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Poll: Americans Say World War III Likely
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EFLtrainer

Joined: 04 May 2005

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 12:05 pm Post subject:

Here's one for you, though I don't vouch for the source. A more respected source within the article states it is at least 39k since the invasion. Most sources seem to indicate a significant portion, if not a majority, are women and children. http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050712-122153-5519r This one is even better, as it comes from respected sources. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3962969.stm More on the same: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html And it didn't even include Falluja! http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/29/news/toll.html "We were shocked at the magnitude but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins study team. He said the team had excluded deaths in Falluja in making their estimate, since that city was the site of unusually intense violence." This one is interesting for the perspective it gives on terrorism-related deaths vs. those to fight terrorism. http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html And on to the pre-war toll: http://www.fnvw.org/index.geni?mode=content&id=10009 Oil for Food: The Real Scandal "The cruel effects of the economic embargo are well documented, from its earliest days when a team of Harvard-sponsored physicians visited Iraq just after the first Gulf War, to the 1999 UNICEF statistical analysis which reported that a half million Iraqi children had died unnecessarily as a direct result of economic sanctions. " Polar Express, virtual reality, and Fox News by Bert Sacks -- December 2, 2004 In 1992 The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 46,900 Iraqi children under five died from January to August 1991. Extrapolating this death rate over the years until the oil-for-food program began - half the period of US/UN economic sanctions - yields a horrible estimate of 400,000 Iraqi children's deaths. Of the total amount of oil sales, 30% went immediately for war reparations -- $16 billion to Kuwaiti petroleum -- while the UN reported 960,000 Iraqi children were chronically malnourished. In 1992 The New England Journal of Medicine stated the major cause of children's deaths in Iraq was water-borne epidemics caused by U.S. Gulf War bombing of Iraq's civilian infrastructure. Paul Bremer said it would take $100 billion to repair Iraq's civilian infrastructure. He said Iraq had "neglected its infrastructure for 30 years." He made no mention of the Gulf War destruction. This amount is far beyond any alleged scandal, far beyond smuggled oil money, far beyond $2 billion we say Saddam spent on palaces." Not that I expect any of this to seem logical to anyone... Last edited by EFLtrainer on Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:11 pm; edited 1 time in total

EFLtrainer

Joined: 04 May 2005

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:10 pm Post subject:

mithridates wrote:

The most 'official' number is around 25000, and also the most credible number to use, especially when talking to someone who agrees with the war in the first place.

Credible till the *whacky* numbers from world-renowned organizations start posting theirs.... as in the post I made below.

Quote:

Citing collateral damage may or may not be correct, but over here it will just lead people to dismiss you which takes away from the point of discussing things here in the first place.

That's one of the saddest, and most telling, statements I've heard or read in a very long time.

Ajarn Miguk

Joined: 22 Jan 2003
Location: TDY As Assigned

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 3:47 pm Post subject: Theory & Opinion

EFLtrainer wrote:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

Quote:

"This is all self-evident and the doing of it violates the US constitution."

Specifically, where do you find such wording in the U.S. Constitution?

Citation(s), please.

How about Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Manipulating, twisting and distorting evidence submitted to Congress (and the people) for the purposes of gaining support for a voluntary war would be considered a 'high Crime' by a good many people.

Exactly. Lying to congress is a crime just as it is in a courtroom. Remember Clinton being impeached for saying simply, "I did not have sex with that woman." Bush went to congress, the public, EVERYWHERE and stated unequivocally that Iraq was a key supporter of Al Queda, had weapons of mass destruction. Both absolutelyl lies. Downing Street.

Like I said, absolutely clear.

As to your "more would have died [sic]" comment: Sorry, but at the time of the invasion Saddam was locked in pretty tightly. There was very little or no ethnic cleansing going on, though I'm sure he was pretty busy with political killings.

Don't even get me started on how many died due to the sanctions!

But, of course, killing hundreds of thousands of innocents to get one man. Priceless. So... the choices were go to war or wait a couple months till the arms inspections were done. Not a hard choice. Not at all. In fact, even if it took years, it would have cost far less human suffering in the end.

This was an immoral, unethical, illegal choice.

Until and if one or more of the persons who would be theoretically covered under the Article you cite is convicted in a Federal Court or impeached by Congress, the Article has not been violated in any legal sense. Nor has there been a legal showing that the Article even applies to one or more persons you feel may be in violation of the Article.

At this point, yours is only a personal opinion and theory based on your interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

It will only become more than a personal opinion and theory if a Federal Court or the U.S. Congress affirms it with convictions.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 6:25 pm Post subject:

Saddam killed 300,000 what would he do if he got free, remember his sons who were like him were coming next.

And Saddam was the major reasons that the sanctions killed. He sold food and kept it away from his own people in a cruel attempt to get the sanctions off.

And you are leaving out that Saddam opposed smart sanctions.

Saddam had a history of agression towards other nations and his own minorities.

And were the sanctions eased that would have rewarded Saddam for not abiding by the agreements that ended the first gulf war.

Besides what would Saddam do to the Kurds if he were free? Probably gas them again. He gassed them before he would do it again

but I got a good idea - You tell the Bathists , Khomeni followers and Bin Laden lovers to give up their war and then there won't be any problems.

