OT: 100 000 Iraqi civilian deaths - first scientific studies

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Wed May 10, 2006 5:49 am

Heironymous wrote:This shows a complete ignorance of current military capability. If you don't know shit about modern warfare...keep your damn mouth shut eh? You will look less like a complete fool that way. This isn't WWII buddy.

Actually your comeback just shows how much you buy into military propaganda....
tell me. Do you actually believe that civilian targets have simply been avoided by the great new military capability? Hey, it is impressive really, only about 100,000 Iraqis have died. That's pretty amazing considering the size of Iraq, but to downplay that as being all military men, is ridiculous.
All your comeback shows is how little you really understand what war is about, and how much you want to paint a rosy picture of it.. pretty sad.

forgie · Post by **forgie** » Wed May 10, 2006 7:48 am

This thread was actually managing to be remarkably civil until *cough* someone made a comment about WWII and keeping their mouth shut. *ahem*.

As Machinesworking said, 100,000 have died. Now let's see.... that must mean that 100,000 were "terrorists", which means that "our boys" have been doing a real good job. There can't have been any civilians in that group, they must've all been terrorists. Must have. MUST HAVE!

The day that your country is invaded by a foreign military power and you have friends and neighbours killed (be they "innocent", or "terrorist", by which I mean that they tried to defend their country from the invaders) is the day that you can legitimately sympathise with military aggressors. Until then, I would take your own advice and 'keep your damn mouth shut eh? You will look less like a complete fool that way'

'This isn't WWII buddy.' You are indeed correct. The general public is much better informed then they were in WWII. Which is why it continues to amaze me how many people can be so short-sighted and non-empathetic. Ignorance is no longer an excuse for unethical beliefs, my friend!

By the way, using language like 'keep your damn mouth shut eh?' may work in keeping peoples mouth shut when you are in their physical presence, due to the fact that they are scared of you. That doesn't mean your beliefs have integrity, it just means that you use violence to push your idealogy on other people. Unfortunately for you, when talking on the internet, you can't threaten people with physical violence. You have to use words instead. In other words YOUR IDEAS HAVE TO HAVE INTELLECTUAL MERIT, OR YOU LOOK LIKE A FOOL.

Heironymous · Post by **Heironymous** » Wed May 10, 2006 10:24 am

100,000 civie casualties is ABSURD and you are a moron if you buy that one. I have a sweet bridge to sell you as well. The BBC story says they are investigating "claims", so this is fact to you?? The lancet is quick to publish political drivel. You would really LIKE to believe this story so you have accepted it without any facts whatsoever. This type of story fits into your world view that America is evil and a big bully, blah blah etc etc.

Perhaps you are not aware of this but during many battles in the streets these "innocent civilians" just stand around watching like they are at a sporting event. You have to yell at them to get to cover, they just stand their smoking ciggs and watch as bullets fly by them. Of course many times a "civilian" will suddenly grab an AK and shoot some rounds off then duck into a house and bam, instant "civilian" again.

Also, the ground war has killed far more than the air war and this particular war has been the most precise of any conflict in modern warfare. Not that any of you would know that since I doubt you have any background in military history to speak of. If you do, please speak up.

There is no way in hell 100,000 were killed, that is simply ridiculous. How exactly do you suppose it would be anywhere near that high? Do you understand ROE at all? Do you think US troops just randomly shoot everything? That is laughable at best.

Also, as a side note about Lancet, Norwegian researcher dreamed up the lives and lifestyles of some 900 people — and used them in a study on cancer. Then, last October, Jon Sudbo had his results published in The Lancet. Hmm...sounds legit doesn't it? Perhaps a similar method was used in this civilian death study?

via washington post:

Last week, Sudbø, who is based at the Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo, admitted that the data had not come from that database or any other, but from thin air.

Many details of this case still need to be worked out. There is some indication that Sudbø may have mental health problems. It is also not clear what his 13 co-authors knew about the fraud — the paper identifies three others as contributing equally to the research, and among the other co-authors are Sudbø's wife and his identical twin. None of the authors could be reached for comment.
----
Oh and by the way, I thought you might like to know:

Analysis of New CIA Data: IRAQI WAR SAVED 100,000 LIVES +
CIA, Index Mundi ^ | NOW | Dangus Research

As of May 2, 2006, the CIA has updated its World Fact Book data on Iraq's death rate. The new data shows a death rate of 5.37 per 1,000 per year. This is down from 6.4 per 1,000 per year in 2000.

