103 replies to this topic

[Shaun]

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.

http://politics.guar...1263901,00.html

Unrecorded victims

Tony Blair and others claim 300,000 bodies have been found in Iraqi
mass graves. In fact, there have been no official exhumations - or
count

Brendan O'Neill
Wednesday July 21, 2004
The Guardian

We now know that the public was misled over Saddam Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction. But have we also been misled over the even more
emotive issue of Iraq's mass graves.

There are without doubt many mass graves in Iraq, into which the
bodies of thousands of Iraqis killed by the Ba'ath regime were dumped
over the past 25 years. Coalition officials have claimed that they
contain the bodies of 300,000 Iraqis. In November last year, Sandra
Hodgkinson, then head of the coalition's mass graves action plan,
told the press that 260 grave sites had been located, which contained
the bodies of "at least 300,000".

In comments and speeches, Labour ministers and MPs have repeated this
figure time and again. Tony Blair told the Today programme in
April: "We have found the mass graves of 300,000 people already in
Iraq. It doesn't get a great deal of publicity, but it's true." At
the end of last year, Stephen Ladyman, Labour MP for South Thanet,
declared: "We are rebuilding a nation where we found 300,000 bodies
in mass graves so far." According to Denis MacShane, minister for
Europe: "We've now uncovered 300,000 bodies in mass graves, there
because of [Saddam Hussein's] torture and tyranny."

Some journalists took such comments as evidence that thousands of
bodies had already been retrieved. In a press conference with a
senior US official on November 20, a journalist asked about Blair's
claim that "400,000 [sic] bodies have been exhumed from Iraq". The US
official said: "We've seen numbers that are in the hundreds of
thousands. It's certainly absolutely at least 300,000 or more; it
could be as high as ... 500,000."

For pro-war commentators, claims that there were at least 300,000
bodies in mass graves became the trump card in debates about the war,
overriding the anti-war lobby's concerns about the failure to find
WMD or the chaos caused by the coalition's military
intervention. "According to the latest estimates, the mass graves in
Iraq contain the remains of at least 300,000 people, but we're still
arguing about whether the war was 'justified'," wrote Mark Steyn in
the Daily Telegraph.

So what is the coalition's evidence to substantiate the numbers
cited? The coalition's claims are based less on investigation and
excavation than on guesswork.

http://www.guardian....1265520,00.html


Even one death caused by Saddam or his henchmen is a terrible thing, but I don't appreciate the lies and exaggeration our so-called leaders have been spinning to justify the war.

Shaun

[CJ AEGIS]

Shaun, on Jul 22 2004, 06:10 PM, said:

only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

Yeah only 5,000 people had their lives ended.

And this type of bad estimate is nothing new...  It happened in Kosovo and in East Timor.  Guessing the number of people in mass graves is a hard task and really just finding the graves is hard.

[Ogami]

What a diabolical monster! He must be stopped.

If the critics want Saddam Hussein restored as the "legitimate" president, why don't they just say so.

If the critics don't want Saddam Hussein restored to power, they should quit their whining already.

-Ogami

[Kosh]

I think they can tell the difference between 5000 and 300,000.

[Godeskian]

Ogami, on Jul 23 2004, 01:18 PM, said:

If the critics want Saddam Hussein restored as the "legitimate" president, why don't they just say so.

I've heard this repeated a lot and I honestly don't understand it.

It is possible to both not support Saddam, and be upset about being dragged into a war on false pretenses.

[Delvo]

The issue of "false pretenses" as a cause for the war is a separate one from the issue of measuring the magnitude of something we found after we'd already done it.

[Drew]

I'm still trying to figure out which "pretenses" were false. So far they've all turned out to be true.

[Ogami]

Drew, those would be the same pretenses that John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Robert Byrd, Bob Graham, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, and Richard Gephardt argued and believed in... in 1998, that is.

-Ogami

[Godeskian]

Ogami, on Jul 23 2004, 03:40 PM, said:

Drew, those would be the same pretenses that John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Robert Byrd, Bob Graham, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, and Richard Gephardt argued and believed in... in 1998, that is.

-Ogami

I'm not talking about the American case for war, i'm talking about the British case for war.

Or can you tell me you have evidence that the 45 minute claim that Blair trumpeted was accurate?

If you do have that evidence, i'm sure Blair would love to hear about it, he's getting hammered domestically over that.

[Ogami]

Blair is an honest and decent man. His critics are simply crass opportunists who didn't care and still wouldn't care if Saddam was filling those mass graves to this day.

Funny how the peaceful pacifists didn't utter a word of protest at Saddam's atrocities, yet they jump all over Bush and Blair for putting a stop to that blood-soaked madman. Weird.

-Ogami

[Godeskian]

Quote

Blair is an honest and decent man. His critics are simply crass opportunists who didn't care and still wouldn't care if Saddam was filling those mass graves to this day.

Do you have any evidence to back up this claim that every single person who opposed Blair, supports Saddam? These two aren't polar opposites you know.

Quote

Funny how the peaceful pacifists didn't utter a word of protest at Saddam's atrocities, yet they jump all over Bush and Blair for putting a stop to that blood-soaked madman. Weird.

As someone who has been concerned with Saddams human rights abuses for a long time, i'm evidence against your claim. My feelings towards Blair and Bush have nothing to do with my opinions on Saddam Hussein, and it's disingenous to pretend that the only way one can be aggainst Saddam is by fully and without questions supporting Blair and Bush.

edited to add, i noticed you missed my question, so i'll restate it. Was the 45 minute claim factually accurate or not? Do you have evidence? If you do, why is it that Blair does not?

Edited by Cyberhippie, 23 July 2004 - 09:59 AM.

