14,000 Iraqis dead so far this year
Abuskedti
Posts: 1,917
I know many of you proud supporters and politicians like to say we aren't the ones killing them....
well, among the several excuses for Iraq - a current favorite is that we can't leave them now. We owe it to them to stay and see this through.
What we are maintaining for these people is a lawlessness that yields some 60 or 70 innocent people killed every day.
well, among the several excuses for Iraq - a current favorite is that we can't leave them now. We owe it to them to stay and see this through.
What we are maintaining for these people is a lawlessness that yields some 60 or 70 innocent people killed every day.
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war
war
war,
wtf?
>
...a lover and a fighter.
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http://www.videosift.com/video/Obamas-Message-To-American-Indians
Edmonton, AB. September 5th, 2005
Vancouver, BC. April 3rd, 2008
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http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
the criminals are free to gather plan and kill. this is wholly due to our presence, our control, and our complete indifference to their humanity. We can't be bothered to protect them. We don't need more troops in Iraq because we consider establishing law and order for the saftey of the conquered to be none of our concern.
Our behavior in Iraq is absolutely disgusting. We are barberic murderers - keeping the cess pool of death vibrant. It is the more shameful than our past atrocities because the only motive is a little political slant to get a few morons from the right club some votes.
it is shamefull sit by and contribute to the propaganda that allows this to continue.
Well....this is occuring under who's watchful eye...once again mission miserably failed....
But yes a lot of the deaths are Iraqi on Iraqi....and I would say equally as bad...just different in definition....
How in the hell can anyone justify the US killing innocent civilians in a country we are supposedly there to HELP the citizens. Geez...some help, eh?
We have been brainwashed since we were toddlers watching Sesame street that the US is good and does no wrong and we are good citizens if we are patriotic. Screw that. We are taught that we only do these thinsg for noble and good reason...HAHA!!
Our leaders could give two shits about citizens getting killed and ...damn there is oil!!!!
They are the real terroists. Taking over a country , while killing innocent people for the almighty dollar.
The US government is probably one of the worse terrorists organizations in the world and have the most power..and we are all conned into believing they are good. BS!!!
We are not in Iraq to do good. We are there for our own selfish motives, so we can live better lives, while screwing them over!!!
Well, in these people's defense (:)), its actually true. The vast majority of these deaths probably came from Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence ...
I agree that we need to look a bit deeper than that, and consider what effect the occupation is having on the situation. But in all honesty, where would the occupation be without an insurgency?
Look mummy, there's an aeroplane up in the sky"
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the
promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue
sky?
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
The flames are all gone, but the pain lingers on.
Goodbye, blue sky
Goodbye, blue sky.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
"The 11:15 from Newcastle is now approaching"
"The 11:18 arrival...."
There is a belief that the US is committing terrorist acts in Iraq. My question is: do you think their is a difference between between unwillingly killing innocent civillians and deliberately targeting them.
My personal belief is that the families of innocent casualties could not care less if their loved ones had been killed 'by accident.' They are dead. They may understand that it was an accident but they would see the killing as heartless and unneccessary even if accidental.
For an observer of the war however, their is a fundamental difference between accidental killing and terrorism. Despite bearing the same consequences, the latter is much worse.
This is only my opinion, give yours.
it is true, i agree. But it is not reasonable to associate the criminals doing the killing with Iraqis.
We had riots in Los Angeles over the Rodney King situation for example. We sent in the National Guard among others to put a stop to it. Had we not done that - it would have escalated. If we did not have a military - or a strong government - the criminals would have taken over and spread. Without law enforcement - America would deteriorate into what Iraq is very quickly. Perhaps worse due to our arrogance.
We have taken away their identity - as well as their army - their criminals are in control - we do nothing about it - and we sit in judgement of them as a people.
those deaths are on our hands - regardless of who is actually carrying them out.
Wrong! Read on....
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2006/davies0206.html
Burying The Lancet Report
By Nicolas J. S. Davies
February 2006 Volume 19 Number 2
Over a year ago an international team of epidemiologists, headed by Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, completed a “cluster sample survey” of civilian casualties in Iraq. Its findings contradicted central elements of what politicians and journalists had presented to the U.S. public and the world. After excluding any possible statistical anomalies, they estimated that at least 98,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the previous 18 months as a direct result of the invasion and occupation of their country. They also found that violence had become the leading cause of death in Iraq during that period. Their most significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent deaths were caused by “coalition” forces using “helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry,” and that almost half (48 percent) of these were children, with a median age of 8.
