Iraq War Logs - 400,000 document leak

Here.

66,081 civilians dead. What else can you say?

That the (infamous) Lancet report that claimed 1 million civilian deaths is both criminally inaccurate and a political stunt.

Not that we didn't know it already.

It is sad, but I'll play devil's advocate here for a moment and point out that civilian casualties by themselves are not a sufficient basis on their own for discrediting a military campaign, tragic though they may be. Judged on that basis alone, no war in history would be justifiable.

But when the majority of all deaths are civilians?

^ The majority of the Second World War's deaths were civilians. Especially on the Eastern Front. What's your point?

If it's any comfort, Sadaam Hussein's regime killed plenty of civilians and might have killed plenty more if he remained in power. I hesitate to say that this makes the war "worth it", though; that would require a more thorough and unbiased analysis than I'm capable of.

^^ That perhaps having the same attitude towards collateral damage as Hitler and Stalin is not an entirely optimal state of affairs?

I'm not sure that the conduct of the two sides involved in World War II's Eastern Front is something we want to emulate.

edited 22nd Oct '10 5:09:22 PM by Iaculus

@Don Zabu: Then is suggests the possibility that the execution of the campaign may have been hampered by incompetence — but, again, does not on its own invalidate the war in its entirety.

Personally, I have some pretty mixed feelings about the Iraq War. On the one hand, I don't buy into all the conspiracy theory nonsense about how all our reasons for going in were one big lie concocted to let Dick Cheney get his greedy little hands on all that precious oil, but on the other hand the Bush administration was notoriously shady, and I doubt their motives were entirely altruistic. All the same, even though the current situation is *far* from optimal, I feel that the removal of Hussein's regime has had a positive net effect, but the really troubling question is whether things will get better or worse after we're gone.

Did it specify which side killed said civilians? I think I saw that it was only a summation of reportable incidents, not lists of soldiers gunning down civilians. I bring it up because just about everything I've heard about civilian deaths attribute them more regularly to IED's and terrorist tactics than to any respectable military forces in the area.

I do believe that in cases of warfare, people should be more expectant of casualties on all sides, including within civilian populations. I agree with Badinator that the Iraq war in general was not exactly a righteous moment in American history.

But even if the war wasn't as smooth as it might have been, considering what Saddam's regime was doing to its own people, at the very least, I'd say removing it wasn't a totally unfounded action.

Not all the women and children involved in the death toll are innocent.

Did not see this reaction coming.

That perhaps having the same attitude towards collateral damage as Hitler and Stalin is not an entirely optimal state of affairs?

Or Butcher Harris for that matter. The Western Allies weren't all flowers and sunshine, you know. The atomic bombings were actually fairly tame as far as aerial massacres of civilians committed by the Allied Powers go.

edited 22nd Oct '10 11:49:58 PM by WoolieWool

Or Sherman.

@Badinator, Toodle: Saddam was bad, but so is what's been going on in Iraq since the war.  

No one's arguing that the situation over there is ideal, but I still think things are better off on the whole without Saddam, and it's not completely inconceivable that the current situation could improve as well. I have my misgivings with the war as well, but writing the whole thing off as an utter failure seems dismissive, and suggesting that chaos and violence are inherently worse than oppression and ... well, violence strikes me as a stance rooted in opposition to the war, rather than an analysis of its results — which, again, are less than ideal, but not necessarily a net negative.

@Woolie: Indeed. It's just that Tom specifically mentioned the Eastern Front in his post, so that was what I was primarily responding to.

Did it specify which side killed said civilians? I think I saw that it was only a summation of reportable incidents, not lists of soldiers gunning down civilians. I bring it up because just about everything I've heard about civilian deaths attribute them more regularly to IED's and terrorist tactics than to any respectable military forces in the area.

You are correct, although I don't think anyone in this thread has said otherwise.

According to the newspaper articles I read that death toll is about civilians killed by the occupation forces (aka the coalition led by America).

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces).

This seems to suggest a total civilian death toll, including people killed by all sides.

And in a bout of extreme irony, this Wikileaks spiel just closed the book that Saddam did have WMDs.

But also, as the article notes, not many of them, and not enough to constitute a compelling threat. It suggests that what he had were remnants from before the first Gulf War, most of his original stock having been destroyed at that time.

So yes, he technically had WM Ds, in terms of their international definition, but he did not have an arsenal capable of literal mass destruction, which is rather more salient.

^ Either way, we have proof he was in violation of numerous UN Security Council Resolutions including 1441.

The resolutions never said "enough weapons to lay waste to cities". They all said "no WMD period".

It would have been nice if you had convinced anyone of that before invading the fucking place then. We in Britain were told that Sadam could launch attacks against us within 45 mins, and looking over this data that is such a huge lie that I am suprised it didn't cause reality to bend.

People die in wars?

^^^ We also have proof that most of the justifications advanced prior to the war are blatantly false.