Death By Liberation for 100,000 Iraqi Civilians

[shereads]

The last I heard from a U.S. mainstream news outlet, the body count was at 10,000. Was I ever relieved! I thought we were doing some serious damage over there.

We were off by one zero.

I heard the independent bodycount on National Public Radio who got it from the Times of London:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1333734,00.html

 

[shereads]

excerpt:

"The risk of dying prematurely has risen by 250 per cent for ordinary Iraqi people since Saddam Hussein was toppled, the US and Iraqi scientists estimate, while the risk of dying violently is 58 times higher.

Most of the victims of violence are women and children killed by allied airstrikes,_said the online report_in the Lancet medical journal."

 

[Bri_Dog]

Good, I hope more innocent children die

 

[Guest]

Oh, God, sher.

This is doing my head in.

 

[TheEarl]

excerpt:

"The risk of dying prematurely has risen by 250 per cent for ordinary Iraqi people since Saddam Hussein was toppled, the US and Iraqi scientists estimate, while the risk of dying violently is 58 times higher.

Most of the victims of violence are women and children killed by allied airstrikes,_said the online report_in the Lancet medical journal."

Allied Airstrikes? Since when did Britain or Australia indulge in a little frivolous bombing? I'm afraid the USA is on its own in this one.

The Earl

 

[shereads]

Oh, God, sher.

This is doing my head in.

Lighten up. There are millions of Iraqis left.

 

[shereads]

Allied Airstrikes? Since when did Britain or Australia indulge in a little frivolous bombing? I'm afraid the USA is on its own in this one.

The Earl

It's your newspaper, not mine.

 

[KarenAM]

Allied Airstrikes? Since when did Britain or Australia indulge in a little frivolous bombing? I'm afraid the USA is on its own in this one.

The Earl

Sorry, Earl. According to George "The Infallible" W. Bush, our eternally glorious appointed president, who is only doing the holy will of God, after all, it is treason for any American to forget our Allies, so I am bound by the fact that I am an American to constantly remind you that everything we do wrong over there is your fault, or Kerry's fault, or my fault, or is the fault of our troops, but NEVER, NEVER the fault of the administration.

Okay, enough sarcasm. I have to go and scream now.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

Those damned insurgents ought to quit planting indiscriminate roadside bombs, and quit packing cars full of explosives and driving them into crowded areas and detonating them.

When was the last time an "indiscriminate airstrike" mowed down a bunch of innocents? Take note of the civilian deaths that occur in Iraq and notice who's actually doing the killing. It's not our troops, yet certain types blame all the deaths on "americans".

It's the terrorists and insurgents doing the killing. They bomb indiscriminately. They don't care who dies as long as people get killed and they make their statement.

 

[KarenAM]

It's a war, Wildcard. The point of war is to kill people until they do what you want them to do. The United States and its "allies" started this particular war. Your point about the insurgents is well taken, and I quite agree with it, but that doesn't eliminate our guilt in this. It also doesn't help that our president refuses to acknowledge that he has ever made a mistake in how the war was planned and executed, when it is clear to everyone else, including our troops, that it has been a total failure.

And yes, American aircraft have fired missiles into civilian crowds.

 

[LadyJeanne]

The killing in Iraq continues, and Osama is alive, perfectly healthy, and railing against GWB on videotape. And somehow, somehow, the political pundits are saying Osama's tape today will help GWB win the election. The train wreck continues...

 

[cantdog]

The "certain types," Wild, are British medical men. Lancet is the British JAMA, a medical journal.

Did you see the "Shock and Awe" with which the campaign kicked off? Rockets and bombs into the heart of a city. Wake the fuck up and smell the fuckin cordite.

 

[BigAndTall]

Er, you do know the method to find this out was done by polling, not actually counting.

 

[cantdog]

The liberal media probably has some conspiracy with the UN to underreport the civilian deaths and cost GWB the election at the eleventh hour, you know.

 

[Guest]

Wake the fuck up and smell the fuckin cordite.

Great for a bumper sticker. P.

 

[cantdog]

Thank you Pear; I strive for the pithy. I inject the occasional aphorism into all my stories whenever I can. I catch people's minds with them like beggar's ticks in my posts in the threads, and it always makes me smug when it's acknowledged.

Ego. I got that, for sure; and the success of an aphorism makes my day every time.

cantdog

doin a celebratory cakewalk, with a grin from ear to ear

 

[cantdog]

The killing in Iraq continues, and Osama is alive, perfectly healthy, and railing against GWB on videotape. And somehow, somehow, the political pundits are saying Osama's tape today will help GWB win the election. The train wreck continues...

