Perspective on Civilian deaths in Iraq

"People in Tokyo have been marking the 60th anniversary of a massive US night-time bombing raid which destroyed much of the city in 1945.
Several memorial services have been held across the city to remember the more than 100,000 people who died.

The raid was part of an American strategy to try to wear down Japanese morale ahead of a possible invasion.

It has remained controversial because of the death toll, but a ceremony expressed little anger towards the US.

At 1000, Buddhist monks began the mournful service of remembrance in a special memorial hall built in Tokyo's Sumida-ku Ward, which was in the centre of the firestorm caused by the US bombing raid 60 years ago.

The low-key service was attended by Prince Akishino, second son of the current emperor, and grandson of Emperor Hirohito who led Japan into the Second World War.

More than 2,000 mainly elderly residents also crowded into the hall, laying bouquets of flowers and lighting incense.

Restrained speeches

Many still have vivid memories of the B-29 bombers flying low overhead dropping the incendiary bombs which turned the neighbourhood into an inferno.

They recall hellish scenes of people being incinerated as they tried to run, or dying when they threw themselves into the boiling River Sumida.

feeds.bignewsnetwork.com...

100,000 deaths in just one nights bombing, and this was before the nukes. This is offered as "perspective" on modern war.

I fail to see exactly what perspectives you are trying to put across.

Iraq is a modern war with sophisticated weaponry as appose to the "hit or miss" weaponry of WW2.

No comparison.

Yes let's all be happy that just 100000 people has been killed. Fantastic

Originally posted by The Todd
Yes let's all be happy that just 100000 people has been killed. Fantastic

Who says they are happy?

Im guessing, can only guess, the point here is that just one attack in WWII could leave many tens of thousands dead. Where a modern day war thats been going on for well over a year has simular numbers.

I cant say I am happy about either stat, but it is telling.

Sorry, my bad... I got all mixed up

WWII was a war fought by the WORLD, against a fascist regime bent on world domination.


Iraq was an illegal invasion, fought by Bush's pro-fascist regime against a 3rd World country with NO Air Force, a ragtag collection of Armed Forces, and unsanctioned by about 80% of the rest of the free world.

They recall hellish scenes of people being incinerated as they tried to run, or dying when they threw themselves into the boiling River Sumida.

I'm sure there are Iraqis who witnessed this same exact thing, though, just with a different river.

Murder is murder, to try and put it into historical context with WWII is wrong.

So the US military doesn't indiscriminately kill as many civilians as before. What they did in one night, they now do over a period of 2 years, and with almost total media silence.


jako

Originally posted by DrHoracid
100,000 deaths in just one nights bombing, and this was before the nukes. This is offered as "perspective" on modern war.

Wow! This sure does put things in perspective! This makes all the Iraqi civilian deaths OK!
Golly, we might as well start killing more civilians!
As long as we kill less than 100,000 no one will really care or notice anyway, right?

Yay for civilian deaths! Yay!

sheesh. this post is 100% sarcastic - just in case anyone is too dumb to notice.

[edit on 10-3-2005 by negativenihil]

[edit on 10-3-2005 by negativenihil]

The Iraq invasion was one of, if not the most needless battles in history. Everybody who has died in this fight, especially the Iraqis, died without any reason other than western greed.

Why are neocons so quick to slip in comparisons between Iraq and WW2, but when someone else slips in a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam the neocons get their panties in a twist?

DrHoracid do you work for the government by any chance? Your not Barbara Bush who said body bags were irrelavant are you?

100,000 civilians have died in Iraq? How do you define civilian? And more important what is your source, and how do you know they werent combatant?

The only civilian in my mind is one who is under the age of 16.

If your older then that you are 1) fighting your own people to curb resistance so the war can end 2) fighting the us. If my neghborhood/country was bombed/invaded you be damn sure I would be out doing 'something' and not going about my civilian life.

So I dont think we have killed 100.000 Iraqi kids.

Typical Dr Horacid post.

Originally posted by Ritual
100,000 civilians have died in Iraq? How do you define civilian? And more important what is your source, and how do you know they werent combatant?

The only civilian in my mind is one who is under the age of 16.

If your older then that you are 1) fighting your own people to curb resistance so the war can end 2) fighting the us. If my neghborhood/country was bombed/invaded you be damn sure I would be out doing 'something' and not going about my civilian life.

So I dont think we have killed 100.000 Iraqi kids.

Typical Dr Horacid post.

