Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
It is sectarian violence NOW, it was not the same thing 2-3 years back, most of attacks were carried against the "coalition" troops then.... with time the targets/victims changed.
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
Bring back Saddam! Muslims are apparently not universally thinking of Islam as the "Religion of Peace". They need to be protected from themselves by a dictator who will gas them if they fall out of line.....
Re: 2.5% of Iraq’s population has been killed since US invasion
Neuter the White Christian americans since they just believe in shooting up schools and upon growing up molesting little boys!
Re: 2.5% of Iraq’s population has been killed since US invasion
You’re making a logical fallacy. Just because I consider this murderous invasion vile does not mean a reconstitution of dictatorship. There were and are other ways.
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
What are the other ways?
Re: 2.5% of Iraq’s population has been killed since US invasion
Is that like how Sudanese killing Sudanese doesn’t meet the definition of genocide?
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
that is not a very convincing line of argument
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
well its arabs killing black africans
Re: 2.5% of Iraq’s population has been killed since US invasion
In that case, Iraq is not Iraq killing Iraqis, it’s shias and sunnis killing each other.
I dunno… northern sudanese look pretty black to me. They definately look much more black than arab. In fact, they don’t even look arab at all, they just look black. In fact, they are black. They call themselves arabs becaue they are black africans who have adopted arab culture, whereas in the south, Sudanese are black africans who kept African culture.
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
When they find sixty school chidlren a day bound gagged tortured and shot, you may have a point.
As we now know, sectarian violence was hatred simmering below the surface in Iraq ( and elsehwhere) for decades, perhaps centuries. Getting rid of Saddam meerly opened Pandoras box, and removed the only thread of civilization that held people at bay. This will either burn itself out, or Iraq will have a civil war the likes of which we have not seen in modern times. If the US leaves we will see deaths in the millions over the next year. Certainly the UN is not going to send in peacekeepers, as peacekeeping only works when people are attempting peace. Iraqi society has degraded to the point where only brutality rules.
This would have happened eventually whenever Saddam fell from power, whether it was today or a decade from now. It was always simmering under a lid.
And, this study is a contrived political manipulation of science. Rather disgraceful.
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
Genocide is "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group." Sudan definitely fits that definition. If we are saying shia and sunni Muslims fit into those groups then I guess we do have 2 genocides in this century where Muslims are trying to exterminate another group of Muslims. So Muslim are leading the world in something.
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
^
u forgot israel against palestinians...a genocide is going there aswell...in every possible way...for thevlast 5-6decades...
Re: 2.5% of Iraq’s population has been killed since US invasion
Bush Has Achieved
America’s Demise
The Founding Fathers’ country
no longer exists by Paul Craig Roberts
When does “collateral damage” so dwarf combatant deaths that war becomes genocide?
Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq has cost 655,000 Iraqis their lives. That is the conclusion of a study financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies and conducted by physicians under the direction of Johns Hopkins University epidemiologists. These are deaths over and above the pre-invasion mortality rate. Bush’s illegal invasion raised Iraq’s mortality rate from 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The study is published by the distinguished British medical journal, The Lancet, and is available on the journal’s Web site .pdf].
The study uses a scientific method known as “cluster sampling.” In 87 percent of the deaths, the researchers requested death certificates, and more than 90 percent of the surveyed households produced the death certificates. Violence accounted for 601,000 deaths, and disease and destruction of civilian infrastructure accounted for 54,000 deaths. The violent deaths are attributed to gunshot wounds**, coalition air strikes**, and car bombs.
Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Gilbert Burnham says, “We’re very confident with the results.” Columbia University epidemiologist Ronald Waldman says the survey method used is “tried and true” and that “this is the best estimate of mortality we have.”
When asked about the report, President Bush stated, "I don’t consider it a credible report](http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-10-11-voa41.cfm)." Bush, of course, is not reality-based, and he knows that any unfavorable news is “enemy propaganda.” That’s what the neocons who pull his strings tell him, and that is what he believes.
**What percentage of these 655,000 deaths were insurgents or “terrorists”? Probably 1 percent and no more than 2 percent. Bush’s “war on terror” is, in fact, a war on Iraqi civilians. **
Bush’s invasion has also spawned sectarian conflict or civil war, although the Bush regime denies it. Even Bush is smart enough to know that “bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq” is not compatible with setting off a civil war in Iraq. Since Bush the faith-based believes that he is bringing “freedom and democracy to Iraq,” he cannot accept the fact that he has started a civil war.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are not the only innocent victims of Bush’s illegal aggression. The New York Times (Oct. 11) reports that Department of Veterans Affairs documents show that about one in five U.S. soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have suffered at least partial disability.
To date, more than 100,000 U.S. troops who are veterans of these wars have been granted disability compensation. Although the U.S. cannot put on the ground in Iraq more than 150,000 troops at one time, 1.5 million troops have served so far and 567,000 have been discharged, of which 100,000 are receiving disability payments.
Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, says that the current rate of injuries will produce 400,000 American veterans suffering 30 percent to 100 percent disability. Apparently, one of the severe forms of disability is post-traumatic stress, which does not count as a physical wound.
What is America’s reward for Bush’s illegal wars that have killed 655,000 Iraqis, an uncounted number of Afghans, and disabled as many as 400,000 U.S. troops?
According to the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate and to practically every Middle East expert, Bush’s invasions have radicalized the Muslim Middle East, created legions of recruits for extremists, undermined America’s puppet rulers, imperiled Israel, and destroyed America’s reputation.
We are talking about over 1 million casualties that have no other cause than blatant lies by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the bloodthirsty neoconservative cabal that occupies Bush’s subcabinet, and their corporate media propagandists, especially The Weekly Standard, Fox News, National Review, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Bush regime deceived America and the world with its lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would be turned against the West by terrorists. By giving speeches that continually mentioned Iraq in the same context as 9/11, the Bush regime created the widespread impression, still prevalent among Americans, that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.
What kind of government would destroy the lives through death or disability of over 1 million people for no valid reason?
The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing their constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created for Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended his client, winning in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Bush administration retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift’s promotion, which killed his military career and sent the chilling message to all U.S. military and government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders in the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the U.S. Constitution is against Bush and his neocon regime.
The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded. First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: “You are with us or against us” – a formulation that leaves no place for duty to the U.S. Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to country and Constitution to loyalty to the government’s leader.
Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to Hitler’s drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany’s right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people. Neoconservatives use “American exceptionalism” and “the war on terror.” There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American troops, and 2,747 dead ones.
When Bush the Decider claims unconstitutional powers and uses “signing statements” to negate U.S. law whenever he feels the rule of law is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the Führer, who told the Reichstag on Feb. 20, 1938: “A man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the people.”
You are with us or against us.
Re: 2.5% of Iraq’s population has been killed since US invasion
If you had said Iraqis in stead of “Muslims” in your original post you might have had a point. You made a generalization, and so did I.
As for the rest of your post. If the hatred has been simmering for so long what about the Pre Saddam times? It took almost 2 years for Pandora’s box to open? strange…killing foreigners wasn’t bad enough?
The whole thing about “Simmering tensions” is balderdash…a re-hashed white man’s burden. Like I said was there anything going on before Saddam? How about when the Brits were there post WWI?
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
divide & conquer
Re: 2.5% of Iraq’s population has been killed since US invasion
hahahahaha
Funny, when even the people at Iraq Body Count don’t believe this study, then we have really reached the outer limits. Remember, Iraq Body Count actually gathers numbers from the morgues, and attributes deaths to the war, *without ever considering how many deaths normally took place before the war. *Here is their response to this blatantly political use of an illconceived survey technique.
Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates
Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda, and Josh Dougherty Summary
A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:
On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive “Shock and Awe” invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.
If these assertions are true, they further imply:
incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.
In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.
Iraq Body Count Press Release 14 (16 Oct 2006) :: Iraq Body Count
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
So clearly the data is wrong but the problem of mass violence in Iraq remains. What do you think the solution is OG, I know you're not a 'stay the course' guy, what should be done?
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
I'll tell you.. he's for the divide the region camp.. and why not.. that's been the objective all along.. See how Baker entered the scene on cue..
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
There was some indication this week that some of the Sunni insurgent groups are looking to negociate with the US. If we could get an agreement from the Sunnis that they would guarantee no terrorist training camps, then I think the country should be divided. This level of violence and hatred says to me that the future for a real country is dim.
The Kurds are the shining light of Iraq, give them what they want. It puts pressure on both the Iranians and the Turks to do the same for their Kurdish minority.
The Shia will have Sistani, and he is the voice of reason, particularly if we can get rid of Rotten Teeth Al-Sadr before we go. The Sunnis are a greedy lot in Iraq and always have been. If we can carve out enough oil rich territory for them, they will police themselves enough to keep the oil flowing, and that means some semblance of order. If they all pledge themselves to some form of truely representative government I have no problem with it. It will undoubtedly be one of the worlds most brutal regimes, but hey, that is Saddams legacy.
Iraqis have proven to me that the country of Iraq was a British construct, and there is no will to live in peace with each other. So deconstruct it and spend the next three years partitioning the country. If they choose to kill each other after that, then so be it, that would have happened eventually, Saddam or no Saddam, US or no US. No country can be held together artificially in the face of this blatant hatred.
Re: 2.5% of Iraq's population has been killed since US invasion
Dividing Iraq is not the solution, the problem lies in the fact that the Iraqis do not trust and believe in their government and U.S. It is funny that they democratically elected them. The only sane voice seems to be Sistani and he is avoiding the issue of violence these days.
President Bush says "We are fighting for a civilization there...." and the solution is to defend that civilization seems no where near. They change tactics from day to day and the violence continues and grows even further.
Iraq was a mess to begin with and when the first Gulf War was going on the same people Dick and others thought invading Iraq would be a stupid idea. Well, it still is....
The solution lies in the fact when a strategy is introduced and inplace where all the ethinicities have an agreement than we can see some peace in that region.