Note for visitors from Daily Kos: 120,000 is an estimate of the
number of violent deaths. The total number of extra deaths as a result of the war is very roughly
200,000 once you include the increase in disease and accidents since
the invasion. This number is more likely to be too low than too high since it comes from doubling the 100,000 estimate from the Lancet study (which just covered the first eighteen months) and violence has worsened since then.
Jim Krane reports:
Three years into the war, one grim measure of its impact on Iraqis can be seen at Baghdad's morgue: There, the staff has photographed and catalogued more than 24,000 bodies from the Baghdad area alone since 2003, almost all killed in violence. ...
At the Baghdad morgue, more than 10,000 corpses were delivered in 2005, up from more than 8,000 in 2004 and about 6,000 in 2003, said the morgue's director Dr. Faik Baker. All were corpses from either suspicious deaths or violent or war-related deaths -- things like car bombs and gunshot wounds, tribal reprisals or crime -- and not from natural causes.
By contrast, the morgue recorded fewer than 3,000 violent or suspicious deaths in 2002, before the war, Baker said. The tally at the Baghdad morgue alone -- one of several mortuaries in Iraq -- thus exceeds figures from Iraqi government ministries that say 7,429 Iraqis were killed across all of Iraq in 2005.
"The violence keeps getting worse," the morgue director said Feb. 28 by phone from Jordan, where he said he had fled recently for his own safety after he said he was under pressure to not report deaths. Freezers built to hold six bodies are sometimes crammed with 20 unclaimed corpses. "You can imagine what a mess it is," he said.
Baghdad has about 1/5 of the population of Iraq so a very rough estimate would be 120,000 75,000 violent deaths as a result of the war. Of course, the death rate in the Sunni triangle is probably higher than the rest of the country and not all violent deaths in Baghdad are going to make it to the Baghdad morgue, so the true number could be higher or lower. Correction: To get the number of excess deaths in Baghdad, we should subtract the pre-war numbers. That was roughly 3,000 per year, so we have 15,000 excess deaths in Baghdad or very roughly 75,000 in the whole country.
Alas, we also see yet again how journalists don't understand statistics:
A United Nations survey conducted almost two years ago -- before the deadliest guerrilla warfare began -- said 24,000 Iraqi civilians and troops had been killed from the war's beginning in March 2003 through May 2004.
In late 2004, a study published in the Lancet medical journal estimated the war had caused some 98,000 civilian deaths. But the British government and others were skeptical of that finding, which was based on extrapolations from a small sample.
How many other surveys of a thousand households has the Associated Press described as "extrapolations from a small sample"? Why wasn't the UN survey in the previous paragraph described as an "extrapolation"? Krane also does not make it clear that the Lancet and UN surveys were measuring different things over different time scales. The Lancet number includes deaths from increase in disease and accidents and deaths from the huge increase in the murder rate as well as the war-related deaths that the UN survey measured. The two surveys agree quite well when you just look at the deaths they both covered.
Yes, surveys are subject to sampling error, but we can estimate the potential size of such errors, while tallies like the Iraq Body Count miss all deaths not reported in the media and we don't know the size of such error. Surveys give better estimates of the death toll, but reporters don't seem to understand this and aren't willing to talk to experts on statistics to find out.
Krane is correct that the study was criticized by the British government and others.
To see what was wrong with the British government's criticism, see Daniel Davies. To see what was wrong with all the other criticisms, see my 76 previous posts on this topic.
Incidentally, the 100,000 estimate in the Lancet included the increase in disease and accidents as a result of the war. The number of violent deaths in that total was 60,000. That was for the first 18 months after the war. Since then there has been another 18 months where violence has increased, so you should at least double that number to 120,000. This is the same number as the rough estimate I got from the morgue numbers above.
Yes, this should be mentioned frequently. The Lancet study findings should be doubled at least. Violence, health everything is worse and the timeframe is doubled now.
Tim, can you comment on the statistical significance of the fact that we had a huge confidence interval and the low range was an impossibility. ie actual reported deaths exceeded the low end of the Lancet estimate so it can be eliminated, does this impact the probability of deaths being higher than 100K?
Journalists should now be reporting that the most likely figure for excess deaths since the invasion is over 200,000 human beings possibly as high as 400,000.
Tim,
Is there an issue with total vs excess deaths in your analysis?
The morgue figures will measure total (violent) deaths, whereas any number extrapolated from the lancet should measure only excess deaths. Is the lancet's estimate of the pre-war violent death rate approximately equal to zero?
It seems it is computer scientists who don't understand statistics, journalists only report them. Hack can't even do that, as he asks us to believe that only corpses from carbombs and the like make it to the Baghdad morgue. Evidently from his account deaths from natural causes have ceased since 2003. Time for more Lambert bingo: let's double his 400,000 to get a "better" likelihood of non-natural deaths in Iraq since 2003. Then you score $100 for each percentile to 100 that you attribute these to the Americans, and pay me $100 for each of these you admit was due to Sunnis/Shias killing each other. Here's another game: bomb Belgrade, topple and charge Milosevich for genocide in Bosnia, ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Serbs - you win Nobel peace prize. Bomb Baghdad, topple and charge Saddam for ethnic cleansing of Shias and marsh Arabs, and you are responsible for all violent deaths in Iraq post-Saddam. Bingo!
Hey Tim, here's a puzzle for you, and anyone else who wishes to have a go:
Proposition 1: Ousting Saddam = Good
Proposition 2: Ousting Milosevich = Bad
Why should the two propositions be so different?
P.S. I don't know the answer. Maybe someone else will illuminate things?!
Hey Meyrick
I forgot to mention your other prizes for bombing Belgrade, etc etc - you also win 9/11 in NY and 7/7 in London.
Tim Curtin:
Is reasoning an optional extra?
Hi all
What about Climate Scientists who don't get statistics, MBH and A&W etc etc. Surely this is more important than journos getting this wrong. Journos are generally a bit thick anyway.
Regards
Peter Bickle
"...Krane is correct that the study was criticized by the British government and others. To see what was wrong with the British government's criticism, see Daniel Davies. To see what was wrong with all the other criticisms..."
I have a criticism. Or is that criticizm. Or crittismsim. Somedamnism, anyway...
Oh, I like this game. Let's play another version.
Invading Poland was very very bad.
Therefore, invading Iraq was very very bad.
"No, no", you cry, "they are completely different cases".
"Aha", I say,"now you get the concept of difference. How about you go and apply it to the terms of your own game..."
See, you learn something every day.
"What about Climate Scientists who don't get statistics"
or statisticians who don't get climate science.
"Tim, can you comment on the statistical significance of the fact that we had a huge confidence interval and the low range was an impossibility. ie actual reported deaths exceeded the low end of the Lancet estimate so it can be eliminated, does this impact the probability of deaths being higher than 100K?"
Not much you can say, given that the actual reported deaths represent a minimum of total deaths, and the figure not only fell well within the confidence interval, but in the lower part of it. If that figure had been around the upper confidence limit, then there'd be something that needed thinking about. (Just my opinion).
Considering that we just saw a thousand Iraqis die by violence in a single week, it would seem that the choice is between maintaining that the total increases in deaths over three years is > 100,000, that the situation is getting much worse, or both.
What Chris O'Neill said.
And Chris, on the Deja Vu thread I mistakenly said I responded to you rather than someone else. Mea culpa sir. Apologies.
Best,
D
Tim curtin: It seems it is computer scientists who don't understand statistics, journalists only report them. Hack can't even do that, as he asks us to believe that only corpses from carbombs and the like make it to the Baghdad morgue. Evidently from his account deaths from natural causes have ceased since 2003.
Tell me tim do you actuaslly bother to read articles before you respond to them?
Let's see - Badghad - population 5,000,000+ plus. Average life expectancy circa 70 years *(generously). Suggests approximately 70,000 deaths from all sources per year.
The figures are obviously for violent deaths only.
Curtin, whoever read Lambert's blog to you must have skipped over the sentence:
Tim Lambert's statistics and math:
"Baghdad has about 1/5 of the population of Iraq so a very rough estimate would be 120,000 violent deaths as a result of the war. Of course, the death rate in the Sunni triangle is probably higher than the rest of the country and not all violent deaths in Baghdad are going to make it to the Baghdad morgue, so the true number could be higher or lower (sic)."
