655,000 Iraqis Murdered

[Rishi]

New study says US war has killed 655,000 Iraqis
By the editorial board
12 October 2006
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This article is available as a PDF leaflet to download and distribute

According to a study published Wednesday in the British medical journal the Lancet, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq are responsible for the deaths of an estimated 655,000 Iraqis.

The survey of Iraqi casualties was conducted by a team of Iraqi physicians under the direction of epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

The estimate of the researchers is more than 12 times the figure of 44,000 to 49,000 civilian deaths given by the British group Iraq Body Count, and nearly 22 times the figure of 30,000, “more or less,” mentioned by President Bush in a December 2005 press conference.

The number of estimated deaths of Iraqis since the invasion corresponds to 2.5 percent of the population of Iraq. A matching percentage of the US population of 300 million would be 7.5 million—nearly the entire population of New York City.

The number of 655,000 represents the “excess” deaths caused by the American invasion and occupation. This is the difference between the number of people killed since March 2003 and the number of deaths that would be expected on the basis of pre-war death rates.

Of the total number of war-related deaths, an estimated 600,000 died as a result of violence, including gun shots, car bombs and other explosive devices, and air strikes. An estimated 31 percent of these, or 186,000, are attributed by the study directly to coalition forces—that is, these Iraqis were killed by the American military or its allies. According to the study, gunshot wounds caused 56 percent of violent deaths—an extraordinarily high figure that points again to the direct role of the US military.

An additional 24 percent of war-related deaths are attributed to other sources, including sectarian killings and suicide bombings, while 45 percent are classified as unknown.

These figures give a partial picture of the consequences of a war crime of vast dimensions. US imperialism has laid waste to an entire country and killed a significant proportion of the population in order to seize control of Iraq’s vast oil resources and establish a hegemonic position in the Middle East. The Lancet report stands as an indictment not only of the Bush administration, but of the entire US political establishment.

Death on such a scale was an entirely foreseeable result of the invasion of Iraq. The US attack has produced a social catastrophe of historical proportions.

The nightmare of death and destruction unleashed by the US gives the lie to all of the claims, beyond the phony allegations of weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi support for Al Qaeda, advanced to justify the war—that it was launched to liberate the Iraqi people, that it is a war for democracy and freedom, etc.

The report states that the US intervention has killed more than twice as many Iraqis in the space of three-and-a-half years than were killed by the regime of Saddam Hussein in the course of its 24-year reign, based on the estimate by Human Rights Watch of 250,000 to 290,000 killings under the deposed Baathist government.

The occupying forces are responsible not only for those they killed directly, but for all of the violence that has been unleashed by the invasion. The US policy of supporting different ethnic groups and pitting them against each other has led to the sharp increase in sectarian killings over the past year. The ultimate cause of all the deaths, as well as the uncounted injuries, lies in the decision to launch the war itself.

The 55,000 additional deaths from non-violent sources are attributed by the study to heart attacks, cancer, infant mortality and other illnesses. This increase is directly related to the destruction of Iraq’s social infrastructure, including electricity, sanitation, clean water and medical care.

The immediate response of the Bush administration to the Lancet report was a predictable mixture of contempt and indifference. In a press conference on Wednesday, Bush called the figure of 655,000 “not credible” and said the methodology used in the study had been “discredited.” He did not bother to explain the basis on which he dismissed the report.

For its part, the Pentagon responded by saying that it “regrets the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else.” The pro-forma character of this statement betrays the complete indifference of the US military. The Pentagon went on to claim, “It would be difficult for the US to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity.”

This statement, as with virtually all official US statements on Iraqi casualties, attributes the toll on Iraqi lives entirely to the resistance, not to US violence. This is yet another in the mountain of lies employed to justify the war.

Since the invasion, the US government has refused to release figures on the deaths it has caused. The US-backed Iraqi government has systematically underestimated the death toll, and has stepped up its policy of concealment in tandem with the increasing carnage from US military attacks, mass killings by death squads, and suicide bombings. Beginning in September, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki barred the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry from releasing their own reports on deaths.

The Lancet study is the most credible estimate of deaths available, and is based on an entirely sound methodology. The figure of 655,000 is much higher than numbers reported by other surveys, including Iraq Body Count, because these other estimates rely on passive surveys of deaths reported in the press. This method is known to vastly underestimate actual deaths, since most killings go unreported. Iraq Body Count also includes only civilian casualties, while the Lancet report includes all deaths.

In an article on Wednesday, the Washington Post cited several researchers who backed the survey’s findings, including Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, who said the survey methods were “tried and true” and that the results were “the best estimate of mortality we have” from Iraq. Sarah Leah Whitson, from Human Rights Watch, said that there was “no reason” to question the report’s findings.

The Post noted, “Both this and the earlier [Johns Hopkins] study are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods. The technique, called ‘cluster sampling,’ is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters.”

To arrive at their estimate, the researchers selected a random population sample across different regions of Iraq and then calculated the number of deaths since the invasion of March 2003 in that sample. In total, 1,849 households were visited, and a member of the household was asked to report on deaths in the family from the period beginning 14 months before the invasion of Iraq through to the present.

To verify the reported deaths, the interviewers requested death certificates 87 percent of the time. Of those asked, 92 percent were able to give certificates.

After calculating the number of post-invasion deaths among the households sampled, the resulting figure was used to estimate the number of deaths for the population as a whole. Based on pre-invasion death rates, the researchers calculated the expected deaths during the same period. The difference between these two figures yielded the “excess” deaths produced by the invasion and occupation. The 655,000 number is a middle figure. The researchers reported that they were 95 percent confident that the actual number of deaths was between 393,000 and 943,000.

Even if one assumes that the low-end of their estimate is correct, the death toll is staggering, with the US military directly responsible for more than 110,000 violent deaths.

Claims that the Johns Hopkins research methods are unsound were also used in an attempt to discredit an earlier report that estimated 100,000 excess deaths in Iraq from March 2003 to September 2004. The new study gives independent confirmation of that figure, yielding on the basis of an independent sample an estimate of 112,000 during that same period.

In answering a question on the Lancet report during his press conference on Wednesday, Bush’s comments reeked of stupidity, indifference and imperial arrogance. Acknowledging that “a lot of innocent people have died,” Bush said he applauded the Iraqi people “for their courage in the face of violence.”

“This is a society which so wants to be free that... there’s a level of violence they are willing to tolerate,” Bush said. The truth is the exact opposite. The violence is a product of colonial subjugation of a population that overwhelmingly opposes the presence of foreign troops in Iraq. Recent polls have found that at least 60 percent of the population supports attacks on US military forces.

At the same time, Bush indicated that the level of killing will increase in the coming period. He declared that it is “time for the Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods”—a reference to US demands for a violent crackdown on Iraqi resistance, particularly on anti-American Shiite militias. Last weekend, US forces carried out a major action in Diwaniyah, a city south of Baghdad, against militias associated with Shiite fundamentalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Also on Wednesday, the US Army said that it planned to keep troop numbers at current levels through 2010. Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker said the move was intended to insure that “I can continue to shoot as long as they want us to shoot.”

