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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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almarst2002 - 08:07am Jun 13, 2003 EST (# 12518 of 12537)

At least 5,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion of Iraq, an independent research group has claimed. As more evidence is collated, it says, the figure could reach 10,000. Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, compiled statistics on civilian casualties from media reports and estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians died in the conflict.

Its latest report compares those figures with 14 other counts, most of them taken in Iraq, which, it says, bear out its findings.

Researchers from several groups have visited hospitals and mortuaries in Iraq and interviewed relatives of the dead; some are conducting surveys in the main cities.

Three completed studies suggest that between 1,700 and 2,356 civilians died in the battle for Baghdad alone.

John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University and an IBC report author, said the studies in Iraq backed up his group's figures. "One of the things we have been criticised for is quoting journalists who are quoting other people. But what we are now finding is that whenever the teams go into Iraq and do a detailed check of the data we had through the press, not only is our data accurate but [it is] often on the low side.

"The totality is now producing an unassailable sense that there were a hell of a lot of civilian deaths in Iraq."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said he had not seen anything to substantiate the report's figures. "During the conflict we took great pains to minimise casualties among civilians. We targeted [the] military. So it is very difficult for us to give any guidance or credence to a set of figures that suggest there was x number of civilian casualties."

IBC's total includes a figure of at least 3,240 civilian deaths published this week by the Associated Press news agency, which was based on a survey of 60 Iraqi hospitals from March 20 to April 20, when the fighting was declining. But many other bodies were either buried quickly in line with Islamic custom or lost under rubble.

Prof Sloboda said there was nothing in principle to stop a total count being made using forensic science methods similar to those used to calculate the death toll from the September 11 attack: it was a question of political will and resources.

He said even an incomplete record of civilian deaths was worth compiling, to assist in paying reparations and in assessing the claim before the war that there would be few civilian casualties.

Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a US defence department spokesman, said the Pentagon had not counted civilian deaths because its efforts had been focused on defeating enemy forces rather than aiming at civilians.

He said that under international law the US was not liable to pay compensation for "injuries or damage occurring during lawful combat operations".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,976392,00.html

lchic - 10:09am Jun 13, 2003 EST (# 12519 of 12537)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm

rshow55 - 05:11pm Jun 13, 2003 EST (# 12520 of 12537)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Just a piece of history. Steve Kline worked with me at AEA - and we were close collaborators - partners - from 1989 until his death in 1997. I've pointed out

Kline, S.J. Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking Stanford U. Press, 1995

I got a copy of another book of Steve's

Kline, S.J. Similitude and Approximation Theory McGraw-Hill, NY 1965

in early 1968. Flugge and others thought it was an exciting book - about one of the most central problems in design. People at Lockheed who Clarence Johnson trusted thought so. But it had a problem - it offered a false hope, as much of applicable mathematics offers a false hope. It showed "islands" where simulation worked superbly - and many of them. But only islands - for reasons nobody understood - very many of the problems that people wanted to simulate - especially the complex ones of practical use - simply couldn't be fit to simulation and analysis. Nobody knew why - and they were baffled - some good people - people, I'm guessing, who had known Nash - had had "dry heaves" trying to figure out why simulation tools only worked on beautiful islands - when practical people, in the military, industry, and the sciences - needed answers on a vast uncharted sea.

Nobody knew why simulation couldn't give good answers all the time - or at least much more of the time.

It wasn't an accident that Kline and I got interested in each other later.

We found, much later, that there was a 350 year old (buried) problem in the arithmetic of setting down coupled problems that seemed to account for the problem with analysis in the places we checked - something I've dealt with before.

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