Body Count

Anybody else distressed with the upturn in publicised Body Counts in Iraq? For instance, last week we heard that the US had "killed 70" in various counterinsurgency strikes, while the US dodged the concerns that civilians, including numbers of children, were killed in the strikes.

As America nudges closer and closer to having lost 2,000 troops [we're at 1,992], the need for justification for this crazy war increases.

The revival of body counts, a practice discredited during the Vietnam War, has apparently come without formal guidance from the Pentagon's leadership. Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said they knew of no written directive detailing the circumstances under which such figures should be released or the steps that should be taken to ensure accuracy.

Instead, they described an ad hoc process that has emerged over the past year, with authority to issue death tolls pushed out to the field and down to the level of division staffs.

So far, the releases have tended to be associated either with major attacks that netted significant numbers of enemy fighters or with lengthy operations that have spanned days or weeks. On Saturday, for instance, the U.S. military reported 20 insurgents killed and one captured in raids on five houses suspected of sheltering foreign fighters in a town near the Syrian border. Six days earlier, the 2nd Marine Division issued a statement saying an estimated 70 suspected insurgents had died in the Ramadi area as a result of three separate airstrikes by fighter jets and helicopters.

FYI- Civilians killed as a result of this Invasion? Near 30,000.