le cifre di una guerra (per una volta non soldi)

Posted on novembre 3, 2003 
Filed Under comunic_azione

il documento per intero 

Di seguito un estratto del documento elaborato dall’istituto Project on Defense Alternatives sui costi umani della guerra in Iraq.
Impressiona di più una cifra come 15.000 morti o 70.000.000.000 di dollari?
Temo la risposta.

Nations cannot wage war responsibly or intelligently without careful attention to its costs. An elementary part of coming to terms with these costs is an accounting of war fatalities. Among other things, this accounting is relevant to gauging the repercussions of a war, both locally and worldwide. With regard to the 2003 Iraq conflict:

* Between 19 March and 1 May 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom cost the lives of approximately 201 coalition troops; 148 of these were Americans.

* On the Iraqi side: a review and analysis of the available evidence shows that approximately 11,000 – 15,000 Iraqis, combatants and noncombatants, were killed in the course of major combat actions. (Iraqi casualties incurred after 20 April are not included in this estimate). Of the total number of Iraqi fatalities during the relevant period, approximately 30 percent (or between 3,200 – 4,300) were noncombatant civilians — that is: civilians who did not take up arms.

These conclusions are based on an extensive review and analysis of operational data, demographic data, several hospital and burial society surveys, media interviews with Iraqi military personnel, battlefield fatality estimates made by US field commanders and embedded reporters, and media and non-governmental accounts of hundreds of civilian casualty incidents. (See Executive Summary section 6: “A note on methodology.”)

Expressed in terms of their mid-points, our estimates of Iraqi deaths are:

Total Iraqi fatalities:  12,950 plus or minus 2,150 (16.5 percent)
Iraqi noncombatant fatalities: 3,750 plus/minus 550 (15 percent)
Iraqi combatant fatalities:  9,200 plus/minus 1,600 (17.5 percent)

Notably, our estimates are framed in terms of “combatants and noncombatants,” rather than in terms of “civilians and military personnel.” This, because a significant number of civilians acted as combatants and some Iraqi military personnel fought and died out of uniform (and, thus, may have been mistaken for civilians). By some counts, between 5,000 and 7,000 of the Iraqis who died during the period of major combat operations were ostensibly “civilians.” However, based on demographic analyses, we count a significant minority of these as likely combatants. All of those we count as noncombatants in the estimate above were civilian. 

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