Baghdad Attack Navigator

[avix123]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/baghdad_navigator/

Nice little tool. Notice the sharp fall off at the beginning of 2007. I look at it as the calm before the storm. I would like to think it's the effectiveness of the troop surge. I guess the next few months will tell.

Notice the current vs. pre-2006 areas. The mixed goes away, the people are taking sides by this demographic, graphic.

[chalupa]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/baghdad_navigator/

Nice little tool. Notice the sharp fall off at the beginning of 2007. I look at it as the calm before the storm. I would like to think it's the effectiveness of the troop surge. I guess the next few months will tell.

Notice the current vs. pre-2006 areas. The mixed goes away, the people are taking sides by this demographic, graphic.

Maybe they just all died.

[slapnpopbass]

Really interesting. How did the insurgent attacks just drop?

Maybe it was the troop surge...

[blabam]

maybe we are only 2,5 months into 2007?

[chalupa]

maybe we are only 2,5 months into 2007?

agreed -- one data point does not constitute a trend

[bergshadow]

The Shia and Sunni have been ethnically cleansing mixed neighborhoods - especially the numerically superior and US-backed Shia have been doing this.

Hundreds of thousands of of Iraqis have been forced from their homes, and either left the country or moved into designated areas of their sect. Baghdad has been partitioned by sect.

The Kurds have also been doing this, clearing the Turkmen and others from designated Kurdish neighborhoods - even whole towns. Soon the clearing of Kirkuk will become a matter of violence - the Shia do not want to leave the oil fields there in Kurdish hands.

So there are few "mixed" neighborhoods any more, anywhere in Iraq. Some have proposed building walls.

That map gives the impression of only a couple of hundred bombings. There have been thousands.

[avix123]

Yeah I saw that too, the last point you made. The points on the map are only for 10+ people dead in a particular attack. The ones documented anyways.

[chalupa]

The true savagery of these people is coming out...some assholes now detonated a car bomb WITH CHILDREN INSIDE yesterday.

I, the peace loving chalupa, am starting to think we should just let this civil war break out and have the problem clean itself up...ethnically. (get it?)

Seriously, how are we going to solve a thousand years of tribal/ethnic tension?

I say, let them build walls. Let them have apartheid. Let them make the leap back to the 1300's. They all suck as human beings.

Oh wait, they all want a piece of the oil. Ain't oil grand?

[Asbestos Crayon]

Notice the current vs. pre-2006 areas. The mixed goes away, the people are taking sides by this demographic, graphic.


Classic East Coast/West Coast syndrome.

Eventually they will run out of bombs or people, which one comes first will be the desiding point as to whether people will call this a US victory or not.

[bergshadow]

The true savagery of these people is coming out... The architects of Shock and Awe need to be careful about words like "savagery".

And it isn't fair to blame the Iraqi insurgents for AQ stuff - the US brought that crowd in, and it's still mostly foreigners - although it has recruited within Iraq.

[chalupa]

Not necessarily the case, berg. Shock and awe was focused at eliminating military targets while attempting to minimize civilian deaths. Shock and awe, in and of itself, is not savage.

Savage is driving a car loaded with bombs through a checkpoint with kids in the back, getting out of the car and running away as the bombs detonate, leaving the children, whose only purpose was to get you through the checkpoint, to be blown into a bloody smear on the sidewalk. That is savage.

[_Joe]

maybe we are only 2,5 months into 2007?

I agree that it's only one data point, but also understand that the total shown in the graphic is not for the entire year, but shows you the totals for those 2.5 months and the short-term decline in violence we are seeing.

Still, we need to wait and see a while longer to really determine if the surge helped.

The Shia and Sunni have been ethnically cleansing mixed neighborhoods - especially the numerically superior and US-backed Shia have been doing this.

Hundreds of thousands of of Iraqis have been forced from their homes, and either left the country or moved into designated areas of their sect. Baghdad has been partitioned by sect.

The Kurds have also been doing this, clearing the Turkmen and others from designated Kurdish neighborhoods - even whole towns. Soon the clearing of Kirkuk will become a matter of violence - the Shia do not want to leave the oil fields there in Kurdish hands.

So there are few "mixed" neighborhoods any more, anywhere in Iraq. Some have proposed building walls.

That map gives the impression of only a couple of hundred bombings. There have been thousands.


I've been having trouble understanding this for a while now. What exactly IS the difference between Sunni and Shia?

