in what strange world do you kill millions of people and then say you are helping them?
Iraq used to be the most advanced country in the region.
its now on the same level as some of the poorest countries in Africa.
if that's the US gov't definition of "help", maybe we should send them a dictionary or something.
A) we didn't kill millions of people. that is an outright lie and disgusting you would say such an exaggerated thing.
no, not a lie, unfortunately.
its all from from official sources and private studies...(and wiki, which was using conservative numbers)
The UN....
"The sanctions, the toughest in history, are killing up to 6,000 Iraqis a month, according to Denis Halliday, a former UN coordinator of humanitarian aid to Iraq."
US led sanctions=6000x12(months)x10(years)=
720,000
Persian gulf war 1- i remember hearing about 200,000 iraq troops killed outright in the invasion, at the time, but that number has disappeared. wiki puts it conservatively at 100,000. which we will use. it also puts the civilian count at 100,000, again very conservative, but still we will use it. http://www.fas.org/spp/aircraft/part08.htm, a very detailed study, claims 170,000 CHILDREN died from the damage to the the following year -no food no water, playing in raw sewage etc...a lot of people died...no one knows the correct numbers. If anything these numbers are considerably lower than the actual count.
So, Desert Storm-100,000 troops. 100,000 civilians. and 170,000 children the following year (forget the adults) =
370,000,
again which leaves out a very large percentage of deaths and uses conservative estimates for the troops and civilian figures.
Iraq war round 2=john Hopkins put it at 600,000 in 2006. And independent european firm (U.K. firm, Opinion Business Research (ORB)-places the number at over 1 million a few months ago.
720,000+370,000 +(600,000 to 1 million)
which puts the death toll at between 1,690,000-2,090,000. (the low number was using totals from 3 years ago.)
its millions. and its a conservative number. its probably much higher.
so that's that.
forget the displaced/homeless/refugees/abu ghraib
we are helping them. we are spending BILLIONS on their infrastructure and training brave Iraqis to defend themselves with police and military. and its actually working.
which is exactly like starting a house fire and then taking credit for putting it out. the US bombed Iraq. many times. you know this. "we destroyed your country, but we're paying American companies to rebuild it so its all good, right"? no.
C) to say Iraq used to be the most advanced country in the region is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard and further proves you know little to nothing about the history or Iraq.
lol.
that doesn't prove anything. in fact you haven't proved anything in this entire thread. no facts, nothing but opinion.
sigh.
The only way i can prove that Iraq was the most advanced country in the Middle East would be to find stats-things like gdp/gnp/production numbers/technology levels agricultural levels etc FROM 1985 and then compare them to 1985 numbers for every single country in the middle east.
Which I am not going to do. you win. Iraq wasn't the most advanced country in the middle east at the time, lets just say, even though it isn't true.
I can prove that Iraq was advancing, which still drives home the point. Advancing, in fact, right up until the US got directly involved in the region.
Iraq was intent on industrialization and modernization...and the numbers back that up-there was significant growth in the private sector(yes the companies were semi-autonomous) until at least 1985. see for yourself. there were advances in almost every sector- agriculturally they were doubling crop production with many crops. the list goes on-chemicical production -not weapons grade-manufacturing, agriculturally...etc. in almost every area IRaq had been improving steadily for decades. right up until about 1985-1990. right about the time the US got involved. and no that's not a coincidence.
Iraq was sitting on the largest known oil field in the world, and was spending that money on infrastructure. the numbers provided back that up. IE advancing, and relatively speaking, advanced.
Which was all very fine until the US destroyed that infrastructure, setting them back..who knows how many decades. Or centuries.
Which is all a very convoluted and time consuming way to say the following -
Iraq was steadily advancing its society, since 1968.
And probably would have continued to do so had the US not got involved.
And
The US in no way "helped" Iraq, in fact killed millions of Iraqis.
that doesn't prove anything. in fact you haven't proved anything in this entire thread. no facts, nothing but opinion.
are you serious? do you want me to point out how many times you've said "I think" or "I heard" or "I read" or "I could argue..."
I'll get to the rest of your bullshit later. I dont have time now. but its laughable for you to basically call the UN=US as if no other countries exist within the UN. and its also funny how you make it sound like sanctions were given to Iraq because the US was bored one day and wanted to pick on someone. sanctions were given for a reason and voted on by several countries. gotta run. I'll continue your history/reality lesson tomorrow.
its all from from official sources and private studies...(and wiki, which was using conservative numbers)
The UN....
"The sanctions, the toughest in history, are killing up to 6,000 Iraqis a month, according to Denis Halliday, a former UN coordinator of humanitarian aid to Iraq."
US led sanctions=6000x12(months)x10(years)=
720,000
Persian gulf war 1- i remember hearing about 200,000 iraq troops killed outright in the invasion, at the time, but that number has disappeared. wiki puts it conservatively at 100,000. which we will use. it also puts the civilian count at 100,000, again very conservative, but still we will use it. http://www.fas.org/spp/aircraft/part08.htm, a very detailed study, claims 170,000 CHILDREN died from the damage to the the following year -no food no water, playing in raw sewage etc...a lot of people died...no one knows the correct numbers. If anything these numbers are considerably lower than the actual count.
So, Desert Storm-100,000 troops. 100,000 civilians. and 170,000 children the following year (forget the adults) =
370,000,
again which leaves out a very large percentage of deaths and uses conservative estimates for the troops and civilian figures.
Iraq war round 2=john Hopkins put it at 600,000 in 2006. And independent european firm (U.K. firm, Opinion Business Research (ORB)-places the number at over 1 million a few months ago.
720,000+370,000 +(600,000 to 1 million)
which puts the death toll at between 1,690,000-2,090,000. (the low number was using totals from 3 years ago.)
its millions. and its a conservative number. its probably much higher.
so that's that.
so thats that huh? first of all, we arent talking about poker chips. these are human beings. you can't just take it upon yourself to DOUBLE death tolls because you feel the estimates are conservative. second of all, the US is not responsible for the deaths during sanctions. Saddam is. not to mention the UN is not the US. other countries had a say in the matter. I can only suggest you study what happen at the UN during the 80s and 90s. sanctions were put on Iraq for a reason and could have easily been lifted had Saddam cared about his own people.
same goes for Gulf War 91. Saddam choose to invade Kuwait. the dead's blood is on his hands.
you can throw out numbers all day but the bottom line, is there is no proof of anything. estimates vary widely and that's that.
your sources are "studies" and "surveys". counting dead isn't like taking an opinion poll. if one of these surveys found that 10 million died, you would believe it. the higher the number the better. but like I said, these arent poker chips.
which is exactly like starting a house fire and then taking credit for putting it out. the US bombed Iraq. many times. you know this. "we destroyed your country, but we're paying American companies to rebuild it so its all good, right"? no.
if someone came and burned down my house and then gave me money and rebuilt it, I would be pissed off they burned it down and not pissed off they stuck around to rebuild. which is exactly the opinion of most Iraqis. they do not like our presence there, but dont want us to leave.
you and I both know, we have spent BILLIONS on reconstruction.
that doesn't prove anything. in fact you haven't proved anything in this entire thread. no facts, nothing but opinion.
sigh.