Washington has used the alleged killing of smaller numbers of people by other governments as a pretext for military attack. The Clinton administration and the media made vastly exaggerated and entirely unsubstantiated claims of Serbian killings of Albanian Kosavars in early 1999 to justify the US plan to launch an air war against the former Yugoslovia. At that time, figures in the area of 100,000-200,000 were tossed out and the regime of Slobodan Milosevic was roundly accused of genocide.

However, following the air war, the Tribunal on War Crimes in Kosovo issued an estimate of Albanian deaths from Serb attacks plus the US-led NATO bombing campaign at between 2,000 and 3,000. This figure is obviously dwarfed by the death toll resulting from the US rape of Iraq. But there are no charges from any section of the US political establishment, from either of its two parties, or from the media of genocide in Iraq.

While Milosevic, at the behest of Washington, was put on trial at the Hague for war crimes, the very suggestion that Bush and the top policy makers—Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz—who conspired to launch an unprovoked war against Iraq should suffer a similar fate would be denounced on all sides as nothing short of treason.

The scale of death and destruction in Iraq has been systematically concealed from the American people, with the complicity of the mass media and the Democratic Party.

There has been very little reporting on the recently launched military operations in Iraq, in both Shiite and Sunni areas. US troops have been conducting neighborhood sweeps, seizing and arresting an untold number of people. How many thousands of people have been killed during the latest round of military aggression? Without any independent reports of what is going on, it is impossible to know.

The silence of the media and both parties reflects the American ruling elite’s contempt for human life in general, and the lives of Iraqis in particular.

The attitude of the Bush administration and the Democrats stands in sharp contrast to the sentiment of broad sections of the US population, who are increasingly disgusted, horrified and shamed by the brutality unleashed by the US invasion in the name of the American people.

The only party in the November elections that represents this growing opposition is the Socialist Equality Party. In its election program (see “For a socialist alternative in the 2006 US elections”), the SEP calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq—the elementary precondition for putting an end to the brutal and ongoing slaughter.

The SEP demands that those responsible for the war be tried as war criminals. The election program also calls for the US government to compensate the Iraqi people for the destruction and suffering it has caused, as well as the families of American soldiers killed in the war and the men and women who have been wounded, both mentally and physically.

The war in Iraq has been waged in the interests of the American ruling elite, not the American people. The SEP calls for a break with the two parties of big business and the building of a new socialist party of the working class. The only viable basis for a struggle against imperialist war is the development of a mass socialist movement against the two-party capitalist system.

We call on all those who oppose the occupation of Iraq to vote for the SEP candidates where they are standing. Study our program, donate to our election fund, and contact the SEP to participate in our campaigns. Join the SEP and help fight for a socialist alternative to war and social reaction.

See Also:
Provocative US attack on Shiite militia in Iraq
[11 October 2006]
US casualties soar as military intensifies violence in Baghdad
[6 October 2006]
_________________
The World Mind Society http://www.eoni.com/~visionquest

[aeroplane]

Video: Bush responds to Iraqi death toll of 655,000







Lucifer had a bastard born in TX.
_________________
"Penalties against the possession of a drug
should not be more damaging to the individual
than the drug itself."

US President Jimmy Carter

[aeroplane]

Video: Bush responds to Iraqi death toll of 655,000







Lucifer had a bastard born in TX.
_________________
"Penalties against the possession of a drug
should not be more damaging to the individual
than the drug itself."

US President Jimmy Carter

[David]

[aeroplane]

[aeroplane]

[Rishi]

David spake thus;

"How many did Saddam kill? Who's the mass murderer!!!!"

I don't know...you many DID Saddam kill? You tell me.

What I DO know is that WE killed hundreds of thousands. Got anything to say about that?
_________________
The World Mind Society http://www.eoni.com/~visionquest

[Rishi]

WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq

Why is the American press silent on the report of 655,000 Iraqi deaths?
By Joe Kay and Barry Grey
13 October 2006
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The US media is virtually silent on a new scientific study that estimates the Iraqi death toll from the US war at 655,000. The study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and funded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was posted Wednesday on the web site of the British medical journal, the Lancet.

The study is the only systematic estimate of the number of Iraqi civilians and military personnel to have died as a result of the US invasion and occupation to be brought to the attention of the American and international public.

Unlike previous estimates, which were based on reviews of media reports or tallies made by the US-backed Iraqi government, the Johns Hopkins study was carried out by Iraqi physicians who interviewed—often at great personal risk—nearly 2,000 families spread across the country, utilizing standard and widely used statistical methods to arrive at an objective estimate of the death toll from the war and occupation. The vast majority of the reported deaths were substantiated by death certificates.

The study concluded with a 95 percent degree of certainty that the number of “excess deaths” in Iraq since the invasion—the number of people who have died in excess of the number that would be expected on the basis of pre-invasion mortality rates—is between 393,000 and 943,000. The figure of 655,000 is given as the most likely number. This represents an astonishing 2.5 percent of the entire Iraqi population.

The researchers further estimated that about 600,000 of the deaths were due to violence in some form, including gunshots, air strikes and bombings. They concluded that US and allied military forces directly caused at least 31 percent—or 186,000—of the violent deaths.

Some 336,000 people, or 56 percent of those killed in violent actions since the invasion, died from gunshot wounds. The study also found that the number of violent deaths in Iraq has steadily increased every year since the invasion. In the period from June 2005 to June 2006, the researchers found a nearly four-fold increase in the mortality rate relative to pre-invasion levels.

There can be no legitimate doubts about the credibility of the study. Lancet is one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical publications in the world. The Johns Hopkins public health school is the largest in the world, and regularly ranks as the top public health school in the United States. The journal article was reviewed and approved for publication by four independent scientific experts in the area.

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the report, even if one assumes its low-end estimate of 393,000 Iraqi deaths to be correct. It demonstrates that the American intervention in Iraq has produced a social and humanitarian catastrophe of historical dimensions, with vast political implications not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world and, above all, in the United States itself.

By any objective standard, the report merits front-page coverage in every major newspaper in the country and extensive discussion and reporting on television news broadcasts. Yet the response of the US press has been to virtually ignore the report and limit its coverage to news accounts on inside pages which report, uncritically, unsubstantiated statements by government and military officials dismissing the report as “not credible.”

In burying the story, the New York Times and Washington Post have played a particularly significant role. The original articles published by these newspapers on Wednesday were relegated to the inside pages: in the Times on page 8, in the Post on page 12.

The Post decided to bury the story in its back pages despite the fact that the article it published vouched for the scientific validity the Johns Hopkins study, noting that it, and an earlier report on Iraqi deaths published by the same team, “are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods.” The “cluster sampling” technique used by the scientists, the newspaper wrote, “is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters.”

