The U.S. should not withdraw from Afghanistan

[TheGreatGatsby]

What goes on over there is none of our GD business.

Tell that to the thousands who died on or because of 9/11.

Well, let's think about this for a minute. We could have gone over there, bombed the Hell out of Al Qaida training camps, killed as many Muslims as we wanted to exact our revenge, and we could have done this without any loss of American lives. Instead, we sent over 200,000 plus of our own, so that about 8000 of them could come home in body bags with another 50,000 coming home disabled, many with very serious injuries or mental issues. On top of that, we helped to destabilize the entire Middle East, and we will end up spending over $4 trillion for the privilege of doing so. We should have our brains examined for being drug into this. Bin Laden may be dead, but he accomplished what he wanted.

Really? You really think we could have killed all of our targets w/o losing any American lives? I think you know nothing of military operations if you really believe that. And even if we could've done that (in theory), then the amount of collateral damage in the form of 'innocent lives' (IE civilians) would surely have been increased. And in that scenario, whackos like you and Tuatara would be complaining and saying this is what justifies the 9/11s of the world. So, really, you're trying to have it every which way.

Helped to destabilize the Middle East? You haven't been paying attention if you think something radically changed. It's been business as usual. If anything, we helped to stir the flames of discord towards the ends of freedom. That place was a caveman culture and oppression was rampant.

OBL did accomplish what he wanted....blood lust. He did nothing else to speak of. Don't elevate him. It's like saying Hitler accomplished what he wanted cos the world didn't lay down and grant him world domination. It's an absurd notion, Mr. Dissent.

 

[TimothysAlaska]

I would agree, and we should never had left Iraq. But when politicians start screwing around with it, it's all screwed. They don't want to nation build yet forget that the economy we have today is a result of nation building and turned us into a global economy. So because they do not have the political will and let the military do what they trained for. Then I say get out now because they will make it worse and pull out when the political winds shift. Cowards all of them. And since they are downsizing the military pulling funds and benefits, why stay when they are turning the knife in the military's back? There won't be enough resources or people to do anything substantial.

 

[SuperDemocrat]

It is clear to me that the US military authorities should slow down its withdrawal from Afghanistan and keep a sufficient amount of armed forces there. First, there is a growing threat of Islamic extremism in the Middle East and Central Asia. Second, not only would it open the door for terrorist organizations like Islamic State (IS), turning the lives of ordinary Afghans into suffering, but it would also harm the US image as global social engineer and peacemaker.
Keeping the US army in Afghanistan is a crucial element of the preservation of stability in the region. It is rapidly becoming an issue of vital importance today, as IS is gaining influence and recruiting new members. Yesterday’s power of Al-Qaeda has not evaporated completely with the neutralization of its local offshoots. Quite the contrary is true – thousands of Muslims are being subject to IS propaganda, and, given freedom of movement, radicalized volunteers would pour into Iraq and Syria. Next, the potential, even small, of the Taliban seizing back power in the region still exists. Weakened and drained of support since 2001, the Talibs still pose a threat to Afghans as well as neighboring countries as they demonstrate no tolerance to non-Afghans. Thus, there is no way terrorist activity can be suppressed in Central Asia without the U.S. and its allies keeping an eye on IS, Taliban and others.
This step would affect not only the whole Islamic world, but the U.S. itself. The presence of troops in Central Asia would sustain the image of America and provide the necessary bargaining power to influence decisions made by Islamic governments. Giving up Afghanistan would mean that the United States is incapable of bearing the burden of global social engineering. Acquiring friends and maintaining relationships is the key to participating in conflict resolutions, settling intra- and inter- governmental issues arising in the Mid East. Take Iran as an example - its confrontation with Afghanistan may morph into a full-scale war unless someone defuses the tension. Iran’s nuclear program should also be taken into account. A regular army is one of key factors that make them more compliant. Leaving Afghanistan would imply ceding Central Asia and the Middle East, which might be considered as a signal of political impotence of the Obama cabinet. Hence, the role of the United States as a global, political and social trendsetter would be irrevocably damaged.
In conclusion, maintaining a military presence in such an explosive region is more likely to alleviate the tension than to cause it. At the same time, it would remain a trump card for the U.S., one that may exert decisive influence over Islamic governments, preventing them from going to extremes. Therefore, it would be for the benefit of both the West and the Middle East. However, 10 years’ experience has shown that something more than just military intervention should be done to accomplish the purpose of creating a truly democratic and prosperous country in the midst of the Asian desert.

No conquered foes should stay conquered.

 

[BlackSand]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Yeah ... That explains why ISIS was kicking ass and taking names before we left.
I mean whipping up on their centuries old enemies is probably the fault of a country less than 300 years old.

If they want to fight us ... I would suggest they fight us ... Not beat up on their neighbors and blame us for their violence.

.

 

[Tuatara]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Yeah ... That explains why ISIS was kicking ass and taking names before we left.
I mean whipping up on their centuries old enemies is probably the fault of a country less than 300 years old.

If they want to fight us ... I would suggest they fight us ... Not beat up on their neighbors and blame us for their violence.

.

The US created ISIS when they purged the Ba’athist party. See Paul Bremner.

The policy of de-Ba’athification and the disbandment of the army ushered in a new sectarian era, and destroyed any chance of real domestic order. The exclusion of Ba’athists from the nation-building process allowed sections of the Shiite political classes to decide that “Ba’athist” simply meant Sunni. Defending your own became the new cause, whilst inclusive nation-building was forgotten. And while the US bumbled, stumbled and fumbled, Al-Maliki seized greater control.

The transitional justice and due process mechanisms required for accountability were trampled. The rise of al-Maliki continued de-Ba’athification, and convinced the more restive sections of the Sunni population that fight was better than flight. Using opaque laws to remove electoral candidates, maintaining power with the support of anti-Ba’ath elements added to Sunni grievances, layered reaction and the loss of faith in democracy building.

Explainer what is ISIS and where did it come from

de-Ba'athification

During the tenure of the CPA, the Administrator, L. Paul Bremer, was charged with overseeing the US occupation and democratization process. As the highest authority in Iraq, orders issued from his office carried the force of law in Iraq. It was through CPA orders that Bremer and his administrative team enacted the policy of de-Ba'athification crafted in the Office of Special Plans at the Department of Defense. A total of 100 orders were issued by the CPA between May 2003 and June 2004.

De-Ba athification - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

US interference and policy created ISIS. Get with the program.

 

[Tuatara]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Cause and effect? Try again. 9/11 was pure evil. Pretending that 9/11 was about some natural sequence of events shows me that you're just not living in any sort of reality besides sitting on a bed of far left talking points.

What the hijackers did was horrible. You know what was worse? The tens of thousands and killed by US bombs and sanctions in the region. Those who didn't see 911 coming were noy paying attention. 911 was because of the events that the US caused. I would love to hear your reason as to why terrorists attacked the US.

Tens of thousands? Come on, dude. Don't give me far left made up numbers. But you have to or you really wouldn't have your faux point, right?

Otherwise, I'm okay with talking about holding the US accountable for air strikes gone amiss. But that's really a whole different topic, is it not?

Sorry, bro. But other than if some of the US insider 9/11 theories pan out, then this is not the US's fault. There was absolutely no justification for it. Just knock that off. It's a sick deluded scenario you're creating.

Another nube who doesn't know history. First let's look at the history of US bombings in the region before the Iraq war.

U.S. Intervention in the Middle East

Please go through it and add up all the deaths you see. Now let's look at the deaths caused by US sanctions on Iraq.

