Posted on 12/02/2004 9:52:17 AM PST by dukeman
My hometown newspaper today included one of those letters to the editor re "Bush administration has no 'moral values' because it's killing 100,000 Iraqi civilians in an unncecessary war!" I'm working on a rebuttal letter and wonder whether anyone has run down the facts behind the claim of 100,000 civilian deaths because of U.S action. Does anyone know where this figure came from and whether or not it has been debunked (or authenticated)? My sense is that the figure is high for propaganda purposes.
http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36163
I got into this debate with the owner of another forum. I'm not certain how to make links but there is the URL. You'll notice I have the Ronaldus Magnus icon and I'm the only one trying to find truth in the debate.
If I remember correctly, the study was done based on a region of Iraq with lots of terrorists. So, there were plenty of deaths because there were lots of battles with U.S. troops. They then applied that death rate to the entire country.
It's kinda like looking at a city with lots of gang shootings and applying that rate to the entire U.S.
In my rebuttal letter I'm planning on using just a few words to cast doubt on the 100,000 figure while pointing out that our losses could be much less if we decided to unleash our full military force from the air. Like the Israelis, we take more casualties because we fight humanely with respect to civilians. I also want to say "If the war is about our controlling Iraq's oil, where's my 50 cents per gallon gas?"
Thanks again for the input!
no idea.. they just pulled a number out of a hat... I hope this link works, I'm at work and I forgot my HTML code... its from a leftie web site-- is certainly not trying help our boys over there... but it looks like the number is 16,771 for the civilian deaths.
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/
I would imagine that 100,000 people have died in the last few years. Heart attacks, cancer, lung ailments, auto accidents. You know. Combat deaths.
Here is a good read to bolster your position.
http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=2400&msp=1242
The figure itself was 'derived' (cough, choke) through the usual means employed by the statistically illiterate liars of the Left, to wit, false-to-fact assumptions, deliberate mixing of data sets, miscategorisation of existing data, and some of the most egregiously non-linear extrapolation ever seen.
You might argue that "only" 40,000 civilians were killed in the UK during the "Blitz" by the Nazis which lasted longer than the Iraqi war and targeted several cities with denser populations than those in Iraq. You might also mention that the weapons used in Iraq were infinitely more precise than the haphazard ones used by the Germans in WW2 and also that the weapons used in Iraq were targeted to avoid civilian targets, as opposed to the Nazi tactic of deliberately bombing residential areas to demoralise the population.
100,000 killed in Iraq -vs- 40,000 in the Blitz?
Likely?
The figure was invented by dissidents in Iraq using the most imcompetent methodology possible. Their "figure" includes killings by the terrorists themselves!
Dan Rather?
You mean that civilian casualties were based on a "computer model"?
"Rectal Extraction"
You mean that civilian casualties were based on a "computer model"?
EXCELLENT! Thanks for the great reference. You're this lazy man's best friend..... :-)
How many "innocent civilians" are / were covert troops without any sort of telling ID? Just askin'! ....
Moral values appear to be selective
By now, most of us have been told "moral values" settled the election. Would somebody, anybody, please tell me, how one can speak of moral values out of one side of the mouth, then have lockjaw in the other side about the 100,000 men, women and children killed in Iraq, who didn't do one single thing against any American?
I have not heard one politician or one media person, in broadcast or in print, who has expressed our shame and guilt in this genocidal act. Maybe, those who voted for George W. Bush the first time have some mitigation in this unspeakable tragedy, but believe me, those who voted for his re-election have complicity in the killing of all these people.
Make no mistake about this. They can't have it both ways; the sanctity they claim with their "moral values" is washed away with their condoning and approving vote to re-elect this president. They can't escape culpability in this slaughter and maiming of innocent Iraqis, and our brave servicemen and women. To those who confuse our country with the administration in charge, may I remind them of what was said at Nuremberg:
"We must make it clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy." (former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor, Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945)
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Do you notice how the letter writer is careful not to bad-mouth our troops? It's all George W.
Study was done by John Hopkins and reported in the Lancet.
http://www.jhsph.edu/PublicHealthNews/Press_Releases/PR_2004/Burnham_Iraq.html
That's it, right there. I think only someone who is truly deluded would try to argue that what has happened in Iraq is anything near the Blitz in its impacts on infrastructure, buildings and people. The mere fact that LIVE REAL TIME footage of bombs hitting in Baghdad was even possible attests to the precision inherent in them.
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