First point: I didn’t cherry pick statistics to prove my case. I simply took an average. I even included the body count you subscribe to, despite it being the worst out of all of them methodologically.
sigh
Simply clicking on the links should tell you who conducted the suverys.
Iraq Family Health Survery - World Health Organization
The Lancet - Peer Reviewed General Medical Journal, London
Opinion Research Business Survery - Independent Polling Agency, London
Associated Press - The AP
Body Count - (this is a meta study btw) Started by John Slobada, at Oxford Research Group.
I did not include the Iraqi government’s own estimate of how many people had died. I just took the top ones listed on the wikipedia article, averaged them, and spat out the number. I think that’s pretty objective.
“also, the sanctions were indeed destructive, all the more justification for the invasion.”
The sanctions were put in place by Higher Order Democratic countries. Just remove them. Invasion of iraq has only further deteriorated its living standards and health care system. Citation here.
“Continued use of sanctions and diplomacy against Iraq despite the fact that this action was causing great suffering to the most vulnerable and innocent in Iraq while having virtually no effect at moderating Saddam’s behavior. Equally important was the animus created in the Islamic and Arab world from the sanctions that were a recruiting boom for regional terrorist organizations. Note that one of the primary motives for bin Laden’s attack on the US in 2001 was in protest of sanctions against Iraq and its impact on Iraqi women and children.”
Yes, I do note that. This is my point; that the Higher Order democracies were killing innocent people for no good reason. This pissed a lot of them off, and now they hate us. The solution is not to kill even more of them.
The most obvious and peaceful resolution would be to offer safe haven to the people, and allow them to emigrate to wherever they want. United States included. I don’t particularly want to start a “closed borders” debate with you, because xenophobia and racism are hard to argue against, but there are numerous other threads you can turn to for a practical position on free association.
Resumption of hostilities against Iraq for violating the ceasefire of 1991 with a goal of removing Saddam and installing a Western ally and representative government in its place.
Hehe cus our puppet states have been so damn peaceful. See State Terrorism, the page I already linked you but were to retarded to read.
Lastly, by any objective, rational, and independent thinking measure – the removal of the sanctions, saddam, and the installation of a nominal US ally in Iraq is a human rights victory
Lol. History is written by the victors.
Government is categorically a human rights violation. Get over it.
We tragically lost over 4000 heroes in 7 years (less than died fighting at Iwo jima in 1 month for 10 sq miles of questionable real estate) freeing 25 million enslaved souls within scud missile range of over 70% of the worlds most accessible oil reserves from a despot who who was responsible for the following
Doing good things is not a liscence to kill tons of people in the process. If I could flip a switch and get rid of despotic governments I would, But there’s a cost associated with waging war, which you downplay/ignore. The fact that you have to cut straight to “the benefits” of the war indicates that you’re struggling for justification. Its special pleading and its pathetic.
No one even has an idea about what is going to replace Saddam. You ask me, I think we’re there for the next 10 years. The killing continues, their infrastructure gets worse.
At least get your arguments straight. The whole contribution from you to this topic has been nothing but one line of demented humanitarian interventionism after another. So, since you are the biggest “humanitarian” around here, the least you can do is stop complaining about humanitarianism and stop spitting into your own bowl.
First point: I didn’t cherry pick statistics to prove my case. I simply took an average. I even included the body count you subscribe to, despite it being the worst out of all of them methodologically.–snowflake
amusingly, hypocritically, and paradoxically you mock yourself by citing statistics on the casualties of the sanctions from wikipedia that include all government sources. galloway, iraqi ministery, baathist party, unicef (multinational govt. enterprise) et al. if government is “evil” then how can you rationalize citing those sources from wikipedia.
moreover, only the body count statistics which included confirmed deaths and the WHO study are valid.
Iraq Family Health Survery - World Health Organization
The Lancet - Peer Reviewed General Medical Journal, London
Opinion Research Business Survery - Independent Polling Agency, London
Associated Press - The AP
Body Count - (this is a meta study btw) Started by John Slobada, at Oxford Research Group.
the lancelet study is bogus. it was funded by soros and edited by horton both unabashed bush haters-- by any objective measure invalid and bias. Indeed the WHO research was significantly more detailed including more clusters and sample sizes and outlined the serious deficiencies in the lancet study which to date has never released their raw data.
the ORB survey cited over 1 million dead iraqis as a result of iraqi freedom with 20% representing deaths from car bombs. which represents over 200, 000 dead from car bombs. which would equate to over 150/day deaths from car bombs – patently absurd! MOre likely they misrepresented the data by parroting the lancet study. for example, they received a nice pay check without any effort or expense. good luck finding the raw data on this study too.
moreover, i challenged you and any other pacifist to explain an alternative option than the one taken by bush and that challenge remains unanswered.
note that criticizing the decisive actions by your own government in the absence of any alternative to nuclear coercion from miscalculating meglomaniac dictators is not policy. it is hot air. you can be justified in blaming previous administrations for bad policy and half measures regarding support for middle east dictatorships, yet it is grand hypocrisy to blame bush 43 for finally acting on principle and not supporting or arming these regimes. indeed, bush took them down as should have been done years ago.
i dont downplay the costs of war, I emphasize the cost of inaction in the face of torture, tryranny, and unchecked aggression in an area where 70% of the worlds most accessible oil reserves are located.
lastly, who cares how much you weigh. i dont measure resolve and sound judgment by what your scale reads. your geopolitical views are naive and plays into the hands of every dictator seeking to undermine the very utilitarian minimalist government that would greatly benefit society by increasing private interactions and eliminating war.
namely, the obvious benefit of American hegemony that brings peace, prosperity, stability,and freedom wherever it holds sway : western hemisphere, europe, and the asian pacific rim.
If Americans shoot someone, then it was defence. Simples.-marko
cease misrepresenting my statements.
if you had actually read any of my posts, you would see that I justify many actions on the battlefield as lifesaving. for example, in a previous post I outlined the net savings from the US liberation of iraq. MOreover, I challenged the pacifists like yourself to rebut my assertion that whereever the USA maintains hegemony the region is more peaceful, free, prosperous, and stable. In contrast, where our enemies hold sway poverty, violence, instability, and despotism reign.
look at the map of europe, the western hemisphere, and the asian pacific rim, they are more stable, free, peaceful, and relatively prosperous than at anytime in their violent past.
So the USA is more free, peaceful, and prosperous than anytime in its past? Is that a joke?-- jonbostwick
you need to read more carefully,
I stated specific areas of the globe under US hegemony are more free, prosperous, and peaceful than at anytime in the past. I would hold off on adding stability due to the increase in non-state faith based actors. However, trade is greater as a percentage of the global economy at anytime in history. starvation has decreased and global GDP has risen markedly since free market reforms have taken hold in large areas of the 3rd world. communications and the free transfer of ideas and knowledge is tremendously improved today than at anytime in history. Indeed, europe is a puppy dog compared to europe of old. the western hemisphere is virtually devoid of despotic regimes with cuba being one of the lone holdouts.
with the election of obama and the democrats in 2006, and prior to that the corruption and crony capitalism of the republicans and bush — the USA specifically is less free and prosperous. However, I believe that we will trend back in the right direction in 2010 and again in 2012. nonetheless, the size and scope of government must be reduced significantly
LOL @ your arrogance. First, you can’t prove historical interpretations, especially about hypothetical alternate courses of events. All your doing is perpetuating this typical American war apologist myth. Let’s weigh the opinions of some people a little more involved than you or me:
General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: “My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender.”
Not enough?
General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: “The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war.”
…
In a trenchant new book, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Praeger, 1996), historian Dennis D. Wainstock concludes that the bombings were not only unnecessary, but were based on a vengeful policy that actually harmed American interests. He writes (pp. 124, 132):
… By April 1945, Japan’s leaders realized that the war was lost. Their main stumbling block to surrender was the United States’ insistence on unconditional surrender. They specifically needed to know whether the United States would allow Hirohito to remain on the throne. They feared that the United States would depose him, try him as a war criminal, or even execute him …
Unconditional surrender was a policy of revenge, and it hurt America’s national self-interest. It prolonged the war in both Europe and East Asia, and it helped to expand Soviet power in those areas.
