Underscoring just how dangerous Iraq has become, a United Nations official reported today that 34,452 Iraqi civilians were killed — about 94 a day — and more than 36,000 wounded in sectarian killings in 2006.
More than 89 Iraqi civilians were slaughtered today in a series of bombings and shootings in Baghdad.
The numbers are a sobering reminder of the soaring level of violence a U.S. troop surge will try to counter in coming months.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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48 Comments
Rice has without question cast her lot in league with the Likud Zionists in Israel. She does not represent any interests of the United States. Her earliest statements indicate she brought that baggage with her into the White House as the Bushco’s first National Security Adviser.
I’m not going to speculate as to why she has become a turncoat. She has worked hard for her spot in the implementation of the PNAC Plan for an American Dictatorship.
Those ’signing statements’ were well thought out during the long planning stages of PNAC and that damned Cheney knew exactly what he was doing. We owe him payback.
Bush was too dumb, but has made a good puppet for Cheney.
Cheney/Rumsfeld and the Neocon rise to power video
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/
I don’t know the “classic” definition of a civil war, but it’s hard not to wonder in light of this large number of civilian casulties.
I can’t imagine what people go through in Baghdad while raising a family and trying to survive!
What difference does it make to the dead,the orphans and the homeless,whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianismor the holy name of liberty or democracy?….Mahatma Gandhi
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.Amen.
Tragic numbers Randy. I think you need to add a zero to the 94 a day though for the figures to work to over 30,000. I know, a typo, I make them all the time. :)
Beautifully written Tracy!
Might I suggest a God’s Will for the next prayer. :)
Life in Baghdad? How about a failed sewer system, and streets flooded with sewage water?
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57064&SelectRegion=Middle_East&SelectCountry=IRAQ““About 600 of our workers were killed by insurgents over the past nine months. We need to be protected to do our job properly,” Kittan added.”
JM – 96 * 365 = 35,040. 35,040 is greater than 30,000.
Maybe I have a “lib” calculator on my computer.
doh! i was thinking per month.
(puts on dunce cap and sits in back corner of the class) :(:(
Did that UN official happen to mention how much of the Oil for Food money has been recovered? Did he mention if they recycle the paper they write their resolutions on?
BDP Fleetwood is full of irrelevant information.
Since the US spends about 2 billion a week in Iraq and 35,000 Iraqis died there last year, that comes out to about 3 million dollars for every Iraqi killed.
Makes the oil for food scandal look like what it is . . . a non-issue.
But Fleetwood has to bring up some side topic to derail the argument against his beloved leader George W. Bush.
The Bushies cannot win an argument based on facts, so they throw everything else including the kitchen sink to sidetrack anyone and everyone.
cnn.com reports that >100 Iraqi deaths today, most in Baghdad; while Iraqi security/police present, so are militia.
Who are killing all these Iraqis? Is it the US?
Where are the Iraqi troops being trained by the US troops? Why are they not controlling this violence? Put the blame where the blame belongs – Iraqis are killing Iraqis.
Where is Malaki in all this? Safe and secure in his palace? I don’t trust that guy – he is playing both sides of the fence and then we wonder why there is chaos and civil war?
BDP Fleetwood–
Any Iraqis killed since we took over the country are our responsiblity, so the answer is “yes.”
Imagine if Iraq had invaded the United States, crushed our military and police, and knocked off Bush and imprisoned or killed all the people that worked for him.
Would you hold Iraq responsible for the ensuing chaos?
Hell, yes.
But somehow the Iraqis are so much different that us and we’re so pure and noble in our ideals, that when we invade countries, we expect . . . gratitude.
Stupid. Really stupid.
capn-So the US is killing the Iraquis?
Captain, you are trying to reason with Fleet; that usually dosent work out all that well with him.
BDP fleet,
Do you think some Oil for Food money is more important than 34,452 Iraqi deaths, and the grief that has caused to their families and friends?
And fleet… do you know what the main source of funding is for the insurgents, who are killing U.S. troops, as well as Iraqis? Come on, take a guess!
That’s right! Theft of Iraqi crude oil and processed fuels.
btw: The instability in the M-E since 2003 has caused a rise in world oil prices — you’ve paid higher prices since then.
cosmos-No, I don’t think Iraqui deaths are more important. Where ever did you get that idea? Please direct me to where that was stated. Perhaps I should apologize if that is so.Do you think that maybe the extra troops would stop the theft of the oil.I thought it was the greedy oil companies that caused the higher prices. Now I’m confused.
The meeting of the Aryan Nation of Canada is about to begin.We think there may be a Black person in Quebec and we need to discuss it.
BDP fleet,
Why DID you bring you bring up the Food – Oil Program on “Civilian death surge in Iraq”? Just because the UN was mentioned in the header, to try derail this thread?
But it’s ironic how oil that funded a very minor scandal is now funding insurgents killing U.S. troops.
Most of the extra troops will be in Baghdad — oil smuggling is elsewhere = unlikely to stop thefts.
Duhh… M-E is a very important oil region. Instability there causes market jitters, causing price to go up.
cosmos – I saw that raised elsewhere – must have been a ‘talking point’ today.
Swiped……….
Poll on AOL
Which president was best?
Bill Clinton 30%Ronald Reagan 27%John F. Kennedy 17%Dwight Eisenhower 13%George W. Bush 5%Richard Nixon 2%George H.W. Bush 2%Jimmy Carter 2%Gerald Ford 2%
Total Votes: 406,002
Which president was worst?
