EasternOrthodox
NATO's civilian death toll in Libya: at least 70 (NYT)
Posted on: 12/19/2011 19:46
There has been some speculation on these threads about the death toll in Libya as a result of the recent action there. And how much of that was caused by NATO bombs. The New York Times has a long article about it.
Certainly, no one wants any casualties, but it seems that at least the civilians casualties were much, much lower than in say, WW II or Vietnam, thanks largely to computerized GPS-guided bombs. It would also appear that the death toll was lower than what would have occurred if Ghaddafi has been able to attack the city of Benghazi, as he was saying he was going to do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/world/africa/scores-of-unintended-casu...
Some excerpts:
By NATO’s telling during the war, and in statements since sorties ended on Oct. 31, the alliance-led operation was nearly flawless — a model air war that used high technology, meticulous planning and restraint to protect civilians from Colonel Qaddafi’s troops, which was the alliance’s mandate.
“We have carried out this operation very carefully, without confirmed civilian casualties,” the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in November.
But an on-the-ground examination by The New York Times of airstrike sites across Libya — including interviews with survivors, doctors and witnesses, and the collection of munitions remnants, medical reports, death certificates and photographs — found credible accounts of dozens of civilians killed by NATO in many distinct attacks. The victims, including at least 29 women or children, often had been asleep in homes when the ordnance hit.
In all, at least 40 civilians, and perhaps more than 70, were killed by NATO at these sites, available evidence suggests. While that total is not high compared with other conflicts in which Western powers have relied heavily on air power, and less than the exaggerated accounts circulated by the Qaddafi government, it is also not a complete accounting. Survivors and doctors working for the anti-Qaddafi interim authorities point to dozens more civilians wounded in these and other strikes, and they referred reporters to other sites where civilian casualties were suspected.
Two weeks after being provided a 27-page memorandum from The Times containing extensive details of nine separate attacks in which evidence indicated that allied planes had killed or wounded unintended victims, NATO modified its stance.
“From what you have gathered on the ground, it appears that innocent civilians may have been killed or injured, despite all the care and precision,” said Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for NATO headquarters in Brussels. “We deeply regret any loss of life.”
....
The Times’s investigation included visits to more than 25 sites, including in Tripoli, Surman, Mizdah, Zlitan, Ga’a, Majer, Ajdabiya, Misurata, Surt, Brega and Sabratha and near Benghazi. More than 150 targets — bunkers, buildings or vehicles — were hit at these places.
NATO warplanes flew thousands of sorties that dropped 7,700 bombs or missiles; because The Times did not examine sites in several cities and towns where the air campaign was active, the casualty estimate could be low.
There are indications that the alliance took many steps to avoid harming civilians, and often did not damage civilian infrastructure useful to Colonel Qaddafi’s military. Elements of two American-led air campaigns in Iraq, in 1991 and 2003, appear to have been avoided, including attacks on electrical grids.
Such steps spared civilians certain hardships and risks that accompanied previous Western air-to-ground operations. NATO also said that allied forces did not use cluster munitions or ordnance containing depleted uranium, both of which pose health and environmental risks, in Libya at any time.
The alliance’s fixed-wing aircraft dropped only laser- or satellite-guided weapons, said Col. Gregory Julian, a NATO spokesman; no so-called dumb bombs were used.
.....
When foreign militaries began attacking Libya’s loyalists on March 19, the United States military, more experienced than NATO at directing large operations, coordinated the campaign. On March 31, the Americans transferred command to NATO.
Seven months later, the alliance had destroyed more than 5,900 military targets by means of roughly 9,700 strike sorties, according to its data, helping to dismantle the pro-Qaddafi military and militias. Warplanes from France, Britain, the United States, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Canada dropped ordnance. Two non-NATO nations, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, participated on a small scale.
France carried out about a third of all strike sorties, Britain 21 percent and the United States 19 percent, according to data from each nation.
,,,
NATO said dynamic missions, too, were guided by practices meant to limit risks. On Oct. 24, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard of Canada, the operation’s commander, described a philosophy beyond careful target vetting or using only guided weapons: restraint. “Only when we had a clear shot would we take it,” he said.
Colonel Julian, the spokesman, said there were hundreds of instances when pilots could have released ordnance but because of concerns for civilians they held fire. Col. Alain Pelletier, commander of seven Canadian CF-18 fighters that flew 946 strike sorties, said Canada installed a special computer software modification in its planes that allowed pilots to assess the likely blast radius around an intended target and to call off strikes if the technology warned they posed too great a risk to civilians.
Colonel Julian also said that NATO broadcast radio messages and that it dropped millions of leaflets to warn Libyans to stay away from likely military targets, a practice Libyan citizens across much of the country confirmed.
....
NATO’s strikes in Majer, one of five known attacks on apparently occupied residences, suggested a pattern. When residential targets were presumed to be used by loyalist forces, civilians were sometimes present — suggesting holes in NATO’s “pattern of life” reviews and other forms of vetting.
Airstrikes on June 20 in Surman leveled homes owned by Maj. Gen. El-Khweldi el-Hamedi, a longtime confidant of Colonel Qaddafi and a member of his Revolutionary Council. NATO has said the family compound was used as command center.
The family’s account, partly confirmed by rebels, claimed that the strikes killed 13 civilians and wounded six more. Local anti-Qaddafi fighters corroborated the deaths of four of those killed — one of the general’s daughters-in-law and three of her children.
General Hamedi was wounded and has taken refuge in Morocco, said his son Khaled. Khaled has filed a lawsuit against NATO, claiming that the attack was a crime. He said that he and his family were victims of rebel “fabrications,” which attracted NATO bombs.
On Sept. 25, a smaller but similar attack destroyed the residence of Brig. Gen. Musbah Diyab in Surt, neighbors and his family members said.
General Diyab, a distant cousin of Colonel Qaddafi, was killed. So were seven women and children who crowded into his home as rebels besieged the defenses of some of the Qaddafi loyalists’ last holdouts, witnesses said....
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graeme
Posted on: 12/19/2011 21:57
Well, I guess it was okay to kill 70 people (not counting those now dying in what is developinig into a civil war). But it was worth it to get Ghadaffi who was a bad man. What a pity the US supported him for so many years!
The figure of 70 is also absurd. The accuracy of the bombs has nothing to do with it. If you accurately drop a guided bomb, it kills anybody in the neighbourhood of the target. It is also not true that only guided bombs were used. NATO, itself, announced it had also used conventional bombs.
It is not possible to bomb cities wtihout killing large numbers of civilians. As well, the cities wre subjected to heavy artillery fire (made possible by weapons and ammunition provided by us. As well, who do you think trained those "rebels" to use artillery? It's not like learning to fry an egg.) Artillery shells are not electronically guided.
To add to that, this war killed many civilians (and, apparently, very large numbers of Black Africans who were migrant workers.)
Even if it were true that the guided bombs asked people if they ghadaffi supporters before blowing up, the figure of 70 is not credible. In the context of the whole war, it is a whitewash.
I know you have a source, and it's respectable. Today, Reuters issued a story saying that the Iraq war killed "tens of thousands". EVen the American government has admitted to 120,000 or so. Other estimates (after sophisticated study) are far higher.
Reuters is a very respectable source. But a source is not fact. You are dealing with human beings here - not computers. In this case, there are respectable sources that place the killing of civilians in the bombing far higher. In any case, I don't see how anyone could go through the rubble (in a hot country and well after the bombing ended) and distinguish a person killed by a guided bomb from one killed by a regular bomb or an artilery shell.
A source is just a source. A central part of scientific or any other sort of scholarly training is to understand that.
GordW
Posted on: 12/20/2011 00:09
My guess is that 70 is an undercount. Of course sometimes it would be hard to tell who is a civilian and who is a combatant in such actions
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 12/20/2011 01:35
Maybe you should write a Letter to the Editor of The New York Times, outlining what you believe to be incorrect.
If you think these respectable sources are wrong--and I am sure they are at times, why not blog about that, rather what isn't in the Moncton Times-Transcript (that is shooting fish in a barrel).
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 12/20/2011 01:36
My guess is that 70 is an undercount. Of course sometimes it would be hard to tell who is a civilian and who is a combatant in such actions
The article stated as much. But it is unlikely the correct number is in the thousands.
graeme
Posted on: 12/20/2011 09:39
Will you write a letter to Reuters telling them that thry're wrong?
Editors are often wrong - and they rarely have any profound grasp of all the topics they write on or approve for publication.
How many were killed by bombing is beside the point, though. The Libyan war was encouraged by NATO. All the dead - and they are in the thousands - almost certainly in the tens of thousands, were killed in that war. They were killed at the instigation and the supply and the involvement of NATO - including the use of NATO special forces on the ground. To fuss over exactly how many were killed by each type of weapon is irrelevant - and really quite impossible. Even an editor should know that. So why assign a team to do such a study in the first place?
To whitewash what we did.
Note that the only authority in a position to give anything close to a correct account is the US government. And it has consistently refused to do so.
We have killed tens of thousands, caused enormous damage, and probably set up a civil war. But it's okay because our sophisticated bombs killing only 70 civilians.
Oh, and the oil companies control the oil fields again.
God's in his heaven. All's right with the world.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 12/20/2011 10:27
The companies controlled the oil fields before (to the same extent they do now). The sanctions had been lifted pre-revolution.
I won't write to Reuters because I did not see the story and I don't know what the correct figures are. You are one constantly carrying on about how these sources are wrong. Yet, you don't even blog about it.
In the new edition of "Guns, Germs and Steel" that I ordered (because I could not find my copy during our extended discussion), there was an afterword, in which he (Jared Diamond) corrected a few minor errors. He said nothing about floods of letters telling him his book was a whitewash. Could be covering it up?
graeme
Posted on: 12/20/2011 11:56
Why would he admit that?
In my blog, I have written about how sources can be misleading. I think it was just yesterday that I did most of the blog on Reuters, showing why it cannot be trusted.
I don't know of any source that can be trusted without some understanding ofo the nature of the subject, and some realistic sense of how people behave. Even then, of course, we still are limited by our own biases..
For example, it's no problem to find sources saying the government has to cut health care transfers because money is short. Two problems with those sources:
1. Money is not short. It has not disappeared. It still exists. We're entering hard times because people cannot buy. They can't buy because for the past thirty years or so most of the money has accumulated in the pockets of the very rich. We have lots of money. We just let corporations and the wealthy keep most of it.
2. A budget is not just health care. What about taxes - and who pays how much? What about handouts to corporations. (There are lots of them.) What about spending unforeseeable billions for a fighter plane for which we have no need, and which seems to be a disaster, anyway?
Sources tell us we have to cut health to balance the budget. The sources are wrong. Common sense should tell us to look at the question in the context of the whole budget,and what our primary needs are. But I haven't seen much of that in any of the sources.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 12/23/2011 00:07
Look at the story above. Quote:
“We have carried out this operation very carefully, without confirmed civilian casualties,” the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in November....
Two weeks after being provided a 27-page memorandum from The Times containing extensive details of nine separate attacks in which evidence indicated that allied planes had killed or wounded unintended victims, NATO modified its stance.
“From what you have gathered on the ground, it appears that innocent civilians may have been killed or injured, despite all the care and precision,” said Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for NATO headquarters in Brussels. “We deeply regret any loss of life.”
Until this story, NATO was claiming zero casualties! Now they change their tune. NATO has spoken, it was a NATO operation, not a US govt operation.
You state (on the other thread):
Anyway, a large part of the bombing, tens of thousands of tons of it, were NOT guided bombs.
And perhaps you will explain how over a thousand, closer to two thousand of the civilian deaths in Libya are attributed directly to bombing.
Give me your source for this.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 12/23/2011 00:13
Story from NYT saying that not even the Red Cross could verify the Libyan rebels death totals. Maybe you have a more recent source?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/world/africa/skirmishes-flare-around-q...
September 16, 2011
Libya Counts More Martyrs Than Bodies
By ROD NORDLAND
TRIPOLI, Libya — Where are all the dead?
Officially, according to Libya’s new leaders, their martyrs in the struggle against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi should number 30,000 to 50,000, not even counting their enemies who have fallen.
Yet in the country’s morgues, the war dead registered from both sides in each area so far are mostly in the hundreds, not the thousands. And those who are still missing total as few as 1,000, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Those figures may be incomplete, but even if the missing number proves to be three times as high, and all are dead, the toll would be far short of official casualty totals.
On Friday, anti-Qaddafi fighters attacked the two remaining strongholds of the loyalist forces, in the seaside city of Surt and the desert town of Bani Walid. Although both assaults were repulsed by determined resistance from the pro-Qaddafi forces, there can be little doubt that the war is in its final phases. And as it winds down, the question of how many died is taking on greater significance.
The death toll from the Libyan uprising is unarguably horrendous, even if it does not fit neatly into the former rebels’ narrative of a David-and-Goliath struggle against a bloodthirsty regime that slaughtered tens of thousands of the helpless and the innocent. It has also become a politically delicate issue, with some new government officials refusing to release hard statistics on casualties and human rights groups cautious about taking a definitive position.
The new authorities say the confirmed death toll will rise with the discovery of mass graves where the Qaddafi government hid its victims, both during its final months and as it collapsed and fled Tripoli and other population centers.
Mass graves of recent vintage have indeed been found — 13 of them confirmed by the Red Cross, or “about 20” found by the government, according to the Transitional National Council’s humanitarian coordinator, Muattez Aneizi. More are being found “nearly every day,” Mr. Aneizi said.
“Mass” is slightly misleading, however, because the largest actual grave site found so far, in the Nafusah Mountains of western Libya, had 34 bodies. In many of the others, the victims numbered only in the single digits. Many are not even graves, but rather containers or buildings where people were executed and their bodies left to rot.
The Red Cross counted only 125 dead from the 13 sites it confirmed, with 53 of those found in a hangar near Tripoli’s airport. While the rebels may not have died in the numbers their side has claimed, there is no doubt that many were killed, often horribly, after having been taken prisoner. As the Qaddafi government collapsed and its die-hards fled from Tripoli and other strongholds, such war crimes happened in many well-documented cases. They just did not happen in many thousands of cases, judging from the available evidence.
There has been no explanation of the basis for either the council’s tally of 30,000 to 50,000 dead, or the number preferred by the new government’s minister of health, Naji Barakat, a more modest 25,000 to 30,000.
At the Ministry of Health, Mohammed al-Ghazwi, who leads a newly formed Committee on the Dead, charged with confirming death tolls from the conflict, was reluctant to give any numbers out. “Every day we find another grave, so I can’t give you a specific number,” Mr. Ghazwi said. “But it’s about twenty-five to thirty thousand, like the minister of health said.”
Asked how many of those were based on documented cases of dead found so far, he said they were many fewer, but he could not give a number. “It’s very hard to tell the real number because during the Qaddafi time they hid all of them,” Mr. Ghazwi said.
In Tripoli, there are two morgues, but most victims who die violent deaths are taken to one of them, at Tripoli Central Hospital. There, according to Ali al-Kerdasi, a member of the hospital’s media committee, the dead since Aug. 25 totaled 700. Mr. Kerdasi said 600 people had been reported missing by relatives who came to the hospital to try to find them; 113 pictures of missing people are posted on the hospital’s emergency ward walls.
The figure of 700 dead may not have included all of those who died in the first days of the final battle for the city, from Aug. 20, when the main hospitals were in the hands of government forces for the first few days, and relatives may have buried some of the dead without taking them to the morgue as required by law.
At the site of the other morgue, at Tripoli Medical Center, Dr. Hossam Algedar, head of the center’s missing persons team, said he was not allowed to release information on the numbers of dead and missing. On the walls of that hospital, fliers show at least 127 missing people.
Bodies of people who have not yet been identified are shown, with their photos, on the team’s Facebook page; they total 52. Dr. Algedar said that was only a partial list.
Dr. Algedar does not hesitate to confirm the widely quoted figure of dead and missing. “Thirty to fifty thousand is a credible number,” he said. “The destination of the missing is a mystery.”
His view is shared by Dr. Othman el-Zentani, a forensic pathologist who has been put in charge of the National Council of the Missing, joining various ministries and international agencies like the Red Cross in an effort to rationalize the lists of missing.
The group has yet to have its first full meeting, but Dr. Zentani confidently predicted that the dead or missing might surpass 20,000. “Why not?” he said. “It’s a seven-month-long struggle, everywhere by all kinds of weapons, so I don’t doubt that.”
Everyone agrees that the toll, whatever it may be, would have been much higher if Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had held out in Tripoli for as long as people had feared. Instead, most victims there died from Aug. 20 to Aug. 26. “Tripoli has fallen in a few days; it was not a Beirut or a Gaza,” said Carole Pittet of the Red Cross.
The estimate of 1,000 missing by the Red Cross includes many migrant workers, Ms. Pittet said, and was gathered by field offices in Tripoli; Misurata, scene of the worst fighting; and Benghazi, where the revolution began.
Even in Benghazi, where fighting raged for weeks before NATO intervened to turn the tide against loyalists, casualties may not have been much higher than in Tripoli. According to Omar Babdous, head of tracing for the Red Crescent Society’s Benghazi office, 850 people were confirmed killed during the fighting in Benghazi and the area around it, while 1,350 are listed as missing.
In Misurata, a much smaller city than either Tripoli or Benghazi, the death toll was worse than anywhere else in Libya. Misurata’s authorities have identified 1,083 dead on all sides, according to Abu Bakr Triebe, the head of the Misurata Medical Bureau, with 2,000 believed missing.
The missing totals in those three largest places add up to far more (exceeding 3,500) than the Red Cross figure for the whole country, even though Red Cross teams were gathering data in those cities as well. But with no centralized system of reconciling missing reports, it is not possible to know how much duplication there is or how many initially were reported missing but then found. And many Libyans may just have not reported missing people to the Red Cross.
Sidney Kwiram, a representative of Human Rights Watch who has been in Libya for much of the conflict, said it was too early for any conclusions about the toll of missing and dead. Some of the missing may still be held by pro-Qaddafi forces inside Surt, where there is a military police detention center. Many rebels were buried by relatives and friends to avoid risking dangerous contact with the authorities. “In Tripoli, people even stopped taking their loved ones to the hospitals out of fear,” Ms. Kwiram said.
Much of the official death toll is based on the theory that there were 30,000 prisoners before the fall of the Qaddafi government, when prisons were all opened, and only 9,000 were found alive. The problem is, no one actually knows how many prisoners there were, and no one actually counted how many were released.
“The numbers you’re hearing in the press, they’re just basically guesses,” said Stefan Schmitt, a forensic anthropologist with Physicians for Human Rights, who was in Libya recently to advise the authorities on how to handle mass graves. “It’s too early to really know.”
graeme
Posted on: 12/23/2011 17:59
I gave you a source. It was a quotation by the reporter who did that NYT story about Libyan civilian deaths. HE said they only examined a very small proportion of the bombed areas.
Just use google. It has thousands of sources on that topic.
And use common sense. a) most of the bombs were NOT guided.
b) even guided bombs kill civilians when dropped in populated areas.
c) It was NOT a NATO operation. What does bombing Libya have to do with protecting the North Atlantic? The US supplied virtually all of the bombs. The US is using NATO give itself a cover for its wars. They are doing exactly what Britain did with its empire in the Boer War and World War One. Most NATO countries refused to participate in the Libya bombing. In any case, NATO had no authorization to bomb. Its mandate was to establish a NO FLY zone, not to take one side in a civil war.
