Is this one. It’s one of the reasons why I have no time for Iraq war pushers. It’s one of the reasons why one of my friends used to say that the person who will wipe a major US city off the face of the planet has probably been born.
Read it. Feel the hatred.
I’m not against all war. But the bar is VERY high. This is why.
The entire Iraq war was one large war crime. Everyone who voted for it in Congress is a war criminal. It is the exact same crime Nazis were hung for at Nuremberg. The exact same one.
Weep bloody tears, and pray that you don’t reap as you have sowed. And understand that this is one reason you have to live in a surveillance state. It is, in part, a desperate attempt to manage “blowback.”
Celsius 233
Stunning! The thin veil of Maya is finally lifting.
It’s very late…
Michael Collins
When you put people in a war zone with no exit, you get barbaric behavior. The invasion of Iraq was illegal, immoral, and predicated on lies. The predicted outcome came true – unbridled civil strife leading to countless deaths. Many of those were committed by the Iraqis against each other. They too were placed in situation where barbarism reigned.
Who is responsible? No one signed up for barbarity. The situation that resulted in injuries, deaths, and destruction on a grand scale came from leaders. Bush I used a fake nurse to testify to Iraqi soldiers killing babies as the pretext for the first invasion. Those present knew or found out what the story was. Nobody talked. Clinton ran a total sanctions regime against Iraq. The result was 225,000 children under fuve dead. Then the Bush crew delivered Iraq II, the greater horror.
The leaders are the truly guilty parties, the ones who need to go on trial. They should be the focus of blame and condemnation.
The thread is highly instructive and very sad since the leaders are bypassed. At the same time, were I the Iraqi woman, I would likely be saying the very same things.
Ian Welsh
Note her experiences during the sanctions before the war. If I had held children in my arms as they died, knowing that the West was embargoing medicine that could have saved them, I would be fucking homicidal.
Be sure that most Muslims and no Iraqis have forgotten Madeline Albright’s famous words about 500K dead Iraqi children being “worth it”.
The person who fucked up most was Papa Bush, by not finishing the job (the Saudis and the other oilarchies were footing the bill, and didn’t want Hussein overthrown, just humbled.)
One of my first posts ever for BOP News was on errors with the Iraq war occupation. I had a list of, oh 30 odd things they had done wrong. Commenters added many more, most of them were valid.
War is bad, but the Iraq occupations was criminally and ideologically incompetent. I recall an Iraqi Colonel at the time, who was mystified. He wrote that what you do is blow in to Baghdad, have a list of proscribed people, and tell everyone else to show up for work tomorrow. You choose who’s going to run the country, and you’re out in 6 months, tops. And the new leadership tows the line because they know you can take them out any time.
The sheer fucking incompetence of the Iraq war was mindboggling. I used to joke that it’s the textbook for EVERYTHING you can do wrong. Bush’s administration may have been the most stunningly incompetent I’ve seen in my lifetime. Only Bush could make Obama, who is also a fucking putz, look good.
No war is good, but the Iraq war was beyond fucked up. And from what MFI says, the Syrian war is worse.
Jessica
The incompetence of the US invasion of Iraq and the failure of the elite to rein this in (for their own sake) and the financial meltdown in 2007-2008 (and still lingering) and the failure of the elite to make any changes both require explaining.
Here is my theory: the current elite is, and has been for nearly half a century now, historically obsolete. It has no remaining historical function. Therefore, there is no purpose around which ethics or morality of any kind can coalesce and the elite itself is held together only by the desire to stay in power. Other than that it is free-for-all(-of-the-elite) plunder.
This also suggests that this elite will not be capable of reform but will do only what helps it stay in power a little while longer. This will make the road more painful (for us) but perhaps shorter than if they were capable of intra-elite discipline and strategic concessions (such as the New Deal).
Mandos
The incompetence was “intentional”—not in the sense that they necessarily wanted to be incompetent in that sense, but because they wanted to prove a theory that was obviously wrong. They put Michael Ledeen’s quite young daughter in charge of a good chunk of the Iraqi economy, because she sang the right ideological tune. Here’s an unintentionally horrifying article on the Simone Ledeen episode that was so emblematic of the whole thing. This mostly leaves out what they were actually trying to *do* (institute a Randroid paradise on what they felt was now a tabula rasa). The last two pages are the kicker here, so horrifying yet so predictable. “It’s not okay, little girl.”
Ideological labels matter.
Badtux
One thing to understand is that 90% of the elite did not in any way earn the wealth and power that they enjoy. They are winners of the lucky sperm club, born with a silver foot in their mouth. They may have native intelligence, but they have never in their entire life been required to actually use it or exercise it. They are intellectually incurious because they have never had the need to be intellectually curious, they are in thrall to idiotic ideologies with dire consequences for the “littles” because they themselves have never had to learn about consequences in their lives since they were born to a position above consequences, and they don’t plan for the future because as long as they have wealth and power, their future is assured.
George W. Bush is a perfect example of our modern elites — born on third base and thought he hit a triple, intellectually incurious, not inherently a stupid man but ignorant because he never in his life had to learn things to get ahead, and furthermore, not at all concerned about that fact. But the rest of our elites are no better (the 10% who actually had to be on the ball to get there being the exception). Think Paris Hilton — vacuous, famous for being famous, good for nothing Paris Hilton. This is the end game of having an inbred nobility based upon inherited wealth ruling our nation rather than a meritocracy where people rise to the top based on intelligence, wit, and skill. It is toxic to democracy, and furthermore, as we are seeing now, toxic to the nation.
Formerly T-Bear
To say the government of the United States was incompetent is nearly the war crime itself. the congress, the administration, the military, the courts, the political parties and the population – ALL were totally and fully competent. Furthermore, responsibility rests upon their necks like a dead albatross, for all time. No, these were not incompetent principals, these were insane principals, principals self disconnected from reality itself, besotted on the drugs of hubris, intoxicated with the liqueurs of phantasmal wealth, indulging themselves on luxurious beds of exceptionalism and self-pleasuring in faux-christian morality. The intentionality of what was done exposes the crime, covering all with the fine red mist of bloody guilt from the round entering between the eyes of justice, leaving a decapitated corpse.
No, to say incompetence was the cause is as egregious as renumbering those half million children dead having the approbation of Madam Albright, now graciously eroded to a mere 225,000 souls who will never grow and mature, have families and children of their own, see another sun set, or inspire to poets. A willful crime is done. The criminals are at large – still. Massive graves now are, the spirits of those there call for justice before they quit troubling the dreams of those they left behind.
Is it not possible to at least preserve the memory of the mere numbers of those whose lives have been foreshortened by our acts, their names legion beyond recall, their faces beyond sight and their dreams beyond count. To do less is to dishonour life itself.
Ian Welsh
Yes, Mandos, I am aware of what their ideological axe was and I (of all people) agree that ideology has consequences. One of those consequence is making you stupid if your ideology doesn’t match reality. But if you put in-bred 20-somethings in charge of major projects, well, that’s incompetence on top of ideology.
Badtux: yeah, not disagreed. The generation of leaders who were competent is virtually gone. People like Rupert Murdoch are the last of them (think what you will about him, he was competent), but they’re OLD.
Rich
“Be sure that most Muslims and no Iraqis have forgotten Madeline Albright’s famous words about 500K dead Iraqi children being “worth it”.”
Not only Iraqis. She was heard and is remembered in many other places.
“The person who fucked up most was Papa Bush, by not finishing the job (the Saudis and the other oilarchies were footing the bill, and didn’t want Hussein overthrown, just humbled.)”
And here you go!
Here you are good ole “Yankee go home”. What part of “go home” you people don’t understand? Just GO HOME, keep your own murderers in your own backyard.
You say Bush was guilty of “not finishing the job”? Who appointed you police of the world? Who assigned you people “the job”? Why do you think you are entitled to interfere in other people’s affairs?
And then in a typical way you start talking about “incompetence” and stuff. Is it all technical with you? Will you first say killing a baby is bad and right after that start discussing if the technique used to kill him was efficient, if the bullet was powerful enough?
Sorry, I know you mean well, but even when meaning well you go into this… I guess it is cultural, inbred. But you should just get it, you don’t mess into other people’s affairs.
It’s difficult enough for the people involved to know what’s right, and in you come charging like an elephant in a bazaar with your own half baked ideas of how life should work and with no idea at all about what is at stake and what are the fine points of the situation.
And of course you justify yourselves saying “they called us”, “people ask us to intervene”… bullshit! Those who call you have their own interests in mind and are probably in your payroll.
Ufff! That was a big rant. Had to get it out of my system. Sorry
someofparts
One dreadful thing has occurred to me that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else.
Americans, as a people, stopped the war in Vietman. So, we should be able to force the fuckers in charge out of Iraq too, if the will were there in sufficient numbers.
But the will is not there for enough people because we no longer have the draft. We stopped Vietman because so many of our asses were on the line. If the “only” ones dying are marginalized Americans and foreigners, not enough of us care to stop the nightmare.
alyosha
I feel as you do about the Iraq war, and what’s so shocking to me is that practically nobody cares. The look of incomprehension and revulsion I got from one of my acquaintances when I tried to explain to her the reasons behind April’s Boston Marathon bombing said it all, for me.
Just saw Dirty Wars, a documentary by Jeremy Scahill and recommend it. Sobering, chilling look at the Joint Special Operations Command, which has basically reinvented warfare over the last decade. They now run covert ops all over the world, turning the entire world into a battlefield. They were extremely secretive and limited in scope in the early years of Iraq/Afghanistan, but with their killing of bin Laden, they’ve become more visible, cheered on by the full approval of the US government. This includes taking out US citizens, anybody the President deems a target. Their hit lists grew from a few handfuls of people in the early years, to hundreds, then to scores of countries where no war has been declared. Many times innocent bystanders were killed, which of course feeds the hit lists.
It’s like a cancer that’s entirely out of control, and yet cheered on by the host. There is absolutely no end, until 1) financial exhaustion, or 2) the US suffers a severe enough blow that people wake up from their complacency.
Ian Welsh
No. Saddam invaded another country, at that point, he loses his legitimacy. Overthrowing him at that point was the right thing to do. It was especially the right thing to do after the US encouraged Iraqis to rebel and let Saddam slaughter them. If Bush I was not going to ovethrow Saddam he should have never told Iraqis to rebel.
The absolute rule against intervention leads ugly places. Ask the Rwandans.
The key is not to have an absolute rule of “never interfere in other countries”, the key is to know when and how. If we can’t do it in a way that doesn’t cause less harm (over time) than the status quo then we should stay out. (In Iraq, most of the army was already destroyed, finishing off the Republican Guard is not that much more damage.) Since intervention is tricky, we should err on the side of caution. But a blanket rule against is, imo, ethically wrong.
(Yes, I am aware of what that says about the US invasion of Iraq and US legitimacy.)
S Brennan
Bush/Iraq was/is asinine…
But so too is Obam/Libya…
Same crime…but it’s okay when a Democratic admin does it.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/destroying-a-country-s-standard-of-living-what-libya-had-achieved-what-has-been-destroyed/26686
Rich
“The key is not to have an absolute rule of “never interfere in other countries”, the key is to know when and how. If we can’t do it in a way that doesn’t cause less harm (over time) than the status quo then we should stay out. (In Iraq, most of the army was already destroyed, finishing off the Republican Guard is not that much more damage.) Since intervention is tricky, we should err on the side of caution. But a blanket rule against is, imo, ethically wrong.”