Given a population of over 26 million, a decline of 1.03 fewer deaths per 1,000 people translates into 27.5 thousand people per year. Since Bush's election, the declining death rate indicates that over 100,000 people fewer died than would have died at the death rate in Iraq in 2000.

Death rates are declining around the world, but the sharp decrease in the death rate in Iraq is quite spectacular. Nations with recent spikes in their death rates include Mozambique, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Equitorial Guinea, Trinidad,

Nations with sizeable declines include the Haiti, Ukraine, Cameroon, Burundi, Benin, Burma, Togo, Ghana, Eritrea, and Senegal.

The world's lowest death rate was Kuwait.
-----
Repeat after me...Bush lied...less people died.

Have a good day sheeple.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Wed May 10, 2006 11:02 am

Heironymous wrote:100,000 civie casualties is ABSURD

yeah, it's more like 35k to 40k - CONFIRMED deaths - real number, all things being equal, must be quite a bit higher. No biggie, eh?
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ (nicely constructed database, btw)
So, which numbers *aren't* absurd? Is 50k alright?

Heironymous wrote: Oh and by the way, I thought you might like to know:

Analysis of New CIA Data: IRAQI WAR SAVED 100,000 LIVES +
CIA, Index Mundi ^ | NOW | Dangus Research

As of May 2, 2006, the CIA has updated its World Fact Book data on Iraq's death rate. The new data shows a death rate of 5.37 per 1,000 per year. This is down from 6.4 per 1,000 per year in 2000.
.

ah yes, there's a reliable source. The good ol' CIA. I heard there are WMDs in Iraq as well, hope they find some soon.
And besides, if the overall health of a country increases by invading it, then it's okay to kill off 30-40 thousand inhabitants? "The Ones who walk away from Omelas" springs to mind.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Wed May 10, 2006 11:08 am

Machinate wrote:ah yes, there's a reliable source. The good ol' CIA. I heard there are WMDs in Iraq as well, hope they find some soon.

No no no. They moved their WMDs to Iraq before the invasion. You do know that all those muslim arabs are all the bestest of friends...

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed May 10, 2006 12:06 pm

this figure of 100,000 was being thrown about a good 2 years ago now.

How someone can honestly say "there's no way it's that high" is beyond me.

There is a car bomb just about every day, usually with dozens of casualties, sometimes hundreds. what's that over a year? Oh but the US army didnt light the fuse on them so they dont count - the fact that they wouldnt have happened before the invasion is irrelevant.

Man, how anyone at all thinks this war was acceptable is astonishing IT IS NOW WIDELY ACCEPTED THERE WERE NO WMDS. That was the justification for it, there was no other one. Now the whole world knows it was a complete fabrication and yet still people defend it, even with stupid fucking statistcs like the CIA ones above.

the first line on that page Machinate quoted says it all

“We don’t do body counts”
General Tommy Franks, US Central Command

all he missed off was, "unless they are American"

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed May 10, 2006 12:13 pm

thanks for that link Machinate, didnt know about that site.

the following was 3 years ago in 2003, even then when it was only about 13 000 the point is made:

So far, in the "war on terror" initiated since 9-11, the USA and its allies have been responsible for over 13,000 civilian deaths, not only the 10,000+ in Iraq, but also 3,000+ civilian deaths in Afghanistan, another death toll that continues to rise long after the world's attention has moved on.

Elsewhere in the world over the same period, paramilitary forces hostile to the USA have killed 408 civilians in 18 attacks worldwide (see Table 1). Adding the official 9-11 death toll (as of October 29th 2003) brings the total to just under 3500:

you can look at a breakdown of them here: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial_feb0704.php

For each civilian killed by "terrorists" on and since 9-11, the USA and its allies have brought about almost four non-combatant, civilian deaths in return.

The figures above do not include recent civilian deaths in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Recent estimates (updated November 2004) suggest that the Israeli army has killed over 1600 Palestinian civilians since 2001. Around 900 Israeli civilians have died in suicide attacks over the same period. This represents a ratio approaching 2:1 in Palestinian civilian deaths as compared to Israeli deaths. The Israeli leadership has repeatedly claimed that their actions against the Palestinians are part and parcel of the same "war on terror" being fought by the USA and the UK.

