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Zman
07-04-2007, 05:21 PM
:sl:/Peace To All

Putting Terrorism In Perspective

Courtesy Of: The Winston-Salem Journal
By Gwynne Dyer
JOURNAL COLUMNIST
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
JournalNow

As terrorists go, this was "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight." One of the would-be London bombers on June 29 drove erratically down Haymarket Street in central London - presumably affected by the fumes from the gas cylinders and gasoline containers that were the heart of his makeshift car-bomb - before crashing into a garbage bin, getting out and running away. Another parked his explosives-packed car illegally, so it was towed away. The third attack was at Glasgow International Airport on the following day, but nobody was hurt except one of the attackers, who set himself on fire.

More competent terrorists might have killed dozens of people, of course, but it's safe to say that this incident will be taken more seriously in the United States than it is in Britain itself or anywhere else in Europe. An occasional terrorist attack is one of the costs of doing business in the modern world. You just have to bring a sense of proportion to the problem, and in general people in Europe do.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued the obligatory statement that Britain faces "a serious and continuous threat" and that the public "need to be alert" at all times, but there were none of the efforts to pump up the threat, the declarations that civilization itself was under attack, that were standard issue when Tony Blair was running the show.
Blair has gone off to bring the blessings of peace to the Middle East, and the British government is no longer compelled to seize on every passing event as evidence that it was right to invade Iraq.

Blair can't do that much harm in the Middle East, as there's no hope of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement in the foreseeable future anyway. The Russians nearly vetoed Blair's appointment, and the British Foreign Office is said to be in an "institutional sulk," but it doesn't really matter much. Neither do the car-bombs that didn't explode in London and Glasgow.

Most major European countries had already been through some sort of terrorist crisis well before the current fashion for "Islamist" terrorism: the IRA in Britain, the OAS in France, ETA in Spain, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades and their neo-fascist counterparts in Italy.

Most European cities have also been heavily bombed in a real war within living memory, which definitely puts terrorist attacks into a less impressive category. So most Europeans, while they dislike terrorist attacks, do not obsess about them.

They know that they are likelier to win the lottery than to be hurt by terrorists.


Russians are also pretty cool about the occasional terrorist attacks linked to the war in Chechnya, and Indians are positively heroic in their refusal (most of the time) to be panicked by terrorist attacks that have taken more lives there than all the attacks in the West since terrorist techniques first became widespread in the 1960s.

In almost all of these countries, despite the efforts of some governments to convince the population that terrorism is an existential threat of enormous size, the vast majority of the people don't believe it.


Whereas in the United States, most people do believe it. A majority of Americans have finally figured out that the invasion of Iraq really had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but they certainly have not understood that terrorism itself is only a minor threat.
"We have a threat out there like we've never faced before," said actor, former senator and potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson last month - on Fox television, admittedly, but they wouldn't have called him a nutcase or laughed in his face on the other networks either.

"I don't think the (American people) realize that this has been something that's been going on for a few hundred years, and our enemies have another 100-year plan," Thompson continued.

"Whether it's Madrid, whether it's London, whether it's places that most people have never heard of, they're methodically going around trying to undermine our allies and attack people in conventional ways, while they try to develop non-conventional ways, and get their hands on a nuclear capability, and ultimately to see a mushroom cloud over an American city."

There has been only one major terrorist attack in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and that one, on Sept. 11, is now almost six years in the past.

So how have Americans been convinced that their duty and their destiny in the 21st century is to lead the world in a titanic, globe-spanning "long war" against terrorism?

Inexperience is one reason:
American cities have never been bombed in war, so Americans have no standard of comparison that would shrink terrorism to its true importance in the scale of threats that face any modern society.

But the other is relentless official propaganda:
The Bush administration has built its whole brand around the "war on terror" since 2001, so the threat must continue to be seen as huge and universal.
-----------
As ridiculous as it sounds to outsiders, Americans are regularly told that their survival as a free society depends on beating the "terrorists." They should treat those who say such things as fools or deliberate liars, but they don't.

So the manipulators of public opinion in the White House and the more compliant sectors of the U.S. media will give bigger play to the British bombings-that-weren't than Britain's own government and media have, and they will get away with it.
• Gwynne Dyer, an independent journalist, writes from London. He can be reached at gwynnedyer@gmail.com.

Viad:
http://freethoughtmanifesto.blogspot...rspective.html
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Zman
07-05-2007, 03:58 PM
:sl:/Peace To All

In All The Excitement, Another Explosion Was Neglected

By Mark Steel
Published: 04 July 2007
Courtesy Of The Independent

...With all the excitement, though, everyone appears to have missed yet another explosion.

It took place at the end of last week, when the Washington Post reported a "NATO and US-led assault" on the Afghan village of Hyderabad.

Wali Khan, the member of the US-backed parliament for the area, was quoted as saying,

"More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from here. The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government."

...A US army spokesman said the civilian deaths proved "insurgents are continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields."

So there's another lesson for Al Qa'ida.

They could claim the Tiger Tiger nightclub was actually a military airfield, with a runway in the cloakroom, and civilian deaths would only have shown the British were using people who dance as human shields.

The reasons why someone erratically drives a car bomb to a nightclub or into an airport must be complex, but there's no doubt it's far more likely if you come from a region that's been mercilessly bombed by the government of the country you decide to bomb in return.

That was certainly the view of the intelligence report seen by Blair before the occupation of Iraq.

Maybe a combination of rage and helplessness leads some people to feel that at least blowing something up is acting rather than doing nothing, and they then seek justification for their decision by appealing to the far reaches of their religion.

Because there are obsessive people in all religions, but without an earthly motive, they don't usually resort to blowing up civilians to please their God...

Source:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/col...cle2733231.ece
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Zman
07-05-2007, 04:46 PM
:sl:/Peace To All

Al Qaeda Wrapped In A Terror Mystery

Editorial By Gulf News
7/5/2007
Courtesy Of: iViews

Within ten days, terrorists struck in South Lebanon where six members of the Spanish peacekeeping force were killed, in Glasgow where an attempt was made to car bomb the city's airport, and on Monday in Yemen where seven Spanish tourists were killed by a suicide bomber.

We are being told that all these incidents "carry the fingerprints" of Al Qaida.

This is of course in addition to the ongoing carnage attributed to Al Qaida in Iraq.

There's no doubt that Al Qaida is a vicious terrorist group that doesn't value human life. It is also true that its doctrine is based on destabilizing political and social regimes in various countries around the world.

However, there are questions that really bother analysts and which must be answered by security organizations:

Is Al Qaida really that huge network which is able to carry out simultaneous operations in different parts of the world?

Is Al Qaida getting bigger and stronger, despite the fierce five-year-old war on terror?

How could Al Qaida penetrate layer after layer of security checks to carry out such atrocious attacks?

How can its alleged members travel so easily and get help - sometimes from official bodies - despite the repeated warning of imminent attacks in many countries?

And finally, what happened to the international campaign to hunt its masterminds?

Can anybody please answer these questions?

Source:
http://www.iviews.com/Articles/artic...ef=GN0707-3309
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islamirama
07-05-2007, 05:06 PM
PUT TERRORISM IN PERSPECTIVE





Terrorism is the "greatest threat of the 21st century". But only according to the US, the UK, and Israel.

In the corporate mass media news, we hear the word "terrorism" many times almost every day, but what about the real problems in the world today?

Next time you leave your house, beware, because crossing the road is many hundreds of thousands of times more of a threat to your life than terrorism.


THE TRUTH ABOUT TERRORISM

0: People killed in the USA by terrorism/WMD in 2006.
(Thousands killed by the US and its allies in foreign countries.)

0: People killed in the UK by terrorism/WMD in 2006.

