05-17-2004, 10:12 AM
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Join The Royal Family
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 25,463
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Quote:
Originally posted by jayeff
I thought we left the two wrongs make a right bullshit behind when we were 8 or 9 years old. But to answer your question, no-one knows for sure. There are any number of estimates, but if you want to quote a us.gov site, the number is put between 70,000 and 150,000 dead since 1979. 6,000 a year, if you take the higher figure.
Of course it is convenient to forget that violence in Iraq preceded Saddam Hussein by 20 years. So did US involvement there. Back in 1963 several thousand people were murdered as a result of the CIA handing over a list of supposed dissidents to the military authorities. Thousands more died when we left the Kurds to their fate in 1975, having previously encouraged them to rebel against their government. And whether or not you buy into the argument that only someone like Saddam Hussein could have held Iraq together at all, the fact remains that he received US money and practical support for the first fifteen years he was in power: a period which included almost all his worst - and never secret - actions.
If you do want to trade numbers: 200,000 Iraqis died during the first invasion of Iraq; 1.2 million are estimated dead as a result of a decade of sanctions, unexploded cluster bombs, depleted uranium warheads, ongoing bombing, etc; and 9,000+ have so far died this time around. Our hearts may be pure, but we know how to rack up the dead...
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Got to hate facts   |
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