When the team’s findings were published in the Lancet, the official journal of the British Medical Association, they caused quite a stir and it seemed that the first step had been taken toward a realistic accounting of the human cost of the war. The authors made it clear that their results were approximate. They discussed the limitations of their methodology at length and emphasized that further research would be invaluable in giving a more precise picture.
A year later, we do not have a more precise picture. Soon after the study was published, U.S. and British officials launched a concerted campaign to discredit its authors and marginalize their findings without seriously addressing the validity of their methods or presenting any evidence to challenge their conclusions. Today the continuing aerial bombardment of Iraq is still a dark secret to most Americans and the media present the same general picture of the war, focusing on secondary sources of violence.
Roberts has been puzzled and disturbed by this response to his work, which stands in sharp contrast to the way the same governments responded to a similar study he led in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2000. In that case, he reported that about 1.7 million people had died during 22 months of war and, as he says, “Tony Blair and Colin Powell quoted those results time and time again without any question as to the precision or validity.” In fact the UN Security Council promptly called for the withdrawal of foreign armies from the Congo and the U.S. State Department cited his study in announcing a grant of $10 million for humanitarian aid.
Roberts conducted a follow-up study in the Congo that raised the fatality estimate to three million and Tony Blair cited that figure in his address to the 2001 Labor Party conference. In December 2004 Blair dismissed the epidemiological team’s work in Iraq, claiming, “Figures from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is.”
This statement by Blair is particularly interesting because the Iraqi Health Ministry reports, whose accuracy he praised, have confirmed the Johns Hopkins team’s conclusion that aerial attacks by “coalition” forces are the leading cause of civilian deaths. One such report was cited by Nancy Youssef in the Miami Herald of September 25, 2004 under the headline “U.S. Attacks, Not Insurgents, Blamed for Most Iraqi Deaths.” The Health Ministry had been reporting civilian casualty figures based on reports from hospitals, as Blair said, but it was not until June 2004 that it began to differentiate between casualties inflicted by “coalition” forces and those from other causes. From June 10 to September 10 it counted 1,295 civilians killed by U.S. forces and their allies and 516 killed in “terrorist” operations. Health Ministry officials told Youssef that the “statistics captured only part of the death toll,” and emphasized that aerial bombardment was largely responsible for the higher numbers of deaths caused by the “coalition.” The breakdown (72 percent U.S.) is remarkably close to that attributed to aerial bombardment in the Lancet survey (79 percent).
BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson, in another Health Ministry report covering July 1, 2004 to January 1, 2005, cited 2,041 civilians killed by U.S. and allied forces versus 1,233 by “insurgents” (only 62 percent U.S.). Then something strange happened. The Iraqi Health Minister’s office contacted the BBC and claimed, in a convoluted and confusing statement, that their figures had somehow been misrepresented. The BBC issued a retraction and details of deaths caused by “coalition” forces have been notably absent from subsequent Health Ministry reports.
Official and media criticism of Roberts’s work has focused on the size of his sample, 988 homes in 33 clusters distributed throughout the country, but other epidemiologists reject the notion that this is controversial.
Michael O’Toole, the director of the Center for International Health in Australia, says: “That’s a classical sample size. I just don’t see any evidence of significant exaggeration…. If anything, the deaths may have been higher because what they are unable to do is survey families where everyone has died.”
David Meddings, a medical officer with the Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention at the World Health Organization, said that surveys of this kind always have uncertainty, but “I don’t think the authors ignored that or understated. Those cautions I don’t believe should be applied any more or less stringently to a study that looks at a politically sensitive conflict than to a study that looks at a pill for heart disease.”
Roberts has also compared his work in Iraq to other epidemiological studies: “In 1993, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control randomly called 613 households in Milwaukee and concluded that 403,000 people had developed Cryptosporidium in the largest outbreak ever recorded in the developed world, no one said that 613 households was not a big enough sample. It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces.”
The campaign to discredit Roberts, the Johns Hopkins team, and the Lancet used the same methods that the U.S. and British governments have employed consistently to protect their monopoly on “responsible” storytelling about the war. By dismissing the study’s findings out of hand, U.S. and British officials created the illusion that the authors were suspect or politically motivated and discouraged the media from taking them seriously. This worked disturbingly well. Even opponents of the war continue to cite much lower figures for civilian casualties and innocently attribute the bulk of them to Iraqi resistance forces or “terrorists.”
