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Quick Facts about IraqbodyCount.net
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The overwhelming
majority of civilians on the list are actually killed by the
insurgents in terror attacks.
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The list includes
non-civilian casualties killed by the insurgents, including
coalition troops.
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The list invariably
includes the insurgents themselves (which may be inadvertent).
Review
Iraqbodycount.net
is an anti-war website that looks similar to our own
TheReligionofPeace.com
in that it presents a maintained list of violent incidents.
Although TheReligionofPeace.com looks only for Islamic terrorism
(but across the globe), Iraqbodycount.net is concerned only with
what is happening in Iraq, and claims to limit it’s list to
“civilian” casualties of every incident that is the “responsibility”
of the U.S. and U.K. “whose military forces cause the deaths.“
Before we offer our unsolicited
opinion on Iraqbodycount.net (or at least the unflattering portion),
it needs to be mentioned that in addition to the site bearing a
resemblance to ours, the designers appear just as dedicated, both to
their research and to their cause. They are careful to include only
reported events and are not seduced by the large and ridiculous
claims made by their comrades that “hundreds of thousands have
died.”
Although tallying the numbers for a given period is tricky,
due in part to an annoying habit of updating incidents while not
removing duplicate entries (except in the overall summary), it
appears that they are reporting that about 15,000 to 17,000
civilians have been killed since the declared end of major combat
operations two years ago, perhaps less. This would make the
homicide rate in Iraq no greater than that of New York City
(adjusted for population variance) during their worst year under the
last Democrat to hold the mayor’s office.
The editors of Iraqbodycount.net
seem to share our own earnest commitment to veracity and appear to
resist publishing suspect information without qualification.
Iraqbodycount.net has at least nineteen
(mostly European-based) staff members, which is far more than
TheReligionofPeace.com. All nineteen have their names
listed, which
underscores either our own cravenness or a key moral distinction
between our adversaries (we suggest the latter). Unlike ours, their
site includes sources (such as al-Jazeera) and also solicits
donations.
Having said these things, we wanted
to go behind the numbers to try and determine whether the same
integrity exhibited in the methodology is consistently applied to
their mission statement as well, which is to convince ordinary U.S.
and British taxpayers that their military is responsible for every
civilian death on an overall list of over 17,000. Comparing the
list against the rationale, we very quickly found two fundamental
contradictions.
First, although the casualties are
supposed to be “civilian,” the site's definition of the term is
stretched rather exotically to include police officers, Iraqi
military and even a large number of enemy combatants (the very
terrorists doing the killing). The enemy there does not wear
uniforms, and all that a Syrian or Jordanian terrorist had to do to
make the Iraqbodycount.net list was wind up in a morgue at the right
time. Realistically, the only sort of casualty that we couldn’t
find in a quick perusal of the list was a non-Iraqi coalition troop.
Secondly, one’s suspicions should
be considerably piqued by the fact that the vast majority of the
deaths on the list attributed to the coalition military are from
terrorist attacks, kidnappings and mass murders conducted by enemy
forces, particularly since May of 2003. In July of 2005, for
example, terrorists killed 608 civilians and Americans killed none,
yet were credited with any death that occurred.
This is kind of like
listing the Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust in the context that
they were murdered instead by the Allied forces. From reading the
original “rationale” posted by the editors, it seems that Iraqbodycount.net was initially chartered to record only the
civilian casualties from Coalition bombings or delinquent ground
attacks. At some point, perhaps because the numbers were nothing to
compel hysteria, the modus operandi wandered dramatically to the
point that it now encompasses blaming the United States military for
any act of violence, even those it is actively working to prevent.
Certainly it is curious that a
project explicitly intended to list civilian casualties of combat
action caused directly by coalition military forces (such as an
errant cluster bomb), would degenerate into claiming non-civilian
casualties of non-combat terrorism.
This becomes even more bizarre against the reality that the U.S.
military and its allies are sacrificing their own blood to stop the
criminals responsible for the killing.
This Orwellian logic leads the
editors down some strange paths. For example, they make an effort
to exclude suicide bombers from the casualty counts of such
bombings, although it isn’t clear why. Are the bombers not included
because they are responsible for their victims (as would normally be
assumed)? If so then how can responsibility logically be the fault
of some other party (particularly those targeted by the bombers and
those working so hard to stop them)?
