Well, lets see. The US used WP (which is not a chemical weapon) against insurgents who where using civilians as a shield. Some civilians were caught in the cross fire and killed, though the intent of the US forces was to kill the insurgents…not the civilians.
Saddam deliberately targetted Kurdish and Shi’ite villages where he knew there were no insurgents…and he did use weapons that are defined as ‘Chemical’. This resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths…civilian deaths that were deliberately caused with the intent to cow the population.
Ok…where is this supposed to lead me again? I can see the distinction. Can you?
Well, you take pride in being ignorant so I suppose its even between use. Let me help you out (waste of breath I’m sure): Its not ‘indifference’ on the US’s part. For cold, practical political reasons the US doesn’t wack civilians ‘indifferently’. Even when we kill them completely by accident we get blasted for it. In addition the US citizens have a standard of what they will and won’t tolerate as far as civilian casualties goes…and the military is run by civilians, civilians who would sort of like to be re-elected sometime.
If we really WERE indifferent then you can bet the death toll on civilians would be much higher. We wouldn’t have bothered even attempting to take Fallujah by direct assault…we’d have simply surrounded it to starve the folks inside, then carpet bombed and shelled it until the insurgents inside were either all dead or ready to surrender.
Its a matter of reality. If the enemy chooses to hole up in and around civilians then a military decision is made whether or not the expected colateral damage is worth the gains in hitting the enemy. If you will recall from the Fallujah thing we DIDN’T attack all out right away. In fact we started to and then left the city be…and one of the considerations was allowing civilians in the perspective battle zone some time to clear out (there were other reasons too like we weren’t really ready to tackle such a big concentration of enemy in a meat grinder like a city).
How so? Just because you say so? I don’t think the US military is randomly using those weapons or the civilian death toll would be much higher. They’re trying to kill the guys with the guns and the bombs, not just everyone in Iraq.
A statement that is in direct opposition to reality. One wonders if you really have a grasp of what goes on in this world.
Now that you’ve established your usual level here … Okay, other people read this stuff too, and they don’t need to be left with the impression that you actually have a defensible point, so here goes anyway:
You sound like Bush saying “We do not torture”. What is the evidence on the ground about we do or do not do? Who gives a shit about what we *say * we stand for?
“You are what you repeatedly do.” - Aristotle, as quoted by Shaquille O’Neal
It’s in the tens of thousands as it is. You do know, I hope, that during the initial phase of the war, Rumsfeld was presented with proposed operations that involved predicted civilian casualties something like 50 times, and approved every single one. Is that not “indifference”?
Excluded middle. Try harder.
Exactly, but the decision has never been made the other way, has it?
Right, it had to wait until *just * after the election. Look it up. If you care about “reality” as much as you claim you do, that is.
Or perhaps the military planning those operations only submitted operations that were extremely vital and neccessary with the minimum amount of casualties possible? It could be that more lives were saved because of these operations. I don’t know, you don’t know. The data given does not allow any conclusive result.
That isn’t the only data. Add in the “shoot first” rules of engagement, in which any Iraqi who gets anywhere near a US soldier and is unfortunate enough not to understand an English command to halt, can be shot. Whose minds are being changed by that, and to what?
So now you change your tune from the original story:
“US used chemical weapons to massacre Iraqi civilians!”
to:
“Since the war is immoral any death of a civilian is by definition immoral”.
If you wanna complain about civilians getting killed, complain about that. But why continue to defend the line that the US used chemical weapons to deliberatly massacre civilians? What exactly are you doing in this thread, which is about how the US used chemical weapons to massacre Iraqi civilians?
I’m against using chemical weapons to massacre Iraqi civilians. I’m against using chemical weapons at all. I’m against using conventional weapons to massacre Iraqi civilians. I’m against using conventional weapons without regard to the presence of civilians.
The only thing we differ on is whether we are for or against using conventional weapons against enemy fighters. You think we shouldn’t be using any, I think we should.
So, what does that have to do with whether the US used chemical weapons to massacre Iraqi civilians?
The problem Lemur866 is that this was the agenda all along. The whole ‘chemical weapons’ thing was a smoke screen…simply a propaganda tool. Like the thread in GD on the same subject it comes back to the same thing in the end.
