Le Monde did this graphic of the what kind of deaths the Wikileaks document dump records happening when (blue are American soldiers killed–darker–or injured; green are civilians killed or injured).
In an article on another revelation in the Wikieaks document–tracing several more incidents of civilian deaths caused by a helicopter using the same call sign as the helicopter that killed some Reuters journalists–Al Jazeera makes this note:
The documents also reveal that the use of airstrikes increased dramatically in 2007, after General David Petraeus took over as the commander of US forces in Iraq, despite his public statements that airstrikes often “provide insurgents with a major propaganda victory.” The US dropped 229 bombs in 2006, a number that surged to 1,447 in 2007.
A similar trend is happening now in Afghanistan, where airstsrikes have increased by 172 per cent since Petraeus took command.
And as the Guardian notes, a lot of more of these deaths–over 15,000–are civilians than previously known (see also their analysis of deaths here). Al Jazeera notes that Iraq Body Count is about to raise its count accordingly, to 122,000.
We’re about to get a rather different understanding of what the surge was all about.