How many arabs killed by Americans?

[BCPVP]

To Sirio11:
"I'm not a Democrat, I'm pro-life; pro free-trade; against taxes; against big goverment; but mostly anti-war."
You say this but then you say this:
"So, I think we should use our energy to change things we can; and since we live here in the US, the Iraq war is one of them; well, at least I like to think that we can do something about it. We should do something about Sudan also."
Which is it? Should we use our eneregy to change regimes like Saddam's, or should we not go to war?
And then...
"but I dont believe the insurgents fighting now are evil people and deserved to be killed."
You don't believe that a group of people who will behead a defenseless person on their knees and videotape it are evil?
That's pretty close to the definition of evil.
Former Baathists and foreign terrorists don't give a damn about the Iraqi people so that's why you see dozens of civilians killed in those car bombs for every one or two soldiers. Their not trying to "liberate" anyone. They're trying to kill as many people as they possible can.
That's evil.

[dana33]

The way you win wars is by killing the enemy. So, if the U.S. has not killed at least 10 times as many Arabs in Iraq as vice versa, then I'd say our military is not doing its job (possibly because they are hamstrung by the rules of engagement). We won WWII by killing far more Germans and Japanese than the number of Americans they killed.

[BadgerAle]

["but I dont believe the insurgents fighting now are evil people and deserved to be killed."
You don't believe that a group of people who will behead a defenseless person on their knees and videotape it are evil?
That's pretty close to the definition of evil.
Former Baathists and foreign terrorists don't give a damn about the Iraqi people so that's why you see dozens of civilians killed in those car bombs for every one or two soldiers. Their not trying to "liberate" anyone. They're trying to kill as many people as they possible can.
That's evil. ]

Is it also evil to torture and videotape prisoners for your own amusment? Or to kill people to get oil and profits?
If so then using your system of generalisation the US-army-goverment-nation is evil- Something that a lot of people in iraq believe.

As I've posted i may as well add my two cents on iraq- At the beginning of the Iraq war i was marginally in favor, now the country is in ruins, the aims given for the war have been exposed as lies, anti-west sentiments (which will lead to new terrorists) have been increased greatly. The country has become violently divided in race and religion and it seems probable that the country will become a islamic state before to long. The only fall-back reason left to Bush and his supporters is that Sadam was a mass murderer and its a good thing that hes gone, while this is true it is exaggerated and repeatedly stated by bush and his supporters (who never cared about it anyway) because its the ONLY REASON THEY HAVE LEFT that and oil. I think iraq was better off with a occasional mass murderer (Sadam not Bush [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]).

by the way i don't consider myself perticularly liberal but i am a bit dyslexic so sorry for any type errors.

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Is it also evil to torture and videotape prisoners for your own amusment? Or to kill people to get oil and profits?

[/ QUOTE ]
1) I need to know whether you meant to say interrogating or you are just parroting what the loony left say. I certainly haven't seen any videotapes of us torturing prisoners, but I have seen video of terrorists cutting off heads.
2) What you believe is the reason for this war is your opinion. And your opinion is wrong by the way.

[ QUOTE ]
As I've posted i may as well add my two cents on iraq- At the beginning of the Iraq war i was marginally in favor, now the country is in ruins, the aims given for the war have been exposed as lies, anti-west sentiments (which will lead to new terrorists) have been increased greatly.

[/ QUOTE ]
1) Marginally in favor sounds like being agnostic. You're sitting on the fence just waiting for one side to do well. From the rest of your post, you don't sound like you were ever in favor of this war, or you are going out of your way to ignore all the good that's been done.
2) And the country wasn't "in ruins" to start with? This wasn't Beverly Hills. If you ever get a chance to read "Hell is Over" (and I strongly suggest you do), you will hear over and over that of 5,000 Kurdish villages, about 4,500 have been destroyed. While we certainly have destroyed some infrastructure of military importance, we are also rebuilding critical parts of the infrastructure, like utilities, schools, and government buildings. We could, like past nations that defeated a country, just left it that way, but we didn't. We've gone out of our way and spent billions to fix up Iraq. Totally opposite of what an uncaring nation would do.
3)One reason for going to war has turned out to be wrong. Not a lie. Just wrong. Every other nations' intelligence services(as well as our own) said he had WMDs. But that's one reason out of a half-dozen or so that was wrong. How many reasons were there to go to Yugoslavia? If you want to look at it as stopping the genocide against the Kurds. There's what, about 400,000 people in mass graves in Iraq?
4)Another opinion. You have no way to measure how or if more terrorists have been created by this. The Kurds certainly appreciate our efforts.

