Heads up in Iraq- 1,000 (make that 100,000) and counting
I sent another (yet to be unpublished) letter to the BBC, who asked their latest inane question, designed to alleviate the frustrations of their muzzled readership-
"Thursday, 23 September, 2004,
John Kerry's Iraq speech: Your reaction-
John Kerry has made an outspoken attack on President Bush over the conflict in Iraq.
In a speech at New York University, the US Democrat presidential candidate accused Mr Bush of "colossal failures of judgement".
He said that the president's decision to go to war against Iraq had distracted from a greater threat to the US - more terrorist attacks - and created a crisis which could lead to an unending war.
The Bush campaign has accused Mr Kerry of inconsistency on Iraq and said a change in the middle of the war was not what the nation needed.
What do you think of John Kerry's speech? Was it the right thing to do or an act of desperation?"
Are they joking? The BBC also published a companion piece by one Tom Carver, who entitled his commentary, "Campaign column: Shifting focus - again". and , "John Kerry has flipped again." Why? Because Kerry had suggested the focus of his campaign would be domestic issues, then deigned to comment on Iraq??? Does this war not impact domestic issues, such as unemployment (which provides the fodder for war- 1,000 and counting- up) , job creation (hey, war's a big industry, as is oil for that matter), outsourcing (well, America outsources too- those jobs in Iraq aren't going to Iraqis. But who knows how many Americans are "working" in Iraq- there are no head counts, at least upon arrival.)
Sincere apologies and sympathy to the families of the deceased. But speaking of horror and head counts- ever wonder how many Iraqis have died??
Kerry should say MORE rather than less on Iraq, and why not include Afghanistan, where "post-liberation' has resulted in a surge of heroin production. Or is America no longer in the "war on drugs" but the grow op business?
I still believe, as I did months ago, that a clearly defined opposition was needed to take on Bush- NOT a candidate who had voted YES on the Iraq war issue. The Democrats' mistake was allowing the media to railroad Dean into withdrawing. It served the purpose- to counter Bush with a man who comes across as inconsistent and ineffectual.
America faces ever growing threats of terrorism precisely because of its disastrous policies and arrogance towards the rest of the world. This has been exacerbated under Bush's "leadership", not diminished, and the longer Bush remains in power, the more nourishment he provides the terrorists. Kerry needs to make it clear to the American people that he's better prepared to attack the roots, not just the growth. But then the US would have to acknowledge that they are not only victims, but primarily aggressors. American voters would rather hide their heads beneath, say, a bush, than admit culpability. It is the Republicans' one great advantage in this coming election.
Also in the news- a lengthy report on ABC documenting the entirety of Allawi's campaign speech for President Bush. In case you're wondering , who is Allawi- is he the warm, fuzzy character on that new show, "Puppets Who Kill?" Well, close. He is the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, undemocratically placed in position by Bush's administration. A puppet government in every sense of the term. A position which warrants an address to congress and the American people at large, about how great it is to be finally free and what a great job Bush is doing to secure it. Wow. So there's a bit of trouble. Hey. Allawi didn't write the speech- pretty obvious, considering how it pandered so exquisitely to Bush's agenda and was peppered with his mentor's now familiar catch phrases.
What I wonder is why Allawi, a minor player of no consequence or authority, is given so much air time on a major television station like ABC while Kerry is reduced to the occasional sound bite??
100,000 Iraqi civilians have died since invasion, survey finds
Sarah Boseley
About 100,000 Iraqi civilians ? half of them women and children ? have died since the invasion, mostly as a result of coalition airstrikes, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
The study, carried out in 33 randomly chosen neighbourhoods representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died of heart attacks, strokes and chronic illness. The risk of a violent death is now 58 times higher than it was before the invasion.
Last week the Lancet medical journal fast-tracked the survey to publication on its website after rapid but extensive peer review and editing, because, said its editor, Richard Horton, "of its importance to the evolving security situation in Iraq". The findings raised important questions for the governments of the United States and Britain, who, Dr Horton said in a commentary, "must have considered the likely effects of their actions for civilians".
The research was led by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers who went to the 988 households in the survey were doctors, and all those involved in the research on the ground, says the paper, risked their lives to collect the data. Householders were asked about births and deaths in the 14.6 months before the March 2003 invasion, and births and deaths in the 17.8 months afterwards. When death certificates were not available, there were good reasons, say the authors. "We think it is unlikely that deaths were falsely recorded. Interviewers also believed that in the Iraqi culture it was unlikely for respondents to fabricate deaths," they write.
They found an increase in infant mortality from 29 to 57 deaths per 1,000 live births, which is consistent with the pattern in wars, where women are unable or unwilling to get to hospital to deliver babies, they say. The other increase was in violent death, which was reported in 15 of the 33 clusters studied and which was mostly attributed to airstrikes.
"Despite widespread Iraqi casualties, household interview data do not show evidence of widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the ground," write the researchers. Only three of the 61 deaths involved coalition soldiers killing Iraqis with small-arms fire. In one case a 56-year-old man might have been a combatant, they say; in the second a 72-year-old man was shot at a checkpoint; and in the third an armed guard was mistaken for a combatant and shot during a skirmish. In the second two cases, US soldiers apologised to the families.
"The remaining 58 killings (all attributed to US forces by interviewees) were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry," they write.
The biggest death toll recorded by the researchers was in Falluja, which registered two-thirds of the violent deaths they found. "In Falluja, 23 households of 52 visited were either temporarily or permanently abandoned. Neighbours interviewed described widespread death in most of the abandoned houses but could not give adequate details for inclusion in the survey," they write.
The British government said it had "concerns and difficulties" about the survey's methodology, adding: "The findings were based on extrapolation and treating Iraq as if it were all the same in terms of the level of the conflict. This is not the case."
SBlt A soldier of Britain's Black Watch regiment sent north from Basra to a base southwest of Baghdad, near insurgent territory, was killed last week when a Warrior armoured fighting vehicle overturned. The accident, and several roadside bombs, delayed the convoy's journey.
The Guardian Weekly 2004-11-05, page 4
"Thursday, 23 September, 2004,
John Kerry's Iraq speech: Your reaction-
John Kerry has made an outspoken attack on President Bush over the conflict in Iraq.
In a speech at New York University, the US Democrat presidential candidate accused Mr Bush of "colossal failures of judgement".
He said that the president's decision to go to war against Iraq had distracted from a greater threat to the US - more terrorist attacks - and created a crisis which could lead to an unending war.
The Bush campaign has accused Mr Kerry of inconsistency on Iraq and said a change in the middle of the war was not what the nation needed.
What do you think of John Kerry's speech? Was it the right thing to do or an act of desperation?"
Are they joking? The BBC also published a companion piece by one Tom Carver, who entitled his commentary, "Campaign column: Shifting focus - again". and , "John Kerry has flipped again." Why? Because Kerry had suggested the focus of his campaign would be domestic issues, then deigned to comment on Iraq??? Does this war not impact domestic issues, such as unemployment (which provides the fodder for war- 1,000 and counting- up) , job creation (hey, war's a big industry, as is oil for that matter), outsourcing (well, America outsources too- those jobs in Iraq aren't going to Iraqis. But who knows how many Americans are "working" in Iraq- there are no head counts, at least upon arrival.)
Sincere apologies and sympathy to the families of the deceased. But speaking of horror and head counts- ever wonder how many Iraqis have died??
Kerry should say MORE rather than less on Iraq, and why not include Afghanistan, where "post-liberation' has resulted in a surge of heroin production. Or is America no longer in the "war on drugs" but the grow op business?
I still believe, as I did months ago, that a clearly defined opposition was needed to take on Bush- NOT a candidate who had voted YES on the Iraq war issue. The Democrats' mistake was allowing the media to railroad Dean into withdrawing. It served the purpose- to counter Bush with a man who comes across as inconsistent and ineffectual.
America faces ever growing threats of terrorism precisely because of its disastrous policies and arrogance towards the rest of the world. This has been exacerbated under Bush's "leadership", not diminished, and the longer Bush remains in power, the more nourishment he provides the terrorists. Kerry needs to make it clear to the American people that he's better prepared to attack the roots, not just the growth. But then the US would have to acknowledge that they are not only victims, but primarily aggressors. American voters would rather hide their heads beneath, say, a bush, than admit culpability. It is the Republicans' one great advantage in this coming election.
Also in the news- a lengthy report on ABC documenting the entirety of Allawi's campaign speech for President Bush. In case you're wondering , who is Allawi- is he the warm, fuzzy character on that new show, "Puppets Who Kill?" Well, close. He is the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, undemocratically placed in position by Bush's administration. A puppet government in every sense of the term. A position which warrants an address to congress and the American people at large, about how great it is to be finally free and what a great job Bush is doing to secure it. Wow. So there's a bit of trouble. Hey. Allawi didn't write the speech- pretty obvious, considering how it pandered so exquisitely to Bush's agenda and was peppered with his mentor's now familiar catch phrases.
What I wonder is why Allawi, a minor player of no consequence or authority, is given so much air time on a major television station like ABC while Kerry is reduced to the occasional sound bite??
100,000 Iraqi civilians have died since invasion, survey finds
Sarah Boseley
About 100,000 Iraqi civilians ? half of them women and children ? have died since the invasion, mostly as a result of coalition airstrikes, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
The study, carried out in 33 randomly chosen neighbourhoods representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died of heart attacks, strokes and chronic illness. The risk of a violent death is now 58 times higher than it was before the invasion.
Last week the Lancet medical journal fast-tracked the survey to publication on its website after rapid but extensive peer review and editing, because, said its editor, Richard Horton, "of its importance to the evolving security situation in Iraq". The findings raised important questions for the governments of the United States and Britain, who, Dr Horton said in a commentary, "must have considered the likely effects of their actions for civilians".
The research was led by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers who went to the 988 households in the survey were doctors, and all those involved in the research on the ground, says the paper, risked their lives to collect the data. Householders were asked about births and deaths in the 14.6 months before the March 2003 invasion, and births and deaths in the 17.8 months afterwards. When death certificates were not available, there were good reasons, say the authors. "We think it is unlikely that deaths were falsely recorded. Interviewers also believed that in the Iraqi culture it was unlikely for respondents to fabricate deaths," they write.
They found an increase in infant mortality from 29 to 57 deaths per 1,000 live births, which is consistent with the pattern in wars, where women are unable or unwilling to get to hospital to deliver babies, they say. The other increase was in violent death, which was reported in 15 of the 33 clusters studied and which was mostly attributed to airstrikes.
"Despite widespread Iraqi casualties, household interview data do not show evidence of widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the ground," write the researchers. Only three of the 61 deaths involved coalition soldiers killing Iraqis with small-arms fire. In one case a 56-year-old man might have been a combatant, they say; in the second a 72-year-old man was shot at a checkpoint; and in the third an armed guard was mistaken for a combatant and shot during a skirmish. In the second two cases, US soldiers apologised to the families.
"The remaining 58 killings (all attributed to US forces by interviewees) were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry," they write.
The biggest death toll recorded by the researchers was in Falluja, which registered two-thirds of the violent deaths they found. "In Falluja, 23 households of 52 visited were either temporarily or permanently abandoned. Neighbours interviewed described widespread death in most of the abandoned houses but could not give adequate details for inclusion in the survey," they write.
The British government said it had "concerns and difficulties" about the survey's methodology, adding: "The findings were based on extrapolation and treating Iraq as if it were all the same in terms of the level of the conflict. This is not the case."
SBlt A soldier of Britain's Black Watch regiment sent north from Basra to a base southwest of Baghdad, near insurgent territory, was killed last week when a Warrior armoured fighting vehicle overturned. The accident, and several roadside bombs, delayed the convoy's journey.
The Guardian Weekly 2004-11-05, page 4
posted by Dawn One at 3:19 pm
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