Just let them give up their war. If they don't then the US is justified in doing anything and everything to force them to.

Quote:

And it didn't even include Falluja!

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/29/news/toll.html

"We were shocked at the magnitude but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins study team. He said the team had excluded deaths in Falluja in making their estimate, since that city was the site of unusually intense violence."

and the 100,000 figure was put in perspective by the economist.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3352814

That figure charges the US for deaths caused by the insurgents .

and of course the US should not be charged for the insurgent killed . They don't count.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 6:47 pm Post subject:

Quote:

http://www.reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml
The Politics of Dead Children

Have sanctions against Iraq murdered millions?

By Matt Welch

Are "a million innocent children...dying at this time...in Iraq" because of U.S. sanctions, as Osama bin Laden claimed in his October 7 videotaped message to the world? Has the United Nations Children뭩 Emergency Fund (UNICEF) discovered that "at least 200 children are dying every day...as a direct result of sanctions," as advocacy journalist John Pilger maintains on his Web site? Is it official U.N. belief that 5,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 are dying each month due to its own policy, as writers of letters to virtually every U.S. newspaper have stated repeatedly during the past three years?

The short answer to all of these questions is no. The sanctions, first imposed in 1990 after Iraq뭩 invasion of Kuwait, are administered by the U.N., not the U.S. They were first imposed on all exports from Iraq and occupied Kuwait, and all non-humanitarian imports, in an effort to persuade Saddam Hussein to retreat within his own borders. After the Gulf War, they were broadened to include a dismantling of Iraq뭩 biological, chemical, nuclear, and missile-based weapons systems, out of fear that Hussein would otherwise lash out again. Estimates of sanctions-era "excess" child deaths -- the number above the normal mortality rate -- vary widely due to politics and inadequate data, especially concerning children older than 5. The dictatorial Iraqi government, which has blamed nearly every civilian funeral since 1991 on sanctions, claims there have been more than 600,000 deaths of under-5-year-olds these past 11 years (4,500 per month) and 1.5 million deaths overall.

While firefighters were still pulling out warm body parts from Ground Zero, foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky and his followers on college campuses and alternative-weekly staffs nationwide were insisting that it was vital to understand the "context" of the September 11 massacre: that U.S.-led sanctions were killing "5,000 children a month" in Iraq. Meanwhile, on the Iraqi government뭩 own Web site, the number of under-5 deaths from all causes for the month of September was listed as 2,932.

Arriving at a reliable raw number of dead people is hard enough; assigning responsibility for the ongoing tragedy borders on the purely speculative. Competing factors include sanctions, drought, hospital policy, breast-feeding education, Saddam Hussein뭩 government, depressed oil prices, the Iraqi economy뭩 almost total dependence on oil exports and food imports, destruction from the Iran-Iraq and Persian Gulf wars, differences in conditions between the autonomous north and the Saddam-controlled south, and a dozen other variables difficult to measure without direct independent access to the country.

Confusing the issue still further are basic questions about the sanctions themselves. Should the U.N. impose multilateral economic sanctions to keep a proven tyrant from developing weapons to launch more wars against his neighbors? If sanctions are inherently immoral, what other tools short of war can the international community use? Is this particular sanctions regime more unreasonable than others that haven뭪 triggered humanitarian crises? How much should we blame Saddam Hussein for rejecting the U.N.뭩 "oil-for-food" humanitarian offer for six years, and expelling weapons inspectors in 1998? Most important, has Iraq made headway since then in pursuing nuclear and biological weapons?

Yet all this murkiness has not deterred advocates of sanctions from claiming absolute certainty on the issue. The warmongering New Republic, for example, announced in October that the notion that "sanctions have caused widespread suffering" was simply "false." Writing in National Review in December, former army intelligence analyst Robert Stewart asserted that "resources are available in Iraq. Even under the sanctions, Iraq뭩 people need not starve."

The chasm between claims made by sanction supporters and opponents is enough to make inquisitive people throw their hands up in the air. Such despair is not exactly conducive to healthy debate, which is especially important at a time when President Bush has made it clear that Iraq must cooperate with weapons inspection or become the next target of the War on Terrorism. A closer look at the controversy over dead Iraqi babies shows that opponents of sanctions have a compelling case to make. Although they often undermine their own position with outrageous exaggerations, their critics show a similar disregard for the facts when they blithely dismiss concerns about the impact of sanctions on innocent people.

Origins of a Whopper

The idea that sanctions in Iraq have killed half a million children (or 1 million, or 1.5 million, depending on the hysteria of the source) took root in 1995 and 1996, on the basis of two transparently flawed studies, one inexplicable doubling of the studies?statistics, and a non-denial on 60 Minutes.

In August 1995, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) gave officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Health a questionnaire on child mortality and asked them to conduct a survey in the capital city of Baghdad. On the basis of this five-day, 693-household, Iraq-controlled study, the FAO announced in November that "child mortality had increased nearly five fold" since the pre-sanctions era. As embargo critic Richard Garfield, a public health specialist at Columbia University, wrote in his own comprehensive 1999 survey of under-5 deaths in Iraq, "The 1995 study뭩 conclusions were subsequently withdrawn by the authors....Notwithstanding the retraction of the original data, their estimate of more than 500,000 excess child deaths due to the embargo is still often repeated by sanctions critics."