The figures most often cited for civilian casualties in Iraq are those collected by Iraqbodycount, but its figures are not intended as an estimate of total casualties. Its methodology is to count only those deaths that are reported by at least two “reputable” international media outlets in order to generate a minimum number that is more or less indisputable. Its authors know that thousands of deaths go unreported in their count and say they cannot prevent the media misrepresenting their figures as an actual estimate of deaths.
Beyond the phony controversy regarding the methodology of the Lancet report, there is one issue that does cast doubt on its findings. This is the decision to exclude the cluster in Fallujah from its computations due to the much higher number of deaths that were reported there (even though the survey was completed before the widely reported assault on the city in November 2004). Roberts wrote, in a letter to the Independent, “Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we did a survey estimating that 285,000 people have died due to the first 18 months of invasion and occupation and we reported it as at least 100,000.”
The dilemma he faced was this: in the 33 clusters surveyed, 18 reported no violent deaths (including one in Sadr City), 14 other clusters reported a total of 21 violent deaths and the Fallujah cluster reported 52 violent deaths. This last number is conservative because, as the report stated, “23 households of 52 visited were either temporarily or permanently abandoned. Neighbors interviewed described widespread death in most of the abandoned homes but could not give adequate details for inclusion in the survey.”
Leaving aside this last factor, there were three possible interpretations of the results from Fallujah. The first, and indeed the one Roberts adopted, was that the team had randomly stumbled on a cluster of homes where the death toll was so high as to be totally unrepresentative and therefore not relevant to the survey. The second possibility was that this pattern among the 33 clusters, with most of the casualties falling in one cluster and many clusters reporting zero deaths, was an accurate representation of the distribution of civilian casualties in Iraq under “precision” aerial bombardment. The third possibility was that the Fallujah cluster was atypical, but not sufficiently abnormal to warrant total exclusion from the study, so that the number of excess deaths was somewhere between 100,000 and 285,000. Without further research, there is no way to determine which of these three possibilities is correct.
No new survey of civilians killed by “coalition” forces has been produced since the Health Ministry report last January, but there is strong evidence that the air war has intensified during this period. Independent journalists have described the continuing U.S. assault on Ramadi as “Fallujah in slow motion.” Smaller towns in Anbar province have been targets of air raids for the past several months, and towns in Diyala and Baghdad provinces have also been bombed. Seymour Hersh has covered the “under-reported” air war in the New Yorker and writes that the current U.S. strategy is to embed U.S. Special Forces with Iraqi forces to call in air strikes as U.S. ground forces withdraw, opening the way for heavier bombing with even less media scrutiny (if that is possible).
One ignored feature of the survey’s results is the high number of civilian casualties reported in Fallujah in August 2004. It appears that U.S. forces took advantage of the media focus on Najaf at that time to conduct very heavy attacks against Fallujah. This is perhaps a clue to the strategy by which they have conducted much of the air war. The heaviest bombing and aerial assault at any given time is likely to be somewhere well over the horizon from any well-publicized U.S. military operation, possibly involving only small teams of Special Forces on the ground. But cynical military strategy does not let the media off the hook for their failure to find out what is really going on and tell the outside world about it. Iraqi and other Arab journalists can still travel through most of the country and news editors should pay close attention to their reports from areas that are too dangerous for Western reporters.
A second feature of the epidemiologists’ findings that has not been sufficiently explored is the one suggested above by Michael O’Toole. Since their report establishes that aerial assault and bombardment is the leading cause of violent death in Iraq and, since a direct hit by a 500 pound Mark 82 bomb will render most houses uninhabitable, any survey that disregards damaged, uninhabited houses is sure to underreport deaths. This should be taken into account by any follow-up studies.
Thanks to Roberts, his international team, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and the editorial board of the Lancet, we have a clearer picture of the violence taking place in Iraq than that presented by “mainstream” media. Allowing for 16 months of the air war and other deaths since the completion of the survey, we have to estimate that somewhere between 185,000 and 700,000 people have died as a direct result of the war. Coalition forces have killed anywhere from 70,000 to 500,000 of them, including 30,000 to 275,000 children under the age of 15.
Roberts has cautioned me to remember that whether someone is killed by a bomb, a heart attack during an air strike, or a car accident fleeing the chaos, those who initiated the war and who “stay the course” bear the responsibility.
