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I am as always stunned by the stupidity of some of you. Ignornace of reality is no excuse to be abusive--- it just illustrates your own ignornace.
As a clarification, the CBC.ca story is actually based on a interview on CBC radio --- for the record the CBC.ca types took the key statements out of context.
As to the casualty issues much of what I said was based on confidential reports written a few years back. But for the record here are some open sources written by me below, plus the 2008 RAND Report (the link is below)
read my article (I don't think there is a version on the Internet), “A Question of Truth: Accounting for American Casualties in Iraq,” Bulletin, Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies Quarterly News Magazine, Summer (Aug-Sept) 2004, Vol.17, No. 2, pp. 4-5.
***note this article is dated and does not account for TBI injuries
In addition in 2007 (Oct 10) Toronto- I presented an analysis “The Sword of the Prophet: The Strategic Implications of the IED War” at the Royal Canadian Military Institute, which provided a more current look at the casualty issue from the view of the IED war.
An April 2008 RAND Corp. study, "Invisible Wounds of War -- Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery," justifies a tenfold jump in the U.S. casualty count versus the figure of 33,000 American dead and wounded used by the Pentagon.
RAND researchers extrapolated from a survey they conducted of 1,965 veterans to conclude that nearly 300,000 service members and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars are suffering from post-traumatic stress or major depression. 320,000 individuals suffered TBI during deployment. Filner told the pair of researchers, who had summarized their findings for his committee, that their work probably understates the problem. Here is the report http://rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG720/
So in summation this is not about what I think, but how our comrades in arms are being treated, and to a great extent this is about being lied to about the reality of these wars. Lying about casulaties is possibly the worse thing any military can do, for it will ultimately undermine moral and in the long-run can never be hidden.
As to the issue of the US using airstike and arty when faced with resistence from insurgents in built-up areas, the below is part of a confidential report I wrote in 2005 (sorry the footnotes did not embed)
The daily barrage of complaints from ordinary Iraqi citizens who initially had welcomed coalition forces is a clear indication that the coalition has been unable to create a stable environment for the reestablishment of civil society in Iraq. Iraq Body Count (IBC), an Anglo-American research group that has been tracking casualties through media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq, has noticed the dramatic rise in violent crime since the outbreak of the war. Just in Baghdad alone between April 14th to 31st August, 2,846 violent deaths were recorded by the city morgue. When IBC adjusted for pre-war death rates in the city, there was an excess of at least 1,519 violent deaths. This excess can be directly linked to the overall breakdown of law and order in the city. There had been almost a tripling of violent deaths in Baghdad since mid-April 2003. Of these, 60 percent have gunshot wounds. IBC indicates that this trend is being mirrored in other Iraqi cities.
IBC notes that the majority of deaths are the result of Iraqi on Iraqi violence, however there were also many incidents where deaths were caused by US military fire. Evidence indicates that these deaths were often caused by the use of indiscriminate firepower, and in turn there had been an increasing failure to report such incidents by coalition troops or the incidents were simply unacknowledged. Furthermore, the growing list of casualties amongst American and other coalition forces is starting to wear down the troops; making them even less inclined to work with the Iraqi people or authorities. The Iraqi populous is more and more seeing the coalition forces as occupiers rather than liberators.
This impression on the Iraqis has been further amplified by the nature of the reporting that had occurred during the war and in the post-war period. The “CNN factor” created stories that in many cases were not true or certainly were not the way they were reported by the military to the imbedded media. Now some of this may have been created deliberately by the military within the greater rubric of psychological operations (PSYOPS), as part of a media disinformation campaign to throw off Saddam or it just might have been a classic case of the “fog of war.” But, the problem that remains is the Iraqi people did not see it this way, and for that matter neither did many people in the west, especially after more information came out. The whole Jessica Lynch story is even now still shrouded in controversy. Appendix A reviews key events during the military campaign and how they were reported, readers can come to their own conclusions, what is clear is that the US did not help its case in respects to the Iraqi people by denying, lying about or providing misleading information in regard to military operations.
