What is the price of a life?

[earth_as_one]

Jon Tracy is a former Army captain, was a judge advocate in Iraq in 2003-04. Here is his take on civilian casualties of war.

Op-Ed Contributor
Sometimes in War, You Can Put a Price on Life


By JON TRACY
Published: May 16, 2007
Washington
LAST week the United States military compensated the families of 19 Afghans killed when a Marine Special Operations unit opened fire on a civilian crowd in March; the marines involved face charges for unlawful use of force. What did the Afghans receive? Just $2,000 for each fatality, while the 50 people wounded in the same shooting got nothing but an apology from a Marine colonel.
Such cases are vivid reminders of what happens when soldiers at war run amok. As with the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha in 2005 and the rape and murder of a teenager and the killing of her family in Mahmudiya, Iraq, last year, prosecuting the soldiers is only the first step toward justice. Legitimate compensation and a real show of contrition must also be offered. In fact, there is a law authorizing such payments — the Foreign Claims Act — but...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/opinion/16tracy.html

What is the price of a life?

 

[jimmoyer]

Man, when I read that story, again, what a mess.

War is a blunt instrument. We can't fine tune it any better than this.
I understand the marines were not going to be victimized any more and were determined to shoot all the way home after that IUD hit. Most of us untrained mortals would have the same emotion.

And the Afghans thinking we're no better than the Russians!!! Understood.

And they know the US is to be held to a higher standard, a standard they understand to be not applicable to the Russians or the Taliban.

 

[earth_as_one]

Does the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents kill as many civilians as coalition forces? I'm not so sure which side has a greater record of civilian collateral damage.

October 06, 2004


[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]Iraq ministry says coalition kills more civilians than insurgents do[/FONT] [FONT=times new roman, times, serif]By Nancy A. Youssef[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]Knight Ridder Newspapers[/FONT]

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis — most of them civilians — as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry.

Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government....
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002045903_civilians25.html

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Published on Saturday, September 25, 2004 by Knight-Ridder [/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]More Iraqi Civilians Killed by US Forces Than By Insurgents, Data Shows[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]by Nancy A. Youssef[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]BAGHDAD, Iraq - Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder. According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.[/FONT]


http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/0925-02.htm

Since then the Iraq health ministry has been ordered to stop providing civilian death statistics.

U.N. Says Iraq Seals Data on the Civilian Toll

By WARREN HOGE
Published: October 21, 2006
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 20 — The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable.


The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of violence and the effect on Iraqi society.
Concern over the numbers of civilians who have died in Iraq has risen sharply at a time when organized attacks by insurgents are swelling the numbers of victims and when a new report from a team of Iraqi and American researchers shows that more than 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion....

http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/world/middleeast/21statistics.html

I doubt the Iraqis think the US led invasion has made their country safer. Here are some numbers the US government attributes to Saddam Hussein to justify his forcible removal:

Fact Sheet
Office of the White House Press Secretary
Washington, DC
April 4, 2003


Life Under Saddam Hussein: Past Repression and Atrocities by Saddam Hussein's Regime




For over 20 years, the greatest threat to Iraqis has been Saddam Hussein's regime -- he has killed, tortured, raped, and terrorized the Iraqi people and his neighbors for over two decades.
When Iraq is free, past crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Iraqis, will be accounted for, in a post-conflict Iraqi-led process. The United States, members of the coalition, and the international community will work with the Iraqi people to build a strong and credible judicial process to address these abuses.
Under Saddam's regime many hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of his actions, the vast majority of them Muslims. According to a 2001 Amnesty International report, "victims of torture in Iraq are subjected to a wide range of forms of torture, including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings, and electric shocks ... some victims have died as a result and many have been left with permanent physical and psychological damage."
Saddam has had approximately 40 of his own relatives murdered. Allegations of prostitution are used to intimidate opponents of the regime and have been used by the regime to justify the barbaric beheading of women. There have been documented chemical attacks by the regime, from 1983 to 1988, resulting in some 30,000 Iraqi and Iranian deaths.
Human Rights Watch estimates that Saddam's 1987-1988 campaign of terror against the Kurds killed at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds. The Iraqi regime used chemical agents to include mustard gas and nerve agents in attacks against at least 40 Kurdish villages between 1987-1988. The largest was the attack on Halabja which resulted in approximately 5,000 deaths. o 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed during the campaign of terror.
Iraq's 13 million Shi'a Muslims, the majority of Iraq's population of approximately 22 million, face severe restrictions on their religious practice, including a ban on communal Friday prayer, and restriction on funeral processions.
According to Human Rights Watch, "senior Arab diplomats told the London-based Arabic daily newspaper al-Hayat in October [1991] that Iraqi leaders were privately acknowledging that 250,000 people were killed during the uprisings, with most of the casualties in the south." Refugees International reports that
"Oppressive government policies have led to the internal displacement of 900,000 Iraqis, primarily Kurds who have fled to the north to escape Saddam Hussein's Arabization campaigns (which involve forcing Kurds to renounce their Kurdish identity or lose their property) and Marsh Arabs, who fled the government's campaign to dry up the southern marshes for agricultural use. More than 200,000 Iraqis continue to live as refugees in Iran."
In 2002, the U.S. Committee for Refugees estimated that nearly 100,000 Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkomans had previously been expelled, by the regime, from the "central-government-controlled Kirkuk and surrounding districts in the oil-rich region bordering the Kurdish controlled north."
"Over the past five years, 400,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died of malnutrition and disease, preventively, but died because of the nature of the regime under which they are living." (Prime Minister Tony Blair, March 27, 2003) Under the oil-for-food program, the international community sought to make available to the Iraqi people adequate supplies of food and medicine, but the regime blocked sufficient access for international workers to ensure proper distribution of these supplies. Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, coalition forces have discovered military warehouses filled with food supplies meant for the Iraqi people that had been diverted by Iraqi military forces.
The Iraqi regime has repeatedly refused visits by human rights monitors. From 1992 until 2002, Saddam prevented the UN Special Rapporteur from visiting Iraq. The UN Special Rapporteur's September 2001, report criticized the regime for "the sheer number of executions," the number of "extrajudicial executions on political grounds," and "the absence of a due process of the law."
Saddam Hussein's regime has carried out frequent summary executions, including:

• prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in 1984;
• 3,000 prisoners at the Mahjar prison from 1993-1998
• 2,500 prisoners were executed between 1997-1999 in a "prison cleansing campaign;
• 122 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/March 2000;
• 23 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in October 2001; and
• At least 130 Iraqi women were beheaded between June 2000 and April 2001.

http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/19675.htm

Here are numbers some stats on Iraqi civilians deaths:

Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000



By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; Page A12

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Lancet published two studies on the effect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation on Iraqi mortality, the first in 2004, the second (by many of the same authors) in 2006. The studies attempt to estimate the number of excess deaths caused by the occupation, both direct (combatants plus non-combatants) and indirect (due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poor healthcare, etc.).

The first survey[1] published on 29 October 2004, estimated the risk of death following the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq to be 50% higher than that prior to the invasion. This led to an estimate of 98,000 excess deaths (with a range of 8,000 to 194,000, using a 95% CI (confidence interval). The authors called this a conservative estimate, because it excluded the "extreme statistical outlier" data from Falluja. If Fallujah were included, the estimated increased risk of death was 2.5 fold (95% CI: 1.6 to 4.2). The Falluja cluster "indicates a point estimate of about 200,000 excess deaths in the 3% of Iraq represented by this cluster", while no confidence interval is given for this point estimate.

The second survey[2][3][4] published on 11 October 2006, estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, or 2.5% of the population, through the end of June 2006. The new study applied similar methods and involved surveys between May 20 and July 10, 2006.[4] More households were surveyed, allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths....


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_mortality_before_and_after_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq

Compare the Iraqi rate of violent death for the four years since the March 2003 invasion with the previous four and its obvious Iraqis were safer before March 2003.

 

[folcar]

Compare the Iraqi rate of violent death for the four years since the March 2003 invasion with the previous four and its obvious Iraqis were safer before March 2003

Tell that to Dubya and his magic veto pen!

 

[snfu73]

War generally seems to bring out the absolute worst in people...for the most part, anyway.

 

[Toro]

Me?

I'm priceless!

 

[snfu73]

Me?

I'm priceless!

Ummmmm....I guess that's one way of putting it...

 

[earth_as_one]

War generally seems to bring out the absolute worst in people...for the most part, anyway.

That's may be true... for some people. On the other hand, war also tends to bring out the best in people.

For example:
http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/LF/English/6_1_1.asp?id=401

These men were willing to risk their lives to save lives. You can't put a higher price on life than that.

 

[Zzarchov]

That report is more than a little biased.

It rightly includes carbomb fatalities etc under insurgents, and air strikes under coalition.

But any "incidental" deaths related to there being a war in general are all on the coalition side. It takes two sides to wage a war.

Statistics don't lie, but you can sure lie about what those statistics are.


And in the west the price of life was about $750 last I checked, as in thats what it cost to have someone killed on average (USA and USD). In Afghanistan life is free, just say you saw the person in a homosexual relationship, bam, two people killed for free.

 

[earth_as_one]

That report is more than a little biased.

It rightly includes carbomb fatalities etc under insurgents, and air strikes under coalition.

But any "incidental" deaths related to there being a war in general are all on the coalition side. It takes two sides to wage a war.

Statistics don't lie, but you can sure lie about what those statistics are.


And in the west the price of life was about $750 last I checked, as in thats what it cost to have someone killed on average (USA and USD). In Afghanistan life is free, just say you saw the person in a homosexual relationship, bam, two people killed for free.

In the US all you have to say is I saw those guys murder this other guy and bam, they are on death row. I agree many countries lack basic rights and freedoms, but lying to get someone killed can happen almost anywhere the death penalty exists.

I agree it takes two sides to wage war. But in this case, one side lied and manipulated to commit a war crime:

Lessons of Iraq war underscore importance of UN Charter - Annan

[SIZE=-1]16 September 2004 [/SIZE]– Secretary-General Kofi Annan believes that the Iraq war in 2003 demonstrated the need for the international community to address the issue of preventive action in the context of Charter principles and showed the importance of joint efforts on matters of use of force, a United Nations spokesman said today.
Responding to media questions about the Secretary-General's comments in a BBC interview, spokesman Fred Eckhard told a press briefing in New York that in his remarks the Secretary-General had reiterated his well-known position that the military action against Iraq was not in conformity with the UN Charter.
In the interview, Mr. Annan was repeatedly asked whether the war was "illegal." "Yes," he finally said, "I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal."
The Secretary-General said the war in Iraq and its aftermath had brought home painful lessons about the importance of resolving use-of-force issues jointly through the UN. "I think that in the end everybody is concluding that it is best to work together with allies and through the UN to deal with some of those issues.
"And I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time," the Secretary-General told the interviewer, noting that such action needed UN approval and a much broader support of the international community.
Mr. Eckhard stressed that this had been the Secretary-General's longstanding view. The spokesman added that one of the purposes of a High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which the Secretary-General had established, was to look at the issue of preventive war and to see how it could be employed in conformity with the Charter, which does not allow pre-emptive attacks.
"He has over the past more than a year used the words 'not in conformity with the Charter' to describe his view of the Iraq war and of course one of his purposes in establishing the UN panel on change was to look at the question of preventive war and try to bring that in conformity with the Charter principles, which do not promote preventive war," Mr. Eckhard said.
"Since the war he has been emphasizing the need for nations on the Security Council and the UN membership as a whole to pull together, saying it is in everyone's interest that stability be restored to Iraq," the spokesman said. "So once the invasion took place, he did not look back, he looked forward." "But the principle of the Charter, called into question in his view by the invasion, needs to be addressed in a serious way," Mr. Eckhard added. "And he asked the high level panel to look specifically at that issue. That panel is supposed to report by the end of this year and the Secretary-General would formulate his recommendations and put them to the General Assembly."

http://www.un.org/apps/news/storyAr.asp?NewsID=11953&Cr=Iraq&Cr1

Before Annan was SG, his specialty was international law. But the SG is essentially a figurehead with limited powers, especially when compared to the leader of a military superpower.

It could be argued that Iraq's leadership was negligent and somwhat resposible for the US led invasion. But when the US declared war, Iraq was more or less in compliance with UN resolutions, their leaders were telling the truth, they were cooperating and remaining disarmament issues were within months of resolution.

The American government has consistently manipulated perceptions of events regarding Iraq. Most people know today that Iraq did not possess WMD stockpiles when the US invaded. But most people have not realized that that also means Iraq probably hadn't had WMDs for some time. UNSCOM knew with a high degree of certainty that Iraq did not possess WMD stockpiles back in 1998, five years before the invasion.

[FONT=helvetica, arial][SIZE=+1]Iraq says the U.N. is confusing "the major and the minor issues."[/SIZE][/FONT]

TARIQ AZIZ, Deputy Prime Minister, Iraq: UNSCOM is back to its old games, to its old tricks, games of confusing the major issues and the minor issues, since this is the wish of the American administration to perpetuate the situation, to prolong the current situation, to keep the sanctions on the people of Iraq. As long as this is the American wish, you are serving the American policy.
TOM BEARDEN: Butler promptly left Baghdad. Talking to reporters at the London airport, on his way back to New York, Butler said he was mystified by the latest developments.

AMBASSADOR RICHARD BUTLER: It's a slightly weird thing, because, as I said, we're doing quite well in missile and chemical. I mean, we were getting there. If this was a five-lap race, you know, we were halfway into the fifth lap. Why stop the race when you're getting towards the finishing line? I don't know.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec98/butler_8-6a.html

Unless proving a negative is a logical impossibility and Iraq was faced with 100% sanctions until they could prove they did not have WMDs with 100% certainty. Once Iraq realized that a 100% certainty regarding proving a negative has no finish line, they stopped cooperating.

The US and UK used their positions in the UNSC to maintain crippling economic sanctions long after they had served their original purpose, to bomb Iraq with impunity and used UNSCOM to spy on Iraq's legal defense systems.

ACTION ALERT:
Spying in Iraq: From Fact to Allegation September 24, 2002


Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration's drive for war.
Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.'s own intelligence purposes. "United States officials said today that American spies had worked undercover on teams of United Nations arms inspectors," the New York Times reported (1/7/99). According to the Washington Post (3/2/99), the U.S. "infiltrated agents and espionage equipment for three years into United Nations arms control teams in Iraq to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military without the knowledge of the U.N. agency." Undercover U.S. agents "carried out an ambitious spying operation designed to penetrate Iraq's intelligence apparatus and track the movement of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to U.S. and U.N. sources," wrote the Boston Globe (1/6/99). Each of the three news stories ran on the papers' front pages. At first, U.S. officials tried to deny them, but as more details emerged, "spokesmen for the CIA, Pentagon, White House and State Department declined to repeat any categorical denials" (Washington Post, 3/2/99). By the spring of 1999, the UNSCOM spying reported by the papers was accepted as fact by other outlets, and even defended; "Experts say it is naive to believe that the United States and other governments would not have used the opportunity presented by the U.N. commission to spy on a country that provoked the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and that has continued to tangle with U.S. and British forces," USA Today reported (3/3/99).

http://www.fair.org/activism/unscom-history.html

When the allied forces crushed the Iraqi military (killing 30,000 mostly involuntary conscripts), they immediate secured Iraq's oil infrastructure. While allied forces were guarding refineries and pipelines, anarchy ruled Iraq. Between the invasion and resulting anarchy, tens of thousands Iraqis died.

Up until then, there weren't any insurgents in Iraq. Who was responsible for that death and destruction?

Culpability for civilians deaths cannot be attributed equally between the two sides if one side had little to no choice in war and the other side lied and manipulated to start an illegal war for profit.

The side which now resists a foreign occupation resulting from an illegal invasion cannot be held as responsible for the consequences of war as the foreign invaders.

I would judge the leaders of the allied forces 100% responsible for the civilians deaths resulting from their military invasion forces and 50% responsible for the deaths caused by the adversaries of their military forces because of context.