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

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

#71

Post by Volpe »

Volpe wrote: post #53
lambda wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 i…

I realised I perhaps didn't provide much in the way of citation:

Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Upto 250,000 deaths [1]

Vietnam+Cambodia: 100,000 + 400,000 maimed or killed by agent orange + 500,000 children born with birth defects (also from agent orange [2]

Korean War: 1.5 million civilians killed (both sides (difficult to delineate), 20% of the north koreans population killed. [3]

Gulf War 1: 15000 civilians killed [4]

You then have Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan drone strikes. Paints a fairly compelling picture.

Those of you with the attitude of "That is just a fact of war, civilians die". Given you know this before a war, you therefore know you are going to kill civilians making the action ethically worse, than if you didn't know this "Fact of war".

This isn't even going into the blatant disregard for human life the US demonstrated with slavery (~10 million african slaves killed, admittedly western europe in general shares the blame for that)[5], trail of tears[6] (4000 cherokees killed), etc...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Deaths_c...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Korean_...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Coaliti...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#European_c...

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

berntb wrote: post #68
gruseom wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not having the kind of argument with you that you seem to think I am. I looked at the articles you mentioned. Certainly their criticisms are devastating if, and only if, they are true and fair. Are they? I can't say. I don't have time to read the studies. If you have, and you've arrived at your beliefs based on factual analysis rather than ideology, that's good. My point about IBC was not intended to dispute what…

You still ignore every argument I wrote. Including the internal documents (Wikileaks). So I'll not add more arguments, just a quick note: AGAIN -- IBC write explicitly they are a lower bound. Claims 7-14 times greater than the IBC do need good papers -- from authors that haven't been criticized on moral grounds, for not releasing data timely and doesn't look to have political motives. That is not the Lancet Report...…

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by berntb »

pessimizer wrote: post #70
berntb wrote: post #25

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 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.…

>His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot. Because he was a horrible dictator who had little regard for human life. Would you expect him to put any of his people's needs ahead of his own? If not, then it's a bit stupid to pretend it's not your fault if when you reduce the resources available to Iraq, children die and Saddam's cont…

>>If you hear that someone is abusive to their 5 children, is your solution to cut their wages in half?

My point was that it is very, very bad to let dictators use their own civilians' suffering as an argument.

But you knew that.

Edit: To the downvoting idiot -- if you check my history, there is a comment I made yesterday on another subject that is not too old, so you can still downvote it :-)

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

#74

Post by berntb »

anuraj wrote: post #51
berntb wrote: post #25

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 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?

>>exterminated millions and millions of lives

Wow, many times more than the Wikileaks data and even the most extreme academics.

HN is going downhill :-(

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

#75

Post by gruseom »

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.…

You can justify anything that way; just find somebody bad who's against it.

The reason not to do something bad is that it's wrong. How a dictator feels about it is beside the point.

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

#76

Post by einhverfr »

berntb wrote: post #69
einhverfr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So let's consider this story. Germany invades Poland and tries to resolve the tension between itself and France and Britain. France and Britain declare war o…

Wasn't there an ultimatum re WWII that if you start this war -- then we are part of it? That is, joining an attacked ally in an existing war.

How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?"

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

#77

Post by berntb »

einhverfr wrote: post #76
berntb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there an ultimatum re WWII that if you start this war -- then we are part of it? That is, joining an attacked ally in an existing war.

How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?"

>> How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?"

If you make a bad argument, admit it. Don't equate declaring a defence alliance with making threats of war, that is just stupid.

(To the downvoting idiot: There is another comment in my history you can find and downvote.)

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

#78

Post by speeder »

phaus wrote: post #18
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 were over two dozen foreign intelligence agencies that agreed that Saddam either had or was attempting to build or purchase weapons of destruction. Nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to hide anywhere on earth, but many other types of weapons of mass destruction aren't difficult to dispose of. That's not to say that the invasion turned out to be a good idea, or that we were justified in the attempt, but tho…

Here in Brazil when the USA started its war movements, I do not met a single person that believed the "intelligence" agencies around the world, people here believed that it was all fake to steal more oil...

When they found no WMD on Iraq, people here was like: "A ha! I told you! US people are just evil liars that steal from people!"

In fact, I really, really, really do not understand how someone can believe that bullshit. Or your countries out there have incredibly stupid people on intelligence agencies, or your population is incredibly stupid and believe agencies that lie all the time. To us here the behaviour of US population supporting whatever crap CIA says is just baffling.

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

#79

Post by speeder »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #12
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…

As a country, it would appear that we lost our minds in the wake of 9/11. Widespread government surveillance. Armed drones. Massive bills passing through Congress without being completely read. Amazingly intrusive security at airports, now filtering down to train and bus stations. Indefinite suspension of prisoners of war. Yes, we have gone astray. For those of you old enough, could you imagine such things happening…

Well, I live in Brazil, you never went astray after 9/11, you just became more obvious in your obviously oppressive ways against anyone that stands in the way of profit.

Everything that happened so far was very predictable...

By the way, when 9/11 happened, although obviously people were upset with the amount of life loss, many people here also became very happy because finally someone had the balls to drive the point home on US that they cannot keep screwing around and expect no punishment.

When the US started to irritate lots of countries because of Snowden, many people here were wishing the offended countries were strong enough to actually hit back (instead of just complaining on the UN assembly and whatnot)

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

#80

Post by sigzero »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #55
GauntletWizard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Salon...pfft. Salon makes it true? I don't think so.
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