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07/20/2004 10:30:56 PM · #1 |
Originally posted by Article:
PM admits graves claim 'untrue'
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday July 18, 2004
The Observer
Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.
The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.
In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'
On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted on the Labour party website that: 'The remains of 400,000 human beings [have] already [been] found in mass graves.'
The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence reports 'to the outer limits' in the case for the threat posed by Iraq.
Downing Street's admission comes amid growing questions over precisely how many perished under Saddam's three decades of terror, and the location of the bodies of the dead.
The Baathist regime was responsible for massive human rights abuses and murder on a large scale - not least in well-documented campaigns including the gassing of Halabja, the al-Anfal campaign against Kurdish villages and the brutal repression of the Shia uprising - but serious questions are now emerging about the scale of Saddam Hussein's murders.
It comes amid inflation from an estimate by Human Rights Watch in May 2003 of 290,000 'missing' to the latest claims by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, that one million are missing.
At the heart of the questions are the numbers so far identified in Iraq's graves. Of 270 suspected grave sites identified in the last year, 55 have now been examined, revealing, according to the best estimates that The Observer has been able to obtain, around 5,000 bodies. Forensic examination of grave sites has been hampered by lack of security in Iraq, amid widespread complaints by human rights organisations that until recently the graves have not been secured and protected.
While some sites have contained hundreds of bodies - including a series around the town of Hilla and another near the Saudi border - others have contained no more than a dozen.
And while few have any doubts that Saddam's regime was responsible for serious crimes against humanity, the exact scale of those crimes has become increasingly politicised in both Washington and London as it has become clearer that the case against Iraq for retention of weapons of mass destruction has faded.
The USAID website, which quotes Blair's 400,000 assertion, states: 'If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.'
It is an issue that Human Rights Watch was acutely aware of when it compiled its own pre-invasion research - admitting that it had to reduce estimates for the al-Anfal campaign produced by Kurds by over a third, as they believed the numbers they had been given were inflated.
Hania Mufti, one of the researchers that produced that estimate, said: 'Our estimates were based on estimates. The eventual figure was based in part on circumstantial information gathered over the years.'
A further difficulty, according to Inforce, a group of British forensic experts in mass grave sites based at Bournemouth University who visited Iraq last year, was in the constant over-estimation of site sizes by Iraqis they met. 'Witnesses were often likely to have unrealistic ideas of the numbers of people in grave areas that they knew about,' said Jonathan Forrest.
'Local people would tell us of 10,000s of people buried at single grave sites and when we would get there they would be in multiple hundreds.'
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'While experts may disagree on the exact figures, human rights groups, governments and politicians across the world have no doubt that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and their remains are buried in sites throughout Iraq. |
Original article here
Its not going to look good for the US if they have killed more Iraqis in the process of liberating them than the oppressor we are freeing them from did. |
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07/20/2004 10:49:56 PM · #2 |
Another one of your political threads, huh?
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07/20/2004 11:02:39 PM · #3 |
| "doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue" -Charles Darwin |
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07/20/2004 11:06:17 PM · #4 |
job well done MadMordegon
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07/20/2004 11:26:02 PM · #5 |
The only numbers I believe are in the last paragraph of the article. All the others are just pulled out of someones butt because they have no idea...and a huge agenda.
Message edited by author 2004-07-20 23:27:35. |
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07/20/2004 11:59:02 PM · #6 |
Originally posted by Riggs:
The only numbers I believe are in the last paragraph of the article. All the others are just pulled out of someones butt because they have no idea...and a huge agenda. |
and the last part, being a direct quote from the a spokesman for the government under attack here, doesn't have any agenda at all ? I'm all for trying to get the truth through the various spin, but if all you want to accept at face value is propaganda from the current governments, I don't see the point of posting about which you believe or don't believe...
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07/21/2004 12:18:48 AM · #7 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by Riggs:
The only numbers I believe are in the last paragraph of the article. All the others are just pulled out of someones butt because they have no idea...and a huge agenda. |
and the last part, being a direct quote from the a spokesman for the government under attack here, doesn't have any agenda at all ? I'm all for trying to get the truth through the various spin, but if all you want to accept at face value is propaganda from the current governments, I don't see the point of posting about which you believe or don't believe... |
I agree with you about one thing...its fruitless to discuss politics when all it becomes is a pissing war...on both sides...and I really dont want to be a part of anymore. I never came to this site for that reason, and believe I will retire from the rant section of DPC.
