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[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 03:59:16PM -0400, Joey Carr wrote:
> First of all, no doubt the Ba'athists are uniformly horrible people, ought
> to be executed to the last, but even if that were fact it would not excuse
> an unjust war.

I'm not arguing about justice; I don't claim to know whether it was
just or not. I was simply disputing the facts as presented.
 
> I wanted to admonish you to check you figures about how many Iraqi
> casualties occured... certainly there were more than a couple thousand,
> they were dying three hundred to an "engagement".

Soldiers? Presumably, they fought to preserve the uniformly horrible
party you mention above. Most of the stories I heard about had the rest
of the army basically disappearing back to their homes once released
from any sort of control.
 
> But, perhaps not suprizingly, there's almost no reliable information
> available on the subject.
> 
> Here's the most reputable source I could find quickly:
> 
> http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/World/iraq030528_casualties.html
> 
> This source lists:
> 620 civilian deaths in Baghdad, 256 in Najaf, 425 in Karbala and as many 
> as 1,100 in Nasiriyah

So, 620+256+425+1100 = 2401, or roughly speaking, "a couple of thousand".
Which is what I said.

But that's assuming that "people out of uniform who died" is equivalent
to "civilians". As far as I can recall, one of the first things many
soldiers outside of the area around Bagdahd and Tirik did was strip off
their uniforms. But I could be ill-informed - lord knows I wasn't there.

There's this site:

 http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial_june1203.htm

...which seems to claim around five thousand or more, though the home
page says between six and eight. They count looters and such, too, though.

I dunno - has anyone compared these numbers to the numbers of skulls
they've pulled out of those mass graves in Kurdish areas or the South?

Steve

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