0: People killed in the USA by terrorism/WMD in 2005.

52: killed in the UK by terrorism/WMD in 2005 (all on "7/7").

0: People in the USA killed by terrorism/WMD in 2004.

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2004.

0: People in the USA killed by terrorism/WMD in 2003.

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2003.

0: People in the USA killed by terrorism/WMD in 2002.

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2002.

2,752: in USA killed by terrorism in 2001 (all on "9/11").

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2001.

0: People in the USA killed by terrorism/WMD in 2000.

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2000.


WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

1.2 MILLION: People in killed in road accidents EVERY YEAR.

430,000: Americans killed by cigarettes EVERY YEAR. (The equivalent of 9/11 repeated every two days forever.) Bush's response to a real threat? His election promise to stop the Justice Department's law suit against the tobacco industry.

400,000: Americans die each year from obesity (while much greater numbers around the world starve to death).

11,000: the people killed in America every year by guns, a human tragedy equivalent to a new 9/11 every 3 months.

8,437: Civilians killed by US/UK attacks in Iraq in 2003.

3,800: Civilians killed by US/UK attacks in Afghanistan by 2002.

135,000: Deaths from cancer in UK alone EVERY YEAR

3 MILLION: Killed by HIV/AIDS in 2003.

780,000,000: People starving to death RIGHT NOW.

1.2 BILLION: People "living" on less than $1 a day.

513,000,000: Number of people without access to safe drinking water.

2,500: Palestinian civillians killed "by accident" in Palestine by the Israeli army - and that's just since September 2000.

14,000: Palestinian people whose homes have been demolished by Israeli bulldozers - and that's just since October 2000. Families who do not escape in time are crushed to death - often at night in their beds.


OTHER FACTS

* Global warming has already killed more people than terrorism, "based on the number of fatalities that have already occurred".
The Independent (UK), "Scientist 'gagged' by No 10 after warning of global warming threat", front-page, 8 March 2004.
[ http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/env...p?story=499013 ]


THE REAL TERRORISTS

Nobody has benefitted more from terrorism than the US, the UK, and Israel. They use terrorism as an excuse to change the law, giving more power to the authorities and withdrawing freedoms from the people. They use terrorism as an excuse to attack and conquer foreign lands. They exploit our fear to win support.

If terrorism and WMD are such a threat, what are the causes? Nobody provides more money to terrorist groups and rogue states than the US and the UK. Nobody has or sells more weapons than the US and UK.

Can you see what is happening here? Or are you still afraid of the boogey-man?

http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0472
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Keltoi
07-05-2007, 05:22 PM
Perspective is one thing, but when large amounts of people are killed by a foreign entity you do not compare it to traffic deaths. Should we only take terrorism seriously when 15,000 people a year are killed as a result of it? Granted, my chances of being killed in a terrorist attack, either foreign or domestic, is very low. However, after what I saw on 9-11, as everyone saw, these people must be stopped, by any means necessary. It is government's job to secure peace and stability for their citizens, especially from outside enemies.
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islamirama
07-05-2007, 05:33 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Keltoi
Perspective is one thing, but when large amounts of people are killed by a foreign entity you do not compare it to traffic deaths. Should we only take terrorism seriously when 15,000 people a year are killed as a result of it? Granted, my chances of being killed in a terrorist attack, either foreign or domestic, is very low.

It is government's job to secure peace and stability for their citizens, especially from outside enemies.
There is no excuse for terrorism. It must be stopped, by any means necessary!

what do you think these gov'ts should do against terrorist attacks, "especially from outside enemies"....

8,437: Civilians killed by US/UK attacks in Iraq in 2003.

3,800: Civilians killed by US/UK attacks in Afghanistan by 2002.

2,500: Palestinian civillians killed "by accident" in Palestine by the Israeli army - and that's just since September 2000.

14,000: Palestinian people whose homes have been demolished by Israeli bulldozers - and that's just since October 2000. Families who do not escape in time are crushed to death - often at night in their beds.
format_quote Originally Posted by Keltoi
However, after what I saw on 9-11, as everyone saw, these people must be stopped, by any means necessary.
yea, but what have you done against them?

Nobody has benefitted more from terrorism than the US, the UK, and Israel. They use terrorism as an excuse to change the law, giving more power to the authorities and withdrawing freedoms from the people. They use terrorism as an excuse to attack and conquer foreign lands. They exploit our fear to win support.
Australia admits Iraq war about oil
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wilberhum
07-05-2007, 05:46 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Keltoi
Perspective is one thing, but when large amounts of people are killed by a foreign entity you do not compare it to traffic deaths. Should we only take terrorism seriously when 15,000 people a year are killed as a result of it? Granted, my chances of being killed in a terrorist attack, either foreign or domestic, is very low. However, after what I saw on 9-11, as everyone saw, these people must be stopped, by any means necessary. It is government's job to secure peace and stability for their citizens, especially from outside enemies.
I guess we should never do anythiing about any evil, that is in less it is the evil that costs the most deaths. :skeleton:
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MTAFFI
07-05-2007, 07:52 PM
I have to say this is one of the stupidest threads I think I have read... Comparing traffic accidents, cigarette deaths, and obesity to an attack on our country, what a bunch of garbage. Say whatever you want people, it may not be likely that you get murdered in a terrorist attack, but you know what, those 2500 families that lost loved one on 9/11 realize that whether it be likely or not, it isnt something to be taken lightly. You are talking about an act of war, not your time to die, it is someone else playing God and taking other peoples lives.
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islamirama
07-05-2007, 08:35 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by MTAFFI
I have to say this is one of the stupidest threads I think I have read... Comparing traffic accidents, cigarette deaths, and obesity to an attack on our country, what a bunch of garbage. Say whatever you want people, it may not be likely that you get murdered in a terrorist attack, but you know what, those 2500 families that lost loved one on 9/11 realize that whether it be likely or not, it isnt something to be taken lightly. You are talking about an act of war, not your time to die, it is someone else playing God and taking other peoples lives.

boo hoo, whats 2500 compared to 775,000 in iraq alone!

don't give me that crap you bunch of terrorists+o(
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wilberhum
07-05-2007, 08:37 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by islamirama
boo hoo, whats 2500 compared to 775,000 in iraq alone!

don't give me that crap you bunch of terrorists+o(
you bunch of terrorists? :skeleton:
Wouldn't that include you? :rollseyes
Twice maybe? :-[
Reply

islamirama
07-05-2007, 09:04 PM
Putting Terrorism in Perspective

VANAIK Achin
9 September 2004


Paper presented at the fifth Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF), “People’s Action for Human Security”, which took place in Hanoi (Vietnam) from 6th to 9th September 2004. This contribution was given in Conference Cluster 1: “Peace and Security”, Workshop 2: “Terrorism, Anti-Terrorism and People’s Responses”.


1. Terrorism is connected to two dominant notions - terror/intimidation and violence. Political terrorism is terrorism that is politically driven, i.e. for political ends or purposes. Depending on how one understands these two notions of terror/intimidation and violence there can be broader or narrower conceptions of terrorism. It is generally useful to distinguish between terrorist regimes and terrorist acts and campaigns (regular, repeated or frequents acts as part of an overall tactic or strategy of combat).

The former involves the institutionalisation of terror/intimidation and would therefore pertain to deeply undemocratic regimes
, while the latter is often carried out by democratic regimes, usually as a part of their foreign policy behaviour. I am going to be talking about the latter not the former, or more precisely about international political terrorist acts and campaigns.


2. The agents of terrorist acts/campaigns can be the individual, the group or larger collectivities like state apparatuses or agencies. The terrorism of states is different in many key respects from that of individuals or combat groups, i.e., those agents that are non-state actors. When talking of state terrorism this can be state sponsored or state directed. Historically, state terrorism came first and then later there emerged the terrorism of non-state actors. When carried out by the latter it is essentially ‘propaganda by the deed’, i.e., publicity is its lifeblood. These acts are meant to be publicly conducted, and responsibility for it is usually publicly acknowledged. It is carried out to send messages in two directions - against the enemy and its support bases, but also to the home population whose morale is thereby supposed to be raised. State terrorism is by contrast usually (though not always) uni-directional aimed at sending a message of futility in the struggle by the enemy opposed to the state in question. If the first is the terrorism of the weak, the second is the terrorism of the strong. States usually do everything they can to avoid their terrorist acts from becoming public knowledge since this would often be damaging politically to them.


Finally, the scale of state terrorism is far greater than that of non-state terrorism. The main reason for this is not because the means available to states are that much greater than those available to non-state actors (which they certainly are) but above all because the ends to which the terrorism of the state is harnessed are so much more grandiose - protecting the ‘national interest’, defending the free world, defeating the Communist threat, fighting against capitalist imperialism, etc. - that the scale of such acts is not only much greater but also more capable of being justified or not seen as terrorism at all. Al Qaeda, ironically, confirms this point since the aim of Sept. 11- a general message to the US Satan rather than fan act with a more specific purpose, e.g., release of some prisoners - is what made it so different from other non-state terrorist attacks in the past. The biggest danger that confronts us today and tomorrow is not non-state terrorism but the capacities and frequencies with which states carry out terrorist acts and campaigns!


3. Terrorism, then, is a universal problem demanding not a selective but a universal response - morally, emotionally and politically. Morally there can be no double standards. You cannot condemn the terrorism of Al Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001 and then remain silent about the terrorism unleashed by the US government on Afghanistan and Iraq, or condemn suicide bombings by Palestinians and not the brutalities of the Israeli government.


In Afghanistan the US used means that they knew were going to kill large numbers of civilians and nevertheless went ahead claiming that this was not terrorism where there is an intent to kill civilians.

However, the philosophical gap between intentionally and knowingly killing civilians is not so great as to allow such hypocrisy to get by, especially when the number of Afghan civilians killed were more than three times the number of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001 in the US. Indeed, double standards means the stronger party gets away with their terrorism while the weaker side is condemned and attacked which is politically disastrous because it only reinforces and widens the anger of the aggrieved side and its actual and potential support base, that the only way to hit back at those who get away with their terrorism, in the absence of international and impartial mechanisms of just punishment for all agents of terrorism, is to continue terrorist behaviour against those who otherwise are unpunished. Emotionally, a universalist response to acts of terrorism is not “never again to my people” but must be “never again to any people”.


Precisely because the response of too many Americans and Israelis is the first and not the second, their governments can hope to carry out the most blatant atrocities with confidence about getting substantial domestic support. Politically, it must be recognized that the only effective way to tackle and eventually eradicate the problem of political terrorism is precisely to recognize and tackle the political context which gives rise to such actions. There can only be a political, not a military or ‘deterrent’ solution to terrorism. Terrorism is not a pathology and its perpetrators are not pathological. Similarly, terrorism is not a specific or cultural phenomenon but a universal and political phenomenon. The tendency today in many circles to see terrorism as a special characteristic of Islam or Muslims or the Muslim world is absurd and obscene, and deeply counter-productive.


4. Evaluating the danger of terrorism today, our greatest problem is the shield that is being provided by the US-led “war on global terrorism”.


It provides the disguise, the great ideological banner, behind which the US is pursuing its Empire-building project. Indeed, the US government saw Sept. 11 as an opportunity for it to push forward much more aggressively and unilaterally this imperial project. Its immediate response within 24 hours to that attack was to declare that act, not as an international crime against humanity whereby all efforts must be made to capture and punish the criminals responsible. Instead, it declared it as a first salvo in a war against it, which therefore had to be countered by a “war against global terrorism”. The two words war and global were not accidental or incidental. In a war you are entitled to act militarily at any time as long as the war is on. You do not have to wait for an attack on yourself to retaliate. Since it is global the US can attack anywhere it decides. It is the US of course that decides who the enemy is, and since no distinction is to be made against the actual terrorist perpetrators and the host country, countries themselves can be directly attacked regardless of international law.


In effect, the US gave itself a carte blanche to attack anyone it decides is guilty, to do so whenever it wants, wherever it wants, for how long it wants, and with whatever means it decides. Note, the US declared its “war on global terrorism” to be a just war project, not simply or merely its war on Afghanistan which being a part of this, automatically becomes a just war. It was left to other pro-American intellectuals to do special pleading for justifying the assault on Afghanistan when the government itself was justifying a much larger global project! A better ideological banner behind which to disguise its imperial project it would be difficult to find, particularly since it feeds into the fear of its domestic population and thus serves to mobilize the American public most effectively behind it. Of course, in the nineties there have emerged five distinct ideological banners to provide cover for US imperial behaviour - ‘humanitarian intervention’, ‘weapons of mass destruction’, ‘war on global terrorism’, ‘regime change’, ‘failed states’.


5. How do we move towards resolution of this problem of international terrorism? There are no surprises here, nor any shortcuts. We can only hope to resolve this problem or at least greatly diminish its significance and impact in the longer run if we


a) confront our biggest and most general problem conducive to perpetuating terrorism in its most widespread, deepest and dangerous form - the US Empire project which must be defeated.


b) We must recognize and address the specific political contexts in which terrorism occurs, whether by states or non-state actors, whether in Kashmir or Israel-Palestine, by searching for politically just solutions in these cases.

c) Finally, we have to work for effective international laws and institutions with the powers to punish all wrongdoers, no matter how powerful, and to broaden our national laws (a la the Pinochet case) to weaken prospects of successful refuge for leaders/people most responsible for such criminal acts and campaigns.



http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article3056
------------------



VANAIK Achin
* Political commentator and former journalist, Achin Vanaik is currently Visiting Lecturer at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He co-founded the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND), and South Asians Against Nukes. Some of his books:” New Nukes: India, Pakistan, and Global Disarmament” (2000); “South Asia on a Short Fuse (Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament” (2001); “Communalism Contested: Religion, Modernity and Secularization (2004).
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Cognescenti
07-05-2007, 11:27 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by islamirama
boo hoo, whats 2500 compared to 775,000 in iraq alone!
Wasn't the imaginary figure 650,000 just last week? I guess I missed the last 125,000 on the nightly news. If you are going to invent figures, go long, think 1,000,000!
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wilberhum
07-05-2007, 11:29 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Cognescenti
Wasn't the imaginary figure 650,000 just last week? I guess I missed the last 125,000 on the nightly news. If you are going to invent figures, go long, think 1,000,000!
You of all people should know that 93.7% of all stats are made up on the spot. :D
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Cognescenti
07-06-2007, 12:13 AM
This line of argument has been used (correctly) to help people order the risk in their lives for accidental or natural causes of loss of life.

A good example are shark attacks, which are realtively uncommon compared to traffic deaths.

It appears a clever argument, but it is, in fact, painfully stupid.


1) The same argument does not apply to an act of war, especially when the opposing party is still actively seeking to do damage and when action can be taken to reduce the likelihood of their success. Those killed in the Pearl Harbor attack were about the same. Does the author suggest we should have worked to reduce farm accidents instead of fighting Japan? :rollseyes

2) The national response to the 9-11 attack isn't simply a question of one's personal risk. If I live on a farm in rural Kansas, my personal risk of a terror attack is just about zero, but I would likely still support efforts to prevent another because I feel a kinship with my fellow Americans and because the aim of the attackers was to harm the US economy. If I take the Holland tunnel to work, my risk is not zero.

