Pentagon secretly keeps track of attack statistics

Body Counts
The Pentagon secretly keeps track of many grim statistics in Iraq. The numbers are not encouraging.



AP
Bomb victims: Bodies lie outside a hospital in Hawija, the northern Iraqi town where a suicide bomber killed dozens of job applicants waiting outside a police and army recruitment center on Wednesday

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek

Updated: 3:31 p.m. ET May 11, 2005May 11 - The morning news from Iraq today brought fresh chronicles of slaughter. Yes, even more than usual. American troops are waging an offensive they call Operation Matador in a remote stretch of desert near the Syrian border, while suicide bombs are going off in Iraq’s towns and cities, including the capital. Who’s winning? Who’s losing? Who knows?


The military and political future of Iraq remains so uncertain that the Pentagon in recent months has gone back to the Vietnam-era practice of citing bodycounts as measures of success.

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The U.S. considers all of Iraq a combat zone,” says the report, which was wrapped up at the end of April, three months after the elections that were supposed to have turned the tide in this conflict. “From July 2004 to late March 2005,” says the document, “there were 15,527 attacks against Coalition Forces throughout Iraq.” Then comes one of several paragraphs marked S//NF (secret, not for distribution to foreign nationals): “From 1 November 2004 to 12 March 2005 there were 3306 attacks in the Baghdad area. Of these, 2400 were directed against Coalition Forces.” In a span of four and a half months, which included the election turning point, that’s not only a hell of a lot of hits in the capital city, it’s just pure hell.

The report in question was prepared at the direction of the Multi-National Corps commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, to answer questions about a now-infamous incident on the night of March 4. Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena had just been released by the hostage-takers who’d held her for a month, and she was on her way to Baghdad airport with Nicola Calipari, a major general in the Italian intelligence service who had negotiated her freedom. At a U.S. roadblock on an access ramp leading to the airport highway, U.S. troops opened fire, wounding Sgrena and killing Calipari.


After long delays, the American report was posted on the Web at the end of April with classified sections blacked out. But those sections could be restored, as it happened, with just a couple of mouse clicks that revealed all the S//NF material, including the names of every soldier at the checkpoint and the second Italian secret agent driving the car.

Under the heading “Atmospherics,” the author lays out the reasons the soldiers at the checkpoint were getting so jumpy—even though they acted according to the rules of engagement and within regulations. Everyone knows the eight-mile road from downtown Baghdad to the airport is dangerous. Here’s how dangerous: “(S//NF) Between 1 November 2004 and 12 March 2005, there were 135 attacks or hostile incidents that occurred along Route Irish,” as the military calls the airport highway. That’s just about one attack per day during those months, by the Pentagon’s calculations, or, looking at it another way, almost 17 attacks per mile. There were nine “complex attacks” combining, say, the explosion of a roadside bomb along with small-arms fire and mortars; there were 19 explosive devices found, three hand grenades, seven “indirect fire attacks” 19 roadside explosions, 14 rocket-propelled grenades, 15 car bombs and four other kinds of attacks. Investigators into the March 4 shooting had a grenade thrown at them when they tried to visit the scene. (Sgrena has suggested in some interviews that she was on a special road for VIPs when she was shot. In fact there’s only one highway to the airport, and this, sad to say, is it.)


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No total Iraqi body count was revealed in the secret report, but the author asks at the end of the article: "Does the Pentagon know? If so, it should tell."

or just about 60 per day

yeah, we're really doing some good over there

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7818807/site/newsweek/

Sorry, just realized I never included the link. Reading the whole article is worthwhile.

The author of this Newsweek article, Christopher Dickey, states the following about the estimated Iraqi civilian body count:


Estimates of the total number of Iraqi civilian casualties in this war, calculated by reporters and human-rights groups, have ranged from about 10,000 to the much-less-plausible 100,000.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7818807/site/newsweek/page/2/

I think that the 100,000 figure is very plausible, and possibly on the low side. The Lancet study, which is widely cited for the 100,000 figure, used very conservative assumptions. Also the Lancet's study was put together many months ago-- before Fallujah and the most recent spate of violence in Iraq.

Does anyone have another source to back up the 100,000 figure? I'd love to write in to Newsweek about this.

Also, is it fair, when drawing up a body count, to count the Iraqi on Iraqi attacks. I think so, since these are events that would not have taken place absent the US invasion. I'd be interested in other opinions, though.

Conservatives, pat yourselves on the back. You deserve it.

:eyes: