Report says military distorts war deaths

[Barrett808]

Report says military distorts war deaths
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff, 2/18/2004

WASHINGTON -- By refusing to make public its estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has undercut international support for the US campaigns in those countries and has made the postwar stabilization of the two societies more difficult, according to an independent report to be released today that accuses the Pentagon of appearing indifferent to the civilian cost of war.

The analysis by the Project on Defense Alternatives, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, concludes that the Pentagon has not fully disclosed in recent years accidental deaths and injuries inflicted upon civilian populations by American military forces. Its failure to do so has made it more difficult to predict how local populations will receive the United States after a conflict, the report said.

According to the report -- "Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a `New Warfare' " -- the Pentagon's stance has also distorted the national debate over whether to go to war.

The report says the US military has wrongly given the impression that its high-tech form of warfare is extremely low risk, creating unrealistic expectations that war produces very low casualties.

Ignoring evidence to the contrary, the report says, the Pentagon has also said that estimates of the number of war casualties cannot be known and that such numbers nonetheless would not be meaningful in assessing the overall success of a military operation.

"Distortion of the civilian casualty issue can only serve to impede the sober assessment of US policy, policy options, and their consequences," states a draft copy of the report, provided to the Globe. "It is antithetical both to well-informed public debate and to sensible policy making."

(more)

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2004/02/18/report_says_military_distorts_war_deaths/

[dArKeR]

1. What about the Whore Media along with AWOL distorting the 'injury' reports

Let's see these citizens and soldiers with no arms, legs, blind, deaf, unable to speak from burned lungs...

The entire Media should be tried for TREASON!

[DenverDem]

3. We must start demoninzing the true demons

that are the radical wrong wing "conservatives" and their equally treasonous fellow travelers in the corporate state media.

The pendulum must swing all the way from the idiotic slandering of compassionate liberals to the truth that is the treason of the right. They are liars, thieves and murderers and need to be brought to the alter of justice to meet their just desserts.

Rather than allowing ourselves to be compromised by "electability" a far better strategy to follow is to assert the absolute correctness of progressivism and the propagandistic lie of "conservatism" (i.e. corporate globalist feudalism).

[DenverDem]

2. Official prevarication to the willfully ignorant

has brought us where we are today, the most universally despised tyrannists on earth. We keep telling ourselves we are hated for "our freedom" but this sociopathological denial syndrome only gets us deeper in karmic debt.

Horrific, long term effects of depleted uranium and massive "collateral damage" by our "surgical" attacks insure that we will be hated for generations to come. This is being done in our name with our money and we all bear the collective guilt of these hideous crimes against humanity. We face a long road of rebuilding relationships with the rest of the world and it must begin in November.

[terryg11]

4. I hear you

but doubt many others will.

some people just don't get it, not unless they have lived it themselves.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

5. The military also under-reports our own injuries

which I have read are in excess of 10,000. And we all know the "If you don't see them, they don't exist" policy * has toward showing the return of U.S. war dead.

BTW, did you notice the Pentagon is echoing the "Saddam caused the war because he didn't follow U.N. resolutions" reason for starting an unprovoked war? I expect propaganda from the enemy -- not from our own people, though.