Traditionally speaking, making a
judgment between two opposing forces means adding up the facts on
both sides, fairly assigning responsibility and then applying the
same standard of consideration to each. This is the definition of
open-mindedness, which is essential for a progressive society.
This
process of equanimity is most critical in a matter as serious as war
which, as any sane person recognizes, cannot be fought in a perfect
manner completely free of civilian casualties. The reasonable
individual, who is not obscuring an underlying agenda beneath
misleading rhetoric, can see very plainly that the Coalition is
making an effort to minimize civilian casualties (which are always
collateral) and bring the people behind the violence to justice,
while their opponents are literally putting bombs in baby carriages.
It becomes obvious at this point
that that there is something very misleading about Iraqbodycount.net
and the other groups on their side of the fence pretending that
their only interest is in the well-being of Iraqi civilians. If
their ostensible humanitarian motives were truly pure then they
would not be working at every turn against the Coalition’s effort to
stabilize the country under a democratic government. They would
certainly not oppose the very military and police efforts to
eliminate the threat to the civilian population, nor would they
refrain from putting the numbers into perspective against what
happened prior to military intervention or the reality of what would
happen if the mission were abandoned.
Since some 400,000 to 1.4 million
Iraqis (mostly Shiite and Kurd) disappeared into the gulag
that masqueraded as the former government of Iraq, the war
was responsible for ending a murder rate at least three times higher
(but probably much more) than what Iraqbodycount.net and others
claim to be so concerned about now. None of these groups was
keeping a scoreboard back then, when, unlike today, the killers
operated with impunity. None shows the slightest interest now in
the mass graves uncovered in various parts of the country.
The
newest project on iraqbodycount.net is to list the names of 3,000
“coalition victims.” But what of the names of 300,000 Shiites who
disappeared intentionally (and not collaterally) in the twelve
months following the first Gulf War? Publicizing a list like that
might make the world more appreciative of the changes that have
taken place in Iraq, spur a commitment to improving the lives of the
Iraqi people, drastically reduce the level of antipathy against the
Coalition and therefore reduce the violence…
Ah, but it’s not really about the
welfare of Iraqis, is it?
In fact, the more dead “Iraqi
civilians” Iraqbodycount.net can come up with, the better, which explains why
the numbers are artificially inflated with the victims of Sunni on
Shiite terror and (in some cases) the bodies of the terrorists
themselves! Iraqbodycount.net and its ilk even contribute to
the cycle of violence by falsely crediting the Coalition with a body
count racked up by the very enemy it is trying to stop; and then
playing fast and loose with the definition of a civilian to the
point that even the (Iraqi) Coalition troops themselves are counted
as “civilian” casualties of the Coalition. This disingenuousness
has the obvious effect of inflaming rage in the Arab world,
inspiring more Jihadi and Shaheed recruits and thus more
violence – resulting in a new batch of victims with which to pin
more blame on the United States.
It’s a cynical game that these
groups are surreptitiously playing with the lives of ordinary Iraqis
simply to camouflage their true anti-American agenda. They are the
children of the intelligentsia of the 1960’s and 70’s who still
glory in their southeast Asian victory while losing no sleep over
the millions who perished as a result, more concerned about the
quality of their next cappuccino than they are with the victims of
totalitarian regimes in places like China, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and
Siberia forced to pay an abject price for these egalitarian
defenders of socialist utopias.
In the final analysis,
Iraqbodycount.net loses the very credibility it works so hard to
attain. The details of each entry in the list are sweated over
while the editors seem blissfully unaware of how far the collection
itself has strayed from the original scope. They’re very much like
a ship’s cannon master, whose concentration is absorbed into the
scrupulous task of blending the perfect amount of powder with the
exact weight of the cannonball – then lights the fuse without
noticing that his vessel has turned and faces a different
direction. The results are just as tragic, as the editors of
Iraqbodycount.net are effectively complicit with the very criminals
behind the violence they claim to be protesting.
It is a symbiotic
relationship in which each finds usefulness in the underhanded
tactics of the other… and success is measured one body at a time.
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Go back to the List of Islamic Terrorist Attacks
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