As someone who has followed this war closely, I find the results of the study to be consistent with what I have seen gradually emerging as the war has progressed, based on the work of courageous, mostly independent reporters, and glimpses through the looking glass as more and more cracks appear in the “official story.”
Nicolas J.S. Davies is indebted to Medialens, a British media watchdog group, for some of the material in this report. This article was first published by Online Journal.
Well, with such seemingly accurate 'guesstimates' and narrow numbers how can they NOT be correct? 70,000-500,000........sounds factual and accurate to me. Pffft.
www.myspace.com/jensvad
Its difficult to walk the streets in Iraq and count. The United States is free to kill people after labeling them insurgents. And the United States will not leave until there are people in power willing continue to hide those facts.
Did you actually read the article or just the two small parts that I highlighted? I'm getting really bored with reading posts by people like yourself who make pointless comments about things they haven't read, and about subjects of which they know nothing. Can I ask you to do me a favour? Can you post just one - yes one! - comment which says something constructive?
Yes I read the entire article. I chose to comment on the part that stood out to me. Those numbers are meant to shock and draw attention. However, I felt they are a little vague and sound alot like guesswork.
Im really bored with sanctimonious people who read a few articles that are clearly biased and suddenly consider themselves experts that know so much more than the common man.
Midgets are people too.
There, that was constructive. Happy?
Better yet.
The usa sucks. Its evil. Israel is a terrorist nation. The usa sucks.
There, that was about as constructive as the lot of you. Happy yet?
www.myspace.com/jensvad
"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" (http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_deathsundersaddamhussein42503.html)
We have now been in Iraq for 1,217 days. If we accept the absolute low estimate of 70,000 Iraqis and add the 2,781 coalition soldiers who have been killed, that gives us an average of about 60 deaths per day ... better than Saddam, but not by much. If the number of civilians killed is towards the low end of the middle of the range given in the article (which it probably is), let's say 200,000, that shoots our deaths-per-day number all the way up to 166. Hooray for freedom!
The thing your are ignoring is that our actions are providing an opportunity to have something better. It's giving the Iraqi people a choice other than a dictator or a theocracy.
Whether we can hold things together long enough and whether the Iraqi people make this work is yet to be seen.
One thing is for sure, we are helping to give Iraq a chance to stop these needless deaths permanently... and if we had never gone there Uday and Qusay would still be waiting in the wings to take up their fathers murderous legacy for generations to come.
what seems funny to me is "needless war with Iran".
You raise a good point ... of those Saddam killed, the U.S. has blood on their hands for a good number of them. The Kurds? Where'd he get the chemicals he gassed them with again? War with Iran? Which country was it that was arming both sides to keep that one going as long as possible?
Actually, the short answer is that Iraq got its chemicals from many sources, including the Soviets and the Chinese. They got manufacturing technologies from the U.S., granted.
Probably not. I think most Iraqi's would prefer Saddam at this point. It was a much more peaceful and prosperous nation under his admittedly harsh and brutal regime, but I'm guessing they'd trade him for the US right about now. He was the only guy oraganized enough and with enough support to keep each group under control.
Freedom is a long way off for all these groups I'm thinking.
Yes, at least if you are talking about Sunni Muslims and perhaps the more secular people in the country who were involved in Saddam's regime. I think its wrong to say that Saddam had the support of other groups in the country, though. He imposed his will on these groups through violence. Admittedly, his will kept the country more orderly than it is currently, by a long shot. Of course, police states are known for being orderly. You're probably right when you say that many Iraqis would choose to go back to Saddam. They don't know what real democracy can actually afford. What is happening in Iraq right now is simple chaos.
Do you put any responsibility on the heads of those who are trying to destroy and disrupt the newborn democracy in Iraq? Do you think if the violence stopped tomorrow the US would still kill just for the hell of it?
Has it occured to you ask under what circumstances these thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed?
