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Why is the New York Times silent on massive Iraq death toll?
The corporate-controlled American media is deliberately suppressing the results of a survey that demonstrates that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused more than 600,000 deaths in the past three years—a figure that in and of itself refutes all the claims by the Bush administration that it carried out the invasion of Iraq in order to foster democracy in the Middle East. What kind of “freedom” and “human rights” can be the consequence of such a slaughter?
The major American media organizations—including the New York Times—published only brief reports on the study October 11. Taking their cue from President Bush, who declared the survey’s methodology faulty without offering any proof, the Times and other leading media outlets have dropped the subject. There have been no editorials in the Times, the Washington Post, or other major newspapers, nor any demands for a more serious response from the Bush administration.
There is no legitimate, scientific basis for rejecting the findings of this survey carried out under the auspices of Johns Hopkins, one of the leading US universities. Under the direction of epidemiologists at the college’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Iraqi interviewers visited thousands of Iraqi families throughout the war-torn country. The sample size was huge: 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in a country of 26 million people. By comparison, the CBS-New York Times poll, whose findings receive regular front-page coverage in the Times, uses a sample of 800 to 2,000 people in a country of 300 million.
If President Bush were to declare at his next press conference that the opinion polls showing 60 percent or more of the population opposed to the war in Iraq are bogus, and based on a “flawed methodology,” the Times would presumably denounce such an accusation and demand the White House provide proof of the alleged poll-rigging.
Why is a similar standard not applied to the Johns Hopkins inquiry into the excess deaths in Iraq? Is it, perhaps, because these figures would implicate all those responsible for the US military intervention—including its media apologists—in killing on a scale that deserves to be called genocide?
During the week since the Johns Hopkins survey was published, the Times has found ample space to report on the affairs of the multimillionaire Astor family, the charges against a local high school teacher of having sex with a student, and countless other news items of even lesser weight. Yet it has had no room to follow up the findings of a study, carried out with a standard scientific method—a “cluster survey”—and published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet.
As a number of public health professionals have explained in letters and blogs to leading newspapers like the Times itself and the Guardian in Great Britain, the most important data provided by the Hopkins survey is the enormous difference between the death rate reported by the surveyed families before and after the US invasion.
In the 18 months before the invasion, the more than 12,000 individuals reported 82 deaths, two of them by violence. In the 39 months since the invasion, this group saw 547 deaths, 300 of them by violence. The death rate in this surveyed group jumped from 0.7 percent to 2.5 percent, a rise of nearly 300 percent.
More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/kell-o16.shtml
There is no legitimate, scientific basis for rejecting the findings of this survey carried out under the auspices of Johns Hopkins, one of the leading US universities. Under the direction of epidemiologists at the college’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Iraqi interviewers visited thousands of Iraqi families throughout the war-torn country. The sample size was huge: 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in a country of 26 million people. By comparison, the CBS-New York Times poll, whose findings receive regular front-page coverage in the Times, uses a sample of 800 to 2,000 people in a country of 300 million.
If President Bush were to declare at his next press conference that the opinion polls showing 60 percent or more of the population opposed to the war in Iraq are bogus, and based on a “flawed methodology,” the Times would presumably denounce such an accusation and demand the White House provide proof of the alleged poll-rigging.
Why is a similar standard not applied to the Johns Hopkins inquiry into the excess deaths in Iraq? Is it, perhaps, because these figures would implicate all those responsible for the US military intervention—including its media apologists—in killing on a scale that deserves to be called genocide?
During the week since the Johns Hopkins survey was published, the Times has found ample space to report on the affairs of the multimillionaire Astor family, the charges against a local high school teacher of having sex with a student, and countless other news items of even lesser weight. Yet it has had no room to follow up the findings of a study, carried out with a standard scientific method—a “cluster survey”—and published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet.
As a number of public health professionals have explained in letters and blogs to leading newspapers like the Times itself and the Guardian in Great Britain, the most important data provided by the Hopkins survey is the enormous difference between the death rate reported by the surveyed families before and after the US invasion.
In the 18 months before the invasion, the more than 12,000 individuals reported 82 deaths, two of them by violence. In the 39 months since the invasion, this group saw 547 deaths, 300 of them by violence. The death rate in this surveyed group jumped from 0.7 percent to 2.5 percent, a rise of nearly 300 percent.
