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| Britain |
| Blair challenged to tally Iraq war dead |
| 2004-12-08 |
| Diplomats and peers have joined scientists and churchmen to urge Prime Minister Tony Blair to publish a death toll in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In an unusual open letter to the premier made available to Reuters, the 44 signatories said Blair had rejected other death counts from the war -- figures span 14,000 to 100,000 -- without releasing one of his own. Any totalling of the Iraqi war dead could embarrass Blair ahead of a general election expected in months in a country that opposed the U.S.-led war. The group urged Blair to commission an urgent probe into the number of dead and injured and keep counting so long as British soldiers remain in Iraq alongside their American allies. "Your government is obliged under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population during military operations in Iraq, and you have consistently promised to do so," they wrote in the letter to be published on Wednesday. "However, without counting the dead and injured, no one can know whether Britain and its coalition partners are meeting these obligations." The inquiry, they added, should be independent of government, conducted according to accepted scientific methods and subjected to peer review. Signatories included Air Marshal Sir Timothy Garden, who spent 32 years in the military; Sir Stephen Egerton, a former British ambassador to Iraq; human rights campaigner Bianca Jagger and the Lord Bishop of Coventry, Colin Bennetts. |
| Posted by:God Save The World |
| #13 Come on, people. Since when is counting civilian deaths in this "war" a bad idea? Don't get distracted by the secondary issues. This is a war against no clearly determined enemy and innocent people are dying. We should know about it. The fact that Blair said no is clear indication he is hiding something and afraid of the truth. Sure we should have counted Saddam's atrocities and everyone else's for that matter, but just because we didn't, does this mean we shouldn't now? |
| Posted by: reesh 2004-12-21 6:02:27 AM |
| #12 Bleeding hearts always want to count caskets instead of honor the fallen for the cause in which they died to advance. Disgusting. |
| Posted by: Capt America 2004-12-08 6:27:36 PM |
| #11 Got this from here: Since retiring from the RAF, he has been closely involved in developing foreign and security policy for the Liberal Democrats. He is now a member of both the Federal Executive and the Federal Policy Committee. He is deputy Chairman of the National Liberal Club. He became a Life Peer in June 2004. His wife, Sue, is the Lib Dem prospective parliamentary candidate for Finchley & Golders Green, and they live in Hampstead. I see the missus is up for something in the Liberal Democratic Party. Could that explain why Sir Timothy Garden is making such a fuss? Goddam those facts! They get in the way of a perfectly decent agenda-pushing 'news' item. I guess what were once considered press releases are now 'stories.' |
| Posted by: badanov 2004-12-08 8:19:01 AM |
| #10 More fetishization of Vietnam. Odd that they never demanded a body count from Pol Pot, or Hugo Chavez, or Castro, or the Sandinistas. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-12-08 8:07:28 AM |
| #9 ed and SPOD...right you are. |
| Posted by: 2b 2004-12-08 7:25:33 AM |
| #8 It's easy. 3654821067 |
| Posted by: gromgorru 2004-12-08 7:03:16 AM |
| #7 SpoD, Hear!, Hear! |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-12-08 6:23:58 AM |
| #6 See this is the story, any Iraqi killed is the fault of Tony and George no matter who did it or why. That is all these people are any good at tearing stuff down. They haven't built up one thing good in their whole useless LLL life. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-12-08 5:07:17 AM |
| #5 It's not about dead Iraqis. Otherwise they would want an accounting of the 1 million missing during Saddam's rule. Well not entirely missing. More than 300,000 have been found so far and new mass graves are being discovered. Why didn't Sir Stephen Egerton and the others speak up when they were in positions to do something about it? |
| Posted by: ed 2004-12-08 4:26:36 AM |
| #4 What a motley crew. They have too much time on their hands. I'm not sure why it's up to Blair to try to count Iraqi dead. Since when is it the job of one side to count the dead of their enemy? Surely the will and the means to get an accurate tally of Iraqi dead should come from the Iraqis themselves? Or am I missing something here? |
| Posted by: Bryan 2004-12-08 4:08:50 AM |
| #3 It would also be interesting to keep a tally of how many Iraqi civilians have been killed at the hands of insurgents and how many bodies are plucked from mass graves. |
| Posted by: Howard UK 2004-12-08 4:06:52 AM |
| #2 Tony should come down hard on these clowns. He won't however. The left love to eat their own. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-12-08 1:01:50 AM |
| #1 Bianca Jagger - The Sandinesta? Really? |
| Posted by: 3dc 2004-12-08 12:49:03 AM |