The key is that the US should not feel it has a special status. You are not the sheriff of the world. Nobody appointed you. Yours is not the only voice to be heard. If you “have” to intervene then do it as part of a multinational force, like everybody else does. And as soon as the thing is solved GET THE FUCK OUT. You don’t have the right to impose your kind of democracy/govt/morals over other people, let THEM sort it out.
markfromireland
Ian,
Thanks for this. Maryam is still going strong and still practicing as a pediatric oncologist. She’s still running a network of orphanages and she still travels into the provincial backwaters to run clinics for people too poor to be able to afford to bring their children into the cities.
Just got home and am grabbing the chance while my supper is cooking to talk about Iraki orphans. One way or another between Zakat and Khums and our membership of various charities “Guides” team members are responsible for an awful lot of orphans . There are a bit more than 5 million orphans in Irak that’s 5 MILLION children without either a father or mother. Then there are the families headed by widows these families number somewhat over a million.
Whenever Americans try to pretend to me that the civilian casualties of the American invasion and occupation of Irak were any number less than one million I point out that 5 children is a fairly small family by Iraki standards and is consistent with the father being relatively young when he was killed. Then there’s the one million widows. Even if you were to factor in the somewhere between 150,000 to 340,000 Iraki casualties of the Iran Irak war (See Federation of American Scientists estimate here: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/appf.pdf ) you still get more than a million males who had fathered children dead as a result of the American war against the Iraki people.
So a lot orphans. Children who live in considerable poverty and who know WHY their lives are so hard and WHO it was who did it to them – the people of the USA and their armed forces.
One of our orphanages and one that has a special place in my heart is in Dhul Kifl a town a bit past al-Hillah and named after the prophet buried there the prophet whom the Arabs call D’hul Kifl and we call Ezekiel. The orphanage is sufficiently large that it has its own schools we pay a bit more than the average teacher’s salary and they get free housing to boot so we get better than average teachers. One of these teachers is a brilliant exponent of the traditional Iraki literary forms in particular the narrative poem. She’s fired many of the kids with her enthusiasm and teams from our orphanage’s school have done very well in regional and national competitions in this art form. There are competitions for reciting traditional stories and poems and competitions for reciting stories and poems. My last visit – a few weeks ago I joined some of the kids as they worked through a new narrative poem to be recited during Ramadan.
They hate you and they despise you and not only do they have the right to hate and despise you they are right to do so. Five million with horrid lives no prospects and absolutely nothing to lose. Five million. What a weapon.
I’ll finish with a joke some of the younger kids told me. It’s relatively mild.
Q: What’s the difference between a plague carrying rat and an American?
A: The rat did not choose to be what it is.
Five million.
mfi
Ian Welsh
Rich,
I’m not American.
alyosha
@mfi – thanks so much for this, your post really puts a face on it, 5 million of them in fact. I remember crying the day we invaded, March 23, 2003, because I knew how wrong we were. It just boggles my mind how few of my countrymen even get this, to this day. What a weapon indeed.
Ken Hoop
Ian says the “key is to know when and how” to conduct interventions.
I guess I had the wrong impression that Mr. Welsh knew the American Political Class,
that is, “the Elite,” was both too incompetent and too corrupt, composed as it is of
special interest groups, to be able to “know” this.
So until it is replaced, please, “isolationist” is not a dirty word.
Mandos
Perhaps. Maybe I’m less willing to say that bad/wrong ideas == incompetence. They put the 20 year olds in charge of something that, in their ideology, is of little importance. Fit for 20 year olds.
You can call that idea an incompetent idea, I suppose—that an economy does not require management. It’s of a piece with the shibboleth of “small government”, etc, which is pretty widespread. To me, the label of “incompetence” kind of…occludes the train of thought that led to their conclusions, when believing otherwise might have led at the very least to a smidgen less historical opprobrium.