More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/kell-o16.shtml
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By Luciana Bohne
Online Journal Associate Editor
Oct 16, 2006, 12:24
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There is no longer any doubt that Bush's policy in Iraq is facilitating genocide. The recent Lancet study makes that very clear.
Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq was a premeditated and documentable conspiracy to subvert the peace -- a crime for which the Nazi elites were hanged. The war crimes Nuremberg Tribunal, Protocol, and Principles would have no qualms calling the invasion of Iraq "the supreme crime," a crime from which all other war crimes have derived, including genocide.
The war against Iraq was, as far as international law is concerned, the mother of all crimes. It violated the Constitution two, three times over, starting with violating the UN Charter, which is the "supreme law of [our] land," according to the Constitution, and encompasses the principles of the Nuremberg Judgment. The occupation violated the Geneva Conventions against mistreatment of prisoners. It violated the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the occupier's obligations 1) by failing to provide Iraqis with security and basic services, while at the same time disbanding the Iraqi army, 2) by failing to safeguard the sites of their national patrimony (National Library, museums, etc), 3) by attempting to sell off Iraqi assets, banks, services to foreign bidders 4) by altering Iraq's tax laws without representation (Bremer's "Orders"). Now comes evidence of national dying on a genocidal scale from the Lancet study.
We live in a grotesque rogue state. Its disregard for law and human life endangers the planet, yet the larger the crime grows the less we are able to fathom it. A terrible numbness envelops us. We are becoming one of "them" -- the freaks at the helm. Or, are we hoping that "elections" will deliver us from evil? We have to realize, sooner rather than later, that the only thing that stands between the horror and their victims is our willingness to oppose it. This empire thing will not stop by electing the Democrats: they
have never opposed this war. They will send more troops; they will expend more funds; they will tell more lies.
Unless they start to fear us.
We say we "support the troops." Do we know what that means?
It means supporting the death and injury not only of nearly 3,000 US troops and 20,000 casualties but also the death of over 650,000 Iraqis, the detention, torture, and disappearance of an unknown number of others, and the projected partition of the country.
It means supporting genocide by denying it. Five hundred Iraqis per day have been dying since 19 March 2003, when Bush decided to despoil, rape, plunder, poison, bomb, torture and steal Iraq from Iraqis because they were oppressed by Saddam Hussein.
More
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1317.shtml
Online Journal Associate Editor
Oct 16, 2006, 12:24
Email this article
Printer friendly page
There is no longer any doubt that Bush's policy in Iraq is facilitating genocide. The recent Lancet study makes that very clear.
Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq was a premeditated and documentable conspiracy to subvert the peace -- a crime for which the Nazi elites were hanged. The war crimes Nuremberg Tribunal, Protocol, and Principles would have no qualms calling the invasion of Iraq "the supreme crime," a crime from which all other war crimes have derived, including genocide.
The war against Iraq was, as far as international law is concerned, the mother of all crimes. It violated the Constitution two, three times over, starting with violating the UN Charter, which is the "supreme law of [our] land," according to the Constitution, and encompasses the principles of the Nuremberg Judgment. The occupation violated the Geneva Conventions against mistreatment of prisoners. It violated the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the occupier's obligations 1) by failing to provide Iraqis with security and basic services, while at the same time disbanding the Iraqi army, 2) by failing to safeguard the sites of their national patrimony (National Library, museums, etc), 3) by attempting to sell off Iraqi assets, banks, services to foreign bidders 4) by altering Iraq's tax laws without representation (Bremer's "Orders"). Now comes evidence of national dying on a genocidal scale from the Lancet study.
We live in a grotesque rogue state. Its disregard for law and human life endangers the planet, yet the larger the crime grows the less we are able to fathom it. A terrible numbness envelops us. We are becoming one of "them" -- the freaks at the helm. Or, are we hoping that "elections" will deliver us from evil? We have to realize, sooner rather than later, that the only thing that stands between the horror and their victims is our willingness to oppose it. This empire thing will not stop by electing the Democrats: they
have never opposed this war. They will send more troops; they will expend more funds; they will tell more lies.
Unless they start to fear us.
We say we "support the troops." Do we know what that means?
It means supporting the death and injury not only of nearly 3,000 US troops and 20,000 casualties but also the death of over 650,000 Iraqis, the detention, torture, and disappearance of an unknown number of others, and the projected partition of the country.
