Civilians Death Rate in Iraq Less Than in Washington, DC

Teflon man....

Or perhaps lead, as that's much more dense.

Blame for Haditha Lies at Bush's Feet
By Scott Ritter
AlterNet

Thursday 08 June 2006

There is a leadership deficit in the Armed Forces today, and it begins with the commander in chief, President George W. Bush.
Like many Americans, I have followed the events unfolding around the deaths of 24 Iraqis civilians in the Iraqi village of Haditha, and the roles and responsibilities of U.S. Marines in their deaths, with a mixture of anger, frustration, shock and horror. I start this essay with the premise that all are innocent until proven guilty, and will maintain that posture until the facts surrounding the incident have been fully investigated.

As a former Marine Corps officer, I have to admit to a certain bias in favor of the Marines. I personally believe all of the involved Marines should be punished to the full extent of the law if found guilty of the crimes they have been accused of. There simply is no excuse for the systematic murder of civilians.

However, the crimes that the Marines have been accused of, and the behavior required to carry out such crimes (both from the enlisted Marines and their officers) run so counter to the very fabric of the Marine Corps I was a member of that I have a hard time accepting the charges at face value. Many of my peers still serve in the Marine Corps today as battalion commanders, regimental commanders, or senior staff officers.

This is not a "new" corps of Marines that has somehow lost its way since I left active duty. This is my band of brothers, fellow warriors imbued with a spirit of service and sacrifice that endeavors not only to persevere on the field of battle, but also never bring shame or dishonor to the 232-year tradition that binds all Marines together.

War is a hard business, and those who wage war have to be hard people if they are to survive. The niceties of civilian life are set aside, and men (and, increasingly, women) are called upon to engage in action which runs counter to everything they have been taught as human beings and American citizens - to take human life, effortlessly and efficiently, with little or no regard for those being terminated.

A target is just a target, and any delay in taking that target down can and will result in your becoming a target yourself. In war it is literally kill or be killed. Most civilians will never - and therefore can never - understand this phenomenon, and the mental and physical trauma it inflicts on those involved. Combat hardens a person and changes those who have engaged in it forever.

Because war is in and of itself so horrible, and the act of waging war so dehumanizing, there is a real danger of those involved suffering a complete breakdown of human sensibility, becoming so traumatized by the act of killing that they become desensitized to human suffering and death. Death becomes a narcotic, and the act of taking human life a drug that must be consumed over and over again.

War is a destructive force, no more so for those who participate in it as combatants. War becomes an addiction, and human detritus a common occurrence. As Michael Herr, the acclaimed writer who chronicled the Vietnam War in his book, "Dispatches," wrote: "Charging someone with murder in Vietnam is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500." In war, death becomes a daily fact of life.

The proclivity to become addicted to dealing death is one of the major reasons behind the laws of war. Adherence to the laws of war goes far beyond any legal obligation; once the bullets start flying, legal niceties go out the window. Adherence to the rules of law doesn't come from a sense of right and wrong that exists on the battlefield, but rather as a result of rules and procedures being drilled into the minds of those who wage war over and over again, until these rules, like procedures for fighting through an ambush, are branded into the minds and muscle memory of those pulling the triggers.

The rules of war are adhered to not because someone is thinking about doing the "right thing" on the field of battle, but because of the discipline which ingrained these rules into the very fabric of the warriors waging combat, and the leadership which continued to emphasize these rules once the forces became engaged in combat. The main reason it is so hard for me to believe that the Marines of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment did what they are accused of doing in Haditha is that it runs counter to the discipline and leadership I know they were subjected to. If Haditha in fact occurred, something went very, very wrong.

It is far too easy to place blame, when things do go wrong in war, on a "few bad apples." The fact is, every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine in a theater of combat is a potential "bad apple" if denied the discipline and leadership necessary to maintain a certain standard of conduct in conflict. Every American who has seen the movie "A Time to Kill" knows that he or she, just like the Samuel Jackson character in that movie, would take the law into their own hands and kill anyone who subjected a child of theirs to the torment and suffering inflicted on the young girl in the movie.

It is harder to put yourself in the place of a young Marine or soldier who has watched a comrade with whom he has bonded with over the course of months or even years die violently at the hands of an enemy. It is even harder when the enemy cannot be immediately located and have vengeance visited upon him.

