THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

So, xingu, cut the pseudology and answer my questions:
(1) What source do you recommend {i.e., recommend for Iraqi violent death counts?} Why?

(2) So what do you conclude from all that {i.e., all my doubling of IBC counts}?

In 24 years of the Saddam regime, from the beginning of 1979 to the end of 2002, the number of Iraqi civilian violent deaths that occurred = more than 1,000,000; average per month = 3,472.

So what do you conclude from all that?

Your claim that I labeled "all others that conflict with IBC's garbage as 'liebral pseudolgist' ", is pseudology. I did not label all such others liebral pseudologists. I specifically labeled the NYT, and the UN as liebral pseudologists. And earlier I also specifically labeled ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN as liebral pseudologists.

xingu wrote:
I also would like to know just what Saddam's death rate has to do with what is currently occurring in Iraq.

This IS the key question for ican. How other country's leader treats their citizens is an oxymoron as an argument; there are too many leaders in the past and current history to make this a justification for our preemptive attack and occupation of any country, because we don't have enough resources to control it. Other leaders killing their innnocents doesn't justify our killing of their innocents. Any attempt to justify our involvement and killing of innocents based on any leader's tyrany is an oxymoron; he/she killed them, so we are allowed to kill them too!

McG, You're a moron; our forces have killed over 30,000 innocent Iraqis - and growing. This is only an estimate, because our government doesn't do body counts.

cicerone imposter wrote:

McG, You're a moron; our forces have killed over 30,000 innocent Iraqis - and growing. This is only an estimate, because our government doesn't do body counts.

How many guilty ones have we killed, or were they all innocent?

The US not only doesn't do body counts, but disallows the showing of flag drapped coffins coming home from the war.

Bushco claims it would show "disrespect."

Go figure.

LBJ wouldnt allow it either.
Neither would Nixon.

Are you saying that they were wrong also?

Afghanistan close to anarchy, warns general

· Nato commander's view in stark contrast to ministers'
· Forces short of equipment and 'running out of time'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday July 22, 2006
The Guardian

The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan yesterday described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.
The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people.

The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. "That is clearly not the case," he said yesterday. He referred to disputes between tribes crossing the border with Pakistan, and divisions between religious and secular factions cynically manipulated by "anarcho-warlords".

Gloom descends on Iraqi leaders as civil war looms
Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:16 PM BST
Email This Article | Print This Article | RSS [-] Text [+] By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi leaders have all but given up on holding the country together and, just two months after forming a national unity government, talk in private of "black days" of civil war ahead.

Signalling a dramatic abandonment of the U.S.-backed project for Iraq, there is even talk among them of pre-empting the worst bloodshed by agreeing to an east-west division of Baghdad into Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim zones, senior officials told Reuters.

Tens of thousands have already fled homes on either side.


"Iraq as a political project is finished," one senior government official said -- anonymously because the coalition under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains committed in public to the U.S.-sponsored constitution that preserves Iraq's unity.

A United Nations report released this week says that the death toll among Iraqi civilians since January 2006 is 14,338. The number killed has been rising steadily each month, from 1,778 in January to 3,149 in June. That report significantly understates the actual totals. The U.N. relied on official data reported by the Iraqi government, which is prone to omit some of the dead. But in any case the situation in Iraq is so chaotic that it is impossible to count their numbers, especially in far-flung provinces. Still, the U.N.'s figures far surpassed previous estimates of casualties from any source.

The toll among ordinary Iraqis is immeasurable. Iraqis are dying in ones and twos, in a wave of rampant murders, kidnappings, and assassinations throughout the country. They are dying in fives and tens, through roadside bombs, car bombs, and sectarian violence. And they are dying in large numbers, in scores, as organized armies carry out atrocity after atrocity in brazen, public attacks.