Estimates of excess deaths during the sanctions vary widely, use different methodologies and cover different time-frames.[31][38][39] Some estimates include (some of them include effects of the Gulf War in the estimate):

• Mohamed M. Ali, John Blacker, and Gareth Jones estimate between 400,000 and 500,000 excess under-5 deaths.[40]
• UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[41]
• Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.[42]
• "Probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20 October 2003[43]
• 350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.[44]
• Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less] than half a million children" because estimation efforts are unable to isolate the effects of sanctions alone due to the lack of "anything resembling a controlled experiment",[45] and "one potential explanation" for the statistics showing an increase in child mortality was that "they were not real, but rather results of manipulations by the Iraqi government."[45]
• "Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period"[46] for sanctions-related excess deaths.[47]
• Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., (1995) The Lancet British medical journal: 567,000 children.[48] A co-author (Zaidi) did a follow-up study in 1996, finding "much lower ... mortality rates ... for unknown reasons."[49]
• Amatzia Baram, Director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa, reported almost no difference in the rate of Iraq’s population growth between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent) and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent), suggesting that the sanctions-related death rate is lower than reported, while also stating "Every child who suffers from malnutrition as a result of the embargo is a tragedy".[50]

I was wrong I should have stated hundreds of thousands.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Cause and effect? Try again. 9/11 was pure evil. Pretending that 9/11 was about some natural sequence of events shows me that you're just not living in any sort of reality besides sitting on a bed of far left talking points.

What the hijackers did was horrible. You know what was worse? The tens of thousands and killed by US bombs and sanctions in the region. Those who didn't see 911 coming were noy paying attention. 911 was because of the events that the US caused. I would love to hear your reason as to why terrorists attacked the US.

Tens of thousands? Come on, dude. Don't give me far left made up numbers. But you have to or you really wouldn't have your faux point, right?

Otherwise, I'm okay with talking about holding the US accountable for air strikes gone amiss. But that's really a whole different topic, is it not?

Sorry, bro. But other than if some of the US insider 9/11 theories pan out, then this is not the US's fault. There was absolutely no justification for it. Just knock that off. It's a sick deluded scenario you're creating.

Another nube who doesn't know history. First let's look at the history of US bombings in the region before the Iraq war.

U.S. Intervention in the Middle East

Please go through it and add up all the deaths you see. Now let's look at the deaths caused by US sanctions on Iraq.

Estimates of excess deaths during the sanctions vary widely, use different methodologies and cover different time-frames.[31][38][39] Some estimates include (some of them include effects of the Gulf War in the estimate):

• Mohamed M. Ali, John Blacker, and Gareth Jones estimate between 400,000 and 500,000 excess under-5 deaths.[40]
• UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[41]
• Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.[42]
• "Probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20 October 2003[43]
• 350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.[44]
• Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less] than half a million children" because estimation efforts are unable to isolate the effects of sanctions alone due to the lack of "anything resembling a controlled experiment",[45] and "one potential explanation" for the statistics showing an increase in child mortality was that "they were not real, but rather results of manipulations by the Iraqi government."[45]
• "Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period"[46] for sanctions-related excess deaths.[47]
• Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., (1995) The Lancet British medical journal: 567,000 children.[48] A co-author (Zaidi) did a follow-up study in 1996, finding "much lower ... mortality rates ... for unknown reasons."[49]
• Amatzia Baram, Director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa, reported almost no difference in the rate of Iraq’s population growth between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent) and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent), suggesting that the sanctions-related death rate is lower than reported, while also stating "Every child who suffers from malnutrition as a result of the embargo is a tragedy".[50]

I was wrong I should have stated hundreds of thousands.

You're the last one that should be calling anyone a noob, dude.Your link does nothing to prove your absurd claim of 10 of k's of bombing deaths in Afghanistan.

And in the second place, if a half million kids were just dying, there'd be plenty of real proof; not this hack estimates BS that you desperately want to believe to support your warped world view.

