Question About Body Counts

[Ravenseye]

Ok, so we went to Iraq because Saddam Hussein had connections with Al Qaeda...no I mean because he had Weapons of Mass....uh...because he was a brutal dictator and we're spreading freedom. You're against the Iraq War? So you like Saddam Hussein huh?

Amnesty International reports that about 17,000 Iraqis disappeared over 20 years in Iraq, but the actual figure may eventually go much higher. I've seen numbers in the 100,000 to 200,000 range, but it's all guesswork for numbers above 17,000.

So far 1756 Americans have died, though that number could be innacurrate by the time I hit 'post message'. Antiwar.com puts the American wounded at 13190.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ puts the civilian deaths at somewhere between 22787 and 25814. I've seen estimates in various publications that the actual number is over 100,000.

So my question is this. Who the hell do people think they're helping if in the span of 3 years they've either come close to duplicating, or perhaps even surpassing the numbers of innocent people that Saddam killed in over 20 years?

[sui generis]

1. silly wabbit

we're doing this to bring them FREEDOM. Too bad we had to destroy the village to save it. (wait wait wait, didn't that expression originate in Vietnam....?)

Why do you hate Murka?

[DaveJ]

2. These statistics should be graphed for comparison

The only reason the body count MAY be slightly lower under * is because * has access to better more expensive weapons targeting systems. Both feel their motivation is to protect their regime.

[whatever4]

3. Just read something about that

At the bottom of this story on truthout.org, just love Molly :)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071205E.shtml
There Goes the Electrical Grid
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

snipped
" CROW EATEN HERE: This is a horror. In a column written June 28, I asserted that more Iraqis (civilians) had now been killed in this war than had been killed by Saddam Hussein over his 24-year rule. WRONG. Really, really wrong.

The only problem is figuring out by how large a factor I was wrong. I had been keeping an eye on civilian deaths in Iraq for a couple of months, waiting for the most conservative estimates to creep over 20,000, which I had fixed in my mind as the number of Iraqi civilians Saddam had killed.

The high-end estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths in this war is 100,000, according to a Johns Hopkins University study published in the British medical journal The Lancet last October, but I was sticking to the low-end, most conservative estimates because I didn't want to be accused of exaggeration.

Ha! I could hardly have been more wrong, no matter how you count Saddam's killing of civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, Hussein killed several hundred thousand of his fellow citizens. The massacre of the Kurdish Barzani tribe in 1983 killed at least 8,000; the infamous gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja killed 5,000 in 1988; and seized documents from Iraqi security organizations show 182,000 were murdered during the Anfal ethnic cleansing campaign against Kurds, also in 1988.

In 1991, following the first Gulf War, both the Kurds and the Shiites rebelled. The allied forces did not intervene, and Saddam brutally suppressed both uprisings and drained the southern marshes that had been home to a local population for more than 5,000 years.

Saddam's regime left 271 mass graves, with more still being discovered. That figure alone was the source for my original mistaken estimate of 20,000. Saddam's widespread use of systematic torture, including rape, has been verified by the U.N. Committee on Human Rights and other human rights groups over the years.

There are wildly varying estimates of the number of civilians, especially babies and young children, who died as a result of the sanctions that followed the Gulf War. While it is true that the ill-advised sanctions were put in place by the United Nations, I do not see that that lessens Hussein's moral culpability, whatever blame attaches to the sanctions themselves -- particularly since Saddam promptly corrupted the Oil for Food Program put in place to mitigate the effects of the sanctions, and used the proceeds to build more palaces, etc.

There have been estimates as high as 1 million civilians killed by Saddam, though most agree on the 300,000 to 400,000 range, making my comparison to 20,000 civilian dead in this war pathetically wrong.

I was certainly under no illusions regarding Saddam Hussein, whom I have opposed through human rights work for decades. My sincere apologies. It is unforgivable of me not have checked. I am so sorry.
"

[Ravenseye]

4. I love Molly, but

the Human Rights Watch numbers are highly inflated and guessworky. There is even question about those gas attacks, which is one reason they're not counted in the other numbers. People love to say Saddam gassed his own people. In fact there are LOTS of questions about them, but hey: Saddam is evil, why search for a different guy to blame. The Kurds were gassed with cyanide, which was what the Iranians were using at the time. Iraq was using Mustard Gas. There is more than enough doubt about the perpetrators there. Not that Saddam loved the Kurds. Most Iraqi Arabs look down on the Kurds. Imagine how he thought.

Molly mentioning the 1 million number is surprising to me given it's source which is completely unscientific. Saddam killed alot of people in his reign of terror. My point is that the large numbers are highly highly speculative.

The body count under Saddam for over 20 years was somewhere in the range of 20,000 to 200,000. Pretty wide range.

The body count under Bush for over 2 years is somewhere in the range of 20,000 to 100,000.

[DaveJ]

5. You're right....

Even using Molly's own numbers in her misguided apology, if you go by yearly averages and compare high end/low end numbers to one another, Saddam and Bu$h are on par with each other in killing tolls. If Bu$h's high end numbers are correct (and Saddam's are on the low end) then * is responsible for much more death. But no matter how you look at it, they are on par with each other.

[Freedomfried]

7. I sincerly doubt Saddam killed many people at all....

But the people in Saddams old government killed a shitload under his orders, or with his permission.
Ruthless men with no qualms about killing.

They're still in the news now though, they're the ones killing the Americans troops over there now.

[Ravenseye]

8. Neither did Hitler

Those numbers aren't people killed by Saddam personally but by everyone in his government, under his orders.

And yes some of those people are killing troops now, but most of them aren't. You'd be surprised at how many new terrorists killing 100,000 people in a couple years can manage.

Anyway my point is that when people say we went over because Saddam killed civilians, we're doing the same thing right now by direct action, or because of the chaos that we have caused there. Bush created his 'front' in the war on Terror and innocent people are dying by the bushelfull. Literally.

Take the highest numbers that are commonly used. 200k for Saddam in over 20 years. 100k for Bush in over 2 years.

[DaveJ]

9. I think that is obvious.

When we say "Saddam killed" we mean he was in charge of (and thus responsible for) the killings. Same goes for Bu$h.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ravenseye]

10. It is.

http://www.unknownnews.net/0301-1.html

That's a good link with articles on both sides. The fact is that whether Saddam gassed the Kurds IS in question. Just because it's a meme that's repeated over and over, doesn't make it true.

Even if he did, which is TOTALLY possible. He killed 3000 times less than the number of deaths caused by the U.S. Sanctions on Iraq, which killed 1.3 million according to the U.S.Army War College.

on edit: the 100,000 number of Kurds is based on 14 year old hearsay evidence that Cheney dredged up and started repeating over and over...so I guess that might make it true, in freeperland.

[DaveJ]

11. BTW, I like your signline...

Carville could have added that cons said gas prices would skyrocket if Gore won. They were right about that too!

[Ravenseye]

12. thanks

I think it's pretty apt showing both Republican administration incompetence, as well as Republican voter hypocracy.