[Norville]

Ogami said:

Funny how the peaceful pacifists didn't utter a word of protest at Saddam's atrocities, yet they jump all over Bush and Blair for putting a stop to that blood-soaked madman. Weird.

Ogami, back off your blanket statements. Yeah, I tend toward pacifism, and no, I don't enjoy war, but you haven't a clue what I've protested in my life. You and G1223 tend to proclaim rubbish like the above, as if you've met all pacifists that ever existed and you just *know* that they all have the same opinions. *All* pacifists did one thing and there was no variation among them, so they're *all* bad.

You speak of "liberal arrogance" in another thread, "That is how his kind view the common man, ignorant sheep to be told what to do by their intellectual and moral betters." and "The arrogance of the liberal elite was never more disgusting as it is today." What about the arrogance of the way you post to almost everyone else around you? I guess you need to tell us how to think and what to do, to guide us in all endeavors.

I never supported what Saddam did and don't regret the fact that he was stopped -- although I do wish that he'd been stopped in the first Gulf War, so we didn't have to do this all over again. I'm tired of talking about it now, since no one listened the first time.

Now, Ogami, since Saddam was hardly the only atrocity-freak, there are a lot of other miserable countries under terrible leadership. Don't we need to go after all of those, too? Just a thought (and said pretty sarcastically, so don't lecture me about how difficult it would be to take out, say, Iran and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and, well, numerous others)...

[Ogami]

Cyberhippie wrote:

Do you have any evidence to back up this claim that every single person who opposed Blair, supports Saddam? These two aren't polar opposites you know.

I think I covered this question quite nicely on the thread where I posted a link the Irish protesters there to greet Bush and Blair the other week.

Where was a single one of these protesters during Saddam's reign, protesting his abuses and murders? They were silent.

The pacifists, from all appearances, are simply expressing their hatred of democratic leaders. They clearly are not guided by principles. If they were, they would have been horrified, not annoyed, by these reports of mass graves.

Evidence corroborating Bush and Blair is seen as unwelcome, and a lie. Why is that?

-Ogami

[prolog]

I agree with Norville.  Why, if we were after Hussein for his atrocities, are we not invading Sudan with its government-sponsored militias genociding the hell out of the country's population?  Weren't we all guilty after Rwanda?  Guess not.

[prolog]

Ogami, on Jul 23 2004, 03:16 PM, said:

The pacifists, from all appearances, are simply expressing their hatred of democratic leaders. They clearly are not guided by principles. If they were, they would have been horrified, not annoyed, by these reports of mass graves.

Hatred of democratic leaders?  Oh, that's rich.  "They dislike leaders I like; therefore, they hate democracy."

By the way, you misspelled, "They clearly are not guided by my principles."

[Ogami]

Norville, building on my response to Cyberhippie, explain to me why the "Pacifists" took every claim made by Saddam Hussein's government at face value, as the absolute truth, yet everything claimed by Bush and Blair was and is automatically declared a lie.

What is it that makes perfectly sane people take the word of a blood-soaked dictator, yet disbelieve anything our democratic leaders say? That's out of whack.

-Ogami

[G1223]

Well would you like to finish Iraq first or just get more folks killed Prolog?

It takes time to prepare for these things. or would prefer we just start bombing with napalm and cluszter bombs all the musluims in Sudan?

You ask us to consider that their are innocent folks on that side as well. Then want us to go everyway at once.

Yes I have no problem after we get thigns done in Iraq and have time to refit to go into Sudan and start killing everybody we have to in order toget them to stop. I would put the whole of the governemnt to the sword as a first step but right now we are in the middle of fixing Iraq.

I favored going into Bosnia long before Clinton finally started to. I saw Europe sitting on it's ass uncaring that someone was killing people in a death camp style right in their backyard. I was willing to accept killing the wounded serbian soldiers at clearly marked Red Cross hospitals.

Why becasue the bad guys do not play by the rules why should we. Espically when those rules are getting our guys killed in droves or the civilians we are suppose to be guarding murdered.

I favoered Clinton in 98 going into Iraq becasue it was the right thing to do based on the INTEL (same Intel folks today are poo pooing)

[Godeskian]

Quote

I think I covered this question quite nicely on the thread where I posted a link the Irish protesters there to greet Bush and Blair the other week.

Did you notice they weren't carryng 'We Saddam' banners?

Quote

Evidence corroborating Bush and Blair is seen as unwelcome, and a lie. Why is that?

dunno, i haven't seen it as either unwelcome or, after verification, a lie. So where is this evidence that the 45 minute claim was accurate. I've asked three times now.

Quote

Norville, building on my response to Cyberhippie, explain to me why the "Pacifists" took every claim made by Saddam Hussein's government at face value, as the absolute truth, yet everything claimed by Bush and Blair was and is automatically declared a lie.

When did the pacifists take every claim made by Saddam as a absolutely true? Do you have any evidence for this statement?

[Uncle Sid]

Not that I'm pushing the whole atrocities reason for the invasion, but the idea that we have to invade everyone else who has a problem because we invade one country that has an atrocity problem is not really a good argument.  Obviously, atrocities are going to be a reason to do so, but no one is pretending that atrocities were the only reason for it.  It's just another weight on the balance for war.  Countries where there have been even worse atrocities might be very poor selections for invasion for the simple reasons that a) we had no prior mandate to due to unfulfilled peace agreement obligations, b) the war is in a country where there is a civil war between two equally repugnant entities, c) the country would not be able to substantially benefit from even a successful intervention and of course, d) we don't have enough interests in the area to justify the expense and loss of lives.

[Godeskian]

G1223, on Jul 23 2004, 04:29 PM, said:

Why becasue the bad guys do not play by the rules why should we.

Because one of the things that is constantly touted is that we have the moral highground.

If we act like the people we are supposed to be trying to stop, then you cease to have that moral high ground.