Badtux
Someofparts, you say “we stopped the Vietnam War”. No. The expense of the Vietnam War stopped the Vietnam War. It was bankrupting America to keep a million troops and contractors in a foreign land (the cost of the war peaked at around 10% of GDP, well above what was long-term sustainable), and our elites determined that it was not in their best interests to continue the war and maneuvered the rest of the American public to see things their way (read Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Consent”, if I recall correctly he discusses how this was done both to get America involved in the Vietnam War and get America *out* of the Vietnam War). But that was when we had elites with more sense than a hamster.
All that the “we stopped the Vietnam War” nonsense has accomplished is provide an excuse for professional protesters to stage kabuki protests of no import and pretend they’re doing something useful. No. The race riots that burned down major cities in the 60’s did something useful — they got significant major legislation passed in hopes of preventing more major cities from going up in flames. But dancing around the Pentagon to make it levitate? Puh-leeze. All that accomplished was making anti-war protesters look ridiculous. Just sayin’.
Celsius 233
@ Badtux
June 27, 2013
Your version is the one I lived, including being drafted in ’65 (got lucky with a 1Y deferment).
I do think the draft played in there in terms of turning public opinion; but did “we” end the war?
Most assuredly not.
That joining the military is now voluntary, the propaganda machine has been in overdrive.
Being in the military is now a major form of employment, it is also a contributing factor in the increased level of barbarity, IMO. I say that not forgetting Vietnam’s barbarity.
Maybe the real difference is the lower number of U.S. troop deaths now. But the civilians, specifically women and children, are paying horrific prices per mfi’s more accurate figures.
Jessica
Markfromireland: “There are a bit more than 5 million orphans in Irak”
“A December 2012 report from UNICEF estimates the number of orphans in Iraq today at 800,000. ” (http://www.sicfiraq.org/)
“A recent survey in Iraq found that between 800,000 to a million Iraqi children have lost one or both of their parents. According to aid workers this figure is a conservative estimate of the many thousands growing up in the shadow of violence.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20461110)
I have always understood “orphan” to mean “having lost both parents” and have seen it used that way pretty consistently.
[Iraqi] Population (thousands) 2011, under 18 16146 {=16,146,000}
(http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iraq_statistics.html)
someofparts
Thanks Tux. It occurs to me that I should be getting my ego all ruffled, but it’s actually impossible to feel that way. Getting shit right means the world to me, and I have nothing but impatience for anyone, including myself, who would let pettiness get in the way of that. So I appreciate the robust correction and all that great information. Guess I’ll be getting my own copy of Manufacturing Consent because now you’ve piqued my interest.
OmAli
I like you, someofparts.
someofparts
According to Barbara Tuchman in Distant Mirror, the French king sent the knights on the crusades to get them out of the country. They were so savage that they plundered their own people, who needed some relief from all their destructiveness.
In her book about Stillman in China, Tuchman noted that when the Japanese invaded China as WWII was beginning, the military were acting on a rogue basis and brushing off the authority of the civilian government.
The lesson I’m getting here is that even if crimes are committed by rogue elements in your own population, even if the majority of people in the country are not guilty of the predations themselves, when blow back finally arrives there won’t be any special consideration for the bystanders.
It’s a sad business but maybe wise to teach your child to leave one bullet in the chamber for herself, and hope she is lucky enough to have even that option if it comes to it.
someofparts
Something else. As an impoverished, scapegoated, constantly overworked/underpaid American worker drone, I was not shocked by the hatred that doctor and those children have for us. I share it.
Probably not to the extent they do, or for the same crimes, but consuming white hot rage for our lizard overlords and their minions – absolutely. I assume that’s what Ian was talking about when he said that this is why we live in a surveillance state.
There’s a world of rage bubbling away inside our hallowed borders and I suppose the overlords suspect as much. Maybe misdirection and disinformation will keep domestic outrage off track and disorganized forever, but I’m sure they want to back that up with invasive surveillance too if they can get away with it.
also – OmAli – What a sweet thing to say. Thank you.
Lisa Simeone
What exactly are “kabuki protests of no import”?