However the cumulative increase in "violent" deaths reported by the Baghdad Morgue above the usual pre-invasion 3,000 corpses delivered to the morgue according to Krane's report was 15,000 to the end of 2005. My non-Lambert computer makes that 75,000 for the whole of Iraq, not his 125,000. And if not all the violently dead make it to the morgue, the "true" number will HAVE to be higher, not potentially "lower" as per Lambert.
Then Ian Gould said: "Let's see - Badghad - population 5,000,000+ plus. Average life expectancy circa 70 years *(generously). Suggests approximately 70,000 deaths from all sources per year.The figures are obviously for violent deaths only."
However according to the UN (Human Development Report), pre-invasion crude mortality was 9.5 per 1,000, which implies that the normal annual number of deaths in Baghdad would be about 475,000, and for Iraq, 2.5 million (using the UN's projected population in 2005 of 26.2 million). So dear Ian you are out in your estimate of normal deaths in Baghdad by a factor of about 6. Surprisingly even the increased throughput of 5,000 in the morgue in 2005 was only 1 per cent of Baghdad's normal annual deaths.
So it seems that journalists are by no means alone in "not getting statistics". Actually I think they usually are better than the luminaries here, e.g. Paul McGeough, but I doubt the total violent deaths he has reported since the invasion would reach the numbers floated in this Blog. But whatever, there are too many deaths, which are indeed attributable to the Americans in the senses that they assumed responsibility for law and order in 2003 and have totally failed to deliver. Their first mistake was typically American (as they have no concept of a public service that is loyal to whoever is the government, their sacking Saddam's army and police rank and file and ALL their officers. Their second mistake is typical of the UN, to try and force disparate ethnic/religious groups to live together. The Brits tried and failed in Iraq in 1919-1932; the West failed east Timor and West Papua by conniving at their takeover by Indonesia; Dem. Congo, Sudan, Somalia, are only 3 of all too many imagined nation states in Africa that will never thrive until they are Balkanised like today's Balkans, and Iraq cannot work as a unitary or even federal state, it has to be split into 3. If you doubt that, just watch Paul McGeogh's video or read him in today's SMH.
Tim Curtin, you really are not good with numbers. You wrote that 10% of the population of Iraq die each year and did not notice how badly wrong you were. Like, you think that average life expectancy there is 10 years? 9.5 per 1000 is not the same as 9.5%. The funky % symbol means "per cent" which means "per 100". Hope that helps.
However according to the UN (Human Development Report), pre-invasion crude mortality was 9.5 per 1,000, which implies that the normal annual number of deaths in Baghdad would be about 475,000,
I'm no mathematician but, 5,000,000 divided by 1,000 times 9.5 equals 47,500 either that or 10% of the population drops dead every year.
Ahh bum. Tim beat me while I was getting my socks off.
Ooops I was wrong,the decimal point slipped. My apologies. Have you ever admitted you were wrong? If not, how did you get from 15,000 times 5 to 125,000?
Sure Tim, I admit it when I'm wrong. I was wrong not to subtract out the pre-war numbers. I have corrected the post.
Thanks, Tim Lambert
I am sorry my slip has distracted attention from my actual point, which is that any single death since the invasion is deeply to be regretted and solely creditable to the incompetence of Dubya, albeit with the Sunnis as the main accessories. It was right to topple Saddam but only IF you replaced his superbly effective law and order with your own. As Dubya has never managed that in LA or New Orleans, we should not be too surprised he has failed in Eyeraq.
Tim posted, "At the Baghdad morgue, more than 10,000 corpses were delivered in 2005, up from more than 8,000 in 2004 and about 6,000 in 2003, " and "By contrast, the morgue recorded fewer than 3,000 violent or suspicious deaths in 2002, before the war, "
Gee, what would happen to an Iraqi if he were to report that his brother, relative, friend was murdered by the Baath security service? How long could he expect to live?
How long could any Iraqi be expected to live after reporting a suspicious death at the hands of the government?
By the fact that more are reported can it be because they now trust the government handling the homicide? Because they have better information and its easier to contact and go to the morgue? These aren't trival facts.
