What’s most worth counting? Dead Iranians, dead Iraqis who fought the Iranians, or dead babies because of the war set off by American greed?
American greed? First off, Hussein would probably have gone to war with Iran with or without our (limited) support. Second, we wanted to contain a rising enemy who had already taken over our embassy and paraded our citizens through the streets. It was a matter of revenge and strategic containment, not greed.
By the way I’m getting a little tired of hearing how we invaded Iraq to stop systematic torture. That’s stupid. There are dozens of nations that still practice torture, and we aren’t going to invade them all. Here’s a Washington Post article summarizing Human Rights Watch’s assessment of the torture situation in Iraq. The article is a little old but I haven’t seen any positive updates come across the news.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar … Jan24.html
[quote]BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 – Twenty months after Saddam Hussein’s government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization.
Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are “committing systematic torture and other abuses” of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday.
Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi “appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights,” the report concludes.
A spokesman for Allawi declined to comment, Monday and said “I will put this report on the prime minister’s desk tomorrow to see if he has any reaction.”
Ibrahim Jafari, an interim vice president, said in an interview that security forces needed to be tougher to combat the campaign of violence by opponents of the election.
“I think the security people are not arresting enough and are releasing them too quickly,” Jafari said. “And many of the security people are cooperating with the criminals. I think we have to put security as our priority.”
The Human Rights Watch report acknowledged that Iraq was “in the throes of a significant insurgency” in which 1,300 police officers and thousands of civilians were killed in the last four months of 2004. But it argued that “no government, not Saddam Hussein’s, not the occupying powers and not the Iraqi Interim Government, can justify ill-treatment of persons in custody in the name of security.”
The report was based on interviews with 90 current and former detainees in Iraq conducted between July and October last year, many of them interviewed when they were brought to court for initial proceedings. Of those, 72 said they were “tortured or ill-treated,” the report says. It recounts numerous individual cases of torture, and says the victims often had fresh scars or bruises.
“I was beaten with cables and suspended by my hands tied behind my back,” Dhia Fawzi Shaid, 30, a resident of Baghdad, told the human rights investigators, according to the report. “I saw young men there lying on the floor while police [stepped] on their heads with boots. It was worse than Saddam’s regime.”
Another, identified in the report as Ali Rashid Abbadi, 21, said he was arrested by police after the bombing of a liquor store on July 11. “The police came and started hitting us,” he told Human Rights Watch. “They shouted at us to confess. . . . We were blindfolded and our hands were tied behind our backs. They poured cold water over me and applied electric shocks to my genitals.”
Abbadi was later released by a judge for lack of evidence, the report says.
The report deals with the conduct of Iraqi authorities but not that of U.S. military forces at three U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. The three sites currently hold about 9,000 prisoners.
The Washington Post contacted several people whose cases were included in the report. They declined to speak to a reporter, saying they feared retaliation by police.
“The majority of detainees . . . stated that torture and ill-treatment during the initial period was commonplace” in jails run by the Interior Ministry, the report says. The abuses included “routine beatings . . . using cables, [rubber] hosepipes and metal rods . . . kicking, slapping and punching, prolonged suspension from the wrists,” as well as electric shocks to the genitals and long periods spent blindfolded and handcuffed.
Hania Mufti, the Baghdad director of Human Rights Watch and chief author of the report, said she did not find examples of abuses that were on a par with the worst atrocities committed under Hussein’s rule, such as mock executions, disfigurement with acid or sexual assaults on family members in front of prisoners. But in many other respects, she said, treatment of those swept up by police had changed little.
“Many of the same people who worked in Saddam’s time are still doing those jobs today. So there is a continuity of personnel and of mind-set,” she said in an interview. “I think the Iraqi people themselves thought there was going to be a different system. Every day, they are finding it is not so different.”
The report also says authorities made a mockery of legal safeguards. People said they were arrested without warrants and held without charges for days, weeks or months. Police officials ignored summonses from judges, and judges who became too demanding of authorities were removed from their jobs.
“The message has not gone out from the government that torture will not be tolerated,” Mufti said. And foreign advisers hired to assist the Iraqi police have failed to object, she said.
The report relates “the only known case in which U.S. forces intervened to stop detainee abuse.” It said scouts from an Oregon Army National Guard unit saw Iraqi guards at an Interior Ministry compound abusing detainees on June 29. A soldier took pictures through his rifle scope of detainees who were blindfolded and bound.
According to an account related in the report by Capt. Jarrell Southal of the National Guard, his soldiers entered the compound and found bound prisoners “writhing in pain” and complaining of lack of water. They gave water to the men, moved them out of the sun and then disarmed the Iraqi police. But when the Oregon soldiers radioed up their chain of command for instructions, they were ordered to “return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.” [/quote]
I’m a little puzzled by the expectation that (a) Taiwanese ought to take an ethical interest in the U.S.-Iraq War, specifically that they should oppose it, and that (b) this would be best expressed through street protests, © on an anniversary. Has all this become an international custom of some kind? I haven’t been to a Quaker meeting in a long time…
Iraq Body Count as of March 7, 2007…
Minimum civilian death toll: 59,801
Maximum civilian death toll: 65,660
Also, it amuses me to see so many voices suddenly raised in concern about dead Iraqis. Under Saddam, I do not recall ever hearing such “concern.” And was not the death toll under the sanctions regime around 500,000 to 1 million because of corruption? And where are the voices screaming in condemnation of the UN? So the invasion ended the sanctions regime. Ergo, those deaths (now prevented) should be added into the plus column right? So not only should the focus be on those who are dying from violence but also it should be on the overall benefit in lives saved.
