The AP is calling America's 4,000th death in Iraq. Every one a tragic result of a criminal mistake.
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4,000
23 Mar 2008 11:08 pm
Comments (66)
"Mistake" is not the word you want here. It makes especially little sense paired with "criminal."
Matt, I know you love the traffic, but I respectfully request that you please stop chumming the waters with "X v. Y"-baiting "Iraq was a mistake" and "Hillary/Obama" posts.
Perhaps now isn't the time to catalog all of Matt's failings and instead to take a moment to consider the tragedy he's posting about.
The problem, Ari, is that a moment of silence doesn't work in blogoland.
But seriously: Fuck this war and the people who keep it going. Four thousand. Even one would be a tragedy and a waste for what it's all gotten us.
Perhaps now isn't the time to catalog all of Matt's failings and instead to take a moment to consider the tragedy he's posting about.
What's left to consider at this point? But don't let me stop you from going ahead with the righteous snark if it'll give you some small and much-desired catharsis.
I usually love this blog, but the almost-gloating tone of today's Iraq posts puts me off.
This is why the Dems have to be very clear-eyed when choosing their nominee to ensure that the person can win. This war must end so fewer of our troops have to suffer a needless death.
Hey MoonRooster - Fuck. You. Does that put you off? Acknowledging tragedy is not "gloating" about it. Assholes like you and sentiments like yours keep this war going.
What's left to consider at this point?
You're right, we've solved the Iraq problem and now there's nothing left for us to talk about, in this democracy where discussing political issues of the day is our civic duty! Hooray! Who saw this weeks Two and a Half Men?
The sad thing is that both McCain and Hillary want this thing to go on and on. McCain is at least honest about it; Hillary has said so many conflicting things about Iraq, and even when she says she would end the war, we have no reason to believe her, since she has such a track record of lies.
There is only one candidate who in good conscience would pursue an end to the war, and that is Obama. He is also the only one who could couple this with the necessary diplomacy in the region.
"There is only one candidate who in good conscience would pursue an end to the war, and that is Obama. He is also the only one who could couple this with the necessary diplomacy in the region."
More precisely, Obama is the only remaining candidate who took a political risk to oppose the Iraq war. Therefore, he is the only candidate where there is any evidence that he might choose ending the war over his own re-election. That means he's the only remaining candidate who is even remotely qualified to be President.
criminal "mistake"? It was and is a criminal crime.
This is why the Dems have to be very clear-eyed when choosing their nominee to ensure that the person can win.
They already chose their nominee. Hillary just refuses to admit it.
I never thought the American people would tolerate a war in which more people died than were lost in 9/11. I know it's unpopular, but we're still there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wyCBF5CsCA&NR=1
"For on more than one occasion, history has proved our great dissenters to be right."
We should have impeached these fucking pigs. They'll never learn otherwise.
Instead of "Every one a tragic result of a criminal mistake", I think we can reduce that to what it would be called in court: murder. Every one murdered by the Administration. Seems about right to me.
Folks, this is a blog about American deaths in Iraq. The vulgar language and political speech are totally inappropriate. Show some respect!
I share your sentiments exactly, Random Dude. I didn't care that there were 'only' two years left of his presidency when Pelosi took impeachment off the table.
Future generations are going to look at this time period with disgust. They're going to wonder why the electorate didn't mind being lied to for a war that wasn't only started on false pretenses, but was waged with such grave incompetence. It's a tragedy that the Bush administration is going to walk away, scot-free when all is said and done. History will not treat us kindly because of it.
...the almost-gloating tone of today's Iraq posts puts me off.
I gotta say as a uniformed person that I agree with this sentiment... on the surface. It's almost as if we get out of Iraq as soon as we reach 5000. Or 4500. That's not the case, of course.
These milestones are almost noted with the same amount of fervor as Bonds' home run count when he was going after Hank Aaron's record. The 4000th death wasn't more noteworthy than the 3999th - every single death in this war was unnecessary.
But we do need to look harder at why we note these numbers. Unfortunately, these milestones do serve to catch the attention of some people. Lord knows that needs to happen after that poll showed that few people realized how many have died. It's regrettable that we almost need an "exploding scoreboard" whenever we reach some round number, but that's how people get their news.
Not being counted are the suicides, the broken marriages, the now fatherless or motherless children of service-members and Iraqis alike. The severed and amputated limbs.
It's gruesome, but unless it's put that way, a lot of people won't realize that the prices we're paying for this war may be excusable if it was done for a just cause. But this was not the case.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZPLLmqs9Q8
It's odd that the guy trying to sell the war makes sure to note that Hussein isn't Muslim. Now we're declaring war on "Islamo-fascists", and John McCain commits to confusing (on multiple occasions) Sunnis and Shiites 5 years later?