3) The flaw in the inane argument that there were no terror attacks on US soil in 2002 or 2003 etc I think should be so obvious that it hardly bears response. Like duh, do you think it might have something to do with reforms of immigration and passports, airport security, air marashalls, FBI, CIA, OBL hiding in a hut with goats..etc etc?

There, enough time wasted on such drivel :)
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Zman
07-06-2007, 03:43 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by Cognescenti
Wasn't the imaginary figure 650,000 just last week? I guess I missed the last 125,000 on the nightly news. If you are going to invent figures, go long, think 1,000,000!
format_quote Originally Posted by wilberhum
You of all people should know that 93.7% of all stats are made up on the spot. :D

Read the British Lancet that published the findings, it's a very reputable source.

Even the British government was forced to admit that they agreed with their findings...
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Cognescenti
07-06-2007, 05:11 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by Zman

Read the British Lancet that published the findings, it's a very reputable source.

I have read the Lancet study. The Lancet study was a study of excess mortality not of combat deaths. Essentially everyone who cites the study fails to understand or to mention this. There are some very serious questions about study design, greatest, in my estimation was a reliance on published mortality figures before the war (by the same government that produced Baghdad Bob and Uday Hussein) as a baseline. The "random" samples are almost certainly not random. The raw data was destroyed by the lead author!!!!! I will say it again because I find it absolutely shocking. The raw data of the neighborhood canvasing was destroyed by the lead author!!!!! Good grief! After all that "work" and all that dilligent study design, he destroys the data! :? :? :? The article was rushed into publication before the US election because the author thought it was "important". Hmmmmmmm.

You are the conspiracy guy. Do I have your interest?

BTW. It is absolutely invalid scientifically (even if the orignal study were correct) to start with the mid to high end of the statistical confidence interval and simply extrapolate over time to come up with a new figure. Your figure is mythological. Don't mind me though. Its only Statistics.


Even the British government was forced to admit that they agreed with their findings...
I would be interested in seeing that.
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Zman
07-06-2007, 11:54 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by Zman

Read the British Lancet that published the findings, it's a very reputable source.

Even the British government was forced to admit that they agreed with their findings...
format_quote Originally Posted by Cognescenti

I would be interested in seeing that.


He is the source that you requested:

British BackTrack On Iraq Death Toll

By Jill Lawless
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
London Independent
British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.
The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.
The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war.

The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.

The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number of deaths lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636.

The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments.
But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as "robust" and "close to best practice".

Another official said it was "a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".

Source:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...cle2396031.ece

Related Material:

1. A study Jointly conducted by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, compared mortality rates before and after the invasion by surveying 47 randomly chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq.

2. "Advisers Told Ministers Not To Rubbish Iraq Deaths Study" ( BBC ,Monday, March 26, 2007)

Two Incidents Worthy Of Remembrance, Regarding Past Government Lies:

1. In 1996 the Lancet claimed sanctions were responsible for the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children.

UNICEF later accepted the study and rounded the number off to 500,000, prompting Clinton’s Secretary of State, at the time UN ambassador, Madeleine Albright, to declare on CBS’ 60 Minutes that the medieval siege of Iraq and the murder of hundreds of thousands of children was a price worth paying.

2. Denis Halliday, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, resigned after a 34 year career with the UN, declaring, “I don’t want to administer a program that satisfies the definition of genocide.”

Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned in disgust, as did Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq.

All told, 1.5 million Iraqis died as a direct result of the sanctions.

Notable Quote:

The co-author of the study, Les Roberts, an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health has stated:

"The consequences of downplaying the number of deaths in Iraq are profound for both the UK and the US. How can the Americans have a surge of troops to secure the population and promise success when the coalition cannot measure the level of security to within a factor of 10?

How can the US and Britain pretend they understand the level of resentment in Iraq if they are not sure if, on average, one in 80 families have lost a household member, or one in seven, as our study suggests?"

Source:
http://freethoughtmanifesto.blogspot...000-iraqi.html
Reply

islamirama
07-06-2007, 01:36 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Cognescenti
Wasn't the imaginary figure 650,000 just last week? I guess I missed the last 125,000 on the nightly news. If you are going to invent figures, go long, think 1,000,000!
To be more precise

War has wiped out about 655000 Iraqis or more than 500 people a day since...
Study: War blamed for 655000 Iraqi deaths - CNN.com


And for your information, that's 655,000 dead thanks to the war criminal bush and his terrorists regime. Saddam killed only 250,000 in 20yrs compared to these killed by bush in 3yrs.

But those figures are 6 months old and with the animalistic behavior and killing by the these invaders, you can bet its 775K if not more by now.
Reply

MTAFFI
07-06-2007, 01:40 PM
Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion?Anjana Ahuja
The statistics made headlines all over the world when they were published in The Lancet in October last year. More than 650,000 Iraqis – one in 40 of the population – had died as a result of the American-led invasion in 2003. The vast majority of these “excess” deaths (deaths over and above what would have been expected in the absence of the occupation) were violent. The victims, both civilians and combatants, had fallen prey to airstrikes, car bombs and gunfire.

Body counts in conflict zones are assumed to be ballpark – hospitals, record offices and mortuaries rarely operate smoothly in war – but this was ten times any other estimate. Iraq Body Count, an antiwar web-based charity that monitors news sources, put the civilian death toll for the same period at just under 50,000, broadly similar to that estimated by the United Nations Development Agency.

The implication of the Lancet study, which involved Iraqi doctors knocking on doors and asking residents about recent deaths in the household, was that Iraqis were being killed on an horrific scale. The controversy has deepened rather than evaporated. Several academics have tried to find out how the Lancet study was conducted; none regards their queries as having been addressed satisfactorily. Researchers contacted by The Times talk of unreturned e-mails or phone calls, or of being sent information that raises fresh doubts.

Iraq Body Count says there is “considerable cause for scepticism” and has complained that its figures had been misleadingly cited in the The Lancet as supporting evidence.

One critic is Professor Michael Spagat, an economist from Royal Holloway College, University of London. He and colleagues at Oxford University point to the possibility of “main street bias”that people living near major thoroughfares are more at risk from car bombs and other urban menaces. Thus, the figures arrived at were likely to exceed the true number. The Lancet study authors initially told The Times that “there was no main street bias” and later amended their reply to “no evidence of a main street bias”.

Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the “three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports.

The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,” contends Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. “They published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not actually follow the procedures that they stated.” The paper had “no scientific standing”. Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? “No.”

If you factor in politics, the heat increases. One of The Lancet authors, Dr Les Roberts, campaigned for a Democrat seat in the US House of Representatives and has spoken out against the war. Dr Richard Horton, editor of the The Lancet is also antiwar. He says: “I believe this paper was very thoroughly reviewed. Every piece of work we publish is criticised – and quite rightly too. No research is perfect. The best we can do is make sure we have as open, transparent and honest a debate as we can. Then we'll get as close to the truth as possible. That is why I was so disappointed many politicians rejected the findings of this paper before really thinking through the issues.”

Knocking on doors in a war zone can be a deadly thing to do. But active surveillance – going out and measuring something – is regarded as a necessary corrective to passive surveillance, which relies on reports of deaths (and, therefore, usually produces an underestimate).

Iraq Body Count relies on passive surveillance, counting civilian deaths from at least two independent reports from recognised newsgathering agencies and leading English-language newspapers ( The Times is included). So Professor Gilbert Burnham, Dr Les Roberts and Dr Shannon Doocy at the Centre for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, decided to work through Iraqi doctors, who speak the language and know the territory.

They drafted in Professor Riyadh Lafta, at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, as a co-author of the Lancet paper. Professor Lafta supervised eight doctors in 47 different towns across the country. In each town, says the paper, a main street was randomly selected, and a residential street crossing that main street was picked at random.

