Posted on 08/10/2003 11:28:16 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
1) Those who continue to throw stumbling blocks in the path of our troops daily:
using civilians as human shields
military units dressed in civilian clothes
fake surrender ambushes
arming with chemical weapons
systematic rape and torture
execution and (possible) castration of POW's
forcing soldiers to fight under threat of death to their families
placing military targets in hospitals
using ambulances for military transport
suicide bombings
attacking their own population
gassing their own population
cutting off water to their own cities
vs.
possibly bombing a market by accident
Guess which draws more protest from the media, the UN and Amnesty International?
2) Or we can look at facts backed up by those who know careless words can kill, and who risk their lives for strangers:
8 Analysis of US Casualties in Iraq by Week and Month - post Baghdad Liberation Day
*** Quagmire? Nonsense! ***- 8/8/03
8 SSG Washington - 'an Army Staff Sergeant escorting convoys and chasing down bad guys in Iraq' - (who links Free Republic to his website), a.k.a. Chrome Dome: http://www.chromedomezone.com/.
8 The Real Situation in Iraq - Chief Wiggles - Blogging Straight from Iraq | 08/06/03
8 The Straight Scoop - A Seabee's First Hand Account of Life in Iraq - Defend America | Sr Chief Art Messer
8 'Screaming Eagles' Brigade Commander Praises Troop Conduct ["doing a better than great" job] - DoD | 8/08/03 | Gerry J. Gilmore
8 Last week in Iraq - a recap of our military's outstanding security efforts
The last time the Iraqi people dared rise up against their terrorist oppressors, they were gassed and murdered by the tens of thousands. The Iraqi people need to know WE are not going to abandon them this time. This administration and these troops have been working to reassure the Iraqi people from the beginning.
Even knowing the history of the Iraqi people and the difficulty of our mission, the press sows fear and dissent in Iraq daily.
Imagine if America's press took America's side? If the would be defenders of the downtrodden actually investigated the bad guys? Our press could help us find those who mass-murdered thousands - or track down one Ba'athist loyalist intent on murdering an American soldier - a soldier who's own courage and sacrifice gives reporters from every civilized nation the freedom to criticize even him. Our press could help save lives, promote freedom, tell the truth about America. They could help heal a nation. Instead, they side with the oppressors, terrorist-appeasers and those who want to weaken America on the world stage.
Look closely at the daily press reports. Remember the press before the war. Remember who and what the press chose to promote (Ritter, UN, Chirac) and defend (Galloway, Saddam Hussein, Susan Sarandon). Remember their attacks on the President, their pro-UN stance, their promotion of the ANSWER rallies - before France and Germany used the organized protests as an excuse to jump ship.
Look closely at those who want America to fail in Iraq. Look closely at the left.
The press said American troops couldn't topple Saddam and liberate Iraq without a mass-humanitarian-environmental crisis. WE DID.
No apologies followed, not even a simple thank you to those in harm's way.
The press has already succeeded in convincing much of the world that it should be a breeze to stabilize a nation brutalized and neglected for over 24 years in less than six months. Ludicrous! Has there ever been a comparable attempt to free a nation - or such a success story? The prevention of 5000 deaths a month at the hands of Saddam's regime matters, as does the freedom - messy or no - of an entire population. Find a similar effort where the liberators worked to establish stability for the people of a nation after they defeated a tyrannical ruler, and where these liberators then worked to make sure the people of the nation ruled their own country - unlike the many who sow dissent and deceive the world daily for personal power's sake.
If the wilful, selective, daily negative reporting by partisan propagandists, the daily drip, drip of defeatism by deceitful anti-Bush activists who ignore the many daily successes of our troops in Iraq, ignore the victims of rape, torture and terror - while handing their mighty pens to the rapists, torturers and terrorists - isn't a crime against humanity, what is???
The troops in Mosul get their news about Baghdad from the NY Times, CNN and The Observer, too. It absolutely effects their perception, gives false hope to their enemies - endangers their lives.