The only way i can prove that Iraq was the most advanced country in the Middle East would be to find stats-things like gdp/gnp/production numbers/technology levels agricultural levels etc FROM 1985 and then compare them to 1985 numbers for every single country in the middle east.
Which I am not going to do. you win. Iraq wasn't the most advanced country in the middle east at the time, lets just say, even though it isn't true.
I can prove that Iraq was advancing, which still drives home the point. Advancing, in fact, right up until the US got directly involved in the region.
Iraq was intent on industrialization and modernization...and the numbers back that up-there was significant growth in the private sector(yes the companies were semi-autonomous) until at least 1985. see for yourself. there were advances in almost every sector- agriculturally they were doubling crop production with many crops. the list goes on-chemicical production -not weapons grade-manufacturing, agriculturally...etc. in almost every area IRaq had been improving steadily for decades. right up until about 1985-1990. right about the time the US got involved. and no that's not a coincidence.
Iraq was sitting on the largest known oil field in the world, and was spending that money on infrastructure. the numbers provided back that up. IE advancing, and relatively speaking, advanced.
Which was all very fine until the US destroyed that infrastructure, setting them back..who knows how many decades. Or centuries.
Which is all a very convoluted and time consuming way to say the following -
Iraq was steadily advancing its society, since 1968.
And probably would have continued to do so had the US not got involved.
And
The US in no way "helped" Iraq, in fact killed millions of Iraqis.
If you disagree, read the above.
you know what ruined Iraq's so called progress? Saddam Huessin. The US had NOTHING to do with him invading Iran and then Kuwait. these two wars, that Saddam started, completely ruined the country. again, this has absolutely nothing to do with the US. you said it yourself, you dont know shit about the Kurds, they are a major part of Iraq's history.... and its painfully obvious you dont know much about Saddam Huessin. do you think he was simply misunderstood? a good guy?
I really hope you do some research on him as well as the UN's involvement in Iraq since the 80s.
I know I'm a little late but I'll get in on this. Hey Jlew what's up? You probably don't remember me but we hung out after the Vic at the bar across the street. Fred from Chicago was there too. Anyway how ya’ been?
So this thread started by someone posting pics of current day Iraq. I can appreciate that as I have a cousin who's there right now and probably for a while to come as his "tour" was just extended. Those of us who have never been there have no real sense of what it's like; can we all agree on that?
I've followed this war since its beginning in '03. Saddam didn’t start this current war. We know we were given reasons to invade which turned out to be not true. That's fact and it's a pretty big deal. Some people say the Bush admin didn't know the intelligence was flawed but there's a ton of info to suggest otherwise. Either way, they either flat out lied, or failed us by giving us bad information and sending our troops overseas based on that flawed info. Those reasons weren't that Saddam killed his own people. If we look around the world, there's genocide going on right now and we're not doing anything about it. It's also happened in the past the same way.
So we're there, nothing we can do about it now let's hope for the best. I get that and there are some positives going on in Iraq. Overall the violence has dropped from what I hear. Unfortunately I just read today suicide bombers killed over 70 people and wounded scores more in separate attacks. Those kinds of attacks have dropped recently but they have not stopped by any means. They need to stop all together for us to claim any kind of victory in Iraq.
Some other positives are that Iraq was able to hold its own elections in which many people turned out to vote. That's a good step. Of course who really knows how legit those elections are, or whether or not they were fixed? That happens all over the world, even here so ok they had elections and that's a positive. The "surge" did work. That doesn't mean the whole war worked, but the so called "surge" did work in quelling some of the violence.
So there is some progress over there. Not as much as I would like and not nearly as fast. Remember we've been there for 6 years now and we still have hundreds of thousands of troops there. It was only 2 months after the invasion that Bush declared mission accomplished. And the negatives definitely outnumber the positives.
Jlew mentioned torture as one of the justifications of being in Iraq. I find that ironic considering the CIA memos that were just released detailing how we tortured terror suspects over 250 times. We also know prisoners were tortured at the now infamous Abu-Ghraib prison in the early days of the invasion. When I mention torture I’m not just talking about pouring some water on someone’s face. I mean slamming people’s bodies on the floor, stripping people and keeping them in cold rooms, sleep deprivation, and who knows what else? It happened. Torture is torture regardless of who did it. It tarnishes our country, especially when it’s authorized by senior officials and keeps the door open for it to be done to us.
I really could go on and on about the failures of Iraq. Blackwater scandals, high levels of troop suicide, high levels of PTSD affecting troops when they come home, poor healthcare for those troops and troops being electrocuted by faulty wiring in their showers, thousands of innocent people killed. I know it is some negative shit. Doesn’t mean I’m dwelling or that it shouldn’t be acknowledged. Not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war. Money that we could really use right now in this economy.
Saddam was a bad guy yes. So is the dictator of N. Korea. So are a lot of brutal dictators all over the world. We can’t just take them all out. We should all hope we can get out of Iraq as soon as possible because many of those guys still have a stop in Afghanistan before they can come home.
West Palm 2000 I & II/West Palm '03/Tampa '03/Kissimmee '04/Vic Theater '07/West Palm '08/Tampa '08/NYC MSG I & II '08/Philly Spectrum III & IV '09/Cleveland '10/Bristow '10/PJ20 I & II 2011/Pensacola '12/Pittsburgh '13/Denver '14
I absolutely remember you. good to hear from you again. we are two of the lucky ones thats for sure.
as for the post, I mostly agree with everything you said. except the part about me mentioning torture as justification for being in Iraq. I never said that. or you misunderstood what I said.
why not show what Iraq was like before the invasion. mass killings, beatings, torture …
I just thought that was kind of ironic because of the torture that was committed by us, after we invaded. Like I said bad stuff that nobody should be doing. That was the Bush era though and hopefully we are past that.
On a side note, we were pretty damn lucky that night. It didn’t hit me until I got back to the hotel. We had front row seats to one of the best PJ shows ever. I was extremely lucky that I found that Fred guy because he waited in line all day while I drove 8 hours from PA.
West Palm 2000 I & II/West Palm '03/Tampa '03/Kissimmee '04/Vic Theater '07/West Palm '08/Tampa '08/NYC MSG I & II '08/Philly Spectrum III & IV '09/Cleveland '10/Bristow '10/PJ20 I & II 2011/Pensacola '12/Pittsburgh '13/Denver '14
why not show what Iraq was like before the invasion. mass killings, beatings, torture …
I just thought that was kind of ironic because of the torture that was committed by us, after we invaded. Like I said bad stuff that nobody should be doing. That was the Bush era though and hopefully we are past that.
that comment wasnt implying we are justified in being there. and we are talking about different levels of torture IMO. water boarding is far less hurtful that whats been reported by Saddam's henchmen.