Most of the Kurds killed by Sadaam were killed using weapons - mainly chemical weapons - which the west sold to him. "..the systematic gassing of the Kurdish population of northern Iraq had [little] impact on America. Only six months after the slaughter at Halabja, the White House lent Saddam Hussein another billion dollars. And in 1991, at the end of the Gulf war, US troops stood idly by while Saddam’s presidential guard ruthlessly suppressed the popular uprising by the Kurds for which the American president had himself called."
http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn
When our "friend" Saddam was gassing the Kurds
Baghdad’s refusal to allow UN experts to inspect the presidential sites on which chemical and biological weapons were allegedly hidden was taken to justify a new bombing campaign on Iraq last month. Times have changed. Ten years ago, the systematic gassing of the Kurdish population of northern Iraq had far less impact on America. Only six months after the slaughter at Halabja, the White House lent Saddam Hussein another billion dollars. And in 1991, at the end of the Gulf war, US troops stood idly by while Saddam’s presidential guard ruthlessly suppressed the popular uprising by the Kurds for which the American president had himself called.
By Kendal Nezan
The town of Halabja, with 60,000 inhabitants, lies on the southern fringe of Iraqi Kurdistan, a few miles from the border with Iran (1). On 15 March 1988 it fell to the Peshmerga resistance fighters of Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, supported by Iranian revolutionary guards.
The next morning Iraqi bombers appeared out of a clear blue sky. The people of Halabja were used to the successive attacks and counter-attacks of the Iraq-Iran war that had ravaged the region since September 1980. They thought they were in for the usual reprisal raid. Those who had time huddled in makeshift shelters. The rest were taken by surprise. Wave after wave of Iraqi Migs and Mirages dropped chemical bombs on the unsuspecting inhabitants. The town was engulfed in a sickly stench like rotten apples. The bombing stopped at nightfall and it began to rain hard. Iraqi troops had already destroyed the local power station, so the survivors began to search the mud with torches for the dead bodies of their loved ones.
The scene that greeted them in the morning defied description. The streets were strewn with corpses. People had been killed instantaneously by chemicals in the midst of the ordinary acts of everyday life. Babies still sucked their mothers’ breasts. Children held their parents’ hands, frozen to the spot like a still from a motion picture. In the space of a few hours 5,000 people had died. The 3,200 who no longer had families were buried in a mass grave.
Pictures of the massacre taken by Iranian war correspondents were relayed throughout the world. Journalists flew in and the international press gave the unprecedented event considerable coverage. After all, the use of chemical weapons is banned by the Geneva Convention of 1925. Only Mussolini’s Italy had ever defied the ban, in its war against Abyssinia. And now a state was using chemical weapons against its own people.
In point of fact, Iraq had already used chemical weapons against the Kurds on 15 April 1987. It happened two weeks after Hassan Ali Al Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, was appointed head of the Northern Bureau set up to deal with Kurdistan. On 29 March of that year the Revolutionary Command Council had issued Decree No. 160, granting him full powers to proceed with the final solution of the Kurdish problem. A problem which the Iraqi regime had failed to solve despite intensive Arabisation, transfers of population, the execution of “ringleaders”, and a war waged on and off since 1961.
The Iraqi proconsul now had the power of life and death over the Kurds. He decided to evacuate and destroy all the Kurdish villages, concentrate their inhabitants in camps along the main highways, and physically eliminate all groups considered hostile. Chemical weapons were to be used as part of this strategy in order to “clean out” strongholds of resistance and inaccessible mountain villages.
Hassan Al Majid’s chemical experiments began on 15 April. They were directed against thirty or so villages in the provinces of Suleimaniyeh and Erbil and proved devastatingly effective. Hundreds died. On 17 April, after a chemical attack that killed 400 people in the Balisan valley, 286 wounded survivors set out for Erbil in search of medical attention. They were stopped by the army and shot.
To convince his colleagues, Saddam Hussein in particular, that his methods were effective, Mr Al Majid ordered films to be made of the massacres and deportations, and of the effects of chemical gas on the population. The Iraqi government services were trained by Stasi experts from the East German secret police. They are obsessed with keeping records, even of the most horrible of their activities. During the Kurdish uprising of March 1991, part of their archives fell into the hands of the resistance, which passed them on to Human Rights Watch, a humanitarian organisation based in the United States. The eighteen tons of police files and political documents were transferred to the University of Colorado for safekeeping and analysis, and the material will soon be available on the Internet. With its help we can follow the stages of the Iraqi regime’s genocidal campaign against the Kurds.
400,000 deaths in fifteen years
We learn, for example, that Mr Al Majid convened the Ba’ath Party leaders on 26 May 1987. “As soon as we complete the deportations,” he informed them, “we will start attacking [the Pershmega resistance] everywhere... then we will surround them in a small pocket and attack them with chemical weapons. I will not attack them with chemicals just one day; I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days... I told the expert comrades that I need guerrilla groups in Europe to kill whoever they see of them [Kurdish oppositionists]. I will do it, with the help of God. I will defeat them and follow them to Iran. Then I will ask the Mujaheddin (2) to attack them there (3).”