One might ask how it is possible to claim that the deaths of some 4,500 civilians at the hands of paramilitaries demonstrates "utter contempt for innocent life" when the blood of some 14,000 innocents staining our own hands is considered noble and necessary

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed May 10, 2006 12:24 pm

"The horror. The horror," wrote Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times, "And unlike Apocalypse Now, there are real, not fictional images to prove it. But they won't be seen in Western homes." Filmed by cameramen but censored, scenes described by a Red Cross spokesman and others of "severed bodies and scattered limbs," "babies cut in half" and other products of cluster bomb technology on the farming communities in and around Hillah, south of Baghdad, were never shown to the nations directly responsible for these charnel-house horrors. That this plays into the hands of those who wish only to "accentuate the positive" and "look on the bright side" of war hardly needs stating.

Up to 55 civilians died on the day a busy market in the Shula district of Baghdad was hit. MATW doctor Geert Van Moorter was at a nearby hospital a few hours after the incident. He reported: "The hospital was a scene from hell. Complete chaos. Blood was everywhere. Patients were shouting and screaming. Doctors heroically trying to save their patients. In that one small, 200-bed hospital they counted 55 dead, 15 of them children. The pictures I made are too horrifying to send." He added that the market is located in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Baghdad and that there are no military targets, not even big buildings, within several kilometres."

Both the US and UK governments publicly suggested – or rather, speculated – that the explosion was "probably" caused by an ageing Iraqi anti-aircraft missile. However, according to the Independent newspaper, the remains of the serial number of a missile were found at the scene, identifying it as one manufactured in Texas by Raytheon, the world's biggest producer of "smart armaments", and sold to the US Navy. The missile is believed to have been either a HARM (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile) device, or a Paveway laser guided bomb. Although the US authorities acknowledged that one of their jets fired at least one missile in the area that day, an official US source claimed that the shrapnel could have been planted at the scene by Iraqi officials. However, Robert Fisk, a highly-respected journalist who was internationally honoured for his unmasking of US atrocities in Kosovo, reported that "The piece of metal bearing the codings was retrieved only minutes after the missile exploded on Friday evening, by an old man whose home is only 100 yards from the 6ft crater. Even the Iraqi authorities do not know that it exists."

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Wed May 10, 2006 12:27 pm

noisetonepause wrote:
Machinate wrote:ah yes, there's a reliable source. The good ol' CIA. I heard there are WMDs in Iraq as well, hope they find some soon.
No no no. They moved their WMDs to Iraq before the invasion. You do know that all those muslim arabs are all the bestest of friends...

ah yes, that's probably it. Did you get that info off a CIA newsletter?

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Wed May 10, 2006 3:22 pm

Machinate wrote:
noisetonepause wrote:
Machinate wrote:ah yes, there's a reliable source. The good ol' CIA. I heard there are WMDs in Iraq as well, hope they find some soon.
No no no. They moved their WMDs to Iraq before the invasion. You do know that all those muslim arabs are all the bestest of friends...
ah yes, that's probably it. Did you get that info off a CIA newsletter?

Kind of, it was cited on some stupid internet forum. Especially the part about Iranians being Arabs and in bed with Saddam.

Heironymous · Post by **Heironymous** » Thu May 11, 2006 12:24 am

So which is it? 100,000 or 39,296? Just a wee bit of differance there.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

For comparisons sake, Stalin killed 20 million of his own people, historians have concluded. Then we have Saddam. Even on a proportional basis, Stalin's crimes far surpass Mr. Hussein's, but figures of a million dead Iraqis, in war and through terror, may not be far from the mark, in a country of 22 million people.

The largest number of deaths attributable to Saddam's regime resulted from the war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988, which was launched by Saddam himself. Iraq says its own toll was 500,000, and Iran's reckoning ranges upward of 300,000. Then there are the casualties in the wake of Iraq's 1990 occupation of Kuwait. Iraq's official toll from American bombing in that war is 100,000 — surely a gross exaggeration(sound familiar?) — but nobody contests that thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in the American campaign to oust Mr. Hussein's forces from Kuwait. In addition, 1,000 Kuwaitis died during the fighting and occupation in their country.

Then we have casualties from Iraq's gulag which are harder to estimate. It could be 200,000 or so that "disappeared".

Oh but America is the bad guy right?

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu May 11, 2006 1:11 am

Heironymous wrote:Oh but America is the bad guy right?

Yes.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Thu May 11, 2006 1:53 am

noisetonepause wrote:
Heironymous wrote:Oh but America is the bad guy right?
Yes.

I'm American, and in this case, I have to agree. Problem you, and a significant amount of other people have heironymous, is that you can't dissociate this one case where the US makes a very bad choice from the history of decent choices we have made.
It's not the militaries fault they kill people, that's their job, but the politicians? Man! that's some foul stench!

