655,000 Iraqis died as a result of US invasion

[Kulapavana]

<TABLE><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top>Source: The Guardian (UK)</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD><TD vAlign=top>Published: October 11, 2006 Author: Sarah Boseley</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD><TD vAlign=top></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

<!-- -->The death toll among Iraqis as a result of the US-led invasion has now reached an estimated 655,000, a study in the Lancet medical journal reports today.

 

The figure for the number of deaths attributable to the conflict - which amounts to around 2.5% of the population - is at odds with figures cited by the US and UK governments and will cause a storm, but the Lancet says the work, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, has been examined and validated by four separate independent experts who all urged publication.

 

In October 2004, the same researchers published a study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war since the beginning of the March 2003 invasion, a figure that was hugely controversial. Their new study, they say, reaffirms the accuracy of their survey of two years ago and moves it on.

 

"Although such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century and should be of grave concern to everyone," write the authors, Gilbert Burnham and colleagues.

 

"At the conclusion of our 2004 study we urged that an independent body assess the excess mortality that we saw in Iraq. This has not happened. We continue to believe that an independent international body to monitor compliance with the Geneva conventions and other humanitarian standards in conflict is urgently needed. With reliable data, those voices that speak out for civilians trapped in conflict might be able to lessen the tragic human cost of future wars."

 

The epidemiological research was carried out on the ground by teams of doctors moving from house to house, questioning families and examining death certificates. Between May and July this year, they visited 1,849 households in 47 separated clusters across the length and breadth of Iraq. The doctors asked about deaths among members of the household in a period before the invasion, from January 2002 to March 2003, and about deaths since. In 92% of cases, they were shown death certificates confirming the cause.

 

A total of 629 deaths were reported, of which 547 - or 87% - occurred after the invasion. The mortality rate before the war was 5.5 per 1,000, but since the invasion, it has risen to 13.3 per 1,000 per year, they say. Between June 2005 and June 2006, the mortality rate hit a high of 19.8 per 1,000.

 

Thus they calculate that 654,965 Iraqis have died as a consequence of the invasion. It is an estimate and the mid-point of a range of numbers that could equally be correct in the context of their statistical analysis. But even the lowest number in the range - 392,979 - is higher that anyone else has suggested. Of the deaths, 31% were ascribed to the US-led forces. Most deaths were from gunshot wounds (56%), with a further 13% from car bomb injuries and 14% the result of other explosions.

 

"Since 2004, and especially recently," writes the Lancet editor, Richard Horton in a commentary, "independent observers have recognised that the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated dramatically." The new study, he continues, "corroborate the impression that Iraq is descending into bloodthirsty chaos".

 

Yet, he writes, "absolute despair would be the wrong response. Instead, the disaster that is the west's current strategy in Iraq must be used as a constructive call to the international community to reconfigure its foreign policy around human security rather than national security, around health and wellbeing in addition to the protection of territorial boundaries and economic stability.

 

"Health is now the most important foreign policy issue of our time. Health and wellbeing - their underpinning values, their diverse array of interventions and their goals of healing - offer several original dimensions for a renewed foreign policy that might at least be one positive legacy of our misadventure in Iraq."

[Kulapavana]

in 3 years US invasion killed at least twice as many people as Sadam killed during his entire 20 year reign. I wonder if those responsible for war will also be tried for their crimes.

[Guest guest]

That's beyond outrageous. How much has it cost the U.S. to kill these hundreds of thousands of Iraquis? 10's of billions of dollars? We could have had a free health care system set up with this money, as they do in England and Canada. The richest nation in the world has no health care for its citizens (except for those wealthy enough to buy it, or those fortunate enough to work for a rare employer who provides it.) That's beyond pathetic.

[Bhakta Don Muntean]

When peeling carrots - do you peel them away from you or - toward you? Do you whittle or carve the carrot's peelings away?? Which is best?

