100,000 Civilians Dead in Iraq 478
asldihf writes "New Scientist is reporting that 100,000 civilians in Iraq are now dead due to America's war in Iraq. Make sure you vote next week."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
100,000 Civilians Dead in Iraq
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!
Re:different stats (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:different stats (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:different stats (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Yes, and don't forget (Score:1, Interesting)
And by hell they'll get the terrorists if they have to kill everyone in the place.
Darn terrorists, speading terror and scaring and killing folk.
The skeptic's opinion: Number hard to calculate (Score:5, Interesting)
For this report, the sample numbers were EXTREMELY EXTREMELY low: 988 housholds. The potential for error here is astounding. So they had confirmation of 6%. That's silly. The death count is constantly overreported. Every article about military firefights ends with a quote from some official saying how the Americans attacked mostly women, children, and the elderly. It's the standard line and it gets old and less believable each time. I would really like to see statistics on who was killed and how the deaths occurred. Firefights with US troops? Bombings? Deaths during reconstruction? Who is called a "civilian?"
Re: do you mean that a war actually kills people? (Score:4, Interesting)
> I could swear the president's right hand man said that they would minimize civilian casualties?
Here's another good one:
The neocons are trying to sell imperialism by portraying it as cheap and painless. Reality hasn't conformed to the plan yet.
Depends what type of war it is (Score:0, Interesting)
If it's a war to free the people of Iraq and reduce terrorism, it's a miserable failure.
If it's a war to get cheaper oil, boost the profits of USA construction companies and demonstrate how dangerous the USA can be, it's an astounding success.
If you believe what Bush says, then he's a miserable failure. If you don't believe what Bush says, he's an aggressive, greedy zealot. Either way, nobody should be voting for him.
Re:different stats (Score:3, Interesting)
It was a tactical desicion. Do you know how many flights it took to take out *one* location in WWII? An average of ten missions with multiple aircraft. Also bombs were wildly inaccurate. There are multiple accounts of bombs missing targets by upto a mile.
The concentration camp were, one a *burden* of money and manpower to the germans, two, you couldn't target individual buildings (ie crematoriums) without risking hitting prisioner barracks, three the force required to take out such targets outweighed their strategic advantage, and four few people knew the whole extent of what was going on there. Yes it's a cold calculated descision but one that was militarily and morally sound.
SENT BACK refugees that had risked their lives to escape
I'm guessing you're refering to the immigration limits of the 30's and early 40's. The US was in a drepression at the time (I think they called it the GREAT depression) and the influx was further destablizing the economy. Furthermore no one in the US knew (at that time) of the resultant outcome of those policies. Cold? Yes. Immoral? They certainly didn't think so.
So no, there's no such thing as a "good" war, but WWII was a "just" war. IBM, Ford and the Catholic Church had more to do with the Holocaust than the US government did. I could offer a refute of your analysis of the civil war also, but no one wants to read a novel on
Re:different stats (Score:3, Interesting)
This is from a relatively unbiased group that studies human rights atrocities throughout the world:
"Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power."
Here's the full article where it's quoted:
http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=
nobody likes to see people die, but you have to honestly include the alternatives as well.
Yes! Vote!! (Score:3, Interesting)
So that there can be a policy change and instead of trying to fix Iraq (the right way... by actually allowing the people to govern themselves) just pull out and leave them at the mercy of the "freedom" fighters.... who, once in power, will probably be Saddam V2.0 .... like it or not, your government fucked things up in Iraq (don't get me wrong; they were incredibly fucked up to begin with...) but you went in with the promise of helping to fix things. The Afghanis hate you because you went in with the same promise (albeit slightly different in that you were requesting their help vs the Russians...) but left before you could fulfill your end of the bargain... and left the country at the mercy of the "freedom" fighters... who fucked up the country more than the Russians likely would have.
I know I'll get modded into oblivion for this, but please, hear me out. We all know that Bush led everyone into that country under false pretenses, and now all those who backed out, including my country are basically saying "told you so." ... and for the record I am pissed that we did not go in with you; Don Cherry said it best: "If you go into a bar, and your buddy gets into a fight, it doesn't matter who started the fight, or who was right and who was wrong, you back your buddy up." none of this changes the fact, however, that Iraq is getting more and more fucked up as time goes on. Unless it gets fixed, it will come back to bite all of us in the ass.
I'm not saying that you should vote for or against Bush (though personally I don't like him, or his policies.) What I am saying is that regardless of which person gets voted into office they need to know that you support efforts in Iraq.... just not the current style of efforts that are being deployed. I wish I had the link to the blog of one of Americas sons who is/was over there and laid it on the line (it was on /. not too long ago) .... tell your government to sit up and take fucking notice. It's too late to cry over whether or not the war was right, but not too late to tell your government that they need to clean up the mess, and that the current efforts are B/S....
anyway... commence flaming/modding to oblivion...
Pre-war estimate (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The important question... (Score:3, Interesting)
My guess is that history will prove that the war was worth it, not only for Iraqis but for the world as a whole.
The US needs another ally in the middle east since Saudi Arabia and Israel are opposite sides of a political fence.
Iraq is probably a pivot point in long-range geopolitical objectives in an unstable area of the world. Yes it also has oil.
The "war to end all wars" didn't and led us into an even worse one. Everything since then was based on MAD. "Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye". Was that just a "hippie" statement?
Diplomacy: The art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
Re:different stats (Score:2, Interesting)
The U.S. has inflicted DOZENS of 9/11-scale deaths on innocents in Iraq alone. A country, mind you, that had nothing to do with terror attacks against the U.S.
