Cher Griffin,
You are a weak and silly man. Blather less, think more. And show some hair.

This whining pose of woe grows tiresome and archaic.

Good point, Mark, I agree with that quote.

Were there other sources for Iraqi civilian casualty numbers the BBC could have used for comparison? That's what's needed to satisfy the 2nd part of the 4th sentence in your quote.

In the absence of independent confirmation, should they have left out the Iraqi numbers? According to the 2nd sentence of your quote, no. Should they have included an article describing the general history of veracity of the various sources of the data? Perhaps, but I wouldn't expect them to do that for every piece of information they publish from every government (all of which lie on occasion).

It's entirely possible that the BBC should be ashamed of their reporting in general (I haven't seen enough to say), but I don't see what they did wrong in the case you're talking about. I thought the footnote attributing the numbers to the respective governments was sufficient for any reasonable person to recognize the biases. It worked for you, didn't it?

jleader: I'll answer with a quote from here:

An objective report gives the audience all the information needed to draw a valid conclusion. An objective report might include the latest bombastic fiction from the Iraqi Information Ministry, because an informed audience will want to know what the Iraqis are saying. But to give the Iraqi claims a weight equal to those of the Americans is decidedly non-objective, precisely because it's the reporter's job to evaluate the quality of information and the veracity of his sources, and to present the information behind those judgments as well. An objective report presents the Iraqi minister, and then shows all the evidence that his claims are false. At that point, it's perfectly objective for the reporter to draw the conclusion that the Iraqi minister is lying, because such a conclusion is warranted by the evidence. Being objective means recognizing that not everybody's point of view is equally valid or deserves equal respect.

Dammit you stupid Iraqis! Quit dancing in the street! Quit cheering! Quit tearing down statutes! Quit waiving flags! Get back in the prisons! Get back in the torture chambers! At least Saddam was elected! We're the real terrorist state! No blood for oil!

Edited by author 04-09-2003 09:34 PM
Mark, what source do you recommend for Iraqi civilian (and military, for that matter) casualties and deaths? Or should the BBC just throw up their hands and not report _any_ Iraqi casualties?

Edit: I'm not suggesting that the figures are anywhere near accurate, but the BBC needs to report something, and they _do_ attribute the source.

daen wrote :the BBC news website (news.bbc.co.uk) regularly show a small table of US and UK military casualties and deaths alongside Iraqi civilian casualties and deaths. The last time I saw the table, there were around 600 Iraqi civilian deaths.

Yes, but read the footnote: "Figures from respective governments." So if you believe that the Iraqi government ("The infidels are committing suicide on the walls of Baghdad.") is (was) as trustworthy as the US, this might be useful information. For sane people, however, it's completely meaningless -- and one more reason the BBC should be ashamed for its coverage of this war.

Now that the journalists are being deliberately targeted for attacks by the US forces, maybe they'll wake up and start asking questions.

Oh, wait, those were non-embedded journalists with Arab names who got killed...despite the fact that they were Reuters guys...

Never mind...Connie Cunt^H^h^Hhung just got fired...

i loved your personal reflections on the war on the front page of your site today. this is the first time i have visited your blog, was referred to it from collisiondetection. your essay sounded true and thoughtful, and it questioned the official line before coming to conclusions,like all intelligent people should...

sigh

so now the war part of this war is mostly over, it would seem.

and from our canadian point of view this is what i see: the americans will feast on images of celebrating iraqis and pat themselves on the back about what a good thing they've done, and the american television crews will pack up and go home, and like afghanistan, there will be little reporting on the chaos that is left in the wake of this incursion or the corrupt "government" that takes over and mops up after, or the bloody deals that are done with the resources (they were mapping afghani resources long before they even thot of setting up supply lines to feed the starving bombed out people). and the americans will get what they want: a puppet government in the middle east and contracts to supply them and their oil companies with plenty of wealth to keep the american dream alive and kicking.

Where's the tally of the dead because of the regime? Oh, sorry, one couldn't get or discuss THAT number because doing so would get you killed.

The commentary offered rings hollow when it doesn't account for 12 years of doing nothing having killed SCORES more than are likely to have died in the current conflict.

I'm certainly no fan of gun-barrel justice, but there /was no justice/ for the Iraqi people.

