Julian Assange is claiming that his spies have reported thousands of more civilian deaths than previously reported in the Iraq War. What he doesn't say is how many of those were killed by Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Special Groups, the Mehdi Militia, assassins, and criminals. He implies that the civilians were killed by Coalition Troops. Many have stated outright disbelief in the Wikileaks claims, but don't analyze his language. To get to the truth, which Assange purposely distorts, I examined the best independent source for data on Iraq: The Brookings Institute.
Here's the Assange claim:
At 1:11, he claims that 109,000 Iraqis have been killed. Later he claims that number includes 15,000 brand new reported deaths. He correctly points out that most were killed in individual attacks, that fewer were killed in multiple fatality bombings. To hear him tell it, you might believe the Coalition was on a mad shooting spree and then covered it up. Neither would be true. H/T to Yankee Mom
To be precise, 88.58% of all violent fatalities in Iraq between 2003 and 2010 were civilians. Less than 2% of all violent deaths were civilians killed during firefights involving the Coalition.
But what of the implication that Coalition Forces killed civilians. The worst year was 2005, in which approximately 360 civilians died in "Escalation of Force" incidents. EOF incidents occur when a Soldier is confronted with a potential attack and uses the least violent means possible to ward it off, escalating to more violent means as the situation dictates, until the threat is eliminated by a change in attitude. When the shooting starts, bullets may hit bystanders, whether fired by the good guys or the enemy.
Some incidents result in the death of a civilian that is acting in the same manner as a terrorist, such as the Italian intelligence agent that went barreling into an allied checkpoint as would a suicide bomber. By the end of 2006, EOF deaths were down to 50 or less annually. But to find that information, you have to look at older Iraq Index reports. It's so low now that they don't even report it and haven't in some time.
In other words, a worst case scenario is that about 2500 Iraqi Civilians were killed in collateral damage incidents, not purposely, but because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they were behaving in a manner of a terrorist. If that worst case scenario were accurate (and it's probably extremely higher than reality), less than 3% of all civilian deaths would be at the hands of Coalition Troops. If it were correct, 7 years of war would have cost the lives of fewer Iraqi civilians than any average month of the Saddam regime. Fewer Iraqi Civilians would have been killed than American Troops killed by the enemy.
11,021 Iraqi Police and Soldiers have been killed by terrorists since 2003. 528 Non-Iraqi Civilians have been killed by the enemy. And of the 143 journalists killed, only two were American. The low number of US journalists killed is because the US media reported from their hotel rooms, without verifying their sources or the information.
So while Assange is fairly close in his overall number of civilian deaths, he is lying when he says he's found a coverup and purposely misportraying who did the killing and who risked their lives to protect civilians and end the killing. And for two years running, ALL violent death in Iraq has been less than a quarter of what Saddam purposely killed of Iraqi civilians in any average month of his rule. Terrorists and Criminals combined kill fewer now than Saddam's regime murdered.
By the way, there are still 400 attacks a month in Iraq, despite the claim that the war is over.
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