You know, I've wondered about those 18 things, too.

In fact, I wish Bush had actually handed out a document containing his first and last list of justifications for invading that country from the beginning.

8/22/2006 5:08:18 PM

But then he would've been able to shift the rationale as it became politically advantageous to do so.

8/22/2006 5:09:54 PM

I'll list a few I know right off hand:

- Iraq is believed to have WMDs
- Iraq killed thousands of their own people (Kurds) with chemical weapons
- Iraq violated UN sanction of no-fly zone in post Desert Storm
- Iraq violated UN inspectors by not allowing open searches
- Iraq attempted assassination on former US President George Bush

and there are 13 more

i am seriously surprised that you guys werent aware that WMDs werent the only reason we went to war in Iraq...I mean thats the only one hammered into your head over and over again by the people screaming how unjust the war is and "Where are the WMDs?!?!!" but I figured you guys wouldnt buy into that

8/22/2006 5:10:44 PM

Quote :

"I mean thats the only one hammered into your head over and over again by the people Bush administration screaming how unjust the war is and "W There are the WMDs!?!?!!""

8/22/2006 5:13:12 PM

clever

yet it doesnt change the fact that there were 17 other resolutions that you apparently didnt know about

8/22/2006 5:13:54 PM

^^
It is interesting how you seem to be hung up on a failure to fulfill evidence on 1 part of 18 different charges against this country and it's leadership. Perhaps your politically skewed ideas get in the way of logical thought? Or are you simply incapable of such rationality?

8/22/2006 7:07:12 PM

Or perhaps I realize that the 18 charges weren't coequal?

And anyhoo, where are these 18 points? The congressional resolution authorizing force had more than 18 points, and most of them had something to do with WMDs.

[Edited on August 22, 2006 at 7:34 PM. Reason : .]

8/22/2006 7:11:45 PM

Quote :

"- Iraq violated UN sanction of no-fly zone in post Desert Storm - Iraq violated UN inspectors by not allowing open searches"

yea ... we really respect the UN

8/22/2006 8:05:54 PM

your a liberal....shouldnt you??

8/22/2006 9:21:57 PM

your a person who says your

8/22/2006 9:23:49 PM

you're a liberal...should'nt you??

8/22/2006 9:29:45 PM

im a neo-con

8/22/2006 11:12:38 PM

ah...thats why i hate you so much...as a liberal, i hate all neo-cons

8/22/2006 11:26:20 PM

8/23/2006 12:30:43 AM

bttt

9/21/2006 2:23:10 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths/index.html

Quote :

" Study: War blamed for 655,000 Iraqi deaths POSTED: 9:57 a.m. EDT, October 11, 2006 Story Highlights • Gunfire found to be most common killer of Iraqis; car bombings on the rise • Study says 2.5 percent of population killed since war; death toll rising each year • Coalition forces blamed for 31 percent of deaths since 2003 invasion • Researchers interviewed more than 1,800 randomly selected Iraqi households BALTIMORE, Maryland (CNN) -- War has wiped out about 655,000 Iraqis or more than 500 people a day since the U.S.-led invasion, a new study reports. Violence including gunfire and bombs caused the majority of deaths but thousands of people died from worsening health and environmental conditions directly related to the conflict that began in 2003, U.S. and Iraqi public health researchers said. "Since March 2003, an additional 2.5 percent of Iraq's population have died above what would have occurred without conflict," according to the survey of Iraqi households, titled "The Human Cost of the War in Iraq." (Watch as the study's startling results are revealed -- 1:55 Video) The survey, being published online by British medical journal The Lancet, gives a far higher number of deaths in Iraq than other organizations. (Read the full report -- pdf) Researchers randomly selected 1,849 households across Iraq and asked questions about births and deaths and migration for the study led by Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. They extrapolated the figures to reflect the national picture, saying Iraq's death rate had more than doubled since the invasion. Iraqis "bear the consequence of warfare," the report said, comparing the situation with other wars: "In the Vietnam War, 3 million civilians died; in the Congo, armed conflict has been responsible for 3.8 million deaths; in East Timor, an estimated 200,000 out of a population of 800,000 died in conflict. "Recent estimates are that 200,000 have died in Darfur [Sudan] over the past 31 months. Our data, which estimate that 654,965 or 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population has died in this, the largest major international conflict of the 21st century, should be of grave concern to everyone." The researchers estimated that an additional 654,965 people have died in Iraq since the invasion above what would have been expected from the pre-war mortality rate. They did not ask families whether their dead were civilians or fighters. (Read the report's appendix, including methodology and charts -- pdf) Violence claimed about 601,000 people, the survey estimated -- the majority killed by gunfire, "though deaths from car bombing have increased from 2005," the study says. The additional 53,000 people who are believed to have been killed by the effects of the war mostly died in recent months, "suggesting a worsening of health status and access to health care," the study said. It noted, however, that the number of nonviolent deaths "is too small to reach definitive conclusions." Other key points in the survey: # The number of people dying in Iraq has risen each year since March 2003. # Those killed are predominantly males aged 15-44. # Deaths attributed to coalition forces accounted for 31 percent of the dead. # Although the "proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006 ... the actual numbers have increased each year." The authors said their method of sampling the population is a "standard tool of epidemiology and is used by the U.S. government and many other agencies." Professionals familiar with such research told CNN that the survey's methodology is sound. Information for the survey was collected by Iraqi doctors, and analysis was performed by the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in cooperation with the Center for International Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Death certificates confirmed families' accounts in 92 percent of cases, the researchers said. It has been very difficult to pin down fatality numbers during the Iraq conflict. The private British-based Iraq Body Count research group puts the number of civilian deaths at between 43,850 and 48,693. Those figures are based on online media counts and eyewitness accounts. "The count includes civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to the coalition presence (e.g. insurgent and terrorist attacks)," the group's Web site says. "It also includes excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion." The latest estimates were released less than a month ahead of U.S. midterm elections that could change the balance of power in the House and Senate, now controlled by Republicans. "

