Posted on 04/02/2016 3:41:01 PM PDT by BlackFemaleArmyColonel
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3750.htm
U.S. - UK Kill More Civilians In Iraq Than were Murdered On 9/11
“If they didn't want to kill civilians, why did they fire into civilian areas?” asked Ayad Jassim Ibrahim, a 32-year-old Basra fireman who said his brother Alaa was killed by shrapnel from a U.S. missile that tore into his living room.
AP Tallies 3,240 Civilian Deaths in Iraq
By NIKO PRICE
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation.
The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll - if it is ever tallied - is sure to be significantly higher.
Several surveys have looked at civilian casualties within Baghdad, but the AP tally is the first attempt to gauge the scale of such deaths from one end of the country to the other, from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south.
The AP count was based on records from 60 of Iraq's 124 hospitals - including almost all of the large ones - and covers the period between March 20, when the war began, and April 20, when fighting was dying down and coalition forces announced they would soon declare major combat over. AP journalists traveled to all of these hospitals, studying their logs, examining death certificates where available and interviewing officials about what they witnessed.
Many of the other 64 hospitals are in small towns and were not visited because they are in dangerous or inaccessible areas. Some hospitals that were visited had incomplete or war-damaged casualty records.
Even if hospital records were complete, they would not tell the full story. Many of the dead were never taken to hospitals, either buried quickly by their families in accordance with Islamic custom, or lost under rubble.
The AP excluded all counts done by hospitals whose written records did not distinguish between civilian and military dead, which means hundreds, possibly thousands, of victims in Iraq's largest cities and most intense battles aren't reflected in the total.
During the first weeks of the war, the Iraqi government made its own attempt to keep track of civilian deaths, but that effort fell apart as U.S. troops neared Baghdad and the government began to topple.
Lt. Col. Jim Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday that the U.S. military did not count civilian casualties. “Our efforts focus on destroying the enemy's capabilities, so we never target civilians and have no reason to try to count such unintended deaths,” he said.
Cassella also said an accurate count of civilian casualties among the population of 24 million would be impossible, in part because Iraqi paramilitaries fought wearing civilian clothes and because of “the regime's use of civilian shields, and unaimed antiaircraft fire falling back to earth.”
The British Defense Ministry says it didn't count casualties either.
In the 1991 Gulf War an estimated 2,278 civilians were killed, according to Iraqi civil defense authorities. No U.S. or independent count is known to have been made. That war consisted of seven weeks of bombing and 100 hours of ground war, and did not take U.S. forces into any Iraqi cities.
This time it was very different. In a war in which the Iraqi soldiery melted away into crowded cities, changed into plainclothes or wore no uniform to begin with, separating civilian and military casualties is often impossible.
Witnesses say Saddam Hussein's fighters attacked from ambulances and taxis and donned women's chadors or Bedouin robes, creating an atmosphere in which U.S. troops couldn't be sure who their enemy was.
Adding to the civilian toll was the regime's tactic of parking its troops and weapons in residential neighborhoods, creating targets for U.S. bombs that increased the casualties among noncombatants.
And while the great majority of civilian deaths appear to have been caused by American U.S. and British attacks, witnesses say some - even a rough estimate is impossible - were caused by the Iraqis themselves: by exploding Iraqi ammunition stored in residential neighborhoods, by falling Iraqi anti-aircraft rounds aimed at U.S. warplanes, or by Iraqi fire directed at American troops.
The United States said its sophisticated weaponry minimized the toll, and around the country are sites that, to look at them, bolster the claim: missiles that tore deep into government buildings but left the surrounding houses untouched.
“Did the Americans bomb civilians? Yes. But one should be realistic,” said Dr. Hameed Hussein al-Aaraji, the new director of Baghdad's al-Kindi Hospital. “Saddam ran a dirty war. He put weapons inside schools, inside mosques. What could they do?”
Among the documents studied by AP journalists was the register at Kadhamiya General Hospital in Baghdad. Someone has taped up the shredded binding, as if that could fix the horrors inside. There are pages bathed in dried, reddish-brown blood, their letters smeared and unintelligible.