I don't know if you would be all that militant in that country with an army around you blowing everything up in sight, it is easy to say that but quite another to actually do it although reports are that we are creating terrorists by being there. Here is one report on the number of the dead. I've included a small excerpt of the article.
www.sfgate.com.../chronicle/archive/2004/10/29/MNG729ILL11.DTL

Washington -- One of the first attempts to independently estimate the loss of civilian life from the Iraqi war has concluded that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the U.S. invasion.

The analysis, an extrapolation based on a relatively small number of actual documented deaths, indicated that many of the deaths have occurred due to aerial attacks by coalition forces, with women and children being frequent victims, wrote the international team of public health researchers who made the calculations.

True but what good is a guerilla war going to do besides keep the US Military in "war mode". If they had organized themselves to stop resistance and gone along with the elections smoothly and had "country pride" about it, the sooner the US would go away I would imagine. And if not go away, at least operate in the background and not have to have such a presence or aggresive nature.

Not sure what our goal is now, I think it is FUBAR now. They are I guess going to have to deal with us for the forseeable future. There needs to be a new generation because this one is not going to do anything to run a respectable country and have compassion for its people and the world.

Originally posted by Frith
The Iraq invasion was one of, if not the most needless battles in history. Everybody who has died in this fight, especially the Iraqis, died without any reason other than western greed.

Needless?

I. The Criminal Record of the Regime of Saddam Hussein

Let me turn to my first main point, the need to address the criminal
record of Saddam Hussein and his top associates for their crimes
against the peoples of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and other countries. To the
United States Government, it is beyond any possible doubt that Saddam
Hussein and the top leadership around him have brutally and
systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for
years, are committing them now, and will continue committing them
until the international community finally says enough -- or until the
forces of change in Iraq prevail against his regime as, ultimately,
they must.

This may seem self-evident to all of you here today. Interestingly, in
my discussions of this issue I have found some people who will agree
that Saddam Hussein is a criminal, but who are genuinely unaware of
the magnitude of his criminal conduct. Those who want to gloss over
Saddam's criminal record often want to gloss over the need for him to
be brought to justice. This goes to the very heart of why his conduct
deserves an international response, so I find it useful to review what
we now know of the criminal record of Saddam Hussein and his top
associates.

1. The Iran-Iraq War. During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein and his
forces used chemical weapons against Iran. According to official
Iranian sources, which we consider credible, approximately 5,000
Iranians were killed by chemical weapons between 1983 and 1988. The
use of chemical weapons has been a war crime since the 1925 Chemical
Weapons treaty, to which Iraq is a party. Also during the Iran-Iraq
War, there are credible reports that Iraqi forces killed several
thousand Iranian prisoners of war, which is also a war crime as well
as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which Iraq is
a party. Other war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by
Saddam Hussein and the top leaders around him against Iran and the
Iranian people also deserve international investigation.

2. Halabja. In mid-March of 1988, Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali
Hassan alMajid -- the infamous "Chemical Ali" -- ordered the dropping
of chemical weapons on the town of Halabja in northeastern Iraq. This
killed an estimated 5,000 civilians, and is a war crime and a crime
against humanity. Photographic and videotape evidence of this attack
and its aftermath exists. Some of this is available to scholars and
God willing -- to prosecutors through the efforts of the International
Monitor Institute in Los Angeles, California. More visual evidence is
available from Iranian cameramen, who collected their images of the
victims of this brutal attack -- most of whom were women and children
-- in a book published in Tehran. The best evidence of all is from the
survivors in Halabja itself.

I am proud to say that the United States has been working with groups
such as the Washington Kurdish Institute and scientists like Dr.
Christine Gosden to document the suffering of the people of Halabja
and -- just as importantly -- to find ways to help the people of
Halabja treat the victims and bring hope to the living. Working with
local authorities, we are looking for ways to help investigators,
doctors and scientists document this crime and plan the help that the
survivors need and deserve. We know they will not get that help from
Saddam Hussein. As one example, to help war crimes investigators, the
U.S. Government is today announcing the declassification of overhead
imagery products of Halabia taken in March 1988, the best image we
have that was taken a little more than a week after the attack. We
hope this will serve as a photo-map to enable witnesses to describe to
investigators, doctors and scientists what they were during those
terrible days of the Iraqi chemical attack and its aftermath.

3. The Anfal campaigns. Beginning in 1987 and accelerating in early
1988, Saddam Hussein ordered the "Anfal" campaign against the Iraqi
Kurdish people. By any measure, this constituted a crime against
humanity and a war crime. Chemical Ali has admitted to witnesses that
he carried out this campaign "under orders." In 1995, Human Rights
Watch published a compilation of their reports in the book Iraq's
Crime of Genocide, which is now out of print. Human Rights Watch needs
to reprint this book. Human Rights Watch estimated that between 50,000
and 100,000 Kurds were killed. Based on their review of captured Iraqi
documents, interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses, and on-site
forensic investigations, they concluded that the Anfal campaign was
genocide. I challenge anyone to read the evidence cited in Iraq's
Crime of Genocide and come to any different conclusion.

4. The invasion and occupation of Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, Saddam
Hussein ordered his forces to invade and occupy Kuwait. It took
military force by the international community and actions by the
Kuwaiti themselves to liberate Kuwait in February 1991. During the
occupation, Saddam Hussein's forces killed more than a thousand
Kuwaiti nationals, as well as many others from other nations. Evidence
of many of these killings is on file with authorities in Kuwait and at
the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva. Saddam Hussein's
forces committed many other crimes in Kuwait, including environmental
crimes such as the destruction of oil wells in Kuwait's oil fields,
massive looting of Kuwaiti property -- Saddam's son Uday appears to
have treated Kuwait as his personal used car lot. As well, Saddam
Hussein's government held hostages from many nations in an effort to
coerce their governments into pro-Iraqi policies. During the war,
Iraqi authorities also committed war crimes against Coalition forces.
War crimes against American service members were detailed in a report
to Congress and in an article by Lee Haworth and Jim Hergen in Society
magazine back in January 1994.

5. The suppression of the 1991 uprising. In March and April of 1991,
Saddam Hussein's forces killed somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000
Iraqis, most of them civilians. The story of the uprising of the Iraqi
people is one of courage and hope for the people of Iraq and has been
told by men such as former Iraqi General Najib al-Salihi in his book
Al-Zilzal, "The Earthquake," The story of the uprising that started in
the south, a part of the country traditionally neglected and deprived
by Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad, deserves to be better known
outside of Iraq. Most of those killed were civilians, not resistance
fighters -- a distinction that Saddam Hussein did not respect in 1991
any more than he has before or since. This qualifies as a crime
against humanity and possibly also a war crime.


6. The draining of the southern marshes. Beginning in the early
1990's, and continuing to this day, Saddam Hussein's government has
drained the southern marshes of Iraq, depriving thousands of Iraqis of
their livelihood and their ability to live on land that their
ancestors have lived on for thousands of years. This is clearly not a
land reclamation project, or a border security project, as some of
Saddam's defenders have claimed. Instead, as groups such as the Amar
Foundation have begun to document, Saddam's efforts have served to
render the land less fertile, and less able to sustain the livelihood
or security of the Iraqi people. This qualifies as a crime against
humanity and may possibly constitute genocide.


7. Ethnic cleansing of ethnic "Persians" from Iraq to Iran, and an
ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the non-Arabs of Kirkuk and
other northern districts. This ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing
was documented by the former U.N. Special Human Rights Rapporteur for
Iraq, Max van der Stoel in his reports in 1999.


8. Continuing unlawful killings of political opponents. Many groups
have documented Saddam Hussein's ongoing campaign against political
opponents, including killings, tortures, and -- lately -- rape. As
some of you may know, the regime has been using sexual assaults of
women in an effort to intimidate leaders of the Iraqi opposition. We
salute the courage of opposition leaders such as General Najib
al-Salihi for speaking out about this crime. The regime is also
carrying out a systematic campaign of murder and intimidation of
clergy, especially Shi'a clergy. The number of those killed unlawfully
is difficult to estimate but must be well in excess of 10,000 since
Saddam Hussein officially seized power in 1980. The number of victims
of torture no doubt well exceeds the number of those killed.

This is the "sanitized" version, the specifics of the horrific acts of Saddam aren't fit to print.

The entire point all of you Saddam lovers can't make here is that between WWII and GW-II military technology has dramatically reduced "colateral" Damage, WHY? Because the EVIL warmongers really don't want to kill civilians. The world has spent trillions to save civilian lives in battles.

It is still amazing that ALL of you anti-Iraq war poor Saddam lovers would put such a "butcher" back in power. Liberalism is a mental disease........

Get a perspective on civilian deaths, the last time the US totally screwed up a war they killed 3 million civillians in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Your just doing a half arsed job now

Originally posted by Uncle Joe
Get a perspective on civilian deaths, the last time the US totally screwed up a war they killed 3 million civillians in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Your just doing a half arsed job now

So you are in favor of carpet bombing Syria? Nice idea, I'll ask Rummy to start at noon today..........