But even worse is when the enemy is you. Paul Reickhoff, the Iraq war veteran who wrote the masterful book, "Chasing Ghosts," wrote of growing up as a child influenced by movies such as "Red Dawn," where a Soviet-Cuban army of occupation had descended upon American soil. In the film a group of American high school kids banded together to resist the occupation and formed an insurgency they nicknamed the "Wolverines." The Wolverines used every method necessary to combat the enemy occupier, who was equipped with tanks and superior firepower, including assassinations and improvised explosive devises."

The Wolverines were heroes. The occupiers, frustrated by the tactics of the Wolverines, used increasingly brutal means of suppressing the insurgency, including taking out their revenge on the innocent civilian population. Reickhoff wrote of how he and his fellow soldiers, by invading and occupying Iraq, had reversed roles with the Iraqis. The Americans were now the brutal occupier, and the Iraqis were the 'Wolverines'. And in such an environment, it is far too easy to start taking out one's frustrations on those you can see, such as innocent civilians, when those you can't see, the insurgents, start killing your own. We are all Samuel Jackson's character, seeking vengeance. And when no clear-cut perpetrator can be found, we become the evil Soviet-Cuban invader of "Red Dawn."

Of course, we are American fighting men and women, and we adhere to a higher standard of conduct, one built on discipline and leadership. I know our fighting men and women have been properly trained regarding the rules of war. The problem is leadership. And, to quote an old Russian military saying, "A fish stinks from its head." There is a leadership deficit in the armed forces of the United States today, and it begins with the commander in chief, President George W. Bush, and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. It extends to the entire U.S. Congress and onto the senior leadership of the uniformed armed services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

All of these individuals and organizations set a standard of carefree indifference to the rule of law when they ordered, or gave consent to, the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They were mute when the president and his secretary of defense waived the Geneva Convention when it came to so-called "terrorists" and "unlawful combatants." They forgot that many who fought for the United States during the American Revolution would be classified as terrorists or unlawful combatants using the standards set forth by the Bush administration. So would the Wolverines. And in waiving American adherence to the rule of law in general, and the law of war in particular, American leadership, civilian and military, set a standard of indifference that was far too easily replicated by the men and women under them. This is why we had Bagram, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. And this is why we have Haditha.

The sad fact is that American service members in Iraq are not fighting a fight they can win. There is no standard for victory. They are deployed for six months, a year, or more, to a theater of operations that President Bush has already acknowledged will only be resolved by the next president. This means that those being dispatched to Iraq have only one mission: to survive. This is not a mission statement conducive to sound decision making and action. It is a mission statement that has all U.S. combatants reverting to a primal state where it is kill or be killed, regardless of the rules. And it is asinine in the extreme to talk about rules in the first place when the leadership of the men and women America sends into harm's way show such a wanton disregard for rules to begin with.

There may have been a crime committed in Haditha. The facts will emerge in due course. But it should be clear to all that there is an ongoing crime taking place in Iraq, and anywhere around the world where American military forces operate according to a mandate given to them by the Bush administration. America has collectively walked away from the rule of law, and in doing so, has become the greatest perpetrator of war crimes in modern times.

The scope and scale of our crimes, as manifested in Iraq and elsewhere, are mind-boggling. The indifference of the American people is mind numbing. And

Mr. McGentrix- It may be that the liberals are now in full retreat, having failed miserably in their foolish attempt to give nonexistent evidence to prove that President Bush is the Worst President.

I find it amusing that some of the posters appear to be so insecure that they cannot imagine that someone could indeed garner degrees as I purported.

I know what I have achieved.

But, now, Mr. McGentrix, the Bush Administration has killed the fanatic IslamoFascistMurderer and leader of AlQuada in Iraq. At the same time, the Iraqi Prime Minister has announced that the two key ministries, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministery of the Interior have been filled. One by a Shiite and the other by a Sunni.

At home, the Senator who was supposed to lose his Primary because of his alleged ties with Abramoff, Senator Burns in Montana, won handily, while in California, the Republican candidate who replaced the disgraced Cunningham in a special election won easily over a much more liberal Republican.

It appears that the worst president has things going well for him these last few days.

