Comments on: 100,000

By: john b

john b — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 17:55:00 +0000

?

The link is to Johann's own site!

By: DavidD

DavidD — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 17:39:00 +0000

Johann hari hasn’t said that. You are quoting another person on harry’s Place, i think you should correct this…

By: siaw

siaw — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 23:33:00 +0000

Even if you had left ", which is a fucking horrible thing to contemplate" in, it would still be the usual crap, as you’d effectively be saying that the current situation is *more* fucking horrible to contemplate than Saddam – and his sons, and his henchmen, and his entire regime – still in power. Which it may well be from where you’re sitting, with those enormous ideological blinkers clamped over your eyes … So tell us, why *did* you change your view on Iraq: because you thought long and carefully about it, or because it bothered you to find yourself out of step with those you’re normally in step with? On second thoughts, no, don’t tell us, we’re nodding off already.

By: buzz

buzz — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 23:09:00 +0000

Yeah, you didnt bother to read it, did you. I suppose since it accuses Uncle Sam of killing 100K innocent people, that was good enough for you. The people who did the "guess" say in the article that the estimate runs from 8000 to 198000 people, so they split the difference at around 100K, with a margin of error of 98%. But what the hell. Proves Bush is Hitler, so that should be good enough for anyone.

By: john b

john b — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 15:42:00 +0000

The draft version of the post had ", which is a fucking horrible thing to comtemplate" after "if Saddam were still in power". I should have left that in, I reckon.

By: siaw

siaw — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 14:54:00 +0000

"not only would the UK and the US be better off, not only would the War on Terror have been more successful, but that even the Iraqis would be better off, if Saddam were still in power": If we’d wanted to write a parody of the infinitely complacent, self-righteous, self-deluding crap that characterises the nuttier wing of the "anti-war" circus we couldn’t have done a better job. If you really believe that you’ll believe anything – even a blatantly biased and unreliable report from the same magazine that sparked off the MMR/autism scare.

By: Laban Tall

Laban Tall — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 05:57:00 +0000

I immdiately disbelieved it - but I haven't seen the evidence yet. I haven't got time to download and review it - hope someone else has.

But 100K in 18 months - that's what, 1200 a week ? Killed by the Septics ?

I'm wondering if they haven't done the equivalent of sampling random families from Dunblane, County Down, Hackney and Hungerford in an attempt to gauge the amount of gun crime.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:36:00 +0000

Johann Hari’s position is interesting – basically it changes according to what the Iraqi people want, as revealed through the latest opinion survey. I feel for Johann, he’s adrift in a sea of internal arguments, which he is very honest about. So he’s given up forming his own opinions, and just supports the Iraqi majority. Not a thoroughly bad thing to do, by any means, but interesting. A journalist without opinions!

Anyway, him and Naomi Klein (for example) are pretty much fighting the same battles now – highlighting issues like the role of the IMF, dodgy business dealings, Saddam-era deby – and campaigning for a democracy with as little US meddling as possible. We can keep arguing about whether the war was right or wrong, because that’s important, but these are the battles we should be getting behind now. We being ‘the left’ or something…

(Oh yeah, and "there’s no statute of limitation for murder" should be applied to both Saddam and Bush. It’s a different thing to kill thousands of innocent civillians in war, but when the war was as stupid and wrong and selfish as this one, it’s not a very different thing at all).

Sorry for going on a bit, John, I’ve got work to put off…

By: Timbeaux

Timbeaux — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:26:00 +0000

Where I come from, there’s no statute of limitation for murder.

By: john b

john b — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 04:24:00 +0000

??

It's significantly fewer men, women and children than he killed in the 10 years before that, I know.