FINALLY, I now understand John Kerry’s position on Iraq:
Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction, but George Bush carelessly and incompetently lost them.
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FINALLY, I now understand John Kerry’s position on Iraq:
Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction, but George Bush carelessly and incompetently lost them.
No, no, John, that’s just “nuance.”
Kerry Logic
John at Discriminations explains: FINALLY, I now understand John Kerry’s position on Iraq: Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction, but George Bush carelessly and incompetently lost them.
I am confused on this. I’ve heard the allegedly missing weapons referred to as WMD, but also as conventional weapons. No one doubts Saddam had stockpiles of the latter. \
?
F.
Fenster,
That’s exactly why Republicans are trying to spin it this way. They think, and with good reason, that the American people on the whole, don’t research things for themselves, or read extensively, which will allow them to throw up all kinds of conflations and obfuscations about the QUAGMIRE we’re in in Iraq. Hell, 40% of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was DIRECTLY INVOLVED with the 9/11 attacks.
Even Bush’s puppet Allawi calls the coalition actions, “incompetant.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1336407,00.html
When your own “yes men” start insulting you…
–Cobra
Funny that you speak of spin… I would say that “spin” is accusing Bush of losing weapons that were gone by the time US troops got there…
Also, the repeated claim is that there have been no components of WMD’s found in Iraq… However, a key component to a nuclear weapon is the highly volitile conventional explosive required to create the nuclear explosive… Such as the 380 tons that Bush “lost”…
I suppose that’s just more spin…
Zach,
How do you KNOW the explosives were gone before the troops got there? Do you believe EVERYTHING this administration tells you?
–Cobra
Cobra,
Yeah, if the Guardian said it, it must be true.
Isn’t the Guardian the newspaper that recently published an article that advocated the assassination of Prez Bush?
Do you have a job, Cobra? Perhaps you should spend some time doing it.
No, that right wing news organization NBC told me… You know Tom Brokaw and company are in bed with Bush and company…
Actually, since Kerry voted against Gulf War I and calls Gulf War II the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, I think that one can deduce that Kerry’s position is that it would have been much better for Saddam to have retained possession of those 380 tons of explosives, and to have been able to stash them somewhere in Kuwait, to boot.
My favorite is the New York Times spin that these explosives are of the sort which can be used for nuclear weapons.
Which is true — but it’s about like saying that the Chevy sitting in my driveway could be used for a car bomb. That is, it’s factually correct — but it’s not really the important ingredient, now is it?
LOL at Cobra….just about every news outlet I see/read now says that US forces weren’t there when those explosives were heisted.
And I thought the Left scoffed at the notion Saddam was after nukes. “Yellowcake from Niger? Puh-LEASE!” Now, however, there is fear that these missing explosives can trigger a nuclear device! But, if Saddam wasn’t after nukes, then …??
John is right on the money here, folks.
Dave & Zach,
What is the WHITE HOUSE saying about this?
>>>The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the IAEA that the conventional explosives were not where they were supposed to be. Boykin said the Pentagon was investigating whether the information was handed on to anyone else at the time.
The explosives had been housed in storage bunkers at the facility. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time on March 15, 2003, and reported that the seals were not broken – therefore, the weapons were still there at the time. The team then pulled out of the country in advance of the invasion later that month.
Cheney raised the possibility that the explosives disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the aftermath of the invasion.
“It is not at all clear that those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad,” Cheney said Tuesday.
Both HMX and RDX are key components in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, which are so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just a pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.”
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/10/27/a2.nat.explosives.1027.html
“Not at all clear” isn’t a statement of FACT, gentlemen. It’s a statement of CONFUSION.
–Cobra
Yesterday, it was obvious that Bush screwed up… Today, it’s uncertain… Who knows what tomorrow will bring…
If it’s so unclear, then why is Bush responsible for disproving the insinuation, instead of the assertion being proven (or at least be backed with evidence) before the attack is launched..?
LOL…exactly, Zach. I heard there were some forged memos about the explosives, too. :-)
Did anyone catch the news that showed just how virtually IMPOSSIBLE it would have been to haul away almost 400 tons of the stuff WHILE American troops were already in Iraq? It would have taken countless vehicles and almost a MONTH’s time — over roads that were almost exclusively controlled by US forces.
