More lies and incompetence by Bush/Chaney in Iraq
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=206847
The strongest evidence to date indicates that conventional explosives missing from Iraq's Al-Qaqaa installation disappeared after the United States had taken control of Iraq [while US troops were guarding the Oil Ministry and pipelines]. Barrels inside the Al-Qaqaa facility appear on videotape shot by ABC television affiliate KSTP of St. Paul, Minn., which had a crew embedded with the 101st Airborne Division when it passed through Al-Qaqaa on April 18, 2003 — nine days after Baghdad fell.Experts who have studied the images say the barrels on the tape contain the high explosive HMX, and the U.N. markings on the barrels are clear.
"I talked to a former inspector who's a colleague of mine, and he confirmed that, indeed, these pictures look just like what he remembers seeing inside those bunkers," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
The barrels were found inside sealed bunkers, which American soldiers are seen on the videotape cutting through. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency sealed the bunkers where the explosives were kept just before the war began.
"The seal's critical," Albright said. "The fact that there's a photo of what looks like an IAEA seal means that what's behind those doors is HMX. They only sealed bunkers that had HMX in them."
After the bunkers were opened, the 101st was not ordered to secure the facility. A senior officer told ABC News the division would not have had nearly enough soldiers to do so.
It remains unclear how much HMX was at the facility, but what does seem clear is that the U.S. military opened the bunkers at Al-Qaqaa and left them unguarded. Since then, the material has disappeared.
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Still undecided about who to vote for on Tuesday? This is the reality behind pro-war bullshit that we are "fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them in America." What that really means is that Americans don't care how many foreigners get killed so long as they can keep their SUVs.
Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there were 100,000 "excess deaths" in 18 months.
The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.
"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.
"The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing a lot of women and children," Roberts told Reuters.
The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which the Iraq war has been a major issue.
Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the researchers described what they found as shocking.
The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods.
Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as 6,370.
By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting, according to the Pentagon.
VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS
The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.
"What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban areas and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said.
Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military action in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians."
"We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so detrimental to civilians populations," he told Reuters in an interview.
The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each, recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths.
They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.
Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.
Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.
"Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes," Roberts added in the study.
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed, edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the evolving security situation in Iraq.
"But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq -- in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre-emptive war," Horton said in an editorial.
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=NW_1-T&oldflok=ne-us-12-l6&flok=FF-RTO-rontz&idq=/ff/story/0002%2F20041028%2F1457167130.htm&sc=rontz
Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi Deaths Since War
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there were 100,000 "excess deaths" in 18 months.
The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.
"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.
"The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing a lot of women and children," Roberts told Reuters.
The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which the Iraq war has been a major issue.
Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the researchers described what they found as shocking.
The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods.
Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as 6,370.
By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting, according to the Pentagon.
VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS
The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.
"What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban areas and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said.
Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military action in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians."
"We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so detrimental to civilians populations," he told Reuters in an interview.
The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each, recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths.
They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.
Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.
Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.
"Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes," Roberts added in the study.
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed, edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the evolving security situation in Iraq.
"But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq -- in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre-emptive war," Horton said in an editorial.
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=NW_1-T&oldflok=ne-us-12-l6&flok=FF-RTO-rontz&idq=/ff/story/0002%2F20041028%2F1457167130.htm&sc=rontz
"A life choice? How about the life choice of being a Republican? Is that protected? Obviously not."
Well boo hoo for those poor Republicans. Whenever a "Gay Party" comes to power and bans marriage between two consenting Republicans, I'll start taking your arguments seriously.
Which proves my point that YOU don't give a shit who is judged as long as it benefits YOU. You'll cast aspirsions on every single Republican and call us dumbasses for supporting Bush, and then you turn around and try to imply that I am anti-gay, which I am most certainly NOT.
Bush benefitted from "activist judges" who went against the wishes of the majority that voted for Al Gore. Now Bush wants to use the exact opposite argument to ban gay marriage. Not that it's ever going to happen of course. He's just pandering to an intolerant majority of his own support.
I'm not even going to get into an Al Gore debate. It's been four years, can't you get something recent to bitch about? For how bad Bush apparently is, it seems there's so little wrong he's done in the past four years that it is necessary to bring up 2000.
As for your articles, I hope you don't mean to imply that the Iraqis were better off under Hussein. If you had lived during the 1800s, would you have stated that the Civil War only made life for slaves worse? Wow, if YOU were in office nothing would EVER get done, because you would run away head in hands anytime a problem happened, because "It'd just make it worse."
Are you trying to say that I am the "intolerant majority"?
It's best if you argue with what I said, rather than what you think I said. However, I'm not going to spend hours explaining simple English to you.
"I think that charles baer's posts are far more interesting and intelligent."
- Simply because you disagree with her political views, I'm assuming.
*hugs Miss James*
It's best if you argue with what I said, rather than what you think I said. However, I'm not going to spend hours explaining simple English to you.
And I'm not going to spend hours trying to teach you manners. That should've been left up to your family. I don't enjoy conversing with someone who attempts to imply that I am an anti-gay bigot, nor do I wish to converse with someone who believes I am an "idiot" because I have a separate group of political views.
I would rather talk with the sexy Mr. McCain.
You can't deal with opinions that contradict your own so you misrepresent what I say and make personal attacks on me and my family. Classic keyboard warrior stuff. However, I should know better than to argue with some of the teenagers on here, many of whom are so terrified of "losing face" in public that they resort to personal abuse in defence of their puny intellectual abilities.
