1 Million Dead in Iraq? 6 Reasons the Media Hide the True Human Toll of War -- And Why We Let Them

[G_j]

http://www.alternet.org/world/151703/1_million_dead_in_iraq_6_reasons_the_media_hide_the_true_human_toll_of_war_--_and_why_we_let_them/


AlterNet / By John Tirman

1 Million Dead in Iraq? 6 Reasons the Media Hide the True Human Toll of War -- And Why We Let Them

Human Toll of War -- And Why We Let Them
Most Americans turn a blind eye to the violent acts being carried out in their name.
July 19, 2011 |

As the U.S. war in Iraq winds down, we are entering a familiar phase, the season of forgetting—forgetting the harsh realities of the war. Mostly we forget the victims of the war, the Iraqi civilians whose lives and society have been devastated by eight years of armed conflict. The act of forgetting is a social and political act, abetted by the American news media. Throughout the war, but especially now, the minimal news we get from Iraq consistently devalues the death toll of Iraqi civilians.

Why? A number of reasons are at work in this persistent evasion of reality. But forgetting has consequences, especially as it braces the obstinate right-wing narrative of “victory” in the Iraq war. If we forget, we learn nothing.

I’ve puzzled over this habit of reaching for the lowest possible estimates of the number of Iraqis who died unnecessarily since March 2003. The habit is now deeply entrenched. Over a period of about two weeks in May, I encountered in major news media three separate references to the number of people who had died in the Iraq war. Anderson Cooper, on his CNN show, Steven Lee Myers in the New York Times Magazine and Brian MacQuarrie in the Boston Globe all pegged the number in the tens of thousands, sometimes adding “at least.” But the number that sticks is this “tens of thousands.”

Cooper, Myers and MacQuarrie—all skillful reporters—are scarcely alone. It’s very rare to hear anything approximating the likely death toll, which is well into the hundreds of thousands, possibly more than one million. It‘s a textbook case of how opinion gatekeepers reinforce each other’s caution. Because the number of civilians killed in a U.S. war is so morally fraught, the news media, academics and political leaders tend to gravitate toward the figure (if mentioned at all) that is least disturbing.

..more..

[BeFree]

1. Just following orders, mate

"Some time in 2002, Bush admitted that he hadn't been giving Bin Laden much thought."

[hack89]

2. Pretty damning indictment of Islamic radicals

I went to the Iraqi Body Count site - they make it clear that the biggest killers of Iraqi civilians were extra-judicial executions, suicide bombs, vehicle bombs, and mortars - all done by "unknown perpetrators".


http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/plos-2011/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

This slaughter in Iraq is what turned the Muslim world against al-Queda. Their willingness to embrace "involuntary martyrs" as they slaughtered their fellow Muslims led to much revulsion and disgust.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. One thing IBC does NOT make clear is that their numbers are

extremely conservative - they only count those casualties that are independently verified by two other sources, IIRC, and that leaves tens of thousands unaccounted for - people who 'disappeared' and the neighbors don't know if they dies while away from their home, or if they fled to Syria, or what. Nor do they count those who were simply buried in their own back yards, but were not reported to the government because there was no government to report to - particularly if the government office was Shia run, and the death was Sunni (or visa versa), and simply reporting a death made you a target by an opposing militia.

Nor does it count those who died in hospital from what would be otherwise treatable illnesses, but were not treated because they were of the wrong ethnicity, or because of lack of supplies, or lack of power. Or those who died of waterborne illness, because of the bombing of water treatment plants and collapse of the sewer systems.

IBC says approximately 100,000 but the realistic number is between 500,000 and a million - and conceivably more.

[sabrina 1]

8. Every death in Iraq that occurred after the invasion, was

the result of that invasion. And many of those deaths attributed to other Muslims were caused by 'Death Squads' admitted to openly by John Negroponte, using the 'El Salvador solution'. There have been many interviews over the years with Iraqis who stated that under Saddam Hussein, most people got along fine, with many Iraqi Shiites and Sunis married to each other.

When they could not control the uprisings against the invasion, they sent in Negroponte and almost immediately, bodies began to show up everywhere.

And how many were slaughtered in Falluja alone?

There is no way that war can use the people themselves, who were NOT killing each other before, to justify the slaughter in that country and the war crimes.

I'm not sure where you're getting that the Muslim world turned on Al Queda, I'm not sure the Muslim World was ever supportive of their extremists. What the invasion and slaughter in Iraq DID do was to turn even moderate Muslims against the Western powers.

I see from polls taken now that the US is down in the single digits across the Arab World, including Egypt and Tunisia.

[hack89]

10. So al-Queda had no choice but to slaughter all those people?

there were absolutely no other possible choices for them?

[sabrina 1]

12. Al Queda was never in Iraq

Even the US Generals admitted that there were so few foreigners there it was hardly worth mentioning even after the invasion. You do know that Bush/Cheney lied about that, don't you?

