14,000 Iraqis killed so far in 2006

[STING2]

The American presence in Iraq will dissipate over the next couple of years.

US can claim success and reduce troops
The American people want the troops home and political pressure will make that happen.

Iraq is a large country, Hezbollah can operate under the radar there. There is quite a bit of support from Iraqis for them too.

The best way to end Hezboalla is for Israel to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. There is not that much more that the right wing Israelis can get. They are too greedy. It is much better to let the Palestinians have more of the West Bank.
If Israel honored the true 67 boundaries the U S and Britain could get the Europeans on board with Israel and against the Arab Extremists.

It would probably take a commitment of
a multinational force to maintain the peace for a couple of decades.

If two people were taken hostage troops could go after the abductors and hold them accountable. there would be no need for a huge show of force as a deterrent. The permanent boundaries and statehood would be established.

Israel already offered the Palestinians 95% of what they wanted back in 1999/2000 and they rejected the offer. Israel is not the side that needs to come to the negotiating table and agree to a deal, because they already have multiple times! The Palestinians have rejected every peace deal from the UN partition plan of 1948 to the latest deal offered in 2000.

 

[Angela Harlem]

How was the figure compiled though? Was it just totaling up reports from the media and various morgues, or did the UN send investigative forensic teams to verify the name, body, and cause of death for each person in the report? There are accurate statistics on the deaths of coalition forces because such a verification process is done. Without going through such a process at a minimum, such figures could be over or under estimates of the true number of deaths. One example of a gross overestimation happened in Jenin in 2002, when most reports said that the IDF had murdered 9,000 civilians in the city. Here the UN did send in an investigative team of forensics and found that only 48 civilians had been killed, and all had died as a result of accidents. Thats not to say that the above figure is that far off as was the case in Jenin, but one can see how inaccurate media reports and reports from people on the ground can be sometimes when potentially dealing with large numbers of people.

I know the media err in reporting figures. Do you question how accurate they are when they're American losses? If it were still only one fatality, would it disturb you?

 

[shart1780]

Do any of you honestly believe that the radical Muslims don't have a grudge against Israel that reaches a little deeper than land?

These people will never be completely satisfied until the Jews are dead.

 

[A_Wanderer]

They won't be satisfied until the entire planet is in submission to their God, but they have some concessions for other people of the book.

 

[shart1780]

Tru dat.

 

[dazzlingamy]

that is a terrible terrible waste of life

You just feel like....is this worth it? How many lives is this war justifiable.

I know Saddam was a disgusting horrible man, who has done horrible things in the past, and yes he shouldn't be allowed to govern over a country with fear, but part of me wonders, what would Iraq be like now if we hadn't gone on a search for imaginary weapons? If we had left Iraq well alone. Sure Saddam would still be a tyrant, but there are MANY tyrants in the world and i dont see the states rushing off to dipose them. I mean how much shit is going down in Sudan, in Asia (like Laods where there is an extermination of a race of people there) things arn't being done there, but we brought so much unrest, hatred and fanaticalism to the middle east, and its just totally blown up in our face.

What can be done?

 

[shart1780]

Well, all we can do is our best. I personally can't justify leaving a man like Saddam to terrorize all of the people under him. Of course there are other nasty leaders in this world, and they should be dealt with in due time too (I have no clue when that would be).

I just could never understand the "It's the Mid-East, it's none of our business" attitude. Those were human being nbeing ruthlessly murdered by Saddam for crying out loud. There is no excuse to just let the people be killed IMO.

Things may be sucky now, but in the long run I think it will help.

 

[dazzlingamy]

And now their getting murdered by their own kind and american soldiers.

I know that Saddam was bad, but this just seems just as bad. And the coalition made it that way. And not only that but every day more American troops are dying fighting for something that nearly the whole world is opposed too and always was. ITs just a stupid loss of life all the way round.

 

[shart1780]

Well, I'm not gonna discuss the politics of it, as that could get ugly. One thing I've always wondered, though, is how anyone could justify leaving a guy like Saddam alone with all those innovent people to terrorize. We'd be leaving the Iraqi people with no hope EVER it seems. I honestly don't think that's right. Sometimes sacrifices need to be made, I know that sounds horrible considering innocent people unwillingly lost their lives, but sometimes there just isn't any alternative.

