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Bob Herbert Contradicts CIVIC's Myth of a Compassionate Occupation
Compare and contrast
CIVIC's view:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21799/
"The Marines have also been paying compensation in Fallujah and Najaf. These data serve as a good barometer of the civilian costs of battle in both cities.
These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The military should also want to release this information for the purposes of comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year. It suggested that since the U.S.-led invasion there had been 100,000 deaths in Iraq."
Catch the sly suggestion that the Lancet is incorrect because the US military purportedly has maintained statistics that refute it? Apparently, it didn't appreciate CIVIC's helpful advice that it release the records for propaganda purposes.
But, then, the combat is a little more brutal than what CIVIC would have you believe. No doubt that the database maintained by the US military includes all of the deaths and injuries resulted from the conduct described in this commentary:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8724.htm
[From 'Gook' to 'Raghead'
By BOB HERBERT
05/02/05 "New York Times" - - I spent some time recently with Aidan Delgado, a 23-year-old religion major at New College of Florida, a small, highly selective school in Sarasota.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before hearing anything about the terror attacks that would change the direction of American history, Mr. Delgado enlisted as a private in the Army Reserve. Suddenly, in ways he had never anticipated, the military took over his life. He was trained as a mechanic and assigned to the 320th Military Police Company in St. Petersburg. By the spring of 2003, he was in Iraq. Eventually he would be stationed at the prison compound in Abu Ghraib.
Mr. Delgado's background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew up overseas. He spent eight years in Egypt, speaks Arabic and knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East. He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.
"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."
The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."
He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "
"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.
Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.
He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.
Mr. Delgado, an extremely thoughtful and serious young man, balked at the entire scene. "It drove me into a moral quagmire," he said. "I walked up to my commander and gave him my weapon. I said: 'I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to kill anyone. This war is wrong. I'll stay. I'll finish my job as a mechanic. But I'm not going to hurt anyone. And I want to be processed as a conscientious objector.' "
He stayed with his unit and endured a fair amount of ostracism. "People would say I was a traitor or a coward," he said. "The stuff you would expect."
In November 2003, after several months in Nasiriya in southern Iraq, the 320th was redeployed to Abu Ghraib. The violence there was sickening, Mr. Delgado said. Some inmates were beaten nearly to death. The G.I.'s at Abu Ghraib lived in cells while most of the detainees were housed in large overcrowded tents set up in outdoor compounds that were vulnerable to mortars fired by insurgents. The Army acknowledges that at least 32 Abu Ghraib detainees were killed by mortar fire.
Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.
Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "
E-mail: bobherb [at] nytimes.com]
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21799/
"The Marines have also been paying compensation in Fallujah and Najaf. These data serve as a good barometer of the civilian costs of battle in both cities.
These statistics demonstrate that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognize they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimize mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy. The military should also want to release this information for the purposes of comparison with reports such as the Lancet study published late last year. It suggested that since the U.S.-led invasion there had been 100,000 deaths in Iraq."
Catch the sly suggestion that the Lancet is incorrect because the US military purportedly has maintained statistics that refute it? Apparently, it didn't appreciate CIVIC's helpful advice that it release the records for propaganda purposes.
But, then, the combat is a little more brutal than what CIVIC would have you believe. No doubt that the database maintained by the US military includes all of the deaths and injuries resulted from the conduct described in this commentary:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8724.htm
[From 'Gook' to 'Raghead'
By BOB HERBERT
05/02/05 "New York Times" - - I spent some time recently with Aidan Delgado, a 23-year-old religion major at New College of Florida, a small, highly selective school in Sarasota.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before hearing anything about the terror attacks that would change the direction of American history, Mr. Delgado enlisted as a private in the Army Reserve. Suddenly, in ways he had never anticipated, the military took over his life. He was trained as a mechanic and assigned to the 320th Military Police Company in St. Petersburg. By the spring of 2003, he was in Iraq. Eventually he would be stationed at the prison compound in Abu Ghraib.
Mr. Delgado's background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew up overseas. He spent eight years in Egypt, speaks Arabic and knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East. He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.
"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."
The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."
He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "
"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.
Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.
He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.
Mr. Delgado, an extremely thoughtful and serious young man, balked at the entire scene. "It drove me into a moral quagmire," he said. "I walked up to my commander and gave him my weapon. I said: 'I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to kill anyone. This war is wrong. I'll stay. I'll finish my job as a mechanic. But I'm not going to hurt anyone. And I want to be processed as a conscientious objector.' "
He stayed with his unit and endured a fair amount of ostracism. "People would say I was a traitor or a coward," he said. "The stuff you would expect."
In November 2003, after several months in Nasiriya in southern Iraq, the 320th was redeployed to Abu Ghraib. The violence there was sickening, Mr. Delgado said. Some inmates were beaten nearly to death. The G.I.'s at Abu Ghraib lived in cells while most of the detainees were housed in large overcrowded tents set up in outdoor compounds that were vulnerable to mortars fired by insurgents. The Army acknowledges that at least 32 Abu Ghraib detainees were killed by mortar fire.
Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.
Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "
E-mail: bobherb [at] nytimes.com]
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By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - Iraqi civilians who have suffered from U.S. military operations face steep obstacles in obtaining compensation for the deaths of their loved ones or material damage, human rights analysts say.
The case of Italian agent Nicola Calipari, gunned down at a U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad on March 4 as he was escorting an Italian hostage to freedom, shows how reluctant the United States is to admit culpability, even in high-profile cases.
The United States exonerated American forces in the incident, but Rome on Monday blamed nervous U.S. troops.
"There is no reason to think that when a nameless Iraqi without international connections is the victim, the U.S. military would take it even remotely seriously," said Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank that opposes the U.S. military involvement in Iraq.
Statistics on civilian deaths in cross fire or at checkpoints in Iraq are scarce. Any released figures usually refer only to Baghdad and cover limited periods.
Marla Ruzicka, a humanitarian-aid worker, campaigned to persuade the U.S. military to keep and release civilian casualty figures and helped persuade Congress to authorize $20 million for families of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. forces.
Ruzicka herself died on April 16 when her car was caught in an insurgent attack.
Just before her death, Ruzicka wrote in a report that she had received information from the U.S. military that 29 civilians were killed by small-arms fire in Baghdad alone during firefights between U.S. troops and insurgents between Feb. 28 and April 5.
The United States allows Iraqis to seek compensation for material damage, death or injury, but claims must be due to a "non-combat situation" and prove wrongful action or negligence.
An investigation by the Dayton Daily News in October analyzed 4,611 civil claims in Iraq against the U.S. military and found that three out of four were denied.
The average payment for a civilian death was $4,421. In some cases, Iraqis received $2,500 sympathy payments without going through the claims procedure.
RULES "KAFKAESQUE"
The claims process is "Kafkaesque" in complexity and designed to frustrate most Iraqis, said a joint report in early 2004 by Occupation Watch and the Defense of Human Rights in Iraq, two groups monitoring U.S. military operations.
"The U.S. military's definition of a 'combat situation' is elastic and ephemeral, and because the rules of engagement are secret, it is difficult to understand what legal space exists for people to have their cases heard and receive compensation," the report said.
"Because of the way the compensation system is structured and managed, the American troops have adopted an atmosphere of impunity. Arrogant and violent behavior goes unpunished and continues," they said.
Steven Boylan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, said in an e-mail to Reuters that after an incident that caused casualties, a commander would normally start an inquiry and name an investigating officer. No Iraqis are included in such investigations.
U.S. personnel believed to have committed crimes are put on trial, Boylan said. Last month, the military held a hearing into whether to court martial 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano for the premeditated murder of two Iraqis in April 2004. A ruling is pending.
In October 2003, Human Rights Watch published a lengthy report on civilian casualties in Iraq, saying it had collected credible reports of 94 deaths in Baghdad between May and September of that year that warranted investigation.
The organization recommended ways to lower civilian casualties and provide compensation but said it saw no evidence its findings were taken seriously by U.S. officials.
"Certainly no one in the U.S. government told us our ideas had any merit," said Joe Stork, of the Human Rights Watch Middle East division.
The United States does not keep count of Iraqi civilian casualties. The British medical journal, The Lancet, last October put the toll since the U.S. invasion of March 2003 at around 100,000, most caused by U.S. air attacks at the war's beginning.
The London-based group Iraq Body Count, which tallies only deaths directly reported by the media or tallied by official bodies, puts the total at between 21,000 and 24,000. For recent months, deaths have been in the 400-600 range, most caused by insurgent attacks.
Stork said U.S. investigations of Iraqi casualties were insufficiently rigorous.
"When there are civilian casualties, the immediate commander interviews the soldiers on the ground and makes a decision on whether it should be referred on for further investigation. In very few cases does it move beyond this immediate inquiry," he said.
Sometimes, the U.S. military is forced to investigate, such as when journalists for international news organizations are killed. Even then, critics say the investigations have not been timely, serious or thorough.