And Chumpsky, Human Rights Watch estimates that the civilian death toll in Panama was around 300 and they’re no fan of the US military. Are they liars or paid off?
The Straight Dope on Panama and casualties seems to be that there is no Straight Dope.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/panama/
It’s beside the OP’s point, anyway, innit? Let’s talk about human shields in Iraq, not Chumpsky’s figures and whose anus he may or may not have pulled them out of. And I think we can take it as read that he’s not in love with Amerika any more, so when he stands there shouting, “Amerika, that evil bitch, has caused more deaths and misery than Saddam Hussein!” he’s hardly telling us anything we don’t already know. It was in all the papers, the breakup of the year, Chumpsky and Amerika, it was like Tom and Nicole.
I cite Physicians for Human Rights, Chump cites the Nowar Collective. Any questions?
Interesting, that we read the same cite and I heard it say that there were no real answers, and you heard it say that there were 300 casualties.
I didn’t say that, I said “less than 500, as far as is known.” Which means I didn’t know, but was making a guess based on what I read.
And it wasn’t even the same site, either.
I think DDG was referring to me- I realize the gist of the article was that they don’t have a firm grasp on the number, although I caught this part:
and made sure I used the word estimated.
According to his ramblings here (scroll down left panel to “United States of Hipocrisy”. He is not an American ex-pat, he is not an American at all. He renounced his citizenship and burned his passport and an American Flag, and declared himself a “World Citizen” on July 1, 2002, and no longer subject to US Law. He has a bench warrants out for his arrest in Hawaii, for actions trying to overthrow the US Government in Hawaii. He says
He says he was with 2dBn, 4th Marines, which was attached to the 8th Marine Regiment. The 8th Marines were on the right of our 2d Mar Div sector, as I recall. He may have seen the destruction on a sight seeing tour, but did not witness it firsthand. The Tiger Brigade held the high ground overlooking that area, which was to my left, as I was in the center of the 2nd Mar Div area.
Bomb his ass.
Oh, all right then, carry on.
Cites, so far:
Chumsky 4 cites
Doghouse Reilly 1 cite
Jackmannii 1 cite
Duck Duck 1 cite
Michael Ellis 1 cite
So there You see Chumsky! You only gave us 4 cites, and we gave You 4.
Not more than we together!!!
I try to find a cite somewhere and we are in the lead, and Chumpsky is left in the shame!!!
And tomorrow I give You all points. Stay tuned.
Btw. if someone needs cites about his/her own country’s history, I suggest a library.
While writing the last, we got more cites!
Chumpsky, on his reputation for veracity: “I present more evidence and more references for my arguments than any single poster on this board”.
Chumpsky, when challenged to support his casualty figures, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with his OP: “These figures are common knowledge.”
Congrats, Chumpsky. Keep up the good work.
If there’s one thing the new round of weapons inspections has accomplished, it’s to draw attention to the amazing and revolting degree to which Saddam has enriched and aggrandized himself while starving his people. You may wish to review the recent N.Y. Times feature on his many opulent palaces, built with funds that could have provided needed food and medical supplies for his people. You might also consider how many lives would have been saved if he had foregone his megalomaniacal dreams and complied with sanctions. You could think about how many lives have been spared in neighboring countries due to sanctions inhibiting his ability to make war on his neighbors.
Thought, however, takes effort.
“It was in all the papers, the breakup of the year, Chumpsky and Amerika, it was like Tom and Nicole.” 
I’m fairly sure that those who propose shipping themselves off to Iraq as voluntary human shields see themselves as helping the Iraqi people, not Saddam. I’m sympathetic to that notion, and good luck to 'em, although I still have to say that they are at least tacitly supporting Saddam by doing such, and Saddam is no one I would care to support even by implication. I’ll stop well short, however, of considering them ‘traitors’, as some have implied in this thread.
Minor hijack:
I’d appreciate it if our esteemed Chumpsky would straighten us out on some of the figures he posted to this thread. I’m willing to buy the CODEHUCA fiqures on Panama as being just as plausible as any of the lower figures cited by other posters, but I need to hear the straight story on the reduced number of dead in Iraq.
In a previous thread, Chumpsky stated in so many words that sanctions in Iraq have killed “more than two million” since 1990, and he never backed off from this figure despite much rebuttal. Now, in this thread, we hear:
Personally, I find it repugnant that anyone at all might have died directly due to the sanctions, but I’m getting a bit confused over the variability of these numbers. So I like to ask the referenced poster which figures he believes are correct: “more than 2 million” or “500,000-1.5 million”? Also, why the change?
I would like to request that all American human shields please verify what they are shielding before they handcuff or tie themselves or whatever to the particular target to make sure they arent guarding some empty building or mosque and that they please send a clear radio signal so that all american forces can …uhh spot them and be aware of their presense… and take …uhhh appropriate action… 
Is anybody like me, in that they would feel better about wars against dictators with WMD if the U.S. had a policy of allowing people to freely immigrate out of horrible countries? That way there would be no Iraqi human shields, and no misguided Americans human-shielding those human shields.
Curious to see the reactions from Chumpsky as the one thing the far left and far right in US seem to agree on is that immigration is bad.
This is a pretty simplistic take on things. The U.S. has no control over the immigration (actually “emigration” in this case) policies of any nation other than itself. If Iraqi citizens want to blow town, their exits are not being blocked by Americans, but by Iraqi security forces. In a similar vein, the Berlin Wall wasn’t built by Americans to keep the commies in their place; it was built by commies to keep people who didn’t want to be commies in their place.
The U.S. has trifled with open immigration policies in the past, in which they will accept defectors openly and freely from specific dictatorial nations. The most notable recent example was Jimmy Carter doing the humanitarian thing and declaring that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba would be welcome in the U.S. In what became known as the “Mariel Boatlift”, 125,000 Cubans took him up on the offer. Fidel Castro took the opportunity to expel numerous criminals and mental patients, who promptly became a major problem for the Americans (fictionalized in Scarface, 1983). Some of the immigrants were (and probably still are) incarcerated in Federal prisons at great expense.
If GWB made a similar policy decision, he might get some Iraqis yearning to brathe free, but he’ll almost certainly get Iraqi spies, sleeper terrorists and general undesirables. The lasting solution is to make life more livable in Iraq, not become a haven for escapees.
I don’t know what Chumpsky’s particular take on immigration is, but it’s definitely not a magic bullet. It is, however, a convenient straw-man subject for anyone trying to make a political point.
A human shield might provide an effective defence if she has had breast enlargement.