[Guest guest]

When peeling carrots - do you peel them away from you or - toward you? Do you whittle or carve the carrot's peelings away?? Which is best?****

 

If you want cooking lessons, you're in the wrong place, BDM.

[Sephiroth]

Have Hindus forget what they did to India when they came invading?

 

Furthermore, Saddam did horrible things to Sunnah Muslims, all in name of Religion while Syiahs WATCHED SUFFERING OF FELLOW MANKIND.

 

So DO NOT PITY THEM. They got what they deserve and MORE COMING.

[Guest guest]

Iraq never invaded India, Sephiroth. Read some history.

[hindweb]

US invasion is for the whole good of Middle east!

[Sephiroth]

 

Iraq never invaded India, Sephiroth. Read some history.

 

Muslims did. OR you do not care on what they did to Hindus in the past? To Hindus' history? Culture? Heritage?

 

Hindus loves to forget ... which is why Muslims and Christians WINNING.

[Sephiroth]

 

US invasion is for the whole good of Middle east!

 

No, it is Karma.

 

When you live as a predator - killing others and live of their remains like what Muslims did - there always will be other, bigger predators which live off killing you.

 

The craddle of civilization - Iraq, as they call it, actually flourished in 14th to 17th century because of wealth they have stolen from Asia regions (especially trade from South East Asia and loots from India) and the knowledge that they took from this people as well.

 

And as you may know, stolen "property" will NEVER stay in hands of the Theives.

[hindweb]

Sephiroth, great point! I never thought on those lines...

[Kulapavana]

 

So DO NOT PITY THEM. They got what they deserve and MORE COMING.

 

yes, we all get what we deserve - like demonic rulers, wars, genocides, even the Jewish Holocaust...

 

and do you know WHY we deserve all these things? because we are greedy, self-centered, barbaric, and above all: not caring for the sufferning of others, and not fighting the evil around us. yes, there is MORE COMING, for all evil doers and their supporters.

 

wet turd laughing at the dry turd being burned. you people are so predictable, and so much alike.

[Kulapavana]

<TABLE><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top>Source: Reuters</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD><TD vAlign=top>Published: October 13, 2006 Author: Eleanor Wason</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD><TD vAlign=top></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

<!-- more war crime charges against US soldiers--this time from our great ally -->OXFORD (Reuters) - One of Britain's most experienced journalists was unlawfully killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, a British inquest into his death ruled on Friday, prompting calls for the perpetrators to be tried for war crimes.

 

Veteran war correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, who worked for British television company ITN, was killed in March 2003 in southern Iraq as he reported from the front line during the first few days of the U.S.-led invasion.

 

"He was fired on by American soldiers as a minibus carried wounded people away," Coroner Andrew Walker said at the conclusion of the inquest, which U.S. soldiers declined to attend.

 

"I have no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire on the minibus," Walker added.

 

He said he intended to write to the Attorney General -- the government's top lawyer -- and the Director of Public Prosecutions in an effort to bring those responsible for Lloyd's death before a British court.

 

Louis Charalambous, the Lloyd family's lawyer, said those responsible for his death should be brought to trial for what he termed "a very serious war crime."

 

"It was a despicable, deliberate, vengeful act," he added.

[Sephiroth]

 

yes, we all get what we deserve - like demonic rulers, wars, genocides, even the Jewish Holocaust...

 

and do you know WHY we deserve all these things? because we are greedy, self-centered, barbaric, and above all: not caring for the sufferning of others, and not fighting the evil around us. yes, there is MORE COMING, for all evil doers and their supporters.

 

wet turd laughing at the dry turd being burned. you people are so predictable, and so much alike.

 

DO NOT EQUALIZE HINDUS, JEWS, BUDDHIST OR ANYONE ELSE WITH THEM.

 

They are PARASITES.

Do you know HOW Parasite lives? It attachs itself onto the body of its victim, slowly drains blood off the victims and lives by mimicking that their are vital parts of the victim. That is Parasite.