On 3 June 1987 the Iraqi proconsul signed a personal directive, numbered 28/3650, declaring a zone that contained over a thousand Kurdish villages to be a prohibited area, from which all human and animal life was to be eradicated. “It is totally prohibited for any foodstuffs or persons or machinery to reach the villages that have been banned for security reasons,” the directive stated. “Concerning the harvest, it must be finished before 15 July and, after this year, farming will not be authorised in this region... The armed forces must kill any human being or animal present within these areas.”
The Iraqi forces were given a free hand. They launched an all-out attack that reached its peak with the Anfal campaign. (The name refers to a verse of the Koran authorising the plunder of infidels.) Anfal lasted from February to September 1988. The last operation was launched on 25 August, a few days after the ceasefire between Iraq and Iran that ended eight years of war. Sixteen divisions and a chemical weapons battalion, totalling 200,000 ground troops plus air support, conducted a “final cleansing operation” in the Kurdish province of Bahdinan along the Turkish border. This operation resulted in the flight of almost 100,000 civilians to Turkey.
In July 1988 the Iraqi army razed Halabja to the ground. Kurds have always considered the city a major cultural centre. It even acquired some fame in the English-speaking world, when Britain became the mandatory power in Iraq in the aftermath of the first world war. Adela Khanum, princess of Halabja and patron of the arts, fascinated her British overlords. They conferred on this Islamic Medicis the title Khan Bahadur, Princess of the Brave. These brave subjects of hers, famous since the time of Xenophon for their skill in the use of traditional weapons and the art of war, were finally to be vanquished by an invisible enemy, poison gas.
The destruction of Kurdish towns and villages continued into 1989. In June of that year Qala Diza, a city of 120,000 inhabitants on the Iranian frontier, was evacuated and razed to the ground. It was the last major action of the campaign. By Decree No. 271, issued on 23 April 1989, the Revolutionary Command Council revoked Hassan Al Majid’s special powers. In December Saddam Hussein considered the Kurdish question settled. He abolished the Northern Bureau which he had set up ten years earlier.
By the time the genocidal frenzy ended, 90 % of Kurdish villages, and over twenty small towns and cities, had been wiped off the map (4). The countryside was riddled with 15 million landmines, intended to make agriculture and husbandry impossible. A million and a half Kurdish peasants had been interned in camps. Since 1974 over 400,000 had died in Baghdad’s war against the Kurds. Almost half had disappeared without trace. About 10 % of the total Kurdish population of Iraq had perished.
The fate of those who had disappeared was raised with Baghdad in May 1991 by the Kurdish delegation to the abortive peace talks. When questioned about the 182,000 people who had vanished without trace, Mr Al Majid lost his temper. “You always exaggerate,” he shouted. “The total number killed in the Anfal campaign cannot be more than 100,000.” In the minutes of a meeting held in January 1989 (5), he makes no secret of the means employed. “Am I supposed to keep them in good shape... take good care of them? No, I will bury them with bulldozers. Then they ask me for the names of all the prisoners in order to publish them... Where am I supposed to put this enormous number of people? I started to distribute them among the governorates. I had to send bulldozers hither and thither.”
Protected by the West
At that time the regime was not worried about international reaction. In the recording of the meeting of 26 May 1987, Proconsul Al Majid declares: “I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! (6)” His language may be coarse, but the cynicism of the butcher of Kurdistan, later promoted governor of Kuwait and subsequently minister of defence, was fully justified.
Iraq was then seen as a secular bulwark against the Islamic regime in Teheran. It had the support of East and West and of the whole Arab world except Syria. All the Western countries were supplying it with arms and funds. France was particularly zealous in this respect. Not content with selling Mirages and helicopters to Iraq, it even lent the regime Super Etendard aircraft in the middle of its war with Iran. Germany supplied Baghdad with a large part of the technology required for the production of chemical weapons. And in an unusual display of East-West military cooperation, German engineers enhanced the performance of the Scud aircraft which Iraq had obtained from the Soviet Union, increasing their range so that they could strike at Teheran and other distant Iranian cities.