The pre-war-war-post-war "news" coverage re. Iraq has proven that this war is not simply about Saddam loyalists vs. the freedom-loving Iraqi people, it's about real Iraqi VICTIMS and US-Coalition LIBERATORS vs. VILLAINS (Saddam loyalists, terrorists,criminals) and LIARS (press, pols, ambitious tyrants).
Tales of Saddam's Brutality [lengthy, graphic] S
VOICES OF FREEDOM
Quotes from the grateful Iraqi people. Y
# of Iraqis not killed by Coalition compared to estimates
# of Iraqis not murdered by Saddam since deposed* x # of days since 1 May 03
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( )
x (birth rate per day of those saved above x # of days since 1 May 03)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( )
- # of Iraqi deaths reported by www.iraqbodycount.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# of Iraqis alive because of the compassion, competence and
love of humanity by the US-led Coalition.
* incl. # of Iraqis not dying from sanctions since they were lifted
A Calculated example for Sunday, August 10, 2003:
Minimum Maximum
48,000 3,900,000
+ 47/day x 71 days 548/day x 71 days
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( 51,337 ) ( 3,938,908 )
+ ( 34.2 per 1000 population per year x (51,337 or 3,938,908) / 365 days ) x 71 days
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( 51,678 ) ( 3,965,112 )
- 6087 7798
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
45,591 3,957,313
References:
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/Saddam_Hussein.htm
http://www.cesr.org/iraq/docs/humancosts.pdf
http://www.medact.org/tbx/docs/Medact%20Iraq%20report-spread.pdf
http://www.ippnw.org/CollateralDamage.html
http://www.geographyiq.com/countries/iz/Iraq_rankings.htm
http://www.casi.org.uk/info/undocs/internal.html
World Health Organization
(with support from UNICEF)
(WHO estimates 100,000 to 500,000 civilian casualties.)
There are several calculations estimating civilian deaths:
MedAct estimates a “range from 48,000 to 261,000 for a conventional conflict and additional deaths from postwar adverse health effects could total 200,000.”5 The World Health Organization estimates 100,000 direct and 400,000 indirect casualties and anticipates that “as many as 500,000 people could require treatment to a greater or lesser degree as a result of direct or indirect injuries.”6
Estimated Casualties
The World Health Organization is estimating 500,000 casualties distributed in the following manner:
South – 100,000
Center – 200,000
Baghdad and surrounding area – 200,000
the policies of Saddam's regimes led to an average of perhaps 200,000 Iraqis dying per year through brutal repression, slaughter by chemical weapons, government-forced poverty and so forth
http://www.deanesmay.com/archives/000840.html
I would love to sit down and figure out how many people Saddam’s regime slaughters every day. Then, we could make some sort of counter that reads “Peace with Iraq has claimed (x) lives”. The counter would include every death that can be laid at Saddam’s feet going back to the end of the Gulf war and go up daily. Let the other side A.N.S.W.E.R. for that…
Posted by Andrew Cory at February 20, 2003 09:41 PM
Dean (and Andrew),
Here are some preliminary numbers. Unfortunately, I won't have much time today to follow-up, but should over the weekend.
According to an article printed by Genocide Watch, an NGO founded in the Hague, Netherlands in May of 1999, Saddam is responsible for the deaths of roughly one million Iraqis.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/IraqkilledJanuary26.htm.
(This article was written by John F Burns, a NYT correspondent who also wrote the article that Dean linked to a few days ago.
Of those one million, 500,000 died in the war with Iran, and another 100,000 died in Gulf War I. I am inclined to exclude those for the sake of being conservative. This means that Saddam is responsible for the deaths of 400,000 purely civilian Iraqis.
Saddam Hussein has been in power since July 16, 1979. Through the writing of the article I cited above that is 8,740 days meaning that on average roughly 47 Iraqi civilians die every day Saddam Hussein is in power. You can do the math yourself, but since I have already done it that’s nearly 1,500 per month, or 17,000 per year.
In direct response to your question Andrew, Saddam is responsible for roughly 200,000 purely civilian deaths since the Gulf War (using my form of analysis).
I would like to stress that this is an EXTREMELY conservative number. I have read quite a few articles on the topic since Andrew’s post and I feel confident that most experts on the situation would agree that my numbers are a low-ball estimate.
