Return of the body counts

[link|http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/11/body_counts/index.html| Salon].

Return of the body counts
With Americans souring on the war in Iraq, the U.S. military has started talking up the number of insurgents killed. Are we headed down the same corrupting road we did in Vietnam?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mark Benjamin

June 11, 2005 | The body counts are back. For the first time since Vietnam, the U.S. military has begun regularly reporting the number of enemy killed in the war zone -- in contradiction, apparently, to prior statements by its own top brass.

"Marines Kill 100 Fighters in Sanctuary Near Syria" was a front page headline in the Washington Post last month. The body count, coming from a Marine spokesman, was carried in other major papers that day. What was striking about the factoid, besides the elegantly even number, was that it showed how the U.S. military has increasingly released body counts in reports depicting successful operations in Iraq -- despite decrees from the highest levels of the Pentagon, throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that "we don't do body counts."

As the bloody insurgency continues in Iraq, the U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign is yielding frustratingly few tangible ways to show progress to the American people. If anything, the insurgency seems firmly entrenched, from reports of its [link|http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/international/middleeast/05iraq.html?| air-conditioned underground bunkers] to its own [link|http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/weekinreview/05burn.html| Ho Chi Minh trail]. Counting enemy bodies at least offers a number to grab on to, some sense of incremental victory.

"It may be that they regard it as being part of the good news story: that we are winning the war," John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, said about the military's stepped-up use of body counts in Iraq.

An extensive review of combat accounts from military commanders reveals that regular reporting of body counts appears to have begun with the battle for Fallujah in November 2004. U.S. Marines' assault on the insurgent stronghold, launched immediately after the U.S. presidential election, was considered critical to showing progress in the war. The Pentagon estimated 1,200 to 1,600 enemy fighters killed -- though at the time the media noted a large and "mysterious" discrepancy in the body count reported following the battle.

If history offers any clue, counting dead insurgents is a misleading endeavor that can destroy trust in the Pentagon and ultimately lead to atrocities on the battlefield. During the Vietnam War, historians say, inflated body counts that sometimes included civilians shattered the Pentagon's credibility with the American people and undercut support for that war. Former soldiers from that era say that relying too much on body counts can drive soldiers in the field to commit atrocities in order to achieve a high number of kills -- though there is no indication that is happening in Iraq.

The Pentagon maintains that it is sticking with a policy of no body counts but that commanders in the field are allowed to release the information if it helps the public's understanding of operations. Body counts, the Pentagon says, are released by field commanders only when they know the facts. "There have been several pronouncements over the years to the effect that the Department doesn't 'do body counts,' and we continue to adhere to that concept," Army Lt. Col. Barry E. Venable, a Defense Department spokesman, wrote in a statement to Salon. "The Department appropriately delegates release authority for unit activities to the units in the field," he wrote, adding that body counts have been released "in isolated instances where smaller scale engagements and timely and accurate means of battle damage assessment allowed for such counts," and when their inclusion "significantly contributed to the timely and accurate flow of information in regard to a specific unit or event."

Commanders on the ground characterized the battles of Operation Matador near the Syrian border last month as a success and later said 125 insurgents were killed, according to a military statement. The military does not report civilian casualties. The Washington Post quoted a doctor in Qaim, one town that saw fighting during Operation Matador, who claimed 21 civilians had been killed, including five hospital workers killed by U.S. aircraft, and dozens more wounded.

"I'm quite certain that there are civilian numbers in there," said an Army officer who served in Iraq, regarding the military's current use of body counts. The officer asked that his name not be used because he fears retribution for criticizing Pentagon policy. The officer said he believes body counts are a bad idea -- and are particularly meaningless in Iraq, where the U.S. military knows little about the total size of the enemy force or the speed with which it can replace its dead fighters. (U.S. commanders' current estimate of insurgent forces ranges from 12,000 to 20,000; a number of reports from Iraq, as well as from Afghanistan, indicate the enemy has been able to replace its dead fighters relatively quickly, in at least some key areas.)