I think the "exploding scoreboard" method is disgraceful, especially coming from someone like Matt who supported the invasion. Shameless. Almost as sanctimonious as the childish nonsense about crimes and impeachment.
What's really needed here is a mature perspective that takes actual rather than Cartoon Network history into account. I've got a friend who will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair because of injuries sustained at Khobar Towers in June 1996. Perhaps a million innocent Iraqis were killed after 1991 by sanctions.
People who agree that former SS officers should be prosecuted when they're ninety seem perfectly willing to have let Saddam Hussein off the hook for starting several wars of aggression and other crimes that cost millions of lives. And without his removal from power, there is nothing but wishful thinking supporting the proposition that he wouldn't continue to wreak havoc.
The obvious historical facts show that we went to war in Iraq in 1991, and have been trying ever since to bring the war to a reasonable conclusion. Those who imagine that the entire operation was ginned up out of thin air early in Bush's first term are either ignorant or disingenuous, and are not showing proper respect to those of us who have sacrificed since that date.
Bush no less than anyone else needs to be held accountable for mistakes that have made this war more difficult and costly to resolve, but pretending that we didn't, and don't, have to find an acceptable resolution is simply foolishness.
Robert Powell -
I think you're white-washing it a bit to say that we've been at war against Iraq since 1991. That statement implies that everything we've done since 2003 has been done with the consent of the UN, and has been done with the intent of protecting a defenseless state.
You can argue that the US was acting in response to Saddam giving the UN inspectors a hard time, but if that's the case, that's an issue the UN should have addressed. Perhaps I'm making a scarecrow out of this argument, I dunno. Please let me know if that is the case. A fundamental portion of the case to go to war in Iraq was that Saddam was providing aid and comfort to al-Qaeda. That is clearly not the case now.
You're dead-on about the "acceptable resolution" part. I'd say that the great debate these days is over what that exactly means. We don't really have a reliable historical example to refer to (people from different perspectives will mention Vietnam, but I don't think that fits well at all), so we're really just doing this thing as we go.
Hey MoonRooster - Fuck. You. Does that put you off? Acknowledging tragedy is not "gloating" about it. Assholes like you and sentiments like yours keep this war going.
Posted by Francisco The Man
Hardly, bitches like you have been salivating for weeks for your "Magic 4,000!!! Mark." Just like many in the media that saw 3,000 coffins as great for PR, ratings, and a pile of fake mourning over the "hapless naive children victims in Army and Marine uniforms the Evil Bush-Hitler murdered."
Within the military, there is an entirely different opinion about media, the Phelps Church, and the patronizing, dishonest Lefties that seek to use soldier's coffins as their soapboxes and who almost gleefully anticipate "death milestones".
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The gloating and celebration of 4,000 DEAD!!! is riddling Lefty blogs today, even as it is wrapped up in crocodile tears --"Awww, those poor stupid children who were too lazy to go to college and get a real job...Such a tragedy!!"
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Instead of "Every one a tragic result of a criminal mistake", I think we can reduce that to what it would be called in court: murder. Every one murdered by the Administration. Seems about right to me.
Posted by roger
Yeah, Roger....why is it so that the moron extremists that declare all war or all abortion is murder get so little respect? Other than being stupid? As is, if you wish to condemn Bush for "murdering" troops, is it any less of a crime that Carter, Reagan, CLinton, Bush I also "murdered US soldiers" though fewer in number?
And ignorant Lefties forget that Congress voted the war, voted to continue funding it, and 65% of the public still supported it in 2004.
Go ahead, take your "murder" charges to your mighty court...go with the "murdering abortionists deserve to go on trial" Fundies too. Of course you both will be laughed out of any court, because real courts don't act like dumb Lefty or Fundie fantasies wish them to.
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Unfortunate factoid: More soldiers died each year when Carter was President than any year Dubya was President. I missed the blubbering Lefties trying to pitch themselves prostrate on coffins back then or engaging in silly mournathons about the "precious dead lazy stupid baby-killing children in uniform" Lefties say they love and respect so much.
chris ford -
As is, if you wish to condemn Bush for "murdering" troops, is it any less of a crime that Carter, Reagan, CLinton, Bush I also "murdered US soldiers" though fewer in number?
Bush 43's war in Iraq is based on false pretenses. That's the distinction.
I can tell you from personal experience that people in the military are not equating the Phelps' to the people that want this war to end.
