adversary, they would fire at that location. Thus, any home or business within 200 feet of the road was fired upon with machine gun fire.
Zapata would work at Camp Jaguar, Arlington, Bondsteel and others. On a typical trip of 25 miles, taking 1 – 2 hours, they might shoot at 300 structures, expending 15,000 rounds of machine gun ammo.
Now, I wasn't there, but Zapata conducted 10 or so such convoy movements, every day for 3 years. Just guessing, that one Mercenary company alone probably killed an average of 5 – 10 Iraqi civilians per day, times over 1,000 days. This one Mercenary company (that also did some engineering work on the side) probably killed 12,000 Iraqi civilians all by themselves.
There were more than 100 such Mercenary companies active in Iraq, at one point.
Mercenaries working for the US Army Corps of Engineers probably killed over a million Iraqi civilians, not including any killing done by military personnel.
An estimate of 12,000 kiled is an insult to the Iraqi victims.
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Brian, you're nuts.
Several years of allied heavy bombing of German cities killed 600,000 civilians during WWII.
And you think 1,000,000 Iraqis have been shot by US contractors shooting from passing convoys?
Seriously?
You might as well claim 1 billion Iraqis have been killed. It's just as credible.
More like a million.
Was 11,000 a typo or a joke? I'm thinking that number was surpassed during the initial "shock and awe". I mean if we "shock and awe" someone, we do it right.