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| Axis of Evil |
| Half million Iraqis will be hurt in first phase of US-led war |
| 2003-01-09 |
| IslamOnline & News Agencies According to a confidential U.N. report, nearly 500,000 Iraqis are prone to suffer serious injuries during the first phase of an attack, western media reported Tuesday, January 8. The BBCâs online news service said that the number âincludes up to 100,000 wounded in combat, and another 400,000 hurt in the devastation expected during any U.S.-led attack on Iraq.â Looks like some worst-case figures here. Prepare to have your heartstrings tugged by The Childrenâ¢... The BBC said that the report, which was posted on a website of a Cambridge University e-group, had its authenticity confirmed by the U.N. and that their correspondent said that the U.N. âhas been somewhat embarrassed by the revelation of the details of its contingency planning, given that the exercise could be interpreted as an assumption that military action against Iraq is almost inevitable.â When you're planning, you have to establish both best-case and worst-case scenarios. I notice they left out the best-case, and the likely-case, and the possible-case... The reportâs facts and figures were based in estimates by the World Health Organization which portrays the population of Iraq as just over 26 million people, said the BBC. Grown some, in the past ten years, despite all the people sanctions have "killed off"... It added that the Iraqi population is âextremely dependentâ on the government as well as aid agencies for basic needs and services such as water, electricity supplies and transportation. Funny thing that. So's the American population... âUnlike the situation prior to military intervention in Iraq in 1991, the reports says that in the present day many Iraqi people have exhausted their reserves of cash and material assets. The normal safety nets have disappeared and this relatively sophisticated and urbanized population could struggle to cope in the face of a major military attack,â said the BBC. Boy, that's tough. That's never happened before in a war, has it? On December 29, In a letter sent to U.N. Sanctions Committee Manâm Al Qadi, Iraq's interim charge dâaffaires in the U.N. said that a total of 1,614,303 people had died due to the stringent U.N. sanctions on the country since 1990. Al-Qadi said that the colossal human losses include 667,773 children under the age of five, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. Well, if I wanted to know how many people had died in Iraq due to sanctions, I'd ask the Iraqi government for the numbers. I mean, who would know better than them? And if you can't trust the Iraqi government, who can you trust? Two points here: First, the sanctions were what Iraq got when it surrendered. They were to be lifted when Iraq complied with the terms of its surrender agreement. Since they never complied, they've still got the sanctions, which makes it their choice. Second, even with the sanctions in place, there have been provisions for the gummint to take care of its civilian populace. Sammy's spent the money on palaces and guns. It's no skin off our collective fore if he screws things up in his country, for his If you spend all your money and hot women and cold beer, what's it to me when your kids go hungry? I can maybe sympathize with them, but it's not my fault, and I have no obligation to do anything about it. Anything you'd get would be out of the goodness of my heart, and if you want something out of the goodness of my heart, don't forget to ask nicely. Our beef is item first, that, having surrendered, he decided to "unsurrender." Viewed in that light, the U.S. has every justification for resuming hostilities at the point we left off. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #4 according to the WSJ last fall, the UN was holding over $21 billion in escrow under Food for Oil, waiting for Iraq to spend. Ya'll could buy a heapin' lot a T-bone fer $21 billun. |
| Posted by: john 2003-01-09 14:57:37 |
| #3 The last I heard, the Saddamites built a $100,000,000 yacht for their dictator while babies were supposedly dying. In any case, all through the sanctions period the Iraqis were bragging about how ineffective these were. Never trust philanderers and liars. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-01-09 12:44:41 |
| #2 Of course every day we delay another dozen people are raped, another dozen killed, a hundred or so tortured, and millions of people robbed by the gangsters in charge. |
| Posted by: mhw 2003-01-09 12:26:32 |
| #1 The normal safety nets have disappeared and this relatively sophisticated and urbanized population could struggle to cope in the face of a major military attack,â said the BBC. All the more reason to get this little thing going and get the job done. The sooner this mess gets cleaned up, the sooner the civilian population can be taken care of. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-01-09 12:00:37 |