[chalupa]

"Ali is the central figure at the origin of the Shia / Sunni split which occurred in the decades immediately following the death of the Prophet in 632. Sunnis regard Ali as the fourth and last of the "rightly guided caliphs" (successors to Mohammed as leader of the Muslims) following on from Abu Bakr 632-634, Umar 634-644 and Uthman 644-656. Shias feel that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Mohammed via Ali and Fatima, They often refer to themselves as ahl al bayt or "people of the house".

...from a Islamic history website.

So, basically, if you were to read on, you'd find that with a few generations of the founding of a religion whose name translates as "Peace", wars were fought about the leadership of the religion.

Nice.

[_Joe]

...from a Islamic history website.

So, basically, if you were to read on, you'd find that with a few generations of the founding of a religion whose name translates as "Peace", wars were fought about the leadership of the religion.

Nice.

Thank you!

[bergshadow]

Shock and awe was focused at eliminating military targets while attempting to minimize civilian deaths.
- - -
Savage is driving a car loaded with bombs through a checkpoint with kids in the back, getting out of the car and running away as the bombs detonate, So what, specifically, is the difference? The bombs were delivered by car? The plane bombers can't see the kids faces? Checkpoints and enemy police, etc, aren't military targets? We didn't count the civilian deaths from Shock and Awe? Two kids is not minimized, should have been one?

I'm sure we can find some technical differences between bombing children from airplanes as inevitable and necessary side effect of our chosen tactics, and blowing them up by car as an inevitable and necessary price of someone else's chosen tactics, but you sure you're not splitting hairs, here?

Especially since the people we bombed are not, byand large, the ones pulling these terroristic horror bombings - the Iraqis are catching it from both ends.

I think terrorism of this kind is evil, amoral, scumbag behavior. But the moral high horse is a dubious seat for the architects of this war.

[_Joe]

So what, specifically, is the difference? The bombs were delivered by car? The plane bombers can't see the kids faces? Checkpoints and enemy police, etc, aren't military targets? We didn't count the civilian deaths from Shock and Awe? Two kids is not minimized, should have been one?

I'm sure we can find some technical differences between bombing children from airplanes as inevitable and necessary side effect of our chosen tactics, and blowing them up by car as an inevitable and necessary price of someone else's chosen tactics, but you sure you're not splitting hairs, here?

Especially since the people we bombed are not, byand large, the ones pulling these terroristic horror bombings - the Iraqis are catching it from both ends.

I think terrorism of this kind is evil, amoral, scumbag behavior. But the moral high horse is a dubious seat for the architects of this war.

Yes, the bombers at least are not intentionally killing children, when the terrorist consciously and intentionally blew up children while sparing his own life. You must see a difference. If you can't, you must be blind.

[bergshadow]

Yes, the bombers at least are not intentionally killing children, when the terrorist consciously and intentionally blew up children while sparing his own life. You must see a difference. If you can't, you must be blind. The moral difference is small, if the bombers know they are dropping bombs on children.

Are you claiming that the US bombing campaigns do not know they are dropping bombs on children?

Are you claiming the car bomb at issue here was intended for the purpose of killing those children?

If you drop bombs on children, you are accepting their deaths as inevitable side effects of your tactics. A car bomber may make a very similar calculation. There is a difference, in that in this case the car bomber is more personally involved with the specific children killed - he sees their faces, knows their names maybe, etc - so we see him as more of a monster; but let's not kid ourselves about the tactics and strategies of the US invasion of Iraq.

The moral high ground is not where we have set up camp.

[_Joe]

The moral difference is small, if the bombers know they are dropping bombs on children.

Are you claiming that the US bombing campaigns do not know they are dropping bombs on children?

Are you claiming the car bomb at issue here was intended for the purpose of killing those children?



I am saying the bombers are not first taking those children and placing them under their sites first. Despite how wrong this war may be, I still can not believe you are equating a U.S. Air Force bomber with a terrorist who lures soldiers to his car with multiple children only to run away and kill the children. Just hearing what you are saying makes me want to punch a hole through the wall.


If you drop bombs on children, you are accepting their deaths as inevitable side effects of your tactics. A car bomber may make a very similar calculation. There is a difference, in that in this case the car bomber is more personally involved with the specific children killed - he sees their faces, knows their names maybe, etc - so we see him as more of a monster; but let's not kid ourselves about the tactics and strategies of the US invasion of Iraq.

The moral high ground is not where we have set up camp.
So I guess in war we should just use tear gas and punching gloves, right? Because hey, violence is wrong. :rolleyes:

It's shitty, but in war there are casualties. Our technology has come a long way from the carpet-bombing tactics of WWII, but civilian casualties are still inevitable in any war. Does that mean we should not fight? Are you saying it is better to lose the war rather than to harm one innocent person? Is that really what you mean, or are you just forming non-sensical arguements in order to bash America?