Isn’t it amazing that the Yellow Cake at the Tuwaitha C Facility was left in a total mess before the US arrived and Bush was accused of being incompetnent about but that 385 tons (20 tractor trailers) of HE was moved after the US arrived without leaving a trace and with great hygiene for which Bush was accused of being incompetnet about.
Fenster reminds us (me), usefully, that these missing explosives are not really WMDs (although apparently they can be used in the construction of nuclear devices). My point, not made explicitly but assumed as sort of ideological background noise, is that to listen to the NY Times and the Kerry campaign (is there a difference?) you couldn’t tell they weren’t WMDs, so horrible is it that Bush lost them.
“Kerry/Edwards: For a More Nuanced America”
The munitions that are missing are not the primary ingredients in making nuclear weapons; they are very common high explosives that are used everywhere in the world.
ELC: “I think that one can deduce that Kerry’s position is that it would have been much better for Saddam to have retained possession of those 380 tons of explosives.”
Yes, I think it would have been better for Saddam to have those explosives (over 300,000 tons of unused munitions have been seized from Iraq so far), rather than have them in the hands of looters and terrorists. Saddam wasn’t exactly on a rampage through the Middle East when we decided to invade (without provocation and without threat); those explosives resting in their bunkers weren’t going to kill anyone. Now they may just be used against our troops (who shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place).
It’s funny how the war in Iraq may just increase terrorism after all. Who’d a’ thunk it? Oh wait, 90% of the other countries in the world, which is why they didn’t participate. Hm…
jean-paul, to me “looting” isn’t the word for removing close to 400 tons of HE. You’d be talking a few dozen large trucks and scores of men. And some weeks, probably.
It seems unlikely in the extreme that this could have been accomplished once US troops arrived. But even if it were possible, we’re talking, evidently, about a tenth of a percent of the material the US has seized and destroyed since the war began. 380 tons is no joke, obviously, but neither is it the abject failure Kerry is making it out to be. And I think those who are suspicious about the timing of this story (which CBS intended to break on the eve of the election, a plan scuttled only because the NYT did it first) are damn right to be suspicious.
ABC is reporting that it may have actually only been THREE tons:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304&page=1
Another part of ABC’s report, that commenters here may find interesting but Dave Huber did not call attention to:
“Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.”
The story is beginning to settle, and it looks like a non-story.
Also, concerning the incompetence of American soldiers in not securing the facility … not securing it was the proper approach. The Americans secured all the roads around it instead. This prevented removal of weapons not only from that facility, but also all others, even secret ones.
The NBC article is interesting, thanks for the link. Besides the fact that only three tons of RDX might have been stored there to begin with, it’s interesting to note that IAEA inspectors admit that it would have been possible for explosives to have been removed without breaking the seals. At the final inspection, IAEA officials only verified the integrity of the seals, they didn’t actually verify the amount of explosives still stored. Also, it seems like this was a proffessional cleanout job, not the kind of ransacking that would have occurred at the hands of a disorganized resistance who would have had to have been in a mighty hurry to sneak a large amount of explosives out from under U.S. guard. It seems substantially more likely that all or most of whatever explosives were there were relocated or dispersed by an organized force prior to the arrival of U.S. troops.
In any case, the failure to secure a single conventional munitions dump in the entire country of Iraq, despite collecting hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions at other locations, hardly constitutes the monumental incompetence that Kerry is making it out to be.
Johnny Jihad Thanks You, Mr. Kerry
Do you know why it’s vital to present a united front during wartime? Because our enemies are watching. They don’t respect the Geneva Convention or reason or individual freedom or the countries that uphold such values. While we’re engaged in a politi…
Not mentioning that President Bush refuses to acknowledge ANY mistakes during his four years, (even JESUS had a moment of doubt, “Why hath thou foresaken me?” moment.) I would like to know what your opinion is of the Insurgent group that claims to now possess a large quantity of this explosive, and why that is a “non-story?”
>>>In a video aired Thursday, an armed group is threatening to use a large amount of explosives it claims to have found against coalition troops in Iraq. The explosives are missing from a munitions depot facility in the country.
The group calls itself Al-Islam’s Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade. It claims to have coordinated with officers and soldiers of “the American intelligence” to get weapons in the al-Qaqaa facility
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1098966798669_47?hub=World
According to the WHITE HOUSE, which should be the FINAL WORD on this matter for Bush fans, this situation is still under investigation, with no DEFINITIVE CONCLUSION as to the whereabouts or disappearance of these explosives.
You may not be concerned about explosives in the hands of insurgents, my conservative friends, but I guarantee you our servicemen and women are, who sustain upwards of 80 attacks a day.
–Cobra
Hmmm. Cobra, here’s the puzzling thing. Apparently it was known and reported that this material had gone missing well over a year ago. So now the NYT reports on the loss (“scooping” CBS, which wanted to run on it Sunday night for, er, no particular reason at all, yes?) and suddenly someone claims they have the stuff and are going to use it against us. Why do you suppose they haven’t done so, or at least announced that they were going to do so, between the actual theft (which, as I said, is well over a year ago) and now? You say total coincidence; I say they read the NYT.
At least, someone reads the NYT, and wants to scare us. There’s nothing easier in the world than saying, when weapons are missing, that you have them and are about to blow something up. You don’t need the actual weapons to make the threat; and as someone in Iraq seems to be blowing something up pretty much every day, you can even take credit for explosions that you not only didn’t cause but physically couldn’t have.
This is easily answered.
1. It is fairly (not completely) certain that explosives are missing. The question is how many, 470 tons or 3?
2. Advertising that you have explosives is the behavior of someone who does not.
3. You should always be suspicious of a statment like this: “It claims to have coordinated with officers and soldiers of “the American intelligence” to get weapons in the al-Qaqaa facility”. That sounds like bluster to me.
4. That the White House continues to investigate makes perfect sense. That’s what you expect from a leader.
The facts remain unchanged. The roads were secured, 470 tons can’t be tip-toed out, and even at 470 tons, you are talking about a small percentage of the WMD (that is the proper term in my opinion) that was already secured. Nothing in this story makes it seem like Bush conducted this war incompetently, or that Kerry would be better.
Michelle and John
Even if the explosives were moved after the IAEA inspectors left Iraq and before the ground war began it would still constitute a major failure on the part of the DOD/Intelliegence communities. Before the war, many intelligence officials at NIMA (National Imaging and Mapping Association), NSA, and the CIA, boasted that Iraq was the most photographed (satellite images) country in the world. In fact, this ability to precisely map Iraq’s key military and industrial infrastructure was cited as a major factor in the success of the air war. The idea that, to use Michelle’s words “a few dozen large trucks and scores of men” could move 300 tons of explosives from a well known ammunition depot without the US knowing about it is comical. Trust me, if those weapons had been moved before the US entered Iraq, Rumsfeld would be on TV with exploded satellite pictures showing the trucks moving through the desert. Someone (Bush) has screwed up again. Our country needs a change.
James,
Again, I’m in total agreement with you. I think the greatest irony here is watching Bush-fans use the “liberal media” to defend the President.
If ONE pound of this explosive can bring down a jet airliner, as in the Lockerbee incident, 3 tons(6000 lbs) could do untold damage. You don’t want to even guess what 400 tons could do, dispersed into the hands of determined enemies.
Let’s get HONEST, people. Defending Bush is NOT synonymous with defending AMERICA.
–Cobra
James,
I don’t think anyone has actually claimed that the material was gone “before the US entered Iraq”; the suggestion I’m seeing is that the move came between the invasion and ground troops reaching that site. All the same, the point about satellite surveillance is a good one. What does it imply to you?
You seem to be suggesting that the US had to know about the move and either disregarded it or actively connived in it. Why do you suppose we would do that? Do you think it was Bush’s idea, or that the men actually responsible were all Halliburton investors and it all had to be hushed up, or what? I’m not saying confusion or even collusion might not have happened, but as we don’t know yet what happened, it seems premature to boil it down to “Bush screwed up.”
I think it’s possible that, early in the war, we were concentrating on other sites, and this activity was missed; but I don’t honestly know enough about the scope of our surveillance to be sure. In any case, there will be day-to-day satellite images of the whole country over at least the last two years, so it ought to be pretty easy for someone to find out exactly when this happened.
Michelle
One need not believe in conspiracy theories about Bush or “Halliburton investors” to understand my central point that this is yet another major failure on the part of the Bush administration. In a war that Bush, Cheney,Rumsfeld and company emphatically state was waged to prevent Saddam from providing weapons to terrorist organizations, I can’t believe a supporter of the war would so casually dismiss the possible release of explosives to terrorists. The incident can not just be an “oversight” because it speaks directly to the Administration’s central justification for the war. Even if turns out that no weapons have been released, the Administration’s inability to immediately and credibly address the concerns raised in the 60 Minutes/NY Times piece speaks to incompetence.
John Kerry’s Position on Iraq
From Discriminations:FINALLY, I now understand John Kerry’s position on Iraq:Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction, but George Bush carelessly and incompetently lost them.
James and Cobra don’t need logic… hatred is sufficient. I for one don’t see how any rational person can intimate that A) 40 truckloads of stuff could have been smuggled out under the Army’s nose, and B) that the President should engage in such micromanagement that he alone decides which locations to guard. IF that’s how Kerry is going to run the armed forces, we will fail within weeks of his takeover.
Jimbo
Before we invaded, Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to fess up, during which time we said we would not go in. During that window, there was significant activity at the site, including, I believe, convoys leaving (and spotted by satellite). This new arrow in the blame-Bush quiver is broken: administration is responsible for overall strategy (or strategery to you), not tactical decisions made on the ground in the heat of war.
James, what I’m saying is that by your own argument, the US had to know exactly when this move happened, and either didn’t care or actively connived in it. The only other possibility is that they missed it, which you said in your first post would’ve been flat-out impossible. In other words, you are accusing the US military of passively or actively letting people run off with huge quantities of HE. Now, again, would Bush want that to happen? If so, why? If not, how could he have prevented it? How would Kerry have prevented it? (I mean, apart from not having invaded — assume that Kerry is President and therefore responsible for everything his troops do, and we are already in Iraq.)
I read one comment elsewhere to the effect that the first US troops to reach the site evidently (1) knew that it was an IAEA inspection site and (2) found vials of what they took to be chemical-warfare materials, together with instructions in Arabic for their use. If true, that suggests to me (as it did to the writer) that someone had been in there moving stuff around after the inspectors had been kicked out. It is not the sort of thing you’d leave lying around, easily accessible, in a site likely to be inspected.
Steve, where did you read that? Have you got a link?
Michelle
In this case “knowing” a set of facts (satellite images, etc) and taking action based upon an analysis of those facts are two different matters and speak directly to the competence of the Commander in Chief. I think the reason this issue has such resonance is that it speaks directly to the central failure (Bush’s logic) of the war – the belief that by attacking Iraq and toppling Saddam we could make that region of the world safer. In reality, the opposite has happened. By toppling Saddam’s regime, and justifying it with shoddy WMD intelligence, we have made ourselves more vulnerable to attack. It’s a bit odd to hear Bush supporters boast that we have not been attacked by terrorists since 9/11 when in reality Americans (our troops) are being attacked by terrorists (Iraqi insurgents) each and every day. In fact, by my account, since Bush declared a cessation of hostilities in April 2003, over 1000 thousand Americans have died in terrorist attacks. Does that clarify my position?
James,
Well, at least you are calling them “terrorists” rather than “insurgents” or “opposition forces” or whatever.
But this:
In this case “knowing” a set of facts (satellite images, etc) and taking action based upon an analysis of those facts are two different matters and speak directly to the competence of the Commander in Chief.
. . . I don’t know what to make of, except that you do think Bush personally decided to let the HE go, or, worse yet, to aid in its removal. Or else that he ought to have known that it was happening. I don’t think it would be humanly possible for anyone to monitor everything happening in a war in a country that size — I mean, you can delegate all you want, but you are going to be relying on hundreds, probably thousands, of sources of information, and some of them are going to be incompetent. They always will be. Even if Bush (or Kerry, for that matter) got to start a new military from scratch and magically get it trained up overnight, there would be fools in it. Ditto the CIA and its brethren.
What is it you want? A war with zero mistakes in it? Has there ever been one, in world history? Even the Israeli rout of Egypt & co. in the Six-Day War featured some notable Israeli screwups.