There was no Al Queda presence in Iraq before the invasion, and little if any, afterwards. Saddam Hussein hated Religious extremists and they viewed him as a traitor to Islam being that he ran a secular state.

The killings were done sometimes by the US/Uk posing as Muslims, remember how a few UK operatives were caught dressed up like Arabs getting ready to set of some bombs, that was an embarrassment to say the least and pretty much exposed their 'Arabs are blowing each other up' claims.

As I said, Iraqis were not killing each other before this invasion, and attempting to shift the blame for the criminal slaughter perpetrated by the Western Colonial powers there, sounds very rightwing to me. I think I you are being misled by propaganda, which came mostly from the US media, primarily Fox.

[hack89]

15. So Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad was a fictitious organization?

Don't think so.

Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, often abbreviated to "JTJ" or shortened to Tawhid and Jihad, Tawhid wal-Jihad and sometimes Tawhid al-Jihad (or just Al Tawhid or Tawhid), was started by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and a combination of foreigners and local Islamist sympathizers, largely Kurdish. Zarqawi was a Jordanian Salafi who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight in the Soviet-Afghan War, but he arrived after the departure of the Soviet troops and soon returned to his homeland. He eventually returned to Afghanistan, running an Islamic militant training camp near Herat. Originally, Zarqawi started the network with the intention of overthrowing the kingdom of Jordan, which he considered to be un-Islamic in the fundamentalist sense, and for this purpose developed a large number of contacts and affiliates in several countries. His network may have been involved in the late 1999 plot to bomb the Millennium celebrations in the United States and Jordan. Zarqawi's operatives were also responsible for the assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Jordan in 2002.<6>

Following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, Zarqawi moved westward into Iraq, where he reportedly received medical treatment in Baghdad for an injured leg. It is believed that he developed extensive ties in Iraq with Ansar al-Islam ("Partisans of Islam"), a Kurdish Islamist militant group based in the extreme northeast of the country. Allegedly, Ansar had ties to Iraqi Intelligence; Saddam Hussein's motivation would have been to use Ansar as a surrogate force to repress the secular Kurds fighting for independence of Kurdistan.<7> In January 2003, Ansar's founder Mullah Krekar denied any connection with Saddam's regime.<8> The consensus of intelligence officials has since concluded that there were no links whatsoever between Zarqawi and Saddam, and that Saddam viewed Ansar al-Islam "as a threat to the regime" and his intelligence officials were spying on the group. The Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq concluded in 2006, "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.

"The group either directly took responsibility or was blamed for many early Iraqi insurgent attacks, including the August 2003 series of high-profile bombings which killed 17 people at the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad;<10> 23 people, including the chief of the United Nations mission to Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, at the UN headquarters in Baghdad;<10> and at least 86 including Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim in the Imam Ali Mosque bombing in Najaf;<15> as well as the November truck bombing which killed 27 people, mostly Italian paramilitary policemen, at the Italian base in Nasiriyah.<10>

The 2004 attacks connected to the group included the series of bombings in Baghdad and Karbala which killed some 178 people during the holy Day of Ashura in March;<16> the April failed plot to explode chemical bombs in Amman, Jordan (said to be financed by Zarqawi's network);<17> a series of suicide boat bombings of the oil pumping stations in the Persian Gulf in April, for which Zarqawi took responsibility in a statement published by the Muntada al-Ansar Islamist web site; the May car bomb assassination of Iraqi Governing Council president Ezzedine Salim at the entrance to the Green Zone in Baghdad;<18> the June suicide car bombing in Baghdad which killed 35 civilians;<19> and the September car bomb which killed 47 police recruits and civilians on Haifa Street in Baghdad.<20>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_in_Iraq

[sabrina 1]

18. This would take too long and I don't have time as I have to leave

I'll just say this, 'Al Zarqawi' was certainly as close to being fictitious as you can get. It was admitted by Gen. Kimmel finally when people began to wonder how it was that this guy was nothing more than a common thief, (after a few real journalists began to wonder how he came to rise from his many deaths so many times} pretty ignorant, illiterate airc, and with zero following.

There was even talk of the US having invented him, or giving him extraordinary, fictitious powers that he did not possess, being illegal as US laws forbid the use of psyops on the American people, which is basically what Zarqawi was. And basically what Kimmel admitted.

Were you not around when all this was going on? That wiki page badly needs editing btw.

Lots of fiction surrounding the Iraq War, but if you weren't following it all at the time, I guess you can't be blamed for not knowing just how many lies were told.

Al Zarqawi was finally 'killed' for about the sixth time as the lies were beginning to take on 'fairy tale' proportions and few were believing them even here in the US anymore. And they didn't resurrect him anymore. The Iraqis actually never did believe the stories.

