Iraq body count
There's an interesting debate going on over at Oliver Kamm's site (see here and elsewhere) between Kamm and Chris Brooke on the countring of Iraqi civilian deaths.It's interesting and well-informed on both sides, so I suggest you read it whilst I'm away. In my opinion Chris has the better of it for various reasons. Kamm thinks 'smear' means 'to associate with' which sends him down a rather dead end, and furthermore concentrates on the rather red-herring of the Marc Herold survey, not the Iraq Body Count. At the end of the day though I think the real difference between them is that Kamm doesn't think any such survey could be legitimate, because he sees the war as legitimate, and because he trusts the US military to do its best to avoid civilian casualties, therefore any civilian casualties are an unfortunate, tragic, but unavoidable consequence.
Certainly there is some merit in this argument. The reason such projects, in addition to Marc Herold's in Afghanistan, are possible these days is because civilian casualties are so relatively low. It wouldn't have been possible even as recently as Vietnam, where best 'estimates' are usually in measured only to the nearest hundred thousand. Nevertheless is surely because a decision has been taken to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties that such a project is required.
posted by Matthew @ 9/21/2003 09:55:00 AM
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