…
In a 1986 study, historian and journalist Edwin P. Hoyt nailed the “great myth, perpetuated by well-meaning people throughout the world,” that “the atomic bomb caused the surrender of Japan.” In Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict (p. 420), he explained:
The fact is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the firebombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It was the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohito’s realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroy Japan and kill every Japanese to achieve “unconditional surrender” that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is indeed a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japan’s surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day.
The first bomb is estimated to have wiped out 4.7 mi2 and the second less, but Tokyo had already had almost 16 mi2 destroyed by firebombing, let alone other targets like Osaka and Kobe that had already been under attack for over a year. If the purpose was to display the new type of weapon, a military target, versus urban area, could have been chosen.
Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, later commented:
It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan … The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons … My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
If the United States had been willing to wait, said Admiral Ernest King, US Chief of Naval Operations, “the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials.”
Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. “Japan was essentially defeated,” he said, and “it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon.” In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: “If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.”
The leadership in place from April 1945 understood that surrender was inevitable. Japan probably would have surrendered if the US simply dropped the demand for Hirohito to be subject to the allies.
There’s also a highly important concurrent event of August 8th-9th. The Soviets had dropped their treaty with Japan and begun the Manchurian campaign.
Let’s check again what you said:
The part about the pollution is particularly telling. When we think of radioactive fallout, the first source we might turn to are the afereffects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in several rather gruesome deaths at the hands of radiation poisoning and related maladies. What few people are aware of in modern times though is just how inefficient (and thus dirty) the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs were compared to later thermonuclear devices. These newer developments have considerably less fallout compared to the older, more popularly known examples from history. We’re not really there just yet; there are still issues with how to achieve a high state of efficiency in a small package, but compared to the earliest nuclear devices the current weapons might as well be glorified high explosive.
I don’t see why you are concerned with the efficiency of the reaction. The only “improvements” have been to increase the magnitude of the explosions. Hydrogen bombs are just as radioactive as “nukes” and create much larger explosions.
I don’t see where you are getting the idea of a nuke with less fallout. The article I linked shows that the newer “bunker-buster” warheads come nowhere close to burying the warhead deep enough to contain fallout. We simply don’t have kinetic weapons capable of burying it deep enough. This is just more BS military apologeia.
Like your previous entries, you made the exact same mistake in presuming that the only potential use of any kind of nuclear device is widespread aggressive destruction,
I never said “any kind of nuclear device”. In fact, I am all for nuclear power and believe that Thorium reactors would be rapidly adopted in a free society. They are safer, the raw material more abundant, and don’t produce plutonium that states crave for weapons, versus conventional reactors.
Once again, when I say that “nuclear weapons” cannot be used without harming innocent people, thus there mere possession constitutes a threat, I mean weapons which behave this way. If you can’t figure this out, you’re hopeless. No government is working on developing nuclear weapons which would be able to contain the fallout to the target area.
and then proceeded to back your claim with, and this is the kicker here: non-sequitr examples of abuse of nuclear devices by government, an inherently aggressive institution that current holds monopoly powers over the development and deployment of the devices. That you would only find aggressive examples of the use of nuclear device in that case was almost painfully obvious,
I cited the history of testing and use to show that the radiation cannot be contained without making an extremely small explosion. I also gave a possible defense for a private defense firm to at least threaten states with nukes.
The fact remains that there are no safe nukes, and their use is guaranteed to harm innocent people. Their possession cannot be seen as justified for any reason beside dismantling them in a free society.
and despite your denial of such things this very specific set of rules in the form of
Possessing an object is not inconsistent with NAP
While also objects, nukes are an exception because they have only ever be used to indiscriminately destroy
Therefore, nukes are not consistent with NAP
Is very much a case of special pleading because have does not necessarily imply can.
It is still not special pleading. Read the thread again. Your logic here is flawed and not even an example of special pleading. A gun, grenade, or SCUD differs from a nuke in that the former can be targeted without harming innocent people. They are different things, thus open to a different interpretation. What you need to do is prove the existence of a nuke that can be exploded without harming innocent people, and I will say, “OK, we’ll call those “safe nukes” and their possession is legitimate as long as they are used defensively just like a pistol.”