In March 1996, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its own report on the humanitarian crisis. It reprinted figures -- provided solely by the Iraqi Ministry of Health -- showing that a total of 186,000 children under the age of 5 died between 1990 and 1994 in the 15 Saddam-governed provinces. According to these government figures, the number of deaths jumped nearly 500 percent, from 8,903 in 1990 to 52,905 in 1994.

Somehow, based largely on these two reports -- a five-day study in Baghdad showing a "five fold" increase in child deaths and a Ministry of Health claim that a total of 186,000 children under 5 had died from all causes between 1990 and 1994 -- a New York-based advocacy group called the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) concluded in a May 1996 survey that "these mortality rates translate into a figure of over half a million excess child deaths as a result of sanctions."

In addition to doubling the Iraqi government뭩 highest number and attributing all deaths to the embargo, CESR suggested a comparison that proved popular among the growing legions of sanctions critics: "In simple terms, more Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions than the combined toll of two atomic bombs on Japan." The word genocide started making its way into the discussion.

Still, the report might well have ended up in the dustbin of bad mathematics had a CESR fact-finding tour of Iraq not been filmed by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes. In a May 12, 1996, report that later won her an Emmy and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Journalism Award, Stahl used CESR뭩 faulty numbers and atomic-bomb imagery to confront Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "We have heard that a half million children have died," Stahl said. "I mean, that뭩 more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

It was the non-denial heard 뭨ound the world. In the hands of sanctions opponents and foreign policy critics, it was portrayed as a confession of fact, even though neither Albright nor the U.S. government has ever admitted to such a ghastly number (nor had anybody aside from CESR and Lesley Stahl ever suggested such a thing until May 1996). The 60 Minutes exchange is very familiar to readers of Arab newspapers, college dailies, and liberal journals of opinion. Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan mentioned it several times during their respective presidential campaigns.

After September 11, the anecdote received new life, as in this typically imaginative interpretation by Harper뭩 Editor Lewis Lapham in the magazine뭩 November issue: "When Madeleine Albright, then the American secretary of state [sic], was asked in an interview on 60 Minutes whether she had considered the resulting death of 500,000 Iraqi children (of malnutrition and disease), she said, 멬e think the price is worth it.?quot;

Albright has been dogged by protesters at nearly all her campus appearances the past several years, and rightly so: It was a beastly thing to say, and she should have refuted the figures. Quietly, a month after the World Trade Center attack, she finally apologized for her infamous performance. "I shouldn뭪 have said it," she said during a speech at the University of Southern California. "You can believe this or not, but my comments were taken out of context."

The other, far more credible source of the 500,000 number is a pair of 1999 UNICEF studies that estimated the under-5 mortality rates of both Iraqi regions based on interviews with a total of 40,000 households. "If the substantial reduction in the under-five mortality rate during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s," the report concluded, "there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998." If the expected mortality rate had stayed level rather than continuing its downward slope, the excess death number would be more like 420,000.

Significantly, UNICEF found child mortality actually decreased in the autonomous north (from 80.2 per 1,000 in 1984-89 to 70.8 in 1994-9 Cool

while more than doubling in the south (from 56 per 1,000 to 130.6). This is Exhibit A for those who, like The New Republic, argue that Saddam alone is responsible for Iraq뭩 humanitarian crisis. When the report was released, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy attributed the difference in mortality trends to "the large amount of international aid pumped into northern Iraq at the end of the [Persian Gulf] war."

The UNICEF report took pains to spread the blame for increased mortality in the south, mentioning factors such as a dramatic increase in the bottle-only feeding of infants in place of more nutritious (and less likely to be tainted) breast milk. "It뭩 very important not to just say that everything rests on sanctions," Bellamy said in a subsequent interview. "It is also the result of wars and the reduction in investment in resources for primary health care."

But in the hands of sanctions opponents and some news organizations, these findings were translated into a U.N. admission that sanctions were "directly responsible" for killing half a million children (or even "infants"). In September 2001 alone, the UNICEF report was mischaracterized in The Boston Globe, The Buffalo News, The Akron Beacon Journal, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Charleston Gazette, the Wilmington Sunday Star-News, and The Chicago Tribune (by a Northwestern University journalism professor, no less).

By November, UNICEF was annoyed enough with the frequent misinterpretations to send out regular corrective press releases, saying things like: "The surveys were never intended to provide an absolute figure of how many children have died in Iraq as a result of sanctions." Rather, they "show that if the substantial reductions in child mortality in Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s -- in other words if there hadn뭪 been two wars, if sanctions hadn뭪 been introduced and if investment in social services had been maintained -- there would have been 500,000 fewer deaths of children under five."

Sanctions critics almost always leave out one other salient fact: The vast majority of the horror stats they quote apply to the period before March 1997, when the oil-for-food program delivered its first boatload of supplies (nearly six years after the U.N. first proposed the idea to a reluctant Iraqi government). In the past four years of oil-for-food, Iraq has exported around 3 billion barrels of oil, generating $40 billion in revenue, which has resulted in the delivery of $18 billion of humanitarian and oil-equipment supplies, with another $16 billion in the pipeline. (The rest is used to cover administrative costs and reparations to Kuwait.)

As the U.N. Office for the Iraqi Program stated in a September 28, 2001 report, "With the improved funding level for the program, the Government of Iraq is indeed in a position to address the nutritional and health concerns of the Iraqi people, particularly the nutritional status of the children." Even two years earlier, Richard Garfield noted in his survey that "the most severe embargo-related damages [have] already ended."

Anyone who tells you more children will perish in Iraq this month than Americans died on September 11 is cutting and pasting inflated mid-1990s statistics onto a country that has changed significantly since then. Knowingly or not, these critics are mangling the facts to prove a debatable point and in the process damaging their own cause.

The Truth is Bad Enough

Two weeks after the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I began looking in earnest for trustworthy sources of information about the effects of sanctions on Iraq. I was joined in my search by a half-dozen or so e-mail acquaintances who approached the question from a broadly similar viewpoint: If sanctions are killing Iraqi babies, then Osama Bin Laden has a legitimate propaganda tool, and the U.S. has blood on its hands that demands immediate attention. So let뭩 find the facts, weigh them against Saddam뭩 weapons capabilities, and proceed from there.

It immediately became obvious that sanctions opponents, especially in the U.S., would be a hindrance, not a help. "I뭢 a little disgusted at the way the Naderite left has used the issue, especially when they have no backup for the claims they are making," one of my co-conspirators, Eric Mauro, wrote me. "They may be right, but they are so inept at arguing that it뭩 dangerous to take their word for it."

The man who launched the American anti-sanctions movement as we know it is a University of Texas journalism professor named Robert Jensen. His Web site뭩 "factsheet" on Iraq contains two lies right off the bat. Citing WHO, he claims that "each month 5,000 to 6,000 children die as a result of the sanctions." And citing UNICEF, he asserts that "approximately 250 people die every day in Iraq due to the sanctions."

Jensen, who teaches "critical thinking," drifted onto the national radar screen days after the terrorist attacks, when he wrote a column published in ZNet, CommonDreams.org, and The Houston Chronicle titled "U.S. Just As Guilty of Committing Own Violent Acts." He has opposed the war against Afghanistan (not to mention Serbia), teaches the journalism of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and once wrote a column about how the "U.S. middle class, particularly the white middle class, is probably the single biggest impediment to justice the world has ever known."

Jensen뭩 cohorts in kick-starting the anti-sanctions movement were intifada-supporting professor Edward Said, "people뭩 historian" Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky, a man who has rarely met a foreign policy he couldn뭪 describe as "genocide." The four issued a joint statement in January 1999 condemning the situation in Iraq as "sanctioned mass-murder that is nearing holocaust proportions."

These four men have authored reams of hyperbolic nonsense since September 11. Isn뭪 it reasonable to conclude that anything they and Saddam Hussein agree upon must be false?

No, actually, it뭩 not, and therein lies the problem. Any sustained inquiry into the sanctions issue runs up against waves of propaganda and reckless disregard for the truth, and it would be all too easy to declare the issue settled after a quick dismissal of the most glaring lies. But that would be an abdication of responsibility. Many of those who support continued pressure on Saddam Hussein tend to focus on a few key counterpoints while ignoring piles of haunting in-country surveys and the damning testimony of former U.N. officials who have quit to campaign full-time against U.S. policy in Iraq. Sanctions proponents, if they are not careful, run the risk of aping the foolish debate tactics of the critics they condemn.

Take, for example, the lowered mortality rates in the northern provinces of Dahuk, Sulaymaniyah, and Erbil -- the smoking gun of the sanctions-don뭪-kill crowd. The New Republic claims the autonomous Kurdish area "is subject to exactly the same sanctions as the rest of the country." This is false: Under the oil-for-food regime, the north, which contains 13 percent of the Iraqi population, receives 13 percent of all oil proceeds, a portion of that in cash. Saddam뭩 regions, with 87 percent of the population, receive 59 percent of the money (recently increased by the U.N. Security Council from 53 percent), none of it in cash. (Of the rest, 25 percent goes to a Kuwaiti compensation fund, and the rest covers U.N. expenses.)

It just isn뭪 true that the sanctions are "exactly the same" in both parts of Iraq. And there are other factors affecting the north-south disparity: International aid agencies have been active in the areas protected by no-fly zones since 1991, and the Turkish border is said to be suitably porous for smuggling (although Saddam has been caught smuggling several times in the past decade).

The get-Saddam camp also likes to point out that sanctions haven뭪 seemed to inflict similar grief in countries such as Libya and Yugoslavia. To which Richard Garfield, who compared the various penalized countries, has an effective rebuttal: "Embargoes with the greatest impact on the health of the general population are usually those which are multilateral and comprehensive, occur in countries with heavy import dependence, are implemented rapidly, and are accompanied by other economic and social blows to a country. Iraq shared each of these characteristics."

Those who get past the initial frustrations of researching the topic usually end up on Richard Garfield뭩 doorstep. His 1999 report -- which included a logistic regression analysis that re-examined four previously published child mortality surveys and added bits from 75 or so other relevant studies -- picked apart the faulty methodologies of his predecessors, criticized the bogus claims of the anti-sanctions left, admitted when the data were shaky, and generally used conservative numbers. Among his many interesting findings was that every sanctions regime except the one imposed on apartheid South Africa led to limitations of food and medicine imports, even though such goods were almost always officially exempt from the embargo. "In many countries," he wrote, "the embargo-related lack of capital was more important than direct restrictions on importing medicine or food."