"People who agree that former SS officers should be prosecuted when they're ninety seem perfectly willing to have let Saddam Hussein off the hook for starting several wars of aggression and other crimes that cost millions of lives."
There is nobody who wanted Saddam "off the hook." This is a typical Powell lie. Unable to justify the lies of the administration that got us into this quagmire, he has to resort to lying about those of us who foresaw the disaster. What's remarkable is that he seems to think this dull-witted tactic will work.
Smarter trolls, please.
" More soldiers died each year when Carter was President than any year Dubya was President."
Not in combat. And not as a function of the total size of the military.
Smarter trolls please.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it gloating, but there is a nasty strain of "This'll show 'em" in Matt's posts today.
The continuing cost of the war, in both lives and money, is a powerful argument for pulling out, and a powerful argument that the original decision was a mistake. (Yes, I said mistake. The question of criminality is entirely separate from that of success or failure)
But "See all the dead soldiers, you fucking war-criminal fascist assholes" (I'm paraphrasing) is not really an argument, it's simply venting.
And Matt is usually above that sort of thing.
the almost-gloating tone
"Almost" clearly doesn't fit.
A mistake that Matt always seems to forget he was all for.
I've got a friend who will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair because of injuries sustained at Khobar Towers in June 1996.
Oh, I see. The fact that you have a friend who was injured in a terrorist attack completely unrelated to the Iraq war over a decade ago means that we should all shut up and accept your position.
Fuck you, EWard. It's in the name of the soldiers that we're so pissed off. How fucking dumb are you to not get that?
This thread rules.
socctty:
I don't think I'm "whitewashing" to insist that the war we got into in 1991 with full legal bells and whistles is the same one we're still trying to bring to a decent conclusion today. On the UN question, I advise reading Lord Goldsmith's easily Googled finding for Parliament (The Guardian, 16 March 2003). Those who insist that the UN's most important sanctions are practically unenforceable "legally" are no friends of the UN, nor are they correct.
The Resolutions that sent us to war were those passed by Parliament, Congress, and the analogous legal authorities of most of the world's important democracies. They were in support of Security Council Resolutions, including the 1991 Ceasefire which was comprehensively violated by Iraq.
To the best of my knowledge no one seriously tried to make an official case that "Saddam was providing aid and comfort to Al Qaeda". It was certainly a ridiculous assertion on its face in 2002, and few outside the lunatic fringe tried to make it, minus random easily discounted dumb quotes in the yellow press. Ditto for Saddam's nukes. It was widespread public knowledge that the nukes were probably on ice, and the concerning potential bio/chem leaks to terrorist groups (which of course are in great variety "linked" with every government in the region and beyond in one way or another), were speculation about how Saddam's eventual decline and fall would transition through his likely successors.
I think it's useful to avoid partisan passions when trying to coax history out of current events. It's going to be a lot more difficult to get an "acceptable resolution" when lots of people still believe against the evidence that this entire episode is only about "false pretenses." This is an unprovable and certainly incorrect characterization. There have been, and will continue to be, plenty of false pretenses, especially when anyone making an evidence-based case that doesn't comport with the accepted-wisdom media script is dismissed as a "troll", criminal, class enemy, or whatever by the zealots.
Address the arguments, not the soundbytes.
freddie:
You're kidding, right? We weren't in Khobar Towers because it's a nice vacation spot. Please see "Operation Southern Watch". While you're at it, Google "Operation Marine Intercept", "Operation Northern Watch", and "civilian deaths caused by UN sanctions in Iraq". Knowledge is available.
Well, criminal as far as 50.4% of the country is concerned. 49.6% continue to think Bush is the second coming of Christ. And screw the polls, the same 1/2 of the nation that voted Bush into office twice (barely, kinda, maybe) would just as soon shoot any Dem in the head as debate Iraq policy. If you don't like perpetual war move your pansy ass to France while real men here do the heavy lifting. Hoo-rah!!
Re "Folks, this is a blog about American deaths in Iraq. The vulgar language and political speech are totally inappropriate. Show some respect!"
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Respect?
You mean the kind of "respect" that the Republicans showed our fighting men when they and their Whore of a President sent 4000 men to their deaths in order to suck up to Exxon and Chevron?
That kind of respect?
Or maybe you're talking about the "respect" that George the Whore showed to the citizens of this country when he lied about why Sept 11 occurred. And the respect that the New York Times and the 911 Commission showed the American People when they helped George the Whore sustain that lie?
Or maybe you're talking about the "respect" that Republican Senator Pat Roberts showed US Citizens when he promised in 2004 to have the Senate Intelligence Committee examine George the Whore's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence in 2002?