[ QUOTE ]
The country has become violently divided in race and religion and it seems probable that the country will become a islamic state before to long. The only fall-back reason left to Bush and his supporters is that Sadam was a mass murderer and its a good thing that hes gone, while this is true it is exaggerated and repeatedly stated by bush and his supporters (who never cared about it anyway) because its the ONLY REASON THEY HAVE LEFT that and oil. I think iraq was better off with a occasional mass murderer (Sadam not Bush [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]).

[/ QUOTE ]
1) The country was violently divided by religion to begin with. The Sunnis ruled over the Shia majority. And they ruled with an iron fist.
2) This is like saying that the Jews were better off when Hitler was in power. What kind of asinine thinking is this?! Ever read about what Saddam has done as far as torturing people? Raping children and wives in front of their husbands, feeding people into woodchippers and acid baths, whipping people with metal cords, using electricity on peoples' genitals, all the while having their families forced to watch? Add to that the people who were just beat and executed for no reason. You'd rather a nation lived under that sort of treatment??? You disgust me.

[bholdr]

number of people killed by people.

[BadgerAle]

[ QUOTE ]
[Is it also evil to torture and videotape prisoners for your own amusment? Or to kill people to get oil and profits?


1) I need to know whether you meant to say interrogating or you are just parroting what the loony left say. I certainly haven't seen any videotapes of us torturing prisoners, but I have seen video of terrorists cutting off heads.]

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is a link to one reported example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3708157.stm There seems to many reports of abuses committed by american soldiers to be doubted.Is the american press not covering these stories?


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2) What you believe is the reason for this war is your opinion. And your opinion is wrong by the way

[/ QUOTE ]

The only clear object in iraq is the worlds second largest oil reserve. I don't believe you can not tell me with any honesty that this is not why america went to war. I believe that the US administration DID NOT go to war with the aim of helping iraqi people very high on its list.

[ QUOTE ]
1) Marginally in favor sounds like being agnostic. You're sitting on the fence just waiting for one side to do well. From the rest of your post, you don't sound like you were ever in favor of this war

[/ QUOTE ]

When i said I was marginally in favour i meant that i didn't know but was leaning towards it being a good thing, so yeah kind of agnostic but you make it sound like a football match. I like everyone had an interest in it working out.

As for your points on the terribleness of sadam's iraq I will concede some amount as it is not yet certain wether iraq will become a better place. What i would ask you to concede is any benifical humanitarian results are the exuse for the invasion not the reason. I don't believe that Bush was worried about WMDs as even if people believed he had them (this is suspect) he showed no desire to use them.
This is beginning to sound cliched but.. The driving motivation is oil- any other reasons just gave a acceptable climate for invasion.

[BCPVP]

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There seems to many reports of abuses committed by american soldiers to be doubted.Is the american press not covering these stories?

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To death.
But don't mistake individuals inflicting their own sadistic pleasures on prisoners and a policy of doing this to almost all prisoners. Enough of the moral equivalency. Did Saddam have trials for those that were found guilty of inflicting the torture they did?

[ QUOTE ]
The only clear object in iraq is the worlds second largest oil reserve. I don't believe you can not tell me with any honesty that this is not why america went to war. I believe that the US administration DID NOT go to war with the aim of helping iraqi people very high on its list.