The whole sham that you went with about less people dying under our occupation..... and were these figures of civilian deaths per year took from recent, heavily embargoed Iraq? or Iraq previous to the US led embargo? You do know that the embargo killed more poor people in Iraq than the war has right? The fact is since the first gulf war, Iraq has been in dire straights because of the sanctions, and of course that changes when we actually are occupying the country.... duh?
History will prove me right with this, but the fact is we are not welcome there, we are just another Saddam to them, a military rule.

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu May 11, 2006 2:10 am

Machinesworking wrote:
noisetonepause wrote:
Heironymous wrote:Oh but America is the bad guy right?
Yes.
I'm American, and in this case, I have to agree. Problem you, and a significant amount of other people have heironymous, is that you can't dissociate this one case where the US makes a very bad choice from the history of decent choices we have made.
It's not the militaries fault they kill people, that's their job, but the politicians? Man! that's some foul stench!

The whole sham that you went with about less people dying under our occupation..... and were these figures of civilian deaths per year took from recent, heavily embargoed Iraq? or Iraq previous to the US led embargo? You do know that the embargo killed more poor people in Iraq than the war has right? The fact is since the first gulf war, Iraq has been in dire straights because of the sanctions, and of course that changes when we actually are occupying the country.... duh?
History will prove me right with this, but the fact is we are not welcome there, we are just another Saddam to them, a military rule.

well put.

this is the thing I dont get - I'm British/Australian. The Governments nd businessmen of the home country of half of my ancestors for probably the last 1000 or more years has been the main player in carving up the modern world for greed. Australia is home to some one of the few totally successful genocides.

And if someone of a differing political view was to point this out to me I would totally agree with them that it was truly terrible. I wouldnt feel like I had to get on a patriotic mad defensive, fighting to the last breath to justify what is clearly to any thinking person plain wrong.

Likewise, I wouldnt think it meant I had to feel bad about it because my passports read British and Australian citizens.

So why do so many Americans feel it so necessarily to defend this evil and call anyone who criticises it "anti-american"??

Is it that blind patriotism is so firmly bred into them that they wont disagree with anything the administration says or does even though it is clearly an abomination? That doesnt sound much like democracy or freedom of thought to me.

I've said it a 1000 times, if the US GOVERNMENT (not every citizen) chooses to justify the Iraq invasion on humanitarian grounds, then they'd better send the rest of their Army quick smart to Africa, because that's where all the REALLY bad shit is going on.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Thu May 11, 2006 3:50 am

forge wrote:And if someone of a differing political view was to point this out to me I would totally agree with them that it was truly terrible. I wouldnt feel like I had to get on a patriotic mad defensive, fighting to the last breath to justify what is clearly to any thinking person plain wrong.

Likewise, I wouldnt think it meant I had to feel bad about it because my passports read British and Australian citizens.

So why do so many Americans feel it so necessarily to defend this evil and call anyone who criticises it "anti-american"??

Is it that blind patriotism is so firmly bred into them that they wont disagree with anything the administration says or does even though it is clearly an abomination? That doesnt sound much like democracy or freedom of thought to me.

Basically, every country on this planet is guilty of despicable crimes, every area on the globe has hosted a tyrant at some point, and the USA was started by people sick of a certain brand of tyranny in the UK.
What it comes down to is if you look at the origions of the US, you see a really decent thing, escalating mild conflicts with the native americans into genocide aside......... The basic ideas of the USA constitution was a great thing, and it really helped bring the planet out of the whole king scenario.
Now though, we are constantly told by the media that we are doing things for honorable reasons, and told that although we might see a war on Iraq as a war for oil, it's really much more complicated than that. We are simply not looking at the bigger picture etc....
If we decide to look outside that world view we are confronted with a slew of bad choices..... going against the UN, mocking them in the media, slagging off the French as just being in it for the oil too, forcing the CIA to admit that there was a remote possibility of some super secret cache of WMD, even though they said that it was next to nil, then slagging them for agreeing with the GWB administration when they proved to be right, not having a plan at all as to what to do about the sunni and Shiite conflict that would/will occur under democratic rule, media blackout on the conflict in general, Haliberton at first being handed all the contracts for rebuilding, ...... this list goes on and on.....
Which would you rather believe if you were american? that we went in to secure democracy, and rid the world of a tyrant? or that we went in with our own best interests in mind, and in order to secure a hold on the light sweet crude supply at it's most pristine?
There are plenty of instances in US history where we have done the right thing by going to war, this simply isn't one of them.
It's much easier to believe you are doing the right thing, than to admit you've made a mistake.