An argument for documenting casualties violence against Iraqi civilians 2006
Protecting the civilian population is one of the central tenets of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. Until very recently, however, the U.S. military has not had a formal system for documenting the level of violence directed against Iraqi civilians. Therefore, other groups (such as nongovernmental org...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Santa Monica, Calif.
RAND
2008, ©2008©2008
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| Collection: | JSTOR Open Access Books - Collection details see MPG.ReNa |
| Summary: | Protecting the civilian population is one of the central tenets of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. Until very recently, however, the U.S. military has not had a formal system for documenting the level of violence directed against Iraqi civilians. Therefore, other groups (such as nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations, and Iraqi ministries) have filled the vacuum in reporting, relying on media accounts, surveys, death certificates, and other open-source information to generate datasets of varying transparency and quality. The resulting statistics have generated widespread debate over sources, methods, and political biases. This study examines available open-source data on Iraqi civilian fatalities and assesses problems associated with previous collection and analysis efforts. The authors present a more robust RAND Corporation Iraqi civilian violence dataset from which they derive new observations about trends in targeting and weapons in 2006. RAND's dataset reveals that the majority of attacks in the year 2006 against civilians were directed against individuals without any identifiable affiliation, and that most attacks were carried out using firearms (rather than via improvised explosive devices or suicide attacks). These findings lead to a proposed framework for future civilian fatality data-collection efforts in Iraq and beyond |
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| Item Description: | Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002 |
| Physical Description: | xviii, 51 pages color maps, color charts |
| ISBN: | 0833044613 9780833044617 1282033131 6612033134 9781282033139 9786612033131 |