Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation • Hacker News Board

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#51

Post by anuraj » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 6:07 AM UTC

berntb wrote: post #25

arcadeparade wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5. It was called genocide by both men who were in charge of it, both of whom resigned in protest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimate... I also find it interesting that many people who deny that this many people were killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion will have no problem believi…

>>Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5 Saddam wanted to get rid of the sanctions, it was in his direct interest to inflate the statistics. (There were reports of e.g. multiple funerals for a given dead child, too.) His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot.…

Let us not play politics on deaths, that too of Children. It is plain truth that the illegal invasion of Iraq by US in 2003, and the sanctions prior to that exterminated millions and millions of lives - on what basis can we defend loss of innocent lives?? On what basis can anybody defend violence - war? When will we see a civilized humanity and not war mongering nations and industrial complexes?

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#52

Post by madaxe » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 6:45 AM UTC

napoleond wrote: post #44

thaumasiotes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Vladimir, Dave, and Angela are fairly nondistinctive names (and in fact, I have no idea who you mean by "Dave"). But in general if I were looking for why something went by a certain name, I'd expect the answer to be "that's how it was learned in the beginning". People hate changing the name they use for things, and even just words for things can persist for so long that there is no knowledge of their origin oth…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron , presumably.

To be fair, he's eminently forgettable.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#53

Post by Volpe » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 7:39 AM UTC

lambda wrote: post #45

berntb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Interesting, do you have references? To me, it seems really hard to distinguish "obvious propaganda" from low details due to protection of intelligence sources. You would naively/cynically assume that if the US army/etc knew they wouldn't find any remaining WMD programs, they would be planted?

>>I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Interesting, do you have references? LA Times opinion piece explicitly calls out the evidence about Iraq as propaganda: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jan/05/opinion/op-marshall5 The Christian Science Monitor discusses propaganda that was used to sell the first Gulf War, and warns us about the dangers of propaganda about the situation w…

> That's what gets me the most about this; how very apathetic the American public and American politicians have been about the mass slaughter of Iraqis (including thousands of civilians), torture, indefinite detention without trial in Guantanamo, extrajudicial assassination on US citizens, and so on and so forth. It's chilling to think that so few people care.

But 'they' (speaking in generalisations) never did care iraq is just the latest of a very long series of events where the US slaughters civilians, it's pretty much a consistent theme in US history and ALL of it's conflicts.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#54

Post by berntb » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 8:17 AM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #41

berntb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this hilarious reality check from the Iraq Body Count project. I never saw it answered... Do you have a link? http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks/ This was also quite funny: http://lancetiraq.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html >>stubborn disbelief I thought it was fun how many people on the left knew how it was, with so wildly varying data. But of course, it never happens that res…

Perhaps you know much more about this than I do. My memory is that the Lancet authors were serious, qualified researchers who had done much similar work in the past and whose objectivity had not previously been disputed. If there's a critique to be made of their work, a snarky "that can't be right" blog post certainly doesn't cut it. The authors of the new PLoS study say that they've taken into account criticisms of…

Uh, I can't see how that is relevant to the specific points I raised. (It isn't relevant to talk about someone else using the IBC data in a way IBC don't recommend. And there were lots of criticism before, see the first Lancet report. It is not good with a political motive either -- timing reports to influence an election.)

1. So you have no answer to the Iraq Body Count reality check and just ignore it? (E.g. where is the conspiracy needed to hide all the missing maimed -- and make their prostheses?!)

2. Nothing to say about the scathing criticism of lacking integrity in the second link?

3. Considering your lack of answers on 1 and 2, you might want to retract the claim that others put their heads in the sand. :-)

4. And a new point: You are aware of that Beth Osborne is a Lancet Report critic? She has documented integrity since she got problems from "too high" mortality values in the first Gulf war... And many other heavyweights in exactly the right field?

5. A second new point: Wikileaked papers also contradict the numbers -- and there is no sign of a big conspiracy in WikiLeaks to hide point 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak#Total_d...

Since you have just ignored my references and arguments, I guess there is nothing else to say? (The point 1 I have asked about since it was reported, never a relevant answer.)

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#55

Post by eliasmacpherson » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 8:36 AM UTC

GauntletWizard wrote: post #50

gruseom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt for a moment that American and other Western soldiers were trying hard to avoid civilian casualties. It's deeply unfair to blame them for things they didn't do or for decisions they didn't make and never would have made had it been up to them. That being said, there are a couple problems with your argument. First, it's not the case that dozens of intelligence agencies believed the WMD propaganda. They w…

There is no doubt that Iraq did have chemical weapons [1], that chemical weapons are classified as weapons of mass destruction [2]. There's also no doubt that the nebulousness of the term was used by both sides in the debate to steer conversation. The ridiculous assertion at one point that Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear weaponry [3] muddied those waters even more. Iraq did have chemical weapons (WMDs). They ha…

"Every major intelligence agency believed that Hussein had WMDs."

Just because you write that sentence - does not make it so. [1]

[1] http://www.salon.com/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#56

Post by berntb » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 8:41 AM UTC

lambda wrote: post #45

berntb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Interesting, do you have references? To me, it seems really hard to distinguish "obvious propaganda" from low details due to protection of intelligence sources. You would naively/cynically assume that if the US army/etc knew they wouldn't find any remaining WMD programs, they would be planted?