Victims described how they were beaten with canes,whips, hosepipes and metal rods, and how other victims were forced to watch as their family members were tortured in front of them.
In a report dated February 11, Amnesty said other methods of physical torture de-scribed by victims include the use of falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet), extinguishing of cigarettes on various parts of the body, extraction of fingernails and toenails and piercing of the hands with an electric drill.
Some victims - both male and female - were sexually abused. Others had objects, including broken bottles, inserted into their bodies.
In addition to physical torture, detainees have been threatened with rape and subjected to mock execution. "They have been placed in cells where they could hear the screams of others being tortured and have been deprived of sleep," said the Amnesty report.
Some were kept in solitary confinement for long periods. "Detainees have also been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out."
AND why were they tortured??...."Many victims of torture have been Shi'a Muslims suspected of anti-government activities."
all that torture listed above was punishment for simply being "suspected" of disagreeing with Saddam. that really puts it in prospective.
torture is a touchy subject and I've researched it alot lately. there are definitely 2 sides to the story in terms of so called American "torture".
On a side note, we were pretty damn lucky that night. It didn’t hit me until I got back to the hotel. We had front row seats to one of the best PJ shows ever. I was extremely lucky that I found that Fred guy because he waited in line all day while I drove 8 hours from PA.
We were guilty of physical torture too, I mentioned it earlier. Slamming bodies on the ground, sleep deprivation, and who knows what else? That's all physical. The waterboarding is just the highest profile method we hear about. Waterboarding is a form of mock execution. There's no way to justify torture on either side and to me actually seems like a one sided issue. I just think torture is torture no matter how you slice it. We expect them to torture. We shouldn't expect that from the U.S. We have specific laws against it, in addition to the Geneva Conventions. When we do it, it's even worse because we're supposed to be the advanced and more civilized nation.
West Palm 2000 I & II/West Palm '03/Tampa '03/Kissimmee '04/Vic Theater '07/West Palm '08/Tampa '08/NYC MSG I & II '08/Philly Spectrum III & IV '09/Cleveland '10/Bristow '10/PJ20 I & II 2011/Pensacola '12/Pittsburgh '13/Denver '14
We were guilty of physical torture too, I mentioned it earlier. Slamming bodies on the ground, sleep deprivation, and who knows what else? That's all physical. The waterboarding is just the highest profile method we hear about. Waterboarding is a form of mock execution. There's no way to justify torture on either side and to me actually seems like a one sided issue. I just think torture is torture no matter how you slice it. We expect them to torture. We shouldn't expect that from the U.S. We have specific laws against it, in addition to the Geneva Conventions. When we do it, it's even worse because we're supposed to be the advanced and more civilized nation.
I agree and disagree. meaning I see both sides. It's still my opinion that our techniques are far less severe then the ones used by Saddam...and for FAR less reason. which is also a very important point.
the people we so called tortured and people who were DIRECTLY involved with killing American citizens and soldiers...and involved in the planning of more attacks.
Saddam seemed to torture random people off the street as sport.
I don't condone the techniques we used but I understand why it was done. back in 01-03, we had no idea if another attacked was imminent. such techniques were necessary in order to gather such information.
where are the pictures of the damage and death being caused by the suicide attacks and other various iraqi-on-iraqi and muslim-on-muslim violence? and to follow that up, how do we know the damage shown in the OP's pictures were not caused by that violence?
by the way, the MT is still debating the Iraq invasion?
echo chambers, on the right, left, and middle, lead to little progress and even less intellectual growth... challenge your own thoughts and beliefs, no matter how convinced you are
Anybody still justifying this war and thinking all the Iraq people are better off now is a fucking retard.
nobody is doing that. how about you come back when you have some constructive to say. its childish comments like this that ruin message boards. grow up.
Anybody still justifying this war and thinking all the Iraq people are better off now is a fucking retard.
nobody is doing that. how about you come back when you have some constructive to say. its childish comments like this that ruin message boards. grow up.
Anybody still justifying this war and thinking all the Iraq people are better off now is a fucking retard.
nobody is doing that. how about you come back when you have some constructive to say. its childish comments like this that ruin message boards. grow up.
everyone but you anyway.
that makes no fucking sense. but I'll assume you are trying to imply I'm justifying the Iraq war. well, I'm not. its a shame this board still allows people like you to troll around.
where are the pictures of the damage and death being caused by the suicide attacks and other various iraqi-on-iraqi and muslim-on-muslim violence? and to follow that up, how do we know the damage shown in the OP's pictures were not caused by that violence?
well I suppose this would fall under the US's fault also. :roll:
so thats that huh? first of all, we arent talking about poker chips. these are human beings. you can't just take it upon yourself to DOUBLE death tolls because you feel the estimates are conservative. second of all, the US is not responsible for the deaths during sanctions. Saddam is. not to mention the UN is not the US. other countries had a say in the matter. I can only suggest you study what happen at the UN during the 80s and 90s. sanctions were put on Iraq for a reason and could have easily been lifted had Saddam cared about his own people.
i never doubled anything. i used the conservative numbers to come up with the final count. sorry if that wasn't clear.
What in the hell.
The US blows up things like water treatment plants, leads the UN in sanctioning Iraq to the point where they cannot be repaired...and diseases spread that cannot be treated...because the sanctions are so severe not even medicine can be imported...and people died as a result. But its their own fault according to you.
Apologizing for atrocities is a terrible position to take, and i can't believe your trying to do so.
Blaming Iraq for the sanctions is like blaming the rape victim for getting raped. Its not right.,
same goes for Gulf War 91. Saddam choose to invade Kuwait. the dead's blood is on his hands.
Ok let me rephrase what i posted earlier, maybe it wasn't clear.
Saddam has his army on the Kuwaiti border. Everyone knows he wants to invade.
So the US sends its highest diplomat, the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, to talk to Saddam. She says, and this is in public record...paraphrasing...
'The US has no interest in your Arab-Arab conflict'
That wasn't taken out of context. The before and after transcript is available, also in the public record. They were discussing the Iraq/Kuwait conflict directly.
Which sent a very clear message to Saddam that he was all clear to invade Kuwait.
And why did Saddam want to invade Kuwait anyway?>
At the end of WWII (i believe) maps were redrawn, maps which took land away from Iraq, cut off their access to the sea, land which they still considered theirs.