Despite the enormous public outrage at the gas attack on Halabja, France, which is a depositary of the Geneva Convention of 1925, confined itself to an enigmatic communiqué condemning the use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world. The UN dispatched Colonel Dominguez, a Spanish military expert, to the scene. In a report published on 26 April 1988, he confined himself to recording that chemical weapons had been used once again both in Iran and in Iraq and that the number of civilian victims was increasing (7). On the same day the UN Secretary-General stated that, with respect to both the weapons themselves and those who were using them, it was difficult to determine the nationalities involved.
Clearly, Iraq’s powerful allies did not want Baghdad condemned. In August 1988 the United Nations Sub-Committee on Human Rights voted by 11 votes to 8 not to condemn Iraq for human rights violations. Only the Scandinavian countries, Australia and Canada, together with bodies like the European Parliament and the Socialist International, saved their honour by clearly condemning Iraq.
Things did not begin to change until the end of the Iraq-Iran conflict and the influx into Turkey in September 1988 of refugees fleeing a new chemical weapons offensive. On 7 September France issued a communiqué in which President Mitterrand expressed concern at information received about the use of chemical weapons and other means of repression against the Kurdish population in Iraq. He added that he had no wish to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs, but the bonds of friendship between Iraq and France were even more reason to make his feelings known. In America, a resolution urging sanctions against Iraq was tabled by Senator Claiborne D. Pell and passed by both Houses of Congress. It was vetoed by President Bush. The White House even granted Baghdad a further loan of a billion dollars.
It was not until Iraq occupied the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait in August 1990 that Saddam Hussein became America’s bogeyman, referred to by George Bush as a new Hitler. Still useful, however, he survived the Gulf war. American troops did nothing to overturn the Iraqi dictator. And they stood idly by in the spring of 1991 while his presidential guard ruthlessly suppressed the popular uprising for which the United States’ president had himself called.
I think that that is exactly what they might think. Or have talked themselves into believing.
www.myspace.com/jensvad
What newborn democracy might that be then? The one that favours the sunni minority and which exists within the fortified green zone in Iraq and nowhere else? I bet the Iraqi people must be so glad that the U.S invaded and destroyed their country! If only the U.S could work such wonders all over the world, then the world would surely be a better place?
No, it wont stop when we leave. But certainly they are not killing just for the hell of it - they are people.
The democracy in Iraq was not born - it was implanted with bombs.
no matter how long it takes, Iraq will wait this occupation out and then progress as they see fit.
so while we stay - the dying will continue with no progress. When we leave, the devil seed will be disguarded - and Iraq can get back to the business of being Iraq.
sadly, we will have judged them all by the acts of the criminals that we've empowered - and as a nation they will hate us
and in our usual smugness we will blame them when not offering help.
Sometimes I wish I stayed on the mind-altering, sedating drugs, then reality of malice and destruction would not even enter into my realm.....;)
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
Please describe just who initiated "newborn democracy" in Iraq, and maybe even define democracy. We certainly aren't experiencing democracy in my country....I mean were the Amerikkkans summoned by Iraqi's? and what about how we protect them on their land, but yet, I bet you have heard racial slurs regarding MiddleEastern Folks even in your neck of the woods....something like sand---n*gg*. Such an irony...Protect them on their soil, yet beat the f*k out of refugees and immi's living on our soilll...f*kn amazing...
Americans aren't killing for the hell of it, sweet 69. Americans are killing because many of us wanna kill for kicks. Face it, many of these people who go into service aren't of rational thinking skills..Usually they are lost, forlorn and don't have a future. They enlist by being promised a bright future while hiding real truth of watching your comrades die. The miliatry doesn't want anyone who may question authority, or else all would go AWL. Do you remember Vietnam War? I remember a large majority of draftees going AWL. They didn't wanna kill....If people in Iraqi War didn't want desturction, I have a feeling history would repeat itself. I think, you and a few others here who promote conservative side, wouldn't even be accepted by enlistment recruiter, becasue you would ask questions. I ask younger males why they would entertain a thought about serving miliatry, and they all say in some way or another, " I wanna kill...".. For myself, I think that all military personell support death whether or not working in front lines or infermerary (sp?? please correct). Even my nephew who went on a nuclear sub is generalized as kill support specialist..even if he never pulled the switch. I always wondered what it was like in his head to be on a nuclear sub for 1 year and knowing that vessel can litterally wipe out a city......The older I get, the more confusing life gets. We can't all sum up and speculate the actions of others or even our "leaders" the only change that is substantial is that of which we make within ourselves...
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light