 

Muslims are parasite on this World.

[Bhakta Don Muntean]

 

yes, we all get what we deserve - like demonic rulers, wars, genocides, even the Jewish Holocaust...

[...] yes, there is MORE COMING, for all evil doers and their supporters.

 

[...]

We don't all get what we deserve - you know there is a first time - in terms of the perpetration of abuses.

 

Heck if we take your position then the Iraqis are getting what they deserve and the palestinians are getting what they deserve - right? Doesn't your logic go two directions?

 

So we see it again you think that the Jewish peoples collectively deserved the nazi persecutions and extermination - you are saying that.

 

Yes there are hopes in some bent freaks for "MORE" - as there are many lost souls out there making plans for another "Jewish Holocaust" and - there are many more out here making excuses for it!

[Guest guest]

It's the oldest trick in PR: If you want to generate publicity, generate a statistic. Statistics get attention. They lodge in people's minds. They take on the status of facts. And by the time somebody comes along to check your work -- well, it's too late. The stat leads the evening news. The correction? Page A13.

 

And so it is with the new study from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins claiming 655,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

 

Most Iraq experts estimate the civilian death toll in Iraq since 2003 as somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000, with the vast majority of these casualties inflicted by the terror tactics of the insurgents: car bombings, assassinations and so on.

 

The Bloomberg report implies that more than 90% of Iraq's casualties have gone -- not only unreported by the government -- but unnoticed.

 

How was this number generated?

 

The Bloomberg team hired Iraqi interviewers to visit 1,849 houses in Iraqi cities. They asked the householders to tell them the number of deaths in their families in the year before the overthrow of Saddam and then in the three years since. They compared the two numbers, arrived at a figure of 547 "excess" deaths, and extrapolated that number to all of Iraq to reach their 655,000 figure.

 

The technical term for the kind of work the Bloomberg team did is "cluster sampling." When conducted properly, it can produce useful information.

 

But the Bloomberg team has a record of doing their work improperly. In 2004, for example, they used the cluster method after the second battle of Fallujah. Their technique suggested that the town had suffered 200,000 civilian casualties -- which is remarkable, considering that the town had a population of 300,000 before the battle, of whom 70% to 90% fled before the battle began.

 

The Fallujah numbers were quietly discarded by the Bloomberg team. But that embarrassing mistake does not seem to have taught them caution in 2006. If anything, their past errors seem only to have encouraged them to become more reckless than ever.

 

The Bloomberg team stresses that in 92% of the cases where a family claimed a fatality, the family produced a death certificate. The Bloomberg team seems not to realize that this claim undercuts their work rather than supporting it.

 

The Bloomberg team suggests that Iraq is such a scene of chaos and violence that 600,000-plus people (eight times the number killed at Hiroshima!) could die without anybody noticing. And yet at the same time they assume that Iraq is so well-organized that 92% of that vast number of unnoticed fatalities were issued a death certificate by an Iraqi morgue.

 

On the one hand: Rwanda-like slaughter. On the other: the paperwork all fastidiously completed. Does that make sense?

 

The Bloomberg survey was not carried out by American poll takers. They hired local Iraqis. Who were these people? How did they do their work? Who knows? But we do know that many Iraqis who work for foreign news organizations or non-governmental organizations have ideological or sectarian agendas. Many others simply find it impossible to do accurate work in the dangerous conditions of Iraq.

 

It's not hard then to imagine that the survey takers simplified their job by paying a visit to the local sheik or imam and telling him: "We want to talk to people in the neighbourhood with death certificates for the loss of a family member." The sheik or imam might well have been able to assemble a dozen local families with death certificates. But that would not be a sample of the local population with a death certificate. It would be the totality of the local population with a death certificate. You can't extrapolate from it; you have already counted it all.

 

But never mind. Suppose it is all true. What would it prove?