 

[BlackSand]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Yeah ... That explains why ISIS was kicking ass and taking names before we left.
I mean whipping up on their centuries old enemies is probably the fault of a country less than 300 years old.

If they want to fight us ... I would suggest they fight us ... Not beat up on their neighbors and blame us for their violence.

.

The US created ISIS when they purged the Ba’athist party. See Paul Bremner.

The policy of de-Ba’athification and the disbandment of the army ushered in a new sectarian era, and destroyed any chance of real domestic order. The exclusion of Ba’athists from the nation-building process allowed sections of the Shiite political classes to decide that “Ba’athist” simply meant Sunni. Defending your own became the new cause, whilst inclusive nation-building was forgotten. And while the US bumbled, stumbled and fumbled, Al-Maliki seized greater control.

The transitional justice and due process mechanisms required for accountability were trampled. The rise of al-Maliki continued de-Ba’athification, and convinced the more restive sections of the Sunni population that fight was better than flight. Using opaque laws to remove electoral candidates, maintaining power with the support of anti-Ba’ath elements added to Sunni grievances, layered reaction and the loss of faith in democracy building.

Explainer what is ISIS and where did it come from

de-Ba'athification

During the tenure of the CPA, the Administrator, L. Paul Bremer, was charged with overseeing the US occupation and democratization process. As the highest authority in Iraq, orders issued from his office carried the force of law in Iraq. It was through CPA orders that Bremer and his administrative team enacted the policy of de-Ba'athification crafted in the Office of Special Plans at the Department of Defense. A total of 100 orders were issued by the CPA between May 2003 and June 2004.

De-Ba athification - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

US interference and policy created ISIS. Get with the program.

Again ... If ISIS is the result of America's actions ... Explain why they didn't do squat until America was gone from the theater.
Why don't you stick your figure up your nose and continue to pretend that difficulties between the Shiites, Sunnis, Ba'athist, Goat Herders and whatnot haven't been around a lot longer than America has?

.

 

[MisterBeale]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Yeah ... That explains why ISIS was kicking ass and taking names before we left.
I mean whipping up on their centuries old enemies is probably the fault of a country less than 300 years old.

If they want to fight us ... I would suggest they fight us ... Not beat up on their neighbors and blame us for their violence.

.

The US created ISIS when they purged the Ba’athist party. See Paul Bremner.

The policy of de-Ba’athification and the disbandment of the army ushered in a new sectarian era, and destroyed any chance of real domestic order. The exclusion of Ba’athists from the nation-building process allowed sections of the Shiite political classes to decide that “Ba’athist” simply meant Sunni. Defending your own became the new cause, whilst inclusive nation-building was forgotten. And while the US bumbled, stumbled and fumbled, Al-Maliki seized greater control.

The transitional justice and due process mechanisms required for accountability were trampled. The rise of al-Maliki continued de-Ba’athification, and convinced the more restive sections of the Sunni population that fight was better than flight. Using opaque laws to remove electoral candidates, maintaining power with the support of anti-Ba’ath elements added to Sunni grievances, layered reaction and the loss of faith in democracy building.

Explainer what is ISIS and where did it come from

de-Ba'athification

During the tenure of the CPA, the Administrator, L. Paul Bremer, was charged with overseeing the US occupation and democratization process. As the highest authority in Iraq, orders issued from his office carried the force of law in Iraq. It was through CPA orders that Bremer and his administrative team enacted the policy of de-Ba'athification crafted in the Office of Special Plans at the Department of Defense. A total of 100 orders were issued by the CPA between May 2003 and June 2004.

De-Ba athification - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

US interference and policy created ISIS. Get with the program.

Again ... If ISIS is the result of America's actions ... Explain why they didn't do squat until America was gone from the theater.
Why don't you stick your figure up your nose and continue to pretend that difficulties between the Shiites, Sunnis, Ba'athist, Goat Herders and whatnot haven't been around a lot longer than America has?

.

Folks who buy into war propaganda and manufactured reality should wise up.