Senator Roberts then relentlessly stonewalled that investigation and , to this day, that report has NOT been published. What does George the Whore and the Republicans have to hide?
Headline this morning about the "Surge" in violence in Iraq.
"especially when anyone making an evidence-based case that doesn't comport with the accepted-wisdom media script is dismissed as a "troll""
LOL!
Where have you made an evidence-based case that anyone who opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq was "perfectly willing to have let Saddam Hussein off the hook for starting several wars of aggression and other crimes that cost millions of lives"?
You're not even a very good liar, Powell. You're just trolling.
"Whore of a President sent 4000 men to their deaths in order to suck up to Exxon and Chevron?"
Wouldn't it have been easier to suck up to Exxon and Chevron by allowing drilling in ANWR?
For all the trolls here who think Matt is "gloating" over 4000 dead American soldiers: Was the MSM gloating over the hostages in Iran when it posted a nightly count of the number of days of captivity? Or is it only "gloating" to cite facts that are inconvenient for chickenhawks?
In line with our recent discussion of the American Revolution and America's Founding Fathers, I found a speech that Samuel Adams gave here in Philadelphia on August 1, 1776.
I think it would be a good quote for Obama to use at the Democratic National Convention in addressing the Hillary supporters and those who voted for the Whore of Big Oil:
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"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices?
Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plow, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth?
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
Re Juan's comment "Wouldn't it have been easier to suck up to Exxon and Chevron by allowing drilling in ANWR? "
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After Saudi Arabia, Iraq has the second largest reserve of oil remaining on the globe. ANWR is a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Amazing how US political discourse is dominated by people who can't do simple arithmetic.
Re Don Williams
"After Saudi Arabia, Iraq has the second largest reserve of oil remaining on the globe. ANWR is a drop in the bucket by comparison."
Amazing how Mr. Williams steals my lines.
Robert Powell -
First, thanks for being civil. I'm sure you'll note I haven't called you a troll, or class enemy, or whatever else.
It's going to be a lot more difficult to get an "acceptable resolution" when lots of people still believe against the evidence that this entire episode is only about "false pretenses."
I guess the overall point you're making there is that, if we allow that this was undertaken needlessly, we shouldn't pull out immediately without regard to the consequences in order to fully rebuke the invasion. I agree with that.
However, the rationale to go in was that Saddam was a bad guy, broke UN regulations, showed a willingness to attack people with chemical weapons - all true, but it was also that "the smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud", that nuclear war was right around the corner if we failed to act, that Saddam had aided al-Qaeda, that he possessed WMDs that he would use against us directly or via proxy - and none of these things were true. Those were the back-breakers of the argument to go in - without them, I doubt we would have had public support to go in, just as we had negligable support from other nations.
While we can't just yank ourselves out of there, we still have to acknowledge that this was a horrible mistake. Until we acknowledge that fact, publicly and with as much fanfare as we made about why we needed to invade in the first place, we won't receive the international assistance for an "acceptable resolution."
socctty, we won't yank ourselves out at all unless we start. It is long past time to start. First, we have to draw down to pre-surge levels, then we have to provide ourselves with diplomatic cover - meaning putting the final bullet in the head of the Carter doctrine that the Persian Gulf is an american lake, talking with Iran, etc. as we withdraw the rest of the troops.
It won't be that hard. The Children's Cartoon network version of the Iraq war is, of course, much closer to accurate than the Robert Powell version, in which up to a million people, now, have died thanks to the sanctions - its the new retrospective superdeath. I'm surprised, I thought it was six million - and in other news, about 5,000 Iraqis have died since 2003, all of heart attacks caused by the joy of seeing American soldiers on their streets.
You would think Powell's notion of reality would have, well, hit some bump insofar as we have no indication that electricity or sewage or any other infrastructural matter that was constant during the sanctions regime has improved since the occupation, which would imply that half a million people have died since 2003 - but why let facts get in the way when fantasies are so pleasant? Since there are less doctors in Iraq now than in 2002, one would think this might put the old keebosh on the theory - but delusions die hard. I suppose those sanction deaths were caused by the pure yearning of Iraqis to see an American face.
roger -
I think Robert Powell's notion of the events that have taken place in Iraq is fairly sound, atleast as expressed in this thread. He does acknowledge that going in wasn't a great success. If my assumption about his points are correct - that we need to be measured and careful in the way we get out of Iraq (if that's your standard of an "acceptable resolution"; he has yet to say what exactly his definition is), I think it's hard to argue against it. The situation in Iraq is entirely too complicated to be summed up by Cartoon Network or Robert Powell.
