Talking point to counter "Sadam = Mass Graves" argument

[Beam Me Up]

One of the things Repugs consistently bring up to justify our invasion of Iraq, despite no WMD, are the "mass graves". Below is a section of a long, recent article by John Pilger, entitled "What They Don't Want You To Know." The article has a lot of information that once again OUTRAGES ME against this war and the crimes of the BFEE.

Bush, Blair and the normalisers now speak, almost with relish, of opening mass graves in Iraq. What they do not want you to know is that the largest mass graves are the result of a popular uprising that followed the 1991 Gulf war, in direct response to a call by President George Bush Sr to "take matters into your own hands and force Saddam to step aside". So successful were the rebels initially that within days Saddam's rule had collapsed across the south. A new start for the people of Iraq seemed close at hand.

Then Washington, the tyrant's old paramour who had supplied him with $5bn worth of conventional arms, chemical and biological weapons and industrial technology, intervened just in time. The rebels suddenly found themselves confronted with the United States helping Saddam against them. US forces prevented them from reaching Iraqi arms depots. They denied them shelter, and gave Saddam's Republican Guard safe passage through US lines in order to attack the rebels. US helicopters circled overhead, observing, taking photographs, while Saddam's forces crushed the uprising. In the north, the same happened to the Kurdish insurrection. "The Americans did everything for Saddam," said the writer on the Middle East SaId Aburish, "except join the fight on his side." Bush Sr did not want a divided Iraq, certainly not a democratic Iraq. The New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman, a guard dog of US foreign policy, was more to the point. What Washington wanted was a successful coup by an "iron-fisted junta": Saddam without Saddam.

From John Pilger's "What They Don't Want You To Know":

http://pilger.carlton.com/print
also at: http://www.rense.com/general47/whattheydontwantyou.htm

[wtmusic]

1. good one

and, it would take a fairly large mass grave to hold the 35,000 Iraqis we've killed...

[OpenMindedDem]

4. Where did you get the number 35,000 we've killed?

Yesterday someone said it was 50,000. I'm looking for a link where these numbers are accurately reported. Thanks!

[wtmusic]

8. Took some digging to find this

This is a report put together by the UK Guardian which estimates military deaths based on extrapolations of eyewitnesses. It appears to be the best estimate to date:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,965385,00.html

Between 13,500 and 45,000. If you choose a conservative median of 25,000 and add to that 9,000 civilian deaths as compiled by Iraq Body Count:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net

you arrive at around 35K, probably more.

onedit: Welcome to DU!

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

[Beam Me Up]

9. Pilger says between 21,700 and 55,000:

From the same article linked above:

According to the non-governmental organisation Medact, between 21,700 and 55,000 Iraqis died between 20 March and 20 October last year. This includes up to 9,600 civilians. Deaths and injury of young children from unexploded cluster bombs are put at 1,000 a month. These are conservative estimates; the ripples of trauma throughout the society cannot be imagined. Neither the US nor Britain counts its Iraqi victims, whose epic suffering is "not relevant", according to a US State Department official - just as the slaughter of more than 200,000 Iraqis during and immediately after the 1991 Gulf war, calculated in a Medical Education Trust study, was "not relevant" and not news.

Edit: spelling

[wtmusic]

10. Sounds like the same numbers

I had--min and max add up to the same. You choose the range (I always lean conservative so Republicans can't say I'm being hysterical).

[OpenMindedDem]

11. Those numbers include soldiers, not just civilians

Not that one life is less important than another, I wanted the civilian total. The links provided were, as always, very helpful. Thanks

[wtmusic]

12. I always include military deaths

Though no doubt there were loathsome characters in Saddam's army...

people have a tendency to brush past the idea that 90% of them were young men who didn't give a shit about the Ba'ath party but needed a job, Dads with a family to support, guys trying to eke by in a country where sanctions had devastated the economy.

They were defending their country from a foreign invasion and our honored military 'took them out'.

Shameful.




http://www.bringhonorback.org

[lcordero]

2. here is a talking point

Elements out of the Bush I Administration coaxed Shiites to try to revolt against Saddam by saying that help was on the way. The Shiites jumped up, got smacked down, and found out that there wasn't any help on the way. The Shiites feel betrayed and they resent American occupation of their lands, just like everybody else in Iraq.

[DuctapeFatwa]

3. CNN ran that mass grave all weekend, never mentioned that it is Pa bush's

mass grave.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Show me the graves!

The only 'mass' graves that I know about are this one and the one in northern Iraq from the Iran/Iraq War when both sides gassed their own people and we sold them the supplies.

Since the beginning of the war I have scanned the Internet news services for pics of dead and injured from Bu$hler's War. I've seen pics of a few hundred bodies from the two above mentioned incidents. I have not seen any evidence of 1000's of dead. If there is, I would love to see the pictures.

[OpenMindedDem]

6. I'd like to see them too

[Cannikin]

7. Would those graves have still been there after we found Osama?

It could have waited! This war was pre planned and made a perfect distraction from Bush's failure in Afghanistan.