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What an outrageous ‘article’. The point on avoiding civilian casualties is just, well, stupid. It infers that the United States is delibrately bombing civilians. It is not.

This typical hypocrisy by the left-wing media, which exonerates Iraq, a brutal dictator who flouts international conventions, yet excorciates against the United States for not only prosecuting, in my opinion, a moral war, but doing so while minimizing civilian casulties at risk of American lives.

This article should take India to task for flouting resolutions on Kashmir, and killing civilians through indiscriminate artillery shelling.

Niraj, it is like someone said, “If America kills one civilian, it is a tragedy - if Saddam kills a million, it is a statistic”. You see, civilian deaths don’t matter if the killer is an inhuman dictator. they matter only when we want to pursue an agenda against a democratic government going to great lengths and taking serious hits to avoid civilian casualties.

Seriously, if Americans just launched a MOAB blitzkrieg as the whole world already predicted they will, it could finish the war off with zero American casualties, but thousands of Iraqis dead. No one gives America credit for the restraint they are showing in the face of an enemy who routinely employs dirty tactics and human shields.

Another funny thing about the article was - how did they arrive at the civilian casualty figure of 200 when not even the Iraqi TV puts the number that high?

It must be the new math I’ve been hearing about. :)

Marc Herold’s marvelous multiplicator of civilian casualties? ;-)

I didn’t get to read the article referred to, but I’m guessing the contents from the comments.

First, the war against Iraq is illegal.

Second, the US first displayed Iraqi POW’s on TV; Now they don’t like their own medicine in a stronger dose?

Third, they’re going to bomb the civilians in Basra under the guise of having to get in and provide them with aid. (It’s going to be a military objective).

Fourth, the US has been using disinformation and denying every casualty they have - until it is first displayed on Iraqi TV. Aren’t they deceiving their own people?

What makes these actions right when it comes to the West and wrong when it come from the Third World?

Incidentally, we haven’t seen any pictures of people of Southern Iraq welcoming the ‘liberators’. I guess this isn’t like the liberation of Paris in WW II. The Iraqis must be an ungrateful bunch of bastards who don’t know what’s good for them when manna comes from heaven (oops, manna is Jewish isn’t it?)

Bungler, the difference between the treatment of Iraqi POWs and US POWs has been explained in my previous post about the moral relativism of Red Cross.

I was listening to this Prof. from GWU, and hes said the biggest mistake USA did when they entered Umm Qasar was to raise the stars and stripes, he said now no matter wat the USA does, the iraqis and other Arabs are going to look at all this as American occupation and not liberation

Iraqis in southern Iraq are taking a wait-and-see attitude. Given the betrayal back in 1991, I don’t blame them. Once they see that the United States is here to stay, their sentiments will change.

Cypher, you are probably right - It might be a little uncalled-for exuberance there.

Niraj, I agree with you too - also, there are still some elements of the Republican Guard blended in with the civilians, that are probably keeping an eye on the people and not letting them fully express themselves.

C’mon, we can’t look at this selectively. We need to look at it objectively. What about those being held in Cuba? Manacles, blindfolds…. and God knows what else. And don’t tell me they don’t get beatings and stuff… And don’t tell me they are not POW’s. Do we just believe everything the government tells us.

And why not put the John Wayne (what’s his name?) in Cuba too? Different strokes for different folks?

The US is no angel, it maybe better than some regimes. But definitely not practicing what they preach.

The Geneva Convention applies only to combatants of countries. In the legal sense, it does not apply to prisoners in Cuba, all of whom are suspected members of Al-Qaeda, which is a terrorist organization, not a sovereign nation.

Actually, bungler - the prisoners in cuba were kept in the chickenwire camps only for three-and-half months - they have now been moved to a permanent facility called “Camp Delta”.

Also, the Geneva Convention applies to soldiers who battle “for a country”, as the defenders of the country, obviously the ones at Gitmo are not considered “lawful combatants”, since they didn’t exactly fight for Afghanistan - they fought for Taliban, as Niraj said.

Niraj writes that India has flouted various Security Council resolutions on Kashmir. Perhaps this ‘tu quoqe’ was only rhetorical. In any case, those resolutions were to go into effect if—and only if—certain conditions were met on the ground. For example, Pakistan was mandated to withdraw its troops.

This—among other required Pakistani actions—was never done. Hence Pakistan—not India—violated those resolutions. Indian compliance was contigent on precisely those Pakistani actions.

I wish I had the stamina to refute those charges of [implicitly, intentional and systematic] indiscriminate shelling of civilians, but I have to vomit and purge myself of Niraj’s post.

Anonymously,
A disgusted Kashmiri Pandit
3/26/03, two days after the systematic murder of 24 Kashmiri Pandits