Until he says otherwise, we can't really assume he means we should say there in a Korean model or a Japanese model or a German model or at all (French model?).
As a side note, I think we'd be lucky if we were looking at a Korean model reasonably within 5 years. Korea is the most-similar; we're still there for the strategic abilities the location provides, and as a defense front to support a government against attacks from an ideologically-driven government over the border.
That would describe Iraq - except the ideology in question is a religion that has been spread by the sword since day one, and the very core of it's holy book advocates the spread of it through force, and there's significant resources to be gained to boot.
I agree that we need to get out, but I also agree with Powell's temperament about the matter - that we need to do it correctly if we're going to do it at all. The biggest reason Iraq is as fucked up as it is now is because we half-assed it in the first place (see Shinseki).
Socctty, I don't see any useable parallel with Korea at all. Why not the Phillipines, or the Dominican republic, or Walker's incursion into Nicaragua? Policy by vague analogy is pretty worthless.
As for the description of the religion, it seems to me that the Bible is pretty much the same thing - hell, God prescribes good old genocide in Judges, and that's been used over and over again in the West to exterminate various peoples. I live in the U.S., which was built over the bones of various Indian nations, exterminated in the name of God. It is pretty easy to be peaceful and liberal after you've exterminated your enemies. However, your remark also points out why we should get the hell out of Iraq - if the American people really dislike Islam so much, we certainly have no business trying to run an Islamic society. And you will have noticed that the Iraq nation at present calls itself an Islamic republic. It is schizo to fight for an Islamic Republic because - we hate Islam! It is generally part of the schizophrenia afflicting war supporters, whose reasons are almost always self-canceling.
Get out, figure out how to assume a lower profile in the Middle East, figure out what to do in Afghanistan since our leadership betrayed us in 2001 there - leaving us in the position of having to negotiate with Al Qaeda/the Taliban - and go on to the much more important problems we have elsewhere. Realistically, even if McCain is elected, he isn't going to spend 600 billion more dollars in Iraq, so the question is how to mitigate our failure there, not whether it will be ultimately a big success.
For all the trolls here who think Matt is "gloating" over 4000 dead American soldiers: Was the MSM gloating over the hostages in Iran when it posted a nightly count of the number of days of captivity? Or is it only "gloating" to cite facts that are inconvenient for chickenhawks?
Posted by Joel
The Left and the media at the time insisted that NOTHING was more important than the Poor Hostages. Carter unfortunately took their advice and made their safety and welfare paramount and so was played like the bitch he was. The rise of radical Islam relates to three key events on Carter's watch. (1)Iran showing America trembles over a few hostage lives and does nothing. (2)Iranian radicals taking over control of Mecca and launching the Grand Saudi Appeasement where radicals would be supported and Wahabbism Exported in return for tranquility in the Kingdom.(3)The Soviets seizing their opportunity after liberals took charge in America and weakened the West - launching fateful invasions and proxy wars confident that the Georgian Wuss wouldn't confront them - leading to major problems in Latin America, Africa where millions died. And of course fatefully, into Afghanistan.
Nixon had it right. We should have supported the Shah and the plan the moderates wanted in Iran of a constitutional monarchy where Islamists shared power but did not have absolute control. And, Nixon said he would have treated the seizure of embassy hostages as an act of war. And gone in, even at the expense of hostage lives. NIxon said the safety of all Americans abroad against kidnappings and terror rests on America not being held hostage itself, but inflicting unacceptable harm on enemy forces and their supporters.
socctty-you're entirely welcome. I appreciate your civility too. It makes sense when wrestling with complicated issues, and a lack of it usually denotes someone arguing with passion rather than facts. Some may honestly believe that caving in to Saddam in 2003 wouldn't have resulted in his being let off the hook for his crimes, but there's not much evidence to support this view.
I believe that one of the main obstacles to a decent conclusion for the Iraq War is the childish demonization of people with differing views on the subject in the US--see this and similar threads. A lot of my respected colleagues were dead set against the invasion in 2003, for the most part because they knew the results would be unpredictable and probably mishandled. I didn't consider them to be irrational then, and their opinions look pretty good these days.
In terms of how we actually got in, though, I don't think you're going to be able to come up with anything remotely like official policy statements about an "imminent threat" from Saddam to blow up the subway or nuke Atlanta. This, and the whole "pre-emption" riff, are straw men Bushophobes love to knock down, but there's a big difference between Rice's wise crack on a Sunday talk show and an actual statement of the causus belli. See the Goldsmith finding I cited for the best summary of the real rationale. As I noted above, the media was full of experts punching holes in that "mushroom cloud" stuff at the time. Maybe everyone didn't sort that all out, but there is solid evidence that there had been majority public support for "finishing the job" since 1991. Gallup did big-sample, good methodology polling about twice a year between 1991 and 2003 on the unambiguous question, "Would you support invading Iraq with US troops in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power?" Always a majority, at times approaching 3:1 and averaging nearly 2:1 for the whole period said "yes". The number in 1993, by which time it had become clear that Saddam wasn't going to fall after his first defeat, was 70%. No one has yet explained how "Bush lies" could have influenced so many people when he was a n'er do well baseball team owner in Texas at the time.
The real issue in 2002 was the failure of nearly everything we'd tried since 1991 to settle this war. "roger" may have better numbers on the deaths caused by the sanctions, but I rely on the figures from the UN itself. Two consecutive Deputy Secretaries General resigned rather than continue to administer the program one of them described as "meeting the legal definition of genocide." We were causing a catastrophe, AND it didn't work--Saddam's grip on power had only been enhanced and his collaborators enriched. The entire facade was crumbling, and if Iraq had managed, in spite of the unprecedented record it had assembled of defying the accepted norms of international behavior to escape with its leadership still in place, it would have marked a major setback to any reasonable post-Cold War international security architecture. There were much more serious things at stake than random remarks pushing a policy the vast majority of our bi-partisan national leadership saw as the right thing to do based on what we knew, or thought we knew, at the time.
The Carter Doctrine is not that the Persian Gulf is an American lake, but that it is an area of vital national (and international) interests. It is the world's most important trade route; Iraq and its immediate neighbors sit on most of the oil that's, for better or worse, the lifeblood of the world economy for the foreseeable future; and it's neighbor Iran is of major continuing concern. These are transcendent geopolitical issues that trump any that were present in Korea. Korea is actually a pretty good model. In 1955 it was a totally destroyed piece-of-crap nation at the ass end of Russia and China with a starving population and a military dictatorship. We killed about two million people, including 40,000 GI's, to achieve a tie, eventually supporting the South's development into a respectable and important nation. In Iraq, our casualties represent ten percent of that, and the most credible numbers on Iraqi casualties are a bit more than ten percent of those in Korea. But Iraq has the most representative and legitimate government in the Arab world, and the opposition, while not yet defeated, is scattered, unpopular, and has no chance of actually taking power.
An Iraq that's reasonably stable, reasonably pro-Western, at peace with its neighbors, not beavering away on wmd's, and pumping oil fit's my definition of victory--and this is not Mission Impossible. Moreover, such an Iraq that is today the world's only example of a Shi'ite dominated democracy is our best likely interlocutor as we began to deal more sensibly with Iran. We need to support such an outcome, and we can't do it with satellites and cruise missiles.
Chris Fraud,
Of all the rotten prejudiced morons anywhere, you are the worst, the most prejuiced and most rotten and most degenerate creep ever.
Robert Powell,
You are a polite pretentious idiot, with the morals of a snail, but thanks for the politeness and do keep it up. You are a model for all immoral idiots everywhere.
Socctty, if you haven't been reading this asshole's tripe for the last six months or longer, you can be forgiven for not realizing that every single day he pops up here, he provides not one whiff of remotely viable evidence for anything he says. And every time he does not do this, everybody here demonstrates how completely wrong he is on every single particular.
And the very next fucking day, he's back with the same fucking bullshit.
He's not uttering an "opinion". He's a fucking, lying, propagandist troll.
Period. End of story.
Do not let my continual use of the term "fucking" prejudice you in this regard. It's a considered and entirely proper use of the term with regard to people who have absolutely NO intellectual integrity whatsoever.
If you parse his statements one at a time, you will see that not one single statement bears any relation to reality whatsoever. It's a conglomeration of utter nonsense leading to the inevitable nonsensical conclusion that everything is just wonderful in Iraq and will only get better as long as we stay there forever - and that all this is utterly true and inevitable and anybody who disagrees is completely ignorant of all history over the last twenty years.
Not one word of which is true.
If you can't see that, you're as bad off as Powell.
Cyberbullies
"Oh, God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!"
William Shakespeare
How very nuts, Mr. "Powell". Your idea that the sanctions magically killed a million, but that the gross destruction of what services remained to the Iraqis over the past five years was somehow all right is absurd. If the sanction regime deteriated conditions that killed a million, than surely, with conditions being worse, more should be dying right now. So, in essence, you are simply arguing for an even higher death toll than the Lancet version of the case.
