100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study

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Do you consider president Bush personally responsable for the civilian deaths in Iraq?

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Yes, as commander in chief he must bear full responsibility.Note however that this does not excuse individual American personnel from also being tried before the Hague, as they are personally responsible for their own actions, according to the precedent established at Nurnberg.

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Yes, but that is because there was so little violent death before the war.

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You're telling me this brutal disctatorship so horrible to its own people that invasion was the lesser evil did NOT have a high violent death rate? If so, another rationale for the war falls.

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First, I'd like to point out that the article states this number like a fact, not the uncertain number it is. Quotes from the actual study

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Some of us are quite familiar and comfortable with the uncertainty inherent to statisticial surveys.

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The study only took into account 33 neighboorhoods. That is not a valid sample size. If there was intense fighting concentrated in some of the clusters, it would drastically skew the data. For example, the cluster in Fallujah gave results so much higher than any others that for the entire report they give stasticial calculations for the data set including Fallujah, and not including Fallujah.

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The reason they did not give numbers fo Fallujah was due to the impossibility of determining how many people the red-brown smear inside a building may once have been. They specifically di NOT include such instances becuase the numbers were not verifiable.Seoncdly your claim is duplicitous - "its not a valid sample size" for what? For a certain statement as to the actual casualty numbers? Certainly; but as a ballpark representation of the scale of death we are looking at, it is indeed adequate. It is also the ONLY methodical study yet carried out and is thus much more reliable than any other estimate.So while you may comfortingly choose to reject these numbers, you have even less of a basis for your numbers than you accuse this survey of having.

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If I have to choose betwee one dubious survey and a whole truckload of reliable ones I'm definitely going with quantity and quality over, well, sensationalism. The newspaper overrated what the people running the survey said about its accuracy, and the people running the survey overrated its accuracy.

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No, the minimisation of the casualty rate is the media sensationalism of American heroism, guilt free. I point out again, you cannot make any claim about other "reliable" surveys becuase there are no surveys more reliable than this one.

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However, the number of deaths should not have any effect on whether or not someone is guilty of a war crime. It is known that at least 10,000 civilians have died, and that is enough to indict someone. What I want to know is why you think president Bush is personally responsable. Do you actually think a president should guilty for all collateral damage in a war? If so, every wartime president we've have should have been convicted many times over.

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Thats the Slobodan Milosovic defense, I believe.No, in a genuine war, I do not regard the commanders in chief of bveing personally culpable. btu this is not a real war - American is not fighting in desperate self defence. America invaded a soveriegn state (the heinous crime, I remind you, of which Saddam was guilty in 1991) on dishonest intelligence without cassus belli and entirely for the purposes of domestic political consumption. And as the occupying power, America has also acquired the legal responsibility for the citizens of Iraq. That is, you have a duty of care to the very civilians in Fallujah your marines are presently butchering.Bush should be brought not just to the Hague, but also the gallows.