Garfield concluded that between August 1991 and March 1998 there were at least 106,000 excess deaths of children under 5, with a "more likely" worst-case sum of 227,000. (He recently updated the latter figure to 350,000 through this year.) Of those deaths, he estimated one-quarter were "mainly associated with the Gulf war." The chief causes, in his view, were "contaminated water, lack of high quality foods, inadequate breast feeding, poor weaning practices, and inadequate supplies in the curative health care system. This was the product of both a lack of some essential goods, and inadequate or inefficient use of existing essential goods."

Ultimately, Garfield argued, sanctions played an undeniably important role. "Even a small number of documentable excess deaths is an expression of a humanitarian disaster, and this number is not small," he concluded. "[And] excess deaths should...be seen as the tip of the iceberg among damages to occur among under five-year-olds in Iraq in the 1990s....The humanitarian disaster which has occurred in Iraq far exceeds what may be any reasonable level of acceptable damages according to the principles of discrimination and proportionality used in warfare....To the degree that economic sanctions complicate access to and utilization of essential goods, sanctions regulations should be modified immediately."

Garfield뭩 conclusion echoes that of literally every international agency that has performed extensive studies in Iraq. In 1999 a U.N. Humanitarian Panel found that "the gravity of the humanitarian situation of the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated." UNICEF뭩 Carol Bellamy, at the time her landmark report was released, said, "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war." The former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, travels around the world calling the policy he once enforced "genocide." His replacement, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned in protest of the U.N.뭩 "criminal policy."

Losing the Loonies

There have been no weapons inspectors in Iraq since 1998. As a result it is exceptionally difficult to know with precision what nuclear and biological weapons Saddam actually has on hand or in development. From the beginning, economic sanctions have been tied to what foreign policy analyst Mark Phythian described in World Affairs as "the first attempt to disarm a country against its will." After September 11, the issue of an America-hating tyrant arming himself to the teeth has seemed more pressing than easing an embargo that blocks his access to money.

Yet the basic argument against all economic sanctions remains: namely, that they tend to punish civilians more than governments and to provide dictators with a gift-wrapped propaganda tool. Any visitor to Cuba can see within 24 hours the futility of slapping an embargo on a sheltered population that is otherwise inclined to detest its government and embrace its yanqui neighbors. Sanctions give anti-American enclaves, whether in Cairo or Berkeley or Peshawar, one of their few half-convincing arguments about evil U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War.

It seems awfully hard not to conclude that the embargo on Iraq has been ineffective (especially since 1998) and that it has, at the least, contributed to more than 100,000 deaths since 1990. With Bush set to go to war over Saddam뭩 noncompliance with the military goals of the sanctions, there has never been a more urgent time to confront the issue with clarity.

That means losing the loonies on the left. Already there are signs of mounting liberal impatience with the routine smokescreens emanating from the usual anti-sanctions rabble. Slate, The Guardian, and even The Nation all published sober correctives of dead-Iraqi-baby inflation toward the end of 2001, decisively backing Richard Garfield over Robert Jensen. And if Noam Chomsky no longer leads this particular coalition of critics, maybe they뭨e not so wrong after all.

Matt Welch, a columnist for the Online Journalism Review, is a writer in Los Angeles.

EFLtrainer

Joined: 04 May 2005

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 10:01 am Post subject: Re: Theory & Opinion

Ajarn Miguk wrote:

EFLtrainer wrote:

Ya-ta Boy wrote:

Quote:

"This is all self-evident and the doing of it violates the US constitution."

Specifically, where do you find such wording in the U.S. Constitution?

Citation(s), please.

I think you need to reconsider both law and logic. You seem to be confusing the issue of proving an offense with whether or not, in fact, the offense occurred. You are saying, e.g., that if I rob a bank and don't get caught, the bank was never robbed. And to think I've been working for a living all these years!!!

EFLtrainer

Joined: 04 May 2005

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 10:25 am Post subject:

Quote:

Ultimately, Garfield argued, sanctions played an undeniably important role. "Even a small number of documentable excess deaths is an expression of a humanitarian disaster, and this number is not small," he concluded. "[And] excess deaths should...be seen as the tip of the iceberg among damages to occur among under five-year-olds in Iraq in the 1990s....The humanitarian disaster which has occurred in Iraq far exceeds what may be any reasonable level of acceptable damages according to the principles of discrimination and proportionality used in warfare....To the degree that economic sanctions complicate access to and utilization of essential goods, sanctions regulations should be modified immediately."

Garfield뭩 conclusion echoes that of literally every international agency that has performed extensive studies in Iraq. In 1999 a U.N. Humanitarian Panel found that "the gravity of the humanitarian situation of the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated." UNICEF뭩 Carol Bellamy, at the time her landmark report was released, said, "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war." The former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, travels around the world calling the policy he once enforced "genocide." His replacement, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned in protest of the U.N.뭩 "criminal policy."

