04-08-2010, 03:54 AM
I'll quote what one of my favorite Salon columnists, Glenn Greenwald, said about this particular video and its response "The value of the Wikileaks/Iraq video and the Afghanistan revelation is not that they exposed unusually horrific events. The value is in realizing that these event are anything but unusual."
"A major reason there are hundreds of thousands of dead innocent civilians in Iraq, and thousands more in Afghanistan, is because this is what we do. This is why so many of those civilians are dead. What one sees on that video is how we conduct our wars. That's why it's repulsive to watch people -- including some "liberals" -- attack WikiLeaks for slandering The Troops, or complain that objections to these actions unfairly disparage the military because "our guys are the good guys" and they act differently "99.99999999% of the time." That is blatantly false. Just as was true of the deceitful attempt to depict the Abu Ghraib abusers as rogue "bad apples" once their conduct was exposed with photographs (when the reality was they were acting in complete consistency with authorized government policy), the claim that what was shown on that video is some sort of outrageous departure from U.S. policy is demonstrably false. In a perverse way, the typical morally depraved neocons who are justifying these killings are actually being more honest than those trying to pretend this is some sort of rare and unusual event: those who support having the U.S. invade and wage war on other countries are endorsing precisely this behavior."
As for 'wrongful' deaths:
The Iraq Body Count (IBC) figure of 94,902 – 103,549 civilian deaths reported in English-language media (including Arabic media translated into English) up to December, 2009 includes civilian deaths due to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and increased criminal violence. The IBC site states: "it should be noted that many deaths will probably go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media."
The Associated Press stated that more than 110,600 Iraqis had been killed since the start of the war to April 2009. This number is per the Health Ministry tally of 87,215 covering January 1, 2005 to February 28, 2009 combined with counts of casualties for 2003–2004, and after February 29, 2009 from hospital sources and media reports.
"A major reason there are hundreds of thousands of dead innocent civilians in Iraq, and thousands more in Afghanistan, is because this is what we do. This is why so many of those civilians are dead. What one sees on that video is how we conduct our wars. That's why it's repulsive to watch people -- including some "liberals" -- attack WikiLeaks for slandering The Troops, or complain that objections to these actions unfairly disparage the military because "our guys are the good guys" and they act differently "99.99999999% of the time." That is blatantly false. Just as was true of the deceitful attempt to depict the Abu Ghraib abusers as rogue "bad apples" once their conduct was exposed with photographs (when the reality was they were acting in complete consistency with authorized government policy), the claim that what was shown on that video is some sort of outrageous departure from U.S. policy is demonstrably false. In a perverse way, the typical morally depraved neocons who are justifying these killings are actually being more honest than those trying to pretend this is some sort of rare and unusual event: those who support having the U.S. invade and wage war on other countries are endorsing precisely this behavior."
As for 'wrongful' deaths:
The Iraq Body Count (IBC) figure of 94,902 – 103,549 civilian deaths reported in English-language media (including Arabic media translated into English) up to December, 2009 includes civilian deaths due to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and increased criminal violence. The IBC site states: "it should be noted that many deaths will probably go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media."
The Associated Press stated that more than 110,600 Iraqis had been killed since the start of the war to April 2009. This number is per the Health Ministry tally of 87,215 covering January 1, 2005 to February 28, 2009 combined with counts of casualties for 2003–2004, and after February 29, 2009 from hospital sources and media reports.