Iraq Body Count analyzes War Logs

Excerpting, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett

“‘It is totally unacceptable that for so many years the U.S. Government has withheld from the public these essential details about civilian casualties in Iraq. There is a vital public interest and an inalienable public right to know who died in this war and how they died, whether Iraqi or any other nationality. Every recoverable detail about the human death toll in Iraq, and in all other conflicts around the world, must be brought to light. Only such detailed and specific knowledge makes the full human consequences of war impossible to deny.’” — Iraq Body Count spokesperson

 United Kingdom-based independent NGO Iraq Body Count records violent civilian deaths resulting from the 2003 military intervention. This is some of what the NGO had to say about the WikiLeaks War Logs.

IBC’s preliminary analysis of the Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks concludes that:

Most of the newly revealed deaths in the logs occurred in previously unreported violent incidents involving the deaths of one or two people. They include targeted assassinations, drive-by-shootings, torture, executions, and checkpoint killings. (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/warlogs)

64,000 civilian deaths recorded in these Logs are already represented in the IBC database. These were mainly gathered from press and media reports, as well as some NGO and official figures.

Even when the bare fact of a death is already known, the Logs frequently add important new detail including, for instance, the precise time and place of particular deaths which were only previously represented in numerical totals from morgues

Most significantly of all, the Logs contain many thousands of previously unreleased names of civilian victims. IBC has already been able to add over one hundred such names brought into the public domain for the first time (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/qa/warlogs/)

Sources and IBC notes

“Early analysis by the independent NGO, Iraq Body Count (IBC), of the Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks suggests the logs contain 15,000 civilian deaths that have not been previously reported. Additionally, IBC calculates that over 150,000 violent deaths related to conflict have been recorded in Iraq since March 2003, with more than 122,000 (80%) of them civilian.

“IBC has fully analyzed all 360 of the Logs which report more than 20 people killed, and which account in total for over 17,000 deaths. It has also analyzed random samples totaling 500 Logs reporting incidents in which 19 or fewer people died. It then carefully crosschecked this information against its own extensive data set, and now publishes its preliminary findings simultaneously with the public release of the Logs.

“IBC plans to inspect all of the 390,000 Iraq War Logs for any casualty data they may contain, and then integrate them into the IBC database, a massive task that will take a dedicated team many months of effort.
Merely sampling the Logs would not do justice to all the other deaths that are contained therein.”
Three articles published on the IBC web site describe and discuss what may be drawn from WikiLeaks’ release: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

“What the Numbers Reveal: IBC’s early assessment of what the logs released by WikiLeaks add to the known Iraqi death toll,” http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/warlogs/

“The Truth is In the Detail: An analysis of the type of victim and incident details found in the logs, and why those details matter,” http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/warlogs/

“Iraq War Logs: Context: What makes the logs different and important, what IBC’s approach to them has been, and will be in future,” http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/qa/warlogs//

IBC’s NOTE FOR EDITORS: Iraq Body Count (IBC) is a UK-based independent NGO dedicated to recording the violent civilian deaths that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. Its public database includes deaths caused by U.S.-led coalition forces and paramilitary or criminal attacks by others. IBC’s documentary evidence is drawn from crosschecked media reports of violent events leading to the death of civilians, or of bodies being found, and is supplemented by the careful review and integration of hospital, morgue, NGO and official figures.

IBC figures are widely quoted as an authoritative source of information by governments, inter-governmental agencies and the worldwide media. IBC has been coordinating the publication of its own careful preliminary analyses with WikiLeaks and those press and media organizations listed at http://www.iraqwarlogs.com/

Iraq Body Count:
The worldwide update on civilians killed in the Iraq war and occupation
Today’s posted count: 98,585 - 107,594

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Lasting consequences

There is no escaping the protracted fallout of invasion and occupation. There is no cure apart from stopping invasion, ending occupation.
Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

DOMESTIC DESERTION

9-11, 9-11! Call to war abandons U.S. victims
House Rejects Bill to Help Sick Ground Zero Workers
Soldier suicides ignored

The U.S. government has approved and sealed legislation hemorrhaging more deficit spending including $37 billion [pushing past a $ trillion] for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the U.S. House of Representatives “failed to pass a $7.4 billion bill to provide free healthcare and compensation payments to U.S. rescue and cleanup workers who were exposed to dangerous toxic chemicals at the World Trade Center site following the 9/11 attacks.”

Soldier suicide has risen above the rate among civilians since the Vietnam War. Between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009, 160 active-duty Army personnel committed suicide. A third of soldiers take at least one prescription drug. Fourteen percent of them take powerful painkillers. The U.S. Army report citing the figures “faulted commanders for ignoring rising mental health, drug and crime issues among soldiers.”

INVASION, OCCUPATION
THEFT, DISRUPTION
DISEASE, DEATH
RESISTANCE, RETALIATION

Afghanistan

As the month ends, July goes on record as the deadliest (63 troop deaths) for the U. S.’s nearly nine-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The missing bodies of Navy sailor Jarod Newlove (Renton, Washington) and sailor Justin McNeley (Wheat Ridge, Colorado) were found earlier in the week.

KABUL: A NATO vehicle crash into a civilian car killing occupants of that car has led today to rioting outside the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Witnesses reported four passengers died when one of two military vehicles moving in convoy hit the civilian car. In 2006, a similar traffic incident led to massive riots that shook the capital and left at least 14 people dead. Young Afghan men responded by throwing stones and shouting ‘death to foreigners’ and “‘death to [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai.’”

Iraq

Billions of U.S. deficit dollars pumped into Iraq’s reconstruction have failed to rebuild the country’s ravaged infrastructure. “Money was just spent,” British journalist Patrick Cockburn said today on Democracy Now. “Nobody quite knew where it went. This was happening well after we knew that fraud had been occurring everywhere... Up to quite recently, there seems to have been a free-for-all with Iraqi funds.…”

Moreover, Iraq’s children are sick and dying as Japan’s children suffered and died in the fallout of World War II. “A new medical study has found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia among people in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, a city bombarded by U.S. Marines in 2004.

Infant mortality is more than four times higher than in neighboring Jordan, eight times higher than in Kuwait. Cancer rates exceed those reported by survivors of the U.S. atomic bombs dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Iraqi cases are “‘similar to the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionizing radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout.”

FALLUJAH west: One soldier died and five people suffered wounds when a bomb exploded on a parked motorcycle near an army checkpoint.

MOSUL north: One police officer died and another two suffered wounds near the convoy of a police chief

BAGHDAD north: Sixteen people died (among them nine security personnel) and 14 suffered wounds Thursday when several bombs hit Baghdad’s Sunni district of Al-Adhamiyah. Three soldiers died and 12 suffered wounds Thursday when a car bomb exploded near an army base in Al-Sharqat, north of Baghdad in Salaheddin province. On different routes to the scene of the attacks, 13 people died among them three soldiers and three police officers. Among the wounded were seven police officers and two civil members of civil defense.

Sources and links
Democracy Now headlines July 30, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/30/headlines
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/patrick_cockburn_on_missing_billions_in
“Afghans riot in Kabul after deadly NATO crash Module body,” July 30, 2010,
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/100730/world/afghanistan_unrest_accident_riot_1
“16 dead, 14 wounded in Baghdad attacks,” AFP July 30, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100730/twl-iraq-unrest-575b600.html