by DoDo
Wed Jul 20th, 2005 at 04:23:29 AM EST
If you believe the US propaganda and the docile mainstream media, 'the insurgents' (collectively*). I on the other hand have argued everywhere, including on my blog, that the main culprit are the occupation forces and criminals - a main reason why the claim that occupation forces are there to defend Iraqis from evil terrorists is a particularly cruel joke.
Now, for the first time, a major news outlet reports the above truth too - the BBC:
Nearly 25,000 civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, a report says... The survey was carried out by the UK-based Iraq Body Count and Oxford Research Group...
37% of all non-combatant deaths were caused by the US-led coalition... Insurgents are said to have caused 9% of the deaths, while post-invasion criminal violence was responsible for another 36%.
I note: the latter is also the occupiers' (
ir)responsibility. I also note: the IBC is based on (Western) media reports, which represents a significant undercount, while health-related excess deaths (which were included in the Lancet study) are ignored.
(You find the original Iraqi Body Count report here, but I thought the mainstream media reporting is a major part of the story.)
*) By all appearance there is no Iraqi resistance central command, yet even people as bright as Billmon often judge them as if there were one.
Update [2005-7-20 7:55:9 by DoDo]: Part as something to think about in response to a comment, part as further debunking of war propaganda bought into by too many, I reproduce below slightly rewritten parts of an older blog post of mine.
The latest propaganda name - after "regime/Baathist diehards", "(foreign) insurgents", "terrorists", "anti-Iraqi forces" - for what the US is up against is "Sunni resistance". The picture is of sectarian warriors from the 20% Sunni Arab part of the population, who coerce even the majority of this 20% to boycotts and such. There is such an element, certainly. However, in truth:
"... a recent internal poll conducted for the U.S.-led coalition indicated that nearly 45 percent of the Iraqi population supports the insurgent attacks... Only 15 percent of those polled said they strongly support the U.S.-led coalition."
Let's contemplate what this means. Even if we assume
- that this poll was not warped from the beginning by its assotiation to the occupiers (wording of the questions, willingness of the polled to answer honestly),
- that it managed to represent Sunnis in the inaccessible Anbar and Niniveh provinces,
- and further assume that all Sunnis and all members of smaller minorities are pro while all Kurds anti (no Occupation there),
- and use the standard numbers (55% Shi'a Arab, 20% Sunni Arab, 20% Kurd, 5% other),
- that is: the scenario most favorable to war supporters - this still means that
more than a third of even the Shi'a Arabs supports armed resistance.
You may wonder how that could be, if you bought that other line of propaganda that all the resistance are terrorists who mainly attack civilians. But don't let the relative numbers of casulaties deceive you: obviously terrorists have more success in killing defenseless civilians than guerillas have in killing soldiers in bulletproof wests riding armoured vehicles with superior weapons at their disposal, not to mention air support. Instead, remember that for at most a dozen terrorist attacks a day, there are at present 70 or so against the occupiers. Consult the New York Times graph below too, especially the third part (not very up to date, but involves the first two months of the heightened anti-civilian violence):