But, I don't mind accepting that the sanction regime couldn't have lasted forever. As I've said, time and time again, it definitely needed to be changed - for instance, connecting it with sanctions against Iran were counterproductive. A light hand, and the realization that Iraq is not and never will be solidly aligned with the U.S., was all that was called for. Hussein was weak, his sons had little constituency, and there's no reason to think that they would, in particular, have survived given simple measures that avoided any kind of invasion.
As for the complete silliness about how very important the Persian Gulf is - well, Wall Street is very important to the world economy, but I haven't seen the U.S. proposing joint governance over it by France, Russia and China. Since it is important, however, I would suggest a foreign policy that had a modicum of intelligence, wasn't based on hyperaggression, and that negotiated from a realistic sense of the doable. Your fantasy description of Iraq doesn't cut it - in fact, for all your criticism of Matt as childish, I've rarely read something as infantile that wasn't published in AEI's magazine. Iraq, of course, shares a few interests with the U.S., but in general, its interests are either as the producer of a good for which it can get good bucks from the U.S. if it isn't occupied and the government isn't forced to propose Mickey Mouse oil laws that would be overturned the minute U.S. troops leave (hmm, wonder if there is a connection there) - which of course gives us a potential bond. On the other hand, as a Shi'ite country, it has expressed its sympathies with other Shi'ite forces, including Hezbollah, which of course has close ties to Da'awa, the party that we are, at the moment, defending, that we might not like. And of course there is the matter of Kuwait, which is regarded by the majority of Iraqis as a colonial artifice that properly belongs to Iraq - in fact, S.H.'s invasion of Kuwait momentarily lifted his popularity. We have different views.
As the Persian Gulf is such an important place, I'd suggest that it is the worst place to try to foist an expensive, murderous and ludicrous fantasy on - try, say, some island in the Pacific for that.
It is utterly consistent that True Believers accuse dissenters of lying, but ignore factual data they present while presenting none of their own.
Way to memorize the media script, folks.
I cited data from the UN, Gallup, the UK Attorney General, etc but "roger" et al just "know" better! In fact, things have been a hell of a lot better for Iraqis in terms of nutrition and water purification, which were the problems that killed so many of the vulnerable among them during sanctions. Things aren't better for many Sunnis who ran things under Saddam (usually the ones quoted complaining in media reports, or for those unlucky enough to be in a marketplace hit by terrorist bombings; but for the big majority things are MUCH better. Shi'ites and Kurds represent over 80% of the population, and any halfway objective look at their situation makes this unmistakably clear. Kurds in particular consider questions like "were things better under Saddam" to be a cruel joke by ignorant foreigners.
Things in Iraq are bad, but getting better, and they've been far worse in the recent past. I find it amusing to be accused of "immorality" by people who in effect have been advocating for Saddam Hussein's staying in power.
Powell,
Please die painfully in a fire and burn in hell for all eternity you genocidal monster.
Larry M
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
Eric Hofer
Powell: "It is utterly consistent that True Believers accuse dissenters of lying, but ignore factual data they present while presenting none of their own."
This is how this piece of shit argues. Projecting his own failings on everyone else.
"I cited data from the UN, Gallup, the UK Attorney General,"
You didn't cite jack shit. I and everyone else here have cited NUMEROUS TIMES refutations of every single thing you've ever said here, including your fucking polls, your fucking UN study, and your fucking UK Attorney General.
You IGNORED ALL of it. Then you pop up here the very next day saying the exact same crap.
Fucking troll.
The data I provided shot holes in ALL of your "refutations", Hack. It's not my fault if you can't follow a discussion once it rolls over into archive. Your idea that some panel of politicized, unaccountable "experts" trumps the legitimate legal authority of Congress, Parliament, and most of the rest of the world's important democracies is typical of the National Enquirer style you prefer. Making grand pronouncements based on propaganda is hardly refutation.
And stop making such a display of your lameness. Rudeness is indeed the weak man's imitation of strength. Nice thought, E.
"Powell" - there's citing, and there is alluding to. You did allude to a UN survey, but then you made up the results of that survey.And then you made up the causes of the deaths in the survey.
The Unicef survey, as per 1999 NYT report, said:
"The first major survey of child mortality in Iraq since the Persian Gulf war in 1991 has found that in areas of the country controlled by President Saddam Hussein, children under 5 are dying at twice the rate they were before the conflict, Unicef said today.
But in Kurdish areas in the north, where United Nations officials run food and medical programs, the health of children appears to have improved a bit.
