Fallujah
But in letters to US President Geroge Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Mr Allawi, Mr Annan warned that a large-scale attack on Fallujah could undermine efforts to promote stability.
…and contrast
Mosques in Fallujah: 100
Mosques used as Fighting Positions / Weapons Caches: 60
Hospitals Used as Defensive Positions: 3
Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Factories: 11
Slaughter House/Torture Chambers: 3
Number of Major Weapons Storage Areas in the City: 203
Evidence of Foreign Fighter involvement: 2
UPDATE 2004/11/28:
Jason counters. I tried rebutting in detail by email, but Thunderbird hung. Oh well. In brief: 14k civilians certainly weren’t killed in Fallujah alone, nor was the assault on Fallujah about WMDs. There might not have been any pre-invasion links to Al Qaeda, but there were certainly Al Qaeda links to the Fallujah “insurgents”. Likewise, while the Fallujah assault was certainly expensive, in blood as well as treasure, it certainly didn’t cost $105 billion USD. Oh, and 62 journalists weren’t killed in Fallujah alone either.
So for the relevant numbers, here’s some context:
Number of people displaced prior to attack: 300,000
Number of people displaced from Iraq when the US invade and occupy: under 600k of 20M
Number of people displaced from Fallujah when “insurgents” occupy it: around 300k of 300k.
Number of people killed in Fallujah offensive: 2,000
Number of insurgents killed: over 1,200
Number of Iraqi/coalition troops killed: under 100
Number of unarmed insurgents killed on videotape: 1
Number of surrendering insurgents on that videotape: 1
Number of surrendering insurgents killed on that videotape: 0
Number of unvideotaped incidents of insurgents faking death, then opening fire on marines: 1
I’ll also go with:
Number of journalists killed in Iraq: 62
Number of journalists killed in Iraq according to CPJ: 36
Number of journalists killed by US forces: 9
Number of journalists killed by “insurgents”: 19
Number of journalists killed in Algeria in 1995: 24
I’m not sure what the point of saying “links to Al Qaeda: 0” is, when Saddam’s payment to Palestinian suicide bombers wasn’t even a nominal secret, nor what the point of focussing on the “no WMDs” point is given both WMD programs ready to be restarted, and failing sanctions. Or what the point of complaining about missing explosives is, if you’re then going to imply a lack of existing WMDs made Iraq effectively harmless.
For some perspective on the dollar figure, annual US aid to Egypt of on the order of $2B USD, almost 2/3rds of which is military aid, and that’s been going on since 1975, amounting to $50B USD up to now. These compare to Israel receiving around $2.7B USD in aid annually, a little of 3/4ths being military aid. Apparently that’s amounted to $84B USD since 1949. The purpose of both payments is to try to stabilise the Middle East somewhat, by ensuring Israel can defend itself, and by bribing Egypt not to attack Israel (Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, and began receiving $1.3B USD in military aid from the US in 1979). cf the 1973 Yom Kippur war (in which 23k people died, apparently).
Whether $100B spent in a few years trying to reform Iraq is better than $134B spent over half a century trying to preserve an armed detente will be interesting to see.
I’ll leave playing with body counts to others. I can’t say I’m spectacularly shocked by 14k civilian deaths in a war where one side isn’t willing to follow the Geneva conventions though. (And from what I can tell, Iraqbodycount includes both political assassinations, and civilian deaths due to terrorist activity)
Okay, maybe that wasn’t so brief.