He existed, but he had no 'network' and was certainly not a big Al Queda guy. Just more of Bush era propaganda.

Have to run, try searching for Al Zarqawi killed again, or with 'wooden leg' and 'cheney' etc. Really have to go.

[hack89]

19. If you like, we can take the conversation down to the 911 forum

your idea of facts and evidence might fit better down there.

Sorry - your wild claims need real evidence.

[sabrina 1]

21. Tell it to Gen. Kimmel! It is your wild claims that belong in

a conspiracy theory forum. I thought everyone here knew all about Al Zarqawi. Guess there's always someone who missed the actual real news back then.

Tell me something, Cheney claimed Al Zarqawi was the reason for the Iraq Invasion, Al Queda blah, blah. When the rest of the world knew there never was Al Queda in Iraq. But Cheney and the truth are sort of like oil and water. Anyhow, do you remember his story about Al Zarqawi at that time?

The 'official' Al Zarqawi story, I mean. Used as a reason to go to war!

[hack89]

25. So IBC are part of the cover up?

are they an agent of the US government or do they represent another agenda?

Kimmell did not say that al-Queda of Iraq did not exist. He said there was effort to make him seem more important than he was in order to create a rift with other insurgent groups.

It is a hell of a leap from that to say that insurgent groups were not responsible for the majority of civilian deaths. Or that al-Queda of Iraq did not exist. There were plenty of groups in Iraq willing to kill large numbers of civilians. Nothing you have posted changes that fact.

[sabrina 1]

33. Where were these groups before the illegal Iraq invasion??

Negroponte's death squads was no secret. The NYT times wrote about it at the time.

Anyhow, this was all trashed out long ago, as it happened. Kimmel admitted that Al Zarqawi was psyops, invented mostly to try to make it seem there was an Al Queda presence there. But no one needed him to tell them that, most people had already concluded he was a nobody, a poor, illiterat common thief who had NO following. It was laughable, one of their worst attempts to fool people, and that is saying something. Not to mention how many times he was 'killed' and 'wounded' etc. etc.

There's a lot more, but to be honest, it's an old Bush era fabrication that was debunked over and over again, and I'm sorry you fell for Bush's lies.

[hack89]

34. So IBC is lying and it was Americans that were setting off all those car bombs? nt

[sabrina 1]

35. Well, we know the Brits were doing it, dressed up like Arabs.

You didn't answer my question, where were all these groups before the invasion?

[hack89]

36. You really are serious, aren't you?

you really believe that it was not Muslims setting off all those car bombs?

[sabrina 1]

40. No, and I didn't say that. I said it was not Al Queda. Which

the US Military also said. And I also stated a few facts, such as the Brits were caught dressing up like Arabs and planting bombs. Take that anyway you wish, but to think that the invaders, who dropped tons of bombs on innocent civilians for years, would not dress up like Arabs while setting off a few more to divide the country, is just plain silly. It is a FACT.

And why are you defending Bush btw?

[hack89]

42. There were plenty of different Arab groups - you are correct about that

there is no evidence that the Brits were planting bombs. A Iraqi militia made that claim but when you search the internet there is no evidence - just a bunch of unsubstantiated claims.

Why are you defending mass murderers btw?

[sabrina 1]

52. They admitted it, they had no choice since they were caught

red-handed. Where were you when all this was going on?? And you still haven't answered the question about why, in its history no violent, terror attacks by extremists had ever happened in Iraq. Those attacks happened only after the invasion by the US/UK Colonialist occupiers.

Never heard of Google either?

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=British+agents+caught+dressed+as+Iraqis+caught+with+bombs+in+southern+Iraq&btnG=Google+Search&

Lots of information on Google, and elsewhere.

British special forces caught dressed as Arab 'terrorists'

British soldiers have been caught posing as Arabs and shooting Iraqis in the occupied city of Basra in southern Iraq. A group of them was caught yesterday by Iraqi police. They were driving an Iraqi car, wearing Arab clothing, and carrying weapons and explosives.

The Iraqi police were patrolling the area looking for suspected "terrorists" or "insurgents", and they noticed that the men were acting suspiciously. Suddenly, without warning, the suspicious men started shooting at people, but the new Iraqi security forces managed to capture some of them before they could escape. Obviously, if these men had not been caught, the mass media would now be reporting the incident as just another attempt by evil "terrorists" to create civil war in Iraq.

There have been a number of incidents in this area and throughout Iraq in which police and civilians have been targeted and killed by "terrorists" or "insurgents". But this is the first time that any of those responsible have been caught in the act, and it is now clear that at least some of them are working directly for the occupying forces, as many Iraqis have openly suspected all along.

Lots more on the 'Coalition' pretending to be terrorists and killing Iraqis, not that they weren't killing them anyhow. But why waste a good killing when you can use it to keep your war going and pretend you found 'Al Queda' there so you don't look like such liars? War crimes, which you are denying. Negroponte, Cheney, Bush, all of them are war criminals, and you are defending them? This is Fox garbage you are repeating.