Originally posted by DrHoracid
This is the "sanitized" version, the specifics of the horrific acts of Saddam aren't fit to print.

Oh c'mon. Print away!

It is still amazing that ALL of you anti-Iraq war poor Saddam lovers would put such a "butcher" back in power. Liberalism is a mental disease........

*yawn* more fo the same from you yet again...

no one here loves Saddam. no one here wants him back in power. you're pulling that out of your ass and you know it.

And now being a liberal is a disease? wow.
"Think like me, or you're insane!"

sigh.

>Iraq is a modern war with sophisticated weaponry as appose to the "hit or miss" weaponry of WW2.

>No comparison

Maybe iyo, but to me much of it seems like such a waste of civilian life.

Dr Horacid:

I. The Criminal Record of the Regime of Saddam Hussein

Let me turn to my first main point, the need to address the criminal
record of Saddam Hussein and his top associates for their crimes
against the peoples of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and other countries. To the
United States Government, it is beyond any possible doubt that Saddam
Hussein and the top leadership around him have brutally and
systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for
years, are committing them now, and will continue committing them
until the international community finally says enough -- or until the
forces of change in Iraq prevail against his regime as, ultimately,
they must.

The United States of America SUBSIDIZED Saddam Hussein for all these yeras, and even had a part in getting him into power? How did you not know this?

1. The Iran-Iraq War. During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein and his
forces used chemical weapons against Iran. According to official
Iranian sources, which we consider credible, approximately 5,000
Iranians were killed by chemical weapons between 1983 and 1988. The
use of chemical weapons has been a war crime since the 1925 Chemical
Weapons treaty, to which Iraq is a party. Also during the Iran-Iraq
War, there are credible reports that Iraqi forces killed several
thousand Iranian prisoners of war, which is also a war crime as well
as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which Iraq is
a party. Other war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by
Saddam Hussein and the top leaders around him against Iran and the
Iranian people also deserve international investigation.

Again, the United States had strong diplomatic ties with Iraq during this time, far more than they did with Iran... They sold weapons to both sides and reaped the benefits.

2. Halabja. In mid-March of 1988, Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali
Hassan alMajid -- the infamous "Chemical Ali" -- ordered the dropping
of chemical weapons on the town of Halabja in northeastern Iraq. This
killed an estimated 5,000 civilians, and is a war crime and a crime
against humanity. Photographic and videotape evidence of this attack
and its aftermath exists. Some of this is available to scholars and
God willing -- to prosecutors through the efforts of the International
Monitor Institute in Los Angeles, California. More visual evidence is
available from Iranian cameramen, who collected their images of the
victims of this brutal attack -- most of whom were women and children
-- in a book published in Tehran. The best evidence of all is from the
survivors in Halabja itself.

So almost 20 YEARS later something needs to be done? What a crock. What about Sudan? What about Pol Pot in Cambodia? Pinochet in Chile? Please explain what makes Saddam so much more evil than all these despots.

3. The Anfal campaigns. Beginning in 1987 and accelerating in early
1988, Saddam Hussein ordered the "Anfal" campaign against the Iraqi
Kurdish people. By any measure, this constituted a crime against
humanity and a war crime. Chemical Ali has admitted to witnesses that
he carried out this campaign "under orders." In 1995, Human Rights
Watch published a compilation of their reports in the book Iraq's
Crime of Genocide, which is now out of print. Human Rights Watch needs
to reprint this book. Human Rights Watch estimated that between 50,000
and 100,000 Kurds were killed. Based on their review of captured Iraqi
documents, interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses, and on-site
forensic investigations, they concluded that the Anfal campaign was
genocide. I challenge anyone to read the evidence cited in Iraq's
Crime of Genocide and come to any different conclusion.

Again, something that happened almost 20 years ago and is trotted out now for a silly, infantile reason to invade Iraq after the fact. A pathetic attempt at justifying the unjustifiable.

4. The invasion and occupation of Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, Saddam
Hussein ordered his forces to invade and occupy Kuwait. It took
military force by the international community and actions by the
Kuwaiti themselves to liberate Kuwait in February 1991. During the
occupation, Saddam Hussein's forces killed more than a thousand
Kuwaiti nationals, as well as many others from other nations. Evidence
of many of these killings is on file with authorities in Kuwait and at
the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva. Saddam Hussein's
forces committed many other crimes in Kuwait, including environmental
crimes such as the destruction of oil wells in Kuwait's oil fields,
massive looting of Kuwaiti property -- Saddam's son Uday appears to
have treated Kuwait as his personal used car lot. As well, Saddam
Hussein's government held hostages from many nations in an effort to
coerce their governments into pro-Iraqi policies. During the war,
Iraqi authorities also committed war crimes against Coalition forces.
War crimes against American service members were detailed in a report
to Congress and in an article by Lee Haworth and Jim Hergen in Society
magazine back in January 1994.