The doctors knocked on doors and asked residents how many people in that household had died. A person needed to have been living at that address for three months before a death for it to be included. It was deemed too risky to ask if the dead person was a combatant or civilian, but they did ask to see death certificates. More than nine out of ten interviewees, the Lancet paper claims, were able to produce death certificates. Out of 1,849 households contacted, only 15 refused to participate. From this survey, the epidemiologists estimated the number of Iraqis who died after the invasion as somewhere between 393,000 and 943,000. The headline figure became 650,000, of which 601,000 were violent deaths. Even the lowest figure would have raised eyebrows.

Dr Richard Garfield, an American academic who had collaborated with the authors on an earlier study, declined to join this one because he did not think that the risk to the interviewers was justifiable. Together with Professor Hans Rosling and Dr Johan Von Schreeb at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Dr Garfield wrote to The Lancet to insist there must be a “substantial reporting error” because Burnham et al suggest that child deaths had dropped by two thirds since the invasion. The idea that war prevents children dying, Dr Garfield implies, points to something amiss.

Professor Burnham told The Times in an e-mail that he had “full confidence in Professor Lafta and full faith in his interviewers”, although he did not directly address the drop in child mortality. Dr Garfield also queries the high availability of death certificates. Why, he asks, did the team not simply approach whoever was issuing them to estimate mortality, instead of sending interviewers into a war zone?

Professor Rosling told The Times that interviewees may have reported family members as dead to conceal the fact that relatives were in hiding, had fled the country, or had joined the police or militia. Young men can also be associated with several households (as a son, a husband or brother), so the same death might have been reported several times.

Professor Rosling says that, despite e-mails, “the authors haven’t provided us with the information needed to validate what they did”. He would like to see a live blog set up for the authors and their critics so that the matter can be clarified.

Another critic is Dr Madelyn Hsaio-Rei Hicks, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who specialises in surveying communities in conflict. In her letter to The Lancet, she pointed out that it was unfeasible for the Iraqi interviewing team to have covered 40 households in a day, as claimed. She wrote: “Assuming continuous interviewing for ten hours despite 55C heat, this allows 15 minutes per interview, including walking between households, obtaining informed consent and death certificates.”

Does she think the interviews were done at all? Dr Hicks responds: “I’m sure some interviews have been done but until they can prove it I don’t see how they could have done the study in the way they describe.”
Professor Burnham says the doctors worked in pairs and that interviews “took about 20 minutes”. The journal Nature, however, alleged last week that one of the Iraqi interviewers contradicts this. Dr Hicks says: : “I have started to suspect that they [the American researchers] don’t actually know what the interviewing team did. The fact that they can’t rattle off basic information suggests they either don’t know or they don’t care.”

And the corpses? Professor Burnham says that, according to reports, mortuaries and cemeteries have run out of space. He says that the Iraqi team has asked for data to remain confidential because of “possible risks” to both interviewers and interviewees.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1469636.ece


i figured since you like to copy and paste so much, maybe this would get through to you

here islamirama, respond to this article now, it was the main one anyways that I wanted to be noticed, the other two were just to show that you can find at tons of sites that discredit this worthless study

please i am interested as to how you would like to discredit and respond to what i have bolded, if you cant then please concede that the lancet study is just a joke
Reply

islamirama
07-06-2007, 01:47 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by MTAFFI
Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion?
Anjana Ahuja

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/22952/

i figured since you like to copy and paste so much, maybe this would get through to you
now that is what you call a classic propaganda of denial. When bomb a nation day and night withou any regards to where you are throwing the bombs, civlian population or not, and then your soldier toys shoot anything they don't get scared cuz they are running rather then walking slowly as a mouse, what do you expect but to kill that many.

It's often common for the gov't to discredit anyone that says contrary to what the war machine wants the world to believe, I wonder how much he got paid to pull that out of his behind...:rollseyes
Reply

MTAFFI
07-06-2007, 01:55 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by islamirama
now that is what you call a classic propaganda of denial. When bomb a nation day and night withou any regards to where you are throwing the bombs, civlian population or not, and then your soldier toys shoot anything they don't get scared cuz they are running rather then walking slowly as a mouse, what do you expect but to kill that many.

It's often common for the gov't to discredit anyone that says contrary to what the war machine wants the world to believe, I wonder how much he got paid to pull that out of his behind...:rollseyes
please see my revised post, in particular, please see the final paragraph
Reply

islamirama
07-06-2007, 01:58 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by MTAFFI
please see my revised post, in particular, please see the final paragraph
every credible report by Guardian, BBC or other reputable source that has been put up, you have denied it all so blindly and now you expect me to waste my time on your propaganda lies, are you feeling ok?
Reply

MTAFFI
07-06-2007, 02:11 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by islamirama
every credible report by Guardian, BBC or other reputable source that has been put up, you have denied it all so blindly and now you expect me to waste my time on your propaganda lies, are you feeling ok?
lol

so then you concede, that the report is a joke by omission?

By the way, I dont see anything on this thread from BBC, the Guardian or any other "reputable" source. The only reputable source that I see would be..... THE TIMES

But hey whatever, why would I expect you to back up your false claims with logic anyways, all you are good at is mudslinging and conspiracy theories.
Reply

islamirama
07-06-2007, 02:28 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by MTAFFI
lol

so then you concede, that the report is a joke by omission?

By the way, I dont see anything on this thread from BBC, the Guardian or any other "reputable" source. The only reputable source that I see would be..... THE TIMES

But hey whatever, why would I expect you to back up your false claims with logic anyways, all you are good at is mudslinging and conspiracy theories.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

----------------------------

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand
on a clock. BEN HECHT
Reply

MTAFFI
07-06-2007, 02:40 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by islamirama
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

----------------------------

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand
on a clock. BEN HECHT

first quote is good

second quote is dumb, unless of course you are a paranoid psychotic who thinks that everything is a conspiracy imposed on us by the man so that he can further his own cause which is........... dare i say world domination

anyways again, please go back and refute that article and give some solid proof for your lancet study (other than the lancet study itself, which I see you continue to do)

(By the way, the problem you are facing with this is that you wont find anything to back the Lancet, because as Cognescenti stated above, the data was destroyed, hence no answers for what they did are available, they will rely on people who are biased and "one eyed" to maintain their false claims)
Reply

islamirama
07-06-2007, 02:41 PM
ALL WAR ALL THE TIME

The battle on terrorism is an excuse to make fighting permanent


Robert Higgs
Sunday, July 6, 2003



I'll concede that having a permanent war might seem an odd thing to want, but let's put aside the "why" question for the time being, accepting that you wouldn't want it unless you stood to gain something important from it. If, however, for reasons you found adequate, you did want to have a permanent war, what would you need in order to make such a policy viable in a democratic society such as the United States?

First, you would need that society to have a dominant ideology -- a widely shared belief system about social and political relations -- within which having a permanent war seems to be a desirable policy, given the ideology's own content and the pertinent facts accepted by its adherents. Something like American jingo-patriotism cum anti-communism might turn the trick.

It worked pretty well during the nearly half-century of the Cold War. The beauty of anti-communism as a covering ideology was that it could serve to justify a wide variety of politically expedient actions both here and abroad. The Commies, you'll recall, were everywhere: not just in Moscow and Sevastopol,

but maybe in Minneapolis and San Francisco. We had to stay alert; we could never let down our guard, anywhere.

Second, you would need periodic crises, because without them the public becomes complacent, unafraid, and hence unwilling to bear the heavy burdens that they must bear if the government is to carry on a permanent war. As Sen. Arthur Vandenberg told Harry Truman in 1947 at the outset of the Cold War, gaining public support for a perpetual global campaign requires that the government "scare hell out of the American people."

