Top U.S. General: 15,000 Insurgents Killed or Caught

[bigtree]

story: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050126/ts_nm/iraq_general_dc_1

15,000 Insurgents? This is the democracy that Bush promises Iraqis? How did we determine that all killed were 'insurgents'?

Remember:

Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq-

Minimum: 15493

Maximum: 17721

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/


Iraq Body Count (IBC) website has published its analysis of the civilian dealth toll in the April 2004 siege of Falluja. This analysis leads to the conclusion that betweeen 572 and 616 of the approximately 800 reported deaths were of civilians, with over 300 of these being women and children.
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/index.php#pr9

[jpgray]

1. How does this square with their initial estimate of 5,000 insurgents?

Or their later uptick to 20,000? Hilarious. Are they including dead civilians, are they lying now, or were they lying then?

:crazy:

[bigtree]

2. Iraq battling more than 200,000 insurgents: intelligence chief

AFP: 1/3/2005

"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence service director General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani said in an interview ahead of the January 30 elections.

Shahwani said the number includes at least 40,000 hardcore fighters but rises to more than 200,000 members counting part-time fighters and volunteers who provide rebels everything from intelligence and logistics to shelter.

>>>>>

Past US military assessments on the insurgency's size have been revised upwards from 5,000 to 20,000 full and part-time members, in the last half year, most recently in October.

Defense experts said it was impossible to divine the insurgency's total number, but called Shahwani's estimate a valid guess, with as much credence, if not more, than any US numbers.

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?ID=35545

[theresistance]

3. Events in Iraq have proved you can never

trust these "body counts" issued by the US military. Most are inevitably innocent people. Even when "insurgents" and "militants" are killed, they are still Iraqi civilians and people's fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands - people fighting against the occupation.

[bigtree]

5. and worse . . .

. . . mostly just folks in the way of our ignorant, immoral, illegal occupation, shot down at checkpoints by nervous troops, demolished by our indiscriminate bombings, and caught up in search and destroy missions bent on intimidation and recrimination.

[underpants]

4. My that's a mighty big "hand full" isn't it?

:grr: