Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: In morte di una bodycounter

Onore a questa soldatessa della ragione. Chi non conta i morti non rispetta
i vivi.
Namib
-------------------------
The Independent (UK)
Aid worker uncovered America's secret tally of Iraqi
civilian deaths
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
20 April 2005
A week before she was killed by a suicide bomber,
humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka forced military commanders
to admit they did keep records of Iraqi civilians killed by
US forces.
Tommy Franks, the former head of US Central Command,
famously said the US army "don't do body counts", despite a
requirement to do so by the Geneva Conventions.
But in an essay Ms Ruzicka wrote a week before her death on
Saturday and published yesterday, the 28-year-old revealed
that a Brigadier General told her it was "standard operating
procedure" for US troops to file a report when they shoot a
non-combatant.
She obtained figures for the number of civilians killed in
Baghdad between 28 February and 5 April, and discovered that
29 had been killed in firefights involving US forces and
insurgents. This was four times the number of Iraqi police
killed.
"These statistics demonstrate that the US military can and
does track civilian casualties," she wrote. "Troops on the
ground keep these records because they recognise they have a
responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in
their interest to minimise mistakes, especially since
winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of
their strategy."
Sam Zia-Zarifi, deputy director of the Asia division of
Human Rights Watch, the group for which Ms Ruzicka wrote the
report, said her discovery "was very important because it
allows the victims to start demanding compensation". He
added: "At a policy level they have never admitted they keep
these figures."
Exactly how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in the
last two years is unclear. Iraq Body Count, a group that
monitors casualty reports, says at least 17,384 have died.
But the group bases its totals only on deaths reported by
the media, and says it can therefore only "be a sample" of
the total actually killed. Its website says: "It is likely
that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported
by the media. That is the sad nature of war."
A peer-reviewed report published last year in The Lancet and
based on an extrapolation of data suggested that 100,000
civilians may have been killed during the invasion and its
aftermath. One of the report's author, Dr Richard Garfield,
professor of nursing at Columbia University, said: "Of
course they keep records and of course they pretend they
don't. Why is it important to keep the numbers of those
killed? Well, why was it important to record the names of
those people killed in the World Trade Centre? It would have
been inconceivable not to. These people have lives of value.
"We are still fighting [to record] the Armenian genocide.
Until people have names and are counted they don't exist in
a policy sense."
Ms Ruzicka, from California, was killed in Baghdad after her
car was caught in the blast of a suicide bomber who attacked
a convoy of security contractors on the road to the city's
airport. She was in Iraq heading, Civic, the organisation
she set up to record and document civilians killed or
injured by the US military, and to seek compensation. She
carried out a similar project in Afghanistan.
In her report, she wrote from Iraq: "In my dealings with the
US military officials here, they have shown regret and
remorse for the deaths and injuries of civilians.
Systematically recording and publicly releasing civilian
casualty numbers would assist in helping the victims who
survive to piece their lives back together."
Colleagues of Ms Ruzicka at Civic (Campaign for Innocent
Victims In Conflict) have vowed to continue her work. April
Pedersen, a friend, said: "We are all committed to ensuring
the work that Marla did is going to continue." Ms Ruzicka,
whose funeral service is to be in California on Saturday,
was also remembered on Capitol Hill where Senator Patrick
Leahy, with whom Ms Ruzicka worked to achieve almost $20m in
appropriations to help victims in Afghanistan and Iraq, paid
tribute to her.
He said: "I want to . . . pay tribute to a remarkable young
woman from Lakeport, California. In my 31 years as a United
States Senator I have met lots of interesting and
accomplished people from all over the world. We all have.
Nobel prize winners, heads of state, people who have
achieved remarkable and even heroic things in their lives. I
have never met anyone like Marla Ruzicka." Meanwhile the
Pentagon maintained its position that it did not keep
numbers of civilians killed in Iraq.
'The public must know how many have died'
This is an edited extract of an article written by Marla
Ruzicka a week before her death:
In my two years in Iraq, the one question I am asked the
most is: "How many Iraqi civilians have been killed by
American forces?" 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.
In a news conference at Bagram air base in Afghanistan in
March 2002, General Tommy Franks said: "We don't do body
counts." His words outraged the Arab world.
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
"stability operations", most units began to keep track of
civilians killed at checkpoints or during patrols by US
soldiers.
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's
interest to release these statistics.
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.
--
Dan Clore

 i vivi.
Io colgo sopratutto l'ironia della situazione ... 

Chi non conta i morti non rispetta i vivi.
Puttanata.
-Stefano

 -Stefano
Infatti tu non rispetti ne' gli uni ne' gli altri.
Am.


Eh? Me la spieghi che non ho capito...

 Infatti tu non rispetti ne' gli uni ne' gli altri.
...disse il bue all'asino...
-Stefano

Eh? Me la spieghi che non ho capito...
E' morta uccisa .... da un attentato kamikaze, del quale e' stato
riportato l'esatto numero di morti :)
-Stefano