Last November, U.S. commanders said Marines killed as many as 1,600 insurgents in the battle for Fallujah. But the New York Times' Dexter Filkins, who covered the battle, reported that Marines found "few bodies" on their patrols after the fighting -- even where the rebels chose to make a last stand. Filkins wrote that the absence of bodies remained "a mystery." Two months later, in January, the United Kingdom's Guardian [link|http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/11/fallujah/| reported] that a nearby "martyr's cemetery" contained only 76 graves. Meanwhile, in February, an unnamed senior military official told [link|http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/08/iraq.main/| CNN] that the U.S. military believes it killed between 10,000 and 15,000 guerrillas in combat last year -- perhaps as many as 3,000 of them during the November push to retake Fallujah. Yet because others were joining the insurgency to replace those killed, the same CNN report noted, Pentagon analysts were "having difficulty matching the current number against previous assessments."

But body counts show success -- or that's the message, at least, that the military is continuing to give reporters on the ground. The Los Angeles Times' Solomon Moore, who filed some crackerjack reports from Operation Matador, told CNN last month that commanders in the field measured success by a high body count. "Basically, they're defining [success] as killing a number of insurgents, especially on the first day of fighting," Moore told CNN on May 15. "They say at the time they killed dozens and maybe as many as 75 to 100 insurgents."

In the earlier stages of the Iraq war, the Defense Department seemed as though it would heed the lessons of Vietnam, at least when it came to counting the number of enemy killed. In November 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to discuss the war in Iraq. Host Tony Snow expressed frustration about how hard it was to measure progress in the war at that time. "Within Iraq, what is the situation in terms of terrorists? Are we taking out or imprisoning more of them than they are killing of our people?" Snow asked. "People say we hear about our death counts; we never hear about theirs. Why?" Rumsfeld's response echoed the famous remark in March 2002 by Gen. Tommy Franks, who ran the war in Afghanistan and later led the charge into Iraq. "We don't do body counts on other people," Rumsfeld told Snow. Other Defense Department officials have consistently said the same.

But since Fallujah, headlines from the Department of Defense's American Forces Information Service have touted body counts in articles about apparently successful operations. "IED Kills U.S. Soldier; Nine Terrorists Die in Firefight" read one headline in May from the Pentagon's information service. "Ten Insurgents Are Killed in New Round of Battles in Iraqi City" announced a headline in the New York Times last month, citing information from the U.S. military. In addition, the Defense Department is increasingly highlighting the number of alleged insurgents detained in raids -- though from the information released, there is no way to judge the intelligence value or guilt of the detainees labeled insurgents.

Top military officials in Washington have also begun citing body counts to support comments by Bush administration officials about the military's progress in Iraq. In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" on May 30, Vice President Dick Cheney said the insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes." The day before, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation," where he said, "I think a lot of aspects in Iraq are getting better ... I think the trend lines are up." Myers pointed out that the U.S. military had killed 250 of terrorist ringleader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's "closest lieutenants."

Even some Republicans have begun raising eyebrows over the success-by-the-numbers message. Ohio Republican Rep. Steve Chabot told the Washington Post in early June, "I think it's impossible to know how close we are to the insurgency being overcome."

. Next page | A Vietnam vet tells how body counts led his unit to commit atrocities
1, 2

For mom Marcia Cobb and her teenage son Axel, the white letters USMC on their caller ID soon spelled, "Don't answer the phone!"

Marine recruiters began a relentless barrage of calls to Axel as soon as the mellow, compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his 17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible to get the seekers of a few good men off the line.

With early and late calls ringing in their ears, Marcia tried using call blocking. And that's when she learned her first hard lesson. You can't block calls from the government, her server said. So, after pleas to "Please stop calling" went unanswered, the family's "do not answer" order ensued.