 

The media who have reported on the Bloomberg team's report echo that team's argument that the civilian deaths in Iraq should lie on the conscience of the United States and its coalition partners. But it is the coalition fighting forces that are defending and protecting the Iraqi civilian population. It is the Baathists and Islamists who detonate bombs, slit throats and massacre worshippers at religious shrines.

 

The bloodshed in Iraq is the work of those who hope to profit from a return to dictatorship, not the work of those who have liberated Iraq from dictatorship. Even if true, the Bloomberg report would vindicate the American war effort and shame the insurgency. And it is to the shame of the international media that, in their eagerness to disparage the United States, they would so credulously broadcast a report that seeks to absolve the real murderers of the innocents of Iraq of the guilt of their crimes.

[Guest guest]

<strong>War on Civilians</strong>

 

Conversation with disciples, April 4, 1975, Mayapur

 

Prabhupada: Even some hundreds of years, it was so nice. Even there was war, they would not attack the farmers. Rather, they would ask, "Where the other party has gone?" So they will say: "Oh, we have seen some soldiers going this way." That's all. They were not affected. That was the principle. Farmers were not attacked, just like at the present moment, the law is the civilians are not attacked. The military target is attacked. That is the law. But they do all nonsense. Even at the present moment civilians are not attacked. Just like Kurukshetra Battle. It was taken far away from the civilian inhabitation.

 

Hansadutta: Some field.

 

Prabhupada: Yes. That is civilization. "Why these innocent civilians should be killed? Let us fight, military to military. That's all." That is honest fighting. We have to settle some things by fighting. So fighting may be, I mean to say, limited within the fighters, not with the civilians.

 

Ramesvara: In modern warfare it's...

 

Prabhupada: Why not? Yes. But they, they are so rascals, they throw bomb anywhere.

 

Tamala Krsna: Especially atom bomb.

 

Prabhupada: But one thing is that because civilians are also responsible for declaring war, because the parliament is the representation of the people...

 

Pusta Krsna: Karma.

 

Prabhupada: Therefore, now the war is between people to people, nation to nation. They support with men and money. So therefore they are also killed by nature's law.

 

<strong>No End in Sight</strong>

 

Lecture on Bhagavad-gita 2.26, November 30, 1972, Hyderabad

 

The warfare of the kshatriyas [military] and the warfare at the present moment of the whimsical politicians, it is, they are different. Formerly it was not democracy. Only the kshatriyas would fight. Especially the king, the royal order, they should come forward. Not that the politicians are sitting very comfortably at home, and poor people, they are given to fight in front of the enemy. No. That was not the system. The king must come forward. The other side, the king also come. And the opposite side, they also, he also should come forward and fight. It was duty. And as soon as the king is killed by the other party, then the other party becomes victorious. There was no more fighting. It is not the so-called king and president is sitting very comfortably and the poor soldiers, they are fighting unlimitedly, and the war is going on for many years. Just like last war we saw at least eight years it continued. Eight years, six years, no. The Battle of Kurukshetra, it was finished within eighteen days. There is no use of prolonging the war unnecessarily. If the chief man is killed, then war is finished.

[Bhakta Don Muntean]

 

When peeling carrots - do you peel them away from you or - toward you? Do you whittle or carve the carrot's peelings away?? Which is best?****

 

If you want cooking lessons, you're in the wrong place, BDM.

 

You missed the point?

[tensriram]

 

US invasion is for the whole good of Middle east!

 

 

Brainwashed!!!

[tensriram]

 

DO NOT EQUALIZE HINDUS, JEWS, BUDDHIST OR ANYONE ELSE WITH THEM.

 

They are PARASITES.

Do you know HOW Parasite lives? It attachs itself onto the body of its victim, slowly drains blood off the victims and lives by mimicking that their are vital parts of the victim. That is Parasite.

 

Muslims are parasite on this World.

 

The Parasite pokes it's nose in others affairs;

plunges its's head in the sand , afraid of all and sundry

calls anyone it pleases a else a parasite.

