and Al Gore thinks liberating Iraq was a "Catastrophic Failure..." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...u=/ap/20031208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_executions -- Survey: Saddam Killed 61,000 in Baghdad Mon Dec 8, 6:58 PM ET By NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government may have executed 61,000 Baghdad residents, a number significantly higher than previously believed, according to a survey obtained Monday by The Associated Press. The bloodiest massacres of Saddam's 23-year presidency occurred in Iraq (news - web sites)'s Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, but the Gallup Baghdad Survey data indicates the brutality extended strongly into the capital as well. The survey, which the polling firm planned to release on Tuesday, asked 1,178 Baghdad residents in August and September whether a member of their household had been executed by Saddam's regime. According to Gallup, 6.6 percent said yes. The polling firm took metropolitan Baghdad's population — 6.39 million — and average household size — 6.9 people — to calculate that 61,000 people were executed during Saddam's rule. Past estimates were in the low tens of thousands. Most are believed to have been buried in mass graves. The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has said that at least 300,000 people are buried in mass graves in Iraq. Human rights officials put the number closer to 500,000, and some Iraqi political parties estimate more than 1 million were executed. Without exhumations of those graves, it is impossible to confirm a figure. Scientists told The Associated Press during a recent investigation that they have confirmed 41 mass graves on a list of suspected sites that currently includes 270 locations. Forensic teams will begin to exhume four of those graves next month in search of evidence for a new tribunal, expected to be established this week, that will try members of the former regime for crimes against humanity and genocide. More graves will later be added to the list. But nobody expects all the mass graves to be exhumed, and nobody expects to ever know the full number of Iraqis executed by their government. Richard Burkholder, who headed Gallup's Baghdad team, said the numbers in Baghdad could be high for two reasons: People may have understood "household" to be broader than just the people living at their address; and some families may have moved to the capital from other areas since the executions occurred. "Anecdotal accounts start to support it, but they don't get you to 60,000," he said in a telephone interview from Princeton, N.J. Even reducing the numbers slightly because of those possibilities, however, Burkholder said the number of executions the data suggest is higher than previously estimated, in the low tens of thousands. The deadliest atrocity associated with Saddam's government was the scorched-earth campaign known as the "Anfal," in which the government killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in Iraq's far north. Many were buried in mass graves far from home in the southern desert. Another 60,000 people are believed to have been killed when Saddam violently suppressed rebellions by Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north at the close of the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites). Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the U.S.-led occupation authority's human rights office, estimated that some 50,000 others were executed during Saddam's reign, including Kurds killed in chemical attacks and political prisoners sent to execution. That 50,000 figure also would include prisoners killed in Baghdad. The survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, was conducted in face-to-face interviews in Baghdad residents' homes from Aug. 28 and Sept. 4. The people were selected at random from all geographic sectors of the Baghdad metropolitan area, and more than nine in 10 agreed to participate. That's at least double the response rate for many U.S. telephone polls.
From the speech today... ____________ Our country has been weakened in our ability to fight the war against terror because of the catastrophic mistake that the Bush administration made in taking us into war in Iraq. It was Osama bin Laden that attacked us, not Saddam Hussein. (APPLAUSE) Saddam Hussein is a bad guy and he's better off not in power. We're all better off. But it was a mistake to get us into a quagmire over there.
AP = Associated Propaganda. They are the first people the government calls when it wants to get out its own version of a story. In fact, you might as well say the CIA has people on the AP payroll. And that would be true for whomever sits in the White House. But it sure is coming in handy now that Bush has to focus on Saddam's cruelty (which no one can deny) rather than on his previous purported reasons we needed to invade Iraq. I wonder if the AP would print a story about all the Shiites who fill mass graves after they rose up against Saddam after Gulf War I (at Bush the Elder's suggestion) but were left to twist in the wind, with no more help from us?
The survey was conducted by Gallup, not the AP. Perhaps they'r on the Bush payroll too? extrapolating from your argument about the Shiites, I assume you're against gun control too? after all, Guns (Sadaam) don't kill people, People (GHWB) kill people!
Yet more attempts at obfuscating the fact that the main reason the war was started has turned out to be unsubstantiated as yet. We knew that Saddam was a bad guy when we invaded a decade ago, heck, we knew he was a murderous tyrant when we (through the CIA) were in cahoots with him. Still no WMDs, though.
amazing how callous that sounds in this context. I'm sure it's a comfort to the families of those 61,000.
Basso, why didn't we go after dictators in African nations who have killed many more of their own citizens than Saddam did?
today, sorry, it was "catastophic mistake " I don't see the problem here. It's great that they are liberated - that doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake. It would be great if we liberated every fascist country in the world - it also be a huge mistake on the part of the U.S. I think everyone agrees that a free Iraq would be awesome - whether we'll get that or not is still a huge questionmark. There's a much murkier debate about whether or not it was a good idea for the U.S. to go in, though. For example, if invading Iraq did hurt our ability to get OBL, and he's able to unleash WMD terror as a result, then I would argue that going into Iraq when we did was a catastrophic mistake. We just don't know yet.
Thank you. I hope everyone notes rimrocker's quotation from Gore. With it's more complete context, it is a very sensible pronouncement. Despite being a "Saddam sympathizer" (double SIC), I already knew he had murdered tens of thousands of his own people.
Yet more attempts at obfuscating the fact that the war remains just regardless of whether WMDs are ever found.
Yet more attempts at obfuscating the fact that the war remains just regardless of whether WMDs are ever found. Gore, however, wasn't talking about whether it was just. He was talking about if it was a good idea for the U.S.
Bush's SOTU speech 2003 " The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm. America will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country, and our friends and our allies. The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to convene on February the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's legal -- Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups. We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him." Bush told us we needed to go to war with Iraq because of WMD. That is a cold hard fact that you can't deny.
Well estimates are that American sanctions and bombing of the water supply and sewers killed several hundred thousand in our first Iraq war and the aftermath. Estimates are that it is as more than 10,000 Iraqi killed to date in Dubya's war. It is going up perhapas hundreds per week. Some liberation. I guess you could say Dubya is better than Sadam. Quite an accomplishment.
The war does not remain just, nor was it ever just. What is just is the fact that Saddam is no longer in charge. That does not mean that this war, at this time, the way it was carried out and handled was just in the least. Because you claim the justness of this war as fact doesn't make it so. We each have our own opinion on this war, but no matter how much we may each believe in our stand on the issue neither of our opinions are fact.
