Posted on 05/31/2006 7:44:25 AM PDT by minus_273
Living in Boston, I am used to professors making wild claims about Iraq in class, so I often keep some articles handy just to challenge them. I had the pleasure of humiliating a liberal professor/reporter at a major school in Boston yesterday.
He began the first class ( the course topic is a subject that is totally unrelated BTW) by assigning “homework” that everyone read the NY Times every day. Then proceeded to claim that the war was for no reason and that 100,000 people were “killed by Bush”. I pulled out a print out from Iraq body count which is by no means a friendly site which showed a range of 30-40k. He then sidesteps that and rambles on and mentions Kosovo which he supported. Of course Kosovo didn’t have UN authorization, when challenged on that, he justified it as a humanitarian intervention. I pull out the following stats: between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqis killed (includes Kurds) annually, 25,000 to 50,000 largest mass grave so far in iraq (southern iraq) has about 15,000 people killed
Clearly annoyed with the facts, he claims Kosovo was different. It was a good war with a reason. That was my cue to pull out the following quote from Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, "What's the use of having the world's best military when you don't get to use them?”
I add that in addition to all this, Iraq supported Islamic terrorism. This got the guy all happy until I show him a print out of this BBC (hardly a friendly site) article from before the war:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2846365.stm
Oh my, Iraq paid 35 million in the past 3 years to fund suicide bombers. And this is a press release! Hoping to have something to stand on, he asked where the bombers killed people and I reply that it was in Israel. I guess the point that he was trying to make was that these were not Americans and I should have asked if he thought an innocent person’s life was worth less if they were Jewish.
His last hope was to challenge the victim numbers I showed earlier. I don’t have a source for them since I’ve had it for a while. Can anyone point me to a site that lists it. Preferably neutral or even better, leftwing. The whole point of this is I am using leftwing news sources to discredit this guy in class.
Tell him his ponytail doesn't hide the fact that he has male pattern baldness. That oughta do it.
What school?
Well done
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20060529.aspx
Trends You Don't Hear About
May 29, 2006: There are a number of trends in Iraq that you hear little, or nothing, about in the mass media. For example;
@ The economy. GDP doubled from 2003 to 2004, and was up double digits in 2005. Inflation and unemployment have both been falling steadily. Yes, the terrorists are still at it, but in the background you will notice all those people going to work, all the new cars and all the new construction. While big companies have stayed away from Iraq, and all those nasty headlines, smaller firms have been more aggressive. Life goes on.
@ Agriculture. For thousands of years, Iraq was a food exporter. But as oil became a larger part of the economy over the past half century, agriculture declined. Now, for the first time in half a century, Iraq is exporting food. Agriculture has come back big time, mainly because many of the regulations government bureaucrats have piled on farmers for decades, have been eliminated. A farmer can now make a lot of money, growing food in the most productive agriculture land in the region.
@ Currency Exchange Rates. The Iraqi currency (the dinar) trades in a narrow range, against the dollar, that is controlled by the Iraqi Central Bank. For the last few years, the exchange range has been around 1,470 dinars to the dollar. But the dinar floats against other local currencies (like the Kuwaiti dinar and the Iranian rial), and has gotten stronger against both of those currencies. That's a big deal, as it means that the Iraqi economy is getting stronger, and people, in and out of, Iraq, have confidence in the Iraqi economy, and currency.
@ U.S. Bases Taken Over by Iraqi Troops. Since last Fall, over fifty U.S. bases have been transferred to Iraqi control. American troops are moving to larger, consolidated, bases out in the countryside. These require fewer troops to defend, and keep U.S. troops out of sight. Iraqi soldiers and police are taking care of security in many areas where American used to do it. This is why you keep hearing reports of plans to pull most American troops out of Iraq in the next 12-18 months.
@ Refugees. Before the U.S. invaded in 2003, it was believed there might be millions of refugees fleeing Iraq. Didn't happen that way. Over a million people (mostly Sunni Arabs) have fled the country, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon, linked to the growing power of the Shia dominated government, and the fear of retribution for decades of atrocities against Kurds and Shia Arabs. More surprising has been the number of refugees returning to Iraq. So far, it's over 1.2 million people, most of the them Kurds and Shia Arabs.