Minimal coverage in the press continued on Thursday, despite the fact that the issue was raised by a reporter at a White House press conference on Wednesday. President Bush contemptuously dismissed the report, stating that it was not credible. He was not challenged and the question was not followed up by any of the other reporters at the news conference.

Bush’s remarks were followed by statements from various supporters and architects of the war similarly dismissing the Johns Hopkins study’s casualty figures. General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, admitted that he had not bothered to read the report, but nevertheless concluded that it did not have “much credibility at all.”

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the figure of 655,000 killed is “not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate.” Iraqi government officials likewise declared that the figure was “exaggerated.”

On Thursday, neither the Times nor the Post published an editorial on the Johns Hopkins report, or even a follow-up article on the report and the response of the Bush administration.

There was not one challenge in the establishment media to the official attempts to disparage the report. Instead, the minimal coverage on Thursday was largely devoted to reporting the statements by Bush, Casey, Blair and the Iraqi stooge regime. The Los Angeles Times, for example, published a story on its inside pages, “Iraq Disputes Claim of 600,000 War Dead,” reporting the statements by the Iraqi government. The newspaper added its voice to the chorus by remarking that it had conducted its own survey and reached a figure of 50,000 killed.

The attempts to discredit the report are not backed up by any factual or methodological arguments. The administration and its supporters assume, correctly, that they can simply make unsubstantiated claims and the media will not challenge them.

Lee Roberts, a co-author of the study, noted in an interview with the radio program Democracy Now! on Thursday that the cluster survey approach the researchers used “is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn’t very functional or in times of war.” He pointed out that both the United Nations and the US government have used the method in determining mortality, including after the Kosovo and Afghan wars. “Most ironically,” he said, “the US government has been spending millions of dollars per year... to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters.”

With its silence, the media is once again taking its cue from the government. It does not challenge Bush’s ignorant and cold-blooded dismissal of the Johns Hopkins report, just as it did not challenge Bush’s offhand remark at a December, 2005 press conference that 30,000 Iraqis, “more or less,” had been killed since the March, 2003 US invasion—an absurdly low estimate.

The corporate-owned-and-controlled media have buried this story because they do not want the American people to know the truth of what is happening in Iraq.

They want to conceal this truth—as they have done consistently since the war began—because they are complicit in a massive war crime in Iraq, and continue to support the bloodletting by the US military.

The Johns Hopkins report, by revealing the colossal dimensions of the death and destruction wreaked by the United States in Iraq, shatters the edifice of lies that has been erected in an attempt to deceive the people and justify the war—from the phony claims of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, to the current claims of a war for “freedom and democracy” and the overarching deception of the “war on terrorism.”

The report inevitably highlights the culpability of the media itself, which has combined an acceptance of unprecedented censorship by the military with self-censorship and deliberate misinformation in order to whitewash an imperialist war for oil and geo-strategic domination of the Middle East.

The scale of mass killing revealed in the Johns Hopkins study published by the Lancet stands as an indictment of the entire American ruling elite, both of its political parties—Democratic no less than Republican—and all of its official institutions, among which the media has played a particularly sordid role.

What the corporate, political and media establishment fear are the explosive social and political implications of growing popular revulsion over the crimes of US imperialism in Iraq and around the world, combined with mounting anger over relentless attacks on working people’s social conditions and democratic rights. The entire political system is being exposed and discredited before the eyes of the people. Such a process inevitably brings with it revolutionary consequences.

See Also:
New study says US war has killed 655,000 Iraqis
[12 October 2006]
Provocative US attack on Shiite militia in Iraq
[11 October 2006]
US casualties soar as military intensifies violence in Baghdad
[6 October 2006]
_________________
The World Mind Society http://www.eoni.com/~visionquest

[Brother Adam]

[Brother Adam]

[David]

[Brother Adam]

The americans didn't just accidentally kill a few Iraqis. Most, if not all, of the "insurgents" you've been hearing about are IRAQI citizens!! Most of the dead are innocent Iraqis and nothing more. They protested because america's only reason for invading Iraq was to pillage it's resources, and aside from americans, nobody else has been fooled about this. It didn't take the Iraqis long to figure out what was happening. How much longer for the rest of you?
_________________
-Brother Adam (we are all one family)

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison

Police officers acquitted for beating a 64 yr old man recently in New Orleans. In the words of their defense attorney "all he had to do was comply"....and they wouldn't have fractured his face.

[Brother Adam]

The americans didn't just accidentally kill a few Iraqis. Most, if not all, of the "insurgents" you've been hearing about are IRAQI citizens!! Most of the dead are innocent Iraqis and nothing more. They protested because america's only reason for invading Iraq was to pillage it's resources, and aside from americans, nobody else has been fooled about this. It didn't take the Iraqis long to figure out what was happening. How much longer for the rest of you?
_________________
-Brother Adam (we are all one family)

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison

Police officers acquitted for beating a 64 yr old man recently in New Orleans. In the words of their defense attorney "all he had to do was comply"....and they wouldn't have fractured his face.

[sara]

