OK I am sick of watching people posting or linking sources with some made up miniscule numbers for Iraq body count. This has no place in US media, moronic made up web sites.
This is the aftermath of USA's 'war against terrorism'. Stop posting bullshit.
http://www.brussellstribunal.org/articl ... wOKGYWPpCU (http://www.brussellstribunal.org/article_view.asp?id=803#.UwOKGYWPpCU)
QuoteWhen considering the number of civilian casualties during the Iraq occupation 2003-2013, it would be a good idea to use the scientific studies of the Lancet, ORB or even BBC to estimate the number of victims of the Iraq war. We shouldn't use media related counts like IraqBodyCount or CostOfWar. This is very unfair towards the hundreds of thousands Iraqi victims of the Iraqi catastrophe. Every death of this illegal occupation should be remembered, not only the soldiers of the invading and occupying powers.
A study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. Since the researchers at Johns Hopkins estimated that 601,000 violent Iraqi deaths were attributable to the U.S.-led invasion as of July 2006, it necessarily does not include Iraqis who have been killed since then. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/156 (http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/156) has updated this number both to provide a more relevant day-to-day estimate of the Iraqi dead and to emphasize that the human tragedy mounts each day this brutal war continues. Their counter stopped in 2010 at 1.455.590 civilian casualties.
The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in January 2008. Opinion Research Business estimated that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 was 1,033,000.
CostofWar (http://costsofwar.org/article/iraqi-civilians (http://costsofwar.org/article/iraqi-civilians)) grossly underestimates the figures of direct deaths by using the IraqBodyCount figures.? Robert Fisk already wrote on 27/08/2005 about the numbers of bodies that were brought to the morgue of Baghdad: "By comparison, equivalent figures for 1997, 1998 and 1999 were all less than 200 a month." That was before the invasion, at the height of the murderous sanctions. In 2003 the number was 70 a day, in 2004 800 every month. In July 2005 the number stood at 1.100 a month, and then the worst days of sectarian violence hadn't started yet.
Please read with me: Disappearances missing persons
Baghdad morgue figures?
As violence in the Iraqi capital continued to rise in 2006, the task of tracking down missing people had become a grim ordeal. Iraq's anemic investigative agencies have been ill-equipped to keep up with soaring crime, so for families seeking information, the morgues have often provided the only certainty.?According to Baghdad's central morgue Director Munjid al-Rezali on April 16, 2009, at least 30,000 unidentified bodies had been delivered to Baghdad's central morgue since sectarian violence surged in 2006, and only about a third had since been identified. "In 2006, there was an average of 3,000 bodies a month ... I call this a year of horror. The Baghdad morgue took in about 16,000 unidentified bodies in 2006 alone, the bulk of them victims of death squads and other sectarian violence, a source at the morgue said on 14 January 2007. "Ninety percent of the bodies received in 2006 were unidentified, compared with 50 percent in 2007 and 15 percent in 2008," said Dr. Munjid Salahuddin, the director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine on 25 October 2009. The United Nations, citing Health Ministry numbers, reported that 1,471 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad in September 2006 and 1,782 in October 2006.?
The unidentified bodies of Wadi al-Salam cemetery in Najaf?
There are clues to count the number of unidentified bodies, such as the number of people buried at the main Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf. A large percentage of the people buried there remain unidentified. But even there, the deaths are limited mostly to Shiites and include natural as well as violent causes, so they cannot be considered definitive. The director of the cemetery's statistics office, Ammar al-Ithari, said the number of burials jumped from just over 32,000 in 2004 and 2005 to nearly 50,000 in 2006 and 54,000 in 2007. It fell to nearly 40,000 last year, as violence declined. There are no statistics from before the war because records were destroyed in the fighting. An Iraqi witness told us: "I wonder if you know that the puppet government decided to bury a lot of unidentified bodies found in Baghdad in the Shia cemetery in Najaf (Dar al-Salam) just to give the impression that a lot of the killing was aimed at the Shia also when its militias were slaughtering Sunnis in Baghdad and its suburbs"?Middle East Online reported on September 9, 2007 that since the US-led invasion of Iraq began, as many as 40,000 unidentified corpses had been buried in Wadi al-Salam cemetery in Najaf, according to figures released by Ahmed Di'aibil, a Najaf governate spokesperson. All corpses are numbered and photographed and the location of burial is noted. Figures are recorded in a register in the hope that families will eventually be able to identify the bodies. Thousands more bodies may have been hastily buried in the deserts surrounding Najaf. Before the US invasion of Iraq, the volunteers buried up to 40 people every month. In the occupation's worst months, that figure increased 50-fold as volunteers buried an average of more than 2,000 anonymous occupation victims every month, CNN journalist Michael Ware reported on September 15, 2007. Already on September 17, 2003, Robert Fisk wrote: "In Baghdad, up to 70 corpses - of Iraqis killed by gunfire ? are brought to the mortuaries each day. In Najaf, for example, the cemetery authorities record the arrival of the bodies of up to 20 victims of violence a day," a 15-fold increase compared to pre-war levels. And the situation gradually worsened from 2003. It is worth mentioning that the buried bodies before the occupation were also from different parts of Iraq, because Shia used to bury their dead in Najaf as it is the holy place.?