>>I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Interesting, do you have references? LA Times opinion piece explicitly calls out the evidence about Iraq as propaganda: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jan/05/opinion/op-marshall5 The Christian Science Monitor discusses propaganda that was used to sell the first Gulf War, and warns us about the dangers of propaganda about the situation w…

Blix I know about of course, a good source. But he did work for the UN, where quite a few of the parts still are taken over by dictators not criticising each others. (See UNHRC on Wikipedia, for instance. It is the less bad successor of what existed 2001...)

The other claims... well, they couldn't know. The real information was (is?) stamped secret. Downing Street wouldn't release that.

>>Also, not that the didn't have to plant evidence of WMDs in Iraq after the invasion; people found out that there were no WMDs, found out about the Downing Street Memo, and yawned. The media didn't care; the US media barely reported on the Downing Street Memo.

Uh, no.

There is still credibility problems, e.g. recently regarding claims about chemical weapons in Syria. They had to send the UN team there; the claims about listening in to Syrian army communications, etc were not accepted.

I am willing to believe the Bush administration didn't care if they kneecapped the credibility of the next few president administrations. But pure incompetence do seem more likely.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#57

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 8:50 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #36

lambda wrote: post #3

According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein'... , estimates of Iraqis killed by Saddam range from a quarter million to a million, and estimates of Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq are in a similar range. So, let's call his death toll a half million to two million. About a decade after the Gulf War, which had pretty much put a stop to Saddam's killing spree, the US decided to inv…

There is a bit of a conceptual leap from "started a civil war that got a bunch of people killed" to "slaughtered." The question of "how did we come to this?" obviously has a different answer in the two contexts. In the former, more accurate, characterization, it can simply be explained as: Americans are an optimistic bunch that continually underestimate how deeply dysfunctional Middle Eastern society happens to be an…

[deleted]

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#58

Post by berntb » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 8:51 AM UTC

gokuismyhero wrote: post #38

berntb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>since without the invasion, there wouldn't have been a civil war. Uh... This happened: A starts a war W with B. As a follow on effect, some groups inside B starts a civil war W2 with others in B. You say that A is responsible for the second war W2 too, which they didn't start and even actively tried to stop?! After the war, when does A stop being responsible for everything bad that happens to B, done by B themselve…

I'd argue the US contributed to "W2" through "De-Ba'athification," disbanding the Iraqi military, and the incompetence of the occupation (eg insufficient troops to enforce martial law/secure weapons caches). This isn't simply claiming the benefit of hindsight because there were many people warning about these decisions at the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_End_in_Sight

I answered someone arguing that legally -- someone that starts a war is absolutely responsible for the effects. But then he turned around and wrote that one group was responsible for starting a war they weren't really involved in, except for trying to stop it.

There is a contradiction in there, if you think about it.

(People do make lots of mistakes in war, but the Bush administration did make a new face for f-ckups while handling the Iraq occupation. They did get lots of help from the Iranians to trip up, the guy arguing for disbanding the Iraqi military was working with them.)

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#59

Post by briandear » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 9:03 AM UTC

aric wrote: post #48

lambda wrote: post #3

According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein'... , estimates of Iraqis killed by Saddam range from a quarter million to a million, and estimates of Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq are in a similar range. So, let's call his death toll a half million to two million. About a decade after the Gulf War, which had pretty much put a stop to Saddam's killing spree, the US decided to inv…

How did "we" come to this? You're asking the largest military wielder and prison population and the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on real people, people going about their contained lives wanting to wake up to see another day, how "we" came to this. - Hiroshima - Nagasaki - Vietnam - Constant US policy to support genocidal dictators around the world who mass slaughter "their" people, so long as US corporate…

"Largest prison population" sorry but China wis that award.

Re: Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

#60

Post by einhverfr » Fri, Oct 18, 2013, 9:05 AM UTC

berntb wrote: post #29

gruseom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt for a moment that American and other Western soldiers were trying hard to avoid civilian casualties. It's deeply unfair to blame them for things they didn't do or for decisions they didn't make and never would have made had it been up to them. That being said, there are a couple problems with your argument. First, it's not the case that dozens of intelligence agencies believed the WMD propaganda. They w…

>>since without the invasion, there wouldn't have been a civil war. Uh... This happened: A starts a war W with B. As a follow on effect, some groups inside B starts a civil war W2 with others in B. You say that A is responsible for the second war W2 too, which they didn't start and even actively tried to stop?! After the war, when does A stop being responsible for everything bad that happens to B, done by B themselve…

"This happened: A starts a war W with B. As a follow on effect, some groups inside B starts a civil war W2 with others in B.

You say that A is responsible for the second war W2 too, which they didn't start and even actively tried to stop?!"

Well, let's see, the argument at Nuremberg was that Germany invaded Poland and sought diplomatic efforts to avoid conflicts with Britain and France, but those two attacked them over the invasion of Poland, which was Germany's war of aggression.

So, it seems to me that if Germany was in a war of aggression against Britain, then the same applies to the US being in a war of aggression against the insurgents.