You’re missing my point. Of course, mistakes are going to be made during the conduct of a war. That is not the issue. My fundamental problem with this war, and I’m sure you disagree with me, is that the war itself was a mistake. Bush has unleashed a set of forces in Irag that have made Americans less safe (hence my comments about American troops).
At this point, however, my opposition to the war is irrelevant. What is relevant is that on Nov. 2 , Americans have an opportunity to elect a new leader that can honorably extricate us from the mess that George Bush & Co hath wrought.
Michelle
I apologize. That last post(06:20 pm) should be in my name, James.
James,
What is relevant is that on Nov. 2 , Americans have an opportunity to elect a new leader that can honorably extricate us from the mess that George Bush & Co hath wrought.
Now, that is where I really disagree with you. How do you suppose Kerry can do that? He has systematically insulted and discouraged every member of the coalition Bush put together (to the point of one member of the campaign practically telling the Australian electorate that a vote for Howard was a vote for more Bali bombings), and despite his repeated buttering-up of France and Germany, they don’t seem to be particularly interested in joining us. Sure, we can “get out,” but honorably? I don’t see how it can be done both honorably and fast. And I doubt Kerry (who voted against the first Iraq war despite it having everything he complains was lacking here — a huge coalition, an explicit UN resolution, a clear casus belli) is going to be interested in sticking it out as long as it will take to do it right. And my hunch is that while getting out now, or soon, will turn out to have been much worse than doing nothing, sticking it out will turn out to have been much better.
I do not trust Kerry to follow through, in short. It’s too bad, because I’m not exactly nuts about Bush.
Presidents are held accountable for millitary actions and outcomes. Conservatives to this DAY hold Clinton responsible for the 14 US Army Rangers killed in the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, even though it was Bush 1 who deployed the troops there in the first place. The buck stops with the commander in chief. That’s called LEADERSHIP.
Now, Rudy Giuliani is marching from camera to camera blaming the TROOPS for the missing explosives.
When is something EVER going to be this President’s fault?
–Cobra
Cobra, I don’t know many conservatives (there aren’t many where I live), but I do read a lot of conservative commentary, and I’ve never yet run across a conservative still obsessing over Somalia. A better example for your own point would be Carter’s rescue mission into Iran, for whose failure he was (wrongly, IMO) universally blamed.
Two stories of interest to the thread:
Video suggests explosives at site after invasion
U.S. TV crew saw troops opening bunkers at Al-Qaqaa base
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/
And…
Study: 100,000 Iraqis died in war, aftermath
Science journal say coalition caused majority of violent deaths
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6354133/
Both articles demonstrate a MOTIVATION for an insurgency, and some TOOLS to proceed with one.
This plus the FBI criminal investigation of Haliburton adds up to a not so good week of news for the President, but maybe he’ll just have Giuliani run out and blame all of this on the troops as well.
–Cobra
Michelle:
Re your request for links: Don’t remember the precise source of the info on the increased activity around the weapons site during that 48 hour window preceding the outbreak of hostilities; might have been a Fox interview, may have been with Bill Gertz but can’t say for sure. Gertz did have an article in yesterday’s Washington Times that generally supports the observation that weapons were being moved out at that time:
“Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation’s top satellite spy director said yesterday.”
“Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.”
“Convoys of vehicles, mostly commercial trucks, were spotted going into Syria from Iraq shortly before the start of the war March 19 and during the conflict, he said.”
Also this from The Belmont Club (scroll several paragraphs into “The Return of the RDX” section):
“The DOD suggested that Al Qa Qaa may have been emptied of some munitions prior to the war. It offers as proof overhead imagery taken two days after the last IAEA inspectors left Al Qa Qaa showing a flatbed truck in front of a set of bunkers containing the HMX.”
“This picture shows two trucks parked outside one of the 56 bunkers of the Al Qa Qaa Explosive Storage Complex approximately 20 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq, on March 17, 2003. It is not believed that all 56 bunkers contained High Melting Explosive also known as HMX. A large, tractor-trailer (yellow arrow) is loaded with white containers with a smaller truck parked behind it. The International Atomic Energy Association inspectors identified bunkers in this complex as containing High Melting Explosive. We believe members of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission visited the Al Qa Qaa complex on March 15, 2003, and withdrew its staff two days later on March 17. The Al Qa Qaa Explosive Storage Complex was occupied by Iraqi forces, who fired on U.S. forces when they entered on April 3, 2003.”
