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June 30, 2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/30/have-millions-of-deaths-from-americas-war-on-terror-been-concealed/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/30/have-millions-of-deaths-from-americas-war-on-terror-been-concealed/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>Evil Cover Up</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Have Millions of Deaths from America’s
‘War on Terror’ Been Concealed?</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by JACK BALKWILL</div>
<div class="main-text">
<p><em>How many days has it been<br>
Since I was born?<br>
How many days<br>
‘Til I die?</em></p>
<p><em>Do I know any ways<br>
I can make you laugh?<br>
Or do I only know how<br>
To make you cry?</em></p>
<p><em>― Leon Russell, Stranger in a Strange Land</em></p>
<p>The mass media in the US have covered up the most important
fact in America’s ongoing wars: the number of people
slaughtered. Even before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq,
the mainstream media served as cheerleaders for the bloodshed,
spreading the major lies that led us to war.</p>
<p>As a combat vet still shocked by what I saw almost 50 years
ago in Vietnam, where we earlier slaughtered millions in
another war based on lies, I decided to look into what is
happening in the current wars. I discovered that as many as
seven million innocents may have been slaughtered in
Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p>I say “innocents,” because even most combatants American
forces have killed were merely defending their homelands from
invasions by foreigners (that is us). The invasion of
Afghanistan was avoidable ― the Taliban had offered to give up
bin Laden if the USA would show them proof that he was
responsible for the 9/11 attacks.<br>
The invasion of Iraq meanwhile violated international law and
was little more than genocide.</p>
<p>I first looked for government or mainstream media reports in
researching this article, but found little help there, forcing
me to conclude they are not at all interested in counting
victims. Anything they’ve put out to date is so simplistic
that it should be ignored by anyone seeking facts. They
wouldn’t even report on or take seriously a <a
href="http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf']);">2006
report by the respected UK medical journal, the <em>Lancet</em></a>,
which, based upon household surveys and other data, concluded
that between the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the
beginning of 2006, Iraq had suffered over 650,000 war-related
deaths, representing an astonishing 2.5% of the country’s
population.</p>
<p>It should go without saying that nobody has a completely
accurate count of the dead. But over the years, the impact of
a corporate media and National Security State have taken their
toll on the truth, warping it to imply that relatively few
people have died in America’s phony “War on Terrorism.”</p>
<p>The charge of a cover-up by the mass media seems obvious, as
it is unconscionable that major media, a multi-billion dollar
industry, could not find the numbers if they made even a
feeble attempt. It seems obvious as well that such numbers
would shock the public and turn them against the wars, which
probably explains the silence of the mainstream, which is in
line with their avid war support and simply echoes the words
of General Tommy Franks that “We don’t do body counts.”</p>
<p>As far as the people of Iraq are concerned, the Iraq war is
now 25 years old. It began in 1990 with deadly economic
sanctions imposed on Iraq, followed by a 1991 attack by
President George HW Bush against Iraqi forces. The sanctions
after the hot war ended, continued during a subsequent hot war
with President Clinton’s Operation Desert Fox, and continued
until sanctions were finally lifted in 2003 as the illegal US
invasion of Iraq was launched by George W. Bush. A variation
of the continued assault on Iraqis crawls forward under the
banner of war on ISIS, a violent group the USA is largely
responsible for spawning in an attempt to bring down the
government of Syria.</p>
<p>In 2001, Iraqi Cultural Minister Hamid Yusuf Hammadi,
speaking at a conference against the UN embargo, estimated
that <a
href="http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/170/41919.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.globalpolicy.org']);">1.7
million Iraqis died as a result of the sanctions and other
violence directed against Iraq by the USA</a> up to that
time under presidents GHW Bush and Clinton.</p>
<p>Before that, in 1996, Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark
estimated that <a
href="http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/Ramsey.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.twf.org']);">1.5
million Iraqis died</a> as a result of the sanctions, while
attempting to bring war crimes charges against the USA and
others for genocide.</p>
<p>While the corporate US media ignored it, even Clinton
Secretary of State <a
href="http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://fair.org']);">Madeline
Albright, in 1996, acknowledged studies showing that over
half a million Iraqi children had died</a> because of US
sanctions on Iraq between 1990 and 1996 (mostly a result of
the inability of Iraq to import chlorine to purify public
water supplies), and concluded that this horrifying and
genocidal slaughter was “worth it.”</p>
<p>But all of that was before 2003’s Shock and Awe attack on
Iraq.</p>