When we take all these figures into account, a simple calculation suffices to conclude that probably 80,000 unidentified bodies have been buried in the cemetery of Najaf since March 2003.? And remember: bodies that are brought to the morgue, be they identified or unidentified, are mostly direct victims of violence.
Let's Count !
Let's do a rough count of the bodies brought to the mortuary in Baghdad between 2003-2008 and the unidentified bodies buried in Najaf:
?a) Bagdad:?
2003 – 17.100 (70x30-200x9)?2004 – 7.200 (800-200x12)?
2005 – 10.800 (1.100-200 x 12)?2006 – 33.600 (3.000-200 x 12)?
2007 - A report from IraqSlogger of August 2007 revealed that the U.S. presence in Baghdad during the "surge" had shown virtually no progress in stemming the gruesome sectarian death squads pervading the capital. Between June 18 and July 18, 2007, up to 592 unidentified bodies were found dumped in different parts of Baghdad. Most of the bodies found by the police - an average of 20 a day - were bound, blindfolded and shot execution style, victims of sectarian violence carried out by death squads. Many also bore signs of torture or mutilation. Despite official Iraqi and U.S. statements to the contrary, the reports indicated that the number of unidentified bodies in the capital had risen again to pre-surge levels in May and June 2007.?
Let's take for 2007 the same number as in 2005, OK??
2008 - UNAMI's Human Rights report for the period from January to June 2008 stated: "Large numbers of unidentified bodies were found in Diyala, Nineveh, Anbar and Diwaniyah and mainly in Baghdad. Many of these bodies bore signs of torture, some were blind?folded and others were decapitated."?
And maybe for 2008 we can take the number of 2004. Reasonable, no?
If we add these numbers, we count for the Baghdad morgue already..... 86.700 extra bodies that were brought to the morgue compared to pre-invasion levels. Then we add the 80,000 corpses of the cemetery in Najaf and the figure rises to 166,700 bodies. These figures do not include Fallujah, Basra, Mosul, Ramadi, Baquba, Al Qaim, Nassiriya, Kerbala, Haditha etc, and neither the victims of the bombing during the "surge".
Need I go on to show that a simple calculation shows that the figure of 120.000, 150.000 or 189,000 is completely ridiculous?
Further: Fallujah was not included in the cluster of the Lancet 2 study of 2006. In that case we would have seen even higher estimates.
David Swanson:
Brown University's "Cost of War" Project garnered a fair amount of media attention this month by announcing that a new report had tallied 190,000 deaths, a significantly lower figure than 1.4 million. But there was no new report, no new research.There was just a paper by Brown professor Neta Crawford from a year-and-a-half ago in which she picked and chose what numbers to use from other sources. She said she was choosing not to use the Johns Hopkins (a.k.a. Lancet) studies or the Opinion Research Bureau study because they had not been updated and had been criticized. She chose instead to use Iraq Body Count, even while quoting an MIT professor pointing out that IBC admits its tally is probably half the size of actual deaths. What IBC means is that it is aware it is missing huge numbers of deaths; it has no basis for knowing how many. Even doubling IBC data, which would have produced 215,000 as of the 2010 paper Crawford quotes, leaves out combatants, and leaves out indirect or nonviolent deaths caused by war, and even leaves out civilians we know to have been counted by the U.S. government thanks to WikiLeaks. Crawford admits that, even adding up all these numbers may give a very low count. "Iraqi officials at the Ministry of Health," she notes, "may have been systematically encouraged to under-report deaths. One person who works at the Baghdad central morgue statistics office told National Public Radio that 'By orders of the minister's office, we cannot talk about the real numbers of deaths. This has been the case since 2004. . . . I would go home and look at the news. The minister would say 10 people got killed all over Iraq, while I had received in that day more then 50 dead bodies just in Baghdad. It's always been like that -- they would say one thing, but the reality was much worse.'" And so, given all those concerns, Crawford chose to stand by Iraq Body Count. After all, it doesn't get criticized.
INJURIES: How Many People Has the United States Wounded in Iraq?
Iraq Body Count estimates three people with injuries for every death. At that rate, 1.4 million deaths (thus far) would mean 4.2 million injured. That is a calculation that does not include every form of trauma or suffering; the Iraqi victims of mental trauma are almost certainly in the millions. Nor does the statistic include injuries to future generations in the form of birth defects - which have become so common in Fallujah.
(From David Swanson's report on 18 maart 2013: Iraq War Among World's Worst Events - Ever More Shocked, Never Yet Awed? http://warisacrime.org/Iraq (http://warisacrime.org/Iraq))
Please continue reading:
The Iraqi government has issued instructions to all security and health offices not to give out body count numbers to the media. Dozens of bodies are found every day across Baghdad. "We are not authorized to issue any numbers, but I can tell you that we are still receiving human bodies every day; the men have no identity on them," a doctor at the Baghdad morgue told IPS on February 19, 2008. Between 50 and 180 bodies were dumped on Baghdad's streets each day at the height of the killing, and many bore signs of torture, such as drill holes or cigarette burns.?Political pressure to lower death toll?On August 10, 2006 Reuters mentioned that Iraq's Health, Interior and Defence ministries consistently provided lower figures than those released by the morgue.
The Guardian reported on March 19, 2008: "There is no shortage of estimates, but they vary enormously. The Iraqi ministry of health initially tried to keep a count based on morgue records, but then stopped releasing figures under pressure from the US-?supported government in the Green Zone. The director of the Baghdad morgue, already under stress because of the mounting horror of his work, was threatened with death on the grounds that by publishing statistics he was causing embarrassment. The families of the bereaved wanted him to tell the truth, but like other professionals he came to the view that he had to flee Iraq. Dr Salih Mahdi Motlab al-Hasanawi, the health minister appointed after the ministry's ban on releasing official morgue figures, said the survey was prompted by controversy over civilian casualties.
Media-based estimates miss 70-95% of all Iraqi deaths
The press and thus also IraqBodyCount use the twisted and downplayed figures released by the Quisling Iraqi government. Most journalists in the mainstream press keep on fixing the number of civilian casualties at around 120.000. IraqBodyCount does valuable work in collecting data of the deaths that are reported in the mainstream press. But their figures cannot serve as a scientific norm to establish a relevant estimate of Iraqi casualties.
Let's give a few examples: Twenty thousand of Iraq's 34,000 registered physicians left Iraq after the U.S. invasion. As of April 2009, fewer than 2,000 returned, the same as the number who were killed during the course of the war. Iraq bodycount has some 70 doctors in their database of casualties, which means that they have only listed 3,5% of the estimated number of killed physicians.
Iraq Bodycount has 108 academics listed in its database. The BRussells Tribunal has a partial list of 448 murdered academics, compiled from different sources. Although that list is very incomplete, Iraq Bodycount lists only 24% of the academic casualties reported by the BRussells Tribunal.
Perhaps the best monitored category of victims in this war are the media professionals. The BRussells Tribunal has a list of 354 killed media professionals. Al-Iraqiya director general Habib al-Sadr told AFP in September 2007 that at least 75 members of his staff have been killed since he took over the channel in 2005 and another 68 wounded. The BRussells Tribunal list of killed media professionals had at that moment less than 1/3rd of this number in its database. But the number of Iraq Bodycount stands at only 241 casualties.