The figures for infant, child and maternal mortality rates place Iraq in the company of third-world nations in Asia and Africa, a significant drop from the oil-boom years."
In 2004, UNICEF issued another report. Here's the Reliefweb summary:
"While some indications showed improvement in child health between 1999 and 2002, the children's agency believed that child mortality was not getting any better since the conflict started in 2003 and that the death rate among children was rising.
UNICEF estimates that there are about 6,880 deaths of children under the age of five every year in Iraq, with an under-fives mortality rate of 125 per 1,000 live births.
Following recent attacks against health workers and hospitals, many families were avoiding going to health care centres.
"The level of insecurity means women are less likely to use pre-natal clinics, or to respond quickly enough if an emergency arises during pregnancy or childbirth," the UNICEF representative said, adding that most child deaths occurred immediately after birth."
Citation that is really allusion that is really fantasy grown in your head is called fiction. Since 2004, of course, conditions have worsened. This is what is called, "inference". There have been numerous surveys, including the Lancet's and the World Health Organization, which has shown that violent deaths have risen to somewhere between 250-650,000. So there is no doubt that the increase in Iraqi deaths is much worse than anything that was happening in Iraq since Saddam's massacre of Shi'ites in 1992. To take the rose colored view that you do requires a mindboggling selectivity when approaching data. It has the air of propaganda.
As for the fiction that Iraq is like South Korea in any way, that's the kind of self serving fantasy that we got so much of during the days when Iraq was like Germany after WWII. The warmonger dream world at this point requires psychoanalysis, not analysis.
I'm not making anything up. Wikipedia lists a number of studies on this subject, some of which show 1.5-1.7 million "excess deaths" due to sanctions. One questionable, small-sample study shows a lot less. The safe, middle of the road estimates come from two studies by the UN with technical support by the WHO published in "Lancet" 1999 based on very large samples (total 40,000 households), and show half a million child deaths attributable to sanctions, most due to elevated infant mortality rates. Carol Bellamy, then-UNICEF Executive Director, said that the large samples "insure that the margin of error in both studies is low". See also Dennis Haliday and Hans von Sponeck, responsible UN officials who have written authoritatively on this subject. Or just carry on in darkness if you choose.
This program was a catastrophe by any reasonable definition, and served to enhance rather than degrade the regime's stranglehold on Iraq. Are you really trying to defend it?
Nutrition in Iraq is spectacularly better than under Saddam, and water purification chemicals are no longer embargoed. You may believe that Saddam's reign was the good ol' days, but don't try to sell this line to Iraqis who weren't in the regime.
Iraq is not Korea. Nor is it Vietnam, Germany, or Japan. It is a state with a legitimate, democratically elected government that has requested our assistance. If it's not abandoned it will likely prosper in much the same way other states we have assisted in recovering from war and totalitarian rule have.
Powell
You are right about one aspect of the Iraq War. Most Iraqis would not want to go back and live under the leadership of Saddam Hussein. It was a brutal police state. However, they did not anticipate any of the postwar violence. As one American journalist observed, the Iraqis are actors in a drama without any influence on the outcome.
When you listen to programs about Iraq, it is easy to become discouraged. Twenty thousand doctors have left the country. Many communities are separated in ethnic ghettos. Electricity levels are close to prewar levels. Because of government corruption, fuel and other resources are stolen. Mosul is the third largest city in Iraq. Mosul has no sewage system, unemployment is rampant, and the city has fuel and electricity shortages.
Despite all these problems, the Iraqis remain hopeful and resilient. The debate in this country needs context. It isn't as simple as staying or leaving. General Montgomery Meigs said it best. The focus should be about the conditions of success rather than timelines about withdrawing troops.
EWard--
Given the rapid pace of "rollover to archive" here I don't know if you'll see this, but I hope so. It is really encouraging to see posts that swim against the tide of hysteria usually in evidence here, and your's consistently do. You are exactly right about context--without it we don't know where we've been or where we should go next.
Regards, Bob
"It is only the dead who have seen the end of war." Plato
Powell
Americans mean well. However, we seem to lack patience and understanding about this war. Whenever events in Iraq start to spiral out of control, there is a tendency to blame others for the tragedy. This behavior only exacerbates the situation and creates a fatalistic attitude in this country.
Our military and the Iraqis deserve recognition for their sacrifices. To honor their memories, a consensus can only take place when we put aside our differences. Despite all the rhetoric, Americans want to do what is right and just. The key is finding leadership that can open the debate and address our real concerns about Iraq.
Comments closed April 06, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
And like many crimes, it had its abettors.
Posted by mrpetercollada | March 23, 2008 11:12 PM