It and other registers at hospitals across the country record the names, ages and addresses of patients, the diagnoses and operations, the recoveries, and the deaths. They also list professions: for example, butcher, carpenter, soldier, student, or policeman. The AP investigation had to depend on the accuracy of the hospitals in distinguishing between soldier and civilians as there was no way to verify the records.
Some of the best record-keeping was in Baghdad, where AP journalists visited all 24 hospitals that took in war casualties. Their logs provided a count of 1,896 civilians killed. There were certainly more civilians dead; a few hospitals lost count as fighting intensified.
In some parts of the country, records are more spotty. The three civilian hospitals in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, recorded the deaths of 413 people. But while doctors estimate 85 percent were civilian, they have no evidence, so AP didn't include numbers from Basra in its count.
Some hospitals that began the war keeping records had to stop. The fighting came to them - in some cases, inside their front doors.
Doctors at Nasiriyah’s Republic Hospital said seven patients were killed in their beds when a shell hit the building April 7. At Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital, doctors fled when U.S. tanks shelled a hospital building seized by Iraqi fighters. When they returned five days later, 26 patients were dead.
It will take months or more before anything like a final count emerges. One survey is being done by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, another by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which hopes to win U.S. compensation for victims or their relatives.
Meanwhile, from city to city, block to block, house to house, Iraqis are trying to come to terms with their losses. For many, the personal tragedy is more important than whether the casualty count is 3,000, or double that, or more.
There is little agreement about whether being freed from Saddam's tyranny was worth the cost in lives.
“If they didn't want to kill civilians, why did they fire into civilian areas?” asked Ayad Jassim Ibrahim, a 32-year-old Basra fireman who said his brother Alaa was killed by shrapnel from a U.S. missile that tore into his living room.
Al-Aaraji, at al-Kindi hospital in Baghdad, saw things differently.
“It was a war,” he said. “This is the price of liberty.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Niko Price is correspondent-at-large for The Associated Press. Contributing to this report were AP writers Sameer N. Yacoub, Bassem Mroue and Charles Hanley in Baghdad, Ellen Knickmeyer in Kut, Tini Tran in Basra, Louis Meixler in northern Iraq and Sharon Crenson and Richard Pyle in New York.
These kind of wars are not OF God and they certainly are NOT of Christ, so why are Christians lining up by the droves to support & fight in them? These are the kinds of wars that Jesus rebuked and refused to take part in because they are wars of the Pharisees & the one the Israelites chose to be released, rather than believing in & receiving their Peacemaker who was right in front of them.
Shalom
It does not and I wasn't speaking to that, I was speaking to unconstitutional US military air or ground troop intervention in other nations. What Trump was speaking to is an Zionist Israeli doctrine, a doctrine I wholly rebuke. Obviously he is not familiar with Ezekiel 18 and how a father is not responsible for the transgressions of the son and vice versa. And if given the chance at an upcoming rally, I plan on asking him about this.
Now that that is out of the way:
* Heidi Cruz has been employed by Goldman Sachs since 2005. She is currently on leave.
Heidi isn't the candidate.
* Heidi Cruz is a member of the leftist council on foreign relations, advocates of world Government and a New World Order.
Heidi isn't the candidate.
* Ted Cruz was George Bush’s top policy advisor.
So Bush trusted him to know his stuff. That's a plus to me.
* Ted Cruz was in the federal Trade Commission.
OK, so maybe he does know his stuff.
* Ted and Heidi met when they were both Bush staffers.
So they didn't meet at church. Big whoop. Also, Heidi isn't the candidate.
* Cruz advised on legal affairs and Heidi on economic policy for the bush administration.
So they both know their stuff. Also, Heidi isn't the candidate.
* Heidi was director for the Western Hemisphere on the national security council under Condoleeza Rice.
So Condoleeza Rice trusted her to know her stuff. Starting to think Heidi would be a good candidate, for something. But, Heidi isn't the candidate.
* Heidi served as deputy U.S. Trade Representative to USTR head, Robert Zoellick, working on China trade policy.
Heidi isn't the candidate.
* Ted Cruz’ campaign chairman, Chad Sweet, is a former CIA officer. He also worked for Goldman Sachs.
At least one of those is a plus. Maybe both.
