One War - Two Counts - Who Counts

In any war the ones who pay the largest price are civilians. The U.S. military has repeatedly claimed that it is not keeping track of civilian deaths in Iraq (which I believe is in violation of international law). Recently, two wildly different figures were released. From the Iraq Body Count Project we have the figure of 24,865. The IBC uses news reports to determine the number of civilian deaths. From the Iraqi humanitarian organization Iraqiyun, we get the figure of 128,000.

The IBC has made an ongoing valiant attempt to keep track of the civilian cost of the war, and to keep it in front of the public. However, the methodology seems flawed to me given the censorship of news coming out of Iraq (for example, the US military not allowing reporters into areas of major activity), and the fact that the military reports that virtually all of its attacks are killing "insurgents."

Iraqiyun used a methodology similar to the one used by Johns Hopkins (which was accepted in Bosnia as valid), and cam up with a figure similar of the Johns Hopkins study.

Both figures seem impossibly low given the levels of military activity since the inception of the war (for example, what happened to the 200,000 plus Fallujahn's that magically disappeared from the population after the siege of Fallujah?). But while no one is officially "keeping track" of civilian fatalities, no one is apparently keeping track of deaths due to the ongoing lack of basic services. It was estimated that over 100,000 children a year were dying as a direct consequence of UN sanctions on Iraq. Now, there is even less clean water, sewage treatment, and hospital care than during the sanctions. Is it likely that toll has gone down?

There generally seems to be little pressure to have an official reckoning of the human cost of the ongoing Iraq war. On the whole, most in the U.S. seem uninterested in any kind of accountability for the Iraqi people - even though support for the war has dropped dramatically. This is in part because of the type of news reports that makes it to the states. Here, we get attacks on insurgents, and the suicide bombers. All US military activity only hits "insurgents," and suicide bombers are presented as the only source of civilian fatalities. The myth of "precision warfare."

Very rarely, there are reports of "whoops" we had bad intelligence. Beyond those "rare" events, one presumes that enemies are easily identified, smart bombs and smart bullets and the crack marksmanship of troops are somehow programmed to only hit the "bad guys." The other, more subtle subtext is that everyone is the "enemy." The killing of children is simply preemptive warfare - kill them before they become the next generation of "insurgents." Civilian casualties and fatalities are "collateral damage," and therefore unimportant.

So, 25,000 ... 128,000 ... or 1,000,000,000 - does it really make a difference to the "coalition" in Iraq or the countries that fund those forces? Apparently not very much. What a sad commentary on humanity.