Logic Times takes a hard look at the propagandized Iraqi civilian casualty figures:

Logic Times demonstrated in the Civilian Casualty Fable that the majority of dead people counted by IBC represent not innocent bystanders, but terrorists and Iraqi security forces. And when, after the fall of Baghdad, IBC identified actual civilian casualties, there was a 5 out of 6 chance they were killed by terrorists.* 
 
These facts, of course, escaped the mainstream media, allowing the conventional wisdom that dominates today to take shape: the coalition intervention in Iraq, whatever your position on the war, has been wreaking havoc on the civilian population as never before. One of the most important planks in the anti—war platform was now in place, sanctimoniously hinted at in the Lancet conclusion:

"In the interim, civility and enlightened self—interest demand a re—evaluation of the consequences of weaponry now used by coalition forces in populated areas." 

Apparently the "enlightened" Lancet authors are unaware that IEDs and car bombs — the primary cause of civilian casualties — are not "weaponry now used by the coalition."

The simple truth is that hundreds of thousands of heavily armed American soldiers fighting non—uniformed terrorists scattered throughout 26 million Iraqi civilians have killed less than one in five thousand of those civilians while winning the war and securing their freedom.  How ironic that this unprecedented military achievement has been cast in its opposite light. 

It is also important to understand the problem with these casualty studies, which is their use as anti—war propaganda. No one disputes that the Iraq War has caused civilian casualties (far less than claimed, but still several thousand) or that these casualties are tragic. But civilian casualties were an anonymous fact of life in Iraq from 1979 to 2003 and are currently in stark decline. The position that current casualty levels as a result of a U.S. initiated war are more egregious than the higher rate of casualties during the Saddam years reveals the convoluted logic of these anti—war groups.  That they have inflated those casualty numbers to try and suffocate the weakness of their argument with dead bodies is criminal. And now Haditha provides further evidence of their duplicity beyond the statistics in the Civilian Casualty Fable. [snip]

...there are between 34 to 187 civilians dying each day from collateral damage. Who thinks that these anti—war leftists, masters at creating atrocities out of whole cloth (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha), would have or could have sat quietly on the sidelines as U.S. urban warfare tactics spat out an average of 110 bodies each and every day? Even if we halve that number to account for the increased civilian casualties during the invasion, there are plenty of bodies to go around. And if those who trumpeted Abu Ghraib had ten times the body count we see in Haditha on a regular basis, the war would have been aborted long ago. With that kind of raw material to work with, raw material in need of only a few "eyewitnesses" and an Al Jazeera camera, do you think they would have been silent these many months?  

Clarice Feldman  6 26 06