Collateral Genocide

[babylonsister]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17696.htm

Collateral Genocide
By Mike Ferner


snip//


This summer will be one year since researchers from Johns Hopkins University collected data for a study which concluded 655,000 additional deaths were caused by the military war, and things have only gotten worse since then. Then consider that the economic war killed an additional 500,000 Iraqi kids under the age of five during only the first seven years of sanctions which were in force for a dozen years, according to a 1999 U.N. report.

Based on the Johns Hopkins estimate of Iraqis killed in the war, one could conservatively estimate that another 2.6 million people have been wounded. The U.N. estimates that between 1.5 million and 2 million Iraqis are now “internally displaced” by the fighting and roughly the same number have fled their country, including disproportionate numbers of doctors and other professionals.

If you are sitting down and possess a healthy imagination, try conjuring up similar conditions here in our land.

* Start with the fact that few people buy bottled water and what comes out of the tap is guaranteed to at least make you sick if not kill you
* Three times as many of our fellow citizens are out of work as during the Great Depression
* On a good day we have three or four hours of electricity to preserve food or cool the 110-degree heat
* No proper hospitals or rehab clinics exist to help the wounded become productive members of society
* Roads are a mess
* Reports of birth defects from exposure to depleted uranium have begun surfacing around the country.

Reflect for a minute on the grief brought by a single loved one’s death. Then open your heart to the reality of life if we suffered casualties comparable to those endured by the people of Iraq.

* In the former cities of Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Baltimore, San Francisco, Dallas and Philadelphia every single person is dead.
* In Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Oregon, South Carolina and Colorado every single person is wounded.
* The entire populations of Ohio and New Jersey are homeless, surviving with friends, relatives or under bridges as they can.
* The entire populations of Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky have fled to Canada or Mexico.
* Over the past three years, one in four U.S. doctors has left the country.
* Last year alone 3,000 doctors were kidnapped and 800 killed.

In short, nobody “out there” is coming to save us. We are in hell.

more...

[ComandanteChe]

1. Companion article to this one

Please read Holocaust Redux, along the same lines, longer and thoroughly well written. A great article IMHO

What we have done in Iraq will never be forgotten. Of course, we did the same in Vietnam.

http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2007/04/holocaust-redux.html

[babylonsister]

2. Welcome to DU, ComandanteChe, and thanks for the link. nt

[Turbineguy]

3. I've always had difficulty with this:

"...economic war killed an additional 500,000 Iraqi kids..." Not that I doubt that it happened, but it was not the aim of the sanctions, nor was it the fault of the sanctions. While the sanctions were in effect, Saddam Hussein was running the country. While these children were dying, he was building palaces and his creepy sons were cleaning up from their black market scams and loading up their Swiss bank accounts.

Like Bush is now, he was President then. That buck stops with him.

Also, American soldiers are not kidnapping and killing Doctors. Iraqis are.

I think Bush would have attacked Iraq no matter what Saddam Hussein did to appease him (and Saddam Hussein had a talent for doing the stupid). But there are things that Bush (and by extension the US) are responsible for and things the they are not.

If Americans take on every guilty burden that can possibly be heaped on them they will never ever be able to leave Iraq.

[babylonsister]

4. I bet many of those docs would not have been killed or kidnapped

if we weren't there. Professors and professionals, too. That's one way the warring factions are weakening the side they oppose. And none of this would have been going on if not for us.

[Turbineguy]

5. Absolutely true

but I'm just saying I've never bought into the "you-made-me-be-mean" excuse practiced by abusers.

This civil war could and should have been foreseen and it would have also happened if Saddam Hussein had dropped dead of a heart attack or lost his grip on power in some other way.

These are not opposing viewpoints.

There were lots of people who told Bush attacking Iraq was a bad idea. Bush did it anyway. But there comes a point where Iraqis become responsible for the egregious slaughter that goes on daily. And ironically, the longer they keep killing each other, the longer we have to stay. I have spoken with a number of people who were against attacking but now feel we have to stay in order to stop this.

My view is we should leave. By staying we only provide an excuse for them to continue killing each other. By leaving we take that excuse away.