I'm not sure why this was posted, but thanks. Nice to be validated. Hundreds of thousands. Yup. This is not a simple situation in terms of actual effects, determining exact causes or assessing blame. There will never be definitive answers to these things. What we can realize is that the taking of massive numbers of innocent lives is simply not justified. There are other ways.

Sometimes the lesser of two evils MUST be tolerated when the greater evil is so many innocent lives, the loss of freedoms in our own country (speaking as an American), the destruction of a once-highly developed nation (at least economically and, ironically enough, socially), the unjust invasion of a sovereign nation (tell me, with all the weapons of mass destruction and the fact we have used them, the support of insurgents all over the globe for decades, why isn't the US invaded??), and the clear violation of the principles upon which the US was founded and its constitution....

The first Gulf War was just. It was to liberate Kuwait (for which there is evidence there is US culpability in the first place). The sanctions were designed to drive Hussein out of power... by starving the populace... That was not justified. The irony is endless: we invaded to find weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist and of which we have more than any other nation on Earth; we invaded to destroy a fictional power base for Al Queda and have fomented a massive increase in the numbers of terrorists and created a mass insurgency in Iraq and world-wide (How can THEY be called the insurgency in Iraq?? There must be some other term more appropriate for Iraqi's fighting for their independence from foreign powers - regardless of the justifications on either side - despite the presence of foreign fighters.); and will end up with an Iraqi Islamic government that restricts the rights of women in a nation that was formerly secular and the most advanced for women in the Isslamic world.

Yeah, it was a GREAT idea to invade Iraq. But the real question is, even if you like the results (as disturbing as that would be), how can anyone be ambivalent about it being done with lies and in unconstitutional fashion?

A slippery slope indeed.

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 10:35 am Post subject:

EFLtrainer wrote:

mithridates wrote:

The most 'official' number is around 25000, and also the most credible number to use, especially when talking to someone who agrees with the war in the first place.

Credible till the *whacky* numbers from world-renowned organizations start posting theirs.... as in the post I made below.

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Citing collateral damage may or may not be correct, but over here it will just lead people to dismiss you which takes away from the point of discussing things here in the first place.

That's one of the saddest, and most telling, statements I've heard or read in a very long time.

I've often wondered what the debates here would be like if people couldn't see the left part of their screens - IOW who's posting. You'll notice that Bobster and Joo go at each other like rabid swamp rats for the slightest of slipups, things that would get looked over were it another poster.

The other most often used tactic here is the slander-by-something-completely-unrelated tactic, which is "sure you refer to a study that says x but I see that in your blog you support left-wing nut y / neocon z, so I choose not to believe it."

Confused

At least the discussions on space always work out well.

bucheon bum

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 10:46 am Post subject:

well i thought EFLtrainer was just refering to the invasion, not everything from the first Gulf War until now, hence my skepticism.

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 10:54 am Post subject:

Yeah, me too.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:12 pm Post subject:

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Well tell us what the US should have done about Saddam.

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Sometimes the lesser of two evils MUST be tolerated when the greater evil is so many innocent lives, the loss of freedoms in our own country (speaking as an American), the destruction of a once-highly developed nation (at least economically and, ironically enough, socially), the unjust invasion of a sovereign nation (tell me, with all the weapons of mass destruction and the fact we have used them, the support of insurgents all over the globe for decades, why isn't the US invaded??), and the clear violation of the principles upon which the US was founded and its constitution....

Cause almost of the enemies of the US were aggressive , totalitarian regimes most of whom did't let their own citizen leave.

the US was right to fight to world War II and the cold war. The Axis powers and The Soviet Union were ought to destroy the US.

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The first Gulf War was just. It was to liberate Kuwait (for which there is evidence there is US culpability in the first place).

Prove it. Besides the US is responsible for Saddams' invasion, That is what NK said about the Korea war.

Though I don't think the US was smart enough to set up Saddam like that.

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[The sanctions were designed to drive Hussein out of power...

Maybe

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by starving the populace...

No Saddam was starving them, he should have gone along with the UN program and not sold food and black marketed.

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That was not justified.

Saddam should have given up his war.

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[ we invaded to find weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist

That is not why the US invaded though Saddam in fact did have WMDs how else did he gas the Kurds

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?

and of which we have more than any other nation on Earth

;

so what?

Better your average Joe with WMDs than Jeffery Dalhmer.

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we invaded to destroy a fictional power base for Al Queda

OK but there were links

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and have fomented a massive increase in the numbers of terrorists

70,000 trained in Al Qaida camps in the 90's.

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and created a mass insurgency in Iraq and world-wide (How can THEY be called the insurgency in Iraq??

70,000 trained in Al Qaida camps way before 9-11. the Bali bombing was before 9-11 what was the problem there?

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WThere must be some other term more appropriate for Iraqi's fighting for their independence from foreign powers - regardless of the justifications on either side - despite the presence of foreign fighters.);

the insurgents are not fight to free Iraq if they were they would not be targeting other groups or a govt far more represenative than the previous regime.

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and will end up with an Iraqi Islamic government that restricts the rights of women in a nation that was formerly secular and the most advanced for women in the Isslamic world.

