Iraq air raids hit mostly women and children

[JohnyCanuck]

By Kim Sengupta, Defence correspondent

Thursday, 16 April 2009

Air strikes and artillery barrages have taken a heavy toll among the most vulnerable of the Iraqi people, with children and women forming a disproportionate number of the dead.

Analysis carried out for the research group Iraq Body Count (IBC) found that 39 per cent of those killed in air raids by the US-led coalition were children and 46 per cent were women. Fatalities caused by mortars, used by American and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents, were 42 per cent children and 44 per cent women.

Twelve per cent of those killed by suicide bombings, mainly the tool of militant Sunni groups, were children and 16 per cent were females. One in five (21 per cent) of those killed by car bombs, used by both Shia and Sunni fighters, was a child; one in four (28 per cent) was a woman.

snip

Professor John Sloboda, of Royal Holloway, co-author of the report, said: “Our weapon-specific findings have implications for a wide range of conflicts, because the patterns found in this study are likely to be replicated for these weapons whenever they are used.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-air-raids-hit-mostly-women-and-children-1669282.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Errant Drone Attacks Spur Militants in Pakistan

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The U.S. program of drone aircraft strikes against higher-ranking officials of al Qaeda and allied militant organizations, which has been touted by proponents as having eliminated nine of the 20 top al Qaeda leaders, is actually weakening Pakistan's defence against the insurgency of the Islamic militants there by killing large numbers of civilians based on faulty intelligence and discrediting the Pakistani military, according to data from the Pakistani government and interviews with senior analysts.

Some evidence indicates, moreover, that the top officials in the Barack Obama administration now see the program more as an incentive for the Pakistani military to take a more aggressive posture toward the militants rather than as an effective tool against the insurgents.


SNIP

McCreary warned that the drone strikes will cause much more serious problems when they increase and expand into new parts of Pakistan as the administration is now seriously considering, according to a New York Times article Apr. 7. "Now al Qaeda is fleeing to other cities, "said McCreary. "The program is escalating and having ripple effects that are incalculable."

McCreary said one of the longer-term consequences of the attacks is "the public humiliation of the Pakistan Army as a defender of the national patrimony". That effect of striking Pakistani targets with U.S. aircraft is "the least understood dimension of the attacks, the most discounted and most dangerous". McCreary said the attacks' "ensure that successive generations of Pakistani military officers will be viscerally anti-American."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/04/15-11

[IDemo]

2. The number was likely higher

A report I read yesterday indicated that it was 46 percent of those whose sex could be identified (obviously). Not to mention the innocent men as well.

[Smith_3]

3. So, conclusion, people who use air strikes as a tactic are worse then people who use suicide attacks

Because collateral damage is lower in suicide attacks.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. No, my conclusion is

that people should not allow themselves to be lead by sock puppets of the military industrial complex into foreign wars to maintain failing empires as it tends to get very, very messy and lots of innocents get killed and/or hurt. And when all is said and done, it's impossible to get the toothpaste back into the tube.

[G_j]

5. "surgical strikes"

I call it murder