[My apologies for again "repurposing" something I've written elsewhere. I was responding to the question about civilian casualties during the Iraqi war, and disputing a wildly inflated total of over 37,137 deaths.]
There is no way there were 3,581 civilian deaths in Nasiriyah, as reported by Wanniski. My Marine unit had teams attached to most of the infantry forces in the city, and they did witness several dozen civilian casualties, many of them fatal. These occured mainly because the Fedayeen would do things like shoot from occupied buildings. That number of deaths could have only resulted from either intense artillery bombardment or a concentrated air campaign. Neither one happened.
Additionally, we spent a month in Kut, and went all around the city talking to civilians (that's a big part of our peacetime role). There was no widespread destruction, and we met few people who had lost family members. In a city of 200,000, Wanniski's reported figure of 2,494 is over 1% of the population. We would have seen some evidence -- mass graves, lots of mothers in mourning, that kind of thing. We had teams in Diwaniyah, Hillah, and Najaf, and a dozen other places. No one reported mass deaths.
My team's primary mission during the war, like that of all the other civil affairs teams, was to minimize civilian casualties by keeping them away from the fighting. This also let the commanders maneuver and shoot without fear of harming the innocent. I don't think people realize the efforts the military made to avoid civilian casualties. In many cases, Marines and soldiers placed themselves at mortal risk to save innocent lives, or refrained from destroying an enemy position because civilians would be injured.
For what it's worth, the Iraqis blamed the noncombatant deaths on Saddam for causing the war in the first place. They considered the losses unfortunate, but an acceptable price for getting rid of their tyrant.
Thanks for posting some facts on the situation! And thank you for your service to our country.
The following is a report by BBC correspondent, Andrew North, who was an embedded journalist with the U.S. Marines battle in Nasiriyah on March 29:
[ANDREW NORTH: In the last few days, the US marines have been forced to change tactics. Instead of just defending the strategic route across the River Euphrates, they've been pounding targets across the town with heavy artillery, air strikes and helicopter gun ships.
[helicopter]
But Colonel Ron Johnson, the operations chief for Task Force Tarawa [phonetic] denies things are going badly.
RON JOHNSON: Mission-wise, our mission was to be here, as I say, in Nasiriyah was to facilitate the onward movement of the 1st Marine Division and other forces north. And we have succeeded. We've succeeded very well. All of our forces have been able to flow north without any problems at all.
[artillery fire]
ANDREW NORTH: But that little sound of artillery going off yet again, that's not what you expected to be having to do five days after the fighting started here?
RON JOHNSON: No. I think that there, there's a lot more resistance and I think that we need to go ahead and clean up a little bit of this.
ANDREW NORTH: Yet "cleaning up" as he puts it, which now means US marines penetrating into Nasiriyah, was not the original plan. Neither was bombing targets in the town.
Journalists have not been allowed in since US attacks were stepped up, so the level of damage is difficult to gauge. But it's unlikely to have won the marines any new friends, as they wonder what happened to their politicians' promises of an "open arms welcome" from the people of Nasiriyah.]
Marine and eyewitness Eric Johnson claims there was no "intense military bombardment" of Nasiriyah. It seems another eyewitness to the situation there saw things differently.