[quote=“fred smith”]Iraq Body Count as of March 7, 2007…
Minimum civilian death toll: 59,801
Maximum civilian death toll: 65,660
Also, it amuses me to see so many voices suddenly raised in concern about dead Iraqis. Under Saddam, I do not recall ever hearing such “concern.” . . . .[/quote]
It’s a lot like Darfur now. Congress did try to pass a resolution condemning Saddam Hussein for using chemical weapons on civilians but someone, I won’t mention names or political affiliations, nixed it.
So it goes.
How so and do you want to do something about invading to solve that problem?
The Reagan administration did. It had its reasons. These decisions are not made in a vacuum.
Yes, it does… and there will always be those there to point to the good as not being perfect while ignoring the grotesquely evil.
How so and do you want to do something about invading to solve that problem?
The Reagan administration did. It had its reasons. These decisions are not made in a vacuum.
Yes, it does… and there will always be those there to point to the good as not being perfect while ignoring the grotesquely evil.[/quote]
I see it more as a matter of truth versus falsehoods. At least now you’re clear that Saddam’s killing spree was condemned at the time by some but ‘more important’ concerns trumped them.
Darfur needs an aggressive international police force to move in and stop the killing. Unfortunately though that intellectual and moral vacuum you allude to once again overrules such a morally justified intervention.
I see that you are more worried about one vote in which the US blocked and effort to condemn Saddam Hussein’s actions at a time when we were desperate to make inroads with his regime. I will note that as your statement stands, it would appear that you are putting far more condemnation on the US for said action than to the nations who voted to condemn him, ironically the very same ones that had sold him most of his weapons, chemicals, nuclear and missile equipment. No?
Well, the US for better or worse is tied up in efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am sure that many well-meaning nations in Europe and, perhaps, Canada? New Zealand? Mexico? India? South Africa? Would love to have the opportunity to put their principles where their bullypulpits are? and send say 5,000 police/military troops? EACH? No? And why is that? Because America should lead? And until Bush is out of office, no one will follow? So once again, they can pass a resolution that will lead to no effective action or concomittant followup and ultimately the US is to be blamed? Or am I just reading too much into your statement?
I see that you are more worried about one vote in which the US blocked and effort to condemn Saddam Hussein’s actions at a time when we were desperate to make inroads with his regime. I will note that as your statement stands, it would appear that you are putting far more condemnation on the US for said action than to the nations who voted to condemn him, ironically the very same ones that had sold him most of his weapons, chemicals, nuclear and missile equipment. No?
Well, the US for better or worse is tied up in efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am sure that many well-meaning nations in Europe and, perhaps, Canada? New Zealand? Mexico? India? South Africa? Would love to have the opportunity to put their principles where their bullypulpits are? and send say 5,000 police/military troops? EACH? No? And why is that? Because America should lead? And until Bush is out of office, no one will follow? So once again, they can pass a resolution that will lead to no effective action or concomittant followup and ultimately the US is to be blamed? Or am I just reading too much into your statement?[/quote]
Correction. When “you guys” were desperate to make inroads with his regime. I don’t do genocide.
I realize that the only nations which have really stepped up historically when the need arose were the United States, Great Britain and Australia. That’s why it’s so sad to see this bastardization of that honorable legacy.
As I’ve said many times before, I criticize the United States because I’m an American citizen and thus culpable for my government’s actions. If its actions don’t measure up to a certain standard I squawk. What other countries do or don’t do isn’t relevant to that process because I also don’t do moral relevancy.
Sneer.
And a few others, but your point is noted.
???
American greed? First off, Hussein would probably have gone to war with Iran with or without our (limited) support. Second, we wanted to contain a rising enemy who had already taken over our embassy and paraded our citizens through the streets. It was a matter of revenge and strategic containment, not greed.[/quote]
The dead babies comment I made refers to the methodology behind the current-day death toll being claimed at near a million. See the links I provided.
I don’t see the point of bringing Saddam’s crimes against Iran into the picture. That was quite a while ago. I’m saying the US has caused much more death and pain for innocent Iraqis than Saddam would ever have during the past four years, had Dubya not invaded.
That’s two huge assertions tossed out as if it is a “given.” Why not cite your source for an important stat like that? But the real problem with the sentence is the notion that all the deaths during the sanctions era were somehow all due to the UN corruption that was uncovered. Cripes. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the deaths were due to American and British pilots taking target practice during their “no-fly” enforcement sorties. Following logic that would be obvious to even a small child, I would blame most of the death toll on the sanctions themselves, which were the creation of the US and Britain. You know, shortages of medicines, disinfectants, detergents, paper, oh heck, just let me quote Wikipedia:
Lots of people not of your political persuasions would be quite quick to criticize the UN. But the invasion/occupation at hand is quite distracting, isn’t it?
[quote]So the invasion ended the sanctions regime. [/quote] Huh? We thank the US for ending US-imposed sanctions and replacing them with a US occupation? Was that a joke?
Sure. Why not?
Benefit? That depends on the numbers you choose. Like, if you take the BodyCount numbers and then say that the US ending sanctions by imposing an occupation counts as saving lives. Have you even read the FAQ on the BodyCount site, Fred? Here, read it: