posted on October 29, 2004 01:44:55 PM newlogansdad - I will call it how I see it. When you take the actions of a very small number of soldiers, that are being tried for their crimes, as representative of our troops...then yes, I believe your inability to see that fact....speaks volumes for your LACK of support of our troops.
Linda and her double standards. It is ok for her to use the actions of a few gay people to make judgments against the gay populous, but if that same reasoning is used against the troops she has a major problem with it.
Fine Linda if that is the reasoning that you want to use it will come back to haunt you later. So don't get bent out of shape when people judge the entire population of Arkansas by the actions of a few.
I can't wait to see how Linda's support will turn if a loved one does not come home from Iraq safely.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on October 29, 2004 04:53:23 PM new
Linda, I am glad you think everything is so peachy in Iraq that you never stop to wonder about the possibility that I talked about above. It may or may not happen.
I am going to use one of your tactics....Keep denying it in your mind if that will keep your mind off all the bad things that are going on in Iraq. Keep denying it until the two military officers pull up to your house. You can keep denying it after that as well if you want and then you can thank Bush for sending your son off to war.
See you can't handle the truth.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on October 29, 2004 05:00:50 PM new
How many Iraqi have we killed vs how many Kurds were gassed by Saddam
Now which ruler was worse?
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on October 29, 2004 07:30:59 PM new
Reporter's Notebook: Saddam's 'Killing Field'
Sunday, October 17, 2004
By Greg Palkot
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The images were shocking.
A trench with piles of clothed bodies packed tightly together. Men, women, little children. Even unborn children. Some blindfolded. Some with their hands bound. All slaughtered in cold blood by the henchmen of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (search).
All of this horror was discovered in another mass grave in the desert wasteland of northwestern Iraq, near the town of Hatra. It was discovered a year ago, and only now is it being carefully and scientifically excavated by the Regime Crimes Liaison Office (search). This agency, part of the U.S. Justice Department, is working with the Iraqi interim government to map out the horrors of the Hussein past.
The head of the unit, Greg Kehoe, who has seen more than his share of horrors in places such as the Balkans, couldn’t believe what he saw.
"I’ve never seen women and children executed, defenseless people executed in this fashion," he said. "I mean, you look at a young woman holding her 2-year-old child with a gunshot wound to the back of the head. I can’t find any reason to justify that."
When I saw the images I could only think back to Hilla, a town south of Baghdad where I went in the spring of 2003, just after the fall of Saddam. A mass grave of Iraqi Shiites was discovered there.
I will never forget it for as long as I live. Thousands of bodies. Thousands of families swarming over piles of clothing and flesh. Earth-moving equipment digging through the raw humanity. Digging up the past.
Some of these people were opponents of the regime, gunned down after an uprising against Saddam in 1991 and then dumped in big trenches. Women and civilians were also among the victims.
Beyond the visual impression, though, it is the smell that I will never forget. The bodies had been underground for over 10 years, but you could still feel the rot of the past. The remainder and reminder of life, snuffed out by a horrendous regime.
The scene was pure chaos. People were running from pile to pile, looking for loved ones long lost. With so much emotion built up you could imagine and understand why no one was carefully going about the business of sorting through the human debris.
And the lucky ones were satisfied enough to bring away their family members in crudely made coffins for long-postponed burials.
There was only one problem with that scene: Saddam got off the hook. It didn't seem that enough could have been done to carefully record who was killed, how they were killed and where they were found. And so no real evidence could have been gathered that might be used in, say, a war crimes trial against Saddam Hussein and the thugs who took his orders.
That is what the team at this latest mass grave is trying to rectify. It is believed these bodies came from Sulamaniyah (search), one of the major cities of Kurdistan. The Kurds were one of the mass groups of people in Iraq that the Iraqi leader despised. At the time of one of the Kurdish uprisings against Baghdad in 1987-88, these people were shuttled over to this desolate spot and killed.
But thanks to this isolated location of horror and the team's organization, this "war crime" scene has been preserved and can be handled in a proper way. Body locations are mapped, and then the bodies are exhumed from the location and taken to a moveable morgue where the corpses undergo more scrutiny.
All of that information and evidence will then be provided to the Iraqi Special Tribunal, which is preparing the case against Hussein and others. Here’s how archaeologist Sonny Trimble put it:
“Our real, ultimate goal is to get evidence that’s so tight that when they bring certain regime leaders to trial, it’s very tight, just like any trial you would have in the United States or anywhere else in the world.”
