Care of war veterans with mild traumatic brain injury--flawed perspectives.

n engl j med 360;16 nejm.org april 16, 2009 1588 of potential victims, supports the assessment that executions have been applied systematically and strategically to civilians in Iraq.5 Certainly, different perpetrators can use similar weapons in different ways, with different effects on civilians. Nevertheless, our findings regarding the rates of Iraqi civilian death resulting from different types of weapons reveal stark differences in the effects of various weapons on civilians, in terms of both the numbers and the demographic characteristics of those killed. Weapons that kill relatively high proportions of Iraqi civilians, female civilians, or children are particularly hazardous to public health. Such indiscriminate or intentional effects from armed conflict must be radically curtailed to comply with international humanitarian law.4 We believe that all combatant forces and governments should implement policies of routine and transparent collection and release of verifiable data on the civilian casualties of military actions. Such monitoring would facilitate timely reparative action and must inform planning if armed combat is to be prevented — as much as possible — from harming noncombatants. Policymakers, war strategists of all persuasions, and the groups and societies that support them bear moral and legal responsibility for the effects that particular combat tactics have on civilians, including the weapons used near and among them.