Letters to the Editor
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The Highway of Death
Excellent short video on the slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians fleeing Kuwait. 60 miles of highway, filled with thousands of vehicles, awash with death and blood and dishonor.
They were running away, they were not a threat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljXnV4Ibpk
The "script" was in place even then. I remember how they played it like it was some huge military battle. The attacking airplanes did not even have enough room to attack at the same time, and had to be stacked in holding patterns, waiting for their turn.
From the script:
Q: What do we know about how many Iraqis soldiers were actually killed? What's the best estimate?
Trainor: They've been all sorts of estimates of Iraqis casualties run by a lower ranked D.I.A. officer that put it at something like 100,000. But it was nothing like that. We don't know the exact number but I think you have to distinguish between the Iraqis in Iraq and those were mostly civilians and there I think they were relatively few killed in Iraq. Saddam Hussein puts the figure at about 3,000. That may be correct, although I think that that's probably a little high, given the type of targets we were going after and the accuracy. Within the theater, I don't think anybody really has a feel for that. The air campaign was not going after the Iraqi soldiers. The air campaign that preceded the ground attack was going after equipment and stores and supplies and the soldiers were pretty much smart enough to stay away from their equipment and supplies so that they weren't killed and then the ground attack went in so very, very quickly that the the casualty rate had to be low. We had all sorts of medical facilities there to take care of of the wounded and they received very few wounded, either American or Iraqi. So, while I can't put a figure on on the number of casualties, it certainly --for the size of the war and the size of the numbers of troops on both sides involved--probably broke the Guinness Book of Records on minor casualties.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/appendix/tdeath.html
Not from the script:
Photojournalist Peter Turnley published photographs of mass burials at the scene;[4] it has been asserted that this constituted a violation of the Geneva Conventions.[5]
Peter Turnley also wrote an essay to Dirck Halstead, the editor and publisher of The Digital Journalist stating:
I flew from my home in Paris to Riyadh when the ground war began and arrived at the “mile of death” very early in the morning on the day the war stopped. Few other journalists were there when I arrived at this incredible scene, with carnage that was strewn all over. On this mile stretch were cars and trucks with wheels still turning and radios still playing. Bodies were scattered along the road. Many have asked how many people died during the war with Iraq, and the question has never been well answered. That first morning, I saw and photographed a U.S. military “graves detail” burying many bodies in large graves. I don’t recall seeing many television images of these human consequences. Nor do I remember many photographs of these casualties being published.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death