Mr. Walter Hinteler- sir. I am most disappointed that you chose to all but call me a liar with regard to the post I made replicating the degree I have received. But I must make a confession. Although the Certificate of Advanced Study from the University of Chicago is genuine, I must confess that I nearly( but did not) succumb to a temptation to put a bogus Certificate in my office stating that I was an MD.

I decided against it, Mr. Walter Hinteler, sir, when I noted the stiff competition I would be facing:

The reason I decided against putting a bogus Medical Diploma on my wall, Mr. Walter Hinteler was:

quote
KNOCKED FLAT: German doctors are fed up with long hours and low pay. The national healthcare system is flagging, too.
JENS MEYER/AP



Why German doctors are packing their bags
More than 12,000 doctors have protested since March. Another 12,000 have taken jobs abroad.
By Andreas Tzortzis | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BERLIN - In the past few months, hordes of white-coated doctors have made regular - and noisy - appearances on the streets of German big cities.
More than 12,000 employees of university and state hospitals in nine German states have protested long hours and pay levels far below that of their colleagues in the rest of Europe.


In the Monitor




"The working conditions at the clinics are getting worse and worse," says Athanasios Drougias, of the Marburger Bund, Germany's biggest doctors' union with nearly 105,000 members. And the head of that union, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, recently told German radio that 1 in 3 doctors are now seeking work outside of Germany because of poor working conditions.

The high-profile strikes at about 40 hospitals over the past few months are drawing attention to the difficult working conditions faced by the nation's primary caregivers. But they're also revealing something else: the troubles facing Germany's over-extended social-welfare model, and the long road Angela Merkel's government faces in correcting it.

Germany is suffering from rocketing public spending costs and an inflexible labor market that critics say has scared off investors and contributed to the fact that 4.5 million Germans are out of work. Though still a world-beater in exports, Germany hasn't shown the fervor that economists say is needed to trim social services and battle unemployment.

As a result, Europe's traditional economic engine has faltered as countries with more dynamic labor-market policies - such as Britain and Sweden - thrive. The jobless rates of the two economies, at 4.7 and 6.4 percent respectively, are well below that of Germany, which is hovering around 11 percent.

More flexibility in their hiring and firing laws, and a willingness to pay top money for high- quality labor, has made Sweden and Britain serious competitors for German medical talent.

In the past three years, doctors have been "fleeing the country," says Mr. Drougias. According to one German doctors' association, 12,000 German doctors are working abroad. Most are on short assignment in the US, says Roland Ilzhöfer, the organization's spokesman. But at last count, 2,600 were registered in Great Britain. More than 1,000 others are in Scandinavian countries, he adds.

"We know that doctors here are unhappy with working conditions and the large amount of bureaucracy," he says. "But ... it also has a lot to do with money. They can earn double or triple the amount abroad."

A 2004 comparative study of doctors' wages, conducted by the London-based National Economic Research Associates for the British Department of Health, confirms the claim. Considered by German experts to be the latest and most viable such study, the report acknowledges the difficulty of drawing exact comparisons because of the disparate ways in which countries and research institutes calculate and collect data.

Nevertheless, a general trend is clear: Estimates of hospital doctors' average annual earnings in 2002 ranged from $35,000 to $56,000 in Germany; $127,285 in Britain; and $165,000 to $268,000 in the US. Swedish hospital doctor salaries were estimated at only $56,000 a year - similar to the German figures.

The departure of young doctors, coupled with a decreasing number of medical students, has already had an impact on Germany's hospitals, where 3,000 positions are unfilled at the moment, says Mr. Ilzhöfer.

The German government seems well aware of this new reality. Chancellor Angela Merkel has called healthcare reform "more difficult than any other" that Germany is being forced to undertake.

The system, which provides patients comprehensive coverage for low monthly payments, currently costs the government 143 euros ($183) billion a year, says Jochen Pimpertz at the Institute for German Economy in Cologne. But employers also shoulder considerable economic burden for the plan. As it stands, they must pay an additional 6.5 percent of an employee's salary toward healthcare.

Mr. Pimpertz says the number is already among the highest in Europe, and says that it will only rise in the coming years. As it rises, hiring new workers will become more expensive - and thus less likely to happen, making Germany's labor market less competitive, he says.

"Increasing healthcare payments lead to increasing labor costs for companies," says Pimpertz. "That is surely one of the biggest disadvantages to investing in Germany, and it's a major problem for our labor market."