As for no patience? Try 12 years of patience. The US wanted to roll clear up to Baghdad in '91. The political climate was such in the UN that it was impossible to keep the coalition together for doing it. So instead, for political purposes, the peoples of the country where left to continue suffering. But hey, the UN /agreed/ so that made it A-OK.

Think seriously about what living in a totalitarian regime does to a person's psyche. Think about what a nightmare is about to rain down on the Iraqi's that sold out their neighbors in favor of Saddam's regime. That there isn't /more/ suicide bombings is a surprise, these folks that bought into abusing their fellow citizens are SCREWED. When the honest victims wake up to the fact that the former regime is gone there's gonna be a hell of a lot MORE violence.

Where's a truth and reconciliation movement being proposed by 'concerned arab neighbor countries'? There isn't one. Apparently their bonds don't stretch into humanitarian gestures.

Note, chemical weapons delivery systems are generally not man portable. It's tough to disperse the stuff in ways that are effective without using engineered delivery systems. Some dude with a can of Sarin isn't going to be able to just 'run up and splash it' on people and have it work effectively enough. Certainly nowhere near as effectively as strapping on 40 pounds of C4. Besides, chemical systems are hideously expensive compared to explosives. Literally, there's more bang to the buck.

Even so their use isn't all it's cracked up to be against an actual army, let alone one as prepared as the US/UK force.

http://www.janes.com/security/internationa...jdw030402_3_n.shtml

Is having direct orders to shoot civilians for non-compliance after 5 seconds a "soft touch"? Or is that just the way we show the civilians we "trust" them?
The way you talk about the war Paul, it would almost seem like you felt the world was black and white. It must be nice to live in such an orderly and sensible place! Darn those lefties for making it seem so Orwellian here! Who needs common sense when we can just read the paper (or have Rush Limbaugh read it for us)?
Save the U.S. from all those terrible foreigners (and liberals) before they destroy our Utopia! Lets Roll!!

My theory, and admittedly off-the-cuff: Because that means standards for proving one isn't a suicide bomber go way, way up. Think Japanese surrender tactics in the Pacific, WWII - once the Marines realized that most of the time Japanese soldiers put up a white flag, they were about to launch a suicide attack, they stopped accepting surrender.

Saddam's regime is perfectly happy to send suicide bombers, because there's no danger on their part in threatening the potential bomber's family to coerce performing the deed. If military officers, Ba'ath officials, etc, want to surrender, they still can. But if suicide bombers start using chemical weapons, our troops aren't going to be quite as inclined to trust "civilian" movements; think the unfortunate incident with the van which was destroyed a few days ago. Iraq might be able to wipe out a platoon or two with chemical suicide bombers, but that'll mean - for better or worse - no mercy in any situation that even remotely resembles a threat. Not out of malice, mind you, no matter what the anti-war left likes to think, but because it'll be unsafe not to shoot first.

To conclude: regime officials want to keep their last out, should they decide to save themselves, and indiscriminate chemical bombings will only screw themselves over.

Paul, I understand your point about the deterence effect (that's why Saddam was so reluctant to use them except when given permission by the US).

But why haven't any suicide bombers used chemical weapons?

I think Iraqi troops are (rightly) afraid of massively overwhelming reprisal if they do use WMDs, instead of the comparative soft touch they're getting now. There's something to be said for a keen sense of self-preservation; any Iraqi force that does use nerve gas on coalition troops is likely going to end up as a dark smear on the ground shortly thereafter.

Also, I'm not sure it matters how old the residues are. They're only one small part of the evidence, which keeps building every day. What kind of smoking gun do you want?

How about http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...iraq_usa_cache_dc_1 - how do you refute sarin-tipped medium-range missiles?

Paul, how old are those residues?

If Iraq has so many _effective_ WMDs, why haven't they used any?

What about the mustard gas and cyanide residue in the Euphrates River? What about the find of sarin and mustard gas in a stockpile near the Kuwait border? Did the Kurds plant those too, hmmm? Nice to see that every new find can be so easily dismissed.

Eventually - and it's going to be sooner rather than later - the amount of evidence of Iraqi WMDs is going to grow so huge as to reveal you for the easily-duped fools you are.

Thank you for your thoughtful essay here. I think it'svery important that voices like yours are heard.