{"id":862,"date":"2005-04-21T15:18:58","date_gmt":"2005-04-21T19:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=862"},"modified":"2005-04-21T15:18:58","modified_gmt":"2005-04-21T19:18:58","slug":"the-public-must-know-how-many-have-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=862","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The public must know how many have died&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Aid worker uncovered America&#8217;s secret tally of Iraqi civilian deaths<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Andrew Buncombe in Washington<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/world\/middle_east\/story.jsp?story=631173\">20 April 2005<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This is an edited extract of an article written by Marla Ruzicka a week before her death:<\/p>\n<p>In my two years in Iraq, the one question I am asked the most is: &#8220;How many Iraqi civilians have been killed by American forces?&#8221; The American public has a right to know how many Iraqis have lost their lives since the start of the war and as hostilities continue.<\/p>\n<p>In a news conference at Bagram air base in Afghanistan in March 2002, General Tommy Franks said: &#8220;We don&#8217;t do body counts.&#8221; His words outraged the Arab world.<\/p>\n<p>During the Iraq war, as US troops pushed toward Baghdad, counting civilian casualties was not a priority for the military. Since 1 May 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations over and the US military moved into &#8220;stability operations&#8221;, most units began to keep track of civilians killed at checkpoints or during patrols by US soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>Here in Baghdad, a brigadier general explained to me that it is standard procedure for US troops to file a spot report when they shoot a non-combatant. It is in the military&#8217;s interest to release these statistics.<\/p>\n<p>A number is important not only to quantify the cost of war, but as a reminder of those whose dreams will never be realised in a free and democratic Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.countthecasualties.org.uk\/\">UK citisens want to know<\/a>.  Why not Americans?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aid worker uncovered America&#8217;s secret tally of Iraqi civilian deaths By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 20 April 2005 This is an edited extract of an article written by Marla Ruzicka a week before her death: In my two years in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=862\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-dU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}