Posted by Mike Plaiss at February 21, 2003 10:01 AM
It's been my experience over the past few years that going to the mainstream press is a waste of time. They know what they're doing.
I e-mail conservative talk show hosts, websites - bloggers - reporters, yes - and sympathetic groups: homeschoolers, Veterans, police and firefighters, church groups, family organizations - friends and neighbors, ask them to please pass on info, stand up for the troops.
A few more articles, and the WH and DOD websites both have detailed, regularly updated accounts of Saddam's atrocities:
"How Many People Has Saddam Hussein Killed?"
...Just as in Stalin's Russia, the machinery of death is mostly invisible, except for the effects it works on those brushed by it — in the loss of relatives and friends, and in the universal terror that others have of falling into the abyss. If anybody wants to know what terror looks like, its face is visible every day on every street of Iraq.
"Minders," the men who watch visiting reporters day and night, are supposedly drawn from among the regime's harder men. But even they break down, hands shaking, eyes brimming, voices desperate, when reporters ask ordinary Iraqis edgy questions about Mr. Hussein.
"You have killed me, and killed my family," one minder said after a photographer for The New York Times made unauthorized photographs of an exhibition of statues of the Iraqi dictator during a November visit to Baghdad's College of Fine Arts. In recent years, the inexorable nature of Iraq's horrors have been demonstrated by new campaigns bearing the special hallmark of Mr. Hussein. In 1999, a complaint about prison overcrowding led to an instruction from the Iraqi leader for a "prison cleansing" drive. This resulted, according to human rights groups, in hundreds, and possibly thousands, of executions....
Committee of the Missing (Saddam's victims may number eight million)
Newsweek via MSNBC.com ^ | 5/8/03 | Rod Nordland
...The Committee’s view is that Saddam Hussein’s regime slaughtered 8 million people; in a country of 25 million that’s a pretty extreme estimate. “Hitler was a minor student in the school of Saddam, and not a very good student by comparison,” Idrisi said. “Just in my small family, my cousin was in prison, my father, brother, and five or six other cousins disappeared,” he said. Saleh agreed. “No family in Iraq is without its missing. My brother, too. Still I haven’t reached his grave, but I saw the file.”
Challenging such over-the-top figures provokes annoyance among the Committee members. “How can we have 8 million? I’ll show you.” Saleh produces an armful of fat file folders. “Look at this one. Look at the file number.” It’s stamped TOP SECRET, labeled Department of General Security, Branch 45, File No. 12584. Branch 45 specialized in the banned Shiite group Al Dawa. This is a case file concerning one Satter Jaber Meslain, an investigation that lasted from 1981-1983. As the result of his confession and other investigative leads that his interrogation produced, 55 persons are implicated; all are listed here as condemned to death on one page, and then, on a paper dated hours later, confirmed “hanged by a rope until dead.” On the front of the file folio is a strip of computer stickers, the kind used to track inventory, bearing the number 507989493; they seem to be file locators. “Look how big that number is. It was indescribable what they did. There are millions of files, millions.”
He pulls out another, quite similar file, Branch 45, File No. 1055. An investigation into one person, led to 54 persons executed. And a third file, 28 executed. And a fourth, 26 executed. The floor next to his desk is stacked high with these; and that’s just this day’s work.
The doors of the villa are tightly controlled now, by guards with their AK-47s laid across a desk blocking the way. Only those on Committee business are let inside, and those whose discoveries on the walls outside have made them so distraught they need comforting. Committee members speak in hushed tones to the bereaved; it helps to know how many others have had the same experience. In his quiet, stern way, Idrisi has the same message, over and over. The files also had the names of the torturers and the executioners. They’re in code, but they hope to break that code. “We will catch them. And when we catch them, we won’t do the same thing they did to us. We will take them to court and put them on television and let the people see who they are, and what they did.”
Basil Jaber, the man whose brother had not yet grown his mustache, leaves oddly reassured. He never really expected to find his brothers alive, anyway, but at least someone is trying to do something about it. “We are not animals,” he says. “There is law. Those who did this will go to court. My brothers were only going to pray, that’s all they did.”