I don't like war, and I don't like this war, but straighten yourself out and don't equate our tactics to those of terrorists. The difference is, if our bombers saw children playing at a bomb site, unless that attack would end the war they would not kill those children. The terrorist uses those children as a means of causing death to people fighting for peace and stability. There's an ENOURMOUS difference, no matter what you feel in that warped mind of yours.


PS: I said "feel" instead of "think" because there is no way anyone with half a mind would come to the conclusions you have come to through rational and sane thought, so it must be emotion writing those words.

[troxy18]

I have my doubts on some of the locations given on the map, due to the event in June 2004, the market rocket attack pointing to the right side of the map, that isnt a market there.

also when I was in Iraq there was a car bomb attack on a specific route we would sometimes convoy through, these images quickly made it onto CNN, people being pulled from the rubble. I dont know the actual death toll for that event but it was not on the map.

Just some observations of mine.

[chalupa]

The moral difference is small, if the bombers know they are dropping bombs on children.

Are you claiming that the US bombing campaigns do not know they are dropping bombs on children?

Are you claiming the car bomb at issue here was intended for the purpose of killing those children?

If you drop bombs on children, you are accepting their deaths as inevitable side effects of your tactics. A car bomber may make a very similar calculation. There is a difference, in that in this case the car bomber is more personally involved with the specific children killed - he sees their faces, knows their names maybe, etc - so we see him as more of a monster; but let's not kid ourselves about the tactics and strategies of the US invasion of Iraq.

The moral high ground is not where we have set up camp.

Berg -- you drew the comparison between men placing children in a car as a means to deliver a bomb, and then running away as they detonated the bomb and the children to the "shock and awe" campaign. I didn't. I did, however, say that comparing the two is not valid. Its the whole apples and oranges debate.

My point: savage = running from the car and blowing up children who had no chance or choice...you signed their death warrant, and they didn't have a prayer. Shock and awe = specifically attack military targets with overwhelming force, with the express intent of shocking and awing the enemy forces into surrendering. In the original push to Baghdad, ancillary civilian casualties (as it was reported, and as far as I know) were minimal. The military strategy for toppling Saddam Hussein was well-choreographed and superbly executed.

However, the Administration's lack of foresight for the handling of the civilian population after the main military conflict could much more accurately be called "savage" than the shock and awe strategy could.

Using a child as a bomb delivery vehicle = savage. Wrecking a country and not having a strategy but rather blindly believing that democracy would be embraced by an oppressed and angry people...well, it may not be savage, but it is just as stupid as what the bombers did.

[bergshadow]

I am saying the bombers are not first taking those children and placing them under their sites first. And I am saying that the difference between that and choosing bomb targets which, to one's certain knowledge, children already occupy, is not as big as you seem to be trying to make it. I'm not saying it isn't there, I'm just estimating its size and significance. It's shitty, but in war there are casualties. Does that mean we should not fight? It means we should not start wars, or prosecute them, or extend the range of mayhem in them, beyond absolute necessity. Our technology has come a long way from the carpet-bombing tactics of WWII, but civilian casualties are still inevitable in any war Our enemy's technology has not come so far. Does that make them morally inferior, the fact that they must make their calculations without access to our means of avoiding civilian casualties - or avoiding seeing them, anyway? Are you saying it is better to lose the war rather than to harm one innocent person? Is that really what you mean, or are you just forming non-sensical arguements in order to bash America? Are you allowing the enemy to make the same calculations, or are you just forming nonsensical judgments in order to bash people you have gone out of your way to kill beyond necessity, and salve your conscience?
The difference is, if our bombers saw children playing at a bomb site, unless that attack would end the war they would not kill those children. In the first place, that isn't true, unfortunately. In the second, it isn't to the point: So they don't look. That's an interesting thing about aerial bombing and long range rocketing and artillery in modern war - you don't have to see what you are doing, or what you did, if you don't want to. The terrorist uses those children as a means of causing death to people fighting for peace and stability. There's an ENOURMOUS difference, no matter what you feel in that warped mind of yours. So now the imagined personal motives of terrorists, or of the terrorist's targets, or those of people who got us into this war, are the core moral justification for the mayhem we have caused ? It is Dick Cheney's personal obsession with bringing freedom and peace to the ordinary people of Iraq that excuses or justifies all our tactics? You are on very thin moral ice there.

Or as I put it, not standing on the moral high ground.