It’s thought that there are as many as 3,000 bodies at this one site alone, but the workers will only unearth 200 to 300. There is not enough time for more, but there are many more sites to examine.
By one estimate, 300,000 people were slaughtered during Saddam's rule and dumped in 40 different mass grave sites around the country.
There is something else that will come of this: Once the legal value can be obtained from the site, the emotional worth can be salvaged, too. It is said that photographs of all of those found, including just the remains, will be brought to their former home for possible identification by families. Maybe these and other victims of the now long-gone regime can get a proper burial, not just a killing field.
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/helms.html
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on October 29, 2004 10:08:08 PM new
I've got some pearls for you craw.
---------------
Bogus Lancet Study
Via The Command Post comes this study published in Lancet (free reg) which purports that 100,000 Iraqi have died from violence, most of it caused by Coalition air strikes, since the invasion of Iraq. Needless to say, this study will become an article of faith in certain circles but the study is obviously bogus on its face.
First, even without reading the study, alarm bells should go off. The study purports to show civilian casualties 5 to 6 times higher than any other reputable source. Most other sources put total combined civilian and military deaths from all causes at between 15,000 to 20,000. The Lancet study is a degree of magnitude higher. Why the difference?
Moreover, just rough calculations should call the figure into doubt. 100,000 deaths over roughly a year and a half equates to 183 deaths per day. Seen anything like that on the news? With that many people dying from air strikes every day we would expect to have at least one or two incidents where several hundred or even thousands of people died. Heard of anything like that? In fact, heard of any air strikes at all where more than a couple of dozen people died total?
Where did this suspicious number come from? Bad methodology.
From the summary:
Mistake One:
"A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004"
It is bad practice to use a cluster sample for a distribution known to be highly asymmetrical. Since all sources agree that violence in Iraq is highly geographically concentrated, this means a cluster sample has a very high chance of exaggerating the number of deaths. If one or two of your clusters just happen to fall in a contended area it will skew everything. In fact, the study inadvertently suggests that this happened when it points out later that:
"Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters..."
In fact, this suggest that violent deaths were not "widespread" as 18 of the 33 clusters reported zero deaths. if 54% of the clusters had no deaths then all the other deaths occurred in 46% of the clusters. If the deaths in those clusters followed a standard distribution most of the deaths would have occurred in less than 15% of the total clusters.
And bingo we see that:
"Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja"
(They also used a secondary grouping system (page 2, paragraph 3) that would cause further skewing.)
Mistake Two:
"33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002."
Self-reporting in third-world countries is notoriously unreliable. In the guts of the paper (page 3, paragraph 2) they say they tried to get death certificates for at least two deaths for each cluster but they never say how many of the deaths, if any, they actually verified. It is probable that many of the deaths, especially the oddly high number of a deaths of children by violence, never actually occurred.
So we have a sampling method that fails for diverse distributions, at least one tremendously skewed cluster and unverified reports of deaths.
Looking at the raw data they provide doesn't inspire any confidence whatsoever. Table 2 (page 4) shows the actual number of deaths reported. The study recorded 142 post-invasion deaths total with with 73 (51%) due to violence. Of those 73 deaths from violence, 52 occurred in Falluja. That means that all the other 21 deaths occurred in one of the 14 clusters were somebody died, or 1.5 deaths per cluster. Given what we know of the actual combat I am betting that most of the deaths occurred in three or four clusters and the rest had 1 death each. Given the low numbers of samples, one or two fabricated reports of deaths could seriously warp the entire study.
At the very end of the paper (page 7, paragraph 1) they concede that:
"We suspect that a random sample of 33 Iraqi locations is likely to encounter one or a couple of particularly devastated areas. Nonetheless, since 52 of 73 (71%) violent deaths and 53 of 142 (37%) deaths during the conflict occurred in one cluster, it is possible that by extraordinary chance, the survey mortality estimate has been skewed upward. "
Gee, you think? It's almost as if military violence is not randomly distributed across the population of Iraq but is instead intelligently directed at specific areas, rendering a statistical extrapolation of deaths totally useless.
In the next paragraph they admit:
"Removing half the increase in infant deaths and the Falluja data still produces a 37% increase in estimated mortality."
That puts their final numbers just above the high end of the range reported by other sources.