 

[A_Wanderer]

If the course of action didn't yield benefits and did significantly more harm and left more risk than inaction it could be justified leaving Saddam in power, even with what has gone on in Iraq following Saddams fall I don't think that was or is the case.

 

[shart1780]

I see no reason to believe things would have been better had we let Saddam stay in power.

I think some people are so turned off by the site of death that they lose site of the purpose of certain wars (wars meant for greater good). They can't see past innocents dying (which of course IS tragic).

 

[dazzlingamy]

Wars are not meant for the greater good! IF Saddam was so bad why didn't they infiltrate his palace and his guards and kill the bastard. That way he is dead, and no one knows who did it, therefore someone else will move into his place.

But no thats wrong, its wrong to kill someone, which I why im not sure it is justifiable to have probably now alost a hundred thousand IRaq civilians dead because we a 'a duty to do'

Whats that saying? Fighting for peace is like f*cking for virginity? And thats what it is.

 

[fly so high!]

Horrible but nothing compared to the stated 10 million Americans that they are targeting.

Which city of ours will we lose before we wake up to what we're dealing with here?

D.C.? Los Angeles? New York?

That is a really,really silly comment...........is this just an American issue is it?

 

[Westport]

That is a really,really silly comment...........is this just an American issue is it?

Of Course not...but this comment refers to these:

From “A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels” ( a religious fatwa that Osama bin Laden secured from Shaykh Nasir bin Hamd al-Fahd a young and prominent Saudi cleric justifying the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against Americans:

Anyone who considers America’s aggressions against Muslims and their lands during the past decades will conclude that striking her is permissible on the basis of the rule of treating one as one has been treated. No other argument need be mentioned. Some brothers have totaled the number of Muslims killed directly or indirectly by their weapons and come up with a figure of nearly ten million....If a bomb that killed ten million of them and burned as much of their land as they have burned Muslim land was dropped on them, it would be permissible, with no need to mention any other argument. We might need other arguments if we wanted to annihilate more than this number of them.


From Ayman Al-Zawahir: “We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill four million Americans—two million of them children—and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the [Americans’] chemical and biological weapons.”


Believe it or not....most of the world is sleeping.

 

[Westport]

Wars are not meant for the greater good! IF Saddam was so bad why didn't they infiltrate his palace and his guards and kill the bastard. That way he is dead, and no one knows who did it, therefore someone else will move into his place.

But no thats wrong, its wrong to kill someone, which I why im not sure it is justifiable to have probably now alost a hundred thousand IRaq civilians dead because we a 'a duty to do'

Whats that saying? Fighting for peace is like f*cking for virginity? And thats what it is.

The threat is an ideological wing of Islam that is irreconcilable to modern civilization as we know it throughout most of the world. We are facing a long struggle with this irreconcilable wing of Islam. Their goal is world chaos and then domination. A the moment they are succeeding.

I would love to hear your peace game plan to get them to change their religious beliefs.

Unfortunately, no one cares about what the U.N. has to say about anything. Support (not militarily) from Russia and China would help.


In the meantime the past seven weeks:

An Iran-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas terrorist alliance is waging war against Israel in both southern Lebanon and Gaza. Hezbollah has launched more than 1,000 rockets into northern Israel in the past few days alone.


Seven bombings in Mumbai, India, killed more than 200 people.


North Korea, which is in public contact with Iran, launched seven missiles, including an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the West coast of the continental United States, Australia, Japan, China, Russia...in deliberate contempt of repeated warnings from the American and Japanese governments and the United Nations Security Council.


Seven Americans were seen on video tape in Miami pledging allegiance to al Qaeda.


A plot to bomb New York City subways and tunnels was discovered.


Eighteen Canadians, plotting terror, were arrested with twice the explosive force used in the Oklahoma City bombing and a plan to blow up the Canadian parliament.


The British government reported that it has uncovered more than 20 "major conspiracies" by Islamic terrorists, and as many as 1,200 potential terrorists now live in the United Kingdom.

This is only a recent list. It is in addition to the deadly bombings we witness on an almost daily basis in Baghdad, and previous attacks in New York, Washington, London, Madrid, Bali, Beslan, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Sharm-el-Sheikh, New Delhi, Amman and many other cities.


Just wait until they have their hands on some other more dangerous technology.

 

[Irvine511]

If the course of action didn't yield benefits and did significantly more harm and left more risk than inaction it could be justified leaving Saddam in power, even with what has gone on in Iraq following Saddams fall I don't think that was or is the case.

i think this sets up a false dichotomy:

Saddam stays in power vs. saddam had to be removed in March of 2003 by the US and the UK without a UN resolution authorizing the use of force.

i support the removal of Saddam. i did not support the actions taken by the US and the UK in 2002/3 that lead to the illegal invasion of Iraq. it was the manner in which the invasion took place, combined with an underestimation of the potential insurgency, a foolishly optimistic reading of the Iraqi people (greet us with like the Dutch in 1944 and all that), intentionally bad evidence engineered to frighten the American population, a total lack of post-war plan, and a complete disregard for the history of the region.

the amount of evidence we have that details just how egregriously unprepared and willfully delusional the Bush administration has been makes it impossible to brush the past 3 years of carnage aside as "stuff happens."

 

[Irvine511]

How was the figure compiled though? Was it just totaling up reports from the media and various morgues, or did the UN send investigative forensic teams to verify the name, body, and cause of death for each person in the report? There are accurate statistics on the deaths of coalition forces because such a verification process is done. Without going through such a process at a minimum, such figures could be over or under estimates of the true number of deaths.

[q]BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 19 — An average of more than 100 civilians a day were killed in Iraq last month, the United Nations reported Tuesday, registering what appears to be the highest official monthly tally of violent deaths since the fall of Baghdad.

Iraqis mourned one of the 53 killed Tuesday when a car bomb exploded in Kufa, a town in the south that is the site of a major Shiite shrine.

The death toll, drawn from Iraqi government agencies, was the most precise measurement of civilian deaths provided by any government organization since the invasion. It represented a substantial increase over the figures in daily news media reports.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/w...&en=8e72e6c3febeb03a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[/q]

 

[STING2]

[q]BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 19 — An average of more than 100 civilians a day were killed in Iraq last month, the United Nations reported Tuesday, registering what appears to be the highest official monthly tally of violent deaths since the fall of Baghdad.

Iraqis mourned one of the 53 killed Tuesday when a car bomb exploded in Kufa, a town in the south that is the site of a major Shiite shrine.

The death toll, drawn from Iraqi government agencies, was the most precise measurement of civilian deaths provided by any government organization since the invasion. It represented a substantial increase over the figures in daily news media reports.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/w...&en=8e72e6c3febeb03a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[/q]

This shows the UN is simply using information provided by the Iraqi Ministry Of Health and the Baghdad Morgue. Its not specified exactly what type of investigative procedure those two organizations do to accurately identify and determine cause of death for the people that have died at the Hospital or have been placed at the morgue. Iraq is a country of 25 million people, and not everyone that is killed is killed because of sectarian violence or violence related to the occupation. Even if the figures are accurate, how long have the two organizations been providing such accurate figures? The increase in the number of deaths could be the result of a more accurate and complete accounting of all deaths than had been done previous to this time period.

 

[verte76]

What the fundamentalists actually want is a return of the caliphate, which was abolished by Ataturk in 1924 to make the new Republic of Turkey a secular state. Also the caliph was supporting the disgraced Sultan, the sultanate had been abolished in 1922. The fundamentalists don't like Turkey because it is secular. They want the Islamic world unified under a caliph, a religious ruler, just as it was in the beginning after Mohammed died (the word caliph comes from an Arabic word meaning "successor", the leaders after Mohammed were considered his successors as leaders of the Islamic community). They don't accept the separation of, let's say mosque and state. The mosque is the state to them.

 

[A_Wanderer]

They don't accept the separation of, let's say mosque and state. The mosque is the state to them.

And that is Islam and it is bloody dangerous, religions are viral memes.

 

[shart1780]

Islam seems to be the only truly violent and dangerous religion in this world right now.

 

[A_Wanderer]

No, there are more than enough examples all around, you believe in the same fundamental untruth.

 

[Judah]

Islam seems to be the only truly violent and dangerous religion in this world right now.

*sigh*

Do you mean Islamists? Islamic militants? Or do you want to stay with your blanket statement above?

 

[shart1780]

Militants.

 

[Angela Harlem]

"... Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the [Americans’] chemical and biological weapons.”

................

I would love to hear your peace game plan to get them to change their religious beliefs.