The Highway of Death

Howdy Kilroy 60, Well, here we are and nothing is yet answered to you as I said, this has to be your decision, not what other people think. Your stand on the military is commendable and I applaud you for it. It is not often someone has unanswered questions and still maintain respect as you. Perhaps I can shed a tad amount of light on the Highway of Death issue.

You have stated the standard media line of the Highway of death containing relatively few bodies. Still today this one event has a tremendous amount of controversy surrounding it.

Whatever the case the amount of Iraqi bodies had nothing to do with the executive decision to call an immediate halt in hostilities. The actual scene of the devastation, vehicles, tanks and varied forms of burning and destroyed transportation strewn about the landscape was simply enough for that call. They were acutely aware that one scene would have devastated various factions in America as well as the rest of the world.

For example, this comment taken from WikipediA discusses various distinct points of views from supposedly on scene eye witness accounts.

“The offensive action for which the road is infamous became a controversial point, with some commentators alleging that the use of force was disproportionate, that the Iraqi forces were retreating, and that the column included prisoners and civilian refugees. Although no reporters were present during the action, and media accounts did not appear for almost a month, photographs taken afterwards showed dramatic scenes of burned and broken vehicles. The bombings were cited by some observers as a war crime — the deliberate bombing of a stretch of highway where fleeing and "out of combat" Iraqi soldiers were stuck in a frenzied traffic jam.

The United States, however, stated that few Iraqi soldiers were found in the wreckage. According to a PBS Frontline interview with Rick Atkinson, when asked whether we know how many Iraqis were killed on the Highway of Death, he answered: "I don't think we'll ever know how many Iraqis were killed there. There were about 1,500 vehicles on the highway of death, counted, destroyed vehicles after the war. And another 400 or so on another road, a spur that ran parallel to the coast. Those who wandered through this wreckage right after the Iraqi surrender found relatively few bodies. Certainly some, and many that were terribly incinerated of those that were found. But the prevailing view is that many of the Iraqis had simply gotten out of their vehicles and ran. And it's difficult to believe that deaths on the highway of death probably exceeded more than a couple of hundred perhaps."

The Independent's Robert Fisk got there in the aftermath of the allied bombing. In his book "The Great War for Civilisation", Fisk describes the scene of kilometres of damaged military and civilian vehicles that was bombed as they were stuck in the traffic jam. He describes the burnt out remains of the occupants of the many vehicles. "I had seen hundreds of dead here; there must have been thousands.”

I can attest to the fact that from a media standpoint the body count is not always the deciding factor to the American people. Any combat veteran will tell you that often the scene immediately following contact is beyond comprehension and sometimes enough for the troops to feel they just destroyed a large amount of enemy, when in truth the scene does not tell the true story. Someone may fire at us and we in turn will light up the landscape returning fire with devastating firepower.

Display that same scene to our arm chair quarterbacks sitting in their livingroom watching the war on CNN and all they can see is death and destruction. It matters not that the only thing destroyed in the equipment, it is in the eyes of the beholder and that was what Powell and company based the decision on, not the body count.

Take a look at the photo of the scene, from someone sitting in their livingroom they would see this and our A10's still lighting them up and feel we are totally on overkill. No matter how many dead, we are bad due to the scene.