Re:virus: War & Peace / Rethinking Iraq

From: Jei (jei@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Thu May 06 2004 - 15:00:43 MDT

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    Joe Dees wrote:

    > 3) The credibility of UN resolutions. Saddam had bought at least two
    > veto votes on the UN Security Council (France and Germany) with
    > sweetheart oil contracts, as well as bribing many top UN officials with
    > petrodollars, and had arranged for kickbacks in the oil-for-food program
    > that netted him billions during the sanctions - money that he spent
    > building fifty palaces (complete with Olympic-sized pools), pursuing
    > WMD's and coddling his army, while his people died for lack of food,
    > water and medicine which he could have easily purchased (that was, for
    > Saddam, a propaganda bonus, as he could blame it on the sanctions).
    > Member countries were also being bribed into violating the very
    > sanctions that the UN itself had imposed. If the UN's sanctions were
    > not enforced, they became just another impotent League of Nations.
    > Since that corrupter-by-bribes body was unable to enforce its own
    > sanctions, the US did so for them (the only nation capable of doing so).
    >
    > > Show me the US concentration
    > > camps and gas ovens; then we'll talk. The overwhelming majority of
    > > Iraqis killed by US forces have been armed non-Iraqi militants or
    > > members and former members of Saddam's army, the army that massacred
    > > hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites and Kurds at Saddam's bidding (we're
    > > still discovering mass graves). All told, Saddam has been responsible
    > > for two million Iraqi and foreign deaths, ranking him even with Pol Pot
    > > and behind only Hitler, Stalin and Mao in the mass murderer sweepstakes.
    >
    > Let's see your sources on that last figure, thank you. Otherwise you're
    > talking bullshit, or referring to the said starvation victims of UN
    > sanctions.
    >
    > (Joe) Those were Saddam's victims (see #3 above). He killed them for
    > the benefit of people like you, to persuade you to think as you do.

    I would still like to see a number which I can reference from a reliable
    source. United Nations sources/figures would do nicely. United States has
    released some very questionable numbers, with no backing.

    This is of interest to me. Simple statements or "estimates" of US Military
    will not do for neutral estimates.

    So far, the only verifiable number of Saddam's victims I have been able to
    get is ~5,000 Kurds which he was responsible for gassing (with gas made by
    equipment the US sold him). There are lots of stories of how Saddam threw
    hundreds of thousands of people into meat grinders, etc, but none have
    come from a reliable and verifiable sources. (Most are from Chalabi and
    his people, who the americans happily quote as reliable. - They are not
    that, as history has proven. - Anyone remember Incubator Babies story
    during Gulf War I - Testimony to US Congress, no less, responsible
    for getting Congress authorization for war - proven total hoax by Kuwait
    ambassador's daughter. The meat-grinder stories are of equal quality. -
    "no verifiable proof exists as of course the bodies were dissappeared")

    My estimate of Saddam torture victims is probably "some thousands (dead)
    to 15-25 thousand questioned." For lack of better reliable information.
    And that figure is not "tortured to death", but probably with treatment
    more or less equal to what US troops are giving the Iraqis with their
    electricity methods. - This guesstimate figure comes from the US as
    those are the numbers that US is holding prisoners for questioning. -
    Saddam didn't have more. He had much less, but with more time.

    I find it somewhat weird, how some people implicitly trust everything and
    anything their government or military is saying, and treat everything
    else with rabid hostility, including anyone who dares to reference or
    quote such information.

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