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| 17 new of 166 responses total. |
tod
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response 150 of 166:
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Aug 28 16:19 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mary
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response 151 of 166:
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Aug 28 17:03 UTC 2003 |
Well, according to General Tommy Franks, "We don't do body counts".
So an exact number of looters shot and or killed would be hard to
find, I'd guess. But a simple Google search brings up reports on
looters being shot, so I guess it does happen.
Now, the *civilian* death toll in Iraq, since we started this war,
is estimated to be somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 people. Most
sources seem to agree on the range.
I sure am glad we don't have an issue with the Iraqi people and
we're just after Saddam. I shudder to think how many we'd kill if
we weren't trying to help them out.
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klg
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response 152 of 166:
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Aug 28 19:06 UTC 2003 |
During the same time period, how many people would Saddam and his sons
have killed? (Or, perhaps, it doesn't count when they kill their own
people.) (And how many lives have been saved by military doctors
working in Iraq. Naw. I spose those wouldn't count, either.)
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tod
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response 153 of 166:
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Aug 28 19:36 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mary
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response 154 of 166:
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Aug 28 20:26 UTC 2003 |
Let's do the math. Saddam killed somewhere between 100,000
and 250,000 of his people between 1968 and his ouster.
Let's take a middle figure, 175,000, and divide it out.
He killed about 416 people a month, on average.
In 6 months we've killed, say, 6,500 civilians. We're
averaging 1083 a month. WE'VE GOT A WINNER!
A silly question deserves a silly answer. We aren't in
competition with a despot. We're there to help the Iraqi
people. How are we doing?
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polytarp
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response 155 of 166:
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Aug 28 20:29 UTC 2003 |
haha.
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cross
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response 156 of 166:
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Aug 28 21:02 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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pvn
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response 157 of 166:
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Aug 29 05:24 UTC 2003 |
How many of those "civilians" were militia and other irregulars like
sadaam fedayeen? If you kill two guys driving around in a "civilian
vehicle" such as a pickup, who were not wearing a military uniform -
wearing civilian clothes- because one of them was firing a .51 heavy
machine gun mounted in the bed at you, did you just kill civilians?
I betcha the NYT thinks so - I betchas those "statistics" are gathered
at morgues and hospitals where everyone who looks like a civilian is a
"civilian casualty".
Hmm, 9/11 -3000 "civilian casualties"/19 in one day. Gulf War-II,
-8000 "civilian casualties"/~100 over the course of how many days?
Their kill ratio is still orders of magnitude higher.
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klg
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response 158 of 166:
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Aug 29 16:28 UTC 2003 |
re: "#154 (mary): Let's do the math."
Don't forget to net out the lives that we're saving.
Then there's the small matter of approximately 1 million people who
died during the Iran/Iraq and Kuwait wars.
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lk
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response 159 of 166:
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Aug 30 04:17 UTC 2003 |
This isn't just a math problem. Assuming that Saddam did kill 175,000
of his own civilians, the average would be better calculated by using
the year in which he came to power rather than 11 years earlier. The
Baath coup was in 1968, but Saddam didn't become president until 1979.
So on *average*, Saddam killed over 600 people per month.
Using Mary's numbers, that's a bit less than the numbers killed during
the war, but these are *averages*. As stability returns, the average
will quickly drop. Of course, I'm not sure that including civilian
casualties caused by Baathist guerrillas should accrue in the US death
toll, but that's another issue.
For nice round numbers, let's just say that the number killed in the
12 months since the war will equal the number that would have been
killed by Saddam. So we're no better or worse of in that category,
except for one thing: Saddam is no longer in power and in the next
year (and those thereafter) some 7500 lives will have been saved.
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pvn
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response 160 of 166:
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Aug 30 08:21 UTC 2003 |
More children will die this year in the US because of the existance of
swimming pools than all the Iraqi civilians killed by our military
during GulfWar-II. In the US a child is way more likely to be killed by
a swimming pool than firearms. And more US citizens will die by
automobile this year than the total US KIA in the vietnam war. (We need
automobile control, not gun control!)
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mary
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response 161 of 166:
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Aug 30 12:14 UTC 2003 |
I realize that comparison somehow makes the situation in
Iraq more tolerable, reasonable even, for you. But I find
no comfort in thinking that reckless and drunk drivers
happen here so what's the problem if we kill a few thousand
innocent Iraqis while we occupy their country.
Try as I can - it doesn't work. Maybe that kind of
rationalization needs practice.
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rcurl
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response 162 of 166:
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Aug 30 20:10 UTC 2003 |
In almost all cases of accidental deaths here there is some form of
compensation for the victims and their relatives and punishment for
the perpetrators of the deaths. If any analogy is going to be claimed,
as pvn wants to do, then compensation and punishment should follow
in Iraq also. However the deaths in Iraq are gratuitous, and the
perpetrators are supposed to be honored. I don't see any equivalence.
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tod
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response 163 of 166:
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Aug 30 20:17 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 164 of 166:
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Aug 30 20:22 UTC 2003 |
I recognize that just compensation and punishing does not follow in
*all cases*, just in almost all cases.
We are also talking about the gratuitious slaying of civilians in
bombings, barrages, and stupid mistakes, which were most of the cases.
I think the military euphamism is "collateral damage". How about some
collateral compensation and punishment?
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pvn
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response 165 of 166:
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Aug 31 06:10 UTC 2003 |
re#164: First of all they were not "gratuitous" but as you point out
"collateral damage". THe military took great pain to strike targets in
such a way as to mitigate civilian casualties and even spent a lot of
money for the technology to do so. Part of the huge cost of the war is
that smart bombs are so very much more expensive. I recall reading a
story about some poor iraqi civilian bitching to the media about how his
windows had been blown out of his house right across the street from a
target building. In past wars the target would have been destroyed but
he wouldn't have been alive to complain.
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tod
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response 166 of 166:
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Aug 31 14:32 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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