US claims it did utmost to protect innocent life
“I don’t think there has been a war where one side has gone to such painstaking lengths to protect innocent life,” said Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Iraqbodycount.net estimates civilian casualties at between 1,930 and 2,377. The Web site is run by researchers including University of New Hampshire Professor Marc Herold, author of a 2001 study on the human cost of the US campaign in Afghanistan, and compiles data from news organisations including Fox News, the BBC and Al Jazeera, and by aid groups including the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch.
The US-led war against Iraq began March 20 with precision bombing of government buildings in Baghdad, and most military action ended with the fall of Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown, on April 14. Since then, television audiences worldwide have seen a daily mixture of Iraqi joy at Hussein’s ouster and anger over occupation by American and British troops. There are similar divisions in the West over the war’s toll. “I do know that the targeting was more careful than it’s been before, but that doesn’t make it pleasant,” said UK International Development Secretary Clare Short, who threatened to resign from Tony Blair’s cabinet in the week before the war started, then changed her mind.
Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, told reporters before leaving the US two weeks ago that the war had left “thousands of casualties,” including “many children and elderly.”
The Geneva-based World Health Organisation put Iraqi civilian dead and wounded at as many as 330 a day during the heaviest fighting. The Red Cross said that Baghdad hospitals were admitting an average of more than 100 injured Iraqis each day.
Civilian deaths in conflicts from 1939 onwards were far higher. World War II claimed 30.4 million civilian lives; 1.6 million were killed in the 1950-53 Korean War; and 541,000 died in the Vietnam War. As many as 50,000 civilians died in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and 100,000 were killed in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War combined.
The international Law of Armed Conflict prohibits the intentional targeting of civilians or buildings that are mainly for civilian use.
Coalition teams identifying Iraqi targets for air strikes integrated legal obligations into their work: qualified lawyers examined every proposed target to assess its compliance with international law.