Is every demonstration of dissent merely a “kabuki protest”? Every act of resistance? Then what’s the point of dissenting or resisting at all? Or writing about it? In this country or anywhere? Why don’t we all just throw up our hands and go to a disco?
markfromireland
@ Michael Collins June 25, 2013
With all due respect to you that is just self-serving American nonsense. Barbarity is exactly what your high command signed up for and what they used as a deliberate tactic from day one.
I lived in Irak through the sanctions, I lived there during the invasion, I lived there during the American occupation and barbarity and savagely vicious targeting of civilians as a deliberate tactic is what your American forces deliberately, consciously, with malice and forethought utilised as a tactic. The American attitude to the populace of Irak in its entirety was summed up by an American general speaking to the NYT’s Michael R. Gordon and quoted by Gordon in Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon (Author) , Bernard E. Trainor (Author)
To say as you have done that:
Is wholly at variance with the facts.
Source: What’s an Iraqi Life Worth? – washingtonpost.com
Oh yes they damn well did starting from the top of your Government down. Nobody in the Middle East has forgotten the ½ million dead children under sanctions. Nobody has forgotten Condoleeza Rice talking about how Israeli Bombers slaughtering civilians was the the birth pangs of a new Middle East.
The acts of barbarity committed by American forces are carried out by soldiers who are your fellow-Americans, born and reared in American homes by American parents who inculcate them with American values, they’re educated in American schools where American teachers continue and deepen the process of embuing them with American values. When they go through basic and specialist training in the military those same American values are hammered yet further into them. All of this applies even more strongly to your officer corps.
Oh yes they damn well did the American people and their military signed up for it in their droves.
mfi
Celsius 233
@ Lisa
Take a good look around, a hard look.
You’ve answered your own question…
jcapan
In addition to being arrested during a “kabuki” protest at the Pentagon in 1967, in addition to being an advocate of non-violence and a fan of the admittedly flawed OWS movement, Chomsky has been making the following point for decades:
“Let me make one final point about the peace movement which is often forgotten. When you look back at the internal documents that we have now you can see that when the big decision was made around the Tet Offensive in 1968 — about whether or not to send a couple hundred thousand more troops — one of the factors was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were concerned that they would not have enough troops for internal control of the domestic American population. They feared tremendous protest and disruption at home if they sent more troops to Vietnam. This means that they understood the level of internal resistance to be virtually at the level of civil war. And think they were probably right about that. That’s a good indication from inside as to how seriously they took the peace movement.”
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/198210–.htm
To deny that the protests played any role in the decision-making process is simply absurd. Furthermore, the Civil Rights Movement, the labor or suffragettes movements–any good this country has ever seen has come via mass protest. To deny their achievements is complete bullshit, to say that only riots bring change is nonsense. But if it makes the armchair dissidents feel better, then carry on.
Celsius 233
@ jcapan
That was then; this is now. I was hardly an armchair dissident; I marched, more than once, during the Vietnam war.
The tactics used today are impotent at best and the police have been totally militarized.
Preemptive raids against organizers of movements and demonstrations.
I submit a new paradigm is needed against the very steady move towards fascism and a totalitarian government.
It’s going to take the application of an intelligence I haven’t seen exhibited thus far.
Celsius 233
Addendum; I stand on history to reiterate; “the people” did not end the Vietnam War. The powers then in charge, made the decision based on economics and a desire to pursue more lucrative strategies.
Here we are…
jcapan
Hey man, as long as you’re cool with someone saying that all you were doing back in the day was making yourself look “ridiculous”?
Jessica
@ Lisa
Resist all counsels of despair. How we have shown up so far is not at all our best.
@Celsius 233
Until they cease to be the powers in charge, it is always the powers in charge that make the decisions.
Yes, they decided to terminate the US invasion of Vietnam, but they did so under much duress, both from the originally middle class anti-war movement and from the considerable resistance to the war that emerged within the drafted military. They withdrew before they could lose any more legitimacy and before their military could fall apart. All of that was the product of many forms of resistance by many people.