Les Roberts, author of the two Lancet studies of Iraq mortality, defended himself on 20 September 2007 against allegations that his surveys were "deeply flawed": "A study of 13 war affected countries presented at a recent Harvard conference found over 80% of violent deaths in conflicts go unreported by the press and governments. City officials in the Iraqi city of Najaf were recently quoted on Middle East Online stating that 40,000 unidentified bodies have been buried in that city since the start of the conflict. When speaking to the Rotarians in a speech covered on C-SPAN on September 5th, H.E. Samir Sumaida'ie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the US, stated that there were 500,000 new widows in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton Commission similarly found that the Pentagon under-counted violent incidents by a factor of 10. Finally, the respected British polling firm ORB released the results of a poll estimating that 22% of households had lost a member to violence during the occupation of Iraq, equating to 1.2 million deaths. This finding roughly verifies a less precisely worded BBC poll last February that reported 17% of Iraqis had a household member who was a victim of violence. There are now two polls and three scientific surveys all suggesting the official figures and media-based estimates in Iraq have missed 70-95% of all deaths. The evidence suggests that the extent of under-reporting by the media is only increasing with time."
A memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, stated that: "The (Lancet) study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."
In an e-mail, released by the British Foreign Office, in which an official asks about the Lancet report, the official writes: "However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones."
Medialens wrote on 03/10/2007:
Consider that a study of deaths in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996 by Patrick Ball et al at the University of California, Berkeley (1999) found that numbers of murders reported by the media in fact decreased as violence increased. Ball described the "problem of relying on the journalistic record" in evaluating numbers killed:
"When the level of violence increased dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s, numbers of reported violations in the press stayed very low. In 1981, one of the worst years of state violence, the numbers fall towards zero. The press reported almost none of the rural violence." (Patrick Ball, Paul Kobrak, and Herbert F. Spirer, 'State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection', 1999; http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ciidh/qr/ ... chap7.html (http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ciidh/qr/english/chap7.html))
Ball added:
"Throughout the 1980 to 1983 period newspapers documented only a fraction of the killings and disappearances committed by the State. The maximum monthly value on the graph [see link above] is only 60 for a period when monthly extra-judicial murders regularly totaled in the thousands."
Ball explained that "the press stopped reporting the violence beginning in September 1980. Perhaps not coincidentally, the database lists seven murders of journalists in July and August of that year".
And here's Les Roberts again in March 2011, comparing the Wikileaks war logs with IraqBodyCount's figures:
The release which supposedly included over 391,000 classified DoD reports described violent events after 2003 including 109,000 deaths, the majority (66,000) being Iraqi civilians. At the time of the release, the most commonly cited figure for civilian casualties came from Iraqbodycount.org (IBC), a group based in England that compiles press and other descriptions of killings in Iraq. In late October, IBC estimated the civilian war death tally to be about 104,000. Virtually all authorities, including IBC themselves, acknowledge that this count must be incomplete, although the fraction missed is debated. The press coverage of the Iraq War Logs release tended to focus on the crude consistency between the number recorded by WikiLeaks, 66,000 since the start of 2004, and the roughly 104,000 recorded deaths from Iraqbodycount since March of 2003. The Washington Post even ran an editorial entitled, "WikiLeaks's leaks mostly confirm earlier Iraq reporting" concluding that the Iraq War Log reports revealed nothing new.
A research team from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health released a report this week analyzing the amount of overlap between the 66,000 WikiLeaks reports and the previously known listing of IBC. The team developed a system for grading the likelihood that the WikiLeaks War Log record matched an entry in IBC, scoring the match between 0 (not a match) to 3 (very likely a match). The matching records were graded by at least two reviewers and then a third reviewer arbitrated any discrepancies. The conclusion? Only 19% of the WikiLeaks reports of civilian deaths had been previously recorded by IBC. With so little overlap between the two lists, it is almost certain that both tallies combined are missing the majority of civilian deaths, suggesting many hundreds of thousands have died.
The discussion about casualties is not over yet, but we can safely put forward the number of 1,5 million excess deaths caused by this war, most of them from violent causes. An archive of articles about the heated discussions in the press and blogs on civilian death counts during the US occupation can be found on the BRussells Tribunal website: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Lancet111006.htm (http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Lancet111006.htm)
Let me conclude with the words of Prof. Raymond Baker in his keynote speech at the International Seminar in Defense of Iraqi Academia in Ghent 9-11 March 2011:
There is something blinding about destruction on so terrible a scale. There is something just too painful about debating methods for calculating the number of slaughtered innocents when the figures almost immediately take us well beyond hundreds and hundreds of thousands of human souls. How many pages and pages of WikiLeaks reports of killings at checkpoints, unspeakable torture, random murders by unchecked contractors can one read with the revulsion for the occupiers and compassion for the victims they deserve. The mind closes down, or so it seems. That may be one of God's mercies but it is one that should be resisted.
(//http://www.brussellstribunal.org/js/ckfinder/userfiles/images/actions_BT/maart%202013/affiche%20justice%20for%20Iraq%20-%20verso.jpg)
Not trying to disagree with you, but the sectarian violence is Iraqis killing Iraqis. Sunnis killing Shiites. In my mind about the same as Baptists killing Presbyterians.
We were wrong in going there, no question. But the fact is that these people are killing each other over issues that are hundreds of years old. And Saddam Hussein killed and tortured many thousands before we got there. Before Hussein, they were killing each other to begin with.
there is no question what we did unleashed a huge firestorm of retribution. But if Hussein were still in power, he would be violently suppressing Shiites like he was doing in the first place.
I don't personally feel guilty about that.
I don't think the true death toll will ever be known.
All of which speaks to the idiocy of a system that places sectarian belief over homogeneity of culture and security.
I think a lot more Americans are ready to accept those figures now. When the invasion started going south, a lot of Americans were still not ready to accept that we may have caused a lot of harm, a mistake maybe, but not severe harm to innocent people. A high casualty rate was not the way this venture was sold to the voters, and it didn't fit into the fantasy very well. But I think that's changing for some people.
With a much better ability to track and catelog these tragedies using computers really makes me wonder what the real death tolls of past wars were. The victors understandably don't want the real toll known to the public because if the world at large knew just how many people perish and just how much suffering goes on the only wars waged would be against thise willing to start these wars in the first place.
I think the real problem is that so many people still have this antiquated notion that mass casualties don't happen in war, so that when they see large figures such as this, they are surprised and assume things that they have no proof for. In war, people die. No war is quick or clean. As much as I have a fairly unpopular view of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I feel like the U.S. will never be able to hold the moral high ground or be really responsible until it accepts that fact that sacrifices on a large scale will always have to be made in war. It's something the whole world needs to learn, really.
Quote from: "Insult to Rocks"I think the real problem is that so many people still have this antiquated notion that mass casualties don't happen in war, so that when they see large figures such as this, they are surprised and assume things that they have no proof for.
I talked to a guy once who said the US had the capability to fight a humane war, and ethically, that is how we should wage war. But no matter how idealistically appealing that idea is, it is not part of war. That's what diplomacy is for. War is savagely brutal. It's purpose is to inflict pain and suffering until the enemy concedes or is vanquished. People, including civilians at wedding parties, will die and suffer in the chaos. Prisoners will be tortured. Leaders will be hung or beaten to death.
Quote from: "SGOS"Quote from: "Insult to Rocks"I think the real problem is that so many people still have this antiquated notion that mass casualties don't happen in war, so that when they see large figures such as this, they are surprised and assume things that they have no proof for.
I talked to a guy once who said the US had the capability to fight a humane war, and ethically, that is how we should wage war. But no matter how idealistically appealing that idea is, it is not part of war. That's what diplomacy is for. War is savagely brutal. It's purpose is to inflict pain and suffering until the enemy concedes or is vanquished. People, including civilians at wedding parties, will die and suffer in the chaos. Prisoners will be tortured. Leaders will be hung or beaten to death.
There is a difference between necessary evils and evils of convenience though. Torture does not need to be part of war, and any who use it should be justly stopped. Death and killing though? That's something that happens. People need to accept that, and stop assuming that wars will be easy or quick, as that only ends up making things more difficult.
We've been feed a Hollywood version of war for so long and now video games sanitizes it even more and toss into that governments who censor news to sanitize even more I'm almost surprised they don't sell naming rights to war.
The Proctor and Gamble War.. Sanitized for your protection.
"War is an atrocity waged for survival"
At least it once was. I like military games and I like researching it, but no. War is nothing more than people slaughtering each other with the worst of humanity coming out into the open. The very definition of war is a war crime, it's just legal.
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Quote from: "Insult to Rocks"I think the real problem is that so many people still have this antiquated notion that mass casualties don't happen in war, so that when they see large figures such as this, they are surprised and assume things that they have no proof for. In war, people die. No war is quick or clean. As much as I have a fairly unpopular view of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I feel like the U.S. will never be able to hold the moral high ground or be really responsible until it accepts that fact that sacrifices on a large scale will always have to be made in war. It's something the whole world needs to learn, really.
QuoteThere is a difference between necessary evils and evils of convenience though. Torture does not need to be part of war, and any who use it should be justly stopped. Death and killing though? That's something that happens. People need to accept that, and stop assuming that wars will be easy or quick, as that only ends up making things more difficult.
You should stop trying to sound like an adult and learn not to confuse political bullshit with some nonexistent glorified definition of war.
If you were born in Iraq, highly likely either you were dead, lost all your family, lost a limb, witnessed horrifying scales of atrocities committed to your family, your own people from rape, to every kind of torture, execution or yourself suffered from all this and you would be ready to blow anything up with yourself in a heart beat.
Your problem is people not accepting computer games as art.
You should learn to build empathy before making stoic comments about 'meaning' of war and what amount of human casualty is 'legitimate' or not.
There is no such thing as war without atrocity of any kind.
This invasion did not prevent anything. It didn't stop anything. It's to everyone's face that it wasn't even planned to do any of that. US radicalised the region more than ever and we are all going to suffer from that.
Shoe, I wasn't even discussing the invasion at all. I was talking about how annoying and frustrating it is when people think war will be easy or not filled with death. As I said, I have differing opinions on war than the rest of you, but that's not what I was trying to talk about. I was agreeing that war is never easy, and is always filled with death. I don't really understand why I am being attacked here.
Strategically, war missions aim to destroy infrastructure. This destruction of infrastructure leaves children as the most vulnerable to die. Per body weight they are more susceptible to waterborne and air borne contaminants, and die at a faster rate than adults. This makes children a target of war, and not simply "collateral damage" as they like to call it. Rename the term "collateral damage" to what it really is, "the killing and suffering of children".
This is a good discussion because if anything, our government has tried to sanitize their actions abroad, especially in the Middle East. We are hated in a lot of places for a reason. I think of the movie "Syriana" and how hypocritical our policies are overseas.
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"You are not being attacked, Rocks. That post is the best thing I can say[...]
Look, we all get it by now that politics is a touchy subject with you, especially when it involves US foreign policy. You're not the first, nor are you the last to be bothered by it. But when you tell that the best you can say is
you should stop trying to sound like an adult, then I think maybe some introspection is in order. He is justified in feeling attacked. I was taken aback in reading that, along with other condescending bits.
With that said, not only do I understand your frustration, but I share it. I also wanted to say thanks for sharing the info on this. I do find it frustrating when the body count is downplayed, but I personally do not hasten to attribute it to malice when it can just as equally be attributed to incompetence, especially since I am, unfortunately, all too familiar with the news reporting "standards" that sometime end up in the media.
Even if the body count is downplayed, it is easy to refute even without counter data on the very simple basis that even if we had a handful of deaths at the hands of the US military action, it is already too much.
You were a teenager once, shoe. You should know this kind of attitude usually doesn't work on teenagers, no matter how smart. Because you sounded like a condescending cunt there, and that isn't the kind of person people are going to take anything from, no matter how smart it might sound. Especially as an intelligent adult, you should know this.
QuoteBecause that's more important than pointing out something real to a kid.
You're not pointing anything out if your subject tunes out after the first line. There is a big difference between telling someone they are wrong (which you did) and being a condescending cunt (which you also did).
The problem is that the latter destroys all the use of the former. The second problem is that your post seems completely unrelated to what was actually said, and seem to be telling Insult that he believes and thinks things that he never even closely mentioned, and that you seem to be completely missing the whole point of his post.
The fact that you seem to be missing the entire point of my post suggest that you're stuck in rage-mode again, so maybe you should calm down a bit, reread the conversation, and see what you're actually being accused of. You're throwing around all sort of comments that seem completely unrelated to anything going on here.
The last Mel Gibson movie I saw was some war movie where a soldier is dying surrounded by his comrades. He's been gut shot, and in typical Gibson-esque fashion he's laying on the ground with his guts coming out of his abdominal cavity, and his last words are, "I'm so happy that I could die for my country." I remember thinking Mel Gibson must have his head up his ass or something. Now when I see a movie playing that has anything to do with Mel Gibson, I run the other way.
I was born during WWII, so I grew up watching patriotic John Wayne war movies almost every Saturday afternoon at the local theater. Watching these post WWII propaganda movies as a pre-teen, it was impossible not to develop a sense that war was about heroics.
Then along came Vietnam. I was 10 years older and in metropolitan areas, I saw filthy streets where the Vets congregated, some in wheel chairs without legs, some missing an arm, or deformed in other ways, a few on little skate board things they could propel their legless bodies down the side walks with their hands. They would come to a curb, and in the flash of an eye, slide off their skateboards, pick them up, place them on the curb and hop back on to continue going wherever; Grown men, now reduced to three foot high half men slithering along the walkways. I didn't see heroes. I saw what seemed like human remains barely alive and mostly drunk.
It pissed me off to realize that those John Wayne propaganda films were all a bunch of lies designed to tell us how great we were. I had believed them, and had been unaware of reality.
The prelude to war is always a slick marketing con job. They fill boys heads with fancy of glory and all that happy horseshit, give them a pretty uniform then toss them straight in hell, pin a piece of brass on them if they survive it then shitcan them for the next crop of young saps.. This is nothing new and as best I can tell will never stop.
QuoteYou are again talking down from some high and mighty place.
Yeah, sucks when that happens, doesn't it? Imagine how it must feel for the people you're talking to :roll:
You seem to be thinking that a lot of things were said and meant that really aren't. You're talking to a poster that I've never met before, because Insult seems to understand all of your points already.
Quote from: "AllPurposeAtheist"The prelude to war is always a slick marketing con job. They fill boys heads with fancy of glory and all that happy horseshit.
I remember watching an sadly ironic news clip back at the beginning of the Iraq War. During the first wave of US casualties, a reporter was interviewing a mother who had just lost her son. She said he wanted to go to Iraq. When he boarded the plane, his last words to her were, "I'm going to go kick some Iraqi butt."
That's why it's so important to have news, video and stories of the real war. Nobody in their right mind would sign up for a war if they really understood what they were getting into. Your body might make it through the battles intact, but your mind pretty much shatters and dies by the end of the first week. If you last that long.
I don't think that's what he said. But that'll need clarification from Insult from Rocks himself. If that is indeed what he meant, you are totally in the right for what you said (which doesn't change my opinion on how you said it) but I'm fairly certain that's not what he meant at all.
I didn't read anything condescending. I read truth and if someone can't handle truth there's always some fucking holy book.
So now shoe has to worry about how the truth is written about horrors of war? What's next, everyone gets a trophy for participating?
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"It's an adult's responsibility to say, 'this is wrong'
Except that's not what Plu and I are discussing with you.
If I were to adopt your attitude I would say that whoever did not live through armed conflict has no business talking about it. Have you?
I'm pretty sure anyone who hasn't been through it has some form of a delusional vision of war. To think yours is correct even though you've never experienced it is probably even worse than some teenager doing the same, because you of all people should know better.
I have honestly lost track of what exactly your problem is.
War is a living hell period! If anyone thinks it is glorifying they are delusional. unfortunately there are people that would got to war after being in it for the same reasons they did the first time, stupidity. One doesn't have to go to war to know it is insane to invade another country based on lies, or know we have to protect ourselves, and that at any cost is immoral. We don't fight wars for our country, we fight them for politicians and their propaganda to make their friends richer now. If we have World War three we will all be back in the stone age, if we survive. War is not a video game where you don't get hurt or die and come back. :roll: Solitary
Honestly, I haven't changed my opinion on anything (and won't unless Insult to Rocks happens to come by and clarifies what he meant) since I made that first post. I also don't have the idea that you've been spending all that much effort trying to understand anyone else's position here either.
Well, I guess if anything we can conclude that it is way easier for me to piss you off than the other way around :-k
It was not at all meant to be entertaining. (Nor me doing my best to try and insult you.)
I'm not smiling or anything. It's more like watching a trainwreck happen in front of you, if anything.
Which I admit, is fascinating in a very morbid kind of way. But not fun.
Shoe and the others who have asked for clarification:
My original post was a condemnation of those naïve people who believe that war is easy and can be fought without casualties, the "we'll be home by Christmas" type people. It was something I figured we would agree on, which is why I posted it. I didn't want to get into a discussion of war in general nor the Iraq war in specifics, and I still do not. I was merely making a comment on the ridiculousness of a glorified war, something which everyone here seems to be in agreement on. Which is why I do not understand why my post was such a big deal.
And Shoe? If you continue to dismiss what I say based on my age, or continue to act in such a condescending and hurtful manner towards me, I'll simply continue to ignore you. If you wish to disagree with me, that's fine. But if you continue to act this way, I'll simply avoid any conversations with you.
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Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Eh enough. You are not discussing anything with anyone. Plu is not even aware what's Rocks saying. None of you have a clue what is going on here and you turned it into something completely different with your politically correct bullshit. Get your heads out of your asses.
Insult to Rocks raised a valid point which I understood from the very beginning exactly as it was intended. He was condemning the skewed view on war which you yourself brought up when you started this topic. So in other words Insult to Rocks was siding with you. If you want to set politeness and political correctness aside, that is fine, I can certainly go with that. In that case, bottom line is you fucked up and you passed judgment on him, most likely due to your self-admitted hypersensitivity. That's a you problem and you need to work on it.
Quote from: "jumper"Neither of you have ever fought in a war (right?)... So that means that war is a specific subject that's beyond both of your life experiences....
:-k
I've survived violent combat although I was not an active combatant. Does that count? :)
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"And I am not the one who thinks a war without atrocity is possible.
Where did he say that?
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You had completely misunderstood what he wrote, and that's on you.
QuoteI understand that a war without torture, without any atrocity fought for good reasons on a morally high ground is NOT possible.
I will ask again, quote where he specifically said this. Stop obfuscating the issue.
What is it with you butt hurtees? Shoe's comments were plain and easy to understand and yet you want to hold her feet to the fire because, what? Someone gets butt hurt?
Insults, some lobbed in the general direction of its intended target, some hurled to a more specific location (privates, ouch!) A thread about the atrocities of war has turned into a microcosm of war itself. If only all wars were so comparatively painless, inexpensive, and child-friendly!
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Well they aren't, but you would think reading some of the drivel some imaginary political figure could just wave a magic wand and *poof* war becomes just another lame video game. :roll:
Quote from: "AllPurposeAtheist"What is it with you butt hurtees? Shoe's comments were plain and easy to understand and yet you want to hold her feet to the fire because, what? Someone gets butt hurt?
They were responses to strawmen, and I'm not the only one that picked up not only on that fact, but also how it's been said. Why do I take notice of that, you ask? Because it completely defeats the purpose of communication, does not facilitate any sort of discussion whatsoever, and betrays that the original intent was little more than an opportunity to blow steam in people's faces. Which is cool, but let's not pretend.
Either way, the death toll is a red herring to the overall legitimacy or lack thereof of the invasion and typically those that post the death toll, do so with the intent to protest, not excuse. Therefore the perceived "downplay" is not malicious, it is incompetence.
Can anyone point me to a news source that is posting a death toll with the specific intent of downplaying it?
There's no strawman about it. You and others find disagreement and want to be the 'top dog' in debate so turn Shoe's comments into something it's not as if there is some nefarious agenda and you have to be right at any cost even if it means you're full of shit. No strawman there, but when you're put in a spot you can always tout out the handy strawman nonsense.
Then it should be trivial to point out specifically where Insult said war without atrocity is possible. That's all I'm asking for.
Quote from: "AllPurposeAtheist"There's no strawman about it. You and others find disagreement and want to be the 'top dog' in debate so turn Shoe's comments into something it's not as if there is some nefarious agenda and you have to be right at any cost even if it means you're full of shit. No strawman there, but when you're put in a spot you can always tout out the handy strawman nonsense.
APA, I don't understand why there is a debate or dissagrement. All I said was what everyone else was saying, that war cannot and should not be glorified. I've tried to clarify this, but I'm still treated as if I said something particullarly wrong or offensive.
Your problem is that you are 16. Just do your best to age faster. Drugs, sex and hard booze will do the trick.