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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (4324)	2/18/2003 11:11:11 AM
From: lorne	Respond to of 15992

Tortured Journalist Hassan Bility Describes Six Months in Jail Posted to the web February 17, 2003 February 17, 2003 Musue N. Haddad Washington, DC Liberian journalist Hassan Bility was arrested with colleagues in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, in June 2002 and held incommunicado for almost six months as what the government of Charles Taylor called an "unlawful combatant" and "prisoner of war". During his detention he was interrogated even, he says, by President Taylor himself, and tortured repeatedly. " I am grateful to President George Bush, Mr Colin Powell - let's say I am grateful to the American government and people but I like to remind them that they should continue to mount pressure so that the other guys who are held in jail for committing absolutely no crime are set free." Full story >>> oneworld.org

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (4324)	2/18/2003 11:25:05 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15992

I am quoting CNN, who quotes Bagdad on the 35,000 civilian death toll. You would have a point if I were quoting Bagdad. There are other estimates, significantly above the 35,000 cited by CNN quoting Bagdad: The overall death toll among Iraqi civilians 12 years ago is hotly disputed. Estimates for civilian deaths as a direct result of the war range from 100,000 to 200,000. news.bbc.co.uk Daponte, a Middle East analyst, was assigned to come up with an estimate. She estimated that a total of 158,000 Iraqis were killed, with only 40,000 of them being soldiers in battle. The far greater death toll came afterward; Daponte estimated that 70,000 Iraqis died through easily preventable diseases that were suddenly made lingering and lethal by the bombing by the United States and its allies of water and power supplies, sewage systems, and roads. Of the estimated 158,000 deaths, Daponte concluded that nearly 40,000 of the victims were women and 32,000 were children. After the Associated Press ran the estimate in January 1992, Daponte was told by the Census Bureau that she was going to be fired on the basis of issuing ''false information,'' ''untrustworthiness,'' and ''unreliability.'' The Census Bureau backed down after Daponte received swift and strong support from civil libertarians and statisticians. A year later she published an even more refined report with even more grotesque numbers. In a study published in the quarterly publication of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Daponte estimated the final death toll to be 205,500. The war itself resulted in 56,000 deaths to soldiers and 3,500 to civilians. Another 35,000 people died in internal postwar fighting. The biggest single number of deaths again was to civilians after the destruction of the nation's infrastructure: 111,000. In Daponte's second analysis, the number of women who died from health effects of the war went down, to 16,500, but the number of children who died soared to 70,000. In addition, 8,500 senior citizens died. If that number is anywhere close to true, that means that far more Iraqi children died than Iraqi soldiers. Daponte now teaches population and policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. boston.com Same story in Business Week: businessweek.com