As a clarification, the CBC.ca story is actually based on a interview on CBC radio --- for the record the CBC.ca types took the key statements out of context.
As to the casualty issues much of what I said was based on confidential reports written a few years back. But for the record here are some open sources written by me below, plus the 2008 RAND Report (the link is below)
read my article (I don't think there is a version on the Internet), “A Question of Truth: Accounting for American Casualties in Iraq,” Bulletin, Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies Quarterly News Magazine, Summer (Aug-Sept) 2004, Vol.17, No. 2, pp. 4-5.
***note this article is dated and does not account for TBI injuries
In addition in 2007 (Oct 10) Toronto- I presented an analysis “The Sword of the Prophet: The Strategic Implications of the IED War” at the Royal Canadian Military Institute, which provided a more current look at the casualty issue from the view of the IED war.
An April 2008 RAND Corp. study, "Invisible Wounds of War -- Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery," justifies a tenfold jump in the U.S. casualty count versus the figure of 33,000 American dead and wounded used by the Pentagon.
RAND researchers extrapolated from a survey they conducted of 1,965 veterans to conclude that nearly 300,000 service members and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars are suffering from post-traumatic stress or major depression. 320,000 individuals suffered TBI during deployment. Filner told the pair of researchers, who had summarized their findings for his committee, that their work probably understates the problem. Here is the report http://rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG720/
So in summation this is not about what I think, but how our comrades in arms are being treated, and to a great extent this is about being lied to about the reality of these wars. Lying about casulaties is possibly the worse thing any military can do, for it will ultimately undermine moral and in the long-run can never be hidden.
As to the issue of the US using airstike and arty when faced with resistence from insurgents in built-up areas, the below is part of a confidential report I wrote in 2005 (sorry the footnotes did not embed)
The daily barrage of complaints from ordinary Iraqi citizens who initially had welcomed coalition forces is a clear indication that the coalition has been unable to create a stable environment for the reestablishment of civil society in Iraq. Iraq Body Count (IBC), an Anglo-American research group that has been tracking casualties through media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq, has noticed the dramatic rise in violent crime since the outbreak of the war. Just in Baghdad alone between April 14th to 31st August, 2,846 violent deaths were recorded by the city morgue. When IBC adjusted for pre-war death rates in the city, there was an excess of at least 1,519 violent deaths. This excess can be directly linked to the overall breakdown of law and order in the city. There had been almost a tripling of violent deaths in Baghdad since mid-April 2003. Of these, 60 percent have gunshot wounds. IBC indicates that this trend is being mirrored in other Iraqi cities.
IBC notes that the majority of deaths are the result of Iraqi on Iraqi violence, however there were also many incidents where deaths were caused by US military fire. Evidence indicates that these deaths were often caused by the use of indiscriminate firepower, and in turn there had been an increasing failure to report such incidents by coalition troops or the incidents were simply unacknowledged. Furthermore, the growing list of casualties amongst American and other coalition forces is starting to wear down the troops; making them even less inclined to work with the Iraqi people or authorities. The Iraqi populous is more and more seeing the coalition forces as occupiers rather than liberators.
This impression on the Iraqis has been further amplified by the nature of the reporting that had occurred during the war and in the post-war period. The “CNN factor” created stories that in many cases were not true or certainly were not the way they were reported by the military to the imbedded media. Now some of this may have been created deliberately by the military within the greater rubric of psychological operations (PSYOPS), as part of a media disinformation campaign to throw off Saddam or it just might have been a classic case of the “fog of war.” But, the problem that remains is the Iraqi people did not see it this way, and for that matter neither did many people in the west, especially after more information came out. The whole Jessica Lynch story is even now still shrouded in controversy. Appendix A reviews key events during the military campaign and how they were reported, readers can come to their own conclusions, what is clear is that the US did not help its case in respects to the Iraqi people by denying, lying about or providing misleading information in regard to military operations.
Ignorance.
