There hasn’t been a lot of good analysis of the civilian toll of the 2016-2017 battle of Mosul before, with the Pentagon only admitting to a trivial number of deaths over many months. The Associated Press, however, has finally tried to come up with figures, and unsurprisingly they’re a lot higher than previously stated.
The AP analysts came up with between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians killed in the course of the fight, spanning some 10 months from October to the following July. Data came from several independent sources, including Airwars.
The Iraqi government claimed only 1,260 civilians killed in the entire battle, while the US-led coalition put the figure at 326. The coalition slammed the new figure, despite strong evidence behind it, including names of people from the morgue, saying it was “irresponsible” to focus on the deaths.
Col. Thomas Veale said if anything, the thousands killed saved lives in the long run because if the US hadn’t killed all those people, the terrorists would’ve won and produced “decades of suffering.”
Patrick Cockburn did a series of articles on this subject which corroborates the much higher number.
The most troubling aspect of this is that the Pentagon lies and the U.S. MSM protects their fairy tales which encourages the Pentagon to lie even more. The U.S. MSM is now acting to protect the narrative rather than do even rudimentary analysis. When I read Cockburn’s explanation, I thought that had the Pentagon / U.S. MSM levelled with the U.S. public that the most likely response would have been something like, ‘we understand why this happened but we also understand that war is serious business.’ But now we have a public that thinks that the U.S. has magic bullets that only kills bad guys and we can shoot our way out of any problem.
I am sickened by the way that the U.S. public is being taught that we can have our cake and eat it too.
Col. Thomas Veale with his meaty topic. Remember 3000, the number of victims of 9/11 all those years ago???
Of course these are “only” Iraqis, but three or four times as many as “9/11”, the alleged reason the USA chose 15 years ago to add Iraq to its GWOT list, and just in a few months. Now another military expert is sending forces into Norway, as NATO saves us from the wicked Russkies.
Can the USA do anything but kill and destroy?