But warnings and liquid crystal lettering can fade. So, two weeks ago when Marcia was cooking dinner Axel goofed and answered the call. And, faster than you can say "semper fi," an odyssey kicked into action that illustrates just how desperate some of the recruiters we've read about really are to fill severely sagging quotas...

[link|http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/227497_paynter08.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=1|much more]

I think I can see where we're going with this: the armed forces are going to skip the formal conscription bit and move directly to press gangs.

cordially,

Post #210,922 by Ashton 6/11/05 7:01:31 AM Reply	Return of the body counts [link\|http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/11/body_counts/index.html\| Salon]. Return of the body counts With Americans souring on the war in Iraq, the U.S. military has started talking up the number of insurgents killed. Are we headed down the same corrupting road we did in Vietnam? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Mark Benjamin June 11, 2005 \| The body counts are back. For the first time since Vietnam, the U.S. military has begun regularly reporting the number of enemy killed in the war zone -- in contradiction, apparently, to prior statements by its own top brass. "Marines Kill 100 Fighters in Sanctuary Near Syria" was a front page headline in the Washington Post last month. The body count, coming from a Marine spokesman, was carried in other major papers that day. What was striking about the factoid, besides the elegantly even number, was that it showed how the U.S. military has increasingly released body counts in reports depicting successful operations in Iraq -- despite decrees from the highest levels of the Pentagon, throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that "we don't do body counts." As the bloody insurgency continues in Iraq, the U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign is yielding frustratingly few tangible ways to show progress to the American people. If anything, the insurgency seems firmly entrenched, from reports of its [link\|http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/international/middleeast/05iraq.html?\| air-conditioned underground bunkers] to its own [link\|http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/weekinreview/05burn.html\| Ho Chi Minh trail]. Counting enemy bodies at least offers a number to grab on to, some sense of incremental victory. "It may be that they regard it as being part of the good news story: that we are winning the war," John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, said about the military's stepped-up use of body counts in Iraq. An extensive review of combat accounts from military commanders reveals that regular reporting of body counts appears to have begun with the battle for Fallujah in November 2004. U.S. Marines' assault on the insurgent stronghold, launched immediately after the U.S. presidential election, was considered critical to showing progress in the war. The Pentagon estimated 1,200 to 1,600 enemy fighters killed -- though at the time the media noted a large and "mysterious" discrepancy in the body count reported following the battle. If history offers any clue, counting dead insurgents is a misleading endeavor that can destroy trust in the Pentagon and ultimately lead to atrocities on the battlefield. During the Vietnam War, historians say, inflated body counts that sometimes included civilians shattered the Pentagon's credibility with the American people and undercut support for that war. Former soldiers from that era say that relying too much on body counts can drive soldiers in the field to commit atrocities in order to achieve a high number of kills -- though there is no indication that is happening in Iraq. The Pentagon maintains that it is sticking with a policy of no body counts but that commanders in the field are allowed to release the information if it helps the public's understanding of operations. Body counts, the Pentagon says, are released by field commanders only when they know the facts. "There have been several pronouncements over the years to the effect that the Department doesn't 'do body counts,' and we continue to adhere to that concept," Army Lt. Col. Barry E. Venable, a Defense Department spokesman, wrote in a statement to Salon. "The Department appropriately delegates release authority for unit activities to the units in the field," he wrote, adding that body counts have been released "in isolated instances where smaller scale engagements and timely and accurate means of battle damage assessment allowed for such counts," and when their inclusion "significantly contributed to the timely and accurate flow of information in regard to a specific unit or event." Commanders on the ground characterized the battles of Operation Matador near the Syrian border last month as a success and later said 125 insurgents were killed, according to a military statement. The military does not report civilian casualties. The Washington Post quoted a doctor in Qaim, one town that