I'm ... stunned.
Oct. 29th, 2004 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsidheSo, while the Allies have killed somewhere around 100,000 people in Iraq in a little over a year and a half (and that doesn't count the preventable deaths attributable directly to the ten years of sanctions, by the way), Saddam killed more than 400,000 in his ... what, 20 years of power? 30?
Ha! Our moral superiority (as measured in bodycount) is once again vindicated!
We are measurably less Evil than Saddam! Take that you pinko anti-war traitors!
Just don't ask about comparisons of deaths per annum. This is for the Iraqis' own good, after all. Just like Vietnam.
Ha! Our moral superiority (as measured in bodycount) is once again vindicated!
We are measurably less Evil than Saddam! Take that you pinko anti-war traitors!
Just don't ask about comparisons of deaths per annum. This is for the Iraqis' own good, after all. Just like Vietnam.
Re: Could
Date: 2004-10-29 10:56 pm (UTC)Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths from war and sanctions run as low as 114,000. Not all of them can be attributed to the Coalition. (Remember, the sanctions were to force Saddam to actually implement the terms of the truce which concluded the 1991 war). So it is not clear that the Coalition is responsible for more Iraqi civilian deaths than Saddam.
Re: Could (2)
Date: 2004-10-29 10:59 pm (UTC)Re: Could (2)
Date: 2004-10-30 04:19 pm (UTC)The Coalition has no moral high ground, and no right to claim it.
What Senator Hill said was not to question the figures, even by questioning the order of magnitude, his response was [paraphrased a little] 'We're not as bad as Saddam (singing) We're Not As Bad As Saddaaaaaam!'
However, munitions and equipment is obsessivly counted, inventoried and recorded. That the explicitly stated policy was (and is) not to keep any records of Iraqi deaths,
not evenespecially women and children (bombed in their own homes) means that Dead Iraqi Children are counted as less valuable than bullets. That's at the far end of callous. I leave it to others to go so far as to call it 'evil'.Unless, somehow, the unnoticed deaths of (literally) uncounted thousands of innocent men, women and children is somehow a good thing.
Re: Could (2)
Date: 2004-10-31 01:27 am (UTC)Re: Could (2)
Date: 2004-10-31 02:19 am (UTC)When the siege at Falluja ends, when the current (ongoing as I type) attack on Sadr City is over with, when the US stops its free-fire policy in the 'Triangle of Death', when houses and restaurants are searched before, or instead of being bombed into oblivion, then I might grant you your point. Until that magical day, innocent civilian Iraqis are in just as much danger from the US troops as they are from 'Insurgents'. More so, because they have less warning, and not even staying in their homes is defence.
Re: Could (2)
Date: 2004-10-31 02:36 pm (UTC)Also, the actual Iraqi civilian death toll, as measured by the anti-war Iraqi body count site is simply nowhere near high enough for the tactics you describe being used.
Re: Could (2)
Date: 2004-10-31 03:11 pm (UTC)... who don't know either. In the absence of any other information source, they pore over News reports and Military Press Releases, and go to a lot of trouble to make sure that multiple reports of a single event are as carefully accounted for as possible. This means identifying dates and locations, comparing death tolls as related by differing sources and accounting for bias.
To avoid any accusation of over-counting the toll, they have a policy that only events which are reported in more than n sources and can be verified to an event are included. This means that they must disclude many reported events, even if they are eye-witnesses. The number of deaths on Iraqi bodycount is a guesstimate based on severely lacking data, and grossly underestimates the numbers.
For example, I doubt they have any numbers at all for Fallujeh, given that the media was expelled from the city with the threat that it would become a free-fire zone, and no-one could guarantee the press's safety (read: Leave or there will be a 'horrible accident', which will be your own fault). Therefore there are next to no reliable accounts from that city.
And, for that matter, that the numbers which you have found do not in your estimation fit with the tactics I claim are used completely wipes out the evidentiary value of all those eye-witnesses to just such tactics, I suppose. Including US soldiers.
Which brings us back to the fact that the US has refused to count or record any details of how many Iraqis they kill, or to verify how many of those they kill are actually 'insurgents', and how many are women, children and infants. The fact remains that the death toll in Iraq is not known to within, I repeat, an order of magnitude. That cannot even be said for the aftermaths of Dresden or Hiroshima.
Re: Could (2)
Date: 2004-10-31 03:21 pm (UTC)Which, in a populated area, is a War Crime. The difference is, It's Us Doing It. Yay Us!
It is still a godsdamned War Crime. Firing into a crowd because there might be a murderer in it is still murder.
How is deliberately bombing a popular restaurant (because a 'terrorist' might be in it) any different? How is declaring the entire non-urban area of Iraq, and bombing without surveillance anything that moves in it (in a region, no less, where nomadic families and tribes still inhabit) any different?
What about, in the early stages of the 'war', the strafing of the columns of would-be refugees, because there might have been Ba'athists in them? How is that different from shooting up a crowd to get one man who might be there?