Pease stop using sources as if t hey were authorities. If all decision making were simply a matter of checking sources, we wouldn't need discussion at all.
If, for example, the US really bases its policies on spreading democracy and being humane, how can you possibly explain its behaviour in Vietnam, Guatemala, Cuba, Iraq, Afghnistan, Pakistan, Libya, and now Syria and Iran. And why is it allied with so many countries that, like Saudi Arabia, are dictatorships?
Don't quote sources. Learn to interpret them. Learn to see what is really there.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 12/26/2011 16:06
Could you provide a link, or failing that, the exact title and date and name of the site? OK, on the other thread I see you provided the info.
When you start saying NYT is not a reliable source, when you start saying sources in general are not reliable, I start seeing the outlines of someone who has wacky ideas. There are plenty of people with wacky ideas, who frequently defend themselves just like you do. They have to criticize sources, no matter how reputable, because their ideas are so bizarre.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 12/26/2011 16:15
BAH HUMBUG--tired of politics
graeme
Posted on: 12/26/2011 19:36
You can't understand, can you? There are good sources, and there are weaker sources. There is no such thing as an always reliable source - or as an always unreliable source.
You regard a source.as a fact. What you cannot seem to understand is that sources come from people. People are not perfect.
To be critical of a source does not mean to condemn it. It means to consider what limitations or contradictions it might have before you accept it.
In the case of the xource you are asking for, I gave it to you. And it was a quotation from th NYT reporter who did that story. All you have to do is go to google, and type in the name of site I gave you, the date, an the word I gave from the story.
For some reason, you won't do it.
You see the world in simplistic terms - angels and devils, good and evil. You see sources the same way. I'm afraid you don't understand what people are.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 01/08/2012 17:59
Carrying forward from Graeme's thread on Israel and Mely:
http://www.wondercafe.ca/discussion/politics/special-flash-mely-newspape...
Check democracynow.org
It's not as prestigious as the NYT. but it a source.
I interviewed .sr. reporter Eric Schmitt (or Schmilt) who covered the story about civilian bombing deaths in Libya. Schmitt told democracynow that they saw only a very small portion of the bombing sites - so the civilian death count is probably much higher than they reported.
And it's a source. - and it would be extremely dangerous for such a site to publish an untrue quotation from a Sr. NYT reporters.
Found and checked. There is a transcript. Link:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/22/nato_forced_to_admit_airstrikes_k...
Notice that I have to do Graeme's for him: I have to find source, post the link and the text and do all the editing to make this readable. Thank-you for your help, Graeme.
I am not your secretary and I will not repeat this exercise in the future.
I am sorry to sound curt and abrupt, but this has taken me at least 45 minutes, whilst Graeme merrily speaks as though I am a lazy lout for not following his directions (hidden in a thread that had nothing to do with the topic).
Here is a copy of all remarks made to or by Eric Schmitt.
ERIC SCHMITT: Well, the principal findings, as your introduction has suggested, was that initially NATO had said, and the Secretary General of NATO had said, that throughout the seven-month air campaign, they knew of no confirmed civilian casualties on the ground as a result of NATO air strikes. What our investigation has shown, and my colleague’s reporting has shown, that there were at least a dozen or so instances where there were air strikes that caused civilian casualties.
Now, granted, this is a very—a relatively small number in the overall number, as you said, 9,700 strike sorties that were carried out, but still significant enough that there were somewhere between 40 and 70 civilian deaths. And that’s just what we know of. Of course, we only saw a small sampling of the strike sites that may have been affected, so the death toll is probably much larger.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of what you did find, you found several instances where families were hit in their homes, as well. Could you talk about one or two of those?
ERIC SCHMITT: Yeah, what we saw, a couple of instances. One was, for instance, there was a strike against a warehouse that we later learned from the guards who had been tending it through the many months was really only a warehouse for food. This was quite close to a civilian home where a number of people were killed. There were, in other instances where mistaken intelligence—where there was a civilian home hit that was very near another home that had been the meeting place for some of the pro-Gaddafi forces. So, again, a piece of bad intelligence, just a few doors away, essentially, ended up meaning a death warrant for many—for several family members.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you introduce us to some of the family members that C.J. Chivers, your co-author in this piece, visited? The story of the little boy who was killed, for example?