The CIA was in cooperation with Kuwaiti intelligence-I provided some evidence suggesting that-and eventually Kuwait started slant drilling the oil out from under Iraq. Why a little country with a militant neighbor would do such a thing is hard to believe. Incredible actually, given the situation in the middle east at the time.
Logic suggests Kuwait wasn't acting alone. I would think, that in most cases, the little kid on the block would try to avoid the neighborhood bully, not sneak into his room and steal money from his piggy bank. Not unless that kid had promises from and even bigger bully, that he would be protected.
And I'm not defending the invasion, just trying to provide context. Its not so black and white as they like to make things..
you can throw out numbers all day but the bottom line, is there is no proof of anything. estimates vary widely and that's that.
your sources are "studies" and "surveys". counting dead isn't like taking an opinion poll. if one of these surveys found that 10 million died, you would believe it. the higher the number the better. but like I said, these arent poker chips.
Hmm. nothing i can post makes any difference apparently.
First I am a liar for suggesting that millions of Iraqi's have been killed in Iraq since 1990.
When I provided numbers that back that up, from legitimate sources, they were dismissed.
And of course they are estimates. How else would you go about getting this kind of information?
And in this case, the "estimates" come from 2 of the leading authorities in the field, the UN and John Hopkins. Information that major newspapers have no problem re-printing all over the world.
I'll give them a look. lets ignore John Hopkins and the UN for the time being and focus on Body Count, that wonderful website that is always at the top of google searches for some reason.
which is exactly like starting a house fire and then taking credit for putting it out. the US bombed Iraq. many times. you know this. "we destroyed your country, but we're paying American companies to rebuild it so its all good, right"? no.
if someone came and burned down my house and then gave me money and rebuilt it, I would be pissed off they burned it down and not pissed off they stuck around to rebuild. which is exactly the opinion of most Iraqis. they do not like our presence there, but dont want us to leave.
you and I both know, we have spent BILLIONS on reconstruction.
yeah. but if you destroy a country, you sure as hell better rebuild it.
It doesn't excuse blowing it up in the first place.
It's like trying to take credit for something you're supposed to be doing anyway.
Like Chris Rock said...
"I take care of my kids..."
"Well no shit, you're supposed to you stupid mother fu%#$"
you know what ruined Iraq's so called progress? Saddam Huessin. The US had NOTHING to do with him invading Iran and then Kuwait. these two wars, that Saddam started, completely ruined the country. again, this has absolutely nothing to do with the US. you said it yourself, you dont know shit about the Kurds, they are a major part of Iraq's history.... and its painfully obvious you dont know much about Saddam Huessin. do you think he was simply misunderstood? a good guy?
like banging my head against a brick wall.
you have got to be out your mind.
I thought it was generally accepted-even by the loonies on the far right-that the US armed both sides in the Iran/Iraq war"? ?
Your statement, "[the Iran/Iraq war] has absolutely nothing to do with the US" is untrue, even by Fox news standards.
And the rest has been dealt with.
btw-my source is a US government sponsored survey (the one that shows the above to be complete bullshit, that you never bothered to read) -yours is..just your opinion.
Back to Bush's statement,
"facts are annoying things."
You must be a big fan of his.
I really hope you do some research on him as well as the UN's involvement in Iraq since the 80s.
The US blows up things like water treatment plants, leads the UN in sanctioning Iraq to the point where they cannot be repaired...and diseases spread that cannot be treated...because the sanctions are so severe not even medicine can be imported...and people died as a result. But its their own fault according to you.
Apologizing for atrocities is a terrible position to take, and i can't believe your trying to do so.
I didnt say it was "their" own fault. I said it was your buddy Saddam's.
Blaming Iraq for the sanctions is like blaming the rape victim for getting raped. Its not right.,
all I can do is beg you to research your friend Saddam Huessin. why do you keep saying I'm blaming Iraq? I'm not. I'm blaming one man. ok? please tell me you understand what I'm saying. I can't be any clearer. I AM NOT BLAMING IRAQIS. I"M BLAMING SADDAM....for the sanctions and resulting death.
Saddam has his army on the Kuwaiti border. Everyone knows he wants to invade.
So the US sends its highest diplomat, the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, to talk to Saddam. She says, and this is in public record...paraphrasing...
'The US has no interest in your Arab-Arab conflict'
That wasn't taken out of context. The before and after transcript is available, also in the public record. They were discussing the Iraq/Kuwait conflict directly.
Which sent a very clear message to Saddam that he was all clear to invade Kuwait.
given the all clear? are you fucking insane.. no one is given the all clear to invade. you are using this one sentence as evidence that the US is responsible for Saddam invading another country? can you see how fucking stupid you sound?
Hmm. nothing i can post makes any difference apparently.
First I am a liar for suggesting that millions of Iraqi's have been killed in Iraq since 1990.
When I provided numbers that back that up, from legitimate sources, they were dismissed.
And of course they are estimates. How else would you go about getting this kind of information?
And in this case, the "estimates" come from 2 of the leading authorities in the field, the UN and John Hopkins. Information that major newspapers have no problem re-printing all over the world.
Yet, not good enough for you.
I'm beginning got see why George Bush 1 said,
"facts are annoying things."
I'm thinking you agree with him there.
I gave you estimates too. you response was lol. how are you any different? you ONLY take the highest possible estimates and make them facts. estimates are not fact.
I'll give them a look. lets ignore John Hopkins and the UN for the time being and focus on Body Count, that wonderful website that is always at the top of google searches for some reason.
Iraq Body Count has far more sources then John Hopkins and the UN.
I thought it was generally accepted-even by the loonies on the far right-that the US armed both sides in the Iran/Iraq war"? ?
Your statement, "[the Iran/Iraq war] has absolutely nothing to do with the US" is untrue, even by Fox news standards.
the US took sides but didnt START the war. which is what you are implying. I apologize though, I can see where my statement was taken the wrong way. I meant the US had absolutely nothing to do with starting the war.
please do some fucking research on the history or Iraq and Saddam. its shocking how little you know about him
i never doubled anything. i used the conservative numbers to come up with the final count. sorry if that wasn't clear.
you are making up numbers out of thin air. and when confronted with sources that show low estimates, you automatically dismiss it.
Eh, no. I didn't make anything up. None of the information presented was mine. And it was all cited. If you disagree with the numbers you can check the sources, I provided them.
(and this is all very sad that we are measuring war based on how many people were killed, but i think itsrelevant. to show how fucked up war is)
You are dismissing figures published in the Lancet, and replacing them with numbers taken from some random website that no one else cares about. The Lancet wouldn't publish something if it were "made up". And they wouldn't be using numbers from iraqbodycount.org.(I don't know anybody that does)
And the reason for that has nothing to with what they found. It has everything to do with how they found it.
iraqbodycount.org, only counts those that died "violent deaths" that were reported in the media.