the study: http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/10/11/human.cost.of.war.pdf

[Edited on October 11, 2006 at 10:17 AM. Reason : .]

10/11/2006 10:16:30 AM

Somehow, I find this pretty hard to believe.

10/11/2006 11:05:21 AM

it's a pretty huge number. whether it is completely accurate or not, Iraq is not better off now than it was under saddam

[Edited on October 11, 2006 at 11:08 AM. Reason : .]

10/11/2006 11:07:18 AM

thats a load of people

heard it on BBC this morning

10/11/2006 11:07:27 AM

Why hasn't TreeTwister commented on this new info yet?

10/11/2006 3:13:42 PM

what about it

10/11/2006 3:54:50 PM

It doesn't distinguish between combatants and noncombatants

It looks at total deaths vs. the prewar average. Not just combat deaths.

And it relies on randomly sampling 2000 people, rather than just counting deaths reported by the media (which is how the lower ~50,000 number was estimated)


Considering these three things it seems very plausible. And it's not like anyone can say otherwise unless they want to argue against the study's methodology, which was apparently pretty sound.

10/11/2006 4:01:00 PM

every news source thats been reporting this has simply regarded it as "600,000 violent deaths", be they combatants or bystanders.

10/11/2006 4:35:00 PM

Holy crap. Now I know that suicide bombs are common there, but I've never heard of 140 people dying at once in one of those bombs in Iraq. Sounds like an all out civil war in Baghdad.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/23/iraq.main/index.html

11/23/2006 3:07:54 PM

im glad the US hasnt tried to liberate north carolina.

shit would be fucked

11/23/2006 3:43:44 PM

According to the press, it was the most productive day today, since the invasion.

And also, October recorded the highest number of violent civilian deaths: 3,700+.

Bush must be happy!

[Edited on November 23, 2006 at 5:24 PM. Reason : 160 died today]

11/23/2006 5:23:45 PM

we're makin' progress!

11/23/2006 7:33:12 PM

its funny to hear people complain that we shouldn't have gone to "help" people in Iraq, regardless of what is happening now or not, yet they then go on and act upset because of how many are dying each day

11/23/2006 9:58:52 PM

there wasn't a sunni/shiite war in iraq before we were there. thats all i'm saying.

11/23/2006 11:00:48 PM

civil war or Saddam.

you call

11/24/2006 12:02:51 AM

Apparently someone forgot to tell the insurgents the elections are over and they can stop the bombing now.

11/24/2006 9:13:16 AM

Quote :

"160 230 died today"

11/24/2006 11:07:29 PM

Shias torch and bomb Sunni mosques in revenge-killings.

Sunnis go to 2 Shia houses, drag out 21 men and kill them, in revenge-revenge-killings.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and Bush says we are making progress?

Unless "making progress" means having the highest rate of killings since the invasion.

Well, those are his words, and so obviously it shows Bush and the US want nothing more than destruction and killing of Muslim lands and people.

11/26/2006 7:55:27 AM

^ Honestly, that is what we want. With enough death it becomes inevitable that Iraq will fracture into three separate territories, increasing regional oil production through competition.

11/26/2006 8:02:15 AM

^thanks.

well, history shows us that western colonial powers have always engendered ethnic divisions in their colonies, and/or split african/asian countries along ethnic lines.

look at the rwanda massacre; wouldn't have happened if the belgians hadn't courted one side against the other. look at the creation of iraq and kuwait by the brits, and indeed the creation of other muslim/arab countries.

the more fractured muslims are, the better western nations would feel (and feel safe); that's just common sense.

so, what better way to do it under the guise of "liberating muslims" (yeah, when's the last time you heard that nonsense; christians liberating muslims?), and then be like, oops, we didn't know it would lead to fighting along ethnic lines! but hey, at least the dinosaur is gone, right? and the iraqis are liberated and free!!!

11/26/2006 8:08:58 AM

hmmmm and why ever would we want to distract fanatical muslims?

11/26/2006 8:48:09 AM

does bush not consider the middle east civilized or something

i just heard him say "they will try to blackmail the world with nucular(SP?!?) weapons and destroy america, europe, and the rest of the civilized world"

11/28/2006 5:21:49 PM

do you consider the middle east civilized?

11/28/2006 5:48:46 PM

bttt


http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/16/iraq.main/index.html

Quote :

" NEW: Four U.S. troops killed Monday in northern Iraq, military says • NEW: Iraqi prime minister blames "terrorists and Saddamists" for bombings • 70 dead, 169 wounded in university bombings in Baghdad • Other bombings and shootings kill 37"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16648759/

Quote :

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nearly 35,000 civilians were killed last year in Iraq, the United Nations said Tuesday, a sharp increase from the numbers reported previously by the Iraqi government. Gianni Magazzeni, the chief of the U.N. Assistance Ministry for Iraq, said 34,452 civilians were killed and 36,685 were wounded last year. "

[Edited on January 16, 2007 at 7:40 PM. Reason : g]

1/16/2007 7:33:55 PM

Quote :

"Nearly 35,000 civilians were killed last year in Iraq"

Better than 35,000 American civilians

1/16/2007 8:33:01 PM

Obviously those were the only two choices.

1/16/2007 8:52:20 PM

Could have been, good thing we'll never know

1/16/2007 9:08:22 PM

Quote :

"Better than 35,000 American civilians"

You're god damn right it's better than 35,000 American's being killed. Now, get back to the thread topic.

1/16/2007 10:46:01 PM

im not the one who bttt'd it

1/16/2007 10:53:58 PM

plain and simple. Iraqis have always been animals. Look at their history of leaders before Saddam. Not one of them made it past a few years. All of them were either removed from office, assasinated, or driven out of the country. Saddam, being a minority, managed to stay in power longer than anyone else and keep his people more or less civil. He should have been the next Castro and die in office from old age. Now the Iraqi people are showing their true side....nothing but wild animals.

and as far as him invading Kuwait in the early 90's. Well...Kuwait used to be part of Iraq...from his perspective he was just taking back what was rightfully his.

[Edited on January 17, 2007 at 1:22 AM. Reason : fda]

[Edited on January 17, 2007 at 1:22 AM. Reason : r]

1/17/2007 1:21:07 AM

Quote :

" Bombers kill 26 in Baghdad, Kirkuk • Car bomb kills at least 15, wounds 33 in Sadr City • Death toll in Kirkuk blast rises to at least 10 • U.S. military reports two U.S. soldier deaths in Anbar province • U.S.-led troops net 28 suspected terrorists in raid"

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/17/iraq.main/index.html

1/17/2007 10:09:09 AM

^^bravo for bigotry.

1/17/2007 10:28:52 AM

its true. don't take my word for it. just go do the research yourself. and check any news website for the 'current' situation over there.

1/17/2007 10:39:22 AM

yeah i've read plenty of your posts for myself. and it is true! you are a bigot!

1/17/2007 10:42:14 AM

denial...its a process.

1/17/2007 10:46:18 AM