I'm not going to get into the war criminal thing, but you are off on your facts... No it did not. It set conditions that Iraq had to comply with or it would face the possibility of military force.Let's start with the fact that that military force described was not the US, there are other nations in the UN and it can only sanction decisions of the UN security council.Second, Iraq was in compliance with the resolution. I'm uncertain where the problems come in for people to understand this. They were complying and the inspections were revealing how fallacious the claims of the US were. Thus the US simply claimed that Iraq was defeating inspections and stopped them by invading.Remember Bush was originally set to go to the UN council again to get authorization for an invasion (and by more than just US troops). Remember he bragged about it when he thought it had the votes. Remember when he continued to brag when he thought he had all the votes except for France which could veto it. Remember he bragged that he would put it to the council regardless of the veto just to show that they had the votes. Remember as he backed down and did not put it to a vote when it turned out he wouldn't get the vote regardless of France?Whoops.And in the end we discovered that the UN and arguments by certain members (such as France) had been correct.There is no question that the US attack against Iraq was contradictory to precedent and international law. Even Kofi Anan has been pretty clear about this fact. The only question is who would be able to take us to court, and who is willing to when no one really liked the guy Bush took out?That doesn't make it more legal, or correct procedurally from the UN, just something no one is going to do anything about. Wrong again. They gave the president the authority to use force if and when he saw that it was necessary.Remember this was post 9-11 and people swallowed arguments that attacks could come out of the clear blue by anyone. Many signers of that authorization made it clear it was not a green light to attack, but exactly what it said: the authority to use force when deemed necessary.It also went with a number of promises made by the president to pursue all avenues first and to work with the international community.Well he ignored the UN, and stopped the ongoing inspections, in order to invade. The argument was Saddam was tricking everyone and the threat was building. Well he wasn't and it wasn't. One did not need 20/20 hindsight to recognize this, but certainly with it 100% should agree that the action did not live up to its promises. This is also untrue, as crash pointed out. And of those governments which did support Bush (and go figure since they were political buds of Bush), the populations of those nations were firmly against the action.Even in the nation I currently live in (which later gave troops), it is only the gov't which did this on their own and as a friendly gesture to this PM's "brother in Christ" Bush. The majority were appalled. There was a vast vast vast majority of entities (population and national gov'ts) that stood against it. That included the UN. So does that not testify against its reasonableness? Doesn't the fact that the arguments used by most of those opposed to the war turned out to be right, indicate the lack of reason used in deciding to invade.Apparently people have lost even hindsight.As far as whether it was a "good" decision, by which I would take to mean beneficial for the US... I would love to hear why you think this beyond the glittering generality of we removed a bad guy and Iraqi's will have a chance at democracy.In the end our invasion provided 0 protection from terrorist attacks, or military attacks, against anyone including ourselves. This is a known fact at this point.In the end our invasion cost us lots of money and spread our military forces to areas that would not provide protection for the US, locking them in in a way that they cannot be used if further problems develop in the world. This is a known fact at this point.In the end our invasion has meant that our nation, our people, killed at least 10,000 totally innocent Iraqis, upwards to 100,000. After fallujah this tally will likely be much higher. This is much higher than what we lost on 9-11 and declared that as a valid reason for nations to treat the aggressor as a rogue nation. This is a known fact at this point.In the end our invasion has set precedent that any nation may invade any other nation, when there is absolutely no imminent threat, but rather the possibility that at some point 5-10 years away there might be a threat... and maybe not even of actually attacking, but or having an equal military force. That is the Bush doctrine. This is a known fact at this point.Yes, I would love to hear how in hindsight anyone can declare this a good decision.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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I will again remind you that Senator Kerry, along with a majority of the house and senate, signed this document - many people who did not support the administration believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that presented a threat.

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So the fuck what JT, there are no grounds for preemptive strikes against a perceived, maybe, possible, kinda, we think threat. The only form of preemptive defense that exists is in response to immediate and imminent attack. That is if one of your subs had run across the Pearl Harbour strike group on its way it could have opened fire under proactive defence.But to take an army half way round the world on what amounts to shitty rumours is both appallingly arrogant and gravely irresponsible.Furthermore, whatever deliberations that may have gone in the AMERICAN political system are hardly of massive significane to global politics - what are we all provinces already that domestic US law supercedes our law, international law, treaty agreements?The fact that the semi-Fascist US spends all its time in permanent horror of some foreign bogeyman is hardly a defence against the charge that this is a crime against humanity or that US personnel should be brougt before the Hague to answer those charges.And yes, I am familiar with the Netherlands Invasion Act, before you ask.

A further point on colaition "partners". Several of the smaller European states such as Poland were oiutright bribed with trade agreements. This is also considered pretty normal for US arm-twisting in the UN, but it is ridiculous to claim that the American argument to the UN commanded much in the way of popular consent. I remind you that even Colin Powell described much of the alleged evidence he was asked to parrot as "bullshit".Furthermore, you should bear this in mind: very few states have the resources to match US intelligence gathering. If the US, with all its wealth and technology, says it certainly knows X to be true than there are prima facie reasons for thinking the US is probably able to know. But this underlines just how provisional the discussion was; it was not as if anyone was in a position to contradict US claims with any degree of authority or confidence.

