Stop You're Killing Me! Redux

Missed this the first time around, but picked it up now thanks to Manic Net Preacher. Some attention was focused on the recent report released last month by Iraq Body Count, "the first detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict." This revealed that 25,000 Iraqis had been *reported* killed since the invasion (the real figure is likely to be much higher). One interesting aspect which I don't recall receiving much coverage was the breakdown of responsibility for those deaths:

• US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims.
• Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims.
• Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths.
• Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.

Which portrays a rather different story to that shown in so much of the media with US forces remorselessly assaulted by unprovoked evil terrorist types. While the report is clear that the toll attributable to insurgent attacks has "shown a steady rise over the entire period," it is obvious that the occupying forces are hardly an innocent party in the whole affair.

This should hardly come as a great surprise. I blogged last October on figures collated by the Iraqi Ministry of Health which suggested US and Iraqi security forces were killing twice as many Iraqis as were insurgents. This report apparently didn't take into account deaths brought about by criminal elements (which, incidentally, can aslo be seen as the responsibility of multinational forces as the Geneva Convention requires that they maintain law and order in occupied territories).