PS: I said "feel" instead of "think" because there is no way anyone with half a mind would come to the conclusions you have come to through rational and sane thought, so it must be emotion writing those words. Let's take a look: Just hearing what you are saying makes me want to punch a hole through the wall. - - So I guess in war we should just use tear gas and punching gloves, right? - - no matter what you feel in that warped mind of yours. I think the comparative roles of emotion and reason in our arguments are somewhat different from your assessment of them.
In the original push to Baghdad, ancillary civilian casualties (as it was reported, and as far as I know) were minimal. Well, not knowing is part of my argument - but don't forget the months of preparatory bombing (starting with the large increase in September of 2002), the extent of the damage to civilian infrastructure, and the Lancet survey count of the casualties from the first few months before the insurgency got rolling.

Not saying I disagree with your assessment - I don't - but war is hell. I would not want the entire US military to be morally damned by one or two - even one or two dozen - events from that initial push into Baghdad, that in retrospect don't look so good. I want the moral damnation properly placed, not generalized from (or confined to) individaul psychopathic incidents at ground level.

[whocares]

Our enemy's technology has not come so far. Does that make them morally inferior, the fact that they must make their calculations without access to our means of avoiding civilian casualties - or avoiding seeing them, anyway?
No. The fact that they don't care about civilians' deaths make them morally inferior.

[chalupa]

Yeah -- I think whocares got it. Our moral imperative is to actively minimize civilian casualties. Of course that is never fully possible, but we at least claim to try. Those who don't follow along should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of military and civilian law, and usually are.

Those assholes in the car blew up children who had no chance to make any choices at all. I cannot equate attempting to minimize civilian damage to blowing up a car with kiddies.

Now, if you want to talk about the morality of the people who started this war, then I think THAT would be better equated to the idiots with the car.

[bergshadow]

Of course that is never fully possible, but we at least claim to try. Our tactics belie our claims. Just as those terrorist tactics belie certain claims made by them.

I do credit claims and intentions - but not as much as behaviors and results. We have killed too many Iraqis at checkpoints, too many children by gunfire and bomb and rocket, too many civilians by military violence, to continue claiming that we are doing well at minimizing civilian casualties. And as the invading, occupying force, we are not in the desperate situations that would justify such killings. We are not fighitng for our homes, our families.
No. The fact that they don't care about civilians' deaths make them morally inferior. The moral inferiority of enemies is always well established by those who must justify certain unfortunate actions of their own. Thus American soldiers are evaluated by their actions at Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, Iraqis by their actions in police station basements, AQ by its car bombs and suicide tactics, etc.

Who, exactly, is "they", btw? AQ? Kurd? Kurd militia? Kurd criminal? Sunni criminal? Sunni militia Sunni death squad? Shia criminal? Shia militia? Shia death squad? They do not all act, or probably think, the same.

America is in the happy moral position of having left its worst people at home, mostly. So when we generalize from individual incidents, we can judge all of Iraq on the basis of the behaviors of armed people who, in America, would be in secure mental institutions with no access to sharp objects. Or on death row. We don't have to account for, say, the kind of person who would beat and rape their kid to death deciding instead to martyr them for the holy jihadist cause - we just jail them back home.

And determine our comparative moral superiority thereby. If we need that edge, for comfortable comparison. I'm thinking maybe we do.

[Nocturnal]

No. The fact that they don't care about civilians' deaths make them morally inferior.

I don't believe that GW and Cheney give a rats ass about civillian deaths, with the exception of the pesky problem of public opinion.

[_Joe]

I don't believe that GW and Cheney give a rats ass about civillian deaths, with the exception of the pesky problem of public opinion.

I think the soldiers do though, and they do whatever they can within their power to avoid them.

Here's the difference between a U.S. Air Force bomber and a terrorist:

1. U.S. Bomber -> would avoid civilian death if it was in their power

2. Terrorist -> uses civilians to inflict casualties on their enemies

I don't understand how berg does not see this difference.

And yes, I did get a little mad at what you were saying, making my arguments less effective.

I do credit claims and intentions - but not as much as behaviors and results. We have killed too many Iraqis at checkpoints, too many children by gunfire and bomb and rocket, too many civilians by military violence, to continue claiming that we are doing well at minimizing civilian casualties. And as the invading, occupying force, we are not in the desperate situations that would justify such killings. We are not fighitng for our homes, our families.
Perhaps there are too many Iraqis driving their cars erratically at those checkpoints, drawing attention to themselves in a negative way. Perhaps there are too many insurgents and terrorists hiding behind civilians and children or in residential areas. And these people aren't fighting for their homes and families. Just as has been argued before this war draws people in from other countries to fight us, and they are killing (sometimes targeting) Iraqis!


Also, you completely omitted the sentence where I said I didn't agree with this war, I want to thank you for that.