Tom Betz wrote:
> Please killfile me if you are offended by my .sig.
No thank you; rebuttal is better.
> George Bush's War of Choice on Iraq is a totally unnecessary war.
> Every life lost, every limb lost, every disfigurement, every
> disability caused there is more blood on George W. Bush's hands,
> and on the hands of everyone who voted for George W. Bush.
http://www.creators.com/opinion_show...olumnsName=miv
....
According to Human Rights Watch, Hussein killed several hundred thousand
of his fellow citizens. The massacre of the Kurdish Barzani tribe in
1983 killed at least 8,000; the infamous gas attack on the Kurdish
village of Halabja killed 5,000 in 1988; and seized documents from Iraqi
security organizations show 182,000 were murdered during the Anfal
ethnic cleansing campaign against Kurds, also in 1988.
In 1991, following the first Gulf War, both the Kurds and the Shiites
rebelled. The allied forces did not intervene, and Saddam brutally
suppressed both uprisings and drained the southern marshes that had been
home to a local population for more than 5,000 years.
Saddam's regime left 271 mass graves, with more still being discovered.
That figure alone was the source for my original mistaken estimate of
20,000. Saddam's widespread use of systematic torture, including rape,
has been verified by the U.N. Committee on Human Rights and other human
rights groups over the years.
There are wildly varying estimates of the number of civilians,
especially babies and young children, who died as a result of the
sanctions that followed the Gulf War. While it is true that the
ill-advised sanctions were put in place by the United Nations, I do not
see that that lessens Hussein's moral culpability, whatever blame
attaches to the sanctions themselves -- particularly since Saddam
promptly corrupted the Oil for Food Program put in place to mitigate the
effects of the sanctions, and used the proceeds to build more palaces, etc.
There have been estimates as high as 1 million civilians killed by
Saddam, though most agree on the 300,000 to 400,000 range, making my
comparison to 20,000 civilian dead in this war pathetically wrong.