America s Allies Are Funding ISIS - The Daily Beast

“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”


Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others.

Pentagon Admits Airdropped Weapons Taken by ISIS Military.com

The Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that an airdropped pallet of weapons, ammunition and medical supplies intended for the besieged Kurds of Kobani missed the drop zone and was taken by ISIS.

US War on ISIS a Trojan Horse New Eastern Outlook

Having failed to achieve any of its objectives in Syria, it inexplicably “invaded” Iraq, affording the US military a means of “easing into” the conflict by first confronting ISIS in Iraq, then following them back across the border into Syria. When this scheme began to lose its impact on public perception, ISIS first started executing Western hostages including several Americans. When the US needed the French on board, ISIS executed a Frenchman. When the US needed greater support in Asia, two Japanese were beheaded. And just ahead of President Obama’s recent attempt to formally authorize the use of military force against “ISIS,” a Jordanian pilot was apparently burned to death in a cage in an unprecedented act of barbarity that shocked even the most apathetic.

The theatrics of ISIS parallel those seen in a Hollywood production. This doesn’t mean ISIS didn’t really burn to death a Jordanian pilot or behead scores of hostages. But it does mean that a tremendous amount of resources and planning were put into each murder, except apparently, the effect it would have of rallying the world behind the US and its otherwise hopelessly stalled efforts to overturn the government of Syria.

Could ISIS have built a set specifically to capture dramatic shots like a flame trail passing the camera on its way to the doomed Jordanian pilot, planned crane shots, provided matching uniforms for all the extras on their diabolical movie set, but failed to consider the target audience and how they would react to their production? Could they have, just by coincidence, given exactly what the United States needed to continue its war on Syria in 2015 when it otherwise had effectively failed in 2013?

The answer is obviously no. ISIS’s theatrics were designed specifically to accomplish this. ISIS itself is a fictional creation. In reality the legions of terrorists fighting across the Arab World under the flag of “ISIS” are the same Al Qaeda militants the US, Saudi Arabia and others in an utterly unholy axis have been backing, arming and exploiting in a variety of ways for decades.

Just as the “Islamic State” in Iraq was exposed as a fictional cover for what was also essentially Al Qaeda (as reported by the NYT in their article, “Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional, U.S. military says“), ISIS too is just the latest and greatest re-visioning yet.
First appeared: US War on ISIS a Trojan Horse New Eastern Outlook

 

[Tuatara]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Yeah ... That explains why ISIS was kicking ass and taking names before we left.
I mean whipping up on their centuries old enemies is probably the fault of a country less than 300 years old.

If they want to fight us ... I would suggest they fight us ... Not beat up on their neighbors and blame us for their violence.

.

The US created ISIS when they purged the Ba’athist party. See Paul Bremner.

The policy of de-Ba’athification and the disbandment of the army ushered in a new sectarian era, and destroyed any chance of real domestic order. The exclusion of Ba’athists from the nation-building process allowed sections of the Shiite political classes to decide that “Ba’athist” simply meant Sunni. Defending your own became the new cause, whilst inclusive nation-building was forgotten. And while the US bumbled, stumbled and fumbled, Al-Maliki seized greater control.

The transitional justice and due process mechanisms required for accountability were trampled. The rise of al-Maliki continued de-Ba’athification, and convinced the more restive sections of the Sunni population that fight was better than flight. Using opaque laws to remove electoral candidates, maintaining power with the support of anti-Ba’ath elements added to Sunni grievances, layered reaction and the loss of faith in democracy building.

Explainer what is ISIS and where did it come from

de-Ba'athification

During the tenure of the CPA, the Administrator, L. Paul Bremer, was charged with overseeing the US occupation and democratization process. As the highest authority in Iraq, orders issued from his office carried the force of law in Iraq. It was through CPA orders that Bremer and his administrative team enacted the policy of de-Ba'athification crafted in the Office of Special Plans at the Department of Defense. A total of 100 orders were issued by the CPA between May 2003 and June 2004.

De-Ba athification - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

US interference and policy created ISIS. Get with the program.

Again ... If ISIS is the result of America's actions ... Explain why they didn't do squat until America was gone from the theater.
Why don't you stick your figure up your nose and continue to pretend that difficulties between the Shiites, Sunnis, Ba'athist, Goat Herders and whatnot haven't been around a lot longer than America has?

.

They were called insurgents then.

 

[Tuatara]

Who said anything about justification. I gave you the reason. Ever hear of "cause and effect"? US interference in the region equals growth in terrorism. See Taliban and ISIS.

Cause and effect? Try again. 9/11 was pure evil. Pretending that 9/11 was about some natural sequence of events shows me that you're just not living in any sort of reality besides sitting on a bed of far left talking points.

What the hijackers did was horrible. You know what was worse? The tens of thousands and killed by US bombs and sanctions in the region. Those who didn't see 911 coming were noy paying attention. 911 was because of the events that the US caused. I would love to hear your reason as to why terrorists attacked the US.

Tens of thousands? Come on, dude. Don't give me far left made up numbers. But you have to or you really wouldn't have your faux point, right?

Otherwise, I'm okay with talking about holding the US accountable for air strikes gone amiss. But that's really a whole different topic, is it not?

Sorry, bro. But other than if some of the US insider 9/11 theories pan out, then this is not the US's fault. There was absolutely no justification for it. Just knock that off. It's a sick deluded scenario you're creating.

Another nube who doesn't know history. First let's look at the history of US bombings in the region before the Iraq war.

U.S. Intervention in the Middle East

Please go through it and add up all the deaths you see. Now let's look at the deaths caused by US sanctions on Iraq.

Estimates of excess deaths during the sanctions vary widely, use different methodologies and cover different time-frames.[31][38][39] Some estimates include (some of them include effects of the Gulf War in the estimate):

• Mohamed M. Ali, John Blacker, and Gareth Jones estimate between 400,000 and 500,000 excess under-5 deaths.[40]
• UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[41]
• Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.[42]
• "Probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20 October 2003[43]
• 350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.[44]
• Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less] than half a million children" because estimation efforts are unable to isolate the effects of sanctions alone due to the lack of "anything resembling a controlled experiment",[45] and "one potential explanation" for the statistics showing an increase in child mortality was that "they were not real, but rather results of manipulations by the Iraqi government."[45]
• "Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period"[46] for sanctions-related excess deaths.[47]
• Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., (1995) The Lancet British medical journal: 567,000 children.[48] A co-author (Zaidi) did a follow-up study in 1996, finding "much lower ... mortality rates ... for unknown reasons."[49]
• Amatzia Baram, Director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa, reported almost no difference in the rate of Iraq’s population growth between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent) and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent), suggesting that the sanctions-related death rate is lower than reported, while also stating "Every child who suffers from malnutrition as a result of the embargo is a tragedy".[50]

I was wrong I should have stated hundreds of thousands.

You're the last one that should be calling anyone a noob, dude.Your link does nothing to prove your absurd claim of 10 of k's of bombing deaths in Afghanistan.

And in the second place, if a half million kids were just dying, there'd be plenty of real proof; not this hack estimates BS that you desperately want to believe to support your warped world view.

I said the region, not just Afghanistan, Do you not remember the bombing campaigns by Clinton? The number of children killed by US sanctions is common knowledge. Most right wingers makes excuses for them or blame Saddam but your the first to actually deny them. The internet is a wonderful thing. Go and do your research.

 

[BlackSand]

They were called insurgents then.

They called themselves "insurgents" ... ... When did they decide to change their name?

.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

Cause and effect? Try again. 9/11 was pure evil. Pretending that 9/11 was about some natural sequence of events shows me that you're just not living in any sort of reality besides sitting on a bed of far left talking points.