Jeanne, I believe he has a kidney dysfunction, actually.

 

[cantdog]

Allied Airstrikes? Since when did Britain or Australia indulge in a little frivolous bombing? I'm afraid the USA is on its own in this one.

The Earl

I blush for it, Earl, but the boys in the Pentagon want to do the war on the cheap. It costs less to just bomb everything than it does to do it right.

Cowards sit in Washington and bomb, bomb, bomb. It's infantry as win wars, innit?

 

[shereads]

When was the last time an "indiscriminate airstrike" mowed down a bunch of innocents?

You can't bomb cities without mowing down a bunch of innocents. That's why some of us thought we should have unimpeachable reasons for doing so. Improving the lives of the Iraqi people was the last reason in the fragile string of reasons we were fed. It seems worth pointing out that we haven't. Quite the opposite.

Dead is dead, whether it happens by our hands as collateral damage, or because we lit the match under this "insurgency." It was insanely irresponsible to take apart a country we couldn't put back together. To have done it on the word of a convicted fraud like Chalabi and still refuse to admit it was a mistake, is criminally insane.

Wildcard, 100,000 innocent people are dead because George W. Bush is an arrogant ass. And all he can say about it is that we're making progress.

He might as well have rounded up 100,000 people in a stadium someplace, and bombed them all at once. The outcome wouldn't have been substantially different, but Bush would have had to accept responsibility for their deaths.

BTW, Iran has weapons of mass destruction and ties with terrorism. We were only off by one consonant.

 

[Somme]

.

 

[shereads]

Er, you do know the method to find this out was done by polling, not actually counting.

How else to arrive at a body count, when there are only parts of bodies? You go door to door and ask who's missing.

 

[shereads]

And yes, American aircraft have fired missiles into civilian crowds.

An Iraqi television reporter was killed on-camera while he was covering a car bombing and the near-riot that followed. He was hit by Americans firing into the crowded street from a helicopter. (Crowd control?). His blood splashed on the camera lens. He fell yelling, "They're killing me! They're killling me!" And then nothing. I saw the videotape, as did our growing circle of friends around the world. I felt my soul shrink.

How is it possible that the man who led us to this can feel no remorse? I feel it. Sometimes it takes my breath away.

 

[rgraham666]

You have to remember, Shrub is a rich man's kid.

He's never had to do anything himself in his life except eat, urinate and defecate. And if he could figure out a way, he would not do those either.

That means responsibility always falls on someone else.

As far as air-strikes go, they can't be anything but indiscriminate.

There's a little thing called CEP (Circular Error Probability) that's used to measure the accuracy of bombs and missiles. CEP is a circular area where half the bombs and missiles in question will fall when 'deployed'. That means half will not fall inside this area.

As I recall, the CEP of non-smart bombs is 30 metres. So half the bombs dropped will fall into an area approximately 200 feet in diameter. And half don't.

Smart weapons bring the CEP down to, wait for it, 20 metres. This is an area about 140 feet in diameter.

Plus even the smallest bomb is 250 lbs. That's a lot of BOOM!

When you throw in fun things like cluster munitions, napalm and FAEs (Fuel Air Explosives) it's impossible to use air dropped weapons in an urban environment without killing a lot of bystanders.

 

[BigAndTall]

How else to arrive at a body count, when there are only parts of bodies? You go door to door and ask who's missing.

Well can do a body count, go by what the hospitals have on file. I just think the data methodology collection is off.

All death rates are based the statisical analysis of facts, not usually polling people to see if they know someone who dies.

I just find there to be problems with this report in how they came to that number,

1. a poll of 900 people to get a number of 100,000.

2

Lancet editor Richard Horton said: "Democratic imperialism has led to more deaths, not fewer. This political and military failure continues to cause scores of casualties among non-combatants."

It sounds like the editor had a message and point to make with this report. Now whether you agree with Horton I'd like to think people wouldhave a healthy skeptaism about any report that might already have started with a conclusion and worked backwards to make sure it got the results it wanted.

Horton and Blair have had run ins before when Horton was embarassed in the MMR vaccine scare as the one who published the report. Blair intervened and Horton ended up having to retract that report.

This could have been just the thing Richard Horton was waiting for. I am not a brit, but I had this debate with a friend of mine from there. Perhaps someone here from England could confirm or correct me here.


Edit, I forgot to put in the link where the quote came from

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3964311.stm

 

[shereads]

I just find there to be problems with this report in how they came to that number

I hope you're right. It would be great if we've only killed 10,000 or so.