Need a civilian casualty counter?

[Chewbacca]

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Well, between 202-280 and still counting. The data-base on the site list an incident-by-incident accounts of civilian deaths.

I wonder how many dead it will take those sitting on the fence to come out and oppose this war. I wonder how many dead it will take for a stalwart war supporter to change their views?

I know that the coalition says they are going out of their way to spare civilians. I know that "collateral damage" is a part of war. And I know Saddam's regime kills its own people as well.

Waging war and causing more than zero deaths in my name and by my nation will never be conscience-able to me and considering how set in my ways I am, the point of this post is not to start a debate if civilian casualities are right or wrong (though ya'll can debate all you want) [img]smile.gif[/img]

I am still looking for a similiar counter for military casualties.

[Luvian]

I consider Saddam to be fully willing to blow some civilian buildings and then accuse the Coalition of it. He did worse in the past.

[ 03-25-2003, 11:21 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

[John D Harris]

Here's a link to a post I made that has some more body counts (about 1/4 of the way down the thread page 1)
http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cg...;f=14;t=000448

After reading all the links in my post I'll ask how many more are needed to die before the fence sitters get off the fence and support the war? Then how many more deaths are needed for the anti war folks to support this war?

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by John D Harris: Here's a link to a post I made that has some more body counts (about 1/4 of the way down the thread page 1) http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cg...;f=14;t=000448 After reading all the links in my post I'll ask how many more are needed to die before the fence sitters get off the fence and support the war? Then how many more deaths are needed for the anti war folks to support this war?

Good questions.

I imagine if mass ethnic cleansing of thousands and use of womd were happening recently in Iraq, then war may be justifiable and the few hundreds or thousands civilian deaths caused by the war are weighed against the thousands or millions saved from extermination. By killing innocents we add to the untimely deaths and personal tragedies and from what I can tell, Iraq hasn't been capable of genocide in quite a while. If genocide were imminent or actually happening then we should put a stop to it.

I did say that Saddam kills his people and the links you posted John are tragic, but besides the point. The civilian deaths being counted in this thread are those being caused by coalition aggression, not Iraqi tyranny. You may see a connection between to the two but I don't.

Darn, and I said I wasn't looking for a debate! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 03-26-2003, 02:31 AM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

[Bardan the Slayer]

Originally posted by Luvian: I consider Saddam to be fully willing to blow some civilian buildings and then accuse the Coalition of it. He did worse in the past.

He also has a reputation from the first Gulf war of declaring that "X" number of civilians were killed by allied bombing on a certain day. The only problem was that no allied bombing runs took place that day.

I don't trust Iraqi casualty reports as far as I can spit.

[khazadman]

Well I would consider the 100,000 or more Shiites in the south who have been killed since the last war to be a good try at ethnic cleansing Chewbacca. And who knows how many Kurds they've killed.

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by khazadman: Well I would consider the 100,000 or more Shiites in the south who have been killed since the last war to be a good try at ethnic cleansing Chewbacca. And who knows how many Kurds they've killed.

I would love to see the source of this 100,000 dead figure, please. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Chewbacca]

Here are some statistics for the first gulf war that include only military casualties:
http://www.sci.fi/~fta/stats.htm

Although they are not civilan death,s it twists my gut to think that upwards estimates of Iraqi casualities were in the 100,000 ballpark figure. Thats alot of dead sons and sad moms. I couldn't tell you if we could estimate the Iraqi death toll in the current conflict...but these stats make me wonder.

[ 03-27-2003, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

[Thoran]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: Here are some statistics for the first gulf war that include only military casualties: http://www.sci.fi/~fta/stats.htm Although they are not civilan death,s it twists my gut to think that upwards estimates of Iraqi casualities were in the 100,000 ballpark figure. Thats alot of dead sons and sad moms. I couldn't tell you if we could estimate the Iraqi death toll in the current conflict...but these stats make me wonder.

That was the high side... looks like one of the sources on that site estimated the casualties could be only in the low tens of thousands. That's not to say that it's OK that only 10,000 died, but compared to historical warfare it's relatively light IMO.

[Azred]

Why focus on civilian casualties? In a military action civilian deaths are to be expected; besides, the Coalition forces are not targeting non-military personnel. It is a shame that civilian have died and will die, but life isn't always fair or pretty.
The focus at this time should be on removing Hussein as a force of instability in an already-volatile region. He should have been removed back in 1991, but that is a topic for another thread.