Pictures from Iraq

jlew24asu

Commy wrote:

its the face of war.


i don't care if this is from the first invasion in 92, doesn't matter. still powerful.

http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqfree ... 27_jpg.jpg

so are these..

http://www.aaljumah.com/system/files/am ... oldier.jpg

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26403249/wid/21370087

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123 ... iraqEX.jpg

Brisk.

Why did Saddam kill Kurds?

jlew24asu

I BrisK I wrote:

Why did Saddam kill Kurds?

great report on the entire situation if you have the time.

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1993/ ... ANFAL1.htm

The Iraqi Kurds have also been the victims of an accident of geography, for vast oil reserves were discovered in the 20th century on the fringes of their ancestral lands. The Kurds have repeatedly challenged the government in Baghdad for control of these areas--especially the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. And it is this contest for natural resources and power, as much as any consideration of ideology or deep-rooted ethnic animus, which underlies the brutal treatment of the Kurds by the ruling Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party.

Brisk.

jlew24asu wrote:

I BrisK I wrote:

Why did Saddam kill Kurds?

great report on the entire situation if you have the time.

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1993/ ... ANFAL1.htm

The Iraqi Kurds have also been the victims of an accident of geography, for vast oil reserves were discovered in the 20th century on the fringes of their ancestral lands. The Kurds have repeatedly challenged the government in Baghdad for control of these areas--especially the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. And it is this contest for natural resources and power, as much as any consideration of ideology or deep-rooted ethnic animus, which underlies the brutal treatment of the Kurds by the ruling Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party.

Thanks man, i read all these threads and wish i could participate but i dont know anything really as its usually just mega complex, and not having grown up in any of it makes it harder to understand the situations at the times. Also i guess articles contain some sort of bias.

jlew24asu

I BrisK I wrote:

Thanks man, i read all these threads and wish i could participate but i dont know anything really as its usually just mega complex, and not having grown up in any of it makes it harder to understand the situations at the times. Also i guess articles contain some sort of bias.

I suppose all articles have some sort of bias one way or the other. its important research as much as you can to find facts. commy, for example, will have you believe the US created the Kurds and used them as a pawn in their grand plan for world domination. reader beware

Commy

jlew24asu wrote:

I BrisK I wrote:

Thanks man, i read all these threads and wish i could participate but i dont know anything really as its usually just mega complex, and not having grown up in any of it makes it harder to understand the situations at the times. Also i guess articles contain some sort of bias.

I suppose all articles have some sort of bias one way or the other. its important research as much as you can to find facts. commy, for example, will have you believe the US created the Kurds and used them as a pawn in their grand plan for world domination. reader beware

actually the kurds were moved from eastern europe into iraq by the nsa, nice try through.

kidding of course.


i don't know anything about the kurds.

Commy

jlew24asu wrote:

Commy wrote:

its the face of war.


i don't care if this is from the first invasion in 92, doesn't matter. still powerful.

http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqfree ... 27_jpg.jpg

so are these..

http://www.aaljumah.com/system/files/am ... oldier.jpg

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26403249/wid/21370087

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123 ... iraqEX.jpg

no. this isn't the face of war.


war may include things like this...those wonderful trained killers bandaging little kids, but its not the face of war.


and there's an argument to be made, that i will make, that those kids wouldn't have been in that situation were it not for the very soldiers bandaging them.

its like taking credit for putting out a house fire that you set.

"dude, did you see that, i just put out that fire"
"yeah you set it though you stupid mother#*%$"

jlew24asu

Commy wrote:

no. this isn't the face of war.

I meant they are powerful images.

Commy wrote:

war may include things like this...those wonderful trained killers bandaging little kids, but its not the face of war.

and there's an argument to be made, that i will make, that those kids wouldn't have been in that situation were it not for the very soldiers bandaging them.

its like taking credit for putting out a house fire that you set.

"dude, did you see that, i just put out that fire"
"yeah you set it though you stupid mother#*%$"

:roll: sigh, you just dont get it. as much as you refuse to believe it, the US is there to help. if we weren't we would have bombed the place back into a desert and left a long long time ago. we arent there to make Iraq the 51st state. we arent there to take the land.

Commy

jlew24asu wrote:

Commy wrote:

no. this isn't the face of war.

I meant they are powerful images.

Commy wrote:

war may include things like this...those wonderful trained killers bandaging little kids, but its not the face of war.

and there's an argument to be made, that i will make, that those kids wouldn't have been in that situation were it not for the very soldiers bandaging them.

its like taking credit for putting out a house fire that you set.

"dude, did you see that, i just put out that fire"
"yeah you set it though you stupid mother#*%$"

:roll: sigh, you just dont get it. as much as you refuse to believe it, the US is there to help. if we weren't we would have bombed the place back into a desert and left a long long time ago. we arent there to make Iraq the 51st state. we arent there to take the land.

?

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.

jlew24asu

Commy wrote:

?

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.

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.

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.

Commy

jlew24asu wrote:

Commy wrote:

?

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.

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.

jlew24asu

Commy wrote:

lol.

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.

jlew24asu

Commy wrote:

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.

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/

Commy wrote:

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.

Commy wrote:

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.

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.

fugawzi

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.

jlew24asu

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.

fugawzi

When you said:

jlew24asu wrote:

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.

jlew24asu

fugawzi wrote:

When you said:

jlew24asu wrote:

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.

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".



---

fugawzi wrote:

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.

and a very far side note lol....

agreed. I still listen to the boot all the time.

fugawzi

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.

jlew24asu

fugawzi wrote:

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.

PJSkier

"just an idea of what its like over there."

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