Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and get the fingered at FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys introducing Sam Oakford from airwars.org.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing?
I'm good, Scott.
Thanks for having me back on.
Listen, I really appreciate you making the time for us today.
It's really important work that you do there.
I'm a big Chris Woods fan as well, going back many years to at least the Pakistan drone wars and so forth.
And I know you've done a lot of great work for years.
I guess I first noticed you covering Yemen.
And now you've been doing such great work on Iraq war three, as I call it, trying to coin that phrase, you know, 2014 through 17 here.
And of course, that includes the war in Eastern Syria against the Islamic state there.
And so, but that brings us to these two pieces in Eastern Syria, Raqqa, a city destroyed, then forgotten.
And then this one, which is reprinted also at the Daily Beast, they're still pulling bodies out of ISIS's capital.
And that one is about Mosul in Iraq.
So can we start there?
Tell us about the war against the Islamic State in Mosul.
You know, we knew for a long time it was going on.
It took about almost a full year, it seemed like to really finally from the launch of the attack to finally really take the city.
And yet there's so little reporting out of Mosul for obvious reasons at the time.
And so I don't even know what we know.
What do we know?
Right.
So maybe just to step back a second.
These were, I think it isn't always thought of this way, but these were some of the biggest urban, you know, assault involving U.S. forces and allied forces.
And in a long time, in decades, according to some U.S. officials since World War Two in the case of Mosul.
So, you know, keep that in mind going forward.
What exactly is it that we're comparing?
Because it sounds like there was a Korea and a Vietnam in there.
So what was it that they were doing in Mosul that was more than NAM?
I guess fighting in distinctly in dense urban areas.
You can understand how that might be a bit different now.
I guess there's K-San, but yeah, I get it.
Yeah, right, right, right.
Exactly.
That was a line that was going around at the beginning.
I think they meant it.
I wouldn't maybe not a positive way, but just to convey the amount of effort they were putting in.
Of course, there's another way to look at that as well.
And they've had previous, you know, in Iraq War Two, they fought in Raqqa.
I mean, pardon me, in Mosul and in Samara and in Fallujah, two major assaults on Fallujah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, there was big urban fighting then as well.
Their contention was the Mosul fight was more significant.
In any case, the civilian data that we looked at, you know, bore that out, at least in comparison to some of the more recent assaults.
In Mosul, the main takeaway that I had, our data was often contested.
The way we monitor, you know, we look at all the data points for a certain thing on a certain date that's happened.
And in Mosul, it was so confused.
And I think that reflected really what was going on in these, you know, these narrow streets, a dense urban area with many different belligerents all using real explosive weapons.
You know, ISIS had something like 700 car bombs, according to the coalition.
And, you know, I'm sure you remember seeing videos of those.
But, you know, considering all of that, the AP subsequently was able to go in and do an estimate that put the civilian death toll between 9 and 11,000.
And that was a really close on the ground survey.
So we wanted to take a look at what the countries, the militaries involved were doing to reflect on this, to study this, even if it's not from a, you know, a purely civilian protection standpoint.
Just how did this urban assault go, given they're selling it in this way?
Right.
So that's why I raised that initially.
And it turns out they really aren't.
So just to finish, it turns out they're not really doing an analysis to see how many civilians died.
And then that gets into some of the reporting we did on Raqqa as well.
Yeah, well, we don't do body counts, they say, right?
That's the slogan.
Which is, you know, we should be kind of thankful for that, because we don't want them using body counts to prove what a great job they're doing, which they do.
They have done that at various times in Iraq, World War II and in Afghanistan.
But we saw, you know, the horrible, perverse incentives built into that in Vietnam, of course.
It should go without saying.
I'm not sure if it does.
But on the other hand, yeah, when it comes to the civilian casualties, they don't really want to know, because they don't want to have to take responsibility.
But now, so here's something, though.
And this is, hell, I was covering the war the whole time.
But I guess I still don't have a real good handle on, I mean, I know the American role was mostly air power.
And of course, there were CIA and special operations forces on the ground there, various tiers and descriptions helping.
But it was basically the Iraqi army and the Shiite militias and backed by, I guess, Iranian special forces as well.
And then with American air power.
But do you have a way to kind of give us some sort of percentage or a way to understand how much of the war for Mosul was really just a bombardment versus, you know, neighborhood by neighborhood?
The men on the ground seizing the territory and keeping boots on the corners and moving on and that kind of deal?
Right.
Yeah, it's a good it's a good question, because this wasn't always clear, even to me, you know, who's keeping an eye on this.
And it changed the degree to which it was one or the other in the course of the campaign.
At the beginning, you know, I talked to some folks who were on the ground.
And at those time at that time, and, you know, there are these elite counterterror forces that the U.S. has been involved in training.
You know, if you're going to be fighting in the way they were, these were some of the better folks.
They seem to have exhibited a greater concern for civilians and they were just better trained in the ways of urban fighting.
That said, they took huge, huge casualties at the beginning.
So the makeup of the forces involved in the east, which was the first half that was taken, right, versus the west where there were less well-trained, more reckless forces like the federal police, for instance.
So the force makeup changed.
And then the reliance on, you know, kind of in a lot of cases, ground fired mortars or artillery, I think, increased as you got to the to the to the old city.
There were airstrikes throughout, but by the end, there were some Iraqi government forces, still government forces, federal police that were firing these improvised explosives basically into areas blindly.
And you can imagine what the outcome would be in that type of dense civilian area.
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All right now, so I'm not sure.
I guess this would have been last fall.
I talked with Patrick Coburn and he had a Kurdish general estimated to him that 40,000 people had been killed.
I'm trying to remember now, actually, if that was supposed to be all civilians or not, or just there's 40,000 bodies in the rubble out there somewhere.
And Patrick thought that might be a little high, but not much.
So I wonder what's your kind of high-end ballpark estimate of casualties here?
Well, so just based on our reporting.
Fatalities, I should say.
Absolutely, yeah.
I mean many, many, many injured.
I can tell you, if I can recall this figure, I spoke to one of the top UN humanitarian people and they said in just – at frontline trauma stations, there were I think around 20,000 injuries.
So that was just in a kind of a limited subsection of places you might record that.
And those were obviously predominantly all civilians.
And in terms of the death toll itself, our total allegations that we monitored were between 6,000 and around 9,000.
Now that is based on our own kind of specific way of monitoring.
Obviously, the AP went in, did this really great reporting.
The NPR also went in and found over 4,000 named victims.
I think a lot of people believe the death toll might be higher than that.
There's still bodies being pulled out, if you can believe it.
But those are figures that I would cite.
As for the true number, I really – it's unclear still, but those are some baselines at least.
God, bodies still being pulled from the rubble now six months after the fighting has stopped really, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And that's even more of a problem, it seems, in Raqqa as well, where there's an actual stench if you go into some of these areas.
So, yeah, it's still a problem in both cities.
And by the way, I left out the Peshmerga earlier.
I don't know if there's really a point to make there necessarily, but just now when I mentioned the Kurds, I was a general from the Kurdish Peshmerga, and I didn't want to leave them out when I was describing the different groups that were fighting against ISIS there, fighting against the occupying force there.
But so, well, I guess if they're still pulling bodies out of the rubble, then that means that the rebuilding is virtually non-existent at this point, right?
First things first?
Is that a fair assumption?
Well, I'm not sure if – you know, it's the same throughout the city.
I know in the east, for instance, there's really positive news in a lot of places where life is getting up and running, which of course is the point.
I think the west, and especially around the old city, was pulverized.
Actually, not all the west, but specifically around there.
So I think, you know, rubble removal is still an issue, but even more so in Raqqa, which is more recent, and there's been less government resources, obviously.
Yeah.
See, now I want to start asking you all these questions about Iraqi politics, but I better not.
That's what I wonder about the most is the future of Iraqi Sunnistan, but that's kind of outside of your purview here.
So let's talk about all the people killed in Raqqa.
So this is basically under the Islamic State when they had attempted to erase the border between Iraq and Syria there.
Maybe they succeeded in doing it.
This was the sort of twin city to Mosul in Iraq.
It was really the first capital of the Islamic State before they rolled into Mosul, right?
And ruled by them from, what, 2012 or 2013 in eastern Syria.
And in that case, America used mostly the YPG or SDF Kurdish forces as their ground auxiliary troops, but then along with, of course, the Marines and special forces and air power as well.
So that's what I know.
First of all, when exactly did the sort of final assault on Raqqa begin?
You know, if you compare it to the attack on Mosul beginning last October, sorry, October before last.
Yeah, I know.
It's amazing.
It was two calendar years ago now, so.
Yeah.
And is that the same for Raqqa then too?
They did Raqqa, they sort of started the final assault on Raqqa later, right?
They started the final assault right as Mosul was ending, right?
So it was almost like one handed off to the other.
And now in both cases, there was a lot of, there's this word they call shaping the battlefield.
You know, there were a lot of airstrikes obviously in the lead up.
So when one picks a date that they say an operation started, obviously that wasn't, it doesn't mean that there weren't civilian casualties or bombing before that.
But in Raqqa's case, the beginning of June, and I think it was June 6th, that was when they officially breached the city and started fighting inside.
In the months before, we had recorded hundreds of deaths in kind of that vicinity from airstrikes.
So just to be clear on that.
And it ended in October, and some of the worst incidents were around then.
In Raqqa, we, you know, Raqqa was less covered, right?
I'm sure you could, just an average consumer of news would have known that, which is kind of odd considering the place it held.
And, you know, among Americans, especially, you know, the capital of the Caliphate and so forth.
But when it took time to, when it came time to actually capture it and what happened inside, there was less attention.
And that meant that a lot of what went on wasn't covered as well.
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And then so I guess in both cases in Mosul and Raqqa, both the civilian population were more or less held captive by the Islamic State.
We're not allowed to flee and get out of the way of the attack, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's never should be forgotten.
I think some of the things that they did were really heinous and obviously war crimes, but really, really heinous.
And groups like Amnesty have documented some of this, you know, bolting doors shut, bringing explosives, putting them in the ground so people are not sure exactly where, you know, they'll trip them off.
They also, I mean, in Mosul, they just shot people, basically.
Hundreds of people were executed during the fight.
In Raqqa, they put people in danger the same way they have everywhere, but it was just exacerbated by the urban environment.
So that's like the context, right?
And that is the group that the coalition is up against.
So it's understood that they do these things.
Although interestingly, in Raqqa, there were basically no car bombs used, which was a huge difference than Mosul.
So you're talking 700 versus around a dozen.
But the number of munitions fired in Raqqa was massive.
So the official figures that we received, and you can ask the military this or the coalition.
And that also is an interesting distinction between, you know, it was mostly a U.S. operation.
It was about 95 percent U.S.
But they said, you know, 20,000 munitions.
Subsequently, and that's everything, so presumably ground fired and air fired.
But a top U.S. official later said that 30,000 artillery rounds alone had been fired in the area during those five months.
So the true total is still unknown.
And that's kind of crazy if you think about it.
And the death toll is around 2,000, according to the local monitors.
Our monitoring suggests around 1,400 were due to coalition strikes.
And for a much smaller city, that's a huge number.
The city's basically destroyed.
You know, early on, the U.N. went in and said it was 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged.
I think they went in again recently and said it was around more than two-thirds.
And they said no one should be living there now, actually, due to the explosive remnants that are still there.
But 100,000 people actually have returned.
So it's a real bad situation.
People are dying every week still from mines and things like that.
God, what a disaster.
All right, so now let me ask you this, man.
I'm sure you remember from Iraq War II, there's the group Iraq Body Count.
And they would do their utmost best to carefully call each and every news report and try to get secondary confirmation and this and that and try to add up as many, you know, I don't know exactly what their standard was, but pretty damn well confirmed, to paraphrase Dick Cheney, deaths there.
And they were always criticized for having this low count, but they would always say, hey, we never said this was everybody.
We only said these are all the ones that we can absolutely verify.
But it always sort of sounded like, in a way, they were lowballing the real consequences of the war, the real extent of the casualties for the people there.
So I wonder if that's something that you guys worry about, or that's something that you take for granted, that the best you can do is kind of basically always be a lowball estimate?
Or how does that work, really?
Well, the way, I mean, I guess you have to, from the starting points that the coalition has often presented this as, you know, the most precise aerial campaign in history, right?
I mean, Mattis is on the record saying things like that.
Under Obama, there were similar statements.
So that's kind of like, you know, what you're, that's the context, right?
If you can prove that that's not true, you know, by being very careful and getting minimum estimates, I think that's much more effective in terms of countering such narratives than, you know.
I mean, I don't want to say that like that 40,000 number is wrong, but it's not one that can be necessarily interrogated by the government, right?
So when you present them with evidence, I guess you have to keep that in mind.
And we have a system where, you know, there's two sets of data.
There's the total allegations, and then once we've vetted them, there's those minimum numbers that I just cited to you.
So the total allegations are higher, but the minimum number, which involves vetting and comparing and, you know, and then the coalition in some cases has admitted to some strikes.
Now, that's one last thing I wanted to mention about Raqqa is the number of cases that are being, they have this civilian casualty union, right?
And in Mosul, you know, they admitted to over 350 deaths, which obviously compared to the numbers I read out earlier is quite low.
Although I should be clear that a lot of those numbers were for all parties.
In Raqqa, they've basically not admitted to any civilian deaths.
It was something like, you know, around 21, I think, as of the month before last.
And it's, they're throwing out more cases.
So there's a real concern that they're not doing the same sort of due diligence there.
They don't travel to the site of airstrikes.
So they're really limited in what they could possibly even know, let alone whether they're, you know, kind of putting the effort in with what they have.
Right.
And then, and now this doesn't even approach and because it's outside of y'all's purview.
And I guess maybe we'll find out later what they call the excess deaths.
And that is all the people who are dying just of the deprivation of having an ISIS thug between them and the hospital having dirty water to drink, being X percent poorer than they were before.
And all of these things that cause deaths that otherwise would not have happened.
Yeah, I'm sure that I mean, I'm sure that's happening.
The thing in Raqqa is there actually are numbers for people that are dying every day from explosives.
Right.
And this is sort of a crazy thing.
You're talking about mines and unexploded bombs that were dropped?
Artillery and stuff?
Yeah, it's it seems that ISIS really rigged the city to kill people after they were gone, which is, which is just, you know, horrifying.
And and people are trying to go back to their homes and they're encountering that now with the total number of munitions used.
One would think there may also be, yeah, duds and unexploded ordinances that either the coalition or the U.S. fire.
It does seem the majority of these deaths are from things that ISIS rigged.
Were the Americans using cluster bombs in Raqqa or Mosul for that matter?
Do you know?
No, I don't.
I don't believe so.
I think one thing to remember is in these cases, especially in Raqqa, it was the sheer number and especially of artillery that was directed at the city.
And, you know, there are some guided artillery, there's there's unguided.
And you can't it's kind of like you look at an aggregate and if you're firing tens of thousands of rounds, which is what this guy is advised, the joint chief said, into a increasingly smaller area.
Right.
In an area where there's a lot of confusion and overlap between militants and civilians.
What do you think the outcome will be?
Right.
And that's for me, one of the big takeaways for Raqqa.
And I don't know if there's going to be, you know, lessons learned here.
You mentioned this is Iraq War Three or, you know, across the border, too.
And I think just from the Pentagon standpoint, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what they're learning in terms of these types of urban assaults and what they can they can take away from this.
The only lesson I've heard from them is they can never leave anywhere ever again, because look what happens if you ever leave.
Right.
And that's that's the only thing.
And they're already, you know, they had a great piece in Defense News on a great but a pretty in-depth piece in Defense News about Iraq War three and a half.
They're already fighting the insurgency.
What's left over of fighters in Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
And across the border.
That's interesting these days.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, man.
You know what?
I could interview you for another hour.
This has been great, but I really am so late and I have to go.
But thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Yeah.
No problem.
I'll come on any time we can continue the conversation.
OK, great.
Thanks again.
All right.
Take care.
Thanks a lot.
All right, you guys.
That is Sam Oakford.
He's with Chris Woods and the guys over there at Air Wars dot org.
Keeping track of who gets bombed in Iraq or three in the Syria war, too.
All right.
I'm Scott Horton.
You know, all this stuff.
Dot org and all that.
All right.
Thank you.