Guess who is the real parasite!!

[tensriram]

Brainwashed , once again!

Who knows the truth!

The only thing we need to do is not to pass judgements but pray for the departed one's on all sides ; and also acknowledge that time and nature will pass judgment on the accuser and the accused.

 

 

 

 

 

It's the oldest trick in PR: If you want to generate publicity, generate a statistic. Statistics get attention. They lodge in people's minds. They take on the status of facts. And by the time somebody comes along to check your work -- well, it's too late. The stat leads the evening news. The correction? Page A13.

 

And so it is with the new study from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins claiming 655,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

 

Most Iraq experts estimate the civilian death toll in Iraq since 2003 as somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000, with the vast majority of these casualties inflicted by the terror tactics of the insurgents: car bombings, assassinations and so on.

 

The Bloomberg report implies that more than 90% of Iraq's casualties have gone -- not only unreported by the government -- but unnoticed.

 

How was this number generated?

 

The Bloomberg team hired Iraqi interviewers to visit 1,849 houses in Iraqi cities. They asked the householders to tell them the number of deaths in their families in the year before the overthrow of Saddam and then in the three years since. They compared the two numbers, arrived at a figure of 547 "excess" deaths, and extrapolated that number to all of Iraq to reach their 655,000 figure.

 

The technical term for the kind of work the Bloomberg team did is "cluster sampling." When conducted properly, it can produce useful information.

 

But the Bloomberg team has a record of doing their work improperly. In 2004, for example, they used the cluster method after the second battle of Fallujah. Their technique suggested that the town had suffered 200,000 civilian casualties -- which is remarkable, considering that the town had a population of 300,000 before the battle, of whom 70% to 90% fled before the battle began.

 

The Fallujah numbers were quietly discarded by the Bloomberg team. But that embarrassing mistake does not seem to have taught them caution in 2006. If anything, their past errors seem only to have encouraged them to become more reckless than ever.

 

The Bloomberg team stresses that in 92% of the cases where a family claimed a fatality, the family produced a death certificate. The Bloomberg team seems not to realize that this claim undercuts their work rather than supporting it.

 

The Bloomberg team suggests that Iraq is such a scene of chaos and violence that 600,000-plus people (eight times the number killed at Hiroshima!) could die without anybody noticing. And yet at the same time they assume that Iraq is so well-organized that 92% of that vast number of unnoticed fatalities were issued a death certificate by an Iraqi morgue.

 

On the one hand: Rwanda-like slaughter. On the other: the paperwork all fastidiously completed. Does that make sense?

 

The Bloomberg survey was not carried out by American poll takers. They hired local Iraqis. Who were these people? How did they do their work? Who knows? But we do know that many Iraqis who work for foreign news organizations or non-governmental organizations have ideological or sectarian agendas. Many others simply find it impossible to do accurate work in the dangerous conditions of Iraq.

 

It's not hard then to imagine that the survey takers simplified their job by paying a visit to the local sheik or imam and telling him: "We want to talk to people in the neighbourhood with death certificates for the loss of a family member." The sheik or imam might well have been able to assemble a dozen local families with death certificates. But that would not be a sample of the local population with a death certificate. It would be the totality of the local population with a death certificate. You can't extrapolate from it; you have already counted it all.

 

But never mind. Suppose it is all true. What would it prove?

 

The media who have reported on the Bloomberg team's report echo that team's argument that the civilian deaths in Iraq should lie on the conscience of the United States and its coalition partners. But it is the coalition fighting forces that are defending and protecting the Iraqi civilian population. It is the Baathists and Islamists who detonate bombs, slit throats and massacre worshippers at religious shrines.

 

The bloodshed in Iraq is the work of those who hope to profit from a return to dictatorship, not the work of those who have liberated Iraq from dictatorship. Even if true, the Bloomberg report would vindicate the American war effort and shame the insurgency. And it is to the shame of the international media that, in their eagerness to disparage the United States, they would so credulously broadcast a report that seeks to absolve the real murderers of the innocents of Iraq of the guilt of their crimes.

