Thursday, December 09, 2004

They don't do body counts.

From IslamOnline.org

"LONDON, December 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair turned down Wednesday, December 8, demands from eminent British figures to open an independent inquiry into the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the start of the US-led war on Iraq.

During his weekly question period in parliament, Blair said that the Iraqi health ministry was the right choice to tally the number of the Iraqi civilians, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The figures from the Iraqi ministry of health ... are in our view the most accurate survey that there is."

The British premier further claimed that the Iraqi "insurgents" for the ongoing violence in the war-torn country.

"Those people that are killing innocent people in Iraq today, who are responsible for innocent people dying, are the terrorists and insurgents who want to stop the elections happening in Iraq.”"


There is data that contradicts the PM's assertion that the insurgents are responsible for the deaths of Iraqi innocents.

From an article by Jonathan Steele, "Iraq's health ministry recently compiled a chilling set of statistics, which were obtained and exclusively published by the American news organisation, Knight-Ridder. The ministry took reports from hospitals in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. It did not have data from the three Kurdish provinces where political violence is minimal.
The death tolls may include some Iraqi police and national guardsmen, but mainly count civilians. They are unlikely to include insurgents, since their families usually fear taking seriously wounded resistance fighters to government hospitals. They bury their dead without registration at the morgue.
The findings were that out of 3,487 Iraqi deaths since April 5, two-thirds were killed by US and multinational forces or Iraqi police. In other words, the footage of car-bombs and suicide attacks set off by insurgents, which TV cameras are able to film in central Baghdad and which we see on our screens, may give the false impression that anti-government forces are the biggest killers. "

More information on the Iraqi Health Ministry's figures can be found here

Also, from Al-Jazeera:

"A former US marine has said his unit killed more than 30 innocent Iraqi civilians in just two days.
In graphic testimony presented to a Canadian asylum tribunal on Monday, Sergeant Jimmy Massey's evidence appeared to bolster war crime claims made by fugitive US paratrooper Jeremy Hinzman.
The 26-yea-old Hinzman said he would face persecution if sent home to the US, in a politically charged case which could set a precedent for at least two other American deserters seeking asylum in Canada. Massey told Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) that men under his command in the 3rd battalion, Seventh Marines, killed 30-plus civilians within 48 hours while on checkpoint duty in Baghdad. "I do know that we killed innocent civilians," he said, relating the chaotic days after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003."



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