From: anwar+@cs.cmu.edu (Anwar Mohammed)
Subject: Re: It gets bigger (was Re: The Big Lie)
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 04:37:18 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.025710.1573@pony.Ingres.COM> garrett@Ingres.COM (QUOTE OF THE YEAR) writes:
>In article <Bv7o42.Gu0.2@cs.cmu.edu>, anwar+@cs.cmu.edu (Anwar Mohammed writes...
>>In article <1992Sep26.031032.7555@tygra.Michigan.COM> jp@tygra.Michigan.COM (John Palmer) writes:
>>>In article <Bv36B5.H1E.2@cs.cmu.edu> anwar+@cs.cmu.edu (Anwar Mohammed) writes:
>>>"In article <1992Sep23.190304.7059@tygra.Michigan.COM> jp@tygra.Michigan.COM (John Palmer) writes:
>>>">Instead of
>>>">getting Hussein, he kills 250,000 innocent people.
>>>"
>>>"Again, you repeat this lie.  Do you have a shred of proof?  This number
>>>"sounds really good, so I'll grant you made a good choice, but where
>>>"in hell does this number come from?
>>>"
>>>IT CAME FROM THE RED CROSS AND AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, THAT WHERE.
>> 
>>You lie.  Neither Amnesty International or Red Cross has *ever* claimed that 
>>the U.S. killed 250,000 innocent people.  Volume is not a substitute for 
>>factuality, so next time tone down your post and present some *facts*.
>> 
>Since you are claiming he lies then you must know the truth. So what
>is it? And why haven't you posted it? I've heard the same number from
>Amnesty International, but appearently you have heard differently.
>So state your evidence. Or do you have any?

Well, I'm not the one waving numbers around, am I?  Neither Amnesty or
Red Cross blamed the U.S. for killing 250,000 innocent people.  John
can twist the wording around or attribute deaths to the U.S. all he 
wants.  I'll wait for him back up his words.

Might as well tackle this one now.  Why I think the numbers are inflated 
and why blaming the U.S. makes absolutely no sense:

[I can e-mail you the references as I dig them up, if you like, although
they'll likely be dismissed as products of the deluded mainstream press
or "conservative tools of the media".]

Highest estimates depend on who you go to.  There are estimates that 
100,000 civilians were killed as a result of the Iraqi government crushing
the post-war uprisings in the south, particularly around Basra and Karbala, 
and the northern Kurdish areas.  The highest report of deaths related to "civilian 
infrastructure damage" I've seen is 70,000.  I won't bother arguing the number, 
but one must consider the true cause of the "damage".  Baghdad and the 
surrounding portion of Iraq, the base of Ba'athist power, has suffered 
relatively little.  Isn't it coincidental that the vast majority of these 
deaths have occured where the Iraqi government has conducted vicious military 
campaigns against its own population?  I mean, Iraq is *still* blockading
humanitarian food and medicine shipments from these areas, which most Iraqis 
call home, according to UN relief workers.

Civilians killed by allied bombing were televised at every opportunity 
by Iraq for maximum political gain, so we can guess that civilian casualties 
directly resulting from bombings were limited to several thousand at most.
I would suggest that this is borne out by the concentration of the press
(left, right, "mainstream") coverage on post-war civilian casualties.

Back to that topic.  Again, these numbers have been inflated.  Initial
estimates soon after the war ended were that the infant mortality rate
had tripled and was rising.  This was revised and the the mortality rate
has actually doubled since the end of the war.  No *blame* has been 
assigned.  A little common sense tells you that unlike those in Baghdad, 
the majority of people in Iraq living under the increased pressure of
Iraqi government blockades are also bearing a majority of the children.
Who do you blame for their deaths?  An Iraqi government that purposely
deprives them U.N.-allowed medical and food aid and then parades them on
TV for propaganda purposes or the U.S., which stopped dropping bombs
well over a year and a half ago?

The highest estimate for numbers of troops killed I've seen thus far
was 100,000 by Saudi Arabia, a number that U.S. military commanders called
plausible at the time, although a post-war review of Allied burials of Iraq 
dead seemed to indicate that this number was inflated and the actual number 
is around half that, or less (I recall some european news outlets, ITN was 
one of them, reported 20-30,000).  In any case, I hardly consider them innocent.  
(And please, numbers from Greenpeace, loopy Ramsey Clarke, his buddies 
in the Worker's World Party, Lyndon Larouche, and like-minded organizations 
and people mean nothing to me.)

So how many innocent civilians were killed by the U.S.?  At most,
several thousand.  How many innocent civilians were killed by the 
Iraqi government after the war? Possibly well over 150,000.
Perhaps if you blame the U.S. for all the deaths and call the Iraqi
army "innocent", you can arrive at the figure of 250,000.

Frankly, I find it amazing that the Iraqi government is given the 
benefit of the doubt by you and John in this matter in spite of 
its singularly atrocious human rights record throughout its entire
history and its unprecedented use of ecoterrorism of an unimaginable 
scale during the course of the Gulf war.  John, a big reader of 
Amnesty International reports, should be aware enough of Iraq's past
history of waging genocidal wars against elements of its own 
population (again, A MAJORITY) to know that blaming the U.S. is 
a big joke.  For Chrissake, the Allied no-fly zone just prevented 
another massacre by Iraqi troops that would've probably killed
at least several tens of thousands of Shi'a.  But then again,
the U.S. would've been responsible for these deaths as well, right?

>
>-Garrett


-- 
Anwar Mohammed                FREE       Graduate Student
anwar+@cs.cmu.edu              THE       School of Computer Science
Voice: +1 412 268 3043     KUWAITI       Carnegie-Mellon University
Fax:   +1 412 681 5739        POWS       Pittsburgh, PA  15213-3890