ERIC SCHMITT: Yeah, we talk about this little boy who was killed in a strike early on, and it was very sad in terms of how—again, the targeting process here, which would be carried out initially in Italy and then relayed to these pilots, who would be flying these wartime missions, usually at night, using laser-guided or satellite-guided bombs for the precision. And yet, what happens is, in this particular case, bombs are falling, and buildings are collapsing around families, killing small women and—small children and women, in many cases.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, I want to go back to a New York Times video report narrated by C.J. Chivers. This clip begins with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of NATO, speaking in June.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Your response to the initial NATO declarations?
ERIC SCHMITT: Well, here’s the problem with the Secretary General’s statement, and it was a statement that was repeated over and over again by NATO officials throughout the campaign: "We have no information of confirmed casualties."
Well, the problem is that NATO and the U.S. did not have any boots on the ground, at least none that they’ve acknowledged, and so until they had such boots on the ground that they could conduct their own investigation, they were not going to acknowledge any kind of error, even though, of course, there were times, air strikes, where the pro-Gaddafi regime came out and claimed casualties for strikes. These were dismissed as propaganda.
And in one case, we went back and looked at these, where, in one instance, there was—I think the regime at the time of the strike had claimed maybe 80 or 90 civilian casualties. That clearly proved to be exaggerated, but our examination—again, on Chris’s reporting on the ground, in talking to family members, neighbors, medical people in the area—confirmed that there were probably about 30 or 35 casualties or so that were—that died on the scene.
So, clearly, and this is—NATO officials pretty much acknowledged to us that, again, without having gone on the ground and confirming it themselves, there may well have been civilian casualties.
The question now is, what will be done about it? NATO has not committed to going in on the ground to investigate these strikes, as they’ve done in places, as you noted, in Afghanistan. They’re essentially waiting for the Libyan government to invite them in to do this. So far, the Libyans are preoccupied with setting up their new government and dealing with other challenges, apparently, to do this.
AMY GOODMAN: And ties to the current Libyan leadership of NATO?
ERIC SCHMITT: Well, again, NATO and the Libyan government are in contact. And as a result of our story, I was told just yesterday by the NATO spokesman, for instance, that they are now working to gather information on unexploded ordnance.
These are essentially duds, bombs that were dropped but didn’t go off, that pose a real threat to civilians, including children. NATOis now trying to track those—because the pilots knew when their bombs didn’t explode—track them, figure out where they are, and get that information to the Libyan government so they can get it out to their people. I’m told that NATO will try and get that information to the Libyan government by the end of January.
The first section that I put in italics and bold indicates the primary mission of NYT: to show that NATO's claim of no civilian casualties was not true. That was stated quite clearly in the story. Graeme is correct: a senior NYT reporter is not going to substantially alter the content of a story he reported in that newspaper.
The second section, that Graeme is referring to, let me quote this again:
And that’s just what we know of. Of course, we only saw a small sampling of the strike sites that may have been affected, so the death toll is probably much larger.
And the NYT story quoted in opening post said:
The Times’s investigation included visits to more than 25 sites, including in Tripoli, Surman, Mizdah, Zlitan, Ga’a, Majer, Ajdabiya, Misurata, Surt, Brega and Sabratha and near Benghazi. More than 150 targets — bunkers, buildings or vehicles — were hit at these places.
NATO warplanes flew thousands of sorties that dropped 7,700 bombs or missiles; because The Times did not examine sites in several cities and towns where the air campaign was active, the casualty estimate could be low.
So, the only difference between the two statements is "we saw a small sampling...the death toll is probably much larger" versus "The Times did not examine sites in several cities and towns where the air campaign was active, the casualty estimate could be low."
In other words, basically no difference, as to quote Graeme again, the NYT reporter would hardly contradict himself. But neither sources says what the total number of sites is.
Perhaps they looked at 20% of the sites? Just a guess. The article says at least 40, as many as 70. If they looked at 20%, that would give us a total of 200 - 350. Seventy is the high estimate.
The point is, Graeme repeated statement of 30,000 is wide of the mark. Especially since the second NYT story said specifically that the 30,000 figure was a rebel estimate of how many people Ghaddafi's sources had killed, which was exaggerated to gain sympathy in the West.
I would like Graeme to acknowledge that this.
I have disagreements with some Graeme earlier statements in this thread
The accuracy of the bombs has nothing to do with it. If you accurately drop a guided bomb, it kills anybody in the neighbourhood of the target. It is also not true that only guided bombs were used.
NATO, itself, announced it had also used conventional bombs.
It is not possible to bomb cities wtihout killing large numbers of civilians. As well, the cities wre subjected to heavy artillery fire (made possible by weapons and ammunition provided by us. As well, who do you think trained those "rebels" to use artillery? It's not like learning to fry an egg.) Artillery shells are not electronically guided.
In fact, in the quoted story, NATO specifically said they did not drop any cluster bombs or any "dumb bombs."
I think, Graeme, you do not realize how much satellite-guided navigation has revolutionized the world of "smart bombing."
I myself had a recent experience (the first time) of using a GPS device in a car, driving to visit my daughter in Edmonton, a city I am not familiar with. My sister and I drove from Kamloops. My daughter's street address had been entered into the device's finder.
The device was quiet on the highway. As we approached Edmonton, it began to speak instructions. It would say things like "in approximately 2 km, you should take the next exit." then as the exit approached, it would tell us again to take the exit.
In the city it would say things like "in the next km you should turn left." As one approached the turn, it would remind you "turn left."
It was remarkable to me--I had never experienced any remotely like it. Based on this, we found our way to my daughter's house in Edmonton in the dark without any trouble at all.
At the end, as we stopped outside my daughter's house, the device announced "You have reach your destination."
It is utterly and completely unlike anything we knew from our younger days, Graeme.
They deliver bombs based on precise latitude and longitude co-oridinates. The days of WW II and Vietnam carpet bombing are way behind us. Targeted bombing truly allows bombing, even in a city, with a very low civilian casualty rate. I am not suggesting we go out on new and fresh wars, only that Graeme is misleading by implying that the NATO operation in Libya was WW II or Vietnam style bombing.
You retired a long time ago, Graeme, long before this. I myself was astounded by the car device. I think it is time you factored this into your thinking.
graeme
Posted on: 01/08/2012 21:05
They had guided bombs in Vietnam (and toward the close of WW2). I watched videos of aircraft firing rockets in Libya. I saw what they were shooting them at.
I'm not your teacher. You want sources? Use google. Why would I go to a lot of trouble for you? You wan't pay the slightest attention to a source you don't agree with.
As to bombing, you simply don't know what you're talking about.; They had smart bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have smart drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Innocent people are still getting killed, and in large numbers. I follow military affairs fairly closely. I know of no evidence that smart bombs have reduced civilian casualties.
And NATO says it didn't use cluster bombs? Well, gee whiz. If NATO says so, it must be true.
I didn't give a total figure of any sort. I said I had seen reports of civilian killings in the tens of thousands. that certainly makes sense in the face of such bombing and artillery and rocket fire on cities.
Artillery shells, btw, are not smart. The war was fought, as well, with poorly trained troops, the sort who kill widely and at random, and in the course of theft and rape. With rfile fire alone, the figure of 70 civilian dead is absurd. With bombing, artillery and rockets, nobody who knows anything of the subject would take the number 70 seriously.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 01/08/2012 21:25
GOOD-BYE. I am obviously not worthy of your wise words and much too stupid to argue such a person as yourself. I do not wish to clutter up the site further. Wondercafe is welcome to you and your wisdom.
I would not have come back without Mely posting that ridiculous thing about the irrelevant loser Galloway (who, contrary to Mely's statement, does not have a large fan base).
SNARL! HISS!