Body Counts: The Biopolitics of Death

Abstract

The body count of dead American soldiers in Iraq now exceeds 2,000.2 To date, there is no official body count of Iraqis killed—civilian or combatant3—in this most recent war on terror. U.S.-led coalition forces have not kept count, and in the words of General Tommy Franks; “We don’t do body counts.” Iraq Body Count, a nongovernmental organization unofficially sponsored by the United States and United Kingdom, estimates the civilian deaths resulting directly from coalition military action between 28,000-32,000 casualties.4 A number of independent studies, however, such as the much-denounced study led by Dr. Les Roberts and published by the Lancet, have estimated the number of Iraqi civilian casualties at more than 100,000, an estimate that Dr. Roberts claims is based on rather conservative assumptions.5 In responding to this study a Pentagon spokesperson stated: “[T]his conflict has been prosecuted in the most precise fashion of any conflict in the history of modern warfare.”6 While the loss of any “innocent lives” is tragic, he went on to say, and something coalition forces have worked hard to avoid, there is no way to confirm the accuracy of the report and, more importantly, that any report on civilian casualties must consider how “former regime elements and insurgents have made it a practice of using civilians as human shields, operating and conducting attacks against coalition forces from within areas inhabited by civilians.”7