Iraqi civilians killed in shootout at checkpoint

The following story from the Chicago Tribune gives a good example of how the "official number of casualties" as reported by the U.S. miltary is often deliberately deflated in order to give the illusion that the Americans are waging a "clean, precise" war that limits the number of civilians hurt or killed.

By Aamer Madhani
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 10, 2005

BAGHDAD -- A day after Iraqi civilians were killed in a mistaken U.S. bombing near Mosul, more civilians died Sunday in a shooting incident near Baghdad in which circumstances were unclear but American troops initially were blamed.

Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, a spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, said early Sunday that a U.S. convoy was struck by a roadside bomb near a checkpoint in Yussifiyah, about 10 miles south of Baghdad, and U.S. forces responded by opening fire, mistakenly killing two Iraqi police officers and three civilians.

But Rahman later told The New York Times that he had not blamed the deaths on American fire and that it was not yet clear who fired the fatal shots. Early Monday, a U.S. military spokeswoman said she had no information about the incident.

U.S. military officials acknowledged Saturday that their forces had dropped a 500-pound bomb on the wrong house near Mosul, killing at least five Iraqi civilians.

Ten soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition died Sunday. Seven from Ukraine and one from Kazakhstan were killed in an ammunition dump accident, and an American soldier and a Marine were killed in separate attacks. In addition, the police chief in north-central Samarra was assassinated.

While Rahman said five Iraqis were killed in the checkpoint shooting Sunday, Dr. Anmar Abdul-Hadi, a physician at the al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad, said eight people were killed and 12 were wounded, The Associated Press reported.

House bombing toll disputed

There was a dispute as well regarding the casualty figures in Saturday's erroneous bombing. U.S. military officials acknowledged that five people were killed in the incident near Mosul, but some reports indicated that as many as 14 people may have died. [...]

In the first instance, the military claims that only five people (3 civilians and 2 Iraqi police officers) were killed, however reports from a Doctor who witnessed the bodies at a Baghdad hospital claim that eight people were killed with twelve wounded.

In the second instance, where an American plane "mistakenly" dropped a 500lb bomb on the wrong house, again U.S. official spokespersons report only five deaths, whereas witnesses on the ground verify that as many as fourteen people were killed by the errant bomb.

So, who is telling the truth? Which report could be considered more accurate?

Or perhaps, a better question to ask might be, which entity has the most to gain from lying about the true number of Iraqi dead?

A recent comment was posted on this alternative news site.

"Are we to assume that the real number of dead is somewhere in between those two figures? Not Likely. Whereas the U.S. war machine benefits greatly from a reduced body count, giving credence to the lie that the unfortunate slaughter of Iraqi civilians is rare with minimal collateral damage, witnesses in hospitals who record the actual number of dead receive no such benefit from inflating these numbers and are more likely to report what really happened."

The most important thing to remember about stories like this, is that the under-reporting of actual casualties by the mainstream media in America's illegal war is the norm, and whenever reports like these are issued from State department it is very likely the real death count will be much higher.

So it goes in these troubled times.

Whomever owns the news, ultimately controls what is scene and herd.

Relic