What the hijackers did was horrible. You know what was worse? The tens of thousands and killed by US bombs and sanctions in the region. Those who didn't see 911 coming were noy paying attention. 911 was because of the events that the US caused. I would love to hear your reason as to why terrorists attacked the US.

Tens of thousands? Come on, dude. Don't give me far left made up numbers. But you have to or you really wouldn't have your faux point, right?

Otherwise, I'm okay with talking about holding the US accountable for air strikes gone amiss. But that's really a whole different topic, is it not?

Sorry, bro. But other than if some of the US insider 9/11 theories pan out, then this is not the US's fault. There was absolutely no justification for it. Just knock that off. It's a sick deluded scenario you're creating.

Another nube who doesn't know history. First let's look at the history of US bombings in the region before the Iraq war.

U.S. Intervention in the Middle East

Please go through it and add up all the deaths you see. Now let's look at the deaths caused by US sanctions on Iraq.

Estimates of excess deaths during the sanctions vary widely, use different methodologies and cover different time-frames.[31][38][39] Some estimates include (some of them include effects of the Gulf War in the estimate):

• Mohamed M. Ali, John Blacker, and Gareth Jones estimate between 400,000 and 500,000 excess under-5 deaths.[40]
• UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[41]
• Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.[42]
• "Probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20 October 2003[43]
• 350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.[44]
• Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less] than half a million children" because estimation efforts are unable to isolate the effects of sanctions alone due to the lack of "anything resembling a controlled experiment",[45] and "one potential explanation" for the statistics showing an increase in child mortality was that "they were not real, but rather results of manipulations by the Iraqi government."[45]
• "Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period"[46] for sanctions-related excess deaths.[47]
• Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., (1995) The Lancet British medical journal: 567,000 children.[48] A co-author (Zaidi) did a follow-up study in 1996, finding "much lower ... mortality rates ... for unknown reasons."[49]
• Amatzia Baram, Director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa, reported almost no difference in the rate of Iraq’s population growth between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent) and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent), suggesting that the sanctions-related death rate is lower than reported, while also stating "Every child who suffers from malnutrition as a result of the embargo is a tragedy".[50]

I was wrong I should have stated hundreds of thousands.

You're the last one that should be calling anyone a noob, dude.Your link does nothing to prove your absurd claim of 10 of k's of bombing deaths in Afghanistan.

And in the second place, if a half million kids were just dying, there'd be plenty of real proof; not this hack estimates BS that you desperately want to believe to support your warped world view.

I said the region, not just Afghanistan, Do you not remember the bombing campaigns by Clinton? The number of children killed by US sanctions is common knowledge. Most right wingers makes excuses for them or blame Saddam but your the first to actually deny them. The internet is a wonderful thing. Go and do your research.

We were talking about Afghanistan...if you tried to expand it to region, that's negligible. I recall a very limited number of bombing missions by the Clintons. So few that to call them bombing campaigns is misleading. Or are you counting Bosnia as the Middle East when it's in Europe? Even then, the number is nowhere near 10,000. And right minded Europeans certainly aren't using that history as an excuse to go on terrorist missions.

And counting sanctions among '10,000 bombing deaths?' Come on. Counting them in the first place is spurious.

 

[Tuatara]

What the hijackers did was horrible. You know what was worse? The tens of thousands and killed by US bombs and sanctions in the region. Those who didn't see 911 coming were noy paying attention. 911 was because of the events that the US caused. I would love to hear your reason as to why terrorists attacked the US.

Tens of thousands? Come on, dude. Don't give me far left made up numbers. But you have to or you really wouldn't have your faux point, right?

Otherwise, I'm okay with talking about holding the US accountable for air strikes gone amiss. But that's really a whole different topic, is it not?

Sorry, bro. But other than if some of the US insider 9/11 theories pan out, then this is not the US's fault. There was absolutely no justification for it. Just knock that off. It's a sick deluded scenario you're creating.

