Read carefully: while there’s a huge range, they’ve said repeatedly that by far the likeliest figure was around 98,000. As for including civilian and combatant deaths, that’s perfectly appropriate, IMO: when we consider the cost of the Vietnam War, we consider combatant deaths, because those soldiers who die are also brothers, sons, husbands, fathers. Excluding the deaths of combatants dehumanizes them.
IBC counts differently because they’re not gong for an accurate picture of how many people died: they’re going for a rock-bottom figure that is undeniable. Different goals.
As for the irony being lost of me focusing on “low” figures for Hussein–put up your own figures if you want me to see the irony, and then explain to me why those figures should be used in figuring out whether this particular war resulted in net loss of life (which was, you will remember, the topic at hand).
No. Read the quote right above my request. ***Bricker *** said 250,000 more Iraqis would have died if not for Bush’s war. That being not a commonly-presented statement, a request for a cite is perfectly appropriate. Note that he hasn’t responded yet, making my even more suspicious that its origin is in his rectal region.
*Now * it’s your turn. Cite?
There’s a chance monkeys might fly out of my butt, too. Note in passing that the Iraqis didn’t choose to make these sacrifices Bush has benevolently bestowed upon them (damn, luci, you’ve rubbed off on me), nor is there much evidence that they would have chosen to do so just to get their democracy, nor is there much evidence that they want it anyway.
What makes you conclude that?
Caricatures get you nowhere fast. There are a lot of groups with their own goals, the only common one being to get us the hell out of there.
You want a cite from me that Iraqi’s were happy to get rid of Saddam? Well, even though my own requests for cites are usually ignored, and even though the entire nation hasn’t exactly been polled consistantly (something I’m sure you knew when you asked)…From The Washington Post
Granted, this particular poll only talks about residents of Baghdad, but other polls show similar things…while the Iraqi may not love us (to put it mildly), by and large those not directly tied to the old government didn’t love Saddam much either, and were happy he was booted out.
Well, if they do, you should probably have a doctor look into that. Sounds painful. I rate the chances of the Iraqi elections as substantially higher though than a flight of semians out of your rectum however…and even the chances of the Iraqi’s getting a stable government as somewhat higher probability wise.
You will note that I already said (in the part of my post you didn’t quote btw) essentially the same thing with reguard to the Iraqi’s getting a choice about Democracy…that the Iraqi’s didn’t exactly ask to be liberated. They had no choice in it. You telling me to note this is sort of circular in that light.
Now that the chance is there though the Iraqi’s themselves seem to be fairly excited about the chance to vote for a new government…I know I’d be a bit wary of voting if AQ had threatend ME with death if I went to the polls. Yet from all indications (and leaving aside the Sunni’s who will be boycotting) a large number of Iraqi’s have signed up to vote…probably a higher percentage of the population that regularly vote in US elections in fact, if some predictions are correct. Guess we’ll see on Saturday.
Because Saddam and Iraq were an unstabalizing force in the region even with sanctions. And sanctions were not going to go on there forever. Once sanctions were lifted I could see SH pushing things as much as he could…he was like a mini-Hitler in that respect, always pushing as far as he could, confident that he could get away with it.
With the amount of retoric SH and Iraq pumped out, and the fact that the US was already suspicious of them, I think it was inevitable that the US and Iraq come to serious blows again. If for no other reason than political. Clinton bombed Iraq. Had there been no 9/11 I’m fairly confident GW would have had the military toss some tomahawks at them as well. Subsequent presidents most likely would have remained suspicious no matter what Saddam did…and to keep the fires burning , Saddam kept up a low level of agression about the no fly zones by periodically attacking the planes enforcing it.
With those kinds of things going on, and no prospect for a radical change in govenrment in Iraq (even if SH died I’m pretty confident the Baathists would have remained in power, and probably under one of his sons…who might have even been worse that the father), we were headed for some kind of clash eventually IMO. Just my opinion though…we’ll never know now. But you did ask.
Me, responding to ElvisL1ves (and quoting him, I might add):
The only reason I used that figure was to respond to his hypothetical. He sees that hypo as “We’re only 40% as evil as Saddam.” I see it as, “We saved 150,000 lives.”
A terrorist, hiding in a crowd outside of a theater, triggers a bomb that kills 100 people inside the theater. Mission complete, he starts walking away.
I, patrolling overhead in my helicopter, see him do this, so I launch a rocket at the terrorist, killing him and 40 bystanders.
How many lives have I saved?
Once the terrorist’s victims are dead, they’re dead. Any more lives that I choose to destroy don’t get counted against the number he’s already killed.
The 250,000 number bandied about is the number of Iraqis who were already dead under Saddam, to the extent that number’s even real.