Im just saying I didnt’ cherry pick them to prove my case.
I bet if the US government told you X# of people had died, you would believe it despite the obvious conflict of interest.
The conclusion isn’t what you were expecting so it must be wrong! Zomg!
.21.210^6 deaths / March 2003 - Sept 2007 = 65.7 deaths/day from car bombs btw.
Actually if you were literate you would have seen my emigration alternative.
And what? Bush grew a moral backbone and decided to charitably aid all these people? There are much worse governments in the world, where the people are starving and dieing of disease. Triage.
Im not saying these governments should continue to exist, i’m saying that killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people isn’t okay.
Aww but you said I was a cupcake. I don’t think you should judge me by my size, but I’m just sayin…
It is YOU who play into the hands of the murderers and thiefs. YOU apologise for every United States sponsored atrocity. YOU were even ignorant of the half a million Iraqis who died as a result of trade sanctions. You’re a fucking flaming internet troll, a retarded piece of scum who would kill millions of innocent people for no good reason. Don’t buy your own hype kiddo.
The problem is that speech by that 900lb gorilla does not support your conclusion. All it supports is that he decided to surrender without assuring his own immunity from trial after the atomic bombs were dropped. He still would have surrendered with that one condition before that. An obviously reasonable condition unless you think that executing Hirohito was worth all of the death and destruction afterward. Oh, and he ended up being given immunity anyway after he surrendered. So, that possibility is moot anyway.
Also, the press in Japan, which was state run, had been telling everyone in Japan right up to that point that they were winning the war, even as bombs were falling on their heads. Meaning that he needed an excuse to suddenly spin 180 degrees and surrender and somehow fit the obvious facts to the web of bullshit that he had been spinning day after day.
Rettoper: at least snowflake brings substance, intelligence, and supports his arguments with actual knowledge and sources.
Wish you could do the same.
Im out for the night. Catch you in the morning.-- snowflake
I might have to take back the backhand compliment since your previous two posts were simply ad hominen attacks and faulty data. For example, produce the source on the ORB research citing 65car bomb deaths/day. however, even at that reduced rate, I challenge you to cite 3 months at anytime during the war when 65 iraqis died from car bomb attacks. MOreover, it should be easy since this is only the average. in addition, every car bombing is reported in the media and recorded by iraqi body count.
the fundamental issue that you cant reconcile is the absurd notion that removing one of the most heinous dictators of the 20th century is a net failure in the human rights category.
saddam actions resulted in the violent death of over 1 million, the sanctions killed tens of thousands, hence the war at a cost of less than 200,000 and only 4000 in AMerican lives within scud missile range of 70% of the world’s most accessible oil reserves was justified. Indeed it was the continuation of a just war to liberate Kuwait.
however, i will concede your bs is more imaginative than the inane one sentence retorts offered by others. but, it is obvious that your thinking is far too rigid and intellectually inflexible hence your statement that all government is evil. for example, the USA has used its power throughout its history to undermine far more oppressive systems (monarchy, slavery, fascism, communism, religious extremism, et al).
moreover, I have repeatedly challenged you to offer an alternative to iraqi freedom and that challenge predictably remains unanswered. also, I challenged you to rebut my assertion that US hegemony has made europe peaceful, stable, and free for the 1st time in its tumultous history and that challenge remains unanswered except for the typical knee jerk “America bad” “people die” “war bad” “me want peace”
Your prediction of a US failure in iraq is naive and ill informed. Democracy has taken hold, despite expected setbacks, it will suceed in some measure to far greater benefit to the iraqi people than what was experienced under saddam. you probably predicted the SUrge would fail. In summary, stick to economics, you dont have a clue regarding geopolitical machinations because your blinded by the ideological lens of the austrian theory.