Saddam's govt was nearly as bad as it gets.

though most of the most ruthless and cruel nations in the world were hostile to the US

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Behind Algeria, on a score of 110.55, come North Korea, Burma, Indonesia, Libya, Colombia, Syria, Iraq, Yugoslavia and China. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and Nigeria follow closely. The United Kingdom comes 141st; a good score on a global basis but not so admirable when compared with other rich, industrialised countries - we are seventh out of 23.

The 'loser' - the country where recorded abuse of human rights scores 0.78 - is Tuvalu.

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Taken together, we believe our categories provide a fair summary of a state's human rights record, Iraq, for example, scores only two points out of 10 on denial of women's rights because of its secular attitude towards women.

It scores 10 out of 10 on denial of majority rights because of gassing the Kurds.

A country with a wretched record of human rights abuse could score a maximum total of 190. Saddam Hussein's Iraq proves the winner of the unmodified list - which measures human rights abuses outside of their economic context - with an unadjusted score of 155.

http://www.algeria-watch.de/mrv/mrvrap/observe4.htm

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Yeah, it was a GREAT idea to invade Iraq. But the real question is, even if you like the results (as disturbing as that would be), how can anyone be ambivalent about it being done with lies and in unconstitutional fashion?

It was one of many bad options.

The president should do what he thinks is best for Natl security.

Telling the real reason for the war would make it harder for the US to acheive its goal to destroy Al Qaida.

this was the real reason for the war.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1110567/posts

EFLtrainer

Joined: 04 May 2005

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 3:30 pm Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

Quote:

...There will never be definitive answers to these things. What we can realize is that the taking of massive numbers of innocent lives is simply not justified. There are other ways.

Well tell us what the US should have done about Saddam.

I'm not sure exactly what you were getting at, but I'll give it a shot:

What it did in the first Gulf War, and then let the Iraqis run their own lives. Just as we insist the rest of the world do with us. The no-fly zone was reasonable given that genocide was taking place, but the sanctions only helped Saddam... as sanctions always do... so why use them at all? But your response didn't really seem to rspond to my statement.

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Sometimes the lesser of two evils MUST be tolerated when the greater evil is so many innocent lives... ...(tell me, with all the weapons of mass destruction and the fact we have used them, the support of insurgents all over the globe for decades, why isn't the US invaded??),...

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Cause almost of the enemies of the US were aggressive , totalitarian regimes most of whom did't let their own citizen leave.

Again, not sure what you were responding to, but again, an attempt at an answer: You seriously need to read up on the non-party line history of the US (whether Republican or Democrat) and get some perspective on the misery the US has caused by it's interventionist policies. Not only did the US essentially create the Iraqi war machine to fight Iran (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) after the US-friendly and exceedingly despotic Shah's regime was toppled, it then essentially gave a freen light to the invasion of Iraq when the US embassador indicated to Saddam that Kuwait was not high on the US interest list.

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the US was right to fight to world War II and the cold war. The Axis powers and The Soviet Union were ought to destroy the US.

What's your point? I have no beef with WWII.

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The first Gulf War was just. It was to liberate Kuwait (for which there is evidence there is US culpability in the first place).

Prove it. Besides the US is responsible for Saddams' invasion, That is what NK said about the Korea war.

See above. Read yourself. This is not a scholarly journal. If you think the US had nothing to do with building the Iraqi war machine you are either totally mis-informed or so biased it is irrelevant.

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Though I don't think the US was smart enough to set up Saddam like that.

How young are you? This is all common knowledge. Read on the history of the Iran/Iraq war. No mystery here.

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[The sanctions were designed to drive Hussein out of power...

Maybe

So they were designed to keep hi in power.... or to kill Iraqi children?? Strange answer.

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by starving the populace...

No Saddam was starving them, he should have gone along with the UN program and not sold food and black marketed.

I'll give you a nod on semantics, but only for split-second. The history of aid do despotic regimes, including Iraq pre-Kuwait, is replete with the misappropriation of the funds. Historically a very small percentage has ever made it to the intended destination.

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That was not justified.

Saddam should have given up his war.

Ummm... the sanctions were post-war.

[quote]

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[ we invaded to find weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist

That is not why the US invaded though Saddam in fact did have WMDs how else did he gas the Kurds

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HUH??!!! Then you are saying we did invade solely to toplle Saddam? Well, then, let the impeachment begin!!

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and of which we have more than any other nation on Earth

;

so what? Better your average Joe with WMDs than Jeffery Dalhmer.

I'm beginning to realize why George Bush got elected then re-elected.

Where are you from??

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we invaded to destroy a fictional power base for Al Queda

OK but there were links

No, there weren't. PERIOD. To say he had them in the past is equal to him having them AT THE TIME OF THE INVASION is ridiculous.

NK has an indisputale record of supporting terrorism, engaging in terrorism and selling weapons.... that goes back DECADES. Why are we not invading NK?

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and have fomented a massive increase in the numbers of terrorists

70,000 trained in Al Qaida camps in the 90's.

And so many more since!!!! *What* is your point?

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and created a mass insurgency in Iraq and world-wide (How can THEY be called the insurgency in Iraq??

70,000 trained in Al Qaida camps way before 9-11. the Bali bombing was before 9-11 what was the problem there?

Do you ahve no concept, despite the reports on even the conservative news sources, of the increase in Al Queda membership? Have you not read the articles about the Al Queda suspects arrested who state (90 percent of them!!!!) that they had no interest in or connection to Al Queda prior to the invasion of Iraq???? This is very recent/up-to-date news. (Note I did not say prior to the invasion of Afghanistan - even most Islamic people recognize the validity of that action.) Iraq has created a huge increase in the depth and breadth i the variety of persons who are willing to join Al Queda and similar organizations.

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the insurgents are not fight to free Iraq if they were they would not be targeting other groups or a govt far more represenative than the previous regime.

Who are you to tell them what they are fighting for? You can argue you don't agree with their reasons, but be assured they beleive they are fighting to free Iraq. When you dismiss what your enemy tells you you are liekly to make stupid decisions about how to handle them.

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and will end up with an Iraqi Islamic government that restricts the rights of women in a nation that was formerly secular and the most advanced for women in the Isslamic world.

Saddam's govt was nearly as bad as it gets.

This is getting tedious. NOT in terms of women's rights, general freedoms, etc. Saddam was obsessed with power. He held it tightly and was a mass murderer. BUT, he was not a dictator in many other respects. Iraq during his regime was the most open and progressive Islamic society in the Middle East. It was a SECULAR society in which women were able to be professionals, they were quite free to dress and live as they wished, etc. Ignorance is not bliss, it's dangerous.

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What is this score for? And when?

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This I can understand. And it reflects exactly what I stated.

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A country with a wretched record of human rights abuse could score a maximum total of 190. Saddam Hussein's Iraq proves the winner of the unmodified list - which measures human rights abuses outside of their economic context - with an unadjusted score of 155.

Who in their right mind would separate the two? And it still is exactly what I said.

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It was one of many bad options. The president should do what he thinks is best for Natl security. Telling the real reason for the war would make it harder for the US to acheive its goal to destroy Al Qaida. this was the real reason for the war.

You are not American, it would seem. As an American, what you state above is absolutely antithetical to our beliefs and system of government. If you cannot live by your beliefs, what is the point? If to keep your freedoms you must deny others their's, what are you really saying? Or, if to keep yourself safe you must give up your freedoms, what is the point?

And that, in a nutshell, is exactly the point. If in keeping oneself from harm one must give up one's freedom - or take that of another, then one has no freedom for nothing is certain. Why? Because ANYTHING can be justified in that scenario! Anything. That is not freedom, it is the tyranny of fear.

bucheon bum

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:53 pm Post subject:

EFL, your history "lesson" is taken straight from a left-wing, radical anti-war pamphlet or something. It is as original and insightful as Joo's tired message.

Let's now see the errors in your statements.

#1:

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Not only did the US essentially create the Iraqi war machine to fight Iran (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) after the US-friendly and exceedingly despotic Shah's regime was toppled, it then essentially gave a freen light to the invasion of Iraq when the US embassador indicated to Saddam that Kuwait was not high on the US interest list.

The US did not supply Iraq with weapons. Iraq's weapons were primarily from the communist countries and France I believe. The USA supplied it with intelligence when it realized Iraq might actually lose. It was surprised as everyone else when Iraq attacked Iran. So no, the US did not create the Iraqi war machine.

I should note the US did give weapons to Iran (albeit illegal and w/out the approval of Congress). Reagan's philosophy was: let them kill each other off.

As for the US Ambassador deal, it was a major f-up and misunderstanding. We didn't realize what Saddam was saying. Don't put the blame on the US for that one.

#2

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I suggest you read: "Baghdad W/out a Map." It is a travel memoir, and there is only one chapter devoted to Iraq, but it gives you an idea of how warped Iraq was in peace (it was between the Iran/Iraq war and the Gulf War). There are other good readings about life in Iraq (personal accounts mind you, not academic speculation) out there as well, but escaping me at the moment.

Saddam was a dictator in every sense. It was secular, yet Shi'ites didn't have the right to make pilgramages to Karbala and other holy sites in Iraq. Who was promoted and had power? Sunnis. It was only secular on paper. Why? Because Saddam was Sunni and felt threatened by Shi'ites. One could argue he bred today's mess by such policies, and alienating the two groups.

You want progressive arab dictorial states? Go to Tunisia and Morocco. They managed to make more progress with women then Iraq ever did and they are a lot more open. Need a closer example? Lebanon. Get a clue dude; don't buy into the anti-war crap about how liberal saddam was when it came to womens' rights. Only compared to places like Saudi and Afghanistan was he that way.

And finally, debating Joo is fruitless; just ask Bob. Wink

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:57 pm Post subject:

Quote:

it then essentially gave a freen light to the invasion of Iraq when the US embassador indicated to Saddam that Kuwait was not high on the US interest list.

When April (Glaspie?) did that, it was undoubtedly a blunder--unless she was saying what she'd been ordered to say. Whatever the case, it is not reasonable to shift the blame for the invasion and occupation of Kuwait onto the US.

Saddam had his army. He had his ambitions of seizing Kuwait. Saddam was responsibile for his actions. He was as obligated as anyone else to respect international borders, whether the US was there to protect those borders or not.

To do otherwise is like holding the police accountable for any murders committed by the bad guys.

bucheon bum

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:58 pm Post subject:

Thank you for elaborting there for me Ya-Ta Boy. My thoughts exactly.

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