Iraqi Casualties, Leftist Lies

Iraqi Casualties, Leftist Lies
By Glen Reinsford
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, November 08, 2007

Counting bodies in Iraq has become quite the fashion these days. Most
major news organizations, from CNN to the New York Times, keep an up-
to-the-minute running total of the number of U.S. troops killed there.
Critics note that if demoralization of the war effort is not the key
motive then it is certainly odd that the number of dead terrorists is
so rarely, if ever, provided as well.


Dead Iraqis are extremely popular with anti-war groups, particularly
IraqBodyCount (IBC), which meticulously compiles a database of deadly
incidents in Iraq based on news and morgue reports. The organization's
"counter" of civilian casualties was once found on the sidebar of most
anti-war blogs - before bloggers were seduced by the wildly insane
Lancet survey estimates, which exceed IBC's numbers by a factor of 10.


To its credit, IBC relies on actual news reports, morgue and hospital
statistics. Although not as popular with the anti-war Left as it once
was, the organization gained some measure of general credibility by
taking the Lancet to task for shoddy research practices. (Even the
Lancet has now been outdone by a recent ORB survey which states that 1
out of every 20 Iraqis have been killed in the last four and a half
years).


Of course, no one seemed at all concerned about mortality statistics
back in the Saddam era, when they were climbing at a faster rate. The
government executions and militia massacres were private affairs then,
with the victims surreptitiously disposed of in unmarked mass graves
well away from media attention.


It was not until the Americans became involved in Iraq that a sudden
interest in dead Iraqis developed, along with the hope that their
condition could be blamed on America itself. It was in those heady
days of ground combat operations and rumored cluster bomb attacks on
helpless neighborhoods that IBC began keeping track of civilian deaths
caused by "US-led Coalition forces."


Unfortunately for IBC, major combat operations came to an end after a
few months and the effort turned toward establishing a democratic
government. Iraqis were no longer dying from war, but from the efforts
of Islamic terrorists, who showed increasing disregard for the future
of the country and the welfare of its citizens.


IBC had a decision to make. Would it count the victims of terror as
victims of terror, or would it continue to call them "war" casualties
of the original US-led operation when, in fact, Americans were
spilling their own blood to protect Iraqis?


IBC decided to blame Americans for the very sectarian violence that
their soldiers are trying to stop, in a shameful leap of logic that
actually perpetuates the bloody cycle. Radical groups like al-Qaeda
recruit young Muslims by convincing them that Iraqi civilians are
under attack by the American forces in Iraq. It is this terror
pipeline of suicide bombers and other architects of violence which
(ironically enough) constitutes the only real threat to Iraqi security
and self-reliance.


The grain of truth in the propaganda is that a number of Iraqi
civilians do die each year from the collateral damage of American
bombs and bullets intended for terrorists. The Arab and Muslim media
do an impressive job of exaggerating the number of victims by
providing inordinate attention to the portion of the violence to which
Americans are held responsible. As a result, the Arab street opposes
"U.S. policy in Iraq" and talks as if the Americans are largely behind
the 75,000 or so civilian deaths that are reported by IBC and various
news agencies.


But this isn't true. The percentage of Iraqi civilian deaths killed by
collateral damage from American attacks is currently running between 1
and 2% of the overall number. This means that the vast majority of
civilians killed are dying at the hands of Islamic terrorists
recruited to "save" their fellow Muslims from the "occupation."


This number isn't easy to find - even in IBC's database. Despite
recording such precise details as the time of day that an attack
occurred and the demographic information of the victims, IBC does not
keep track of the perpetrators. This information can only be gleaned
by manually analyzing each incident, which is what my own website,
TheReligionofPeace.com (TROP), did in February of 2007.


A few months after TROP posted its informal findings (that just over
1% of Iraqis were dying from American collateral damage, according to
IraqBodyCount's own database) IBC increased its estimate of overall
civilian deaths in 2006 by 11% and its estimate of those caused by
coalition troops by a whopping 38%!


Although curious about these convenient new numbers, TROP opted not to
reanalyze the new data, but to instead keep a close eye on the IBC
list of 2007 incidents, particularly after the entire first half of
the year was posted in August. An analysis of this data reveals the
somewhat duplicitous methods that IBC employs to exaggerate US-related
violence, while minimizing the role of the terrorists.


First, the facts. According to IBC, approximately 12,142 Iraqi
civilians died in 2294 "incidents" in the first half of 2007. Of
these, Americans were held directly responsible for 298 deaths, or
about 1 in 40 (as we shall see, however, this number is highly
questionable). 122 of these occurred in air strikes (meaning missiles
or dropped bombs) while the remainder were mostly from helicopter or
ground fire. By IBC's admission, the parties responsible for at least
42 of these 298 deaths are ambiguous, often meaning that they were
civilians caught in crossfire.


At first glance, it would appear that civilians are dying from
American weapons at a rate that is a little over twice that of the
TROP study from the year before. But as these incidents were analyzed,
certain trends were discovered that call into question the integrity
with which IBC compiles and presents its data.


In the first place, the journalistic standards for identifying US-
related incidents are considerably lower. In fact, US incidents were
about twice as likely to rely on one of two articles from the
Washington Post that are identified as "WP 06 Jul (MoH)" and "WP 04
Apr (MoH)." A casual observer might assume that these are listings of
individual incidents published by the Washington Post, since the
articles are listed as an independent source of confirmation for 30%
of US-related events.


However, these articles are actually just a few paragraphs each that
present high-level mortality statistics by month according to
unpublished Ministry of Health statistics. In fact, the focus of both
stories is the unidentified victims of sectarian violence. Neither of
these articles is a legitimate source for confirming the occurrence of
any individual incident, much less whether or not the Americans were
involved.


IBC was gracious in responding to an inquiry about this and maintained
that they "use this general source as corroboration for single-sourced
incidents of the appropriate type and timescale, making our usual
adjustments to avoid double-counting etc." Although this may shore up
the estimate of Iraqis killed over a long period of time by the
violence, it seems completely inappropriate (and outright deceptive)
to list either of these two articles as itemized confirmation of
individual incidents.


Unfortunately, IBC uses this dubious technique to "confirm" one out of
every three incidents that it blamed on the Americans, comprising 24%
of the US-related casualties on its 2007 list. By contrast, IBC was
far less inclined to rely on the generic Washington Post articles for
non-US related events, which explains why those confirmed in this
manner comprise a mere 7% of those killed by terrorists.


Fully 80% of the time, the generic Post articles are used to
artificially support US-related incidents that are only reported by
one member of the local Iraqi press (usually the National Iraqi News
Agency or the Voice of Iraq radio station). This means that about 1
out of 4 incidents attributed by IBC to American bombs and bullets
relied solely on a single local news account that was rejected by more
established media organizations.


The most reputable international news agencies used by IBC are
Reuters, CNN, the New York Times and the Associated Press. They were
relied on for 56% of the non-US related incidents, but used in only
29% of cases involving the US military.


The immediate implications of using far less dependable sources for
one side of the equation are skewed numbers and the inclusion of
questionable incidents. This is because the local news agencies in
Iraq are more apt to print news based on word of mouth or rumor.


Not surprisingly, several such incidents on IBC's list simply could
not be verified by any reputable source. These include a January 11th
incident in which US forces supposedly opened fire "randomly" on the
people around them, and a shooting the next day of a family of four in
their car.


Could it be that anti-US sentiment generates manufactured news events
or distorts the details of real events?


As a case in point, consider that IBC is reporting that a house was
hit by a US air strike in Haditha on January 24th, resulting in the
deaths of twelve civilians. That this is based on a single local
report by the National Iraqi News Agency makes it extremely suspicious
under the circumstances.


Anti-US sentiment was running quite high in the Haditha area at the
time over the alleged "massacre" of civilians by the American
military. It seems highly unlikely that the tragic death of a dozen
civilians sitting in their home, if it had happened, would not have
generated enormous outrage and been picked up by the international
press, which was also focused on the area at the time.


Isn't it more probable that the Haditha incident was fabricated, or
that the victims may have died from a bombing by local extremists,
which was then briefly blamed on the Americans by a frustrated
bystander?


But with IBC, the Americans never get the benefit of the doubt. On
April 7th, for example, the U.S. military insisted that it had visual
confirmation that one hostile was killed in an air strike in Diwaniya.
IBC instead relied on other reports that four civilians were killed by
"tank fire."


On March 30th, IBC reported that 20 Iraqi "civilians" were killed in
an American air strike on Sadr City during a firefight, even though
the U.S. denies that it ordered a strike. IBC apparently relied on
busy morgue officials to determine (perhaps psychically) whether
victims were killed by debris from a missile or debris from an errant
mortar fired by militias.


IBC also appears to over-represent civilians among the casualties of
US-related incidents. For example, the organization reports that on
January 1st, six "civilians" were killed when Americans fired into an
al-Qaeda safehouse. Interestingly, this includes two guards and an
"unknown male." It is unclear what qualifies the male occupants and
guards of a terrorist safehouse as non-combatants.


Nearly 45 civilian deaths are laid at the feet of Americans following
a February 8th air strike on four houses thought to have been
sheltering terrorists in Amiriyah. However, a careful reading of news
reports yields plenty of accusations, but little follow-up evidence
that these were all civilians.