The principal crime of Iraq, from the U.S. perspective was to try and control their oil-wealth, and use that resulting power to reduce the likleyhood of Israeli hegemony in the region.
Re:Kerry now says he'd have gone to war too... (Score:3, Interesting)
If McArthur could disarm Japan- GWB's generals could certainly have done an equal or better job disarming Iraq. But the politicians didn't even give them the chance- because they did not think of it.
It would be next to impossible to do, and wouldn't leave the iraqis with much of a warm feeling for their "liberators". Street fighting is where Americans die fastest, and they were right to stay mostly out of town.
There was NO chance that the Iraqis would have any "warm feelings" for their "liberators"- because we aren't liberators, we're an invading army. High time we started acting like one.
Besides, the *whole* strategy of the invasion was to get into Bagdad is quickly as possible, much like the wildly-successful island hopping campaign of the Pacific during WWII. And again, the invasion was wildly succesfull. The problem comes in at post-war planning, and the much touted "exit-strategy". Did GWB screw the pooch on that on? Yep. Would've Kerry or any other Dem done differently? I don't think so. It's just talk.
During the island hopping campaign, we made DAMNED sure we didn't leave behind insurgents to attack us, either with carpet bombing or with massive invasion forces overwhelming each and every island. Our failures were few- there were a few, and some of them didn't come out of hiding until the 1960s- but we certainly didn't leave behind millions of people to attack us either.
You say this as a good thing. A draft? Are you serious?
Actually, I personally thought it should have been done within a week of 9-11 when patriotic fever was still high. We could have had a mobilization that would have ended the economic recession, given us more than enough troops to conduct the War on Terror on several fronts, and also given us the troop strength to (gasp) protect the Homeland better than the Bush Administration is doing now (say, by adding a million or so uniformed MPs to the shipyards to help search the 1.2 million shipping containers crossing our border each day, or actually securing the Arizona border so that the Mexican Army can't run drugs and terrorists into Tuscon anymore).
Are you a cloaked republican?
No, just a disillusioned one who re-registered as a Democrat briefly, and then after finding out that the Democrats were just as corrupt, re-registered Technocrat. I voted for Kerry because I'm in a swing state that uses mail in voting only, and my wife was going to the library anyway and I didn't want to waste a stamp.
You must be dreaming if you think kucinich would've considered a draft.
I said that KERRY would have considered the draft, not Kucinich- Kucinich would have followed Augustine's City of God and never bothered to involve a third country in the War on Terror to begin with (or even a second one).
Give me a break. I lot of Democrats voted *for* the war after seeing the same intellegence as the president. You can't confirm every detail. You are living in a dream world if you think that any of this would've happened. I'm not a Republican, I'm not voting for Bush, but you're scenario is utterly inconcievable and pure conjecture.
As is any scenario the Bushites come up with saying that Kerry would pull out a week after taking office, so what?
+4 insighful?!? You want more friendly fire incidents??? Troll.
That bit is just realistic- even Kerry's currently scaled back version of adding 40,000 more troops to Iraq (which can be accomplished without a draft) WILL result in more friendly fire incidents- whether we like it or not, adding more people will increade the number of accidents involving those people alone.
Re:Kerry now says he'd have gone to war too... (Score:3, Interesting)
Within the first two weeks after 9-11, when everybody was comparing the attack on the WTC to Pearl Harbor, we had the opportunity to increase our Armed Forces and to mobilize our nation in EXACTLY the same way that FDR did during WWII- with all production retooled to war material, and all excess labor soaked up to either production of stuff necessary for the national defense or the army. Bush WASTED that opportunity- and did the second of many actions that have since disillusioned me on the entire American Political System.
I know damn well how many of our people have been killed by small arms fire. And it'll be a lot better when the civilians, of which there are a lot, take charge of more of their own safety and security.
And when will that be, do you imagine? The Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites have been fighting for control of Iraq off and on for about 5,000 years now. What makes you think that they'll stop now?
All the people here have their own self-interests, but MOST of them are not fighting.
Most of them are still looking for the electricity and water we promised them a year ago. But given their history, I'm sure they'll get back to fighting soon enough- they always have in the past.
The process has been started and we will finish it. Iraq as a free, democratic, self-elected, modern Arab nation will be a reality in the long-term and far more valuable as a foothold against the cancer of RADICAL Islam that plagues our world than for whatever political cost or gain in the short term.
And which one of the three radical Islamic Groups do you suppose will be elected to power? My guess is the Taliban, the politcal arm of the Shi'ites, as they have the most votes.
Re:Death (Score:3, Interesting)
Opposition to abortion does not have to be founded on a religious belief. There are many people who oppose abortion who do so out of a completely secular worldview.
On the other hand, why do you think that an opinion that is based on a religious belief is not permissible? Here's an example. I believe that incest is wrong because the practice clearly is a sinful one. Because I think it's wrong based on my religious views, you're going to say that I'm not allowed to try to promote legislation banning incest?
Furthermore, do you realize how many of our laws today are based on religious "opinions"? Who do you think it was that pushed for the abolition of slavery, for instance? If you've never read about the great abolitionist William Wilberforce [anglican.org], it might open your eyes a bit.
How about this biblical reference: Let he without sin cast the first stone. Wakeup call: It is not yours or anybody else's right, privelege, calling, or job to judge other human beings.
You're right that according to Jesus, we are not to judge one another, however, that's not the whole story. According to Romans 13:1, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God." And in Romans 13:4 we read, "For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
So if you are going to quote the Bible to back up your arguments, you're also going to have to confront the fact that governments were established by God to establish order and peace, by force if necessary.