Thursday, August 16, 2007

IRAQ - Inside View 8/16/2007

"Hide & Seek...again !" by Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

You know something, this business with figures is starting to really aggravate me. I understand that you can count very well, when it comes to dollars...This we all know. But why is it when it comes to killings, you conveniently misplace numbers ?

In previous posts, "An Add'h'olic" and "Let's call...", I alluded both directly and indirectly as to the number of deaths in Iraq. I even asked you to check the series of correspondence between Gabriele Zamparini, the Guardian and Znet.

I maintain that the Iraq Body Count figure of 70'000 is shameful to say the least.

I have also said on numerous occasions, that even the Lancet figure of 655'000 Iraqis dead is obsolete by now. I was slightly relieved to see that some websites did publish the more accurate figure of 1 million +. I reiterate yet again, the figure is greater than 1 million+.

I have also said that prior to the invasion the total population of Iraq was approximately 24 million in 2003.

German figures for 1997, placed the population number at 22.5 million. Remember that 1990-2003 were sanctions years and we lost 1.5+ million people during those 13 years.

I have also mentioned the famous Bremer question time and time again, when he asked one of the persons in his bureau in Baghdad what the population was and when the answer given was 24 million, he said let us bring it down to 5 or 6 million, that should be enough.


There is much more in the full article

We Americans need to remind ourselves that it is not just American lives being lost in Iraq.

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"Bush’s War Forces Iraqi Women Into Prostitution" by Ken Grandlund, Bring It On


We went over to “win hearts and minds” while establishing “democracy in the Middle East” and saving America from a “looming mushroom cloud” of nuclear decimation perpetuated by Saddam Hussein. None of that has come to pass. What we have managed to achieve is increased hatred for America in the region, a hopelessly degrading civil war at foot, and no sign of the so-called WMD’s anywhere. Add turning pious Muslim women into prostitutes so they can feed their kids to the list of grand achievements America has realized under the woefully inadequate eye of George W. Bush.

According to this CNN report, Iraqi women are being forced into prostitution just to keep their families alive. And when I say “forced” I don’t mean that armed gangs are dragging them out of their homes and savagely raping them , tossing a few dinars at their feet. I mean that the country is in such a shambles, and so many men have been killed in sectarian violence, that family matriarchs are choosing to sell their sexual wares for food money just to keep their children from starving. In a country where religion often sees walking hand in hand or kissing in public as an affront to modesty and piety, these women are abandoning all their religious traditions and risking certain death upon discovery by family members simply to eat.

Kudos Dub’ya- you managed to become the Pimp of Iraq, albeit as a consequence of your incompetence.

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