Thread by @iraqbodycount

1/11 There is nothing to ‘commemorate’ about the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, but it needs remembering in every civilian life-destroying detail. This thread is about those deadly first weeks, drawn from @iraqbodycount analyses summarised in iraqbodycount.org/analysis/refer…

2/11 The rate at which civilians were killed by invading US-led forces in the 21 days from 20 March–9 April (invasion to “fall of Baghdad”) was 315 per day – so high compared to the following 2-year period it could not fit on the same intensity graph:

3/11 By 18 Apr, coalition aircraft dropped on Iraq “a total of 29,199 bombs, rockets, and missiles of all varieties.” 2/3 were “precision guided weapons”, 1/3 “unguided”; 78% of 20,000+ airstrikes supported ground forces using their own devastating arms.

airforcemag.com/PDF/MagazineAr…

4/11 For every civilian reported killed (predominantly by explosive weapons, airborne or artillery) more than three were reported injured, bringing the total killed and injured in the invasion phase to 22,733.

5/11 The “unguided” weapons included cluster bombs and their many (uncounted) ‘bomblets’, including those that lie in wait for children: IBC documented 352–507 civilians killed and 1,652–2,042 wounded in incidents involving these still-to-be-universally-banned WMDs.

6/11 These were all civilians: to this day there are no reliable figures for Iraqi combatant deaths during the invasion – we can only surmise that it was in the thousands. US + Coalition deaths totalled 172, some 25% from “friendly fire” or in accidents. icasualties.org

7/11 Only around 80 of the Iraqi civilians killed during the invasion (around 1% of the total) were humanised by their full names in media reports at the time (see: iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyon…).

8/11 The task of publicly and individually recognising every victim of the Iraq war remains largely un-finished. An example of how recent witness testimony has filled in one missing part of that larger picture from the invasion phase is given at iraqbodycount.org/database/incid…

9/11 In the intensity of “Shock and Awe” relatively few casualty reports emerged: most appeared in the later (comparative) calm. Early releases from Iraqi officials (dismissed as “propaganda”) turned out to be true or an under-representation.
archive.globalpolicy.org/security/issue…

10/11 The invasion — deemed “illegal” by UNSG — enabled all that followed: a brutal occupation, the torture halls of Abu Ghraib, the sieges & mass slaughters in Fallujah, 1,700 suicide bombs & sectarian conflicts claiming more than 200,000 civilian lives.
theguardian.com/world/2004/sep…

11/11 All of which underlines the Nuremberg prosecutors’ declaration that to initiate a war of aggression “is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/09-30-46.a…