Let the photos roll, thats why I came here. |
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07/21/2004 08:17:13 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Originally posted by Article:
PM admits graves claim 'untrue'
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday July 18, 2004
The Observer
Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.
The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.
In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'
On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted on the Labour party website that: 'The remains of 400,000 human beings [have] already [been] found in mass graves.'
The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence reports 'to the outer limits' in the case for the threat posed by Iraq.
Downing Street's admission comes amid growing questions over precisely how many perished under Saddam's three decades of terror, and the location of the bodies of the dead.
The Baathist regime was responsible for massive human rights abuses and murder on a large scale - not least in well-documented campaigns including the gassing of Halabja, the al-Anfal campaign against Kurdish villages and the brutal repression of the Shia uprising - but serious questions are now emerging about the scale of Saddam Hussein's murders.
It comes amid inflation from an estimate by Human Rights Watch in May 2003 of 290,000 'missing' to the latest claims by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, that one million are missing.
At the heart of the questions are the numbers so far identified in Iraq's graves. Of 270 suspected grave sites identified in the last year, 55 have now been examined, revealing, according to the best estimates that The Observer has been able to obtain, around 5,000 bodies. Forensic examination of grave sites has been hampered by lack of security in Iraq, amid widespread complaints by human rights organisations that until recently the graves have not been secured and protected.
While some sites have contained hundreds of bodies - including a series around the town of Hilla and another near the Saudi border - others have contained no more than a dozen.
And while few have any doubts that Saddam's regime was responsible for serious crimes against humanity, the exact scale of those crimes has become increasingly politicised in both Washington and London as it has become clearer that the case against Iraq for retention of weapons of mass destruction has faded.
The USAID website, which quotes Blair's 400,000 assertion, states: 'If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.'
It is an issue that Human Rights Watch was acutely aware of when it compiled its own pre-invasion research - admitting that it had to reduce estimates for the al-Anfal campaign produced by Kurds by over a third, as they believed the numbers they had been given were inflated.
Hania Mufti, one of the researchers that produced that estimate, said: 'Our estimates were based on estimates. The eventual figure was based in part on circumstantial information gathered over the years.'
A further difficulty, according to Inforce, a group of British forensic experts in mass grave sites based at Bournemouth University who visited Iraq last year, was in the constant over-estimation of site sizes by Iraqis they met. 'Witnesses were often likely to have unrealistic ideas of the numbers of people in grave areas that they knew about,' said Jonathan Forrest.
'Local people would tell us of 10,000s of people buried at single grave sites and when we would get there they would be in multiple hundreds.'
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'While experts may disagree on the exact figures, human rights groups, governments and politicians across the world have no doubt that Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and their remains are buried in sites throughout Iraq. |
Original article here
Its not going to look good for the US if they have killed more Iraqis in the process of liberating them than the oppressor we are freeing them from did. |
Oh, yeah, right! Saddam was a benevolent, paternalistic, great leader. He treated his people really nice and was working on a cure for cancer when we so rudely interrupted him!!
Joseph Goebbels right now is spinning in his grave in envy! |
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07/21/2004 08:43:49 AM · #9 |
Liberals... The best friend Saddam could ever have!
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07/21/2004 07:21:13 PM · #10 |
Originally posted by Russell2566:
Liberals... The best friend Saddam could ever have! |
I don't know why leftists are called liberals, what with their totally intolerant self-righteous attitudes towards anybody not subscribing to their political agenda. Hell, conservatives are more liberal than so-called 'liberals'. |
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07/21/2004 07:46:35 PM · #11 |
| But conservatives are basicly dishonest, greed being there guiding principle. |
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07/21/2004 07:49:37 PM · #12 |
Originally posted by MinAlex:
But conservatives are basicly dishonest, greed being there guiding principle. |
What's dishonest about having greed as a motivation ?
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07/21/2004 07:54:55 PM · #13 |
Originally posted by frychikn:
Originally posted by Russell2566:
Liberals... The best friend Saddam could ever have! |
I don't know why leftists are called liberals, what with their totally intolerant self-righteous attitudes towards anybody not subscribing to their political agenda. Hell, conservatives are more liberal than so-called 'liberals'. |
Wow. |
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07/21/2004 07:56:36 PM · #14 |
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Originally posted by frychikn:
Originally posted by Russell2566:
Liberals... The best friend Saddam could ever have! |
I don't know why leftists are called liberals, what with their totally intolerant self-righteous attitudes towards anybody not subscribing to their political agenda. Hell, conservatives are more liberal than so-called 'liberals'. |
Wow. |
Well, its a rant forum after all...
v. rant·ed, rant·ing, rants
v. intr.