Answer those before you imply that life in a regime where the sons of the president can rape your daughters and sisters, and if you complain, you would be immediately murdered, is better than today.
>Answer those before you imply that life in a regime where the sons of the president can rape your daughters and sisters, and if you complain, you would be immediately murdered, is better than today.
Yes, it's obviously vastly prefer for the women of Iraq to live in a country where they can be pack-raped by their in-laws for insulting the family honor by owrking otuside the home.
Just as I'm sure the hundreds of Iraqis whose corpses have turned up in Baghdad in the past week showing signs of torure died happy knowing that it was the secret police of their new democratic government that were applying the electrodes, cgarettes, battery acid and lectric drills.
"To get the number of excess deaths in Baghdad, we should subtract the pre-war numbers. That was roughly 3,000 per year, so we have 15,000 excess deaths in Baghdad or very roughly 75,000 in the whole country."
Sorry, but even with the correction, this is still a highly implausible calculation. The Baghdad area has clearly had the highest concentration of violence anywhere in the country. And large sections of the country, particularly the North, have comparatively very little violence. So Baghdad should have a much higher death rate than just its share of the population.
Suggesting that the Baghdad figures could just extrapolate out evenly accross the country is highly implausible. There's almost certainly far less deaths in the other four 5ths of the country, no matter how you divide them.
And not all deaths in Baghdad are going to make it to the main morgue. And I didn't say that they could just extrapolate out.
"And I didn't say that they could just extrapolate out."
??? 15k X 5 = 75k
You're extrapolating to the rest of the population based on Baghdad.
"And not all deaths in Baghdad are going to make it to the main morgue."
There are no other morgues, first of all. All violent deaths go to the Baghdad morgue. I agree though that some could just be missed or not get there for one reason or another, but I'm not sure the disparity would be that huge to dramatically alter the figures.
Take, for instance, Les Roberts on the Lancet study:
"And at the end of the interview, if they had reported someone dead, on a sub-sample, we asked, can you show us the death certificate? And about 82% of the time, they could do that."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/14/154251
If this is accurate, we can assume that only up to 18% of deaths would go unrecorded.
That means instead of 15k the number should be 17.7k, and therefore the (still implausible) extrapolation of Baghdad to the rest of Iraq would total 88.5k instead of 75k.
"There are no other morgues, first of all. All violent deaths go to the Baghdad morgue."
I should clarify that I'm talking about the Baghdad area here. Obviously there are other morgues in other parts of the country.
Answer those before you imply that life in a regime where the sons of the president can rape your daughters and sisters, and if you complain, you would be immediately murdered, is better than today.
Classic Bushite tactic of "moving the goalposts." The thrust of the article is why are the death in Iraq being underreported since the fall of Saddam.
Seems like all those great Bush-loving humanitarians so deeply concerned about the fate of a post-Saddam Iraq would care about that.
"You wrote that 10% of the population of Iraq die each year and did not notice how badly wrong you were. Like, you think that average life expectancy there is 10 years? 9.5 per 1000 is not the same as 9.5%."
About ten years ago here in the states, the Fight Breast Cancer folks started a campaign based on the estimate that the lifetime incidence of breast cancer in women is 1/8, after adjusting (upwards, of course) for other sources of mortality. Sure enough, one of their corporate supporters ran big ads nationally saying "One woman in eight will die of breast cancer this year".
Here are some other numbers to consider:
2 million killed, directly, in the last 25 years by the Hussein regime. Using the Lancet ratio as a rough guide, that would equate to around 8 million total excess deaths, or 320,000 per year.
So, using the same kind of logic, in three years we've saved roughly (320K x 3) - 210 = 440,000 lives.
The problem with the Lancet numbers is that they ignore the major democides of the Hussein era. This is comparable to calculating the cost in German lives to invade Germany and remove Hitler while ignoring the Holocaust. It's ridiculous.
Ian,
By that logic we can also conclude that since Abner Louima was tortured by New York police, citizens in the U.S. are no better off than those in N Korea.