The guards have let a woman named Suheila Daoud come inside; she is wailing and beating the sides of her head with both fists. Only her face can be seen under the black abaya; it is wet with tears. Her neighbor is let in to try to calm her. One of her brothers had been an opposition agitator; authorities first arrested him and then came later for her other four brothers. The youngest, Muhammed, was only 12 years old, another, Ali, was 13, the rest in their 20s. She has just found their names on the wall outside, ordered hanged many years before. Late last year she saw the Iraqi minister of information, Mohammed Sayid al Sahaf, on the street, and got down on her knees in front of him. “I kissed his hand and said, ‘Please, just let me see one of my brothers, only the small one, he’s still a baby, let me come to him, please.’ And he said, ‘OK, all will get out, don’t worry.’ They lied.” Then the Americans came and she was filled with hope that her brothers would come out alive from one of the prisons, until she saw their names on the Committee’s wall lists. “I want only one thing now, to catch Saddam and bring him in front of us. Tell Mr. Bush our hearts will never rest until he is punished.” ...
You might want to check the link to 'Chrome Dome' - it's great. He leads those dangerous convoys, writes colorful tales about his exploits - and linked Free Republic to his sight. (^:
Thanks to LT Smash for directing loyal readers to both Chief and Chrome Dome.
LT Smash is coming home.
A Calculated example for Sunday, August 10, 2003: Minimum Maximum 48,000 3,900,000 + 47/day x 102 days 548/day x 102 days ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ( 52,794 ) ( 3,955,896 ) + ( 34.2 per 1000 population per year x (52,794 or 3,955,896) / 365 days ) x 102 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ( 53,298 ) ( 3,993,703 ) - 6087 7798 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 47,211 3,985,905
Thanks for the great work. That article in the Observer angered me as well. It seems to me that the greatest threat to the troops and the memory of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, is to have our support recede or the confidence in the mission eroded by unreasonable expectations and the reactions of weak kneed politicians. The press and every single Dem presidential candidate are leading the effort to make this so.
Amen. It's a major scandal.
Gen. Myers felt it necessary to say this last week:
You know the press is behaving very badly when a military leader criticizes them in public. Gen. Myers just put his neck on the block for his troops.
When I read this quote I was so furious. The press will be out for his blood, just as they went after SOD Rumsfeld when he told the watching world that the American people had sense enough to find the trustworthy news sources after the march to Baghdad. Even FoxNews attacked SOD Rumsfeld....and he was only responding to a very hurt young man who just helped win a major victory - only to discover his country's press wasn't on his side.
When the press attacks Gen. Myers, SOD Rumsfeld, Pres. Bush unfairly, and disses our military - they need to know they're attacking "we the people" - and we aren't running for election or subject to military codes of conduct.
PC insanity that parents of the troops trust anyone who intentionally incites fear, hypes negativity daily while ignoring the good works of their sons and daughters, ignoring the gratitude of the Iraqi people and the history of Saddam's brutality. I've seen it here - parents glued to the 'worst case scenario' news, refusing to listen to reports from the troops and their commanders.
Here's one reason - the major military support group is stupidly calling itself the "Worried Families Bureau" - spreading "worry" to the families throughout Britain. Perhaps a Brit visitor could phone these fearmongers and suggest they change their name to reflect the character and dignity of the military:
Our enemies couldn't come up with a better way to undermine morale...parents treating their warriors as babies, as understandable as it may be.
Bill Clinton's peacenik Oxford pals now work for the BBC, and teach journalism. A Rudyard Kipling / Shakespeare revival would help. Too bad the Brits threw out their very real and noble traditions - history of law and chivalry for Utopian PC fluff. The British troops in Basra survived BBC indoctrination and grew up to be honorable and brave defenders of the faith. Hopeful, that.
8 Orwell's Warning - The BBC is blind to its own biases - Opinion Journal ^ | 8/06/03 | MICHAEL GONZALEZ 8 Scandalous [BBC] - AEI ^ | July 28 - AEI, August 11, 2003 - NR | David Frum BBC bias blog:
* http://www.biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
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