Lloyd WilliamsIN THE war that is now winding down between the US-led coalition forces and the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, much of the focus of the media coverage and, the propaganda, was placed on the casualties - civilian especially.
And naturally so. There is hardly anything as traumatic and heart-rending as losing one's relatives, friends or acquaintances to gunfire or other explosive devices in the comfort of their homes, or elsewhere, triggered by perfect strangers, regardless of how just or righteous the cause of the war.
So, pity the poor, innocent people of Iraq who get blasted into thy kingdom come while merely going about their business or were safely in bed.
The pain and the anguish is no less unbearable in Jamaica, land we love, when young men, poor, semi-literate, jobless and misguided, murder one another without cause or kill victims they have robbed or raped.
CASUALTIES
On Tuesday, the 27th day of the Iraq war which began on March 20, The Associated Press and Reuters quoting the Pentagon and the British Defence Ministry, listed the Iraq war casualties as:
121 US troops dead and 495 wounded. Of the 121 dead, 105 were killed in combat and 16 in "non-hostile" incidents such as accidents. Four troops are missing and the number of captured was revised to zero, the seven US POWs having been rescued on Sunday after they were abandoned by Iraqi forces.
Thirty-one British troops are dead.
Neither Iraq nor the coalition has released an estimate of Iraqi military casualties, although US officials have said that more than 2,600 Iraqi soldiers were killed since Friday, April 4. Iraq said that since the war began more than 1,200 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded.
Last week, the US Department of Defence said American forces held at least 7,300 prisoners of war. Britain said its troops were holding more than 6,500 Iraqi prisoners.
More that 700 journalists are embedded with coalition forces covering the war and hundreds more have been finding their way around. Casualties among journalists have been 10 killed in situations of combat, two are missing, two died in accidents, and one died of natural causes.
More than 300,000 coalition troops are in the region with some 255,000 from the United States, 45,000 from Britain, 2,000 from Australia, 400 Czechs and Slovaks and 200 from Poland.
Some 2,000 US aircraft have flown more than 30,000 sorties, dropping more than 20,000 munitions on Iraq.
FRIENDLY FIRE
In friendly fire incidents since the war began, more than 13 coalition servicemen have been killed and several wounded.
According to figures provided by The Associated Press,, of more than 540,000 Americans deployed at the peak of the fighting in the Gulf War of 1990-1991 Desert Storm 148 were killed and 467 wounded.
Twenty-four British servicemen were killed, nine by friendly (US) fire, with 10 wounded. Two Frenchmen were killed and an estimated 25 wounded. An Italian airman was killed. Allied Arab casualties totalled 39.
Baghdad put its losses at 75,000 to 100,000 soldiers killed in action and 35,000 to 45,000 civilians killed by allied bombing.
Particularly painful in any war are the casualties caused by "friendly fire", also referred to as fratricide or "blue on blue" fire. With all the advances in the technology of war, with all the checks and balances employed, "friendly fire" seems as much a persistent reality of war as enemy killing enemy.
In one of the first incidents of friendly fire in the current Iraq war, a US Patriot missile on March 23 shot down a British Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 fighter near the Kuwaiti border killing the two crew members.
It was reported that a glitch in the targeting software caused the Patriot missile's defence battery to lock its sights on the allied fighter plane and shoot it down.
Friendly fire accounted for 35 servicemen or 24 per cent of the US casualties in Desert Storm, the first Gulf War.
DISSIPATING THE
'FOG OF WAR'
Since then, the US military has spent billions of dollars equipping its computers, planes, tanks and other vehicles with technology designed to increase its servicemen's ability to distinguish friendly troops from foes. Commanders in the field use laptop computers, Global Positioning Systems, satellites and other equipment and technology to dissipate the "fog of war", but still friendly fire persists.
All cases of friendly fire are investigated by the US military. Sometimes criminal charges are preferred against persons found negligent or careless.
Lloyd Williams is Senior Associate Editor at the Gleaner
Much of the injuries to civilians in the Iraq war and the damage done to their property have been blamed on "collateral damage."
At a briefing given at the Penatgon on March 19, Col. Gary L. Crowder, chief of Strategy, Concepts and Doctrine, US Air Combat Command, spoke about "collateral damage" in explaining effects-based operations and the efficacy of the combination of stealth and precision munitions such as laser-guided bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions which are guided by the Global Positioning System.
"The term 'collateral damage' is often misued", Col. Crowder said. "From a military sense, collateral damage means or, by definition, is that damage than can be expected from the reasonable occurrence from attacking a system or attacking a target. For example, if I looked at a target and... I was going to put a 2,000 lb. on it, and windows broke across the street, I can plan for that. And that is collateral damage. It is the anticipated effects created by the employment of force...
"Now that is different from unintended damage, and it is different both philosophically and from a practical manner. Unintended damage is when something goes wrong. Either a fin breaks on a weapon and the weapon goes off course - and everything is a mechanical device, and as like as we would that these things be perfect, they are in fact not. Mechanical devices that we employ fail. And so we will have some degree of that. We will also have some degree of intelligence failure."
And of course, there is always human error which will arise from the complications and confusion of the battle spaces of war.
