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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Are you being sarcastic or not?
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Just like you are with his WMD ;)
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*Originally posted by Abdali: *The reason the casulty figue is not that hight is because Iraqi army or civilians have nothing to fight back with.
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Brilliant.
At least we get an admission that the casualty figure is not that high (well .... that's my translation of "the casulty figue is not that hight").
I guess the Iraqis couldn't find all those abandoned rpgs, ak47s, mortars, etc. hidden in the schools, mosques and hospitals. They were probably looking for them at military bases instead.
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*Originally posted by myvoice: *
Brilliant.
At least we get an admission that the casualty figure is not that high (well .... that's my translation of "the casulty figue is not that hight").
I guess the Iraqis couldn't find all those abandoned rpgs, ak47s, mortars, etc. hidden in the schools, mosques and hospitals. They were probably looking for them at military bases instead.
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But you fail to address maliks question about the ones that are already dead.
So good, by the same token we get an admission that US has killed millions and will not hesitate to do the same.
I guess US couldn't find WMD coz they are looking in schools, hospitals, mosques, resturants, topless bars, resturants BUT military bases.
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Will many more lives be spared in the coming years because Saddam is gone? Absolutely!
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Sorry, but how will more lives be spared when we have the decades-long consequences of DU to claim more generations of children ?
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Third, some of the reports, such as from Kirkuk and Mosul include deaths due to landmines. Saddam has laid over 11 million landmines since the 1980's.
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Yes, but please do not forget the cluster bombs and landmines that have been utilized by the US and UK during this invasion (as well as in the previous 'Gulf War') - despite the proven consequences of these landmines being picked up by young children.
"The reason the casualty figure is not that high is because Iraqi army or civilians have nothing to fight back with."
You're right! If sanctions had been lifted, and Saddam actively rebuilt his miltary, what would civilian casualties have looked like then? Even if he did not have a Drop of WMD, he had the scientists. They were not allowed to travel, or to be questioned by the UN. Why? Saddams worst case is that he destroys his own WMD, sanctions become lax and he rebuilds. As long as he has the scientist firmly under his thumb, it is only a matter of a year or two until he has capability back again.
The time to strike him was when he was weak, not when he rebuilt his capability. Better for us, better for civilians, worse for Saddam. The timing was right.
But, you miss one big thing. Saddam is probably the worlds worst general. He is brilliant at putting down civilian uprisings, and attacking Kuwait, but he has never beaten, or even challenged an equivalent country.
You keep hoping for somebody to come along to give the US a bloody nose. Now you turn your hope to the North Koreans. Frankly were it not for the prospect of civilain casualties in South Korea, I think we would do it. But 40% of the South Korean population lives within 50 miles of the DMZ. Horrific casualties in the civilian population probably rule out a really big war there, unless the North goes insane.
Nadia, the use of landmines by the U.S. is limited. The U.S. is set to ban there use by the end of 2003 with the exception being the boarder of South/North Korea. The majority of landmine accidents caused in Iraq are ones that Saddam regime laid down.
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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Nadia, the use of landmines by the U.S. is limited. The U.S. is set to ban there use by the end of 2003 with the exception being the boarder of South/North Korea. The majority of landmine accidents caused in Iraq are ones that Saddam regime laid down.
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They may plan to end their use by the end of 2003 - that is of little consolation, sadly enough, to the families of those whose limbs have been amputated - let alone those who are missing one or two limbs here and there thanks to picking up a landmine.
"Limited" use or not - they should not have been utilized at all. Period. It doesn't matter how many Hussein used - you can't compare the actions of a democratic country to the actions of a brutal dictator. If anything, his using them is more of a damning incentive for us not to have utilized them at all.
I agree they should not be used nor should cluster bombs.
** You're right! If sanctions had been lifted, and Saddam actively rebuilt his miltary, what would civilian casualties have looked like then? Even if he did not have a Drop of WMD, he had the scientists. They were not allowed to travel, or to be questioned by the UN. Why? Saddams worst case is that he destroys his own WMD, sanctions become lax and he rebuilds. As long as he has the scientist firmly under his thumb, it is only a matter of a year or two until he has capability back again. **
LOL.. from WMD to Al-Qaeda links to liberation to He had scientist to build the bomb… You keep trying you will eventually get there.
** The time to strike him was when he was weak, not when he rebuilt his capability. Better for us, better for civilians, worse for Saddam. The timing was right. **
Exactly my point that I have been trying to make US is a country that attacks weak and Saddams mistake he did not acquired WMD fast enough like NK. And I am hoping Iran and other states get their hands on WMD ASAP.
** But, you miss one big thing. Saddam is probably the worlds worst general. He is brilliant at putting down civilian uprisings, and attacking Kuwait, but he has never beaten, or even challenged an equivalent country. **
Yeah he never fought Iran for 10 years right… And as if US has the guts to challenge even a weaker state with WMD. US is good at lobbing cruise missiles at Sudan but little Kim is too much for US….
** You keep hoping for somebody to come along to give the US a bloody nose. Now you turn your hope to the North Koreans. Frankly were it not for the prospect of civilain casualties in South Korea, I think we would do it. But 40% of the South Korean population lives within 50 miles of the DMZ. Horrific casualties in the civilian population probably rule out a really big war there, unless the North goes insane. **
I am not hoping somebody to come along and give US a bloody nose I know what Kim senior did and I know what Kim junior can do. And don’t even try to bring up the civilian casualties and show even a tiny concern for them you can try this elsewhere especially after the killings US did in the 50s and 60s… The only difference is now Kim has enough WMD to wet your pants. How very nice suddenly so much concern for the same civilians that you have the honor of killing in millions.
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Originally posted by Ohioguy:
Nobody is buying it...
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Try telling the Red Crescent that which has asked the US to allow access to the graves of those 3000 dead bodies buried in US-controlled territory near the airport. Or the HRW (who you only selectively quote when it suits you without reading ALL the facts) which has asked for the US to show (in resepct to all grave sites) that it is quickly communicating its commitment to exhume and identify the remains.
But 1700 civilians killed by US forces just in one city, Baghdad, and the bodies of 3000 others the US is trying to hide. God knows how many countless numbers of civilians US forces killed in the rest of Iraq? The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has already demonstrated one thing i.e. that American forces have committed by far the biggest acts of terror since 9/11, far, far surpassing the terrorism of others.
Like everything else these days - a sad read.
After war, the terrible peace, Daily Telegraph (UK), Alice Thomson, 19 May 2003
On the first day back at school after the war, Ali Hussein Mugamis ran out into the playground and saw a shiny metal object. He remembers nothing else. As the 12-year-old lies in Basra Public Hospital in southern Iraq, a doctor is telling his father that the four fingers of one hand have been amputated, that there is shrapnel in his brain and thighs, and that it may not be possible to save one of his legs.
On the ward, the doctor points to another boy whose leg has become gangrenous. “Better safe than sorry,” he explains, although there is no anaesthetic left and the operation will be expensive.
Suddenly, from outside, we hear the terrible sound of wailing. A patient runs in to say that nine boys have been killed and seven wounded while playing with an Iraqi rocket. Like many Iraqis, they were probably planning to take out the fuel and sell it for use in cooking stoves.
On the other side of town, at the mothers and children hospital, it is water rather than old military hardware that is killing children. Parents are forced to beg for basic rehydration sachets to treat chronic diarrhoea.
Mustafa is 18 months old; since catching a stomach bug six weeks ago, he has eaten no solids. The area where he lives has had no running water for nearly two months; he is now suffering several epileptic fits a day. His mother has stood by his bedside all this time, guarding one of the few remaining drips. Everyone in Basra is terrified of cholera.
…] Relatively few people were killed and injured in the war; it is the aftermath - the unexploded ordnance, the lack of water and electricity, the sewage spewing out around the cities - that is terrifying people in the south. Looters have ransacked the water and sewage plants, often taking even the bricks.
**This comes on top of three wars, 24 years of dictatorship and 12 years of sanctions. More than 80 per cent of the population were dependent on hand-outs from the oil for food programme, and most were employed by the government.
For two months these people have received no food or salaries**. Now the only currency is the corrugated iron torn from the roofs of government buildings, the light bulbs pilfered from schools and the sinks from orphanages - all sold for knock-down prices on the looters’ market.
The aid agencies say we are witnessing a humanitarian disaster, and Unicef has launched its largest appeal, asking for £167 million.
**An entire country is living on the brink. The problems start as you cross the border from Kuwait. Desperate farmers have shot holes in the main aqueduct from Basra, tapping the water every few hundred yards.
Locals with donkey carts, children and goats are all helping themselves, swimming in puddles in the desert. By the time the water reaches the town of Safwan it is a trickle. At the health clinic there is not enough left to make a glass of tea.**
Unicef already has 67 tankers coming from Kuwait each day, filled with water, but these service less than 10 per cent of the local population. Further down the road an ice factory has been looted and people are carting off chunks for their families.
Before we enter Basra, Jubbar Al Haiday, the former chief engineer of Basra’s water department, takes us to one of the pumping stations. He is crying quietly as he wades through the devastation. Every bolt and screw has been taken, the wiring has been stripped out - even the tiles in the lavatory have been prised off. “I have no workers left. I am paying guards out of my own savings,” he says. Forty per cent of Basra still has no water.
With him is the director of the sewage department, Maitham Jarella Saboom, who has 116 sewage pumping stations. Less than a third are working. He recently discovered a group of looters using a stolen crane to lift the roof off a water treatment plant. Of his 200 workers only 10 have turned up for work since the war.
Their cars and lorries have been stolen, and they are too scared to carry their tools with them on their carts. "I have no desk in my office, no chair, no records - yet they ask me to stop cholera breaking out," he says.
He takes us to a water treatment plant surrounded by miles of hardened sewage, cracking under the sun. There are children running over it. The sewage director explains that they have only one week’s chlorine left to disinfect the water for five million people in the south.
The locals claim that the armed forces have taken it for their swimming pools, but it is the British who have supplied Mr Saboom with what little he has.
…] Zaira is eighteen months old. Her family comes from the Iran/Iraq border, which is littered with depleted uranium tips. Her mother tells us that she suffered six miscarriages before having Zaira - her only child - who has congenital deformities. The baby became so ill that she refused to breastfeed, so her mother gave her powdered baby milk - and now Zaira has diarrhoea and violent stomach cramps.
In the cancer ward children lie limply on their beds. There are no therapies for them, only pain killers. Unicef hands out milk powder, nutritional biscuits and basic drugs.
Dr Abd Al Kareen Subber, the consultant gynaecologist, takes us to the maternity wards. “We have no ultrasound, no monitoring of labour,” he explains.
He is visiting two sisters from the countryside. One went into labour the day the war ended. After two days of agony, she realised that she must reach a hospital - but she had no transport. “By the time she arrived, her uterus had burst,” says the doctor. “The child died, but I think we will save her.” He has just performed a caesarean on her sister-in-law, who is clutching her new baby.
In the premature babies unit there are still four incubators. The babies are so tiny that the smallest nappies reach their chins. They have no tubes on them - they were all stolen.
"We lost 48 out of 92 premature babies in April. Those that survived did so without the aid of oxygen - one made it through on black, sugary tea.
“We have few nurses left. Most avoid the premature unit: they are frightened of staying on the isolation wards alone because of looters, so these babies are left by themselves in the middle of the night.”
The manager of the hospital, Dr Mouhammed Nasir, says: “Contaminated baby milk and ice-cream are the killers, and children being washed. Just one accidental sip of water can kill a small child.”
…] At Yomoma girls’ school, a teacher points to the sweating seven-year-olds, and cries: "We have no fans, no milk or water for the children. They are being treated like animals going to market, not pupils receiving an education. We are the second richest oil country in the world, but we have nothing - it is madness."
The Americans are planning to restructure the curriculum but, at the moment, that is merely a matter of tearing out pages. What people need now are water supplies, lavatories, desks and teachers. Each school is operating on two-hour shifts; 25 per cent of children do not receive any education.
…] Some Iraqis have been extraordinary. At one orphanage, Dr Mohamed Ghali, a former university lecturer in biology, moved in to help protect the boys after looters threw in grenades and ransacked the home. “I am ashamed of what my neighbours have done to this place,” he says. He goes begging for the boys’ food every morning, and for mattresses.
The agencies’ first priority is to get the water and sewage systems working and to provide food and oral rehydration sachets for the most vulnerable. At the same time, they are trying to re-equip the hospitals and to start clearing the mines, cluster bombs and ammunition dumps. The schools are next on the list.
Two of the Unicef workers, from Somalia and Sudan, tell us: “It is even worse than Somalia and Sudan. But this country has the chance of a future, if we can get it right. It is like a rich man who has trashed his palace - at least the plot of land on which we have to build is rich with oil.”
To donate to Unicef’s Children of Iraq Emergency Appeal call the 24-hour credit card hotline on 08457 312312, log on at www.unicef.org.uk or send a cheque payable to Unicef to: Telb, Unicef, FREEPOST CL885, Chelmsford, CM2 8BR.
Those are very tragic stories Nadia, and one’s that are sadly happening every day in Iraq, with little care by the occupying powers. Well these people cannot even admit any fault after killing thousands of civilians in Iraq, so showing sorrow for these acts is not surprising.
Unfulfilled promises leave Iraqis bewildered, Anthony Shadid
Washington Post, May 2003