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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (57339)	11/15/2002 12:27:13 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Just out of curiousity - What exactly is "Saddam's normal killing rate now"? We won't know for sure until after we free the country. But add in the casualties from the Anfal campaigns, the campaigns against the Shia (including starving the Marsh Arabs) and the general "sewer system" (to use Solzhynitzen's term) that a Stalinist state sets up for prisoners, not forgetting the tribal aspects laid on top (when you suspect a traitor, his whole family must die), it cannot be small.

To: zonder who wrote (57339)	11/15/2002 4:31:55 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Zonder, What exactly is "Saddam's normal killing rate now"? Present rate? Don't know. It's a police state. You might find this site interesting: fas.harvard.edu Not counting the war against Iran where I've seen estimates of deaths between 700,000 and a 1,000,000, he has killed at least 100,000 of his own citizens directly. I'm being very conservative. Amnesty International says hundreds of thousands. If memory serves me well, there are about 3,000,000 refugees from the regime. I think that's on the low side. Over 20 years, say, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, and before you know it, it adds up to real numbers. If you count in his responsibility for allowing the sanctions to continue, then he's killed lots more. Overview a bit out of date: web.amnesty.org [Snip] The majority of the victims of human rights violations have been Shi'a Muslims in Southern Iraq and in some districts of Baghdad, as well as Kurds in the north. Since the beginning of the 1980s hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shi'a Muslims have ''disappeared'' and their cases remain unresolved.(1) In the last 18 months a number of prominent Shi'a Muslim clerics have been killed in Southern Iraq in circumstances suggesting that they may have been extrajudicially executed possibly by government forces or forces acting on government orders. The Government's repression of Shi'a dissent has continued unabated since the failed Shi'a uprising of 1991 following the Gulf War. Those killed recently were popular religious figures viewed with suspicion by the government. One of them had reportedly publicly criticized the government's repression. Atmosphere is always important, I think. Story from the Guardian, no friend of the US: guardian.co.uk Zonder, I'm a bit of student of police states. It doesn't get much worse than Iraq. Nevermind the arguments about WMDs, etc, there is an excellent case can be made for just going in and cleaning out the cesspool - rescue the people there as a service to humanity. There is no necessity for allowing it to continue.