re saudi clergy and their western supporters vs human rights ilyess sez so how would have you defended saudi arabia and rolled back the iraqi invasion were you in charge of saudi arabia all muslims knew that the whole thing was set up to destroy iraq not to liberate kuwait the people who were killed by the invasion are more many many more than the ones that were killed by the iraqis in their smaller invasion i lived in the west and i have seen how your media prepared you helpless naive americans for a war against no doubt you plan on exploiting helpless naive americans for your own purposes hmm let s see iraq even before the artificial conflict between iraq and kuwait that led to the invasion as the cia correctly predicted and pretended to be surprised not to know it just happened that saddam was so predictible and so arrogant and stupid what would i have done most muslims would choose dead kuwaitis over dead iraqis and dead kuwaitis the first case would happen if no western intervention happened and the second case was a direct or indirect result of western envolvement possibly if iraqis had indeed died but this number is based on greenpeace estimates greenpeace had compromised its alleged impartiality during the war by condemning the potential environmental consequences of allied miiltary action while initially completely ignoring iraq s horrible environmental crimes starting with the dumping of millions of barrels of oil into the gulf at ahmadi to the blowing of over oil wells what is the real number there has been a lot of work on this in the last two years none of it reported as the greenpeace figure seems to get continuously bandied about the real number seems to be around on the same order as the number of kuwaitis killed tortured and kidnapped during the occupation i ve included an article i recently posted below but this is really old news independent television news reported a figure around only a few months after the war but it was hardly reported for the allies to have killed iraqis they would have had to kill twice the total number of iraqis in kuwait the favored image of the hysterics is the last battle of the war at mutla this was yet another example of the american and european media playing into the hands of iraq and its de facto allies the destruction of the iraqi convoy at mutla was portrayed as an all out slaughter this is simply not true the head and tail of the convoy was bombed initially resulting in a lot of casualties at these points before bombers came back most of the rest of the iraqi soldiers fled on foot furthermore your estimates of kuwaiti war dead if allies hadn t invaded is completely ridiculous you have acknowledged certainly implicitly that saddam is a barbarous brute you have acknowledged the hundreds of thousands he has been responible for killing in his own country you know that the man he appointed as governor of kuwait ali majid was his most brutal henchman presiding over the near genocide of the kurds in the late s and more recently the shi a yet when it comes to his treatment of kuwaitis he is an angel in your estimate he would ve killed fewer than he already had when the war started what a joke apn iraq war dead copyright the associated press all rights reserved by nick ludington associated press writer washington ap after the persian gulf war ended the world was told that as many as iraqi soldiers were killed at one point even baghdad put the toll that high as did the u s defense intelligence agency in private but u s officials have been backpedaling ever since even though the pentagon has yet to settle on an official estimate to release to the public now one former dia analyst says the number of iraqi troops killed may have been as low as that conclusion by john heidenrich writing in the current issue of the quarterly magazine foreign policy represents the lowest estimate yet from u s defense sources the revisions suggesting a less devastating iraqi toll fit a pattern of vastly moderated u s military claims in the months after the war ended claims for a number of u s weapons also were scaled down despite the dramatic videotapes of successful weaponry or the shocking pictures of iraq s disastrous retreat from kuwait arguments have continued unabated about what really happened in the gulf war heidenrich is not the first to question the iraqi death toll numbers that originally were aired more that a year ago air force lt gen charles horner the commander of the air campaign in the gulf war said he believed the iraqi military death toll was fewer than for the entire war the pentagon itself still refuses to provide an estimate of the number of iraqis who died in the day war against the u s led coalition in january and february on monday pentagon spokesman lt cmdr joe gradisher reiterated past statements that there just isn t a number that is credible but some current internal estimates range from to iraqi troops killed said one analyst speaking on condition of anonymity who is familiar with the pentagon s reports allied deaths were put at americans by friendly fire british by american fire frenchmen italian and among various arab allies of the postwar reassessments the most widely publicized was the army s reluctant acknowledgement months later that its touted patriot air defense system was nowhere near so effective as claimed against iraq s scud missiles the bush administration initially claimed an almost perfect record for the patriot last spring it revised the hit ratio to percent the success record of the navy s tomahawk high tech cruise missile used against targets in baghdad and other parts of iraq also turned out to be more modest than initially indicated by the pentagon the first iraqi casualty figures to surface after the war came in a may report by the environmental group greenpeace which said to iraqi soldiers were killed it estimated that to iraqi civilians were also killed the same month published reports said the defense intelligence agency estimated iraqi soldiers were killed and wounded in the air and ground campaigns although the agency qualified that by saying the estimate could be off by as much as percent in either direction but as more information became available those figures gradually were revised downward the house armed services committee staff estimated dead and wounded after a review last year but heidenrich writing in the current issue of the quarterly foreign policy estimated the total death toll from both the air and ground offensives as low as with about wounded heidenrich based the conclusion in his article on the number of bodies found and buried by u s troops and on prisoner of war interviews he noted that only about of iraqi prisoners of war were wounded based on the calculation that about half as many wounded escaped as were captured he put the number of wounded at about using a conservative ratio of one dead to two wounded applicable to third world armies like iraq he set battlefield deaths at maybe the figures are too low he wrote maybe the real death toll on the battlefield was or or even even then the evidence suggests a death toll of well below or even in an interview he said the figure was obviously off base because it would mean that virtually all the iraqi soldiers in the kuwait theater of operations were casualties he said today s bloodiest wars were not those fought with high technology but rather the drawn out conflicts such as those in yugoslavia and somalia