* Ted Cruz voted for cloture on TPA, (trans pacific partnership agreement) fast track trade authority, removing the hurdle of concern for further amendment, and clearing the way for passage! It didn’t have to be recorded, so nobody knew this. He voted NOT to require approval of congress before other countries could join, including China.
"Cloture" means quit talking about it, vote on it, and move on to other business. Good thing.
* Cruz has openly stated that he will NOT use a deportation force, and will continue to use the failed ICE system, where an illegal has to commit a crime first, then be caught.
That would not be a continuation of the present catch and release system, but a restoration of law enforcement. In other words, a good thing.
* Cruz belongs to the radical Christian sect of 7 mountains dominionism.
You really want to have a religious test in this country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNa5w9js48s
Here is the father. They Cruz family list Southern Baptist. She, Heidi is SDA and Ted is Pentecostal and just like his father dominionism.
Why not search Ted Cruz and dominionism. Do it for Rafael Cruz also. There are You Tube pieces galore. Cruz has you BS’d.
The Apostles were given this gift to spread the word just as you said. Jesus met with them and in Mark 16:7 in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues (meaning the language of those they teach).
You’re trying to bullshit me into believing Cruz can get 85% of the remaining delegates?
Try harder.
Huh? Tongues are one of the 9 gifts of the Spirit. Nothing from the Spirit is "foolish" or "pointless." It seems that you misinterpreted what Paul was trying to say.
Having said that, I agree with you that Cruz's character is very slimy. ;)
I thought trump and his troops wern’t going to attack Ted Cruz’s wife.
Good point. The language in question can also be a heavenly language as well.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Holy-Spirit-You-Filled/dp/0882706233
Anyway, to get back on topic, let's all please remember to pray about the WI primary, that God reveal the truth about all the candidates and that His will be done. Looking at polls tends to make me anxious, so I'm going to try to spend more time praying and less time doing that. ;)
Cruz identifies himself as southern Baptist. That’s quite mainstream.....as a matter of fact I am one.
But this language was spoken by the apostles as they were blessed with being able to speak the language of those they taught. It is not a Kenneth Copeland charismatic tongue session.
Buy a study Bible.
HOUSTON, Texas – Presidential candidate Ted Cruz today welcomed the endorsement of Pastor Gaylon Wiley, who led him to the Lord as a youth, and Pastor Gregg Matte, his current pastor. At eight years old, Cruz accepted Christ as his Savior and was baptized by Pastor Gaylon Wiley of Clay Road Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. Cruz attended Second Baptist High School in Houston as a teenager.
Gaylon Wiley has been an evangelist for more than 40 years. Now retired and living in Tennessee, he still preaches the gospel.
“Ted was just like all the other kids,” Wiley remembered. “Except he had the IQ of his father – he was three stages ahead. I baptized both of his parents and had the privilege of baptizing Ted and leading him and his cousin Bibi to the Lord. I believe he is God’s man for this hour, for such a time as this. He is the most constitutional, conservative candidate in either party. The hand of God is on him, and if God’s people rise up, he will be the man.”
Gregg Matte is the senior pastor of Houston’s First Baptist Church. Under his leadership, the church, founded in 1841, has experienced tremendous growth. Matte also founded Breakaway Ministries at Texas A&M University, which has become the nation’s largest college Bible study. He is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of Unstoppable Gospel.
https://www.tedcruz.org/news/ted-cruzs-pastors-speak-out-about-his-faith/
You bought on to the screed of a Freeper I’ll not mention because I really don’t like his company.
Exactly. It is of the Spirit. Paul was merely saying that you should keep silent if there's no one who can interpret, because it wouldn't edify anyone.
His wife is SDA. Ted does not go to school anymore, He believes this 1960-70 dominionism. He is not in 8th grade now.
I think he has associated himself with dominionists, and I agree with you, whatever they believe ( probably a kind of postmillenialists from what I have read, which is not much.) I think he has made the connection to evangelical Christianity in an unnecessarily condescending manner, but I don’t see dominionism as being a particularly threatening; I mean Trump went after Carson’s Seventh Day Adventism at one point, then denied it.
I meant to refer to Trump, sorry if I was unclear.
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