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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (145211)	9/9/2004 2:15:09 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Ok ... well you seem to have drawn on some license to interpret events differently than I and our government spokespersons do, while dismissing some highly significant aspects of these operation and couching your observations carefully to provide an unfair analysis (for example: while it is true that thousands of innocent people have been killed, not a single innocent was targeted to my knowledge). Your conclusions seem particularly unsupportable.

To: GST who wrote (145211)	9/9/2004 2:34:13 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Despair in Iraq over the forgotten victims of US invasion _________________________________ By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad The Independent 09 September 2004 "When I heard on television that the Americans had lost 1,000 military killed in Iraq, I asked myself, what about our side? What is the number of Iraqis who have died?" said Dr Amer al-Khuzaie, an Iraqi deputy health minister. He admits it is impossible to know the true figure because many bodies are simply buried and the deaths never registered. "Sometimes there are as many as 200 Iraqis killed in a single day," sighed Dr Khuzaie, flicking through a file showing the casualty figures. "The Iraqi people are being eradicated. We must stop this haemorrhage, this bleeding." The US army does not count the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion in March 2003. The most conservative figure for the number dead is 10,000 as calculated by private groups. It is rising every day. The US military claimed that on Tuesday alone it killed "100 militants" in air strikes on Fallujah on top of a further 33 people killed in fighting in Sadr City in Baghdad. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, proudly claimed on Tuesday that US forces had, last month, killed between 1,500 and 2,500 Iraqi insurgents. He did not note an ominous trend that, for the first time, more Americans were probably killed by Shia fighters than by Sunni guerrillas. For the US, it is now a war on two fronts. Iraqis suspect that in any case many of those who died were civilians. Dr Khuzaie admits that poor communications make it impossible to get a complete picture but he estimates that "in Najaf 400 civilians were killed and 2,500 wounded in the fighting last month." There are many ways to die in Iraq. At the al-Khindi hospital yesterday, doctors were treating one of their own workers called Ihsan Aboud, 32, who had gone home in a taxi to Sadr City the night before. "There was a roadside bomb," explained his cousin Sabah Thigil. "It blew up as the taxi passed and two people in it were killed and Ihsan was badly burned." Asked if the wounded man would live, a doctor gestured with his hand to show that his life was in the balance. "Even when there is nothing much happening, we get 15 to 20 people a day brought in who are victims of violence," said Dr Yassin Mustafa, an assistant manager of the hospital. "Often people do not know who shot them or blew them up." In the close-packed heavily populated houses of Sadr City, home to two million people, the use of rockets and heavy machineguns by the US inflicts heavy casualties. The mortars of the ill-trained Mehdi Army militiamen are often misdirected. Dr Mustafa had just received seven bodies, all from a single family, hit by a mortar bomb. He pointed out that, at this time of year, casualties were particularly severe because those in poorer neighbourhoods sleep on the roofs of their houses because it is cooler. As they lie sleeping, they are often killed or wounded by shrapnel or stray bullets. People in Baghdad have learned caution. Often there are long traffic jams because cars do not want to go near a slowly moving American convoy, a possible target of a massive bomb buried beside the road or a rocket-propelled grenade. The Americans also have a much-feared practice of spraying fire in all directions when they come under attack. continued at: news.independent.co.uk