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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (161623)	2/19/2003 10:40:05 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574727

Do you count the Iran-Iraq war? That gets you a million plus. Iraq claims that he killed 800k Iranian soldiers and civilians. Iraq claims 200k. Most experts believe the death toll for the Iranians is closer to 300k and for the Iraqis 1/2 that. It is hard to get any reasonable death toll for anything because they all try to make things worse or better depending on their drama of the moment. For an example, if you look into Saddam's gassing of the Kurds. The Kurds say Saddam gassed close to 100k. However someone else says its closer to 250k. Still another says its around 40k. When all is said and down, the experts know for sure one village of 5k was gassed. As for the Kurds who are no longer around, most did not die but fled to Turkey and Iran. And that is just scratching the surface of what is a complicated relationship that intertwines between Iran, Iraq and Turkey, and each of those countries with the Kurds. And lets face facts, the Kurds are a major headache for everyone. There are close to 20 million of them scattered among the three countries, and I think they have not had their own country for at least 100 years if not longer. BTW these are not nice people......in Turkey they are perceived as terrorists. They have their own paramilitary unit, the PKK, which is fighting the gov'ts of all three countries. Meanwhile, Turkey has killed 30-40k in the '80s and nearly 40k more in the 90s. Iran has done some Kurd killing as well. Again, keep in mind, all these deaths are estimates.....finding out the truth is virtually impossible. Everyone lies and exaggerates the truth for differing reasons. Think Hatfield and McCoy for hundreds of years. And so when you put Saddam in the context of this regional backdrop, and ask is he evil....yeah he is but by our standards, everyone else in the region is too......and that includes Turkey, our ally. Imagine the Mafia as countries and that's what's going on over there. Because of this mess, I don't see democracy standing a chance. All of these countries have been screwing with each for centuries, and with the notable exception of Turkey [and I say that with considerable reservation], they are either a theocracy, a monarchy and/or a dictatorship. I believe any democratic gov't would collapse within a year. Its like try to put a house of reformed coke addicts in the middle of Columbia's poppy fields. ted