Of course, if you don’t agree with them then you obviously simply want to burn children alive. Ask rjung…
…in simpler words, what the US State Department told us in December 2004 was a lie. And the letter that the American Ambassador to London wrote to the Independent Newspaper a few days ago stating “US forces do not use napalm or phosphorus as weapons.” was a lie as well. It looks like the Italian documentary forced the US administration to stop lying about something. Is this not a good thing? Cite.
Not that you’d care what the US Administrations response to the whole thing would be…
I laid out a comphrehensive well-cited post that challenged many of your assertions here.
Still waiting for your reply on that one…
…well, this one should be easy enough for you to prove: so how many civilians have died to US hands since the war began? The civilian death toll would be much higher relative to what?
…so how much of the lead-up to Operation Phantom Fury do you really know? Do you remember the first seige of Fallujah? The Al-Qa’id Primary School? The blockades? The accusations that food trucks were being denied entry to the city? As cited by my previous post, 150 000 people were displaced and probably still are displaced from Fallujah. They are living either with relatives or in tent cities. One out of every five buildings were destroyed. No, Fallujah was not “carpet bombed.” But do the former residents of Fallujah give a shit? So your essentially saying “well, we could have done worse.” Of course you could have, but you could have done an awful lot better as well…
…do you remember the first thing US Forces did when they moved into Fallujah after the fall of Baghdad? They occupied a school. It was a “sound defensive position.” to paraphrase the Captain in charge. It’s no wonder so many civillians have died at the hands of the insurgency: if US troops decided to patrol the streets and occupy civillian buildings, it is a sound military decision on the part of the insurgents whether or not the expected colateral damage is worth the gains in hitting the enemy.
Nope. You recall wrongly, however from the tenor of your uncited post that really is no surprise. The Americans first moved into Fallujah in April 2003, pissed a whole lot of people off, opened fire on a group of protesters, then essentially moved out. After the deaths of the four security contractors, US troops launched Operation Vigilant Resolve. This battles ended at a stalemate, with American Forces unable to push further into the city, they came to a mutual agreement with City Leaders to cease hostilities. Operation Phantom Fury happened seven months later: this was not, as you seem to characterize it, a pause to allow civilians to leave the city. Vigilant Resolve was an ill-thought out under-strength retaliation strike that failed, Operation Phantom Fury was the followup, with the goal of “breaking the back” of the insurgency. And, if you read my post up above, you would find out it has done anything but.
…as for evacuating the city:
…pity being a man aged between 15 and 50 eh? And as for displays of indifference:
Its hard not to read Rumsfeld’s comments without knowing whether to barf, laugh, or whack myself over the head with a hammer…
…from 210 deaths/week from insurgents pre-phantom fury to to 420 deaths per week a year post-phantom fury. Freedom! Oportunity! Come to Iraq, but be careful driving on the road from the airport! If you drive to slowly, you will be shot by the insurgents! But if you drive to fast, you will be shot by us! Watch us get self-rightous when 2 billion dollars goes missing in the “oil for food” saga, then watch us bury our heads in the sands when 9 billion dollars goes missing from reconstruction funds on our watch! Come see us sell off the state owned assets, in the opening month! And to cap that one off, we will write it into legislation! Watch us as we make the military unemployed, and then stare at wonderment as they get pissed at us! Amaze at how a convicted fraudster on the run from one of our allies and who spun a careful tale of lies that bought the US into this conflict ended up the Vice-President of Iraq! Lets get Jay Garner to spend a year planning for Iraq, assemble a team to watch over the occupation, and then just prior to the invasion strip down his team, and then after a month fire him! Viva le invasion! Freedom, opportunity and democracy for all!
Seriously, don’t you just get tired of all this bullshit?
There doesn’t appear to be an exception for civilians used as human shields. Now as I stated before, the US hasn’t signed onto this protocol, but 90 other countries have. IMHO, that gives them the right to be pissed about this.
On a different tack, How would human shields work in spider holes? Do civilians who happen to be in the same buildings, or on the same block as insurgents count as shields? How does the military determine who is a shield and who is not, under combat conditions?
The state department’s initial lie about the use of WP in Fallujah, makes it reasonable to question the veracity of whatever cover story they come up with now.
I pointed out how the military has admitted to using such weapons, despite lying about it, and to point out they were doing the same thing as many here : defending themselves with legalisms/semantics that no one but the apologists care about. Like it or not lots of people lump in incendiaries with chemical weapons, and they really don’t care about the official definition. Argueing about it just makes the pro war side sound like it’s weaseling.
No, it’s poor use of language and the names of weapons, that’s all. For example, google “Iraq napalm” and you’ll find articles about the use of “napalm gas” and mustard gas, confusing the properties of the two. They are wrong about the technical details, but get the important point : people fried. Gas, jelly, corrosive, incendiary; it doesn’t matter how, it matters what happened.
For what? The insurgents using civilians to shield themselves from fire? I’d think it goes without saying, seeing as they were using mosques as sniper positions, had arms and ammo stored in hospitals, etc. However, in a one min. search (sorry, I’m strapped for time tonight) I found this article in the Washington Post:
Do a google search and interestingly enough the first few pages repeat Arbour’s quote. There were a few military papers I could have cited quoting US soldiers in Fallujah who witnessed insurgents actually using civilians to screen them, or having civilians in and around strong points, but I figured they would be considered too biased by one such as you so I won’t bother.
Yes, I was aware of that. Seeing the reaction I suppose I can see why they denied using WP in Fallujah. I agree though, it was wrong of them to do so and certainly throws their credibility into question.
As for the Italian documentary doing some good, I suppose this is an ends vs means thing. They used propaganda to exaggerate WP into a chemical weapon. On the other hand they have gotten the military to acknowledge some additional data about what happened.
If I have a chance later I’ll look at that thread and see what your well cited challenges to my positions are.
So, what you are asking is how many civilians would have died had we just left the insurgents in control of a major Iraqi city? Kind of a stupid question, isn’t it? How many German citizens would have died (or lived) had we just left the Nazi’s alone instead of trying to kick them out?
Quite a bit actually. Though I thought it was 250,000 that fled and aprox. 50,000 that remained in the city for various reasons. I certainly remember the various accusations that were flying both in the first siege and in the actual assault.
How could we have done better and still gotten the insurgents out of there? They were running the whole city, they were conscripting civilians into the local militias, they had fortified the buildings. Again, I suppose we could have left then there…had the Iraqi’s allowed us too. They were driving the assault as much as we were. Given the reality of the situation, and given that we weren’t going to let Fallujah stay in insurgent hands, and given that we didn’t want to suffer a lot of US/Iraqi casualties, what do you think we could have done differently that would have resulted in less loss of property (I assume you aren’t disputing about the loss of life on either side which was relatively small compared to the size of the city)?
Its no wonder so many civilians died since the insurgents were using the mosques as defensive positions, use hospitals and schools as weapons/ammo cache’s, put their fortifications in and around civilians, etc. Interesting that you don’t mention this…or do you just not believe anything that isn’t anti-American?
As for the rest of your post, again, what do you suggest as an alternative? Allow any males between 15 and 50 to leave? How would you know who was legitimately leaving and who was leaving for other reasons? What would stop the insurgents from leaving to hit somewhere else…or from letting the leadership guys get out? It was a no win situation. They allowed women and children out. Presumably they expected any innocent men between 15 and 50 would keep their heads down as well as they could and hopefully ride out the storm.
…No. Is this a habit with you? Restating your assertions? I was looking for a cite for your assertion: “The US **used WP **(which is not a chemical weapon) against insurgents **who where using civilians as a shield. **”
…so no cites to that WP was used against insurgents using civillians as a shield? Concession accepted.
Maybe if they hadn’t denied it, there would have been no documentary, no accusations, and no reaction. Pity we will never know.
Agreed.
…well, you did say you would
No, my questions weren’t exactly hard ones. Why the need to restate them? Seems it does seem to be a habit of yours…
I asked two questions:1) How many civilians have died to US hands since the war began? and 2) The civilian death toll would be much higher relative to what? They were in response to your assertion " If we really WERE indifferent then you can bet the death toll on civilians would be much higher." Higher than what?
Germans? Nazi’s? What has this got to do with the questions I asked you? I’ll ask you again, as you seem quite confident that the Americans aren’t indifferent to civilian casaulties: how many civilians have died due to American or Coalition actions since the war began in 2003? Surely, you should be able to find this information out on the official govenment website…after all, its not as if they are indifferent towards civilian deaths, are they?
…I’m talking about the 150,000 that as of March of this year, hadn’t gone home. (As per my cite in my original post. )
…how about engaging in proper dialogue with those running Fallujah back in 2003? How about invading the country with the amount of troops the Generals wanted? How about fixing the infrastructure liked promised? How about not conducting Operation Vigilant Resolve; a stupid attack that did nothing except make the commanders feel like they had “struck back”, and which helped intensify anti-American feelings? Of course, these are all of this would require a proactive strategy as opposed to the current reactive strategy. That could have meant that Fallujah never turned into an insurgent base at all.
…sounds just like prewar: Either you Invade Iraq and get Sadamm and bring FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY to the Iraqi people, or your an evil Sadammite! You support a torturous regime and terrorists and such! There are other options to either leaving Fallujah as a homeground for the insurgency and making Fallujah virtually uninhabital, right?
Agreed!
…oh horsecrap. How about, for starters citing the loss of life at Fallujah? Then ask yourself, what did the taking of Fallujah actually do to the citizens of Fallujah and the Iraqi’s in general. Are they safer? Is the insurgency weaker? Were the goals of Phantom Fury achieved?
…oh that hurt. Your implying I’m anti-American? You bandied that one around
in the other Great Debate thread as well…must be a force of habit. I can guarentee you I am absolutely not anti-American. But call me what you like.
You state that " If the enemy chooses to hole up in and around civilians " as a reason for military decisions that may mean civilians may die due to collateral damage. It was implicit in your post that the insurgents were using hospitals and schools and mosques as defensive areas. Why would I repeat your implication? Did you miss the point of my post? To make it simpler for you, yes, the insurgents use hospitals and schools as fortifications and ammo caches, and so do the Americans. In fact, in the middle of Baghdad right now, theres a great big area called the Green Zone that normal, every day Iraqi’s aren’t allowed into. Including the Palaces that the Americans claimed preinvasion “belonged to the Iraqi people.”
…ummm, newsflash…they did get out. And they are causing killing and maiming at a rate of twice what they were doing pre-fury. Claiming that “anyone on the street” is an insurgent is, quite clearly, a display of indifference on the spokesmans part. Claiming that “innocent men” could ride out the storm with no runnng water, injured people around them, bombs exploding around them, being used as a human shield, no food and quite likely, no roof, is an example of indifference on your part.
I understand that perfectly. I suspect we have a two-way cultural comprehension problem here.
In most countries ex-US, where incendiary chemicals are banned along with chemical weapons, the distinction that a number of people are thundering about here is not as distinctly perceived as it is in the US. These weapons are considered unnecessarily cruel, dangerous, and harmful.
Why this difference of perception? Because the US is not a signatory to both UN bans (chemical and incendiary), but only to one of them, and therefore to some in the US one type of weapon seems more acceptable than the other.
But outside the US both are unacceptable, both are “chemical”, and the problem thus appears one of hypocrisy. To understand this sentiment (and note I am not saying the two cases are parallel, only that a comparison is helpful in understanding the gulf between opinions), consider the instance of captured “unlawful combatants” who were blatantly denied basic rights in Afghanistan and detained indefinitely without charges on non-US soil: the US justified its behaviour (though poorly) by claiming that unlawful combatants fell outside the purview of the Geneva Convention and that they were not being detained in the US, but to observers the behaviour remained highly objectionable no matter what legal workaround or loophole was sought to justify it.
When someone quotes an entire paragraph then asks ‘cite?’ I usually try and figure out exactly what they are asking for. Good thing since I didn’t understand what you were asking for.
I have no cite about your specific request. Frankly I’d be stunned if there was a cite you would find acceptable about it. If you say the word I have a few blog sites I could use, but I’ll assume they won’t be good enough.
lol, sure BB. I suppose if I can’t find a cite you must be right.