I had not heard him say such things. I have always hoped to hear him say such things, but can't say that I have. Do you have a citation?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This is not an accurate description. They are 95% certain of 8,000 and 198,000 but 90% certain of more than 40,000. In other words their data has a normal distribution of probabilities - which leads to long lead offs. And let's not forget that more than 100,000 is equally as likely as less.You are right that the sample size is too small to give precise figures but what else are they to do with a small budget in a war torn country? What is clear from the result is that passive reporting measures (such as those quoting 10,000-15,000 dead) are severely undereporting the actual death toll. Which is exactly what we would expect - comparisons of passive reporting counts and actual results in other situations has shown that passive reporting can report as little as 7% of the actual incidence rate.(See the latest edition of The Economist for a rather more in depth discussion) No, this is incorrect. It would be statistically less accurate to take the results from other data sources and base the comparison on that.

And to that last point, what has been ommitted is the massive spike in infant mortality due to UN sanctions. So the pre-war infant mortality rate was itself artifically inflated by the decade-long blockade on medical services, tools and knowledge imposed on Iraq.

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I had not heard him say such things. I have always hoped to hear him say such things, but can't say that I have. Do you have a citation?

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I'll look, it was in the Guardian I am pretty sure, but also cited on Newsnight. Powell is reported to have said, only a day before his performance before the UN, "I cannot present this bullshit". He is also alleged to have said, in a phonecall to Jack Straw, that the neo-cons were "fucking crazies", although he has subsequently denied this (but not sued it seems).

JT -- if you put your responses to me as responses to my posts then I will get notification of them. I would try based on knowledge if you are going to be causing massive death and destruction. If you have to go based on a best guess scenario, then yes the person should be held accountable. Can you think of one reason why not? Can I presume you were one of the people that wanted to hold Clinton responsible for all kinds of things but could only find the evidence for lying about sex? What is your criteria for culpability? It was bad at the time, I said it was bad at the time, others said it was bad at the time. That I and these others have been shown correct by the passage of time just confirms that it was bad.The main reason that it was not reasonable at the time was because the inspectors had not finished their job. Reasonable would have waited for that to happen. No, I am talking about the public, intentional, and malevolent setting aside of the Geneva conventions for the prisoners at Gitmo, at Abu Ghraib, and at other "undisclosed" locations, violations that were not just condoned but put into motion by the top people of the administration.I am talking about starting a war without just cause. That this war has caused thousands of civilian deaths just makes it that much more necessary to take action to prevent another such miscarriage of aggression.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

nice mapNow all we need to do is add red states and blue states into the mix ...... here and in Australia ...

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

America is far from perfect, and we have participated in deaths from war and are as guilty as any nation. America will NOT be under the authority of any world court, however. The world court is in favor of the interests of a global population whose overall interests are unlike ours. Capitalism will be tried and found guilty by a world who wants to strip us of our resources and redistribute the wealth. We will not have it. This Empire will go down fighting. Contra, I know your ideology. Tell the average U.S. middle class guy whose wealth is already being downgraded from $15.00 an hour to $9.00 an hour that the rest of the world wants to dismantle the system around him. The world will get more equitable, but for the American, it will mean giving up what they have. So we are hogs! We won't let go!

While I agree with concerns about the UN or a world court being based on specific ideology I might ask whose wealth you are talking about. It is my understanding that the 5 % of the world's population in the US is using 25% of the resources now.

What are you talking about? The world court is run by primarily capitalist nations, and certainly manned by all capitalist nations.It also does not try tort and political crimes, it only tries war crimes which involve the use of military and/or police forces to commit crimes against humanity. That is torture and genocide, not what economic system you run. Wait a second.... bwahahahahahahahahahahaha... okay now.Tell the average middle class guy whose wealth is being downgraded because of unregulated capitalism, protected and enforced by Bush, who they just reelected in spite of all indicators that their paychecks will take a dive under his continued presence in that office, that their paycheck is really under threat by the world criminal court?Yeah that sounds about ignorant enough.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

yesthat feels good.especially when they voted on "moral issues"ahahahahaaaa

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I'll bet Bush could ride in his limo through a poor neighborhood, tossing crumbs from a dessert out the window while yelling "let them eat cake", and 51% of americans would say what a generous and moral man he is... compassionate.And then blame liberals and the rest of the world that people are poor and hungry. Well American people, the rest deserve it for hating democracy and freedom so much.Oh wait, didn't phathead say this already?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)