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Chilcot Inquiry Accused of Fixating on West and Ignoring Real Victims
Iraq Body Count group claims attention paid to Iraqi casualties has been derisory
The Chilcot inquiry has "fixated" on decision-making in Whitehall and Washington, obsessed over the ''war at home" and given "derisory" attention to the plight of the main victims, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) claims today.
The Iraq Body Count group has criticised the inquiry led by John Chilcot, above, for ignoring Iraqi casualties. (Photograph: Matt Dunham/PA) Releasing
correspondence with Sir John Chilcot, the IBC, which is widely
considered as the most reliable database of Iraqi civilian deaths, says a
proper "Iraq War Inquest" may be the only way to fill the gap his
inquiry has left.
The inquiry closed its public hearings last month after seeing 140 witnesses but none dealt specifically with civilian casualties, which the IBC calculates as between 97,000 and 106,000.
Other groups have produced much higher estimates but the IBC, a UK-based organisation set up by volunteers to track deaths in Iraq, prides itself on working carefully with data drawn from cross-checked media reports, hospital, morgue, NGOs and official figures.
The five-person Chilcot inquiry team plans to visit Iraq briefly in the next few weeks but the IBC says this appears to be "an afterthought". Looking at the inquiry's focus so far, "one would almost think that the Iraq war largely took place in Britain", it says.
"There are certainly a few instances of 'home-grown terrorism' on British soil which may well be inextricably linked to events in Iraq. But in the main, this war's largest and most irrevocable effects are on Iraqis, not on British (or American) citizens."
In a letter to Chilcot a year ago, which it publishes today, the UK-based IBC welcomed the inquiry and its broad terms of reference, unlike those of earlier ones.
It quoted a group of 52 retired British diplomats who attacked Tony Blair's decision to take the UK to war and described the coalition forces' failure to track Iraqi deaths a a disgrace.
Urging Chilcot to fill the gap, the letter said: "It is impossible to establish the wisdom of actions taken … if the full consequences in human welfare are not taken into account. Casualty data are perhaps the most glaring indication of the full costs of war". It is signed by Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda, IBC's main researchers.
Three months later Chilcot replied, saying: "The inquiry team were already aware of the work of the Iraq Body Count … The information you have collated will be very useful to help us in this task." Today's IBC statement says that the attention paid by the inquiry to Iraqi casualties, whether killed or injured, civilian or combatant, has been derisory.
The IBC was not invited to give evidence, although the US special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction used its work in a report to Congress.
It cites the only two cases where the issue came up briefly at the inquiry, once during the six-hour questioning of Tony Blair and again in a brief exchange with armed forces minister Adam Ingram.
Posing a rhetorical question on whether the British government had a duty to count casualties since the invasion, Ingram told the inquiry: "Are you prepared to put units in every one of the hospitals to count the bodies in and the bodies out?" 'No', would have been my answer".
The IBC accuses the inquiry of "sharing this reluctance to inquire too deeply into the human consequences of the war (when these humans happen not to be British officials, bureaucrats and politicians, but ordinary Iraqis)" and says the inquiry is taking its cue from the government that appointed it.
The IBC proposes a full judicial investigation into all casualties in Iraq, whether dead or injured. As a matter of international and domestic law, it says, the UK bears equal responsibility if it aided and assisted any of its allies in causing disproportionate civilian casualties or other breaches of law.
A spokesperson for the inquiry said in a statement last night: "Throughout its work, the inquiry has been acutely aware of the violence in Iraq which has resulted in the deaths and injuries of so many.
"The drivers for that violence and the British response to it has been a theme throughout the inquiry's investigations. From the outset of the Iraq inquiry, Sir John Chilcot has said that the committee hopes to visit Iraq and hear from Iraqis. He repeated this at the close of the last round of public hearings.
"The committee hope that such a visit will be possible as it would give the inquiry an opportunity to hear and see at first hand the situation in Iraq and the continuing impact of the violence.
"The insights and understanding gained would inform the inquiry's report, which it aims to publish around the turn of the year."
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30 Comments so far
Show AllCould it be that the IBC wants a complete reckoning??? Explain your perfidious intentions you varlets. Do you want the "good guys", namely us, to have our reputations besmirched by divulging the unvarnished truth? Remember, whenever we do something, that something is always a good thing because we ARE always the GOOD GUYS. If a couple hundred thousand or so "innocent" civilians were wiped out by our forces they just couldn't have been innocent. The "good guys" don't wipe out innocents. QED
It's misleading to suggest that the roughly 100,000 dead listed by IBC represent "Iraqi civilian deaths." IBC makes no attempt to count all Iraqi civilian deaths that are the outcome of the 2003 invasion. It attempts to count VIOLENT deaths caused by the 2003 invasion. There's a big difference. Invasions and occupations and wars typically take their largest toll through structural violence (caused by anything from food shortages to impoverishment and despair) rather than direct violence. So we should be even more scornful of the Chilcot enquiry than this article suggests. Let's not go around saying only 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion (and let's not forget the deaths caused by the "sanctions" in Iraqi between 1990 and 2003).
I agree, 911SATYA. Well said!
Thankyou, all of that ABSOLUTELY needed to be said.
Also, the IBC is a COUNT of each death reported in at least two western media outlets. It means that each death counted is well documented, but obviously, only a fraction of Iraqi deaths will be reported in the western media. For an estimate of the number of deaths, please refer to the Lancet report, which is an estimate, and which estimated 1.2 million deaths between 2003 and 2006.
Us good guys have not only wiped out the innocent, we have wiped out innocence. We have a LOT to answer for. Not one of us can make the excuse "we didn't know" or "we didn't have any power". That didn't fly for Germans after the war, and it won't fly for us.
IBC's estimates contrast greatly with the John Hopkins study, which used a methodology that has been used many times in conflict zones (wars), and the State Dept has cited such statistics, except the John Hopkins numbers from Iraq whose numbers were shunned by GWBush's State Dept.
Here is a very straightforward article written in 2008, that compares the IBC's methods with the John Hopkin's Survey's methods.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-iraq/iraq_deaths_4011.jsp
The Lancet Survey of Random Gravediggers across Iraq came up with the, I believe 500,000 to 800,000 figure. Counting extra deaths makes sense to me.
Also Madelin Albright admitted to 250,000 deaths just from sanctions.
1.5 million people died by 1996, according to the UN report, 500,000 of them were children.
There was nothing accidental about those deaths. Iraq had plenty of brackish water and unsanitary water. Water treatment plants and the power plants which powered them were necessary for Iraq's survival. These were bombed, and the sanctions were used to prevent parts for repair. The US Government knew precisely what the effect of destroying Iraq's power stations and their water treatment plants would be:-
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html
The lack of food did not kill people so much as the lack of clean water. The majority of patients in Iraq's hospitals were stricken with amoebic dysentery, gastroenteritis and other waterborne diseases.
Correct. There certainly was nothing accidental about the deaths from waterborne diseases. This was written up some years ago.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713673484
The Iraq Body Count's assessment that we have killed between 97,000 and 106,000 Iraqis is laughable. Only an idiot would believe that. For all I know, the IBC might be on the CIA's payroll.
They yap about that they count ONLY CONFIRMED DEATHS at the hands of infidels... from Sir John Chilcot's air-conditioned office in London. But we are responsible for every death, every act of violence... crippling, displacement, etc, that would not have occurred without the invasion. We are responsible for every child missing a day of school. We are responsible for every man beating his wife while under maximum stress caused by our... our... well... Powell called the Sudan killings a genocide as soon as 50,000 people were killed. By that calculus, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are genocides. So are Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnam, and many other incursions and bombings by US forces.
Well said, coolhead.
Yes, stop reading when you see the IBC count taken seriously.
Yet more perfidy.
It's not a body count, it's a cover up. War crimes have no statute of limitations.
If Chilcot is the word; truth is a turd and justice a flying away bird. My way of preserving sanity. Tony
8 trillion dollars added to the national debt thanks to George bush and his wars based on lies.
Read it and weep republicans, Bush came into office with a 4 trillion dollar national debt, he left us with a 12 trillion dollar debt 9 years later.
8,000,000,000,000 divided by 300000 thousand dead in Iraq, thats half way between Lancet estimates and the IBC = 26 million.
It cost us 26 million dollars per Iraqi death.
I cant even say another word.
, "the IBC, which is widely considered as the most reliable database of Iraqi civilian deaths," what?????
"Are you prepared to put units in every one of the hospitals to count the bodies in and the bodies out?" 'No', would have been my answer".
Why not put a doctor in each hosptial, and let them count while they fix up the USA's latest victims?
USA, why do you keep killing people?
Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Powell, et. al.: "Dead Iraqis? Who cares?"
“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the world-a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer Whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum and that is how history will remember us.” (Hunter S. Thompson)
No British or American inquiry will come even close to the truth on the number of civilians massacred in Iraq by the born again contractors and the United States and British forces. Bush and Blair prayed together to make mayhem together and the slaughter was on.
Don't forget that there were millions of people all over the world , who left their homes and some traveled for hours to join peace activist in a march against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There were hundreds of thousands of people, who despite the blackout on information about the impact on sanction against Iraq,learned about the Iraqi deaths sanctions caused and peace activist violated the sanctions and rallied against them.
There were the billions of people in the industrialized world and millions of Americans who just did not give a damn. As hard as we tried to get our neighbors and country men to oppose their government policies that we knew were unjust and barbaric they did not care. And after 9-11 instead of doing some soul searching and recognizing the beam in there own eye they still won't listen to the truth and voices of reason.
Bring America Back !!!!
**100,000 violent deaths seems an absurdly low estimate, when considering the initial shock and awe of the illegal
US invasion used 40,000 missiles.
**Over a million displaced Iraqis were forced accross
neighboring countries borders--seeking refuge from the missile attacks, lucky to just be alive.
**King George lied our country into this internationally illegal invasion and was specifically warned by the Secretary of the UN, NOT to invade that sovereign nation.
There never were any WMD's in control of Saddam Hussein,
and most certainly NO ties to the attacks of 9/11.
**Why these sad and degrading facts of recent history are being ignored when the Afghan plans to proliferate war are considered, I will never know.
**Preemptory Wars are patently illegal, immoral, and basically inhumane==these should always be the primary considerations. Stay out of Iran !!!!
We are gifted with the continuation in Afghanistan because Obama never realized that when Iraq settled down, Afghanistan would hot up. He and his advisors are so inept, so inexperienced, especially in foreign affairs, he thought it was safe to appeal to the folks that thought the wars were justified by using Afghanistan as the "Good War"
He was a weak fool then and he remains a weak fool now.
Stay out of the Middle East, period!
The simple fact here is that one death was too many. In this case since it was an unwarrented attack of choice, 1 or 100,000 makes no difference.
Nor does the excuse that civilians were killed by roadside bombs or other Iraqui's count.
If we were not there, if we had not stayed in occupation these deaths would not have happened.
It was the choice of our cowards in office but we are responsible. All of us.
The German/Nazi comparisons are eggs and oranges.
This is outrageous. The British power elites are apparently learning all the wrong things from their US cousins on this side of what they call the pond. Damn it! Give me a break!
AD
Before the invasion, for years an embargo of Iraq starved the people, and if we total up all the dead, including all those wasted by unnecessary illness, the number would equal or exceed a million.