This "peer reviewed study" is a piece of polemical garbage. Everybody is supposed to take away the bumper sticker summary, "Coalition kills 100,000 Iraqi civilians, half of them children," without reading the details. It tries to use crude epidemiological models like those used to study disease and applies them to the conscious infliction of violence by human beings. The result is statistical static.
(Update: Commentator Clashman below points out that the studies "conservative" estimate is actually around 66,000 instead of the 30,000 I had done in my head so the study is actually at least twice of what other sources place as the upper range at around 25,000)
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
posted on October 29, 2004 11:19:25 PM new100,000 deaths over roughly a year and a half equates to 183 deaths per day. Seen anything like that on the news?
The news reporters aren't allowed to report on the war - George Sr. started that. They can't even leave their hotel for fear of losing their heads.
posted on October 30, 2004 10:14:48 AM new
Craw, you think anyone really gives a "crowbait" about your opinions.
Reamond, right. There are no reporters filing reports in Iraq. Hey, hey Ho, ho Kerry - sign the 1-8-0
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
posted on October 30, 2004 10:42:51 AM new
Hmmm....Victor Barbish. Barbish who defrauded investors in a bank scheme. Now there's a good source of information. And strangely enough, the Pearl of Allah plays into that, too:
EXCLUSIVE REPORTS
From the October 1, 2004 print edition
Investors are left crying foul and fraud
Tom Locke
Denver Business Journal
A group of investors and would-be gambling town developers have filed a lawsuit that includes allegations of a fraudulent, high-yield investment program the plaintiffs say took them for millions of dollars.
Colorado Springs businessman Victor Barbish, his son Mario Barbish, Denver hospital administrator and Barbish partner Harry Newell Harrison and Barbish assistant Karen Klausmeyer make the allegations in an Aug. 27 complaint in federal court in Denver.
The lawsuit alleges two main areas of wrongdoing: a fraudulent scheme promising huge returns on a European program involving the buying and selling of bank debt and the wrongful name change on a Wells Fargo bank safe deposit box holding the world's largest pearl, the Pearl of Allah. Victor Barbish said he owns two-thirds of the pearl on behalf of his daughter Gina.
Among the named defendants are Steven E. Boynton, Allen Bhak, Edison F. Baldwin, Terry Dowd and Block Marcus Williams LLC, Wells Fargo Bank and Wells Fargo employees Cary Karcher, Brad Wilson, Barbara S. Cole and Peggy Toal.
The bank, according to the complaint, set up a "blocked funds" account holding a land deed as collateral for a loan to Barbish's group. The loan was to be used for buying and selling bank notes in Europe to supposedly generate millions in profits and fund a huge proposed resort development in Central City.
Bank regulator Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has warned banks against setting up blocked funds accounts because many have been tied to fraudulent schemes.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Cristie Drumm said the bank's lawyers have read the complaint and find it "totally unintelligible." She noted it was filed "pro se," meaning without benefit of an attorney.
Klausmeyer said the group filed to avoid a statute of limitations deadline and plans to get a lawyer involved.
Drumm said Wells Fargo and its employees have no liability and "had no part in the investment scheme." Cole and Toal, the two Wells Private Client Services employees whose signatures are on a safekeeping receipt for the blocked funds account, declined comment.
A 2002 letter from Allen Bhak of Bhak Development Co. in Pleasant Hill, Calif., touts earnings of "about 90 percent per week for 40 weeks" in a joint venture with a trust in Europe represented by Boynton. The letter, an exhibit in the lawsuit, outlines an intent to "establish about $200 million" for Barbish's Highlands Holdings project in Central City.
The plaintiffs' plan to use profits from the trading program to complete the purchase of a 340-acre parcel in Central City and also to develop it, fell apart when the promised money never materialized, says the lawsuit.
And, really, if you were a top terrorist would you go spouting off your plans like that? "Hi, I'm from Osama bin Laden's group and we want to buy your pearl so we can get in good with our sworn enemy Saddam Hussein. Yeah, we thought it was a great idea, too!" And I'm sure Hussein would tell an American business man all about it too: "Hi, I'm Muhammed Faed & I represent Saddam Hussein who is willing to put aside his emnity for bin Laden in exchange for your priceless pearl. Yes, this should go a long way toward patching up their differences."
____________________
"Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." --Charles Buxton
posted on November 1, 2004 07:38:15 PM new
If it is true that 100K Iraqis have been killed due to this war, we can kiss the idea of peace with the Arabs goodbye.
The Middle East is still fighting a war that has been going on for a thousand or more years. They won't forget this one soon.