@ Tourism. The holiest shrines in Shia Islam are in southern Iraq, and in the last three years they have seen a growing flood of pilgrims. Over 12 million so far, and increasing as Shia Moslems kept away by Saddam's police state for decades, make long deferred trips. Some stay longer, mainly religion students. For the last three decades, Shia religious scholars and teachers have been fleeing Iraq for places like Iran. But now there are over 12,000 religion students in southern Iraq, attending hundreds of newly established schools. These pilgrims and students spend a lot of money as well, helping to feed economic growth in the south.
@ Media. Iraqi has gone from police state, to media madhouse, in three years. Under Saddam, media was tightly controlled. Since Saddam, hundreds of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations have appeared. Talk radio and investigative reporting are all the rage. The gangsters and politicians hate it but, so far, have been unable to stop or control it.
@ Health and Education. More hospitals and schools are open and operating than ever before.
Democracy. It's thriving, and contrary to popular opinion, it's not an alien concept in Iraq. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Iraq had democracy. A military dictatorship was established in 1958, in the name of progress, and that was the end of democracy. The Baath Party was going to make things so much better, as long as everyone did what they were told. Iraqis are not stupid, and there are older Iraqis who remember the old democracy. Yes, it may have been ramshackle, but compared to Saddam and all that came after 1958, democracy is a lot more popular these days.
May 28, 2006: A top aid to al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Kassim al-Ani, was captured in Baghdad by Iraqi police. Meanwhile, Iraq and Iran have agreed to coordinate their border patrols, in order to stop illegal crossings of their mutual, 1,100 kilometer long, border. The deal appears directed more at smugglers of commercial goods and illegal drugs, because there are powerful factions in the Iranian government that remain committed to supporting the establishment of a religious dictatorship in Iraq.
May 27, 2006: Al Qaeda, and Baath Party terrorists continue to carry out enough attacks to keep foreign journalists occupied, but the terror campaign is much diminished over the past year. There are still several suicide bomber attacks a week, and assassinations of government officials or tribal chiefs continues. The terrorists are still obsessed with the idea that they can foment a civil war. But most Iraqis look at the terrorists as a crime problem. More and more, terrorists are caught because of a tip from a concerned citizen (although cash rewards are also given for some types of tips.) The private militias (Shia Arab in the south, Kurdish in the north) are still attempting to take control, politically and economically, of certain areas. The militias run their protection rackets, taking a cut of whatever they can. The militias have a payroll and other expenses. The government has a hard time keep the police honest, as their is a tendency (an old Iraqi tradition) for local police commanders to go bad and become just another money grubbing bunch of gangsters.
The government is cracking down on the militias, sending in the police SWAT battalions and army units to take on the militias. This is getting people killed. In normally peaceful southern Iraq, over two hundred people died from militia related violence just last month. The two largest Shia militias in the south (the Badr and Sadr groups) are trying to establish one of themselves as a religious dictatorship in Iraq. Most Iraqis want no part of this, but radicals in the Iranian government (which is a religious dictatorship) are supplying guns, money and technical help to Badr and Sadr. This is getting people killed and is rather pointless, but that makes sense to many in the region.
not sure if this site can help you out or not.
http://icasualties.org/oif/
During the 90's, the hippies were claiming that 100,000 children were dying every year from the Clinton/UN embargo on Iraq. In reality, Saddam was building palaces while people were dying. Why wasn't he talking then? We are actually saving the lives of children because less of them are dying from the UN/Clinton embargo.
-----
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 studys 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."
http://reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml
i've left the school name vague enough to maintain my anonymity. It is one of the big schools in the area.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4525412.stm
The campaign group Iraq Body Count has been recording the number of civilians reported to have been killed during the Iraq war and subsequent military presence. On 1 May 2006 it put the total number of civilian dead at 34,830 to 38,990 and the number of police dead at 2,059.
Here is the official lefty site--show this to your prof:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
With their data here:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
And their methodology:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/background.php#methods
OT: Stat page of US and coalition casualties (I know that's not important to liberal professors):
http://iraq.pigstye.net/stats.php
That 100,000 number was the midpoint of a seriously flawed study published in The Lancet where the range of possible fatalities in Iraq ran from 12,000 to 196,000. In other words, the study was statistically worthless with that kind of error margin.
So, your prof is an adjunct professor? Is it BC?
Keep up the good work - liberals love emotions - keep at him with the FACTS!
Here! Here!
I find the best thing though in College ( school) settings is to basically stay with " One-Liners".
Just get a Great COLLECTING of not just FACTUAL One-Liners--but
"Fancy-Come-Back" too for him!
If I have time-I'll send ya some--
but MAKE THEM POLITE!! other wise YOU lose respect! and therefore Credibility!
And TAKE YOUR TIME!--remember--EVERY "Retort" or "attack" by Libbies in your life does NOT Deserve a " Come back " either!! Present CALMNESS--it helps YOU to appear IN CONTROL even though you may be just thinking of a Good Reply!
And ALWAYS HARP,"....And just WHERE Professor ? Can I "FIND" this So-Called INFORMATION you are quoting all this from???"
NEVER put them on the DEFENSE PERSONALLY--just INFORMATIONALLY if you knwo what I mean--so WHENM ( And it WILL HAPPEN!!) when they lose their TEMPER!! with you cause they KNOW you are right and they are wrong--YOU can say,
"What's the matter prof?? Too HOT for you ?? when it comes to FACTS!!
And ALWAYS !!! ALWAYS!! ALWAYS!! "SPEAK" and answer/debate for THOSE AROUND YOU!!----for THEIR BENIFIT!!
remeber--: YOU already KNOW you are Right & Smarter than They are!!
YOU want your CLASS MATES to see this!! Cause it is THEM you care about!! NOT what This Bone-Head liberal thinks!!!
And then keep your " Carry-file " of the Most IMPORTANT Facts / info with you--and COPIES to hand out--for your fellow students AFTER you've kicked your professors butt in class!--it makes YOU look more credible TOO to have these things ready and at hand to hand out!!
Looks like you REALLY have been researching this stuff!
Plus--FREE REPUBLIC is a GREAT SOURCE for Information on EVERY and ANY topic you can think of too! Just do a SEARCH here!! and you will find!
When I was in school ( when the World was young & Hungry..) I RIPPED my Liberal Profs apart just by staying calm--and NOT allowing myself or pride to be PUSHED around--and making my fellow Class members LAUGH!! ...plus...keep a small RECORDER with you too--incase YOU get Verbally Attacked!)
Darth AirBorne
THIS is a GREAT POINT TOO from above!!
".....During the 90's, the hippies were claiming that 100,000 children were dying every year from the Clinton/UN embargo on Iraq. In reality, Saddam was building palaces while people were dying. Why wasn't he talking then? We are actually saving the lives of children because less of them are dying from the UN/Clinton embargo. """
Great Sight on this one too!!
Then give him this:
Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodiestheir arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.
"We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein's regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. "Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades," said the group in a statement in May. "Many of these 'disappeared' are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq."
If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.
Thanks for the link to the BBC article. I save those for future reference too. That is the first I had heard of $35 million given to suicide bombers.
Good on you!!
I am so envious. Keep up the good work.
I find it exquisite to trash leftists with their very own words.
But, instead of making the war topic one, why not approach the subject of the big Govt foisted upon us by progressives of BOTH parties, starting with the ICC created only to protect the largest railroads against competition?
Here are some great sources that bust the myths of Progressivism ever contributing anything but larger Govt and diminished liberty. Plenty of liberty arrows here to fill your quiver with! I'll provide the apple for his head!
How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution
http://www.cato.org/realaudio/cbf-02-15-06.ram
Secrets of the Federal Reserve
http://www.barefootsworld.net/fs_m_ch_01.html
Size Matters: How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America's Families, Finances, and Freedom (And Limits the Pursuit of Happiness)
http://www.cato.org/realaudio/cbf-02-02-06.ram
The Founding of The Federal Reserve (video)
http://mises.org:88/Rothbard-Fed
The Issue of Tariffs: How U.S. Revenue Collection Was Turned Inside-Out (video)
http://mises.org:88/Sophocleus
The Great Depression, World War II, and American Prosperity, Part I (video)
http://www.mises.org/multimedia/video/Woods/Woods5.wmv
Big Business and the Rise of American Statism
http://praxeology.net/RC-BRS.htm
List the senators that voted for the war. The senators that voted for the war did so based on a constituency that was behind the President which means that 100,000 people weren't "killed by Bush" but by Americans.
Also point out that Bush could only be solely responsible if he were a dictator, so you may need to remind him of our form of government.
I pulled out a print out from Iraq body count which is by no means a friendly site which showed a range of 30-40k.
This is where I would vary the argument. When this commie bastard says that we've killed 100,000 people for nothing, I'd say, "Who's side are you on? We're the good guys. They're the bad guys. So what if we've killed 100,000. If they keep coming, we kill another 100,000 and another and another until they quit coming. Or, we could just wait for the bad guys to come kill us....again."
Of course, you could always quote The Hilderbeast and other prominent Dims.
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.