Another nube who doesn't know history. First let's look at the history of US bombings in the region before the Iraq war.

U.S. Intervention in the Middle East

Please go through it and add up all the deaths you see. Now let's look at the deaths caused by US sanctions on Iraq.

Estimates of excess deaths during the sanctions vary widely, use different methodologies and cover different time-frames.[31][38][39] Some estimates include (some of them include effects of the Gulf War in the estimate):

• Mohamed M. Ali, John Blacker, and Gareth Jones estimate between 400,000 and 500,000 excess under-5 deaths.[40]
• UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[41]
• Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.[42]
• "Probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20 October 2003[43]
• 350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.[44]
• Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less] than half a million children" because estimation efforts are unable to isolate the effects of sanctions alone due to the lack of "anything resembling a controlled experiment",[45] and "one potential explanation" for the statistics showing an increase in child mortality was that "they were not real, but rather results of manipulations by the Iraqi government."[45]
• "Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period"[46] for sanctions-related excess deaths.[47]
• Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., (1995) The Lancet British medical journal: 567,000 children.[48] A co-author (Zaidi) did a follow-up study in 1996, finding "much lower ... mortality rates ... for unknown reasons."[49]
• Amatzia Baram, Director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa, reported almost no difference in the rate of Iraq’s population growth between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent) and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent), suggesting that the sanctions-related death rate is lower than reported, while also stating "Every child who suffers from malnutrition as a result of the embargo is a tragedy".[50]

I was wrong I should have stated hundreds of thousands.

You're the last one that should be calling anyone a noob, dude.Your link does nothing to prove your absurd claim of 10 of k's of bombing deaths in Afghanistan.

And in the second place, if a half million kids were just dying, there'd be plenty of real proof; not this hack estimates BS that you desperately want to believe to support your warped world view.

I said the region, not just Afghanistan, Do you not remember the bombing campaigns by Clinton? The number of children killed by US sanctions is common knowledge. Most right wingers makes excuses for them or blame Saddam but your the first to actually deny them. The internet is a wonderful thing. Go and do your research.

We were talking about Afghanistan...if you tried to expand it to region, that's negligible. I recall a very limited number of bombing missions by the Clintons. So few that to call them bombing campaigns is misleading. Or are you counting Bosnia as the Middle East when it's in Europe? Even then, the number is nowhere near 10,000. And right minded Europeans certainly aren't using that history as an excuse to go on terrorist missions.

The region is the middle east, not europe. As for the limited bombing missions Clinton dropped over 1.3 millions pounds in bombs in Iraq alone. That's not including Syria, the Sudan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Americans drop bombs by the millions on other nations and some americans wonder why 911 happened. Pathetic.

And counting sanctions among '10,000 bombing deaths?' Come on. Counting them in the first place is spurious

My original comment was "The tens of thousands and killed by US bombs and sanctions in the region" Those who had lost loved ones are not going to bicker whether it was a bomb or related to the sanctions. Death by US interference is all the same to them.


"500,000 Iraqi children had already died as a direct result of economic sanctions. Over one million Iraqi civilians have died from the sanctions, mostly children under age five. Those are not Iraqi figures -- those figures come from Unicef, the World Health Organization, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN’s Department of Humanitarian Affairs, and other international sources."
Read on. You might learn something.
Clinton s Worst Crimes - The Ornery American

 

[Tuatara]

They were called insurgents then.

They called themselves "insurgents" ... ... When did they decide to change their name?

.

The definition of insurgent is a rebel or a revolutionary. This is what we called them during the occupation. Can'tr keep calling them insurgents if the occupation withdraws.

 

[BlackSand]

The definition of insurgent is a rebel or a revolutionary. This is what we called them during the occupation. Can'tr keep calling them insurgents if the occupation withdraws.

It doesn't matter what we call them ... They named themselves independent of your approval.

.