Mr. Hanratty, in his letter of June 4, questions the accuracy of the Lancet’s report, and misses the point in my letter about the magic number of "acceptable" civilian casualties.
Bombs and missiles are “WID”s, “Weapons of Indiscriminate Destruction” when used on cites and residential areas, because of their inherent lack of precision and the possible faulty intelligence used in target selection.
It is one thing to use bombs and missiles on an enemy tank on a battlefield in the desert, it is another to use them on houses, schools or hospitals in a densely populated residential area, even if they hold weapon caches, when it is certain that many innocent civilians will be killed by the bombs and missiles.
The intended targets of US bombings of cities, like Saddam Hussein, escaped, but many civilians were killed or injured. There was no useful military advantage gained by the bombings.
If Mr. Hanratty would like the hard, grim statistics of civilian deaths, let him read the Gazette’s own News Report of June 11, 2004 based on Associated Press’s report by AP reporters’ examination of the ledgers of only some Iraqi hospitals, which shows 3,082 civilian fatalities who were brought to hospitals.
As the report says “ Even if hospital records were complete, they would not tell the full story for this nation of 24 million people. Many dead never were taken to hospitals. They were either buried quickly by their families in accordance with Islamic custom or lost under rubble.”
Part of that report reads:
FATALITIES IN KEY CITIES
A list of the 3,082 civilian fatalities in key cities: Baghdad: 1,896
(recorded at 24 hospitals) Najaf: 293 (four hospitals) Karbala:
200 (one hospital) Mosul: 118 (five hospitals) Samawa: 112 (two
hospitals) Nasiriyah: 145 (three hospitals) Fallujah: 89 (one
hospital) Madain: 71 (one hospital) Diwaniya: 61 (one hospital)
Kut: 52 (two hospitals)
Tikrit: 45 (one hospital)
An additional 158 fatalities were scattered among many small villages and towns
and cities.
In Basra, Iraq’s second-biggest city, hospitals issued 413 death certificates
and officials estimated 85 percent were for civilians, but the hospitals did not
keep daily records listing civilian or military status of casualties. The AP did
not include any Basra deaths in its count.
The US media did not show Americans the carnage caused by coalition air strikes, did not show the perspective of the civilians on the receiving end of the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign. There was the bomb shelter that was targeted because of faulty intelligence that Saddam was hiding there, resulting in the incineration of hundreds of women and children by a bunker-buster bomb. There was the little Iraqi boy whose arms were blown off, and charitable agencies were kind enough to arrange for him to get prosthetics, but no one can bring back his mother and father who were killed in the same bombing. To Mr. Hanratty and his ilk, these are mere “statistics”, not human beings. In terms of scale, since Iraq is less than one tenth of the population of the US, the impact of just these three thousand verified civilian casualties is ten times that of 9/11 to the US, if one can imagine the impact in the US of not one but ten 9/11 attacks.
Mr. Hanratty sneers at the Sunni Baathists, that they would mis-report the casualties in their families. But since they were not military combatants, why target their houses and kill their families and their neighbors’ families, mostly women and children?
Why use bombs and missiles on residential areas when it is sure that there will be many civilian casualties? There is no doubt in anyone's mind, including the military's, that there will definitely be civilian casualties when bombing targets in the midst of heavily populated, residential areas. Do we go ahead and bomb, hoping there won't be any casualties, and then not care if there are casualties? Are Iraqis not human, do they not bleed, and are their women and children not flesh and blood, do they not feel the sorrow of the loss of loved ones, like us Americans?
It is a declared policy of the US military to not keep count of “unintended” civilian casualties, so they can neither confirm nor deny any statistics. Mr. Hanratty’s faith in the accuracy of CNN is touching, but hardly the basis for determining civilian casualties. So who to believe? The US intelligence, the US media, the Arab media, the European media, the UN agencies, the Red Cross? The military leadership concealed the truth about the death from friendly fire of an American hero, Pat Tillman, not only from the nation, but from his parents, are they the ones he trusts? One certain casualty of the war, wounded by all sides, is the truth.
So what is the magic number? Is it just one? But could I look into the eyes of a mother and tell her that her child has been killed by our "weapons of indiscriminate destruction", that he is the only “collateral damage” of the war? I could not, so the magic number is zero, for not a single innocent should be killed by the use of weapons that cannot discriminate between combatant and innocent, not by terrorists, and certainly not by the military. Can we not hold America to a high standard?
Comparing the civilian casualties from such air strikes to the civilian casualties from terrorist bombings does not justify either, both are reprehensible, two wrongs do not make a right. The terrorists are not going to listen, but can we not expect those who lead the military to stop bombing targets in populated, residential areas, to avoid civilian casualties for little or no military advantage?