Reply #16: What was it that Tommy Franks said? [View All]

[UpInArms]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/05/03/MN98747.DTL

excerpt:

"We don't do body counts," Gen. Tommy Franks, who directed the Iraq invasion, has said.

In his speech aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, President Bush saluted a U.S. military operation that he said went out of its way to protect Iraqi civilians. "With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war, yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent," he said.

The historical reluctance to estimate civilian or even military losses stems from a widespread belief that it would be all but impossible to separate casualties caused by American action from those caused by the enemy. As for military losses, the military's bitter experience with charges of inflated body counts during the Vietnam War has soured the Pentagon on even offering estimates of enemy killed, missing or wounded.

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