Here is a high-resolution version of the DOD overhead image.
The video footage provided by the television station from Minnesota was dated April 18, 2003, which puts it over a month AFTER these satellite images, and two weeks after the alleged firefight.
It’s time for another spin.
–Cobra
Suggest a look at the Chicago Boyz debunking of the 100,000 Iraqi deaths claimed by the Lancet study (link supplied by Cobra in a previous post).
The Chicago Boyz understand that “this study will become an article of faith in certain circles but the study is obviously bogus on its face.”
“First, even without reading the study, alarm bells should go off. The study purports to show civilian casualties 5 to 6 times higher than any other reputable source. Most other sources put total combined civilian and military deaths from all causes at between 15,000 to 20,000. The Lancet study is a degree of magnitude higher. Why the difference?”
“Moreover, just rough calculations should call the figure into doubt. 100,000 deaths over roughly a year and a half equates to 183 deaths per day. Seen anything like that on the news? With that many people dying from air strikes every day we would expect to have at least one or two incidents where several hundred or even thousands of people died. Heard of anything like that? In fact, heard of any air strikes at all where more than a couple of dozen people died total?”
“Where did this suspicious number come from? Bad methodology.”
See the writeup for an analysis of that methodology.
A poster commenting on the Lancet study also observes:
“The lead author was an opponent of the war, and . . . the lead author submitted it to the Lancet on the express condition that it be published before the election.
“Do you suppose the guy might have a bit of bias of his own?”
Steve,
It’s always a fun tactic to post conservative, right winged weblog sites as articles of fact. Hell, I would have a ball if I got all of my quotes and info from George Soros. But, again…let’s see what the BUSH ADMINISTRATION has to say about Iraqi Civilian Casualties:
>>>The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush publicly says as a matter of policy it has not estimated civilian war casualties in Iraq. But in recent remarks before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld criticized the media and opposition Democrats for focusing too much on casualties in Iraq.
“Is [Iraq] dangerous? Yes. Are people being killed? Yes. Is it a violent country? You bet,” he said. “Were there 200 and some odd people killed in Washington, D.C. last year? Yes. Were they on the front page of every newspaper? Were they on the television every night? No.”
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/10/5d9141da-97ce-4bd1-8fb8-33fe10415b0e.html
This Administration doesn’t give a DAMN about lives of the people they are allegedly trying to “liberate.” This is from the mouth of the SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, not Michael Moore, Al Sharpton or Howard Dean. DONALD RUMSFELD
said THAT. If you don’t think the people around the world see the CONTEMPT and DISREGARD that the Bush Administration has for the lives of the Iraqi People, then you live in a delusional dreamworld of ignorance. The methodology of this casualty figure was developed ON THE GROUND in Iraq, not in some lab…or some think tank in Washington. There were trained physicians out in Iraq doing surveys, at great risk to their own lives. The report, which you can find right online at http://www.thelancet.com was done by Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, Gilbert Burnham, and their findings was the CONSERVATIVE estimate of casualties, as not all areas of Iraq, including Fallujah was open for them to conduct research.
NOW, compound this with the BUSH ADMINISTRATION’s REFUSAL to even COUNT Iraqi Civiliam Casualties, and you see the where the outrage comes from.
You also see why there are thousands of Iraqi INSURGENTS out there trying to kill our servicemen, by any means neccessary.
–Cobra
Cobra, whether an analysis comes from a right-wing or left-wing blog isn’t to the point–whether the analysis holds up is, or should be, a function of logic, not ideology. For an analysis that arrives at similar conclusions, see this article from Slate, hardly a right-wing source.
To the poster at 8:02, the MAIN point is that the BUSH ADMINISTRATION isn’t using ANY METHODOLOGY to count the deaths of Iraqi civillians at all. It’s as though their lives DON’T COUNT–literally.
–Cobra
Cobra,
Sorry about sending that one off yesterday at 8:02 without identifying myself.