IOW, your assertion that 250,000 *more * Iraqis would have died without the war is indeed straight out of your ass, as suspected. I wish I could say I’m disappointed in you, but I’m over that.
They seemed pretty thoroughly contained and disarmed, though unhappily. Where was the destabilization going to come from if not externally?
Rhetoric? Who gives a shit about that? How was Iraq going to “come to blows” without weapons or even a dependable army? Sorry, no, Saddam was a complete prick, but he couldn’t have started squat. This one is Bush’s all the way, with an assist from Blair.
I think we’re pretty much in agreement otherwise, although I’m still firmly in the “reality-based community”. Where we differ is that, to the extent there may have been a chance of durable success, it has been so totally bungled by this administration that it’s gone now - and the decisionmakers have shown no sign of being able to learn from their bungles in time.
Yep, that’s the difference you get when you change from the indicative to the conditional. In other words, there is a huge honkin difference between “Saddam is responsible for 250,000 deaths” and “250,000 would have died”; by paraphrasing Elvis’s indicative statement with the conditional statement, Bricker drastically changed the meaning.
I suspect he, not being a grammar geek like myself, distorted the meaning purely unintentionally. Thus my post that intended to clarify the difference.
Of course! Rhetoric of Mass Destabilization (RMD)!
We simply must not underestimate the power of RMD! Even now, the rhetorical force of The Leader’s Inugheral Address is echoing and reverberating throughout the Middle East, to glad cries of approval and enthusiastic agreement! If only the liberal media would permit, you could see the swelling crowds in the streets, marching in the thousands in “Boy! Do We Love George W. Push and America Just A Whole Bunch!” demonstrations.
Let us rejoice that the ghastly threat of Saddam’s RMD is no more!
Sure they were as long as the sanctions continued. Even there though there are indications that Saddam was getting around them (i.e. Oil for Food scandal) and was pumping money into covertly rebuilding his conventional forces (albiet slowly) and attempting to purchase, under the table, more modern weapons. Even if thats bunk though its not that big a stretch to envision Saddam and Iraq rebuilding its military (and maybe even restarting its WMD programs) after the sanctions were lifted. And it was only a matter of time…the first rumblings for lifting the sanctions were already starting to come across the radar screens long before the invasion.
In addition there are other ways besides direct military actions that Saddam and Iraq, freed of sanctions, could have caused havoc in the region. I think Saddam was attempting to set himself up as a champion of Arab (ironic, since most Iraqi’s aren’t Arabs)/Muslim causes with his payments to Palistinian terrorist suicide bombers as a first step. I’m unsure how much the population over there REALLY was buying it, but pouring money into such a popularist position probably wasn’t hurting him any.
All of which is pure speculation of course, and none of which justified the invasion IMHO. I’m just responding to the thread of the conversation trying to point out that its plausable that the US and Iraq would have come into conflict sometime in the future…and why I think it was inevitable.
Rhetoric by itself means nothing, sure enough. Then again, ObL was just pumping out Rhetoric as well…until the mid-90’s when AQ started to actually do things against the US and culminating (so far) in 9/11…no? Saddam had continued to show that he wasn’t all just hot air, as I said, but pushing the envelope with the no fly zone and other things of that nature. Certainly his military wasn’t very dependable when compared to the US’s…but that was after his defeat in GWI and the sanctions.
Lets recall that Germany was also under similar sanctions after WWI and figured out ways to get around them and rebuild a respectable military eventually. Now, I don’t put Iraq in the same league, but then again, compared to the other military’s in the region how good did they really have to be? If the US was distracted elsewhere I could certainly see an oppurtunistic Iraq wreaking havoc in the region. Who would stop them? The Saudi’s? Kuaiti’s? The Europeans? :dubious:
If your point was that Iraq was no threat to the US I agree with you provisionally…they were no direct threat to the continential US, militarily speaking. However, they WERE a threat to our strategic interests in a vital region of the world.
Well, I like to think of myself as reality based. I’d say we differ on a lot of things, probably even on WHY we both dislike the invasion of Iraq and think it was a mistake. I also think that there is still a chance for Iraq and the Iraqi people…the invisible line between success, no matter how limited, and utter failure has not yet been crossed and is still in the future IMO. Part of that is going to be what comes out of saturdays election and what the Iraqi people do with it.
I agree that the administration has severly bungled the entire enterprise, including launching it in the first place, but even with such bungling I can see how Iraq COULD still become stable and even ‘democratic’. There are more factors in play here than just Bush et al after all…the Iraqi’s themselves have something to say on their own behalf, and not all of them, or even the majority of them are insurgents and terrorists.