Index

U.S. War Crimes Ambassador Reviews Saddam Hussein's Criminality
The Case for Justice in Iraq By David J. Scheffer Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Monday, September 18, 2000 Middle East Institute and the Iraq Foundation National Press Club, Washington, D.C. Thank you, David Mack, for your kind introduction, and thanks to you and to the Middle East Institute and the Iraq Foundation for sponsoring this important conference on the crimes against humanity and war crimes of Saddam Hussein and his regime. It is good to be among so many groups and individuals who are dedicated to the pursuit of justice, democracy and the rule of law for the Iraqi people. I am here to tell you all that the United States looks forward to the day when justice, democracy and the rule of law will prevail in Iraq. I want to do three things this morning, by way of starting us all on a series of interesting presentations on different aspects of the case for justice in Iraq. First, I want to recall to everyone's attention the reason we are here -- the need to address the continuing criminality of Saddam Hussein's regime. Second, it has been almost a year since I saw many of you here in Washington last October, when I spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the subject of Iraqi war crimes, or at the Iraqi National Assembly in New York shortly thereafter. I want to update you on what the U.S. Government has been doing to promote accountability for Saddam Hussein's 20 years of criminal conduct. Third, I think you will find of interest some of the reaction, in Baghdad and elsewhere, to what we -- and many of you -- have been doing to promote the cause of justice in Iraq. Let me be clear at the outset. Our primary objective is to see Saddam Hussein and the leadership of the Iraqi regime indicted and prosecuted by an international criminal tribunal. If an international criminal tribunal or even a commission of experts proves too difficult to achieve politically, there still may be opportunities in the national courts of certain jurisdictions to investigate and indict the leadership of the Iraqi regime. The United States is committed to pursuing justice and accountability in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere around the world. We are also committed to the pursuit of justice and accountability for the victims of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. I. The Criminal Record of the Regime of Saddam Hussein Let me turn to my first main point, the need to address the criminal record of Saddam Hussein and his top associates for their crimes against the peoples of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and other countries. To the United States Government, it is beyond any possible doubt that Saddam Hussein and the top leadership around him have brutally and systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for years, are committing them now, and will continue committing them until the international community finally says enough -- or until the forces of change in Iraq prevail against his regime as, ultimately, they must. This may seem self-evident to all of you here today. Interestingly, in my discussions of this issue I have found some people who will agree that Saddam Hussein is a criminal, but who are genuinely unaware of the magnitude of his criminal conduct. Those who want to gloss over Saddam's criminal record often want to gloss over the need for him to be brought to justice. This goes to the very heart of why his conduct deserves an international response, so I find it useful to review what we now know of the criminal record of Saddam Hussein and his top associates. 1. The Iran-Iraq War. During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein and his forces used chemical weapons against Iran. According to official Iranian sources, which we consider credible, approximately 5,000 Iranians were killed by chemical weapons between 1983 and 1988. The use of chemical weapons has been a war crime since the 1925 Chemical Weapons treaty, to which Iraq is a party. Also during the Iran-Iraq War, there are credible reports that Iraqi forces killed several thousand Iranian prisoners of war, which is also a war crime as well as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which Iraq is a party. Other war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Saddam Hussein and the top leaders around him against Iran and the Iranian people also deserve international investigation. 2. Halabja. In mid-March of 1988, Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali Hassan alMajid -- the infamous "Chemical Ali" -- ordered the dropping of chemical weapons on the town of Halabja in northeastern Iraq. This killed an estimated 5,000 civilians, and is a war crime and a crime against humanity. Photographic and videotape evidence of this attack and its aftermath exists. Some of this is available to scholars and God willing -- to prosecutors through the efforts of the International Monitor Institute in Los Angeles, California. More visual evidence is available from Iranian cameramen, who collected their images of the victims of this brutal attack -- most of whom were women and children -- in a book published in Tehran. The best evidence of all is from the survivors in Halabja itself. I am proud to say that the United States has been working with groups such as the Washington Kurdish Institute and scientists like Dr. Christine Gosden to document the suffering of the people of Halabja and -- just as importantly -- to find ways to help the people of Halabja treat the victims and bring hope to the living. Working with local authorities, we are looking for ways to help investigators, doctors and scientists document this crime and plan the help that the survivors need and deserve. We know they will not get that help from Saddam Hussein. As one example, to help war crimes investigators, the U.S. Government is today announcing the declassification of overhead imagery products of Halabia taken in March 1988, the best image we have that was taken a little more than a week after the attack. We hope this will serve as a photo-map to enable witnesses to describe to investigators, doctors and scientists what they were during those terrible days of the Iraqi chemical attack and its aftermath. 3. The Anfal campaigns. Beginning in 1987 and accelerating in early 1988, Saddam Hussein ordered the "Anfal" campaign against the Iraqi Kurdish people. By any measure, this constituted a crime against humanity and a war crime. Chemical Ali has admitted to witnesses that he carried out this campaign "under orders." In 1995, Human Rights Watch published a compilation of their reports in the book Iraq's Crime of Genocide, which is now out of print. Human Rights Watch needs to reprint this book. Human Rights Watch estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds were killed. Based on their review of captured Iraqi documents, interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses, and on-site forensic investigations, they concluded that the Anfal campaign was genocide. I challenge anyone to read the evidence cited in Iraq's Crime of Genocide and come to any different conclusion. 4. The invasion and occupation of Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein ordered his forces to invade and occupy Kuwait. It took military force by the international community and actions by the Kuwaiti themselves to liberate Kuwait in February 1991. During the occupation, Saddam Hussein's forces killed more than a thousand Kuwaiti nationals, as well as many others from other nations. Evidence of many of these killings is on file with authorities in Kuwait and at the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva. Saddam Hussein's forces committed many other crimes in Kuwait, including environmental crimes such as the destruction of oil wells in Kuwait's oil fields, massive looting of Kuwaiti property -- Saddam's son Uday appears to have treated Kuwait as his personal used car lot. As well, Saddam Hussein's government held hostages from many nations in an effort to coerce their governments into pro-Iraqi policies. During the war, Iraqi authorities also committed war crimes against Coalition forces. War crimes against American service members were detailed in a report to Congress and in an article by Lee Haworth and Jim Hergen in Society magazine back in January 1994. 5. The suppression of the 1991 uprising. In March and April of 1991, Saddam Hussein's forces killed somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians. The story of the uprising of the Iraqi people is one of courage and hope for the people of Iraq and has been told by men such as former Iraqi General Najib al-Salihi in his book Al-Zilzal, "The Earthquake," The story of the uprising that started in the south, a part of the country traditionally neglected and deprived by Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad, deserves to be better known outside of Iraq. Most of those killed were civilians, not resistance fighters -- a distinction that Saddam Hussein did not respect in 1991 any more than he has before or since. This qualifies as a crime against humanity and possibly also a war crime. 6. The draining of the southern marshes. Beginning in the early 1990's, and continuing to this day, Saddam Hussein's government has drained the southern marshes of Iraq, depriving thousands of Iraqis of their livelihood and their ability to live on land that their ancestors have lived on for thousands of years. This is clearly not a land reclamation project, or a border security project, as some of Saddam's defenders have claimed. Instead, as groups such as the Amar Foundation have begun to document, Saddam's efforts have served to render the land less fertile, and less able to sustain the livelihood or security of the Iraqi people. This qualifies as a crime against humanity and may possibly constitute genocide. 7. Ethnic cleansing of ethnic "Persians" from Iraq to Iran, and an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the non-Arabs of Kirkuk and other northern districts. This ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing was documented by the former U.N. Special Human Rights Rapporteur for Iraq, Max van der Stoel in his reports in 1999. 