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Coolassprov MC
05-05-06, 11:47
http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22

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Finally --and it's WAY overdue-- the Iraq Body Count(IBC) is being revealed as a tame, gross underestimate of civilian deaths in Iraq.

The most damming indictment in a new Media Lens article ( http://medialens.org/alerts/index.php ) is that the IBC figures do not to any significant degree reflect the mass casualties from the thousands of air bombing and missile attacks whose inherent indiscriminate nature result in high levels of civilian casualties.

Media Lens reports that during January to June 2005, according to the US military's own pre-approval standards estimates, over 50 air strikes were conducted which were likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians.

How many airstrikes were included in the Iarq Body Count in this period? Just one. In which 14 people were killed.

The US military's own standard basis of figuring the likely death toll would indicate that 1,500 actually died. Meaning the Iraq Body Count underestimated by a factor of 100 to 1. Even granting that the IBC want to report only the most credible casualty total, why are 1,486 deaths excluded from their estimates when the basis for inclusion would be the fairly conservative U.S. military assesments of the toll?

Media Lens also recounts that in the weeks leading up to the December 2005 election:

Quote:
"the number of airstrikes... increased from a monthly average of 25 in the first half of the year to more than 60 in September and 120 or more in October and November. The monthly number of air missions grew from 1,111 in September to 1,492 in November.

And yet, when we checked, the first 18 pages of the IBC database, covering the period between July 2005 and January 2006, contained just six references to helicopter attacks and airstrikes killing civilians."

So how many casualties are likely missing from the IBC count, and is it beyond their capability to implement some methodology to at least estimate the unrecorded casualties? Let's see.

Looking just at air actions alone, in 2005 there were roughly 500 airstrikes and probably at least 7,000 air missions in all. What would be the likely civillian toll? Asssuming that civillian casualties are an inevitable consequence of airstrikes and air missile attacks, and assuming most were "high collateral" urban missions and one in five were mistaken non-military targets, let's try an rough estimate:

Air Strikes "Collateral Damage"

------------------------------------Military target-----------------Civilian Target
300 Urban...............................240 => 300...........................60 => 200
200 Non-urban........................160 => 50............................40 => 100

------------------------------------------ 350 ------------------------------ 300

Air Missions "Collateral Damage"

------------------------------------Military target-----------------Civilian Target
4,000 Urban ........................3,200 => 2,000.........................800 => 1,000
3,000 Nonurban....................2,400 => 1,000.........................600 => 750

------------------------------------------ 3,000------------------------------1,750

-----------------------------------
2005 Total = 5,400
-----------------------------------

Now the above is not meant to be definitive. You could question the basis on different criteria and argue the figure up or down. You could get input from returned Iraq vets and vets of former campaigns to improve the quality of the assesment by basing it it sound military experience.

But they haven't. Because this is not in their "criteria" --which are based entirely on published media reports.

In a response to Media Lens, the IBC say:

Quote:
"Our work is, and has always been, to systematically record civilian deaths reported by two or more recognised media sources which conform to the basic criteria set out in our methodology. This means that deaths unreported in these media are not in our data base."

Well screw their criteria! Are these "criteria" carved in stone? Or do they have to be examined to see if the IBC is producing misleading propaganda --rather than a worthwhile estimate? Damm right they do.

Here are the kind of terms IBC uses in reply to Media Lens:


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