You know, guys, she's got a point. We liberals are supposed to be the tireless opponents of intolerance, and yet, when faced with someone who disagree with us, we go into a weeklong sliming snit.
Could we please reserve the rage for the fucks who actually deserve it, like Ann Coulter and Grover Norquist? They're completely nuts. We don't need to bother listening to them. If you actually bother to have a conversation with Sara, you would realize that while completely perverted, she is not a Hannityesque psychopath. There are intelligent, sensible conservatives in the world.
And Kerry IS against gay marriage. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I support him, but that doesn't change his being a weenie.
Oh yeah, and I'm about as far left as they come, so anyone who accuses me of being a pawn for the right can just go fuck themselves.
(John McCain? Sexy? You gotta be kidding me...)
Could we please reserve the rage for the fucks who actually deserve it, like Ann Coulter and Grover Norquist? They're completely nuts. We don't need to bother listening to them. If you actually bother to have a conversation with Sara, you would realize that while completely perverted, she is not a Hannityesque psychopath. There are intelligent, sensible conservatives in the world.
And Kerry IS against gay marriage. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I support him, but that doesn't change his being a weenie.
Oh yeah, and I'm about as far left as they come, so anyone who accuses me of being a pawn for the right can just go fuck themselves.
(John McCain? Sexy? You gotta be kidding me...)
"it seems there's so little wrong he's done in the past four years that it is necessary to bring up 2000."
I would call you a bad name, but it's not even worth of you. THIS HAS BEEN THE WORST PRESIDENCY IN US HISTORY! Check your facts before acting like a dumbass!
You are a narrow minded annoying little girl.
Marriage is a RIGHT. Therefore disallowing marriage is, indeed, "restricting the rights of gay people."
Why can't you get this through your pea brain?
People like you piss me off to no end. You can't even give a real answer as to why you support Bush; you have no facts, just the bullshit propaganda he throws at us.
I would call you a bad name, but it's not even worth of you. THIS HAS BEEN THE WORST PRESIDENCY IN US HISTORY! Check your facts before acting like a dumbass!
You are a narrow minded annoying little girl.
Marriage is a RIGHT. Therefore disallowing marriage is, indeed, "restricting the rights of gay people."
Why can't you get this through your pea brain?
People like you piss me off to no end. You can't even give a real answer as to why you support Bush; you have no facts, just the bullshit propaganda he throws at us.
I don't mean to be mean, but Holly does have some rational arguments with many points which remain to be rebutted, and Sara (is it?) is not doing a good job at explaining her position very well. I'm sure she has her reasons, and that they are all rational, but there is a popular saying here (and I'm sure several places elsewhere) concerning debates, which is "put down the shovel."
What I am seeing a lot of, though, on BOTH sides are attacks upon not what people say, but the people themselves (yeah, I am often guilty of this, but I am working on it - just call me a hypocrite)...Come on, we're all friends here, or at least I would like to think so. We are all going to disagree, but a debate should be a friendly way to express your opinions in an intelligent manner.
Also, it is very clear to me and I'm sure to many others that Holly is a great debater. This doesn't mean that Holly has better opinions than anyone else, but just a much better ability to argument and expression. That doesn't mean that other people don't have anything to say; they are just not as good at saying it.
What I am seeing a lot of, though, on BOTH sides are attacks upon not what people say, but the people themselves (yeah, I am often guilty of this, but I am working on it - just call me a hypocrite)...Come on, we're all friends here, or at least I would like to think so. We are all going to disagree, but a debate should be a friendly way to express your opinions in an intelligent manner.
Also, it is very clear to me and I'm sure to many others that Holly is a great debater. This doesn't mean that Holly has better opinions than anyone else, but just a much better ability to argument and expression. That doesn't mean that other people don't have anything to say; they are just not as good at saying it.
"it seems there's so little wrong he's done in the past four years that it is necessary to bring up 2000."
I would call you a bad name, but it's not even worth of you. THIS HAS BEEN THE WORST PRESIDENCY IN US HISTORY! Check your facts before acting like a dumbass!
You are a narrow minded annoying little girl.
Marriage is a RIGHT. Therefore disallowing marriage is, indeed, "restricting the rights of gay people."
Why can't you get this through your pea brain?
People like you piss me off to no end. You can't even give a real answer as to why you support Bush; you have no facts, just the bullshit propaganda he throws at us.
I will not say whether or not this is the worst presidency in US history, but I will ask you one question. Why? As compared to other presidents, why is Bush worse?
And if you have nothing nice to say, please keep it to yourself.
Thank you very much, Music Man: very well said!
Ja ne.
Ja ne.
Don't forget to vote, y'hear!
I will not say whether or not this is the worst presidency in US history, but I will ask you one question. Why? As compared to other presidents, why is Bush worse?
And if you have nothing nice to say, please keep it to yourself.
Economic Depression + Deficit + Unemployment + Removal of Rights (some forms of abortion, gay marriage proposition, revoke Roe v. Wade proposition, Patriot Act) + Not renewing Assault Weapon ban + IRAQ WAR + collapse of negotions in Israel + RELGIOUS emphasis (federal money goes primarily to faith based Christian charities, religious rhetoric,denouncing condom use in countries where AIDS is of epidemic proportions) + Attacks on Affirmative Action + Attacks on Educated Americans + Increase Class Gap + Virtually no relief for NYC after Sept. 11 ++++ the list goes on and on.
I'll ask this - what has he done RIGHT?