The 2 obvious flaws in that method, and maybe the reason no respectable journalists report on it, is that it excludes the incredibly large portion of people that die non-violent deaths. Which is a considerable number.
And obviously the media can't possibly report on every single death.
A very large section of the deaths are left out, in the thousands range for sure, probably in the hundreds of thousands.
The US blows up things like water treatment plants, leads the UN in sanctioning Iraq to the point where they cannot be repaired...and diseases spread that cannot be treated...because the sanctions are so severe not even medicine can be imported...and people died as a result. But its their own fault according to you.
Apologizing for atrocities is a terrible position to take, and i can't believe your trying to do so.
I didnt say it was "their" own fault. I said it was your buddy Saddam's.
Blaming Iraq for the sanctions is like blaming the rape victim for getting raped. Its not right.,
all I can do is beg you to research your friend Saddam Huessin. why do you keep saying I'm blaming Iraq? I'm not. I'm blaming one man. ok? please tell me you understand what I'm saying. I can't be any clearer. I AM NOT BLAMING IRAQIS. I"M BLAMING SADDAM....for the sanctions and resulting death.
Really? Saddam Hussein sanctioned Iraq.
That is news to every single person in the world.
you know hundreds of thousands of little kids were killed in those sanctions? (i'm not gonna post any links, you'll pretend i invented them or whatever) -United States former Secretary of State Madeline Albright accepted tha500,000 children died as a result of the sanctions, on national tv, but i'm making that up too right?
what in the fuck did they ever do to anyone? for that to happen?
and this country put those sanctions on that country that killed those children. Saddam Hussein was a piece of shit but he didn't sanction Iraq. The US/UN did.
Saddam has his army on the Kuwaiti border. Everyone knows he wants to invade.
So the US sends its highest diplomat, the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, to talk to Saddam. She says, and this is in public record...paraphrasing...
'The US has no interest in your Arab-Arab conflict'
That wasn't taken out of context. The before and after transcript is available, also in the public record. They were discussing the Iraq/Kuwait conflict directly.
Which sent a very clear message to Saddam that he was all clear to invade Kuwait.
given the all clear? are you fucking insane.. no one is given the all clear to invade. you are using this one sentence as evidence that the US is responsible for Saddam invading another country? can you see how fucking stupid you sound?
Yeah. just pretend it doesn't matter. That official statements made in an official capacity, at the highest diplomatic levels-don't matter.
You are suggesting here that diplomacy has no impact on events in world politics, which actually says a lot about your understanding of international politics.
Hmm. nothing i can post makes any difference apparently.
First I am a liar for suggesting that millions of Iraqi's have been killed in Iraq since 1990.
When I provided numbers that back that up, from legitimate sources, they were dismissed.
And of course they are estimates. How else would you go about getting this kind of information?
And in this case, the "estimates" come from 2 of the leading authorities in the field, the UN and John Hopkins. Information that major newspapers have no problem re-printing all over the world.
Yet, not good enough for you.
I'm beginning got see why George Bush 1 said,
"facts are annoying things."
I'm thinking you agree with him there.
I gave you estimates too. you response was lol. how are you any different? you ONLY take the highest possible estimates and make them facts. estimates are not fact.
You are suggesting I take numbers from a random website that nobody else considers, over numbers from reports published in publications like the Lancet?
really?
If I was going to take the highest possible estimates i wouldn't have used wiki.
I'll give them a look. lets ignore John Hopkins and the UN for the time being and focus on Body Count, that wonderful website that is always at the top of google searches for some reason.
Iraq Body Count has far more sources then John Hopkins and the UN.
and again, John Hopkins did a survey of a very small % of the country. you cant apply the same principles to an opinion poll as you can a death toll.
Lancet is probably the oldest scientific journal in the world. The studies they published by John Hopkins have been accepted by almost everyone but you and body count.
And it has been peer reviewed, by some of the most prestigous universities in the world.
Cambridge University calls their method "generally well described and readily repeatable" re the Iraq report.
If its good enough for Cambridge U i think I'm just fine with it too.
But stick to body count if it makes you feel better.
Again those annoying facts shouldn't get in your way, right?
I thought it was generally accepted-even by the loonies on the far right-that the US armed both sides in the Iran/Iraq war"? ?
Your statement, "[the Iran/Iraq war] has absolutely nothing to do with the US" is untrue, even by Fox news standards.
the US took sides but didnt START the war. which is what you are implying. I apologize though, I can see where my statement was taken the wrong way. I meant the US had absolutely nothing to do with starting the war.
please do some fucking research on the history or Iraq and Saddam. its shocking how little you know about him
[/quote]
i wasn't trying to imply that.
Iraq was progressing, and had been for 2 straight decades.
I posted information proving that statement, from a US gov't sponsored survey, its just simple statement, but its true.
It is now on par with some of the shitiest places on the planet.
And its all Saddam's fault in the strange magical world you guys live in.
I got it. I see your point.
I'm of the mind that US jets dropped these big bombs all over the place and kind of reduced everything to ruble.
that's just me. seems more realistic though.
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Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,200
no one is disputing that saddam killed hundred of thousands of kurds. it its not the point. and it doesn't excuse killing another million to "save" them from such atrocities.
yes it is the point. you want to post these pics and make this thread to put the US in some bad light and show what its like to be invaded. why? why not show what Iraq was like before the invasion. mass killings, beatings, torture, people living in fear everyday, and having zero freedoms.
why not post pics of current day Iraq that show woman and children going to school, people being able to express themselves, and progress that is being made everyday. there is a reason why Iraq is not in the news anymore, no one cares about good news...its not reported.
here is the only story I could find about Iraq on BBC's site...A story about US technology companies coming to Iraq to help build the internet and networking capabilities..
"The internet in Iraq was censored and not easily available under Saddam Hussein. It is now widespread but is still expensive and not always reliable.
But for many Iraqi families, it has been a lifeline linking them with the outside world during years when it was often too dangerous to step outside their front door.
The BBC's Sebastian Usher says not too long ago the prospect of senior executives from leading American companies paying a week-long visit to Iraq would have been out of the question.
It is a sign of the improving security situation that nine executives are venturing into Baghdad. It is also an indication of how the Americans are trying to use means other than military power to help Iraqis develop a more stable society.
I'm not saying this to justify US going into Iraq. war is horrible and going to Iraq was wrong. we were told lies about what was going on there. but guess what, it happened. cant change that now. so instead of dwelling on the bad things of the past, why not look to some of the positives as well. to say Iraq is not making progress is plain ignorant.
Don't forget the US use of depleted uranium which in turn exposed and harmed us soldiers along with thousands of Iraqis.
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
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Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,200
After seeing this video, if it doesn't bring a tear as to what these people have been through or are going through then something is truly gone terribly wrong with us.