[/ QUOTE ]
1)We still haven't gotten over the "what is a fact vs opinion", I see. If we wanted their oil, we could have just lifted the sanctions. We wouldn't have to spend the billions and billions to invade and topple Saddam. So that theory doesn't make any sense at all. But keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.
2)So now that we've established that the only for oil theory is bogus, you'd have to ask yourself, why we'd need to topple Saddam.
Well, one could say for the same reason we toppled Milosevic. Certainly what Saddam has done (and continued to do) is equal or greater the horror of what Milosevic was doing. If you go this route, then you'd have to acknowledge that the UN has totally screwed up the Milosevic thing. The man is STILL on trial for Pete's sake! So if we were going to topple Saddam for humanitarian reasons, we'd have to do it ourselves to ensure that the man isn't on trial forever and justice is actually done. (I strongly suggest you read "Hell is Over". It's testamonials from Kurdish victims of Saddam's regime)
Since we're already in there, we'd have to rebuild the place so that such a dictator won't arise again. It also makes sense to rebuild because a functioning country is a country other countries can do business with. That's about as close to a "for oil" argument as it gets. But a country that has functioning schools and universities will produce more productive people who can contribute more entreprenurial ability to the world. Everyone wins.

But even that wasn't our only reason (although I argue, using the Yugoslavia incident as an example, that it could be justified that way). Since 9-11, we've committed to the Bush Doctrine of aggressively persuing terrorists and the states that harbor/support them. Iraq was most certainly a country that harbored and supported terrorists. Instead of boring you guys with all the details, I recommend you read either The Connection, by Stephen Hayes, or this website:
http://husseinandterror.com . The website includes pictures and sources for the picky.
Now I would argue that even though we had toppled the Taliban, I don't think terrorists quite grasped how serious we were. I think one might be able to argue that Saddam was made an example of, to show that we were dead serious. EVERYONE acknowledges that Saddam was a bad guy and the world is better off without him. Around the world there are horrible dictators who abuse their citizens. Now we can't go around willy-nilly and change every one of them. But we can make an example of one or two to show that we aren't kidding around.

[ QUOTE ]
As for your points on the terribleness of sadam's iraq I will concede some amount as it is not yet certain wether iraq will become a better place. What i would ask you to concede is any benifical humanitarian results are the exuse for the invasion not the reason. I don't believe that Bush was worried about WMDs as even if people believed he had them (this is suspect) he showed no desire to use them.

[/ QUOTE ]
I say reason, you say excuse. I would ask you whether it would have been a good idea to go to war with Germany, knowing about the Holocaust, even if we weren't attacked.
Or was going to war with Yugoslavia a good idea? That seems to be solely based on humanitarian reasons.
Showed no desire to use WMDs??? Once again, I ask that you read "Hell is Over". Saddam most certainly DID use WMDs on the Iranians as well as hundreds if not thousands of Kurdish villages.
"Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities."
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_...ap1.html#sect1

The driving motivation wasn't oil and I've shown why not.

[BadgerAle]

[ QUOTE ]
We wouldn't have to spend the billions and billions to invade and topple Saddam. So that theory doesn't make any sense at all. But keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

[/ QUOTE ]

there is another thread going specifically about the oil question so we should argue that there. I will add that if you don't know the counter arguments to this i am worried that you have been delibratly exposing yourself only to information that suits your own ideas. (See my post on the oil thread, sorry i don't know how to link it)

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But keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would like to keep this objective but you do sound a bit pathetic here.

[ QUOTE ]
So now that we've established that the only for oil theory is bogus

[/ QUOTE ]

lol, i am tempted to stop reading here but lets continue...

A lot of this depends on the truth of the above quote so i won't respond.

I just want to say that unlike some people i do not criticise america for the sake of it or assume that US is always immoral. Even with (my perceived) self interested american oil motivation the war can be a good thing for iraq if done right- consideration to the people. i just don't believe that it has been.

[BCPVP]

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Even with (my perceived) self interested american oil motivation the war can be a good thing for iraq if done right- consideration to the people. i just don't believe that it has been.

[/ QUOTE ]
Then I guess we're at an impasse. I'm not going to try and convince you of something that it sounds like you don't want to be convinced of anyway.

[John Cole]

[ QUOTE ]
If we kill a mass murderer, should we bewail the fact that we killed a person? Or should we consider that we saved a bunch of people whose identities we will now never know?

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What happened to the pro-life stance, BGC?