<p>In 2007, Opinion Research Business of London estimated the
number of Iraqis killed in the 2003 invasion of that country
and following war up to that time to be <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">1.2
million</a>, based on face to face interviews with 1,720
adults aged 18+ throughout Iraq (1,499 agreed to answer the
question on household deaths).</p>
<p>Taking these numbers from the invasions, sanctions and
occupation of Iraq alone, we are already over 2.5 million
dead.</p>
<p>And then there is the Afghanistan affair.</p>
<p>In 2001, President George W. Bush authorized an invasion of
Afghanistan, where, we were told at the time, seven million
people were being fed by NGO’s because they were on the verge
of starvation, meaning they would die in a short time without
emergency food.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20020201.htm"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.chomsky.info']);">Noam
Chomsky reported in 2002</a> on the time of the invasion, “A
spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned
that ‘We are facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions
in Afghanistan with 7.5 million short of food and at risk of
starvation,’ while aid agencies leveled ‘scathing’
condemnations of U.S. air drops that are barely concealed
‘propaganda tools’ and may cause more harm than benefit, they
warned.”</p>
<p>No one has counted how many Afghans starved to death as a
result of the invasion, but clearly the NGOs who had been
feeding people on the verge of starvation had to withdraw
because of the bombing. Those starving people who were being
fed by those departed NGOs were among the poorest on earth,
lacking birth and death certificates, so we may never know
what happened by searching records.</p>
<p>Some good people have tried to use newspaper accounts to come
up with numbers of Afghan dead, but this doesn’t take into
account the massive numbers of rural Afghanis who likely died
of hunger away from cities while fleeing the massive bombing
for several months without food.</p>
<p>Australian scientist Gideon Polya did a study of the effect
of war on the Afghanistan population and concluded that as a
result of the invasion and occupation up to 2009,”This carnage
involving <a
href="https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://sites.google.com']);">4.5
million post-invasion violent and non-violent excess Afghan
deaths</a> constitutes an Afghan Holocaust and an Afghan
Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide
Convention.”</p>
<p>So if this estimate is correct, there are 4.5 million dead in
Afghanistan as a result of the invasion and occupation.
Combined with the 2.5 million who died from war and sanctions
in Iraq, we arrive at the rough figure of 7 million dead.</p>
<p>But if 7 million people died, why is it that few seem aware
of these numbers? After all, anyone you ask on the street can
tell you 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Why aren’t 7
million Muslims important enough to notice?</p>
<p>One may speculate that the truth is offensive to a National
Security State that would be embarrassed by its involvement in
two major genocides.</p>
<p>The owners, board members and advertisers of our mainstream
press are interlocked in “defense” contracting investments,
and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most lucrative in
history, with, at times, more contractors in both Iraq and
Afghanistan than there were troops. The <a
href="https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/category/military/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.nationalpriorities.org']);">National
Priorities Project estimates that well over $1.5 trillion
has been spent on these Wars since 2001</a>. Some figures
place the total cost of the War on Terror at over $3 trillion.</p>
<p>Our politicians’ own “defense” investments as well, and their
political campaigns, often depend on contributions from
“defense” industries, at great expense to taxpayers who wind
up, as a direct result, buying weapons systems even the
Pentagon doesn’t want. Many Members of Congress legally vote
for “defense” projects which personally enrich them because of
their investments.</p>
<p>Even though the <a
href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/cbs-poll-the-majority-of-americans-are-opposed-to-war/27633"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.globalresearch.ca']);">majority
of the public oppose the wars</a> and want our troops to
come home, it is imperative to the corporate media and
corporate government, and those above them (the ruling Forces
of Greed) that as much public support as possible be
maintained to keep the wars going.</p>
<p>If the public were informed that as many as 7 million people
may have been slaughtered, more war supporters might fall off
the bandwagon, making it harder to keep the bloodshed flowing
for the billions in profit, just as a point was reached during
the Vietnam War when the vast majority of Americans opposed
the war and it could no longer be waged without risking
rebellion.</p>
<p>Violence has become the primary diplomatic tool of our
government, enabled by propaganda spread by corporate media.
Gandhi said “I object to violence because when it appears to
do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is
permanent.”</p>
<p>Our government and mass media are still covering up the evil,
but it may be permanent for as many as seven million.</p>
<p><em><strong>Jack Balkwill</strong> is an activist in
Virginia.</em></p>
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