The more an employer has to pay for his employee's coverage, the more he is likely to pull up stakes and move on.

"Climbing healthcare costs mean climbing labor costs," says Max Höfer, director of the German Institute for Health Economics. "This makes products more expensive and leads to automation and, eventually, job cuts."

Government proposals for healthcare reform have been stalled by political bickering.

The migration abroad, meanwhile, shows no signs of stopping, says Ilzhöfer. In addition, those who do stay are increasingly eyeing other options. "They're no longer going into patient care," he says. "They're becoming medical journalists or working for pharmaceutical companies and consultancy groups."
end of quote
*************************************************************

Is it possible, Mr. Walter Hinteler, that the defection of so many Doctors from Germany may have caused more than 42,000 deaths?

Is it true, Mr. Walter Hinteler that, as the article says, the "over-extended Social Welfare Model" is driving German Doctors away?
*************************************************************
But, I think you have a point, Mr. Hinteler, 42,000 innocent lives of Iraqis brutally murdered by the savage Coalition troops. That's inhuman.

I have always been against the killings in wars. Ever since 4 Million German Sevicemen, the flower of their country, and 593,000 innocent German civilians were killed in World War II, I have been a pacifist. When I read the History of World War II, I ask myself --What for? Why did all those people have to die?

And I never have an answer. Do you know whythey died, Mr. Hinteler? I am sure that they were as innocent as the Iraqi men, women and children who have been brutally squashed under American tanks.

You are turning really to be insane.

I think.,Mr. Walter Hinteler, that could be viewed as a violation of the TOS

Re: Civilians Death Rate in Iraq Less Than in Washington, DC


fascinating. But no doubt the longer Americans stay in Iraq, the closer the violence there will approach that in American cities.

Steve,

As has been pointed out here on several occassions, the statistics for Iraq were made up. In reality it is closer to 120 per 100,000.

Of course since Mr Hinteler has left Germany, it could be his esteemed medical opinion as one of those Dr.s you seem to think is fleeing the low pay.

Are you desirous of a second opinion?

Parados, out of curiosity, where do you get the 120 per 100,000? What Cyclo got from the Iraq body count data was something like 50 per 100,000, and that sounded pretty convincing.

Parados is probably referring to Baghdad numbers, which are of course much higher than the average for the country, and if I remember correctly somewhere around 100-120 per hundred thousand, though it is fair to say that these numbers have been on the rise lately.

Cycloptichorn

The new count is 121 per 100,000. The fanatic Islamo-Fascist< Al Zarqawi, got blasted into eternity. With that face, he will not get 72 virgins!

So he counted for about 680 Iraquis (or something like that)?

So he counted for about 680 Iraquis or something like that?

(I don't have a degree in education nor four altogether, so I'm not sure.)

Murder rate soars in Basra as political parties battle over oil

RAW STORY
Published: Monday June 12, 2006

The city of Basra in southern Iraq is suffering from a soaring murder rate, a tattered oil industry, and a terrified population, the New York Times will report on Tuesday page ones, RAW STORY has learned. Excerpts:

#
Western-style politics, once seen as the solution to the problems of one-party rule, have degenerated into deadly fighting among the Shi'ite political parties for control of the province and its oil reserves.

There were almost 85 killings in the city in May, nearly triple the number in January.

Police reports from the past five months include the murder of eight oil company employees, the discovery of twenty caches of Russian rockets, including one cache in the back of an ambulance, and shoot-outs among different factions of the police.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Murder_rate_soars_in_Basra_as_0612.html

I made an error. Al ZArqawi's death did not equal 121 per hundred, It was at least 125 per hundred since the Arab street equated him with at least 3,500 regular soldiers. I don't know if Mr. Walter Hinteler is familiar with the History of World War II, but John Toland, in his brilliant two volume history of World War II called "The Rising Sun"< noted that the death of the brilliant strategist and war hero, Admiral Isoroku, because US P-38's shot him from the skies on April 18th 1943, was, in terms of Japanese morale, equivalent to the Japanese losing a cruiser or aircraft carrier.

This is totally fatuous. Not worth considering.

Not only was it fatuous, but it is silly. The gentleman who was shot down was Admiral Yamamoto. Isoroku was his given name. It's rather the equivalent of referring to Field Marshall Montgomery as General Bernie.