According to IBC itself, only two children were among the dead, as
well as two women and two "elderly," which leaves 39 others who are
presumably fighting-age men. But in a country in which nearly half the
population is under the age of 18, how is it that an air strike on
four ordinary residences kills just two children, while 85% of the
casualties are from a demographic that happens to contribute more than
95% of all terrorists, but just 17% of the general population?


This is not the only example on the list in which the boundaries of
credulity are stretched considerably to accommodate the "civilian"
label. IBC relies on any report that includes any eyewitness claiming
that civilian casualties resulted from a US action, even though
civilians are never the intended targets of the Americans but of the
terrorists - whom the Americans are trying to stop.


To exaggerate the negative impact of American actions, IBC plays word
games in its incidents database, particularly with regard to the
discretionary personalization of victims and attackers.


With regard to victims, IBC reports that a "child" or "children" were
the actual targets of an attack 5 out of 81 times when the Americans
were involved (even though they are not the real targets of anti-
terror operations). A "child" or "children" is described as the target
in only 11 out of the 2213 deadly incidents that did not involve
Americans, despite the hundreds of indiscriminate truck bombings and
suicide attacks on marketplaces and urban sidewalks in which thousands
of women and children were deliberately murdered by Islamic
terrorists.


Although twelve times more likely to personalize the victims of
attacks involving Americans, IBC is also twenty-five times more likely
to depersonalize descriptions of non-Coalition attacks. Victims of
terrorism are said to have been killed by disembodied 'bombs,'
'explosions,' and 'gunfire' in all but 49 out of 2213 cases, while
fully half of the US-related incidents are blamed on 'US troops,' 'US
soldiers,' or 'US forces.'


This objectification is by design, of course. So much so that it is
almost comical in places. In at least two instances, for example,
Iraqis are said to have been killed by a "suicide truck."


Shiites are mentioned as the perpetrators of violence only once. The
Sunnis never. And al-Qaeda, which not only stages dozens of
spectacular suicide bombings each year, but deliberately triggered a
devastating holy war by attacking Shiites and their mosques, is given
a complete free pass by IraqBodyCount. They are never once mentioned
as the party responsible for the many deadly attacks that they
directly coordinate, nor are they credited with the residual violence
intentionally spawned.


Despite the undeniable prejudice working against the Americans, if we
start with the number that IBC provides for casualties of US related
incidents for the first half of 2007, cull out the three most dubious
entries (such as the Haditha air strike that wasn't), and give
responsibility to the terrorists for half the victims of crossfire and
other ambiguous incidents, we arrive at a figure of 199 (or 1 in 60).
Of these, only 44 deaths are from air strikes.


How many of these 199 victims are truly civilian or even truly dead
(given the tendency of IBC to rely disproportionately on single "word-
of-mouth" sources for US-related incidents) probably isn't possible to
determine. It may very well be that the actual number of civilians
killed is much closer to 120, which would be consistent with the
conclusions of the earlier TROP study.


Still, given the massive capability of American firepower and the
complete disregard for civilian casualties exhibited by an enemy that
does what it can to blend in with the local population, it is plainly
evident that the Americans are taking extraordinary measures to
protect innocent Iraqis from collateral damage. If this is an
"occupation," then it may be the first in history in which an army
takes three times the casualties that civilians on the ground do from
collateral damage.


However, IBC is undeterred by the low number of casualties from US
action, and insists that Americans be faulted for all of the
violence.


When it conspicuously revised its number of 2006 Coalition-caused
victims sharply upward earlier this year, IBC suggested that even if
the new figure "seems insignificant in light of the overall total,
consider for a moment what it would mean if in your country there
were, on average, three incidents a week in which a foreign army
killed civilians, including the killing of a 5-yr-old girl and entire
families with their children. Would this army be a stabilising
influence?"


Here is the glaring inconsistency: If IBC truly believes that
collateral damage from foreign troops propels the "insurgency," then
why does the organization misrepresent and exaggerate these
casualties? Why does IBC employ double standards and deceptive
language to embellish the number of civilians who are dying from US-
related incidents when doing so needlessly fuels the violence?


Beneath the public moralizing, it appears that anti-war groups have an
underlying political agenda that is not always in line with their
purported motives. Although operating under the cover of compassion,
the success and welfare of the Iraqi people is of secondary concern to
America's failure.


Reprehensible as well is the sanctimonious posturing of much of the
Islamic world outside of Iraq, which demonizes America and her allies
for the problems on the ground - even as its only contribution to
Iraqi progress is the very Mujahideen who thwart it.


But this is what happens when moral superiority becomes an end unto
itself. Having problems to blame on America becomes more important
than resolving them, even if it means sacrificing Iraqis to the god of
anti-American bigotry.

Glen Reinsford is the editor of TheReligionofPeace.com, the site that
has documented 9,570 Islamic terror attacks since 9/11.

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