Well, neither. Just because someone has good intentions doesn't mean they are right. How's the UNAMI going to know how many civilians were killed in a battle like Fallujah?. The only chance they've got of having an idea is from intel from embedded journos, and those journos - I bet you anything you like - aren't going to have their heads high during a contact.

You just CAN'T a have figure like 2185 when there's just SO MANY variables in a battle. What's to say 'Abdul Dead Guy' on a push bike didn't have a hand grenade that was seconded by his mates after he blown apart?.

If someone came up with figures of 1000 +/- 200 (for example) dead civi's then I might start believing them.

Dear csteele,

People quote stats for a multitude of reasons.
Eventually as history has shown - the
truth does out. Though it often takes decades.

I haven't read the book you're quoting - but
now I'm tempted to, to see what it's
all about.

I'm reading "Mao's Last Dancer," at the moment -
(having just seen the film).

Dear StG,

Why is it that we don't question these UN based organisations when they report on tsunami or earth quake victim numbers. Often the counts are achieved through reports from families and neighbours when there is no body to be recovered, or attending morgues and hospitals etc when there is.

However when the military quotes a figure it is often given far more credence.

There was one news organisation in Fallujah at the time, Al Jazzera. They challenged the position of the US military that 95% of the casualties were military aged males. The editor-in-chief Achmed Al-Sheik was interview by CNN he was asked;

""Isn't the story, though, bigger than just the simple numbers, with all due respect to the Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives-- the story bigger than just the numbers of people who were killed or the fact that they might have been killed by the U.S. military, that the insurgents, the people trying to cause problems within Fallujah, are mixing in among the civilians, making it actually possibly that even more civilians would be killed, that the story is what the Iraqi insurgents are doing, in addition to what is the response from the U.S. military?"

Wow!

From Jim Molan's book:

"we were approached by the Middle East news network al Jazeera who told us through central command in Qatar that they had journalists with the insurgent forces and asked us to respect them"...."Rather optimistically, we suggested it would help us respect them if al Jazeera could just tell us where in Fallujah they were! It was a long shot and probably worth a go, but al Jazeera were obviously not stupid and we heard no more about it."

What do you think Jim Molan would have done with that information if it were given?

Dear Foxy,

Reading the book AFTER the movie, tut tut.

Jim Molan's book is worth a read but probably more for what it doesn't say. I found it very interesting.

I don't think the military figures are given more credence by anyone other than the patriotic voter.

Propaganda didn't start with the Nazi's, and it sure as hell didn't end there. We all know - or should know - how edgy the government is with the idea of body bags and body parts of their constituents on the 6pm news.

Do the government need Al Jazeera telling their preception of the truth?. Hell no.

War is ugly and sh*ty. There is nothing nice about it and there will ALWAYS be contention over the details.

Do civilians die in conflict?. Of course, they've been fodder since warfare began 10's of thousands of years ago. It's SO MUCH easier to forget what's it's all about when we're sitting on the other side of the world thinking Islam 'is responsible' for all that's evil. The soldiers doing the killing HAVE TO believe their enemy is somehow less than them for the purpose of making the slaughtering easier. A soldiers first job is to kill the enemy. Their second job is not to kill the population.

American soldiers, ESPECIALLY the Marines, are brainwashed into hating everything in the area they are going to do the killing. It's just their psyche and how they function.

Civilians just don't understand this concept, and never will. Fortunately our military encourages free thinking and compassion, moreso. They aren't perfect, that's for sure. The 1991 Gulf War was a classic exmaple when Au pilots refused some missions because the Yanks couldn't guarantee civilians weren't in the area of operation. An American pilot would NEVER do that.

I guess what my point is that the story is a miriad of truth and lies depending on who's telling the story. But one thing it isn't, is black and white.

Dear StG,

You said;

"The 1991 Gulf War was a classic example when Au pilots refused some missions because the Yanks couldn't guarantee civilians weren't in the area of operation."

Which was exactly the reason I was drawn to this book. I expected an 'Aussie' sensibility from a person operating at the highest levels in the conflict.

You might see it when you read the book but I didn't. Jim Molan could have just as easily been an American.

Some lines are quite telling; "To prepare for attacks from hostile media..." and "We decided that the outside broadcast truck, if that's what it was, was not part of any known media organisation, so we waited until it was unoccupied, then destroyed it with a missile." He seemed to me to be totally embedded.

Hell I might be reading this all wrong, and he does go into the measures taken to limit 'collateral damage', but my admittedly civilian sensibilities had me asking questions constantly through the book.

To give a case in point (sorry if I'm doing any spoiling), pre-assault (pg207) Molan talks about his hunting, through air strikes, Umar Hadid a suspected terrorist leader. "I made a sustained effort to kill him and launched several strikes as the taskforce delivered the intelligence".

Four times Molan ordered strikes on four different houses and three times Hadid walks clear of the rubble (the first one kills his brother). It was only on the last when Molan used several 'JDAMs" that he finally succeeded. My thoughts were for the others in the buildings including one would assume families. There is no mention of collateral damage.

My question would have been how many other deaths occurred and at what point do you stop? Ten, twenty more houses?