Peace and STAY HUMAN
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Comments
no, not a lie, unfortunately.
its all from from official sources and private studies...(and wiki, which was using conservative numbers)
The UN....
"The sanctions, the toughest in history, are killing up to 6,000 Iraqis a month, according to Denis Halliday, a former UN coordinator of humanitarian aid to Iraq."
US led sanctions=6000x12(months)x10(years)=
720,000
Persian gulf war 1- i remember hearing about 200,000 iraq troops killed outright in the invasion, at the time, but that number has disappeared. wiki puts it conservatively at 100,000. which we will use. it also puts the civilian count at 100,000, again very conservative, but still we will use it.
http://www.fas.org/spp/aircraft/part08.htm, a very detailed study, claims 170,000 CHILDREN died from the damage to the the following year -no food no water, playing in raw sewage etc...a lot of people died...no one knows the correct numbers. If anything these numbers are considerably lower than the actual count.
So, Desert Storm-100,000 troops. 100,000 civilians. and 170,000 children the following year (forget the adults) =
370,000,
again which leaves out a very large percentage of deaths and uses conservative estimates for the troops and civilian figures.
Iraq war round 2=john Hopkins put it at 600,000 in 2006. And independent european firm (U.K. firm, Opinion Business Research (ORB)-places the number at over 1 million a few months ago.
720,000+370,000 +(600,000 to 1 million)
which puts the death toll at between 1,690,000-2,090,000. (the low number was using totals from 3 years ago.)
its millions. and its a conservative number. its probably much higher.
so that's that.
forget the displaced/homeless/refugees/abu ghraib
which is exactly like starting a house fire and then taking credit for putting it out. the US bombed Iraq. many times. you know this. "we destroyed your country, but we're paying American companies to rebuild it so its all good, right"? no.
lol.
that doesn't prove anything. in fact you haven't proved anything in this entire thread. no facts, nothing but opinion.
sigh.
The only way i can prove that Iraq was the most advanced country in the Middle East would be to find stats-things like gdp/gnp/production numbers/technology levels agricultural levels etc FROM 1985 and then compare them to 1985 numbers for every single country in the middle east.
Which I am not going to do. you win. Iraq wasn't the most advanced country in the middle east at the time, lets just say, even though it isn't true.
I can prove that Iraq was advancing, which still drives home the point. Advancing, in fact, right up until the US got directly involved in the region.
Iraq was intent on industrialization and modernization...and the numbers back that up-there was significant growth in the private sector(yes the companies were semi-autonomous) until at least 1985. see for yourself. there were advances in almost every sector- agriculturally they were doubling crop production with many crops. the list goes on-chemicical production -not weapons grade-manufacturing, agriculturally...etc. in almost every area IRaq had been improving steadily for decades. right up until about 1985-1990. right about the time the US got involved. and no that's not a coincidence.
its all here...from http://countrystudies.us/iraq/56.htm
Iraq was sitting on the largest known oil field in the world, and was spending that money on infrastructure. the numbers provided back that up. IE advancing, and relatively speaking, advanced.
Which was all very fine until the US destroyed that infrastructure, setting them back..who knows how many decades. Or centuries.
Which is all a very convoluted and time consuming way to say the following -
Iraq was steadily advancing its society, since 1968.
And probably would have continued to do so had the US not got involved.
And
The US in no way "helped" Iraq, in fact killed millions of Iraqis.
If you disagree, read the above.
are you serious? do you want me to point out how many times you've said "I think" or "I heard" or "I read" or "I could argue..."
I'll get to the rest of your bullshit later. I dont have time now. but its laughable for you to basically call the UN=US as if no other countries exist within the UN. and its also funny how you make it sound like sanctions were given to Iraq because the US was bored one day and wanted to pick on someone. sanctions were given for a reason and voted on by several countries. gotta run. I'll continue your history/reality lesson tomorrow.
so thats that huh? first of all, we arent talking about poker chips. these are human beings. you can't just take it upon yourself to DOUBLE death tolls because you feel the estimates are conservative. second of all, the US is not responsible for the deaths during sanctions. Saddam is. not to mention the UN is not the US. other countries had a say in the matter. I can only suggest you study what happen at the UN during the 80s and 90s. sanctions were put on Iraq for a reason and could have easily been lifted had Saddam cared about his own people.
same goes for Gulf War 91. Saddam choose to invade Kuwait. the dead's blood is on his hands.
you can throw out numbers all day but the bottom line, is there is no proof of anything. estimates vary widely and that's that.
your sources are "studies" and "surveys". counting dead isn't like taking an opinion poll. if one of these surveys found that 10 million died, you would believe it. the higher the number the better. but like I said, these arent poker chips.
here are some sources you can read
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/iraq
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat6.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... death.html
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
if someone came and burned down my house and then gave me money and rebuilt it, I would be pissed off they burned it down and not pissed off they stuck around to rebuild. which is exactly the opinion of most Iraqis. they do not like our presence there, but dont want us to leave.
you and I both know, we have spent BILLIONS on reconstruction.
you know what ruined Iraq's so called progress? Saddam Huessin. The US had NOTHING to do with him invading Iran and then Kuwait. these two wars, that Saddam started, completely ruined the country. again, this has absolutely nothing to do with the US. you said it yourself, you dont know shit about the Kurds, they are a major part of Iraq's history.... and its painfully obvious you dont know much about Saddam Huessin. do you think he was simply misunderstood? a good guy?
I really hope you do some research on him as well as the UN's involvement in Iraq since the 80s.
start with this
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892771/
torrent is out there too..
http://www.torrentz.com/0112f1bf758f056 ... fa04abd511
serious question: who would you rather be your president. George Bush or Saddam. neither is not a choice.
So this thread started by someone posting pics of current day Iraq. I can appreciate that as I have a cousin who's there right now and probably for a while to come as his "tour" was just extended. Those of us who have never been there have no real sense of what it's like; can we all agree on that?
I've followed this war since its beginning in '03. Saddam didn’t start this current war. We know we were given reasons to invade which turned out to be not true. That's fact and it's a pretty big deal. Some people say the Bush admin didn't know the intelligence was flawed but there's a ton of info to suggest otherwise. Either way, they either flat out lied, or failed us by giving us bad information and sending our troops overseas based on that flawed info. Those reasons weren't that Saddam killed his own people. If we look around the world, there's genocide going on right now and we're not doing anything about it. It's also happened in the past the same way.
So we're there, nothing we can do about it now let's hope for the best. I get that and there are some positives going on in Iraq. Overall the violence has dropped from what I hear. Unfortunately I just read today suicide bombers killed over 70 people and wounded scores more in separate attacks. Those kinds of attacks have dropped recently but they have not stopped by any means. They need to stop all together for us to claim any kind of victory in Iraq.