Agreed. I’m no big fan of this administration, and I think that at least part of these kinds of things stem from their assinine knee jerk security. THey are like clams who only want to put out when they are caught red handed with their hand in the cookie jar. They don’t seem to get that sometimes its better to just come clean and take your lumps up front then to try and dance and sing and hope no one notices whats going on behind the curtain.
I know, and I really will, time permitting. I don’t usually come into this particular forum much though…I usually stick to GD and occationally peek in GQ and CS. I also don’t normally put even the little effort I have to spend on this board in debates in here. I will try and go through your other post in the other thread.
To make sure I understand what you are asking. If you want to get it right the first time ask your questions directly…and ask them in spanish if you don’t want me to repeat them back.
Oh. I didn’t realize thats what you were asking. Ok, how many have died year to date? I don’t have a breakdown of just civilian, but here is IBC’s current count:
If you are asking me about the death toll in Fallujah alone I can’t seem to easily find a solid figure. From what I am reading it seems something between 600-1000 roughly (this seems to combine civilian with insurgent…according to IBC 20% of the dead were women and children). I’ve seen lower and higher numbers but I think thats a good range. If you really want to beat me up I’ll dig somemore for a firmer figure.
I’m unsure what you are asking in your second question. If you are asking me why I speculate the death toll could have been much higher in Fallujah thats an easy one…there were aprox. 50,000 folks in Fallujah when the US attacked. Obviously the death toll could have been 10’s of thousands…and probably would have been that high had the US resorted to simply starving the inhabitants out combined with massive indiscriminant shelling and bombing. I can’t give you a cite on that because I don’t have a time machine that can do alternative history…I’m merely speculating.
To lay it out then, had 10’s of thousands died in Fallujah instead of hundreds or a few thousand (depending on which figure you go by) obviously that would constitute ‘higher than what’ … 6xx-x000 < 10,000-50,000. Yes?
It was an analogy of course.
26982 - 30380 (according to IBC). A good question might be: How many would have died had the US not invaded (due to the sanctions)?
I had a really good cite for this before but seem to have lost it. Here is one I dug up quick and dirty (no idea how accurate it is):
This doesn’t count adults (elderly), nor those killed directly by the regime of course. Based on half a million over 7 years we get aprox. 71,000 deaths (of children) per year. Even if we cut that figure in half and don’t add anymore deaths we get:
26982 - 30380 (over 3 years) vs (aprox) 106000 (over 3 years…a VERY rough aproximation btw and conservative in the extreme).
I suppose we could extrapolate the death toll in Fallujah pre-invasion vs during the siege as well but I’m too tired to time machine this any further. I’m not even sure I’m answering the question you are asking to be honest. This doesn’t really show one way or the other whether or not the US is indifferent to inflicting casualties on civilians…or not. Only way to do that would be logically.
There are aprox 28 million Iraqi’s (IIRC…not going to bother looking that up). In 3 years of fighting we’ve killed aproximately 30k civilians. If the US was really indifferent to Iraqi casualties I can speculate that the death toll COULD be in the millions (wide spread shelling or bombing of major population centers, refusal to provide health care and supplies, etc). Baghdad alone has several million folks inside…by itself indiscriminant bombing in the city would account for several times the number of dead civilians so far in this war. I have a feeling you aren’t going to accept this logic unless I can trot out some ‘expert’ to speculate for you…but it seems logical to me knowing what the US COULD do militarily if the gloves were really off.
blah blah blah. I have to admit I don’t have the energy to finish looking over your post and I doubt I’m satisfying what you are asking anyway. I will appologize for something I said that you appearently took badly:
I do seem to be implying that though I’ll be honest and say I really don’t know you as a poster well enough to say that. I was just irritated…but not at you. I apologize for the remark.
There is very little that is “logical” about the above, and a lot that is intuitive, not to mention wild guesses. The standard you apply appears to be the maximum destructive capability of the US armed forces, which is incredibly high and could potentially produce several million casualties.
That same kind of twisted thinking will also lead you to conclude that the US treated Iraq only with love and tenderness, since they could have carpet bombed every inhabited area and, in fact, sent over a few nukes along with those incendiary weapons that most of the civilized world has banned. Your so-called logic relies on claiming that “things could be worse” while holding a highly relativist point of view.
In other words the extract above is another tortured piece of thinking… nothing new here, move along.