At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a force of seventy thousand persons labored at an undertaking whose nature they knew little or nothing about; in fact, wartime propaganda had been so effective that they took pride in their ignorance and boasted of it as a badge of honor or as a sign of co-operation-----in what? It is just possible that a few, and I should be willing to say a very few, had they known that their efforts were being directed to the slaughter of noncombatants on a scale never before contemplated, or to a perfection of brutality as we have defined the term, might have refused complicity. Perhaps they would have had some concept of war as an institution which forbids aimless killing; perhaps they would have had a secret feeling that the world is morally designed and that offenses of this kind, under whatever auspices committed, bring retribution; in any case, it is just possible that a few of these anonymous toilers would have given a thought to the larger responsibility. It was rumored that among the world’s elite concerned with atomic research that there were a few who declined to participate in an operation so contrary to the canons of civilization. . . . Imagine the modern state considering a referendum to conscience! The bomb was an unparalleled means; was this not enough? Just so does modern industrial and political organization, which is irrational hierarchy, make the citizen an ethical eunuch. If Thoreau felt, in his time, that it was a disgrace even to be associated with the government, what would he have felt in this? These corrupt bureaucracies are contemptuous of the people, in whose name they so piously speak.
For that matter, there were few among the world’s “elite” that knew about it, because Roosevelt told only one person in his administration about it. Most of those who knew about it were in Moscow because the communist spies in the project had the loosest lips.
Why does this make any difference? Its just a pissing match with you isn’t it. I challenge you to cite 3 months during the last 30 years which less than 100 people died as the result of United State’s aggression
Yeah they get EVERY single one of them. All of them. I’d ask you for a citation but it doesn’t really matter for this argument how many car bombs they manage to count…
No. I said I wanted these governments to be gone, but if you have to kill tons of innocent people to do it, you’re kind of defeating your purpose. I also proposed my emigration alternative which you haven’t addressed, probably because it makes too much sense and doesn’t allow you to kill a whole bunch of people.
Actually kuwait was free before 2003.
An expropriating property protector is a contradiction in terms. You haven’t even read the Ancap literature on this. How can you continue to attack it? We’re not crazy punk rock anarchists who want to do away with civilization and just smoke pot all day. We’re pro free-association and pro-lockean homesteading.
Pffft. And aided many times more. You still haven’t responded to the State Terrorism page I sent you. You’re still under the illusion that, for some reason, our skinhead military gets motherfuckin sad that the world is such a messed up place, and is on a humanitarian crusade to save the world from oppression.
Why would they think like this? Why? Its an illusion. You’ve been watching too many Go-Army commercials. They have NO incentive to be humanitarians. They are self interested just like every other human being. THEY MAKE MONEY when there’s a war on because the government purchases tons of stuff from the military industrial complex. THEY WANT WAR. They don’t make money off peace.
I’ve answered this about 5 times, by my count.
See the link on state terrorism I’ve posted a bunch of times. Also see the Higher Order Democracies funding Dictatorships. And yes, the United State’s government is evil, it does cause an insane amount of people to die, and I do want peace.
Regardless, its not particularly important to this argument.
The surge did fail. They killed a whole lotta people. That’s a failure. OH but in your mind this is like a videogame and if someone might shoot at you, you have to kill them. Or if someone’s just standing funny, or gets in the way of your bombs, thats okay too.
You don’t even know what Austrianism is. Don’t use words you don’t know. And don’t lecture me in geopolitics when I have to continuously school you on your warped view of American Heroism. Turn off fox news and stop ignoring my links.
Quote Rettoper:“saddam actions resulted in the violent death of over 1 million, the sanctions killed tens of thousands, hence the war at a cost of less than 200,000 and only 4000 in AMerican lives within scud missile range of 70% of the world’s most accessible oil reserves was justified. Indeed it was the continuation of a just war to liberate Kuwait.”
So no none of that was justified if Saddam was willing to be exiled. But your statement is ridiculous because you have no idea if more people would be dead if Saddam remained in power, you don’t know the alternate future, and the violent in the present is directly related to US actions..You don’t sound like you really care much about the preciousness of human life you just look people as numbers and toys to play political science games with. Just like the British and US empires do.
**Quote Rettoper: “**however, even at that reduced rate, I challenge you to cite 3 months at anytime during the war when 65 iraqis died from car bomb attacks.”
