Let talk about the war

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Loving my BMW

Which one?

I'm sure Eric can argue the "against" side of any particular war of your choosing...

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2010 528Xi
I demand justice.
Or, if there must be injustice, let it be in my favor.

Reynold's Wrap: it's not just for hats anymore.

Care to share the information that you have? I'm sure there must be an online article reporting all of this violence in Iraq in 2002.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...

Eric, I'm not even going to bother qualifying it...if you want to be the one person who believes that Iraq was peaceful that is fine by me.

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An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I'm sure you'll attempt to wiggle out of this by claiming you meant some other definition of "violence," but here's a few:

Wikipedia Link

Now, I don't consider Wiki the greatest of sources, but they have some interesting things to say concerning "violence" in Iraq - here's the major sub-heads from that link.

1 Documented human rights violations 1979-2003
2 Collusion of foreign powers in Saddam-era human rights abuses
3 Involvement of 'Saddam's Dirty Dozen' in abuses

No "violence" there, right?

Here's a little number from a left-wing organization for ya:

Human Rights Watch Link

Lead paragraph:
The Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussain perpetrated widespread and gross human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests of suspected political opponents and their relatives, routine torture and ill-treatment of detainees, summary execution of military personnel and political detainees as part of a "prison cleansing" campaign, and forced expulsions of Kurds and Turkmen from Kirkuk and other regions.

Still no "violence."

Enough, or would you like more?



You're so fond of saying, "If it happened here, would you still feel the same?" Damn right! I hope some democracy would come sailing in and save us from systematic torture and denial of rights!

__________________
2010 528Xi
I demand justice.
Or, if there must be injustice, let it be in my favor.

Reynold's Wrap: it's not just for hats anymore.

__________________

An unwavering defender of those I see worth protecting.

"promote the general welfare, not provide the general welfare"

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Surely there must be articles online reporting about this violence. I don't mean some report, but I mean an article like this one from today's news:

Death toll from market car bombing near Baghdad rises to 16

Every time there is some major kind of violence, there are dozens of news reports documenting it. I don't think there has been a day in the last year where I could not find 10 or 20 such articles in the major news media.

So then, if there was all this violence in Iraq in 2002, show me some articles. In fact, show me even a single one reporting on a specific incident. All I see for far are generalizations, and nothing in the form of concrete evidence.

I don't doubt that Saddam was a ruthless dictator who often murdered his opposition, but the numbers of those killed in this fashion at best would be fewer than probably died this week in Iraq in all the chaos there.

And no, Kurd and Shiite civilians and fighters killed during Kurdish uprising of the 1980s or the civil war of the early 1990s does not quality as "murdering your political opposition". If that were the case, then Abraham Lincoln would be considered the most ruthless leader of all having been responsible for a war that killed over 600,000 people.

Yes, targeted assasinations did indeed happen, and major political opposition leaders were indeed murdered, but not anywhere near the numbers that have been killed in the current war, or even probably in the last month. And in this sense, Iraq was not any different than half of the countries on the planet. Have you ever taken a look at how many political leaders in the United States have been assasinated over the years? Oh yeah...I'm sorry....American politicians are always conveniently murdered by lone nuts. LOL

If you want to make a case that Iraq had lots of chaos and violence in the 1980s and early 1990s, then you can make a very good case. But Iraq in 2002 was a relatively peaceful nation. Los Angeles probably had more violcence in 2002 than Iraq did.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...

Translation: because they are Iraqi, it's ok.

Actually, Philadelphia had more murders last year than Iraq had military deaths.

I say: SUPPORT THE TROOPS! PULL OUT OF PHILADELPHIA NOW!

__________________
2010 528Xi
I demand justice.
Or, if there must be injustice, let it be in my favor.

Reynold's Wrap: it's not just for hats anymore.

Funny how you make this comment here......



Yet conveniently forget to mention that there were many more deaths in Iraq besides the "military deaths", and even far more "military deaths" than there were "American military deaths".

I'm pretty sure the number of Iraqi military deaths last year was far far higher than the number of American military deaths, and the number of civilian deaths was reported to be over 35,000 last year.


Edit: According to this site (http://icasualties.org), there were 2091 Iraqi Security Force deaths last year, and 870 coalition deaths, totalling 2961 "military deaths" in Iraq last year. Did Philadelphia really have more murders? Yikes!

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...