Each crisis piques the people's insecurities and renders them once again disposed to pay the designated price, whether it takes the form of their treasure, their liberties or their young people's blood. Something like the (alleged) missile gap, the (alleged) Gulf of Tonkin attacks on U.S. naval vessels, or the (actual!) hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran will do nicely, at least for a while. Crises by their very nature eventually recede, and new ones must come along -- or be made to come along -- to serve the current need.

Third, you would need some politically powerful groups whose members stand to gain substantially from a permanent war in terms of achieving their urgent personal and group objectives. Call me crass, but I've noticed that few people will stay engaged for long unless there's "something in it for them."

During the Cold War, the conglomeration of personally interested parties consisted of those who form the military-industrial-congressional complex. The generals and admirals thrived by commanding a large armed force sustained by a lavish budget. The big defense contractors enjoyed ample returns at minimal risk (because they could expect that, should they screw up too royally, a bailout would be forthcoming). Members of Congress who belonged to the military oversight and appropriations committees could parlay their positions into campaign contributions and various sorts of income in kind.

Presiding over the entire complex, of course, the president, his National Security Council, and their many subordinates, advisers, consultants, and hangers-on enjoyed the political advantages associated with control of a great nation's diplomatic and military affairs -- not to speak of the sheer joy that certain people get from wielding or influencing great power.

No conspiracy here, of course, just a lot of people fitting into their niches, doing well while proclaiming that they were doing good (recall the ideology and the crisis elements). All seeking only to serve the common public interest. Absolutely.

The foregoing observations have been widely accepted by several generations of students of the Cold War. Yet now, you may protest, the Cold War is over, the USSR nonexistent, the menace of communism kaput. Under post-Cold War conditions, how can we have a permanent war? Well, all we need to do is to replace the missing piece.

If the ideology of anti-communism can no longer serve to justify a permanent war, let us put in its place the overarching rationale of a "war on terrorism." In fact, this substitution of what President Bush repeatedly calls "a new kind of war" amounts to an improvement for the leading actors, because whereas the Cold War could not be sustained once the USSR had imploded and international communism had toppled into the dustbin of history, a war on terrorism, with all its associated benefits, can go on forever.

After all, so long as the president says he has intelligence information to the effect that "they" are still out there conspiring to kill us all, who are we to dispute that the threat exists and must be met? The smoke had scarcely cleared at Ground Zero when Vice President Dick Cheney declared on Oct. 19, 2001, that the war on terrorism "may never end. It's the new normalcy."

Just as during the Cold War hardly any American ever laid eyes on an honest- to-God Commie, although nearly everybody believed that the Commies were lurking far and wide, so now we may all suppose that anyone, anywhere might be a lethal terrorist in possession of a suitcase nuke or a jug of anthrax spores.

Indeed, current airport-security measures are premised on precisely such a belief -- otherwise it makes no sense to strip-search Grandma at Dulles International Airport.

Potential terrorists are "out there," no doubt, in the wonderful world of Islam, an arc that stretches from Morocco across North Africa, the Middle East,

and Southwest Asia to Malaysia, Indonesia and Mindanao, not to mention London,

Amsterdam and Hamburg. And that's good, because it means that U.S. leaders must bring the entire outside world into compliance with their stipulated rules of engagement for the war on terrorism. It's a fine thing to dominate the world, an even finer thing to do so righteously.

Better yet, the potential omnipresence of the terrorists justifies U.S. leaders in their efforts to supercharge the surveillance-and-police state here at home, with the USA Patriot Act, the revival of the FBI's COINTELPRO activities, and all the rest. Adios, Bill of Rights. The merest babe should understand that these new powers will be turned to other political purposes that have nothing whatever to do with terrorism. Indeed, they have been already. As the New York Times reported on May 5, "The Justice Department has begun using its expanded counterterrorism powers to seize millions of dollars from foreign banks that do business in the United States" and "most of the seizures have involved fraud and money-laundering investigations unrelated to terrorism."

The war-on-terrorism rationale has proved congenial to the American public, who have swallowed bogus government assurances that the so-called war is making them more secure. Much of this acceptance springs, no doubt, from the shock that many Americans experienced when the terrorist attacks of September 11 proved so devastating. Ever alert, the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, asked the National Security Council immediately afterward "to think seriously about "how you capitalize on these opportunities" to fundamentally change American doctrine and the shape of the world in the wake of September 11.

The president's most powerful and influential subordinates -- Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and their coterie -- then set in motion a series of actions (and a flood of disinformation) to seize the day, measures that culminated in the military invasion and conquest first of Afghanistan and then of Iraq, among many other things.

Likewise, the military component of the military-industrial complex has entered into fat city. During fiscal year 2000, before Bush had taken office, Department of Defense outlays amounted to $281 billion. Just four years later, assuming that Congress gives the president what he has requested for fiscal year 2004, the department's budget will be at least $399 billion -- an increase of 42 percent.

No wonder the generals and admirals are dancing in the corridors at the Pentagon: all this loot, and wartime citations and promotions to boot!

The flush times for the officer corps have spilled over handsomely onto the big arms contractors, whose share prices have been bucking the trend of the continuing stock-market meltdown nicely during the past couple of years. With only a single exception, all the major weapons systems have survived funding threats, and their manufacturers can look forward to decades of well-paid repose as they supply models B, C, D, and so forth, as well as all the remunerative maintenance and repairs, operational training, software upgrades, and related goods and services for their Cold War-type weaponry in search of an suitable enemy. In the immortal words of Boeing vice president Harry Stonecipher, "The purse is now open."

Amid the all-around rejoicing, however, the power elite appreciate that nearly two years have elapsed since Sept. 11, 2001, and the public's panic has begun to subside. That won't do. Accordingly, earlier this month, the government released a report that there is a "high probability" of an al Qaeda attack with a weapon of mass destruction in the next two years.

So there you have it: The war on terrorism -- the new permanent war -- is a winner. The president loves it. The military brass loves it. The bigwigs at Boeing and Lockheed love it. We all love it.

Except, perhaps, that odd citizen who wonders whether, all things considered, having a permanent war is truly a good idea for the beleaguered U. S. economy and for the liberties of the American people.

Source
---
Robert Higgs is senior fellow at the Independent Institute. His books include "Crisis and Leviathan" and "Arms, Politics and the Economy."
Reply

Zman
07-06-2007, 08:05 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Cognescenti

I would be interested in seeing that.

Did you read the material, bro? I'm interested in your view...
Reply

Zman
07-06-2007, 11:30 PM
:sl:/Peace To All

U.S. Kills Al Qaeda Leader In iraq, Twice

By Rowan Scarborough,
Jul 6, 2007, 8:03 AM (10 hrs ago)
Examiner

Washington DC (Map, News) - The U.S. command in Baghdad this week ballyhooed the killing of a key al Qaeda leader but later admitted that the military had declared him dead a year ago.

A military spokesman acknowledged the mistake after it was called to his attention by The Examiner. He said public affairs officers will be more careful in announcing significant kills.

Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner began his Monday news conference with a list of top insurgents either killed or captured in recent operations. He said they had been eliminated "in the past few weeks" and were "recent results."

"In the north, Iraqi army and coalition forces continue successful operations in Mosul," he told reporters. "Kamal Jalil Uthman, also known as Said Hamza, was the al Qaeda in Iraq military emir of Mosul. He planned, coordinated and facilitated suicide bombings, and he facilitated the movement of more than a hundred foreign fighters through safe houses in the area." All told, Bergner devoted 68 words to Uthman's demise.

Uthman was indeed a big kill, and the military featured his death last year in a report titled "Tearing Down al Qaeda."