To speak or write in a angry or violent manner; rave.
Message edited by author 2004-07-21 19:56:50.
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07/21/2004 08:15:47 PM · #15 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by MinAlex:
But conservatives are basicly dishonest, greed being there guiding principle. |
What's dishonest about having greed as a motivation ? |
Nothing, so long as they don't try to simultaneously claim the mantle of Christ ... I believe that greed is one of the "Seven" after all ... and "Love of money is the root of all evil" according to the prophet Timothy. I think that's just a little too far out on the extremes to allow that kind of hedging ... or would that be hypocrisy?
I know one of those "H" words will be involved somehow :)
Message edited by author 2004-07-21 20:17:29. |
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07/21/2004 08:41:45 PM · #16 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Wow. |
Well, its a rant forum after all...
v. rant·ed, rant·ing, rants
v. intr.
To speak or write in a angry or violent manner; rave. |
That is why I disagree with off topic photography disscussions to be forced into the 'rant' forum. |
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07/21/2004 08:47:21 PM · #17 |
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
That is why I disagree with off topic photography disscussions to be forced into the 'rant' forum. |
How is this a photography discussion? I like to read these arguments, mostly because of the almost superhuman level headedness of Gordon. I do appreciate that they are tolerated. But photography? |
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07/21/2004 09:05:50 PM · #18 |
Originally posted by emorgan49:
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
That is why I disagree with off topic photography disscussions to be forced into the 'rant' forum. |
How is this a photography discussion? I like to read these arguments, mostly because of the almost superhuman level headedness of Gordon. I do appreciate that they are tolerated. But photography? |
Of course this is not photography discussion, but there is a forum called "General Discussion - No other place for it? Try here!" which I find would be the more appropriate place.
Talking about politics or world goings should not be forced into a forum entitled "rant" as from the definition above does not fit.
Unfortunately I do however understand most humans like there blue sky's so..
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07/21/2004 09:11:59 PM · #19 |
| but anyways, anyone want to actually comment on the article or the situation? Anyone have any other data to add, conflicting or otherwise? |
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07/21/2004 09:44:35 PM · #20 |
| in answer to your q.... I hope so. |
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07/21/2004 09:55:16 PM · #21 |
Originally posted by frychikn:
Oh, yeah, right! Saddam was a benevolent, paternalistic, great leader. He treated his people really nice and was working on a cure for cancer when we so rudely interrupted him!! |
I would also like address this comment. What good is this? What are you trying to say?
Nothing I said or that article said is trying to say Saddam isnt a bad guy. Everyone knows he is a bad guy (that the US put in power).
The issue here is, did Tony Blair and the US overstate the facts to mislead the public to gain support for the war? |
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07/21/2004 11:34:31 PM · #22 |
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Originally posted by frychikn:
Oh, yeah, right! Saddam was a benevolent, paternalistic, great leader. He treated his people really nice and was working on a cure for cancer when we so rudely interrupted him!! |
I would also like address this comment. What good is this? What are you trying to say?
Nothing I said or that article said is trying to say Saddam isnt a bad guy. Everyone knows he is a bad guy (that the US put in power).
The issue here is, did Tony Blair and the US overstate the facts to mislead the public to gain support for the war? |
What good is this? It's just as good as anything than anyone else posts. |
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07/21/2004 11:39:52 PM · #23 |
While my husband was in Iraq he himself killed ONE Iraqi. His platoon killed 9. These were men however that were trying to hurt them and invade their camp. However, I do understand that the Military invaded their country. But these soldiers are supposed to go over there. they did not know this was going to happen when they joined. But my husband said definitly they have not killed more Iraqi's than Saddam.
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07/21/2004 11:43:24 PM · #24 |
Originally posted by frychikn:
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
I would also like address this comment. What good is this? What are you trying to say?
Nothing I said or that article said is trying to say Saddam isnt a bad guy. Everyone knows he is a bad guy (that the US put in power).
The issue here is, did Tony Blair and the US overstate the facts to mislead the public to gain support for the war? |
What good is this? It's just as good as anything than anyone else posts. |
What? |
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07/22/2004 12:21:54 AM · #25 |
Originally posted by MadMordegon:
Everyone knows he is a bad guy (that the US put in power). |
The US put in power?
His second cousin, Ahmed Hassan Bakr, became president, and Saddam was elected vice president on Nov. 9, 1969. On July 16, 1979, Saddam forced Bakr to resign and appointed himself president of Iraq and commander-in-chief of the military. |
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