Some other positives are that Iraq was able to hold its own elections in which many people turned out to vote. That's a good step. Of course who really knows how legit those elections are, or whether or not they were fixed? That happens all over the world, even here so ok they had elections and that's a positive. The "surge" did work. That doesn't mean the whole war worked, but the so called "surge" did work in quelling some of the violence.
So there is some progress over there. Not as much as I would like and not nearly as fast. Remember we've been there for 6 years now and we still have hundreds of thousands of troops there. It was only 2 months after the invasion that Bush declared mission accomplished. And the negatives definitely outnumber the positives.
Jlew mentioned torture as one of the justifications of being in Iraq. I find that ironic considering the CIA memos that were just released detailing how we tortured terror suspects over 250 times. We also know prisoners were tortured at the now infamous Abu-Ghraib prison in the early days of the invasion. When I mention torture I’m not just talking about pouring some water on someone’s face. I mean slamming people’s bodies on the floor, stripping people and keeping them in cold rooms, sleep deprivation, and who knows what else? It happened. Torture is torture regardless of who did it. It tarnishes our country, especially when it’s authorized by senior officials and keeps the door open for it to be done to us.
I really could go on and on about the failures of Iraq. Blackwater scandals, high levels of troop suicide, high levels of PTSD affecting troops when they come home, poor healthcare for those troops and troops being electrocuted by faulty wiring in their showers, thousands of innocent people killed. I know it is some negative shit. Doesn’t mean I’m dwelling or that it shouldn’t be acknowledged. Not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war. Money that we could really use right now in this economy.
Saddam was a bad guy yes. So is the dictator of N. Korea. So are a lot of brutal dictators all over the world. We can’t just take them all out. We should all hope we can get out of Iraq as soon as possible because many of those guys still have a stop in Afghanistan before they can come home.
as for the post, I mostly agree with everything you said. except the part about me mentioning torture as justification for being in Iraq. I never said that. or you misunderstood what I said.
I just thought that was kind of ironic because of the torture that was committed by us, after we invaded. Like I said bad stuff that nobody should be doing. That was the Bush era though and hopefully we are past that.
On a side note, we were pretty damn lucky that night. It didn’t hit me until I got back to the hotel. We had front row seats to one of the best PJ shows ever. I was extremely lucky that I found that Fred guy because he waited in line all day while I drove 8 hours from PA.
that comment wasnt implying we are justified in being there. and we are talking about different levels of torture IMO. water boarding is far less hurtful that whats been reported by Saddam's henchmen.
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/200 ... 592643.asp
Victims described how they were beaten with canes,whips, hosepipes and metal rods, and how other victims were forced to watch as their family members were tortured in front of them.
In a report dated February 11, Amnesty said other methods of physical torture de-scribed by victims include the use of falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet), extinguishing of cigarettes on various parts of the body, extraction of fingernails and toenails and piercing of the hands with an electric drill.
Some victims - both male and female - were sexually abused. Others had objects, including broken bottles, inserted into their bodies.
In addition to physical torture, detainees have been threatened with rape and subjected to mock execution. "They have been placed in cells where they could hear the screams of others being tortured and have been deprived of sleep," said the Amnesty report.
Some were kept in solitary confinement for long periods. "Detainees have also been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out."
AND why were they tortured??...."Many victims of torture have been Shi'a Muslims suspected of anti-government activities."
all that torture listed above was punishment for simply being "suspected" of disagreeing with Saddam. that really puts it in prospective.
torture is a touchy subject and I've researched it alot lately. there are definitely 2 sides to the story in terms of so called American "torture".
---
and a very far side note lol....
agreed. I still listen to the boot all the time.
I agree and disagree. meaning I see both sides. It's still my opinion that our techniques are far less severe then the ones used by Saddam...and for FAR less reason. which is also a very important point.
the people we so called tortured and people who were DIRECTLY involved with killing American citizens and soldiers...and involved in the planning of more attacks.
Saddam seemed to torture random people off the street as sport.
I don't condone the techniques we used but I understand why it was done. back in 01-03, we had no idea if another attacked was imminent. such techniques were necessary in order to gather such information.
Just curious......
Any info on "when" the events in these pictures took place?
Two weeks ago, several months, several years????
A timestamp would be helpful for context
it makes zero different to the OP. in his eyes, this is how it is yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
agree to disagree
peace.
no dates.
some were from desert storm, others from invasion 2.
where are the pictures of the damage and death being caused by the suicide attacks and other various iraqi-on-iraqi and muslim-on-muslim violence? and to follow that up, how do we know the damage shown in the OP's pictures were not caused by that violence?
by the way, the MT is still debating the Iraq invasion?
echo chambers, on the right, left, and middle, lead to little progress and even less intellectual growth... challenge your own thoughts and beliefs, no matter how convinced you are
nobody is doing that. how about you come back when you have some constructive to say. its childish comments like this that ruin message boards. grow up.
The Vic sucked
almost as bad as the smilies on this new board :roll:
everyone but you anyway.
well I suppose this would fall under the US's fault also. :roll:
What in the hell.
The US blows up things like water treatment plants, leads the UN in sanctioning Iraq to the point where they cannot be repaired...and diseases spread that cannot be treated...because the sanctions are so severe not even medicine can be imported...and people died as a result. But its their own fault according to you.
Apologizing for atrocities is a terrible position to take, and i can't believe your trying to do so.
Blaming Iraq for the sanctions is like blaming the rape victim for getting raped. Its not right.,
Ok let me rephrase what i posted earlier, maybe it wasn't clear.
Saddam has his army on the Kuwaiti border. Everyone knows he wants to invade.
So the US sends its highest diplomat, the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, to talk to Saddam. She says, and this is in public record...paraphrasing...
'The US has no interest in your Arab-Arab conflict'
That wasn't taken out of context. The before and after transcript is available, also in the public record. They were discussing the Iraq/Kuwait conflict directly.
Which sent a very clear message to Saddam that he was all clear to invade Kuwait.
And why did Saddam want to invade Kuwait anyway?>
At the end of WWII (i believe) maps were redrawn, maps which took land away from Iraq, cut off their access to the sea, land which they still considered theirs.
The CIA was in cooperation with Kuwaiti intelligence-I provided some evidence suggesting that-and eventually Kuwait started slant drilling the oil out from under Iraq. Why a little country with a militant neighbor would do such a thing is hard to believe. Incredible actually, given the situation in the middle east at the time.
Logic suggests Kuwait wasn't acting alone. I would think, that in most cases, the little kid on the block would try to avoid the neighborhood bully, not sneak into his room and steal money from his piggy bank. Not unless that kid had promises from and even bigger bully, that he would be protected.
And I'm not defending the invasion, just trying to provide context. Its not so black and white as they like to make things..
Hmm. nothing i can post makes any difference apparently.
First I am a liar for suggesting that millions of Iraqi's have been killed in Iraq since 1990.