"The more we can bring down al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, the greater probability of reducing violence," Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the command's chief spokesman said, in 2006.
Uthman was listed in the 2006 news release as "the chief of military operations [in] Mosul."

When The Examiner pointed out that Uthman's death had been announced twice, a command spokesman said in an e-mail,

"You are correct that we did previously announce that we killed him. This was a roll up to show an overall effort against [al Qaeda in Iraq]. We can probably do a better job on saying 'previously announced' when we do long-term roll ups to show an overall effort."
rscarborough@dcexaminer.com

Source:
http://www.examiner.com/a-815250%7EU..._al_Qaeda.html

More U.S. War On Terror Dinsinformation:


It has become evident with every false press release, that the U.S. military is deliberately disseminating black propaganda in a blatant attempt to artificially inflate their alleged success of what is in actual fact: their total failure in conducting their disasterous WAR OF TERROR.

The Occupations "Eagerness" to appear successful does not excuse their blatant lying to the "ViewsPapers" and the American people, about its failed and counter-productive terror operations in Iraq.

Also, this is not the first time so called Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders have been neutralized more than once.

Like the mythical Phoenix, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the supposed former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq (who was one-legged and couldn't operate a machinegun), was apparently sent to his grave, no less than five times by the occupation.

He was first killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq, then he was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, followed by a death during Operation Matador near the town of Qaim on the Syrian border, then he was killed, along with his mentor, Osama bin Laden, in the besieged city of Fallujah, and finally met his fifth demise in a U.S. air raid north of Baghdad in the town of Hibhib near Baquba.

Source (click on this link to access the articles):
http://freethoughtmanifesto.blogspot...raq-twice.html
Reply

snakelegs
07-06-2007, 11:44 PM
i believe that there really are evil people Out There who will (and do) happily kill themselves by blowing up innocent people.
but, i also think there is a lot of truth in the article islamirama just posted. a permanent state of war is indeed a wonderful thing for the right people.
Reply

Zman
07-08-2007, 01:42 AM
:sl:/Peace To All

Divide & Conquer: Jihad Mutates Into Sectarian Wars

By Alain Gresh
July 08, 2007
Le Monde diplomatique
Zmag

Post 9/11, the world was stupefied to discover that the Afghan "freedom fighters", once lauded by President Ronald Reagan for their resistance to the Soviet empire of evil, had a very specific idea of "freedom".

Twenty years after its blindness helped create al-Qaida, has the United States learned its lesson?

The answer, if we are to believe the celebrated American journalist Seymour Hersh, is no: the US has brought together a coalition of moderate Sunni Arab states to support all the anti-Iranian and anti-Shia movements, even the most "radical" (1).

Lebanon, where the Shia Hizbullah dominates opposition to Fuad Siniora's US-backed government, is a textbook case.

Even before Fatah al-Islam (2) achieved prominence, Hersh noted with concern the emergence of radical Sunni groups, linked to al-Qaida, some of whose funding came from forces close to the government and Hariri's party.

Hersh said: "The United States of America are looking the other way as money flows in from us... and [from] Saudi Arabia under the table.... Why do we support... the Salafists - we would have arrested these guys two years ago and put them in Guantánamo. Now we're supporting them because they're potential allies against... Hizbullah" (3).
According to the journalist David Samuels: "[Condoleezza] Rice and her colleagues in the administration decided to embark on a daring and risky third course."

This involved a subtle mix of diplomacy, economic pressure, large-scale military exercises, psychological warfare and covert operations.

"The bill for the covert part of this activity, which has involved funding sectarian political movements and paramilitary groups in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, is said to amount to more than $300m. It is being paid by Saudi Arabia and other concerned Gulf states" (4). Iran, it seems, has now succeeded al-Qaida as public enemy number one.
__________________________________________________ ______

(1) Seymour Hersh, "The redirection: Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism", New Yorker, 5 March 2007.

(2) This radical Islamist group formed in November 2006. During May and June 2007 it took on the Lebanese army in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.

(3) Interview on the site Antiwar.com, 13 March 2007.

(4) David Samuels, "Grand Illusions", Atlantic Monthly, Washington DC, June 1970.

Source:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarti...2&ItemID=13241
Reply

Pygoscelis
07-09-2007, 02:32 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by Keltoi
Perspective is one thing, but when large amounts of people are killed by a foreign entity you do not compare it to traffic deaths.
I think it is fine to compare it to traffic deaths. It shows how dangerous traffic is. We need to pay attention not only to foreign threats, real and imagined, but also to domestic safety issues. Drunk driving kills more people per year than terrorism. Where is our war on drunk driving?
Reply

Keltoi
07-09-2007, 01:11 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis
I think it is fine to compare it to traffic deaths. It shows how dangerous traffic is. We need to pay attention not only to foreign threats, real and imagined, but also to domestic safety issues. Drunk driving kills more people per year than terrorism. Where is our war on drunk driving?
I'm sure more people died from strokes the same year as Pearl Harbor, does that mean the U.S. should have compared stroke statistics with the number of U.S. citizens killed in that attack and base a reaction on the data?
Reply

MTAFFI
07-09-2007, 02:03 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Keltoi
I'm sure more people died from strokes the same year as Pearl Harbor, does that mean the U.S. should have compared stroke statistics with the number of U.S. citizens killed in that attack and base a reaction on the data?
I am with you on this, drunk driving, strokes, car crashes, earthquakes, tornados, etc. These are all incidental whereas murder and/or terrorism are one in the same, the people that are killed by such attacks their families are left with hatred for the perpetrators, thus also fueling what so many Muslims on this site constantly moan about, the demonizing of themselves and their beliefs. A drunk driving accident causes someone to hate alcohol or the consumption thereof, a tornado cause people to move away from the reach or to expect such an occurrence, a stroke is just someones time to die and encourages others around them to eat better or try and live with less stress, but a murder/ terrorism is, in my opinion, one of the many roots of hatred. It cannot be compared to the aforementioned causes of deaths, by this logic I could say in 2004 there were 2.3 million deaths in the US, so what does it matter that since the beginning of the war in Iraq there has only been 73,253, I mean that is really not that many compared to the number of strokes, etc. is it?
Reply

KAding
07-09-2007, 02:41 PM
This is not only about the number of casualties. Obviously terrorism has a social and communal consequences which can undermine the peace and stability of a country. If someone dies because of a deliberate action of another individual people will demand justice. Denying them that justice might well cause considerable tensions.

That said, I agree that terrorism is only a minor danger to the West and it will remain so as long as terrorists do not get their hands on WMD. Of course, the same cannot be said in places like Iraq, where terrorism is a major cause of death.
Reply

Pygoscelis
07-10-2007, 04:21 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by MTAFFI
I am with you on this, drunk driving, strokes, car crashes, earthquakes, tornados, etc. These are all incidental whereas murder and/or terrorism are one in the same
Tornados and strokes maybe... but drunk driving??? INCIDENTAL?! :confused:

Drunk driving is something the average citizen can actually do something about, much more so than terrorism. Obesity is another major killer that people can do something about.

What exactly can the average citizen do about terrorism? Besides be afraid when told to be afraid? No. The biggest risk of terrorism isn't another 9/11 or a nuke on California. The biggest risk of terrorism is allowing our own politicians to drive fear into us and take away our civil liberties.
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Keltoi
07-10-2007, 05:19 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis
Tornados and strokes maybe... but drunk driving??? INCIDENTAL?! :confused:

Drunk driving is something the average citizen can actually do something about, much more so than terrorism. Obesity is another major killer that people can do something about.

