Is the Army lying about friendly fire deaths? / Why the U.S. has already lost in Afghanistan
Ic
The military claims fratricides in Iraq and Afghanistan are down 90
percent from previous wars -- but experts call the figures suspect.
| New statistics obtained by Salon depict a spectacularly low
number of U.S. Army deaths from friendly fire in the current conflict
in Iraq, a mere fraction of historical rates. According to data
released to Salon by the Army's Combat Readiness/Safety Center, only
24 of the 3,059 U.S. Army soldiers killed in Iraq since the invasion
in 2003 died by fratricide.
That is a rate of .78 percent, less than one-tenth of almost every
estimate from previous conflicts stretching back to World War II,
despite six years of combat in Iraq, often in confusing urban terrain,
using intense U.S. firepower. Army officials gave Salon similar
statistics for Afghanistan: six out of 484 dead, or a rate of 1.24
percent. By comparison, the Army's own estimates of the friendly fire
rates for every war from World War II to Desert Storm are between 10
and 14 percent, except for a low of 6 percent during the invasion of
Panama. During the last U.S. conflict in Iraq, 1991's Operation Desert
Storm, fratricide killed 35 of 298 U.S. service members, or a rate of
nearly 12 percent, according to a 1992 report by the Center for Army
Lessons Learned.
Army spokesman Paul Boyce said improved technology and better
leadership and training contributed to the low fratricide rates in the
current Iraq war. Some observers, however, called the new data fishy.
"That is almost impossible," said Geoffrey Wawro, director of the
University of North Texas' Military History Center, who closely
followed the Army's coverup of football star Pat Tillman's death by
friendly fire in April 2004. Wawro says that technology and training
can help minimize the friendly fire rate, but "still, the fog of war
is such that it has to be higher than .7 percent."
The retired Army colonel and West Point graduate Andrew Bacevich, now
a history professor at Boston University and a prominent Iraq war
critic, was just as emphatic.
"To say we have suddenly stopped all these problems that have been a
part of warfare since the beginning of time? I don't believe it ... To
claim that this Army is somehow uniquely disciplined in that regard?
It is a great army, but they are still human beings. They are still
scared shitless."
Those unusually small numbers, along with anecdotal reports from
soldiers and a string of coverup allegations, raise the possibility
that the Army has routinely swept fratricide incidents under the rug
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Salon detailed just such a case last fall, in
which battle video and testimony from soldiers contradicted the
official version of events. Army casualty officers, therefore, might
have provided incorrect information to an unknown number of parents
about the death of their son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan. The
Army might also have missed a similar number of opportunities to learn
from friendly fire incidents and avoid knocking on more parents' doors
with the same bad news.
As Bacevich notes, many of the problems that create friendly fire
incidents have existed "since the beginning of time." In an e-mail to
Salon, the Army's Paul Boyce listed the "leading causes of fratricide
throughout military history": "chaos and confusion of warfare;
inadequate situational awareness; inadequate employment of, and
adherence to, fire control measures; and combat identification
failures."
Expressed another way, the fog of war and human error cause soldiers
to misidentify friends as foes. A more easily quantifiable factor that
Boyce does not cite is the collision between different branches of the
military or between different units in the same branch. A 1992 Army
study says that fratricide is most likely to occur "along shared unit
boundaries," or when different units fight side by side supporting
each other. This can mean, as in Grenada in 1983, a Navy jet
mistakenly attacking Army troops, or as in the incident first reported
last fall in Salon, members of an Army tank unit in Iraq in 2006
allegedly firing on Army infantry.
continued...
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/15/friendly_fire/
Jan. 15, 2009
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Why the U.S. has already lost in Afghanistan
Rampant corruption by U.S. contractors has left the country in
shambles.
| The first of 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops are
scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan next month to re-win the war George
W. Bush neglected to finish in his eagerness to start another one.
However, "winning" the military campaign against the Taliban is the
lesser half of the story.
Going into Afghanistan, the Bush administration called for a political
campaign to reconstruct the country and thereby establish the
authority of a stable, democratic Afghan central government. It was
understood that the two campaigns -- military and political/economic
-- had to go forward together; the success of each depended on the
other. But the vision of a reconstructed, peaceful, stable,
democratically governed Afghanistan faded fast. Most Afghans now
believe that it was nothing but a cover story for the Bush
administration's real goal -- to set up permanent bases in Afghanistan
and occupy the country forever.
Whatever the truth of the matter, in the long run, it's not soldiers
but services that count -- electricity, water, food, healthcare,
justice and jobs. Had the U.S. delivered the promised services on
time, while employing Afghans to rebuild their own country according
to their own priorities and under the supervision of their own
government -- a mini-Marshall Plan -- they would now be in charge of
their own defense. The forces on the other side, which we loosely call
the Taliban, would also have lost much of their grounds for complaint.
Instead, the Bush administration perpetrated a scam.
continued...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/01/15/afghanistan_jones/
Jan. 15, 2009
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AMERICA'S JAILS AND PRISONS: HOW MANY VETERANS SUFFER THERE?
EVERY WAR FILLS OUR JAILS AND PRISON WITH OUR HEROES
HOMELESS, SUBSTANCE ABUSE, CRIME, PRISON: AMERICA THANKS ITS VETS
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.royalty/msg/0961d850bcba6071
January 09, 2009
Send Your Grand Farewell to President George W. Bush
http://www.veteranstoday.com/article4409.html
January 13, 2009
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