It means supporting genocide by denying it. Five hundred Iraqis per day have been dying since 19 March 2003, when Bush decided to despoil, rape, plunder, poison, bomb, torture and steal Iraq from Iraqis because they were oppressed by Saddam Hussein.
More
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1317.shtml
It would be much clearer if the people were told the truth from the start. It is U.S. big oil that is warring for the control of the the worlds oil supply. It is that the U.S. Imperialists have been overthrowing genuine independant democratic elected regimes in the middle east and imposing dictatorships throughout the area since the British awarded the U.S. big oil companies 25% of the Iraqi oil in the early 1920's. It is U.S. Big oil behind the Saudi Fuedal regime, It is U.S. big oil and its C.I.A. that put Saddam Hussein in the palace of the end after he was hired by them to assasinate the elected president of Iraq, which he did after his third try in 1963. Saddam was then the C.I.A. main man and puppet of the oil monopolies for twenty-seven years. He was the man they ordered to attack Iran in 1989 to amputate the two Iranian oil producing provinces. That war was sponsored by the Saudi king, the Kuwaiti emire, Brezninski, and the U.S. state department and its C.I.A. because the Iranians overthrew the U.S. oil puppet the shah of Iran and nationalized their own oil fields. In fact U.S. Imperialism is not in the habit of supporting genuine independent popular democracies as they do not obey the greedy U.S. Imperialist corporations agendas but rather their own popular agendas.
In this light it can be seen that the indigenous peoples of the mid-east are not in any way cared for by the U.S. Empire who sees them as so much troublesome nuisense. Therefore they practice genocide and brag about it. For instance the British Oil Companies invaded Iraq in 1917 and warred and killed over 20,000 Iraqis and awarded the U.S. twenty-five percent of Iraqi oil, and since that time the U.S. has sought to control the entire mid-east oil market with the view that they can therefore control all other world markets. Their pitch to become super-power number one is on, and is intent on making themselves the biggest empire on the planet, past , present, and future. It is warring to dissolve the anti-fascist covenants so it can use the core nazis methods of might makes right, pre-emptive strikes, and Unilateralism and genocide stark naked and in front of our eyes with impunity. The people of Iraq have lost 500,000 killed by the U.S. ordered Iraq-Iran war, 300,000 killed in the first gulf war ordered by George W's father, then 1,500,000 killed by twelve years of U.S.-U.K. imposed sanctions, then now 655,000 killed since George juniors war of nov. 2003. Add that up and you get 2,955,000 killed since 1989 all ordered by the British and U.S. Imperialists for the ownership and monopoly control of the indigenous peoples oil resources. That is war criminal activity as described by the anti-fascist Geneva Conventions of War (1949). It is much more than minor skirmishes. It is Genocide, U.S.-U.K. style and it must be stopped sooner rather than later. The big lie they use is that they support freedom and democracy. Troops out of Afghanistan, and Iraq now.
In this light it can be seen that the indigenous peoples of the mid-east are not in any way cared for by the U.S. Empire who sees them as so much troublesome nuisense. Therefore they practice genocide and brag about it. For instance the British Oil Companies invaded Iraq in 1917 and warred and killed over 20,000 Iraqis and awarded the U.S. twenty-five percent of Iraqi oil, and since that time the U.S. has sought to control the entire mid-east oil market with the view that they can therefore control all other world markets. Their pitch to become super-power number one is on, and is intent on making themselves the biggest empire on the planet, past , present, and future. It is warring to dissolve the anti-fascist covenants so it can use the core nazis methods of might makes right, pre-emptive strikes, and Unilateralism and genocide stark naked and in front of our eyes with impunity. The people of Iraq have lost 500,000 killed by the U.S. ordered Iraq-Iran war, 300,000 killed in the first gulf war ordered by George W's father, then 1,500,000 killed by twelve years of U.S.-U.K. imposed sanctions, then now 655,000 killed since George juniors war of nov. 2003. Add that up and you get 2,955,000 killed since 1989 all ordered by the British and U.S. Imperialists for the ownership and monopoly control of the indigenous peoples oil resources. That is war criminal activity as described by the anti-fascist Geneva Conventions of War (1949). It is much more than minor skirmishes. It is Genocide, U.S.-U.K. style and it must be stopped sooner rather than later. The big lie they use is that they support freedom and democracy. Troops out of Afghanistan, and Iraq now.
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