What exactly can the average citizen do about terrorism? Besides be afraid when told to be afraid? No. The biggest risk of terrorism isn't another 9/11 or a nuke on California. The biggest risk of terrorism is allowing our own politicians to drive fear into us and take away our civil liberties.
The government is between a rock and a hard place in terms of terrorism. Either they don't do enough and are blamed for allowing terrorist attacks to succeed, or they overreach and are blamed for using terrorism to take away civil liberties.
Reply

MTAFFI
07-10-2007, 08:02 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis
Tornados and strokes maybe... but drunk driving??? INCIDENTAL?! :confused:

Drunk driving is something the average citizen can actually do something about, much more so than terrorism. Obesity is another major killer that people can do something about.

What exactly can the average citizen do about terrorism? Besides be afraid when told to be afraid? No. The biggest risk of terrorism isn't another 9/11 or a nuke on California. The biggest risk of terrorism is allowing our own politicians to drive fear into us and take away our civil liberties.
Not every drunk driver kills someone, obesity doesnt kill everyone, not only that but these are "internal" problems that, as you said, citizens must deal with themselves. Terrorism on the other hand is not something that a average citizen can handle which is why we have a government and military to take care of outside threats on mass portions of our country. The bottom line is, you cannot compare murder to man slaughter or death by being a glutton and eating yourself to death, and if you think you can then re-read the last sentence of my previous post.
Reply

Zman
07-12-2007, 01:46 AM
:sl:/Peace To All

Nonsense About Terrorism

By Paul Campos
July 10, 2007
RockyMountainNews

For nearly six years now we've been hearing from politicians and pundits about how Sept. 11, 2001 "changed everything." One especially unwelcome change wrought by that day has been that, ever since, large numbers of otherwise sane and sensible people continue to utter the most ridiculous things regarding the subject of terrorism.

Consider a column last week by The Washington Post's David Ignatius. Ignatius wonders how the nation would react to a future terrorist attack. "Would the country come together to combat its adversaries," he asks, "or would it pull farther apart?"

Ignatius notes that liberals would blame the Bush administration for needlessly inflaming Muslim anti-Americanism by bungling the invasion of Iraq, while conservatives would blame liberals for weakening the nation's anti-terrorism defenses by insisting that, for example, laws requiring warrants for wiretaps and forbidding torture be obeyed.

Ignatius calls this sort of political disagreement "scary," given that "the British car bomb plots uncovered last week remind us of our vulnerability to terrorist attack, wherever we live."

"In a politically healthy nation," Ignatius intones, "the news from Britain would have a galvanizing effect. Politicians and the public would pull together and take appropriate steps to prepare for future terrorist attacks on America."

And just what would these steps include? Ignatius doesn't say! He's strongly in favor of "national unity" - but in order to do what? (All this reminds me of The Simpsons episode in which Willie Nelson invites the family to make a presentation at the New Awareness Awards. "When we heard the goal was to promote awareness," Marge says, we couldn't say no!")

When the subject is terrorism, people like Ignatius seem to have trouble grasping that political disagreement is real. Let me put it as plainly as possible: The reason Americans disagree about how to respond to the threat of terrorism is because they have radically different views on the matter.

For instance, my view is that Ignatius and his ilk have helped create a fear of terrorism out of all proportion to the actual threat terrorism poses; that by doing so they helped drag America into a disastrous war with Iraq; and that they're now helping to create the conditions that may enable an even more disastrous war with Iran.
Nothing better illustrates this than Ignatius' claim that the British car bombing plots "remind us of our vulnerability to terrorist attack." What they remind anyone not already in thrall to the cultural hysteria Ignatius promotes is that all the "terrorists" discovered in America over the past few years were, like the British would-be bombers, thoroughly pathetic figures, who collectively proved themselves incapable of blowing up a phone booth.

In the two hours or so I'm guessing it took Ignatius to crank out yet another 800 words of substance-free alarmism festooned with platitudes about the need for "unity," about 350 Americans died.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, approximately 14 million Americans have died.

Some of these people died agonizing deaths on emergency room floors because they didn't have health insurance. A quarter-million were killed in car crashes. Around 200,000 were shot to death. Several thousand died of acute alcohol poisoning.

In theory, most of these deaths were preventable. In practice, only some of them were preventable at anything like a reasonable cost.
Here's a question:

What would be the optimal number of deaths per year in the United States caused by less-than-ideal medical care, or car crashes, or gunshot wounds, or alcohol poisoning?

I'm sure Ignatius understands why anyone who answers "zero" is saying something nonsensical.

So why does he continue to write similar nonsense about terrorism?
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.

He can be reached at: paul.campos@colorado.edu.

Source:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...622100,00.html
Reply

islamirama
07-12-2007, 05:20 AM
Muslims against terrorism, Americans for it...

Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.

The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24 percent believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified."

Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world's most-populous Muslim countries - Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are "never justified"; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.

These findings mean that Americans are closet terrorist sympathizers...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0223/p09s01-coop.html
Reply

Zman
07-12-2007, 03:03 PM
:sl:/Peace To All

The West Will Fail

By Sarah Smiles and Brendan Nicholson
July 11, 2007
TheAge

AS PESSIMISM grows in the US about Iraq, the American commander there has warned that the war will take many years to win and a former top CIA officer has told a Sydney conference that defeat is inevitable in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit until 2004, said the West was losing the global battle against Muslim insurgents.

Mr Scheuer said the US and its allies had failed to commit enough troops to win and did not understand the grievances motivating Muslim insurgents.

"We in the West are fighting an enemy we have woefully chosen to misunderstand and to whom we are losing hands down and on every front," he said.
Mr Scheuer said the US and its allies continually became involved in Middle East wars because of their reliance on Arab oil supplies and had little other interest in the region.

The US had tried "to do Afghanistan on the cheap" and that defeat there was "just around the corner," he said.

Mr Scheuer's bleak declaration came as the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said the war in Iraq could last for many years.

General Petraeus said the new "surge" strategy involving 30,000 extra US troops was having a positive effect in parts of Baghdad and the surrounding areas but such operations in places such as Northern Ireland took decades.

"I don't know whether this will be decades but the average counter-insurgency is somewhere around a nine or a 10-year endeavour."


General Petraeus said the big question was how US troops could be reduced to lessen the strain on the army and on the nation.

There is growing pessimism in the US about the chances of success in Iraq and the Washington Post reported yesterday that President George Bush was planning to begin reducing troop numbers next year.

Top officials in Washington had begun explaining to worried Republicans the President's plan for "post-surge" Iraq that would eventually involve bringing troops home.

Mr Scheuer said there was no hope of bringing democracy to Iraq or Afghanistan without a much greater commitment to defeat insurgents.


He said the West's biggest mistake in the war on terror was to ignore the grievances of Islamic insurgents.

He said Western politicians, including Prime Minister John Howard, deceived the public by suggesting that terrorists were motivated only by hatred for freedoms enjoyed in the West.

Mr Howard had "warbled" the "wildly inaccurate ditty" that the London bombers were motivated by a hatred of Western culture, Mr Scheuer said.

He said Al-Qaeda was motivated by anger towards US foreign policy in the Middle East rather than by hatred for Western culture.

That included the US military presence in the region, its backing of tyrannical Arab regimes and "unqualified" support for Israel.
Mr Scheuer said the United States needed to increase its troops and take a heavy-handed, "brutal" approach to beat insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan — or leave.

Source:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/nation...833519273.html
Reply

Zman
07-13-2007, 06:31 PM
:sl:/Peace To All

Chertoff's "Gut Feeling"

Keith Olbermann gives us another one of his priceless special comments on Michael Chertoffs "Gut Feeling."

Media Tags are no longer supported

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Keltoi
07-13-2007, 06:47 PM
Olbermann should worry about his ratings, not with the cute turn of phrase.
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