The US gave Saddam the okay to invade Kuwait then pulled back afterwards.

5. The suppression of the 1991 uprising. In March and April of 1991,
Saddam Hussein's forces killed somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000
Iraqis, most of them civilians. The story of the uprising of the Iraqi
people is one of courage and hope for the people of Iraq and has been
told by men such as former Iraqi General Najib al-Salihi in his book
Al-Zilzal, "The Earthquake," The story of the uprising that started in
the south, a part of the country traditionally neglected and deprived
by Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad, deserves to be better known
outside of Iraq. Most of those killed were civilians, not resistance
fighters -- a distinction that Saddam Hussein did not respect in 1991
any more than he has before or since. This qualifies as a crime
against humanity and possibly also a war crime.

The United States ALLOWED Saddam the use of helicopter gunships to quell the uprising, so your own country is complicit in the slaughter.

6. The draining of the southern marshes. Beginning in the early
1990's, and continuing to this day, Saddam Hussein's government has
drained the southern marshes of Iraq, depriving thousands of Iraqis of
their livelihood and their ability to live on land that their
ancestors have lived on for thousands of years. This is clearly not a
land reclamation project, or a border security project, as some of
Saddam's defenders have claimed. Instead, as groups such as the Amar
Foundation have begun to document, Saddam's efforts have served to
render the land less fertile, and less able to sustain the livelihood
or security of the Iraqi people. This qualifies as a crime against
humanity and may possibly constitute genocide.

Hey, get your country to sign the Kyoto Protocols and maybe, just MAYBE, this would be a valid reason. Your country pollutes the planet more than any other country does and refuses to do anything about it.

7. Ethnic cleansing of ethnic "Persians" from Iraq to Iran, and an
ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the non-Arabs of Kirkuk and
other northern districts. This ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing
was documented by the former U.N. Special Human Rights Rapporteur for
Iraq, Max van der Stoel in his reports in 1999.

I'm reading up on this, I'll get back to you. But again, YEARS after tghe fact it is decided there is a necessity to invade? Bah.

8. Continuing unlawful killings of political opponents. Many groups
have documented Saddam Hussein's ongoing campaign against political
opponents, including killings, tortures, and -- lately -- rape. As
some of you may know, the regime has been using sexual assaults of
women in an effort to intimidate leaders of the Iraqi opposition. We
salute the courage of opposition leaders such as General Najib
al-Salihi for speaking out about this crime. The regime is also
carrying out a systematic campaign of murder and intimidation of
clergy, especially Shi'a clergy. The number of those killed unlawfully
is difficult to estimate but must be well in excess of 10,000 since
Saddam Hussein officially seized power in 1980. The number of victims
of torture no doubt well exceeds the number of those killed.

And this was known ALL ALONG. When Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983 he knew all these things had happened, and that didn't stop him from shaking Hussein's hand and doing business with him.

The entire point all of you Saddam lovers can't make here is that between WWII and GW-II military technology has dramatically reduced "colateral" Damage, WHY? Because the EVIL warmongers really don't want to kill civilians. The world has spent trillions to save civilian lives in battles.

It is still amazing that ALL of you anti-Iraq war poor Saddam lovers would put such a "butcher" back in power. Liberalism is a mental disease........

Watch who you accuse of having a mental disease when your points are so lame as to be laughable.

Your country invaded a country illegally, used the lamest excuses to justify it (which the UN and pretty much the rest of the world recognized as lies and refused to go along with), and brought about the deaths of 100,000 civilians.

At the time of the invasion, the ONLY reason was that Saddam had WMD. Now, when the WMD's are obviously a fabrication, people try to rewrite history and say that the REAL reason was because Saddam was a bad man.

When it's worth your while financially, your country deals with the worst dictators on the face of the planet and turns a blind eye to their crimes when it pleases them to do so.

So spare all of us this absolute garbage. The last 50 years of United States foreign policy shows the proof that everyone needs to know. Your country embraces this Evil when it suits them either financially or militarily.

If you don't believe it, educate yourself and you'll see it's true.

Or stay ignorant. Just let me know you choose to stay ignorant and clueless and I'll happily block you.

jako


p.s. I am not a Saddam-lover. The world is not black and white despite what your semi-retarded President says.