8. Continuing unlawful killings of political opponents. Many groups have documented Saddam Hussein's ongoing campaign against political opponents, including killings, tortures, and -- lately -- rape. As some of you may know, the regime has been using sexual assaults of women in an effort to intimidate leaders of the Iraqi opposition. We salute the courage of opposition leaders such as General Najib al-Salihi for speaking out about this crime. The regime is also carrying out a systematic campaign of murder and intimidation of clergy, especially Shi'a clergy. The number of those killed unlawfully is difficult to estimate but must be well in excess of 10,000 since Saddam Hussein officially seized power in 1980. The number of victims of torture no doubt well exceeds the number of those killed. Who is responsible for these crimes? Like Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein did not commit these crimes on his own. He has built up one of the world's most ruthless police states using a very small number of associates who share with him the responsibility for these criminal actions. The non-governmental group INDICT some time ago developed a list of 12 of those most deserving of international indictment. To refresh everyone's recollection, they are: 1. Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). I will have more to say about the RCC shortly. 2. Ali Hassan al-Majid, "Chemical Ali," reviled for his enthusiasm in using poison gas against Iraqi Kurds and in the Iran-Iraq war. He also turned up in Kuwait during the occupation and, more recently, as governor in the south of Iraq during recent periods of repression against the people there. When someone shows up at crime scene after crime scene, the pattern of evidence becomes clear. 3. Saddam's elder son Uday, a commander of a ruthless paramilitary organization that maintains Saddam's hold on power. 4. Saddam's younger son Qusay Saddam Hussein, the Head of the Special Security Organization, reputed by many to be Saddam's likely successor. 5. Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. 6. Taha Yasin Ramadan, Vice President of Iraq. 7. Barzan al-Tikriti, former Head of Iraqi Intelligence. 8. Watban al-Tikriti, former Minister of the Interior. 9. Sabawi al-Tikriti, former Head of Intelligence and the General Security Organization. 10. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and former Head of the Revolutionary Court. 11. Tariq Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. 12. Aziz Salih Noman, Governor of Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation. II. Building the Case: What the United States Has Been Doing The charges are clear. The targets of prosecution are identified. Let me turn to a brief description of what the United States has been doing in the past year to gather the evidence of Iraqi crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. First, we have undertaken an analysis of the de jure case against Saddam Hussein. This is important because a more straightforward de jure case can greatly simplify the work of prosecutors. As some of you know, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia took advantage of Slobodan Milosevic's official role as President of the FRY in 1999 to indict him for crimes against humanity in Kosovo, whereas he has not yet been indicted for his responsibility for crimes committed during the 1991-95 wars in Bosnia and Croatia, when he was nominally only President of Serbia. The de jure case against Saddam Hussein and his top associates is rock-solid. To summarize briefly, Article 37 of the current Iraqi constitution names the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) the supreme body in the state. Articles 42 and 43 state that the RCC has the power to promulgate laws and decrees that have the force of law Article 38 states that the RCC chairman is also the President, who is responsible under Article 57-59 for the acts of the Iraqi military and security services. The RCC chairman and Iraqi president is, of course, Saddam Hussein. We have also been doing our part on the de facto case. Our second area of work has been in connection with one of the most important archives of evidence-millions of pages of captured Iraqi documents taken out of northern Iraq by Human Rights Watch and the U.S. Government. We scanned these onto 176 CD-ROM's. Last October, we announced we had given a set of the 176 CD-ROM's to the Iraq Foundation, along with a grant to make the full collection of these documents available on the Internet to scholars, journalists and, eventually, prosecutors worldwide. I know the Iraq Foundation and the Iraq Research and Documentation Project have been working hard on that project, which I will let them describe further. Third, the U.S. Government has another archive of millions of pages of documents captured by U.S. forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. I announced on August 2 that we have been working to declassify these documents and that we were giving the first of these to the Iraq Foundation. Today, I am announcing that we have given several hundred more to the Iraq Foundation, as well. I will let the Iraq Foundation describe further what is in this collection. Fourth, the U.S. Government has an extensive archive of classified documents relating to Iraqi war crimes during the Gulf War. Since October, staff from my office have located and reviewed these materials. If you remember the final scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where the Ark is being wheeled into a warehouse of crate upon crate, I should tell you that that warehouse does exist -- it's in Suitland, Maryland -- and that my staff found these materials on Iraqi war crimes ... located safely right next to the Ark of the Covenant. U.S. Army lawyers and investigators did a truly outstanding job of compiling this evidence and organizing it in ways that will prove valuable to the staff of a tribunal or commission. Some of the materials can eventually be declassified. While we do not intend to make all of these documents public, we have worked closely with past commissions of experts and tribunals to allow them access to classified material in accordance with U.S. laws that protect sources and methods. We would be willing to do the same for a commission or tribunal looking into the crimes of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. I must also salute the work of Kuwaiti prosecutors, the Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait, and others there in documenting Saddam Hussein's crimes against the Kuwaiti people. After the liberation, Kuwaiti authorities undertook a systematic effort at collecting evidence and documenting Iraqi war crimes in Kuwait. As some of you know, Kuwaiti prosecutors recently completed a thorough trial of Alaa Hussein, installed in August 1990 by Saddam. Hussein as the quisling governor of Kuwait during the early weeks of the occupation. Kuwaiti prosecutors showed, through their professionalism in that trial, their ability to present evidence of Iraqi war crimes committed 10 years ago. Fifth, U.S. Government officials have been meeting with witnesses and former Iraqi officials to gather evidence of Iraqi war crimes. There is no substitute for eyewitness accounts in any criminal prosecution, before an international tribunal or in national courts. We have learned a lot in these interviews. As a rule, we treat information provided to us in confidence, so we leave it to those who talk to us whether to go public with what they have experienced. There have been a number of cases where valuable leads have come forward. We understand other groups are also active in interviewing witnesses, but I will leave it to them to describe their own work. Sixth, to support our other work, the U.S. Government has undertaken a review of imagery to declassify potential evidence of both historical and more recent Iraqi criminal conduct. We have made public imagery products showing the ongoing work to drain the southern marshes, and destroy Iraqi villages. Recently, the Iraq Foundation received a report of the destruction of the southern Iraqi village of Albu Ayish on March 28 and April 5, 1999. We were able to locate imagery products from September 1998 and December 1999 that confirms this account. Those of you familiar with Jamie Rubin's press briefings of the conflict in Kosovo will recognize this presentation. [Show] On the left is Albu Ayish as it existed before Iraqi forces moved in. You can see the school near the river, here. The buildings surrounding it have roofs on them. In the "after" picture, here, the school is intact. That is more than you can say for the buildings surrounding the school, which bear the signs of destruction from ground level. I will leave it to Rend Franke if she wants to say more about what happened to the families at Albu Ayish and surrounding towns in southern Iraq. Albu Ayish is but one example of what the U.S. Government is doing to review imagery of Iraqi war crimes. All in all, we have had a productive year in developing and preserving evidence of Iraqi crimes against humanity and war crimes. We are the first to say there is much more that needs to be done. To that end, we are hoping the Congress will give us the President's full requested appropriations so that this important work can continue for another year. We also anticipate further strong contributions to this work by the Iraqi opposition. The Iraqi National Congress, in particular, tell us they plan to devote substantial efforts to this cause as part of its upcoming $8 million work program. III. The Reaction from Baghdad and Elsewhere Let me turn to my third main point. One of the most interesting aspects of our work on documenting Iraqi war crimes, and engaging with other governments on this issue, has been the reactions we have received. Let me first talk about Baghdad's reaction, Saddam Hussein recognizes that he is vulnerable to calls for accountability for his crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. Articles in the international press have reported that the regime takes international efforts to establish a tribunal seriously. Threats of possible arrest have caused Iraqi officials to curtail or forgo travel to European countries whose laws allow arrest under the UN, Convention Against Torture, The regime has also harassed Iraqis and others who speak out against the regime's crimes. For example, the regime sent someone with an Iraqi diplomatic passport -- hesitate to call him an Iraqi diplomat to try to film participants at INDICT's conference on Iraqi war crimes in Paris this past April. There is another important aspect of the Iraqi reaction, as well, Saddam Hussein realizes that international discussion of his crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes reveals the truth about his policies towards the Iraqi people for the last 20 years. This is a regime that maintains its power through crime-whether it be by crimes against humanity and war crimes, or by killings, torture or the threat of killings and torture, of Iraqi citizens, and by looting the property that rightly belongs to the people of Iraq or Iraq's neighbors. Make no mistake -- those crimes are continuing to this day. Saddam Hussein clearly fears the truth. Journalists who travel to Iraq all have "minders." It takes courageous journalists, and documentary film producers like Joel Soler, to tell any story other than the one that Saddam Hussein's regime wants you to tell. (I hope you all can see Mr. Soler's documentary, "Uncle Saddam" at 1:00 this afternoon.) One recent visitor to Iraq traveled to Baghdad earlier this year and was shown hospital beds with two patients to a bed. It was only when he slipped away from his minder that he found out that around the corner, out of sight, was a room full of empty hospital beds. Last week, as you read in Barbara Crossette's story in September 12th's "New York Times", Saddam Hussein kept U.N. humanitarian experts from traveling to Iraq to assess the true living conditions in Iraq. She wrote, "President Saddam Hussein, whose government is now probably the world's most repressive, wants to control all contact between Iraqis and outsiders, and can in effect veto the assignment to Iraq of even United Nations officials." Large aid organizations based in Europe have been barred from areas in Iraq under the regime's controls. Instead, only small, anti-sanctions protesters, "who bring in relatively small amounts of aid, are welcomed for their propaganda value." Any statistics from Iraq, or taken by Iraqi officials for the U.N. are seriously suspect. A recent Fellow at the US Institute of Peace, Amatzia Baram, documented in this Spring's issue of "Middle East Journal" how the Government of Iraq denies U.N. relief agencies accurate and reliable statistics on the true conditions inside Iraq. No reporter should uncritically accept as true any Iraqi statistics, based on the research and data shown in this article. Iraqi human rights and opposition groups frequently must work hard and take risks to get the truth out of Iraq, and I am honored to be here with some of their representatives today. Saddam Hussein refused every year to allow the former U.N. Special Human Rights Rapporteur for Iraq, Max van der Stoel, to visit Iraq to find out the truth about Iraqi human rights abuses. The new rapporteur, Andreas Mavrommatis of Cyprus, has not been allowed into Iraq, either. Efforts to keep U.N. arms inspectors from the truth about Saddam's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are so well-known I will not repeat them, except to say there were many "full and final disclosures." Russian diplomat Yuli M. Voronstov was this year denied entry to find out the true fate of more than 600 missing Kuwaitis taken captive by Iraq during the occupation of Kuwait and, thus far, never returned to their families. Their fate is known up until the time they were taken to a prison in Basrah, southern Iraq, and they have never been heard from since. It is true that, a few years ago, Iraq admitted it had been holding hundreds of Iranian prisoners of war more than 10 years after the end of the Iran-Iraq War. When the truth came out, Iraq was forced to release its prisoners. All this effort to conceal the truth about what is going on inside Iraq today is hard to explain without understanding the context of Saddam Hussein's 20-year record of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi regime. We know from those who have been in Saddam's inner office that he admires Josef Stalin, and he has clearly tried to emulate Stalin's methods of brutality, terror, covering up the truth, and using propaganda to project a different image. An awareness of the criminal character of Saddam Hussein's regime puts in context his current propaganda campaign. No wonder Saddam Hussein is concerned about efforts to establish an international tribunal that would document the truth of his 20 years of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. It would end international support for Saddam Hussein's campaign to gain personal control of billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues that is now dedicated to the Iraqi people through the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. Make no mistake -- the United States is committed to finding ways of improving conditions for the Iraqi people, but we cannot foresee the suspension of U.N. sanctions except through full compliance with the Security Council's resolutions that were adopted precisely as a result of Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes against the peoples of Iraq and Iraq's neighbors. The United States has held discussions in the last year with a number of governments and non-governmental organizations who share the desire for an international tribunal to indict Saddam Hussein and his top aides for their crimes. We have also compiled a collection of arguments from those who don't want to support a tribunal. As you would expect, none of them withstands scrutiny. Let me share some of the answers we have given and let you be the judge. -- Until recently, some people said there was no reason to bring Saddam to justice since most of his crimes took place long ago, starting right after he seized absolute power in 1979. That argument doesn't work any more, since other recent efforts for justice in Europe and Asia have reached back prior to 1979, when Saddam Hussein murdered his way to the presidency of Iraq. The worst abuses of the Pinochet era took place in 1973-1979, and the crimes against humanity of the Khmer Rouge era took place in 1975-1979. As Secretary Albright has long made clear, there is no statute of limitations for genocide or crimes against humanity. -- Some have said that the Security Council should not establish another ad hoc international tribunal and instead wait for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to come into force. The ICC Treaty will not come into force for at least two more years, and it will not have jurisdiction over crimes committed before the Treaty comes into force. Therefore, the ICC will be not able to hold Saddam Hussein and his associates accountable for between a hundred thousand and a quarter of a million civilian deaths, nor for the tortures, rapes, lootings and other crimes against humanity and war crimes of the past, nor for crimes against humanity that are still going on inside Iraq today, Nor, under Article 12 of the Treaty, is the ICC going to be able to indict Saddam for crimes he commits in the future inside Iraq unless the Security Council acts to establish the court's jurisdiction over his crimes, which we, and others, say should happen right now. -- Our pursuit of justice in Iraq is entirely consistent with the objectives of International Criminal Court, objectives we have long supported. Governments that support international justice need to work together in real time on the most demanding issues of accountability of this era -- in places like the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia -- and Iraq. It would be ironic indeed if the generation of leaders who drafted the ICC Treaty turned their backs on the some of the most egregious crimes of our time. The ICC will not succeed if its supporters are not willing to demand accountability for war criminals like Saddam Hussein. -- Finally, there used to be those who said that the threat of indictment of officials around Saddam Hussein would deter them from leading a coup against him. The nature of the Iraqi regime -- both in fact and in law -- is that Saddam Hussein and a very small group of men around him have wielded absolute power. They are not likely to be the ones to lead an uprising against Saddam. They deserve to be the ones held responsible for the regime's crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. When Saddam passes from the scene -- and this will happen sooner or later -- there will need to be a process of truth and reconciliation for the bulk of Iraqi society if it is to make peace with itself. We owe it to the victims of 20 years of the crimes of this regime to hold accountable those at the top who wielded absolute power and ruined the lives of millions of Iraqis. -- The last argument that never gets made, at least publicly, is money -- that there is profit in doing business with the Baghdad regime despite its criminal character. Countries that have ratified the ICC treaty have already expressed, explicitly or implicitly, their policy decision that economic grounds are insufficient to let a war criminal off the book. We believe there is much more to gain for international peace and security from pursuing international justice against Saddam Hussein than would ever be possible to gain for private profit from pursuing international commerce with Saddam Hussein. Moreover, in the end, Saddam Hussein's criminal regime will go. At that time, the Iraqi people will look up, around them, and see who stood up for justice for the victims of Saddam. Hussein's criminal regime, and who opposed efforts to bring the regime to justice, It is in everyone's long-term interests -- economic, political, and moral -- to side with justice for the peoples of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and elsewhere. IV. Conclusion In conclusion, let me say this, Iraq is a proud nation. Its heritage goes back to the days of Hammurabi the lawgiver and the four schools of Islamic law of the Abbasid Caliphate [Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali], and the great Shi'ite schools of Islamic theology that Saddam Hussein has sought to destroy. Saddam tries to liken himself to the great Nebuchadnezzar II, when it is more likely history will judge him as a latter-day Hulagu Khan, the Mongol conqueror who left Iraq a legacy of death, devastation and misrule. Mongol conquerors built a pyramid of the skulls of their victims, Saddam Hussein used helmets of Iranian soldiers killed during the Iran-Iraq War. The time has come for Saddam Hussein and his top associates to be held accountable for their 20 years of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. I hope you will join with me these next few months in advancing the cause of justice in Iraq
_________________
“When one is connected above,’’ he said
quietly, “he does not fall below.”
OINK OINK OINK OINK OINK...

[Brother Adam]

Sara....the whole war was based on lies about WMD's. This banter without paragraphs is a whole lot of wasted space talking about anything but the LIES the war was started over. We know they lied for a fact, and have for a long time. There is no justifying a lie. EVER. That means there is no justifying this illegal war....EVER. Especialy when we have gone in and SLAIN thousands more than Sadaam himself ever did. What good was that? Please...tell me....

Our government has stepped in and taken over all of Iraq's industries and sold them out to american corporate interests. What good did that do? We took control of their one major export....oil, and use their oil to buy more bombs for their cities. What good has that done? We have turned OVER 60% of their country AGAINST us. Now, if we were helping, why is that so? 60% advocate bombing us troops.

[Brother Adam]

Sara....the whole war was based on lies about WMD's. This banter without paragraphs is a whole lot of wasted space talking about anything but the LIES the war was started over. We know they lied for a fact, and have for a long time. There is no justifying a lie. EVER. That means there is no justifying this illegal war....EVER. Especialy when we have gone in and SLAIN thousands more than Sadaam himself ever did. What good was that? Please...tell me....

Our government has stepped in and taken over all of Iraq's industries and sold them out to american corporate interests. What good did that do? We took control of their one major export....oil, and use their oil to buy more bombs for their cities. What good has that done? We have turned OVER 60% of their country AGAINST us. Now, if we were helping, why is that so? 60% advocate bombing us troops.

[Don Quixote]

Firstly,
brother Rishi , thank you for posting this article and info about the Lancet report.It would be difficult to find a more honourable or honest organisation than these people.i am inclined to believe that if they published the report they must have confidence in the veracity of this report.

secondly , the Johns Hopkins University is renown for its honesty and accuracy in such matters and i see no reason to doubt them.

Also , i would like to point out that Saddam Hussain was put in power by a intelligence operation conducted under the auspices of UK/USA , which is a combined British and American intelligence committee.

these are the same people who arranged for Hussain to aquire mustard gas , sarin and other chemical warefare agents , through a shell corporation operating out of Germany and other European nations.in fact these chemical weapons procurement programs have been traced back to arms dealers which operate openly from mayfair in London.

Also , Hussain was told that he had a 'green light' to invade Kuwait by this same UKUSA group (ie.he was set up.) his attempt to nationalise his countries oilfields and seccure an outlet into the shat al-arab waterway so he could export his oil were what precipitated the attack on this sovereign nation , and the seizure of his oil-fields by Exxon/BP.

Also , as Hussain is a mass murderer , why is he not being tried in the Haig.?? why is he being tried in an Iraqi show trial , where all media access is severely restricted by the military ? why - because he knows too many secrets - thats why !

with respect , sister SARA's post is perfectly accurate , but for the fact that the U.N. and all those other fine organisations 'forgot' to mention that he was 'our man'.we put him in power , we armed him , we trained him in the latest torture techniques , we provided him with satellite intelligence through a direct link into 'our sat/intell network.

MOST IMPOTANTLY OF ALL.bearing in mind the afore mentioned facts , OUR slaughter and butchery of anything upto 950,000 plus Iraqi men , women and children is a war crime of monumental proportions.Hussains crimes pale into insignificance in the face of what WE have done to these people and are STILL doing.

it is a FACT. we invaded Iraq for one reason only.TO STEAL HIS OILFIELDS ON BEHALF OF EXXON/BP.this will allow them to build a pipeline connecting all the worlds oil supplies with all the worlds oil consumers.THINK about what power this will give them.

THIS is why those young American and british kids are bieng fed into the meat-grinder.

THIS is why we are slaughtering children in Iraq.

all the rest is bullshit , churned out by the media , and spoon - fed to people who are too stupid , too ignorant and too chicken shit scared to face the truth about the people who OWN us.

What is even more hilarious is the fact that baby-killers B.liar , Bush and the groups that they are the front - men for , wrap this up in a package of a 'religious war'.they shout 'Praise the Lord' whenever they need to get the bible-belt on side.then they rush off to their weird devil worshipping covens in Bohemian Grove to sacrifice babies , or whatever crazy shit they all get up to.

QUESTION.- Are we , the world , really so fucking stupid ?are we just scared to admit that everything we base our lives on , teach our children , is a big ball of bullshit.?

i want to thank ALL of the posters to this thread for proving that , here at least , some of our species are not asleep at the wheel.fair play to all of you.i am glad to read your posts, and to be amoungst people who have not lost the ability to THINK.

Oh yeah , sorry about the vitriolic language , but i get a bit excited sometimes (at least it proves i aint brain - dead yet )

PEACE

.

[Don Quixote]

AHHH , LIBERTY , WHAT SINS ARE COMMITTED IN THY NAME !

.NOTE :- "Dear 'the great whatever you believe' we are sorry.how like foolish , petulant children we are.you gave us everything and we blew it

Do not hate us , for you see , our governments and our religious institutions went astray a long time ago , and we , in the mistaken belief that we were doing the right thing , followed in their shadow.

In the end we will all acknowledge that we the same tears , bleed the same blood , feel the same pain and mourne by the same grave-side when we bury our children.

Until we , the people , turn asside from those who lead us astray it will remain the same.All of our human beliefs and all of our religious institutions in this world are the same.if even one of them were right they would have united the whole world in peace and unity.they have not.this is how we know they are ALL liars and thieves and have betrayed they very essence of their religions.

who ever you are , whatever you believe , this much you must know to be true -

WE ALL SPRANG FROM THE SAME WELL-SPRING.WE ARE ALL BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

PEACE AND RESPECT,
nothing else works.

.