Jessica
Meant to say that the resistance to the war within the military was primarily working class and minorities. Since that is who was in the military.
Lisa Simeone
jcapan,
Bravo.
Jessica,
Likewise.
Canned Mandarin
I think the “incompetence” was intentional, and quite successful. It was around that point that popular and official resistance to Washington acting as leg-brakers for U.S. corporate interests was reaching a boiling point. They quite deliberately were setting Iraq’s head on a pike, as a way of putting the world on notice that they would be continuing business as usual, and no consequence no matter how heinous, and no objection no matter how strident, was ever going to dissaude them in the slightest. Obey, or perish.
caplin
I think the “incompetence” was intentional, and quite successful.
exactly.
“who benefits”
Jessica
The US elite, through its handling of the occupation of Iraq cost itself dearly. That they did so and that there were no consequences for that failure within the elite are facts that have still not seen fully explained.
Because of the sanctions, Iraq was in many ways in bad shape even before the invasion. If the US invaders had quickly moved to restore the infrastructure, provided needed food and medicine, and kept the Iraqi military intact, even doubled its pay, and kept it practicing somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, so that they could keep an eye on it, they probably could have successfully seized effective control over Iraq’s vast oil wealth.
Perhaps it was just ideological blindness and extremely short-sighted corruption that explains the vast, almost comical failure of the American elite to serve their own general, long-term interests. But it may also be that this is an indicator that the elite is no longer capable of working coherently for its own long-term power. It can act cruelly in the short-term, but has neither vision nor coherence.
The fact that Snowden was in a position to do what he did to the elite is also telling. An elite with any sense would be much more careful about who was handling the flood of illicit information.
Jessica
Markfromireland: “There are a bit more than 5 million orphans in Irak”
“A December 2012 report from UNICEF estimates the number of orphans in Iraq today at 800,000. ”
“A recent survey in Iraq found that between 800,000 to a million Iraqi children have lost one or both of their parents. According to aid workers this figure is a conservative estimate of the many thousands growing up in the shadow of violence.”
[Iraqi] Population (thousands) 2011, under 18 16146 {=16,146,000}
I have removed the URLs for these quotes because the URLs seemed to prevent the post from showing up.
markfromireland
As I have just remarked I am not in the business of spoonfeeding the ignorant. Even a minimal effort would have turned up information such as this:
Post-American Iraq by the Numbers | Informed Comment:
I do not regard SICF as a reliable source on anything.
As to the survey quoted that’s the Health Ministry and CSO cluster survey which relies mainly upon data about registered claimants with one government department and which has been savagely criticised by welfare providers within Irak for just that reason. There’s some moderately useful health status information but information on civilian casualties which is the relevant measure – nope.
The figure for five million orphans goes back to reports from the Iraki anti-Corruption board published in 2007 the chairman at that time was Moussa Faraj and if memory serves me correctly he launched the report – that report’s figures were confirmed in 2008 in evidence from officials in the Iraki Ministry of Planning and Development Coordination at the hearings of the Iraki Parliament’s Women and Children committee under the chairmanship of Naddera Aif
mfi
markfromireland
latest comment has triggered moderation – sorry Ian.
mfi
Lisa Simeone
Jessica, I, too, was wondering about the statistics in markfromireland’s comment. You’re right that they don’t add up. Looks like he elucidated them, somewhere, but they seem to be held up in the ether. Here’s hoping they’ll fly free.
markfromireland
@ Lisa Simeone July 2, 2013
As I said above my reply is in moderation – it has a lot of links and is awaiting Ian releasing it.
mfi
someofparts
“But it may also be that this is an indicator that the elite is no longer capable of working coherently for its own long-term power. It can act cruelly in the short-term, but has neither vision nor coherence.”
Sounds right to me.
Ian Welsh
Comments have been released from moderation, my apologies, I’ve been traveling, and tardy in checking the moderation queue.