You can inflate or deflate the numbers, or you get them right, but you’ll still be lost in confounding mysteries and arguments around the accuracy of the sampling, reliability of the sources, and the context of the deaths.
With bigger fish to fry than playing a numbers game unwinnable regardless of fairness in counting doctrine (and well aware that body counts in Vietnam were used primarily as a political tool, an obscene sideshow far removed from the real exigencies of the war), the administration has adopted a policy of minimizing casualties (which the U.S. certainly has tried to do at increased risk to our troops instead of bombing Fallujah strongholds to glass) while still pursuing the enemy, an inevitably messy mission during which people get killed and not always the ones you were aiming at. (And by the way, how many of those deaths resulted from attacks on civilians by the terrorists themselves–terrorists who intentionally aim to kill anyone they can turn into a headline?)
The deaths you count don’t count as evidence that the administration doesn’t care about them; it just happens to be fighting a war during which bad things happen. You can spin the stats this way or that–as wars go, the casualties are relatively low–but don’t forget (though I suspect you’ve never believed) this is a real battle for our own survival, and we’re fighting it there so that we don’t have to fight it here. Sounds like just a buncha slogans you’re probably sick of but it’s not pretend; you can’t just pick up your marbles and go home unless you want to gravely increase our risk here.
Terrorist jihadis from Iran, Syria, Jordan, Chechnya, etc. have streamed into Iraq (many of whom have now joined and been counted among the “civilian casualties”), where we have soldiers armed and trained to fight them. How many of us are equipped to do the same if we wait until they come through the door?
One problem in this debate is semantic, and seems to stem from a failure to comprehend what we’re up against. Iraq is viewed by those who oppose our action as a separate war from Afghanistan; actually it’s part of the same war, but a different theater. Al-Zarqawi moved into Iraq in an effort to reestablish the same kind of operations he conducted in Afghanistan before we chased him out.
The targets move and assume different names but they are fundamentally the same many-tentacled enemy we have to nail before it nails us. You can’t call it off, you can’t make nice, you can’t say I’m sorry we’ll do better though maybe we’ll have to send cops and lawyers after them, reduce them to a nuisance while averring oh yes Osama it was the bad man in the White House or the evil capitalists, it was the fault of our greed, whatever justification the Chomskys and Moores want to hand them for murdering us.
The blunt fact is that the terrorists won’t stop until we physically stop them. They will keep coming at us; they want your death and mine, and they are absolutely determined. Why doubt that they’ll interpret lack of resolve on our part as weakness and only become further emboldened?
Or do we have to take another major hit before you realize the danger, before you remember that Osama said he attacked because we stood revealed as a paper tiger by our ineffectual responses to terror in the 90s?
The sympathy of the world will be little consolation as we count our dead.
Steve,
Why do you disrespect the Iraqi people so much? Why do you think it’s not feasible for relatives and friends to take up arms against occupying invaders who killed their loved ones? Why do you think that somehow, people in the middle east don’t have the same sense of pride, nationalism and sense of honor that you do?
If an invading army came to Los Angeles right now, and occupied the city, killing tens of thousands of civillians in the process, propping up a puppet government under the guise of democracy, causing 70% unemployment because the jobs had been “in-sourced” to the invading army’s home corporations, and renegging on promises to restore water, power and basic life neccessities, do you think that the people of Los Angeles would sit still and take it like sheep?
I say NO. I say they would fight back with whatever means that they had. I say that there would be alliances formed between old enemies. Even Crips and Bloods would join with members of the LAPD to form millitias, and give that occupying army hell.
But that concept seems to escape those so hell bent on going to war. You will NEVER kill all the terrorists because terrorism is a TACTIC–a Strategy, and not a “group of people.”
As long as the United States continues to stay in bed with dictators, and oppressive regimes, the oppressed will view us as the enemy, and no amount of carpet bombing, tanks, predator drones, or deployment will change that fact, Steve. And since the oppressed doesn’t have a navy, air force, tanks or technology, they will resort to low-tech tactics…TERRORISM…box cutters and plastic knives, car bombs, suicide bomb packs, sniper fire, etc.
Right now, to shore up our overstretched millitary, we’re sending 50 year old reservists over to Iraq, and the stop loss program is extending tours. There’s no end in sight to this, Steve.
–Cobra