[Rev. Steven Wilson]

I am no friend of the US goverment. But the press here is stong aginst bush. Run by democrats mostly. 650 thou I think would be jumped on by the press to help discredit the bush regieme. So I don't belive that number. Accually I dont trust anybody with ANY political ties to any country. They are all self absorbing nazis.I listen to the speaches givin by the president of IranWith "deth to Isreal" at the end of them all.Now maybe he has a legitimet gripe. But ya know what..when I'm anoyed at my negibor I dont want to kill him and his whole family.This goes for america, Isreal,Syria,China,Iran and any other goverment trying to expand thier controll.


Piss on haters....all of them
be free.

Give me LIBERTY or give me death!!
_________________
Once a man sees his immortality, there is no turning back. He is on the Quest of Knowledge whether he knows it or wants it. He can fight against it and live a turbulent life. Or follow it and find inner peace.

Peace and flowers
Rev. Steven Wilson
(Shaman Quester)

[Rishi]

Why is the New York Times silent on massive Iraq death toll?
A question for Bill Keller
16 October 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

The following leaflet is being distributed outside a lecture being given by New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Monday, October 16.

The corporate-controlled American media is deliberately suppressing the results of a survey that demonstrates that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused more than 600,000 deaths in the past three years—a figure that in and of itself refutes all the claims by the Bush administration that it carried out the invasion of Iraq in order to foster democracy in the Middle East. What kind of “freedom” and “human rights” can be the consequence of such a slaughter?

The major American media organizations—including the New York Times—published only brief reports on the study October 11. Taking their cue from President Bush, who declared the survey’s methodology faulty without offering any proof, the Times and other leading media outlets have dropped the subject. There have been no editorials in the Times, the Washington Post, or other major newspapers, nor any demands for a more serious response from the Bush administration.

There is no legitimate, scientific basis for rejecting the findings of this survey carried out under the auspices of Johns Hopkins, one of the leading US universities. Under the direction of epidemiologists at the college’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Iraqi interviewers visited thousands of Iraqi families throughout the war-torn country. The sample size was huge: 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in a country of 26 million people. By comparison, the CBS-New York Times poll, whose findings receive regular front-page coverage in the Times, uses a sample of 800 to 2,000 people in a country of 300 million.

If President Bush were to declare at his next press conference that the opinion polls showing 60 percent or more of the population opposed to the war in Iraq are bogus, and based on a “flawed methodology,” the Times would presumably denounce such an accusation and demand the White House provide proof of the alleged poll-rigging.

Why is a similar standard not applied to the Johns Hopkins inquiry into the excess deaths in Iraq? Is it, perhaps, because these figures would implicate all those responsible for the US military intervention—including its media apologists—in killing on a scale that deserves to be called genocide?

During the week since the Johns Hopkins survey was published, the Times has found ample space to report on the affairs of the multimillionaire Astor family, the charges against a local high school teacher of having sex with a student, and countless other news items of even lesser weight. Yet it has had no room to follow up the findings of a study, carried out with a standard scientific method—a “cluster survey”—and published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet.

As a number of public health professionals have explained in letters and blogs to leading newspapers like the Times itself and the Guardian in Great Britain, the most important data provided by the Hopkins survey is the enormous difference between the death rate reported by the surveyed families before and after the US invasion.

In the 18 months before the invasion, the more than 12,000 individuals reported 82 deaths, two of them by violence. In the 39 months since the invasion, this group saw 547 deaths, 300 of them by violence. The death rate in this surveyed group jumped from 0.7 percent to 2.5 percent, a rise of nearly 300 percent.

Such an increase is utterly incompatible with the official Bush administration estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths—as of December 2005—or the estimates of 50,000 to 60,000 deaths from groups like Iraq Body Count, which have no on-the-ground reporting capability and rely on media accounts.

There is every reason to believe that the Times and other US media outlets are refusing to further report and investigate the Johns Hopkins study because its findings demonstrate that both the Bush administration and the American media itself have been carrying out a cover-up of the bloodbath in Iraq.

One has only to contrast the silence on the Hopkins study with two equivalent cases: the Kosovo War of 1999 and the Darfur conflict of the past three years.

In Kosovo, the media readily echoed the Clinton administration claims that tens, even hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians had been massacred by the Serbian military and paramilitary forces. In fact, the death toll, horrendous as it was, came to several thousands, with crimes committed on both sides of the conflict between the Serb forces and the CIA-backed Kosovo Liberation Army. But the US media blared out numbers that suggested death on a Holocaust-like scale in order to swing public opinion behind the NATO war against Serbia.

More recently, the Times has been one of the publications most adamant about the necessity for UN or NATO intervention in Darfur, in the western Sudan. Using statistical methods no different from those employed by the Johns Hopkins study in Iraq, humanitarian aid organizations have produced credible estimates that some 200,000 people may have died of starvation and ethnic killings by militias backed by the central government in Sudan.

The US government and the American media generally have labeled the killings in Darfur as genocide. According to the Hopkins study, the Iraq war has taken three times as many lives as the bloodbath in Sudan, a country whose population is roughly equal to Iraq’s. The Bush administration is thus implicated in a crime which approaches those of the Nazis. Indeed, if Americans were dying at the rate that Iraqis have died over the past three years, the death toll would be 7.5 million.

There are many other reasons to examine with a critical eye the pretensions of the New York Times to represent a genuine “Fourth Estate.” This newspaper is deeply implicated in the drive to condition the American people to accept the war in Iraq. It played the leading role, through the activities of reporters like Judith Miller, in peddling and validating Bush administration lies about weapons of mass destruction, Al Qaeda ties to Iraq, and the supposed Iraqi threat to the United States.

Only two months ago, the Times public editor Byron Calame revealed that the newspaper deliberately withheld its report on the Bush administration’s program of illegal domestic spying until after the 2004 election. This decision was taken by executive editor Bill Keller, and its effect was to help insure Bush’s reelection.

Mr. Keller will appear in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Monday, October 16, to give the Sixteenth Annual University of Michigan Senate Lecture On Academic And Intellectual Freedom. He has chosen as his topic, “Editors in Chains: Secrets, Security and the Press.”

After the Times editor gives his account of his moral sweatings over whether or not to make public a criminal conspiracy by the Bush administration against the democratic rights of the American people, he should be asked why his newspaper is choosing to cover up a serious and meticulously documented report on the worst human rights violation of the twenty-first century: the US war in Iraq.

US-SEP lecture series
The economic and political roots of the crisis of American democracy
A lecture by David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site
University of Michigan
Monday, October 30, 7:00 p.m.
University of Michigan
Michigan Union, Kuenzel Room
530 S. State St.
Ann Arbor

Also speaking: Jerome White, SEP candidate for Congress in Michigan’s 12th District

See Also:
Why is the American press silent on the report of 655,000 Iraqi deaths?
[13 October 2006]
New study says US war has killed 655,000 Iraqis
[12 October 2006]
_________________
The World Mind Society http://www.eoni.com/~visionquest