When I provided numbers that back that up, from legitimate sources, they were dismissed.
And of course they are estimates. How else would you go about getting this kind of information?
And in this case, the "estimates" come from 2 of the leading authorities in the field, the UN and John Hopkins. Information that major newspapers have no problem re-printing all over the world.
Yet, not good enough for you.
I'm beginning got see why George Bush 1 said,
"facts are annoying things."
I'm thinking you agree with him there.
lol.
I'll give them a look. lets ignore John Hopkins and the UN for the time being and focus on Body Count, that wonderful website that is always at the top of google searches for some reason.
yeah. but if you destroy a country, you sure as hell better rebuild it.
It doesn't excuse blowing it up in the first place.
It's like trying to take credit for something you're supposed to be doing anyway.
Like Chris Rock said...
"I take care of my kids..."
"Well no shit, you're supposed to you stupid mother fu%#$"
like banging my head against a brick wall.
you have got to be out your mind.
I thought it was generally accepted-even by the loonies on the far right-that the US armed both sides in the Iran/Iraq war"? ?
Your statement, "[the Iran/Iraq war] has absolutely nothing to do with the US" is untrue, even by Fox news standards.
And the rest has been dealt with.
btw-my source is a US government sponsored survey (the one that shows the above to be complete bullshit, that you never bothered to read) -yours is..just your opinion.
Back to Bush's statement,
"facts are annoying things."
You must be a big fan of his.
depends.
As an American it obvious. Bush would be the better choice. As an Iraqi, there's a good chance I'd be dead either way, so it doesn't really matter.
you are making up numbers out of thin air. and when confronted with sources that show low estimates, you automatically dismiss it.
I didnt say it was "their" own fault. I said it was your buddy Saddam's.
all I can do is beg you to research your friend Saddam Huessin. why do you keep saying I'm blaming Iraq? I'm not. I'm blaming one man. ok? please tell me you understand what I'm saying. I can't be any clearer. I AM NOT BLAMING IRAQIS. I"M BLAMING SADDAM....for the sanctions and resulting death.
given the all clear? are you fucking insane.. no one is given the all clear to invade. you are using this one sentence as evidence that the US is responsible for Saddam invading another country? can you see how fucking stupid you sound?
because is a narcissistic sociopath who thought he was going to rule the entire Arab world.
I gave you estimates too. you response was lol. how are you any different? you ONLY take the highest possible estimates and make them facts. estimates are not fact.
Iraq Body Count has far more sources then John Hopkins and the UN.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/about/methods/
and again, John Hopkins did a survey of a very small % of the country. you cant apply the same principles to an opinion poll as you can a death toll.
says who? did Germany rebuild Europe ? you statement makes no sense. the US isn't obligated to rebuild anything.
I agree and never said it did.
the US took sides but didnt START the war. which is what you are implying. I apologize though, I can see where my statement was taken the wrong way. I meant the US had absolutely nothing to do with starting the war.
please do some fucking research on the history or Iraq and Saddam. its shocking how little you know about him
i was there dude... drove out from delaware
i am one of the guys yelling out "Lets Go Phillies" on your boot
after i went to Wrigley and saw the Phils kick the Cubs ass that afternoon :twisted:
no shit? sucks I missed ya. next time old friend
Eh, no. I didn't make anything up. None of the information presented was mine. And it was all cited. If you disagree with the numbers you can check the sources, I provided them.
(and this is all very sad that we are measuring war based on how many people were killed, but i think itsrelevant. to show how fucked up war is)
You are dismissing figures published in the Lancet, and replacing them with numbers taken from some random website that no one else cares about. The Lancet wouldn't publish something if it were "made up". And they wouldn't be using numbers from iraqbodycount.org.(I don't know anybody that does)
And the reason for that has nothing to with what they found. It has everything to do with how they found it.
iraqbodycount.org, only counts those that died "violent deaths" that were reported in the media.
The 2 obvious flaws in that method, and maybe the reason no respectable journalists report on it, is that it excludes the incredibly large portion of people that die non-violent deaths. Which is a considerable number.
And obviously the media can't possibly report on every single death.
A very large section of the deaths are left out, in the thousands range for sure, probably in the hundreds of thousands.
Really? Saddam Hussein sanctioned Iraq.
That is news to every single person in the world.
you know hundreds of thousands of little kids were killed in those sanctions? (i'm not gonna post any links, you'll pretend i invented them or whatever) -United States former Secretary of State Madeline Albright accepted tha500,000 children died as a result of the sanctions, on national tv, but i'm making that up too right?
what in the fuck did they ever do to anyone? for that to happen?
and this country put those sanctions on that country that killed those children. Saddam Hussein was a piece of shit but he didn't sanction Iraq. The US/UN did.
You're apologizing for a major atrocity.
Yeah. just pretend it doesn't matter. That official statements made in an official capacity, at the highest diplomatic levels-don't matter.
You are suggesting here that diplomacy has no impact on events in world politics, which actually says a lot about your understanding of international politics.
You are suggesting I take numbers from a random website that nobody else considers, over numbers from reports published in publications like the Lancet?
really?
If I was going to take the highest possible estimates i wouldn't have used wiki.
Lancet is probably the oldest scientific journal in the world. The studies they published by John Hopkins have been accepted by almost everyone but you and body count.
And it has been peer reviewed, by some of the most prestigous universities in the world.
Cambridge University calls their method "generally well described and readily repeatable" re the Iraq report.
If its good enough for Cambridge U i think I'm just fine with it too.
But stick to body count if it makes you feel better.
Again those annoying facts shouldn't get in your way, right?
What is your point than? regarding the billions the US spent rebuilding Iraq?
Its ok we destroyed a country, because we're rebuilding it?
or it doesn't matter we destroyed it because we're rebuilding it?>
or we're just really great guys cuz we spent all those billion on some poor country?
Or some other obscure meaning that i can't fathom because i am not a war apologist..probably. [/quote]
i wasn't trying to imply that.
Iraq was progressing, and had been for 2 straight decades.
I posted information proving that statement, from a US gov't sponsored survey, its just simple statement, but its true.
It is now on par with some of the shitiest places on the planet.
And its all Saddam's fault in the strange magical world you guys live in.
I got it. I see your point.
I'm of the mind that US jets dropped these big bombs all over the place and kind of reduced everything to ruble.
that's just me. seems more realistic though.
Don't forget the US use of depleted uranium which in turn exposed and harmed us soldiers along with thousands of Iraqis.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
It's called "I KNOW I"M NOT ALONE"
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=3083
An interview with Michael Franti on Iraq, Isarel and Palestine and his documentary
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2007/1 ... 76209.html
After seeing this video, if it doesn't bring a tear as to what these people have been through or are going through then something is truly gone terribly wrong with us.
Peace and STAY HUMAN
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)