- Every few days the U.S. Department of Defense issues
a terse press release of US military deaths in Iraq from non-combat causes.
These lack drama or narrative so they are hardly ever noted in newspapers
or television newscasts in places other than the hometowns of the newly
dead. The DoD release for August 25, 2002, for example, read, in its entirety:
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- Pfc. Michael S. Adams, 20, of Spartanburg, S.C., died
on Aug. 21 in Baghdad, Iraq. Adams was participating in a small arms fire
exercise on the range when a bullet ricocheted and ignited a fire in the
building. He died as a result of injuries sustained during the fire. Adams
was assigned to 1st Battalion, 35th Armor Regiment, 1st Armored Division,
Baumholder, Germany.
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- Spc. Stephen M. Scott, 21, of Lawton, Okla., died on
Aug. 23 in Baghdad, Iraq. Scott died as a result of non-combat injuries.
Scott was assigned to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Carson, Colo.
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- Pfc. Vorn J. Mack, 19, of Orangeburg, S.C., died on Aug.
23 near the Hadithah Dam, west of Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Mack jumped into the
Euphrates River to take a swim and did not resurface. A search party found
Mack's body downstream on Aug. 24. Mack was assigned to the 3rd Armored
Cavalry Regiment, Fort Carson, Colo.
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- These incidents are under investigation.
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- The U.S. does not, as a matter of public record, keep
any listing of Iraqi civilian and paramilitary kills (but some nonmilitary
people try: see Iraq Body Count ). There was no attempt at a count during
the formal part of the war; there is no admission of a continuing count
during this continuing part of the war. I have no doubt, however, that
they do have their own body count of the civilian dead since the U.S. occupation
of Iraq began. They're just not distributing the numbers. They fear misinterpretation
by people like you and me.
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- How is one to tell the difference between a family machinegunned
to death by nervous 19-year-olds worrying that the car heading their way
is a bomb and a guerilla driving a car that is in fact a bomb machinegunned
to death by some other nervous 19-year-olds? How is one to tell the difference
between a suicidal religious fanatic out for some American blood and some
poor sonofabitch who goes amok and attacks a U.S. soldier because his eldest
child just died because the hospital U.S. missiles blew up last spring
is still not functioning and even if it had been he couldn't have gotten
the dying child through U.S. military barricades anyway? How is one to
know if the woman screaming and waving her hands is just pissed off because
she hasn't had any electricity or potable water since last spring or if
she's got a bomb under that flowing dress?
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- No American military official, in the heat of a Mesopotamian
summer, can make those distinctions. That would require investigations,
time, personnel. It would require disciplining soldiers who shot too quickly
or with no justification at all. Put an American boy on trial for murder
in a place like this? For the death of one of them? Never.
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- Except for the most egregious civilian deaths, which
is to say those that take place when a lot of independent witnesses are
present, the kills are all of guerillas, Al Qaeda, paramilitary whatevers,
or they are ignored entirely. It's like Vietnam: if it's dead it's V.C.
The only difference is, in Vietnam they bragged about the body count and
in Iraq they hide it.
-
- The count may be hidden from us, but they are not hidden
from Iraqis. The deaths are real and specific. The dead all have names,
every single one of them. They have families, every one of them.
-
- Here's one of those names Iraqis know: a man named Mazin
turned a corner in a prosperous Baghdad neighborhood on the afternoon of
Sunday, July 27, going home with his wife and teenage son. He was driving
a Toyota Corona. Task Force 20, the U.S. military's hit squad assigned
to hunt down people close to Saddam, was just then mounting a raid on a
house where they thought some bad guys might be holed up. Soldiers backing
up the raiders had set up a roadblock. When they saw Mazin's Toyota they
immediately opened fire, blowing off the right half of his head. The wife
and son, witnesses said, were injured and were taken away by the Americans.
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- A man named Mazin, who lived in a comfortable neighborhood,
going home on a Sunday afternoon with his wife and son. He's dead. Maybe
they are too.
-
- They add up, these deaths, day after day, no matter how
many times a well-groomed one-star general tells an air-conditioned press
corps that things are going well, things are under control, our boys are
doing a wonderful job, thank you for your attention, God bless the United
States of America and its President..
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- And then there are the journalist deaths. Seventeen of
them now, the most recent a Reuters photographer shot dead by U.S. troops
shortly after identifying himself to U.S. troops as a Reuters photographer.
Only two of the journalist deaths were embedded-one was a vehicular accident,
the other died in his sleep, like some of the G.I.s in the DoD non-combat
death reports. The others were all shot to death or missiled to death,
most of them by U.S. forces. (Proving that it is, on the whole, better
to see only what they want you to see while embedded than look at what's
really going on when you're not.)
-
- The total number of U.S. military dead in Iraq since
President George W. Bush's melodramatic San Diego harbor aircraft carrier
declaration of the war's end now exceeds the number who died in combat.
We don't know how many civilians were killed by U.S. missiles and bombs
and guns before Bush's carrier declaration. If the post-carrier-declaration
doesn't yet exceed the pre-carrier-declaration they will. This is not going
to stop.
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- Every day, more deaths. More G.I.s killed and maimed
in official attacks with demonstrable bad guys that get reported in the
press. More G.I.s killed and dying by accident or for unexplained reasons
that are noted only in those almost invisible minimal DoD press releases.
More Iraqis killed and maimed by U.S. soldiers making their world safe
for democracy.
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- Every day, the little deaths. This war that we won.
-
- - Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel
P. Capen Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo, edits
the web journal BuffaloReport.com. His most recent book is Emile de Antonio
in Buffalo (Center Working Papers). Jackson is also a contributor to The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: bjackson@buffalo.edu
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- http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson08272003.html
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