Who needs "freedom" and "democracy" anyway? Those are just buzzwords to confuse the gullible. We should all live under police state dictatorships, since it's obvious there's no difference.
s/b 200, not 210 above. And I realize the 200 is excess above a baseline from (a ridiculously unrepresentative portion of) the Hussein era, but the 2 million can also be considered above that baseline too since very few of them fall during that time (which, again, makes that period of time a particularly bad choice if one is going to use the study as an argument against removal of the regime).
And the reduction in excess deaths is on top of any value some poor deluded fools might place on two elections, one constitutional referendum, a free press, an independent judiciary, greater religious liberty, the lifting of economic sanctions, reintegration into the region and the wider international community, etc. Of course, wiser heads know all those things are worthless.
TallDave, you're really setting the bar pretty low on the whole excess deaths thing. First it was the Lancet numbers are wrong, now they're basically right, but not excess.
Oy!
TallDave, your calculation assumes that if we hadn't invaded Saddam would have started another wqar with Iran. This seems more than a little unlikely.
That's not fair! Rumsfeld works so hard on the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam gets all the credit.
"2 million killed, directly, in the last 25 years by the Hussein regime. Using the Lancet ratio as a rough guide, that would equate to around 8 million total excess deaths, or 320,000 per year.
So, using the same kind of logic, in three years we've saved roughly (320K x 3) - 210 = 440,000 lives."
This is complete nonsense. First of all, the figure of 2 million is higher than those I usually hear. Most use a much smaller figure. A very common one is 250,000. (Notice that you can attribute virtually any number to someone like Hussein, and nobody questions its accuracy. I wonder how well many of these widely differing estimates would hold up under the kind of scrutiny immediately thrown on the Lancet study).
But the fatal flaw in your claims is that the vast majority of the deaths in the total (no matter which total you're using) are from the 1980's and the very early 1990s.
You can't stop deaths from 1988 by invading in 2003. So what's relevant is not what happened in 1988, but what was happening in the years directly preceeding the war, and on the eve of war.
Human rights groups monitoring Iraq such as Amnesty Intl have described recent years directly preceeding the war (2002, 2001, 2000..etc.) as having "scores" (dozens) or in some cases "hundreds" in their yearly reports. They found instances of killings, but not mass killings.
Human Rights Watch has gone on record stating that there was no mass killing going on in Iraq in 2003 and hadn't been for many years. The most reasonable expectation for the number of deaths that would have been expected for the years 2003-2006, if we hadn't invaded, would be in the "scores" or "hundreds", just like 2002, 2001, 2000..etc.
Just deciding to average out figures from the Iran/Iraq war or from 1988 as if these events were still ongoing will have no resemblance to reality, and will make for absurd extrapolations, such as yours.
Your claims are comparable to saying the cost in German lives to invade Germany *in 1955* would actually "save lives" because a yearly German average, going back to and including the Holocaust, would be higher.
Nonsense.
Great post, joshd. TallDave has posted here and elsewhere before and constantly wheels out his apologies for US aggression. Using his twisted logic, based on the now long destroyed myth of US benevolence, he probably claims that the 2-5 million Vietnamese and Cambodians killed by US bombs were actually 'saved' from a future misery under communism. Or that the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed as the US exercised the Monroe Doctrine by destroying any hope real bottom-up democracy across much of Latin America was again based on the myth of 'best of intentions'.
Clearly, TallDave hasn't read any of the thousands of declassified documents written by US (and UK) planners in the 1940's, 50's, 60's and 70's that detail the real ambitions of the governments (although many remain claissified, some enter the public domain - at least one benefit of living in our pseudo-democracies). I have. These documents outlne the real agenda which has nothing whatsoever to do with the spreading of democracy and freedom. In fact, they almost are never mentioned. What themes constantly occur is that the governments of the super powerful and super violent states (with the US way out in front) are based on a constant concern that "Other countries will embrace populist, nationalist governments that attempt to use their own resources for the benefit of their own populations". This worries US-UK government planners because "These nationalist forces threaten the aspirations of western corporations which covet the resources of these nations". The documents constantly refer to 'conflicts' between the business interests of western corporations and the aspirations of a nationalist governments because these latter forces will use the profits from their natural resources for social programmes that benefit all sectors of society and to create socially just societies, instead of simply functioning to enrich western elites.