As for this:

Why are you defending Mass Murderers btw?

I do not support the War in Iraq, what are you talking about? The Iraqis were the MURDERED not the MUREDERS. You are confused. Again, why would you possibly be trying to help defend the crimes of the Bush administration when every Democrat who was sentient during his reign of terror, is aware of all of this?

[hack89]

57. The "Insider" - really?

Your proof is a wacko conspiracy web site? Did you notice that there is no mention of them actually planting bombs?


The British had soldiers dressed as Arabs carrying out surveillance. No evidence that they were setting bombs. This is what they were carrying - no bombs:

Richard Galpin said al-Jazeera news channel footage, purportedly of the equipment carried in the men's car, showed assault rifles, a light machine gun, an anti-tank weapon, radio gear and medical kit

Do you believe everything on that web site?

So IBC is lying and Iraqi insurgent groups did not kill all those civilians? Is their body count a lie too?

[sabrina 1]

70. Any reason why you are so unaware of what was going on

in Iraq back then? Or why you would deny what everyone knows by now?

I suppose it's always possible that you weren't following the news at the time. I will assume that to be case, since just about everyone knows the 'Al Zarqawi' fairy tale was nothing but lies, and it was truly a shock to find someone here who did not.

I will leave it that you were not paying attention at the time, which is fine, lots of people weren't which is why Bush was able to fool so many Americans, not so much other countries though.

Just to review:

The Brits were caught red-handed pretending to be Arabs who were attacking Iraqis. Pretty standard tactics btw, they did the same thing when they embedded themselves in the IRA even suggesting targets to bomb over the years.

Kimmel acknowledged that the Al Zarqawi story was psyops.



And I'm sure everyone reading these exchanges noticed you have no explanation for why Iraqis were not killing each other before the illegal invasion.

And that you ignored the Google link provided for you where there are thousands of sources to help you inform yourself.

whenever someone using diversionary tactics, it simply makes it obvious that they cannot defend their position. Just so you know we know most of us are very familiar with those tactics.

I would suggest you go do some research, but it's clear you want to believe the war propaganda for some reason, and that is your right, so I won't bother.

[hack89]

71. Don't you think brutal violent police states are good monopolizing violence?

Are you so clueless as to many of his own people Saddam killed? Don't lecture me about ignorance then turn around and use a RW CT site for"proof" of anything. Have read the rest of.the filth on that site?

[sabrina 1]

74. Still with the distraction tactics.

You didn't answer. Where were these groups of Iraqis killing each other before the illegal, illegitimate invasion of Iraq?

When Saddam was 'killing his own people' he was our best friend, we were giving him the weapons. We didn't go to Iraq to save the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator. We installed him.

As I said, you must not have been paying attention. Why not just leave it at that, people can understand someone not being around or involved in something, but trying to legitimize an illegal Bush War by blaming the victims, that's hard to understand.

[hack89]

75. Lets cut to the chase - two simple questions

1. Can you link even one specific car bombing or terrorist attack to US or British soldiers? So far you have two British soldiers with no explosives and "Zarqawi is a psyop" - which you have spun into a massive bombing campaign by US and British soldiers. Can the insults and provide real evidence - not opinion pieces from RW CT sites.

2. From 2003 to the present, what percentage of car bombings and other attacks on Iraqi civilians were done by US and British soldiers? Half? A quarter? All?

How about some straight answers?

[JackRiddler]

62. So is there no diversionary question that you won't ask to serve your government-line sophistry?

Do you think your puffing up the small cadre of "al-Qaeda" in Iraq to laughably mythic proportions is going to retroactively absolve the US government for launching an unprovoked war of aggression, destroying a nation, and committing the worst premeditated crimes of the century?

We will never forget or excuse the Bush regime and US government invasion and genocide in Iraq!

[hack89]

67. Oh - al Queda was a small part of the insurgency

it was Iraqi killing Iraqi's for the most part. That al Queda thread kind of got off track.

Let me restate my position - according to the IBC, after the initial invasion, the vast majority of death in Iraq were do to Islamic insurgent group of various flavors - Sunni, Shiite, Baathest in the main.

[eridani]

27. It is a real organization that was created by the US invasion.

It did not exist prior to 2003.

[hack89]

28. 1999 is before 2003 isn't it? nt

[eridani]

49. It had no real presence in Iraq before 2003. There was not a single suicide bombing in Iraq before

[hack89]

58. So it existed before 2003

and the war led to its growth? Is that a big surprise?

[eridani]

64. Not in Iraq it didn't. The US invaded and grew this and other terror groups

As people with common sense warned, the invasion led to a large increase in terrorism worldwide.

[hack89]

65. So the Americans were responsible for the actions of these groups?

we made them kill other Iraqis in huge numbers? Why is that - couldn't they have restricted their violence to the invaders?

[eridani]

72. Yes. They would not exist without American initiative n/t

[hack89]

73. So Americans led those group? Supplied them with explosives?

trained them? Is that what you are saying.

[eridani]

77. As a matter of fact, America DID train them

The CIA was trolling mosques all over the world to send to Afghanistan in the 80s for direct training from the US in the 80s. And we supplied them with Stinger missiles too. We supplied both sides in the Iran-Iraq war.

Mostly, America just fucked with their countries and provided a huge base of very angry colunteers.

[hack89]

78. That's not completely true

there were three major sources of funding for the Mujaheddin:

1. Arab governments. No surprise that Saudi Arabia leads this pack.
2. Islamic "charities". This is where bin Laden got most of his money - his piety was a big hit with rich Muslims.
3. US government. Channeled by the CIA through the ISI.

Yours is a common misconception - the CIA had very little hands on involvement with recruiting Mujaheddin. We in essence outsourced through the ISI - they had the contacts and the training bases. They also guarded their turf very carefully - there was very little direct contact between the CIA and Mujaheddin.

Your final comment is interesting. Why did they turn this anger on their fellow Muslims? If America was occupied, would your first response be to start killing Americans? I mean, your country has been fucked with and you would be very angry - right?

[eridani]

79. I'd kill people I thought were collaborators as well as any occupiers I could find

Terrorism is what conquered people who don't have the power to stop conquest do. At the very least, they can make sure that the conquerors don't enjoy themselves as much as they hoped to. Even animals will chew their own feet off to get out of traps.

[hack89]

80. What about "involuntary martyrs" ?

you know - ordinary people in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Would you also take the opportunity to settle old personal scores or to satisfy your racial/religious bigotry?

[eridani]

81. Destroy the physical and social infrastructure of another country--

--and each against all chaos will inevitably ensue. The county that created the chaos, that is to say the US, bears the blame.

[hack89]

82. I see - so mass murder is excusable in certain situations.

got it.

[eridani]

83. You are a citizen of the country responsible for the lion's share of post WW II mass murders n/t

[hack89]

84. The Great African War? Rwanda? Cambodia? Indian Partition?

Here is a listing of post-war genocides. I suggest you do something about your ignorance.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history#East_Timor_under_Indonesian_occupation

[eridani]

85. Vietnam, mass murderin Latin America, overthrowing a secular elected leader of Iran

Cambodia was instigated by the US bombing campaign. The Khmer Rouge were isolated whackjobs with no popular support whatoever until mass murder from the air.

[OwnedByFerrets]

23. Thank you for telling the truth

[indurancevile]

13. nice spin.

The most indiscriminate effects on women and children in Iraq were from unknown perpetrators firing mortars (DWI = 79) and using non-suicide vehicle bombs (DWI = 54), and from Coalition air attacks (DWI = 69).

Coalition forces had a higher DWI than anti-coalition forces for all weapons combined, and for small arms gunfire, with no decrease over the study period.

[hack89]

17. Speaking of spin

The authors studied 92,614 Iraqi civilian direct deaths from the IBC database which occurred as a result of armed violence between March 20, 2003 through March 19, 2008. The authors found that most Iraqi civilian violent deaths during this time were inflicted by unknown perpetrators, primarily through extrajudicial executions which were disproportionately increased in Iraqi governorates with greater numbers of violent deaths. Unknown perpetrators also used suicide bombs, vehicle bombs, and mortars which had highly lethal and indiscriminate effects on Iraqi civilians. Deaths caused by Coalition forces of Iraqi civilians, of women and children, and of Iraqi civilians from air attacks, peaked during the invasion in 2003.

So there was a short but significant spike of civilian deaths due to the invasion followed by years of slaughter by Muslim terrorist groups and Baathist dead-enders.


Read the 2004 entries - they are horrific. A daily parade of car bombs coming from Fallujah to murder civilians in Baghdad. That's the reason why there was a battle of Fallujah in the first place.

[Forkboy]

29. If we really want to talk about why things happened "in the first place"....

...let's discuss Iran, circa 1953.

[hack89]

31. Do you really think that justifies car bombing civilians? nt

[Forkboy]

32. No, but I understand why it encourages them.

Don't you?

[hack89]

37. No I don't

Americans invade their country so they respond by slaughtering their fellow countrymen. Why didn't they attack the Americans?

[Forkboy]

41. History, it's a wonderful thing.

How did you feel after 9/11? Like someone had attacked you and tried to undermine American democracy? I bet that's close, or at least a part of the emotions that went through your mind.

I hate to be so dismissive of a fellow B's fan (I'm still getting goosebumps over the Cup win), but c'mon, you know the point I'm making. Playing dumb to make a point rarely makes the point...it just looks dumb.

However, I'll give you a starting point, and then you're on your on your own....

Why did "Americans invade"?

See you in the fall at the drop of the puck. We should have Marchand signed up, Knight looks to be an interesting prospect, and Bergy is the rapidly becoming one of the best two-way forwards in hockey.

[hack89]

43. We invaded because we had a lying sack of shit for president

so now explain to me why all those Iraqis felt compelled to killed other Iraqis? Could it be because Sunnis wanted to re-institute their reign of terror? Could it be because the Shiite had a life time of pain and suffering to take revenge for? Or do you think they were fighting for Iraq? Just curious if you are capable of nuance or does it all come back to evil america?

[Forkboy]

44. Alrighty then. Remove the avatar.

Hockey trumps all, and you're clearly too serious a man for such things. :P

The Middle East had a democratically elected leader in Iran (repeat those word again for effect..."DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED"). The United States overthrew said DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED government. You're clearly a fan of nuance...tell me the nuance I'm missing so far.

so now explain to me why all those Iraqis felt compelled to killed other Iraqis?

Were talking about Iran. I know, they all look the same to me too.

Could it be because Sunnis wanted to re-institute their reign of terror?

Could be. And this has fuck all to do with Iran how?

Could it be because the Shiite had a life time of pain and suffering to take revenge for?

If nuance is your thing, reread that, think about it's implications, and get back to me.

Or do you think they were fighting for Iraq?

I'm more worried about what we're fighting for. Nuance is your bag, so I'm open to your explanation.

Just curious if you are capable of nuance or does it all come back to evil america?

America does many awesome things in this world, seriously. America is not evil. We have many wonderful people here who truly care about those around the world. But overthrowing a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED (not sure I can drive that point home enough here) government to gain control of their resources doesn't rank high among our best moments. Spending 60 years fucking with that region doesn't help either. Want to save the world? Sign up, by all means. Maybe you can single handedly stomp out evil in the Middle East, be a regular Captain America and spread peace, love and democracy throughout the Middle East. I'm sure they'll love you for it. So don't delay, head on over there today.

If you can't see how that kind of action set some wheels in motions that have come back to haunt us then I'm not the one that nuance is lost on. Unless, of course, you lack nuance so much that you see America as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East? In which case, well, Bush and Cheney will always welcome some new pals.

[coalition_unwilling]

55. Nah, I think you have to go back to Sykes-Picot, ca. 1922, when

the defeated Ottoman Empire was divided up by the French and British into spheres of influence, aka, 'colonies'. 1953 and the coup that deposed Mossadegh is a footnote to Sykes-Picot, imho (albeit not a footnote in the minds of the people of Iran)

[Forkboy]

56. ....

:thumbsup:

[indurancevile]

50. No idea why you think deaths by "unknown perpetrators" are actually deaths by known perpetrators.

"Coalition forces had higher Woman and Child DWIs than Anti-Coalition forces, with no evidence of decrease over 2003–2008, for all weapons combined and for small arms gunfire, specifically."

Presumably if the researchers knew the "unknown" deaths were "AL qaeda" deaths, they would have said so. There is no evidence for you to assume they were.

[hack89]

59. So you have evidence that America

executed a extensive campaign of car bombings and extra-judicial kidnappings and executions? You have proof of this? All those reports out of Iraq detailing the terror campaign were lies?

[indurancevile]

63. straw.

[hack89]

66. If it wasn't Americans then it had to be Islamic groups doing the killing, right?

there aren't too many other choices are there?

[indurancevile]

68. There are a number of choices. But you've already shown your hand & there is no point discussing

it with you. Goodbye.

[hack89]

69. There are no other choices. Not real ones that is. nt

[eridani]

26. A baby is just as dead from diarrhea from dirty water (a result of the US

--blowing up water purification plants and hospitals) as from being blown up directly. Even then, there were no suicide bombers in Iraq before the US invasion.

[hack89]

30. So the insurgents had no choice but to slaughter civilians?

don't you think the water would have been clean if not for years of Arab killing Arab? What in your mind excuses such behavior?

[H2O Man]

39. Exactly.

If those dead babies from Iraq hadn't attacked us on 9/11, this wouldn't have happened. Look what they made us do!

[eridani]

48. The water was clean before 1992. The United States put Al Qaeda in Iraq

No oil wars, no Al Qaeda in Iraq, period. We need US military dictatorship in the Middle East because why?

[Capitalocracy]

45. delete

wrong place

[Selatius]

53. Did you forget Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11? There were no suicide bombers pre-war. nt

[JackRiddler]

61. Your deflection of USG responsibility would be hilarious, if the subject were not genocide...

and a war of aggression, the highest of all crimes, launched by the United States government on a nation that posed no threat, in violation of international and constitutional law, on the basis of outrageous lies.

The largest number of killings in Iraq were conducted in the US-backed ethnic cleansing of Sunni areas by Shi'ite militias.

After the USG launched a war of aggression, after the carpet bombing of "Shock and Awe" and the other measures to destroy Iraqi society, including the intentional facilitation of looting of national treasures to break the people's will and create an atmosphere of chaos...

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31490&p=410656&hilit=baudrillard#p410656

...after the dissolution of the Iraqi army despite warnings of the consequences, the USG acted surprised that Plan A ("they will throw flowers" at the invaders and destroyers of their country) didn't work.

Plan B meant bringing the Shi'a militias into the Interior Ministry and arming them for ethnic cleansing, and blaming every single killing in Iraq on the super-powerful "al-Qaeda" (perhaps a 1 percent factor in the insurgency).

Flood in a few billion dollars to pay off the Sunni militias, once they're on the defensive, and voila, "surge" wins.

This is mass murder, and while it's always on the killers who pull the triggers, ALL of it is the responsibility of the superpower that initiated the war of aggression.

ALL OF IT.

As for the "unknown perpetrators," I like how you assume YOU know.

British soldiers disguised as Arabs captured after firing on an Iraqi police station:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/19/content_3514065.htm

Series of stories linked from here:
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/09/carry-on-killing.html

To the hell that is Iraq? A collection on the USG war of aggression:
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31490

[July16th-20th]

3. K&R

Needs to be read.

[defendandprotect]

5. 80% of Americans want an end to the wars Obama/Dems have been keeping going 5 years now!

[robdogbucky]

6. I posted this information yesterday on the 60s era thread

The recent illegal adventures in the ME actually eclipse the amount of dead from the conflict in SE Asia.

Look it up.

That are other big differences between that and now, including transfer tubes (caskets), no deaths counted unless in combat w/boots on, (Pentagon covers the real body counts) cover bans,(heavy MIC censorship hiding these truths like never befoer and it appears to work, no?),embedded "reporters," once in a blue moon over there (we had actual reporters and even TV anchors in SE Asia all the time) etc., etc., etc.

Daniel Ellsberg, where are you?



Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 08:20

Richard Franklin + Henk Ruyssenaars


The U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs, in conjunction with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has released the truth because they need all people to know the US military is literally destroyed. They are under orders to conceal the truth at all costs, so they let slip a report which now cannot be "un-slipped."

FPF: "We don't do body counts." - US General Tommy Franks, who directed the illegal Iraq invasion, has said concerning their genocides abroad. But now also in the US the cemeteries are enlarged. - Text & links below.

Franklin's Focus 9/25/07 - I am forwarding a must read item sent to me by Phoebe. I've been waiting a long time for this report to emerge. I reported long ago on the methods used to conceal the true number of dead. This report is long overdue, and it once again condemns the American fourth estate as a hideous, slavish tool of the government.

As I said, this is a must read. I suggest forwarding this to every news broadcaster you can think of. Email addresses are available at the web sites for the news networks. - Warmest regards, Richard.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

73,846 U.S. TROOPS DEAD; 1,620,906 PERMANENTLY DISABLED*

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS ISSUES OFFICIAL REPORT CONFIRMING 73,000 U.S. TROOPS KILLED IN IRAQ

SAME GOVERNMENT AGENCY REPORT CONFIRMS 1.6 MILLION "DISABLED" BY THE WAR!

http://quebec.indymedia.org/en/node/28224



Tuesday, June 28, 2011




Iraq Deaths Far Higher Than Reported

Iraq War Deaths Exceed Vietnam War Numbers
Department of Veterans Affairs Reports 73 Thousand U.S. Gulf War Deaths
By Gary Vey for viewzone

More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans. This probably is news to you. But the truth has been hidden by a technicality. So here is the truth.

The casualties in the Vietnam War were pretty simple to understand. If a soldier was dead from his combat tour, he was a war casualty. There are 58,195 names recorded on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.

Some of these brave men died in the jungles of Vietnam while others died in Medivac units or hospitals in Japan and America. A dead soldier can surrender his life anywhere in his service to his country. It really doesn't matter where this happens. The location of a soldier's death in now way colors his sacrifice to his country.

But something odd has happened with the Iraq War. The government, under the Bush administration, did something dishonest that resulted in a lie that's persisted since the war began -- and continues to this very day. They decided to report the war deaths in Iraq only if the soldier died with his boots on the ground in a combat situation. What's the difference, you might ask?......

http://cretincountry.blogspot.com/2011/06/iraq-deaths-f...




Hands off my Social Security!
Hands off Latin America!



rdb

[pinboy3niner]

38. That "Iraq War" casualty information is false

The quebec site has a bad link to a VA report on GULF WAR veterans, data which are completely misinterpreted and misused as if they are on Iraq War casualties. They even misuse, for example, a figure on deaths among veterans who were NEVER deployed and count them as Iraq War casualties.

The report itself states: "The GWVIS report identifies all veterans with military service on or after August 2, 1990." And it counts deaths among veterans, from all causes, after their return to civilian life.

Look it up. Although the link was bad, I found the report here:

http://www.vba.va.gov/REPORTS/gwvis/historical/2007/May_2007.pdf


Similarly, the Gary Vey article at the cretincountry blog is absolutely wrong in its false assertion that the government counts Iraq War deaths "only if the soldier died with his boots on the ground in a combat situation." All deaths are counted, whether they involved combat or not (even heart attacks and suicides), as are deaths that occur elsewhere after the service member is evacuated from the combat theater.

Even today, a Vietnam veteran who dies as a result of wounds sustained decades ago in-country is added to DoD's casualty database as a VN War casualty (and names are added to the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial every year on Memorial Day. With this year's additions, the total number of names on the Wall is now 58,272.)

[Kaleko]

7. K & R

[gratuitous]

9. Why do we forget or cover up the cost?

Because in the land of the High Church of Redemptive Violence, it's an article of faith that war solves problems, effectively and permanently. All those extra deaths are inconvenient to the faith narrative that's being peddled in the media, and so they are minimized, elided, and ultimately forgotten. As it must be. If parents knew what was going to happen to their sons and daughters, they'd never let them join the military or advise them to do so. Instead, we're treated to a never-ending series of feel-good stories about brave men and women who went overseas to "do a job," who "served with honor" and returned to the bosom of their loving families.

[Forkboy]

11. K&R

[JackRiddler]

14. Lancet numbers rendered credible by study at Millman School of Public Health (Columbia University)

The Iraq war logs, the 350,000 documents leaked by Wikileaks last October, document about 66,000 deaths of Iraqis designated as civilians in the course of hostilities. (Never mind how many of the 43,000 "combatant" deaths recorded in the military logs were of actual combatants, and never mind whether they had a right to combat the invaders of their country.)

The "Iraq Body Count" (IBC), which compiles published reports only, had documented about 100,000 civilian deaths as of Oct 2010.

A Columbia University study compared significant samples from the two data sets and found that only 20 percent of the deaths appear to be recorded in both.

This suggests that both data sets are minority samples of the total number of deaths inflicted, i.e. we should apply a multiplier of 3 to 6 to either number.

The study is available here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/50105556/Do-WikiLeaks-and-Iraq-Body-Count-tell-the-same-story-No-A-Comparison-of-the-Reports-of-Iraqi-Civilian-Deaths

.

Les Roberts, the author of the 2006 Lancet study that estimated 650,000 "excess deaths" as a result of the Iraq war, was hammered for his findings, in the main because they were ideologically inconvenient. And his "excess" was compared to a theoretical baseline of how many would have died had the extant conditions of 2003 continued without the US-led invasion. Now the Millman study suggests a similar number of people were likely to have been killed outright.

Roberts comments on the Millman study:

http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/wikileaks-analysis-suggests-hundreds-of-thousands-of-unrecorded-iraqi-deaths/

.

If this isn't genocide due to an unprovoked war of aggression, then that is a weakness in the legal definition of genocide, and not because it is not a crime on the same scale as the mass murder of civilian populations caused in other wars of aggression.

[G_j]

60. thank you

crucial information

[Imagevision]

16. The Pentagon controls what Americans read about Iraq war, for the past 5-6 years

[Rex]

24. MIC/M$M/Wall Street.

And I would be so bold as go back 30 years of total control.

[Ignis]

20. K&R

When do we start paying out reparations?

[OwnedByFerrets]

22. And the war criminals walking around free men

[Capitalocracy]

46. We may forget, but one million dead are one million families who will never forget.

We as a nation are freakin' geniuses, aren't we?

[inna]

47. bad karma right there

- for the American people on the whole, i hate to say it, not just for the homicidal megalomaniacal psychopaths at the top responsible for these unspeakable crimes against humanity.

[slipslidingaway]

51. knr :( nt

[killbotfactory]

54. The US doesn't take war very seriously

The media doesn't, because it's good for ratings.
The politicians mostly don't, because they don't have to fight it, and are heavily lobbied by powerful corporate interests who stand to profit from war.
The defense industry doesn't, because they stand to profit from it.
The American public, by and large, doesn't, because we have never suffered through a war on our own soil except for the rare terrorist attack.
And for the most part, we trust the media and government to take war seriously for us, and generally don't believe they could be so corrupt and callous to subject our military and entire nations to the horror's of war for spurious reasons. And even if everyone in government, the media, or the corporate world individually aren't such shitbags that they can support a needless war, it's in there interests to do so, and they can be easily convinced to ignore their better judgement and go along with whatever consensus is being built to justify war.

[upi402]

76. Public enemy #1; corporate media

:patriot: