Some shocking new findings have been exposed showing that the mainstream media is showing a misleading portrait of civilian casualties in Iraq. According to a study done by Iraq Body Count, 37% of civilians killed were by Americans, 36% were by criminal elements, and only 9% were by the insurgents.
Yet the only people we hear about doing the killing are the insurgents, or "terrorists." Yes, what the foreign suicide bombers are doing is wrong. But in fact, the only groups we are hearing about are the insurgents and foreign fighters.
And many of the crimes committed against civilians have been committed against women by government-backed thugs trying to impose their own version of Islamic Law. Their version of justice involves harassing, stalking, raping, and murdering women who will not wear the veil in accordance with their version of Islamic Law.
I thought one of the prime reasons we went to Afghanistan was because of the Taliban’s rampant control of women there. That is typical doublethink from the administration — they complain about human rights abuses when it suits them and discard their complaints when it suits them.
So, the next time the Bush administration tries to promote the meme that Iraq is a democracy, the question to ask is, why should we trust what they say? Bush said he would uphold the honor and dignity of the White House; he refuses to fire Karl Rove for his treason against the country. He said Iraq was trying to buy Uranium from Niger; debunked by Joe Wilson. He actively conspired with Tony Blair to fix the facts around the case for war in Iraq.
And when people like Khalid speak out against the outrages backed by the Bush administration, the Iraqi government carts them off and throws them in jail. Freedom is slavery and slavery is freedom in George Bush’s universe.
You may still sign the petition to free Khalid here.
I recommended this diary but suggest you modify the title slightly as “misogyny” doesnt quite accurately describe the point of your story.
Misogyny runs rampant across the globe, and always has, but the brutal treatment of women by Iraqi govt and the large percentage of civilian deaths attributed to good ol USA firepower should be the main subject, just my opinion.
Excellent information.
It’s there; one of the links talks about a woman who got harassing phone calls, then was raped and murdered.
We have to keep speaking out against this, because the Iraqi government could find people and arrest them without notice if they oppose the American occupation.
totally agree with you…I was just thinking the title was a bit too innocuous for the revelations you were sharing with us….I believe you would get more play with a title such as “US bombs responsible for 4 x More Deaths Than Insurgents” or something.
Not to minimize the brutality towards women. Maybe two diaries instead of one.
Anyway,very eye opening data on both counts. Thanks
I read that article also and was startled by that ratio myself. I knew our killing of civilians was high but didn’t realize just how terrible this was. The criminal element doesn’t surprise me unfortunately as war always brings this out and Saddam had also I believe emptied the prisons right before the invasion, didn’t he?
I think our using women’s rights in Afghanistan came after our invasion as one more reason to make that invasion sound good..not that we’re really doing much about that their now either.
Now that you brought up Saddam releasing all the prisoners before the war, that figure makes perfect sense. I suggest many of these people were actively working to turn Iraq into a Iranian-style Shiite state before they were found and arrested. That would explain all of the rampant vigilantism, especially in places like Basra.
The numbers were as I suspected. My very young 20ish cousin in Colorado Springs and actively dating phoned me a few weeks back. She said that a lot of young soldiers at Fort Carson who have returned from Iraq showing off photos of the Iraqis that they personally killed there. Who knows if they were civilians or “fighters”, that didn’t seem to be a qualifier……just that they were Iraqi and the soldier had killed them. I guess the photos were meant to impress fairhaired bombshell types, doesn’t seem like they did though.
I wish that I could be surprised that government sanctioned thugs are running about committing fresh evils upon an already terribly abused population, but I’m not…..just sad and disgusted as usual.
This goes back to a problem with our society — we glorify violence and killing and never stop to think about the fact that we are inflicting human suffering. Bush is a reflection of that weakness; he thinks that war is just a big video game, only larger and life-like.
Why are our politicians, like Lieberman and Clinton, so actively speaking out against sex and violence and not speaking out against this? It seems like shooting games do more psychological damage to someone than games with S-E-X.