Again, document after document pursues the same theme, with human rights not even appearing on the radar screen of the planners. What is so shocking is that the language in these documents is hardly veiled - the intentions are made to be crystal clear. Where the rights of people conflict with the desires of multinational businesses, the former are considered as 'unpeople'. This explains exactly whay the US is using gunboat diplomacy (more than 700 military bases in 140+ countries) in an attempt to ensure that the world order remains subservient to the interests of the rich and powerful minority. The US supports any democracy as long as these countries do as they are told.
The fact that the state-corporate media completely ignores the nakedly predatory aims of the established orders shows exactly what agenda they support. These declassified documents are easily accessible, but their message has long since gone down Orwell's 'memory hole'. Instead, the media functions as part of a well-oiled propaganda machine - the government states its unbridled belief in democracy (in spite of massive evidence to the contrary), the media channels this as 'fact' without a hint of scepticism, and the public eventually comes to accept it as a 'given'.
What joshd said. You can vet my paltry posts anytime, sir.
Best,
D
"Answer those before you imply that life in a regime where the sons of the president can rape your daughters and sisters, and if you complain, you would be immediately murdered, is better than today."
Well, if you really don't get it, it's because the number of rapes the sons of the president can commit is rather limited compared to the number of deaths in a Civil War, not to mention the number of rapes which can be committed by unleashed misogynistic fundamentalists who see rape as a valid punishment for a woman leaving her face uncovered in public, attending school, and other such offenses against God.
"a free press..."
"greater religious liberty..."
I tell you you couldn't make this stuff up.
I guess the fact the current government mostly bribes reporters to report the offical lien rather than using direct intimidation (although they do that too) offsets the fact that Iraq is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists.
And I never realised before that "religious liberty" included the liberty to blow up the members of other religions.
In closing, tell me Dave would you care to spin these three stories into further validation of the glorious (and inevitably successful) American liberation of Iraq?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002876683_civilians2…
http://www.time.com/time/world/arti...74649-1,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1175055,00.html
"You can't stop deaths from 1988 by invading in 2003.:
Still mired in the old-fashioned "reality-based thinking" I see.
America can do anything.
Why do you hate america?
Ian,
I beg to differ. The inability of the US to stop the rise of populist-based movements and the real democratic change occurring in South America is proof that America CAN'T do anything. Thirty years ago, they would have ensured that the economies of these countries were subservient to US corporate interests and investors by instigating one bloody coup after another. The Monroe Doctrine had ensured - at least since the second world war - that any countries in defiance of this doctrine would be subject to terrorism or aggression from the US; defiance of the hemispheric master was not to be tolerated.
But the fact is, that Uncle Sam has overextended himself in waging wars for control of resources in the Middle East that are a last ditch effort to sustain itself as global hegemon. China is not intimidated by these posturings, and the sheer effort to overextend itself to control oil and natural gas supplies in the Middle East means that the US hasn't got the means to exercise the Monroe Doctrine anymore, although they tried vainly to oust Hugo Chavez from Venezuela in 2002. Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president, and part of the plutocratic elite, whose military (and the paramilitaries he also supports) have an appalling human rights record, appear to be one of the last footholds for the US in South America (in the country 70% of the land is owned by 3% of the population; Uribe himself is a big landowner).
US planners must be exceedingly frustrated at these developments - populist based change, which is becoming pandemic, is showing that the 'old master' has lost control. Moreover, co-operation between governments in South America means that they are successfully defying western financial institutions and their programmes - like structural adjustment and 'free trade' - which have for years enriched the bank accounts of western elites and their counterparts in the south but have caused mass suffering for the poor. There is hope.
Tell me, Jeff, why do you hate freedom?
Jeff Harvey said: But the fact is, that Uncle Sam has overextended himself in waging wars for control of resources in the Middle East that are a last ditch effort to sustain itself as global hegemon. China is not intimidated by these posturings, and the sheer effort to overextend itself to control oil and natural gas supplies in the Middle East means that the US hasn't got the means to exercise the Monroe Doctrine anymore.
This is childish Hitlerism. He too thought that the only way to obtain oil was (in his case) to invade the USSR. Much simpler to buy it. The USA has never had a problem paying for oil, nor does anybody else. Bush wanted revenge for 9/11, not oil. "Global hegemon" - that is soo 1968 studentism!
Tim,
You are throwing up the old neocon red herring. I never said anything about getting access to oil. Of course the US can get that on the market. Read again. I said that the US is waging resource wars to control the oil. To maintain its hand on the spigot. With China emerging as a major challenge to US hegemony, it would have been inconceivable for the US to attack Iraq (or Afghanistan for that matter) had they been islands in the Indian Ocean and had their main exports been Brussels Sprouts.
Moreover, Bush and his regime could not give a jot about 'revenge for 9-11' or for 'security'. In truth, 9-11 has been a gift to this vile administratuion - they've used it to camouflage their real agenda, which I have outlined. One intelligence agency after another warned the US that attacking Iraq would profoundly increase the threat of international terrorism. Did they care? The bottom line is control of oil and natural gas supplies in the Middle East and, if possible, in the Caucasus. Control of these resources gives one leverage over the global economy. Period. Read Zbignieuw Brezinski's "The Grand Chessboard", a primer for the "Project for a New American Century", which was itself written by many of the neocon 'crazies' in the current Bush administration. These documents outline Washington's clear ambitions for the region and to attain its status as global hegemon. Its hardly controversial, if you look beyond the end of your nose for the evidence.
In 1980, President Carter made a historic speech which actually set out the US global economic agenda (now known as the "Carter Doctrine"). He said that any move by a foreign power - he was, of course, referring to the Soviet Union - towards the oil rich Persian Gulf region would be seen as a "Direct attack on the interests of the United States". In 1992, President George H.W. Bush said that, "The American way of life is not up for negotiation". In truth, he was of course referring to the way of life of the corporate and political establishment, but the message is clear. Maintaining this "way of life" in large part depends on a control of the global economy. The US does not have more than 700 military bases in 140 countries for nothing. Thus Tim, your argument is nul and void (like most of your other arguments postulated on this and other threads).
Ian, I love freedom. Why do you ask?
Jeff Harvey,
Please define "military base". Does the 700+ figure include military facilities within the United States? Can you refer me to a list of the 700+ facilities, please? (Someone must have compiled a list in order to get a reasonably accurate count.)
Thanks.
Jeff,
In that post (and the one before it) I was parodying the platitudes tossed around by the supporters of the war.
Ian,
I thought so. Sorry for being too hot wired to notice it.
JF Beck
I sourced this originally from someone like Paul Street or Tom Engelhardt (but don't hold me on that). I will try and get the deatils back to you; however, is this information that inconceivable to you? As far as I know, every EU country, many in the Middle East and South America have US military bases and/or personnel operating from the. Ditto for Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and the like. Bush now says that American soldiers will be in Iraq for "years" to come. Of course this was always the intention; Iraq is an economic prize which will not be given up so easily.
JF Beck,
OK, I have sourced my information from the book by Chalmers Johnson, "The Sorrows of Empire" as originally discussed in an article on Tmo Dispatch, "Twenty-first century gunboat diplomacy" by Tom Engelhardt. Both authors state that the US operates or shares more than 700 military bases with other countries around the world; they state:
"[T]he United States now has bases or shares military installations in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean".
I need t check up on all of the nations concerned, but 140 may be a conservative estimate.
The full article can be accessed here:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1344
"And the reduction in excess deaths is on top of any value some poor deluded fools might place on two elections, one constitutional referendum, a free press, an independent judiciary, greater religious liberty, the lifting of economic sanctions, reintegration into the region and the wider international community, etc. Of course, wiser heads know all those things are worthless."
"imagine an enemy that says we will kill innocent people because we're trying to encourage people to be free."
George Bush press conference March 21 2006
The Bush administration believes in freedom alright - the freedom to be bombed, and to die, that is provided if your very existence runs counter to the aspirations of the privileged few. The vast majority of the planet's inhabitants thus classify as "unpeople" according to the neocon lexicon.
Jeff Harvey,
The 700+ bases in 140+ countries thing is very squishy. For one thing, what, exactly, constitutes a "military base"? Regardless, not all EU members host US "military bases".