[Sephiroth]

 

The Parasite pokes it's nose in others affairs;

plunges its's head in the sand , afraid of all and sundry

calls anyone it pleases a else a parasite.

Guess who is the real parasite!!

 

Those who support Adharmic people ARE Adharmic themselves. Thank you.

[Guest guest]

Satisfies the selfishness of of the US - Good for none

 

 

 

US invasion is for the whole good of Middle east!

[Kulapavana]

<TABLE><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top>Source: GuardianUK</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD><TD vAlign=top>Published: October 17, 2006 Author: George Monbiot</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD><TD vAlign=top></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

<!-- -->The courts are starting to accept that the war against Iraq is a crime

 

In Britain and Ireland, protesters who have deliberately damaged military equipment are walking from the dock

 

George Monbiot

Tuesday October 17, 2006

The Guardian

 

 

In the early hours, two days before the attack on Iraq began, two men in their 30s, Phil Pritchard and Toby Olditch, cut through the fence surrounding the air base at Fairford in Gloucestershire and made their way towards the B52 bombers which were stationed there. The planes belonged to the US air force. The trespassers were caught by guards and found to be carrying tools and paint. They confessed that they were seeking to disable the planes, in order to prevent war crimes from being committed. This year they were tried on charges of conspiracy to commit criminal damage, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Last week, after long deliberations, the jury failed to reach a verdict.

 

The same thing happened a month ago. Two other activists, Margaret Jones and Paul Milling, had entered the same RAF base and smashed up more than 20 of the vehicles used to load bombs on to the B52s. The charges were the same, and again the jury failed to agree. In both cases the defendants claimed to be putting the state on trial. If I were in government, I would be starting to feel uneasy.

The defendants had tried to argue in court that the entire war against Iraq was a crime of aggression. But in March this year the law lords ruled that they could not use this defence: while aggression by the state is a crime under international law, it is not a crime under domestic law. But they were allowed to show that they were seeking to prevent specific war crimes from being committed - principally, the release by the B52s of cluster bombs and munitions tipped with depleted uranium.

 

They cited section 5 of the 1971 Criminal Damage Act, which provides lawful excuse for damaging property if that action prevents property belonging to other people from being damaged, and section 3 of the 1967 Criminal Law Act, which states that "a person may use such force as is reasonable in the prevention of a crime". In summing up, the judge told the jurors that using weapons "with an adverse effect on civilian populations which is disproportionate to the need to achieve the military objective" is a war crime. The defendants are likely to be tried again next year.

 

While these non-verdicts are as far as the defence of lawful excuse for impeding the Iraq war has progressed in the UK, in Ireland and Germany the courts have made decisions - scarcely reported over here - whose implications are momentous. Last year, five peace campaigners were acquitted after using an axe and hammers to cause $2.5m worth of damage to a plane belonging to the US navy. When they attacked it, in February 2003, it had been refuelling at Shannon airport on its way to Kuwait, where it would deliver supplies to be used in the impending war. The jury decided that the five saboteurs were acting lawfully.

 

This summer, the German federal administrative court threw out the charge of insubordination against a major in the German army. He had refused to obey an order which, he believed, would implicate him in the invasion of Iraq. The judges determined that the UN charter permits a state to go to war in only two circumstances: in self-defence, and when it has been authorised to do so by the UN security council. The states attacking Iraq, they ruled, had no such licence. Resolution 1441, which was used by the British and US governments to justify the invasion, contained no authorisation. The war could be considered an act of aggression.

[Guest guest]

Brainwashed , once again!

Who knows the truth!

The only thing we need to do is not to pass judgements but pray for the departed one's on all sides ; and also acknowledge that time and nature will pass judgment on the accuser and the accused.*****

 

This coming from a guy living in Hyderbad, which is being taken over by muslims.LOL.