saw fighting during Operation Matador, who claimed 21 civilians had been killed, including five hospital workers killed by U.S. aircraft, and dozens more wounded. "I'm quite certain that there are civilian numbers in there," said an Army officer who served in Iraq, regarding the military's current use of body counts. The officer asked that his name not be used because he fears retribution for criticizing Pentagon policy. The officer said he believes body counts are a bad idea -- and are particularly meaningless in Iraq, where the U.S. military knows little about the total size of the enemy force or the speed with which it can replace its dead fighters. (U.S. commanders' current estimate of insurgent forces ranges from 12,000 to 20,000; a number of reports from Iraq, as well as from Afghanistan, indicate the enemy has been able to replace its dead fighters relatively quickly, in at least some key areas.) Last November, U.S. commanders said Marines killed as many as 1,600 insurgents in the battle for Fallujah. But the New York Times' Dexter Filkins, who covered the battle, reported that Marines found "few bodies" on their patrols after the fighting -- even where the rebels chose to make a last stand. Filkins wrote that the absence of bodies remained "a mystery." Two months later, in January, the United Kingdom's Guardian [link\|http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/11/fallujah/\| reported] that a nearby "martyr's cemetery" contained only 76 graves. Meanwhile, in February, an unnamed senior military official told [link\|http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/08/iraq.main/\| CNN] that the U.S. military believes it killed between 10,000 and 15,000 guerrillas in combat last year -- perhaps as many as 3,000 of them during the November push to retake Fallujah. Yet because others were joining the insurgency to replace those killed, the same CNN report noted, Pentagon analysts were "having difficulty matching the current number against previous assessments." But body counts show success -- or that's the message, at least, that the military is continuing to give reporters on the ground. The Los Angeles Times' Solomon Moore, who filed some crackerjack reports from Operation Matador, told CNN last month that commanders in the field measured success by a high body count. "Basically, they're defining [success] as killing a number of insurgents, especially on the first day of fighting," Moore told CNN on May 15. "They say at the time they killed dozens and maybe as many as 75 to 100 insurgents." In the earlier stages of the Iraq war, the Defense Department seemed as though it would heed the lessons of Vietnam, at least when it came to counting the number of enemy killed. In November 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to discuss the war in Iraq. Host Tony Snow expressed frustration about how hard it was to measure progress in the war at that time. "Within Iraq, what is the situation in terms of terrorists? Are we taking out or imprisoning more of them than they are killing of our people?" Snow asked. "People say we hear about our death counts; we never hear about theirs. Why?" Rumsfeld's response echoed the famous remark in March 2002 by Gen. Tommy Franks, who ran the war in Afghanistan and later led the charge into Iraq. "We don't do body counts on other people," Rumsfeld told Snow. Other Defense Department officials have consistently said the same. But since Fallujah, headlines from the Department of Defense's American Forces Information Service have touted body counts in articles about apparently successful operations. "IED Kills U.S. Soldier; Nine Terrorists Die in Firefight" read one headline in May from the Pentagon's information service. "Ten Insurgents Are Killed in New Round of Battles in Iraqi City" announced a headline in the New York Times last month, citing information from the U.S. military. In addition, the Defense Department is increasingly highlighting the number of alleged insurgents detained in raids -- though from the information released, there is no way to judge the intelligence value or guilt of the detainees labeled insurgents. Top military officials in Washington have also begun citing body counts to support comments by Bush administration officials about the military's progress in Iraq. In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" on May 30, Vice President Dick Cheney said the insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes." The day before, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation," where he said, "I think a lot of aspects in Iraq are getting better ... I think the trend lines are up." Myers pointed out that the U.S. military had killed 250 of terrorist ringleader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's "closest lieutenants." Even some Republicans have begun raising eyebrows over the success-by-the-numbers message. Ohio Republican Rep. Steve Chabot told the Washington Post in early June, "I think it's impossible to know how close we are to the insurgency being overcome." . Next page \| A Vietnam vet tells how body counts led his unit to commit atrocities 1, 2
Post #211,007 by rcareaga 6/12/05 1:54:01 PM Reply	another kind of body count: Xtreme Recruiting For mom Marcia Cobb and her teenage son Axel, the white letters USMC on their caller ID soon spelled, "Don't answer the phone!" Marine recruiters began a relentless barrage of calls to Axel as soon as the mellow, compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his 17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible to get the seekers of a few good men off the line. With early and late calls ringing in their ears, Marcia tried using call blocking. And that's when she learned her first hard lesson. You can't block calls from the government, her server said. So, after pleas to "Please stop calling" went unanswered, the family's "do not answer" order ensued. But warnings and liquid crystal lettering can fade. So, two weeks ago when Marcia was cooking dinner Axel goofed and answered the call. And, faster than you can say "semper fi," an odyssey kicked into action that illustrates just how desperate some of the recruiters we've read about really are to fill severely sagging quotas... [link\|http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/227497_paynter08.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=1\|much more] I think I can see where we're going with this: the armed forces are going to skip the formal conscription bit and move directly to press gangs. cordially, Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Post #211,013 by warmachine 6/12/05 2:50:34 PM Reply	Not entirely certain you're joking I would say the US armed forces wouldn't dare use press gangs because of the hostility it'd generate. But hard questions are blocked from town hall meetings, so I'm not sure. But I can see youth clubs being paid to allow recruiting seminars. Or implied threats of bad, high school references. Or recruiters advocating leniency in police stations for petty offences. I'm surprised some of the tactics worked. For example, I'm surprised a 17 year old doesn't know that every sentence in He could pursue his love of chemistry. He could serve anywhere he chose and leave any time he wanted on an "apathy discharge" if he didn't like it. And he wouldn't have to go to Iraq if he didn't want to. is rubbish. Or is the kid just on of those below average brains? Matthew Greet Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin? - Mark Renton, Trainspotting.
Post #213,313 by lincoln 7/1/05 4:00:43 PM Reply	Re: Not entirely certain you're joking He could pursue his love of chemistry. He could serve anywhere he chose and leave any time he wanted on an "apathy discharge" if he didn't like it. And he wouldn't have to go to Iraq if he didn't want to. Taken straight from the movie "Private Benjamin". Fantasy becomes reality. lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow [link\|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net\|contact me]
Post #211,047 by pwhysall 6/12/05 7:00:42 PM Reply	Note careful use of the word "factoid"... ...i.e. something that looks like a fact, but isn't one. [link\|http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=factoid&x=0&y=0\|http://www.m-w.com/c...a=factoid&x=0&y=0] Peter [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu Linux] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #211,065 by tuberculosis 6/13/05 1:04:14 AM 8/21/07 6:35:41 AM Reply	Bigger problems - officers leaving military in droves Can't find it online right now - dead tree edition Seattle PI did a piece on officers bailing on military as soon as minimum commitment is over. They don't feel Iraq is worth it and after one tour of duty they've got all the experience, awards, medals, stories, accomplishments and glory they need for a lifetime. No point in a second tour. Big business covets their skills and maturity and works extra hard to recruit them. Its working. Working on a big time generation gap in officers. "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush Edited by tuberculosis Aug. 21, 2007, 06:35:41 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #211,068 by Andrew Grygus 6/13/05 1:18:28 AM Reply	That's been all over the place. In a while Corporals will once again be the highest officer most soldiers deal with, and they'll all speak English as a second language. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #211,070 by jbrabeck 6/13/05 1:37:58 AM Reply	Already that way in dau NG unit Picked her up today after drill. couple of CPLs running formation. A good friend will come and bail you out of jail ... but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!"
Post #211,073 by Ashton 6/13/05 5:54:45 AM Reply	Yes, noticed on the daily US body counts.. what seems a disproportionate %Sergeants. No Doubt somewhere on the web is an actual stat. Poor fucking bastards.. premeditated execution by an epidemic of ideologues, enroute to permanency.. unless? a whole Slew die in some next period of coordinated slaughter (so Gross that even a sheared sheep - in expired-unemployment for the 3rd time - actually begins to Notice).

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