The Tom Dispatch link you provided is also very imprecise:
There's also the little matter of whether or not US bases are included in the 700+ figure.
It's odd that, in a post about journalists who can't understand statistics, not one of those who usually show such obsessive attention to numerical accuracy has questioned the 700+ figure. It seems they are willing to accept on faith numbers meant to damn the US.
This just in:
"One doesnt want to be accused of inhuman callousness; but I am willing to confess, and believe I speak for a lot of THWTHs [To-Hell-With-Them Hawks] (and a lot of other Americans, too) that the spectacle of Middle Eastern Muslims slaughtering each other is one that I find I can contemplate with calm composure."
-John Derbyshire, National Review Online, March 21 2006 http://nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200603210827.asp
The sad part is that indeed, he does speak for a lot of Americans, too.
JF Beck,
Let me put it this way: do you think that any other country on Earth maintains anwhere within a fraction of the number of military bases or shares such facilities as does the USA? This is hardly 'squishy' - its pretty solid evidence of gunboat diplomacy. What other countries have more-or-less opted out of all of the following: the UN Charter, the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (in fact, increasing and upgrading their arsenal while arguing that Iran is in violation of the NPT), the Small Arms Treaty, the Comprehensive Land Mines Treaty, the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Kytoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and is trying like mad to slither out of the Montreal Protocol?
In other words, the US is telling the world: international laws apply to others, not to 'us'. 'We' (meaning the US) can harbor terrorists (there is plenty of evidence for this), and support terrorist nations that are client states (plenty of evidence for this, too), but we unilaterally have the right to preventatively attack other countries that we simply deem to be terrorist states or to support terrorism (this was reiterated in several of Bush's recent speeches and is enshrined in the National Security Document of 2002). This is Empire. Period. Thus, there are no laws for the super powerful and super violent states but that which they decree on themselves.
The remarkable thing is that the western state-corporate media apparatus has actually been able to legitimize (normalize) the aggression against Iraq, which in fact was in full violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Code, and just about every provision in the Geneva Conventions. There was Bush, the laughingstock, last week in Cleveland claiming that the US had the right to attack Iraq because, as he put it, Saddam was in violation of two UN resolutions and was rearming. How could the president - as ignorant as he is - make such an absurd remark, bearing in mind that we now know (and, in fact knew four years ago) that Iraq was disarmed and utterly defenseless. The biggest shock is that the Cleveland audience didn't fall out of their chairs in fits of hysterical laughter. That is probably because they'd been hand picked by the Republican handlers to look respectfully as their idiot-in-chief made his speech.
Jeff Harvey,
You have not addressed the points I raised, choosing instead to follow-up with more hyperbolic nonsense: that is, that Iraq was utterly defenseless.
You win.
Yes Jeff, after all the truth about the overwhelming might of Iraq's massive military build-up was proven beyond dispute in March 2003.
JF Beck,
Against the coalition, Iraq was utterly defenseless, and the aggressors knew it; otherwise they wouldn't have attacked the country. Iraq's military budget in the three years leading up to the war was a third of that of neighbouring Kuwait; Iraq had been devastated by the first Iraq war, followed by twelve years of sanctions that resembled a medievel siege. By 2003 it was just another helpless 'punching bag' that was worth the trouble to invade; a massive economic 'prize'.
Sadly, JF, none of this is hyperbolic nonsense; its fact. That's why Bush looked the imbecile that he is when he spoke in front of his pre-picked audience in Cleveland last week. But he's not alone; the well-oiled propaganda machine, masquerading as an 'independent' US press, had continually amplified all of the garbage spewing out of the White House for more than a year leading up to the attack, in order to reduce any domestic opposition. Its doing the same now to soften up opposition to an attack against Iran. What's remarkable is the ability with which they are constantly able to 'normalize' western atrocities and to 'marginalize' alternate views to the point that they are considered to be crazy. Thus, the hollow myth of western benevolence and belief in the spreading of democracy and freedom - all nonsense of course - is maintained.
Moreover, the whole cabal in the Bush regime - Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, Feith, Libby, Perle etc. are equally complicit in this massive crime.