George W. Bush 49%Jimmy Carter 25%Bill Clinton 15%Richard Nixon 6%George H.W. Bush 3%Ronald Reagan 1%Gerald Ford 1%John F. Kennedy 1%Dwight Eisenhower 0%
Total Votes: 408,543
Nice going, GWB supporters.
What does the BDP in front of Fleet’s name stand for? I noticed it on another thread, but haven’t found the source, yet.
Steven Davis
On another thread, he was unamiously named ” The Blogs Dumbest Poster”.
I guess good work is its own reward!
But GMC is giving him a run for his money……
Thanks gster. I guess I am not sure he has quite earned that distinction. But, I do applaud his efforts at working on it.
Takes away WSClarks ability to use “!” in his posts and substitutes them with “~”.
“Takes away WSClarks ability to use “!” in his posts and substitutes them with “~”.”
Do you have an English translation for that, JM?
‘Cuz it certainly doesn’t make any sense.
49% of the country are idiots?This is no surprise. Have you been to a local mall lately?
WSClark,
You use a lot of exclaimation points in your posts (!)
I was suggesting using the tilde (~)instead. :)
Some humor that was no doubt lost in the translation. :)
Obviously – I rarely use “!”
But what the hell, the right wing doesn’t care about any stinking facts.
JM,
What’s humorous about replacing “!” with “~” ? Your posts,
Beautifully written Tracy~doh~ i was thinking per month.
I can never figured out why Jimmy Carter is thought to be among the worst presidents. To me, he is a great man. I’d vote for him again.
Jimmy Carter was good at international policies but was weak on domestic policies.I do admirer him for his honesty and his work on habitat for humanity program after being president.Peanuts, Billy beer anyone?
Bush says Congress no confidence vote may signal to the world that the country is divided on Iraq. I say, Duh.
Surely someone like Rush can come up with a comparison on the number of civilians killed in Iraq in a year, and say the number of Americans that died of cancer or heart attacks in the US, to make it sound like you’d be safer living in Iraq.
Over 300,000 Americans die each year of smoking related illnesses…costing the taxpayers billions in health care costs. Just think if everyone quit smoking and we never went to war, how much money we’d have…maybe we could do something really cool with it, like colonize the moon or pay for every American kid’s college education.
Wiseman, I actually have an unopened can of Billy Beer! Although, it’s probably not worth drinking now.
“Over 300,000 Americans die each year of smoking related illnesses…costing the taxpayers billions in health care costs. Just think if everyone quit smoking and we never went to war, how much money we’d have…maybe we could do something really cool with it, like colonize the moon or pay for every American kid’s college education.”
Mary,Sign me up for your .org. Enjoy your vacation.
While you’re at it Mary, sign me up for the empirical truth about Irqai deaths:
http://freerangethought.com/Docs/Lancet2.pdf
Irqais’ life under Saddam was better!
Sad, but true…
Wiseman,
“Jimmy Carter was good at international policies but was weak on domestic policies.”
I wonder if civilians in Iraq realize how much U.S. DOMESTIC policies have messed up their lives?
Carter’s higher energy efficiency policies would probably have prevented the 1st Gulf War, the U.S. military being based in Saudi, OBL getting PO’d, and the resulting consequences…
But Reagan rolled back CAFE mpg standards in 1985, to benefit GM and Ford’s $’s — and here we are today…
Written in 1990, 16 years ago,’Make Fuel Efficiency Our Gulf Strategy’http://www.rmi.org/images/other/Security/S90-26_MakeFuelEffGulf.pdf“Are we putting our kids in tanks because we didn’t put them in efficient cars? Yes: we wouldn’t have needed any oil from the Persian Gulf after 1985 if we’d simply kept on saving oil at the rate we did from 1977 through 1985.” (continues)
Plus we wouldn’t have the current energy crisis, our economy would be stronger, and we’d be putting much less GHG’s into our atmosphere.
Carter’s energy policies were much more sweeping than rolling back speed limits. They included inducements for wind and solar power; gassification of coal, mining of oil shales, grants to make homes easier to heat; the list goes on and on. His was a comprehensive thoughtful plan and u.s. energy use was actually declining; then along came the conservatives, and Ron; who mothballed the billion dollar gassification plant in North Dakota and abandoned the shale efforts. Scrapped everything, and now you can see the result of “market economics.” The Reagan bastards also secretly negotiated with Iran to make sure the hostages weren’t released under Carter’s administration.
Carter was our only president who thought ahead in terms of decades instead of elections; and of course, he lost.
Had we followed his energy policies, we’d be self-sufficient today; our greenhouse gas emmission would be much less, and we be sitting pretty, the energy conservation and alternate tech leaders of the world.
The Chinese attained positive energy production from a thermonuclear reactor the other day. Where are we?
Where are we?
Stuck in Iraq, because of our stupid addiction to oil.
In Iraq, many times we can also define “insurgents” as “passersby.”
“Carter was our only president who thought ahead in terms of decades instead of elections; and of course, he lost.”
Actually, I think Ford did too … and lost too …
But cosmos and Hmmmm, we can all take comfort in the fact that big oil and Halliburton are making record profits (this is sarcasm – you recognize don’t you?)
Reagan started this whole spending money we didn’t have to make the few wealthy. But he dressed it all up in the flag, God and democracy also and he sold it just like a snake oil salesman.
I agree Cosmos, if we had listened to Carter, we would be self sufficient sitting on the gold mine of alternative energy but no we are now a debtor nation and it scares the hell out of me. Debtor nations do not hold the ranking of superpower.
Just think what all the billions of dollars wasted in Iraq could have done if we had invested in alternative energy sources? Might have, could have but did not have – that’s the legacy of the Bush Administration.