the premises

1. The U.S. military is already killing more civilian Iraqis than would likely die in any threatened civil war;

2. The U.S. presence is actually aggravating terrorist (Iraqi-on-Iraqi) violence, not suppressing it;

3. Much of the current terrorist violence would be likely to subside if the U.S. left;

4. The longer the U.S. stays, the more likely that scenarios involving an authentic civil war will prove accurate. (Michael Schwartz)

the reasoning

*With some 600 checkpoints in Baghdad alone, and as many as 100 cars approaching each checkpoint during a non-curfew daylight hour, there are upwards of 250,000 chances each day for an Iraqi driver to fail to slow down soon enough, or, distracted, fail to see the checkpoint in time, or do something to make jumpy soldiers jump. If only one out of 40,000 drivers makes this mistake that still would produce perhaps 6 lethal incidents a day -- in which case about 2,000 Iraqis would meet Waleed Khaled's fate each year, although without the benefit of news coverage and a U.S. Army investigation, however perfunctory. (Note that, at this point, we have just about no way of knowing in any of the death situations discussed here and below how many Iraqis are dying, so these are the crudest of figures.)

*Second, American troops are constantly patrolling contested areas in Iraqi cities under instructions to use "overwhelming force" in firefights with actual or suspected resistance fighters. If they encounter sustained resistance, the rules of engagement call for demolishing buildings occupied by snipers, and treating all inhabitants of such buildings as the enemy. Among the several hundred patrols or more each day around Iraq, it appears that about one in ten result in lethal firefights. Even if fewer than half of these firefights produce a single collateral civilian death, this tiny percentage would yield perhaps 15 deaths on an average day or close to 5,000 civilian deaths a year.

*A third staple of the occupation is entering houses in search of suspected insurgents, either because they have been identified by informants, or as part of house-to-house searches after IED or other guerrilla attacks. U.S. statistics indicate that no fewer than 75% of all entered houses do not contain an insurgent....With several hundred such missions undertaken each day, and such patrols entering as many as a dozen houses on a patrol, American troops enter something like 2,000 Iraqi homes on an ordinary day. If only one of every one hundred entries results in violence, and far less than half end in a dead civilian, these home invasions can still account for 10 or so deaths per day, or another 3,500 per year.

*Fourth and finally, we come to American air power. When American patrols, large or small, encounter violent resistance, their rules of engagement call for the use of overwhelming fire power to eliminate the enemy. Where their immediate response fails to destroy the enemy, an air assault is often ordered, with either gunships or bombers. Air assaults are also ordered against suspected insurgent "safe houses."

American officials do concede that they average about "50 close air support and armed reconnaissance missions every day." These occur at all of the familiar urban hotspots: Baghdad, Falluja, Mosul, Tal Afar, Ramadi, Samarra, as well as numerous smaller towns. If only one in five of these missions produces civilian casualties, and if the average death toll is only four instead of 40, then 15,000 Iraqi civilians die every year from U.S. air attacks. (Michael Schwartz)

conclusion

*The depressing total of these very rough calculations is over 25,000 civilian deaths each year, more than five times the number caused by car bombs and other Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence.(Michael Schwartz)

this however seems to be a rather conservative estimate...

*In fact, the best estimate is that the occupation has been killing about 40,000 Iraqi civilians each year. These figures were first published a year ago in a path-breaking, yet largely neglected, study published in the British medical journal the Lancet by a mixed team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Iraqi universities; but careful vetting of war reports indicates that something close to these rates seems to have been maintained ever since. That helps explain why even the distinctly limited numbers collected by U.S. and Iraqi official sources (when released at all) almost always report that American (or other) occupation forces account for at least two-thirds of all civilian deaths in military actions, with an unknown proportion of the remainder due to the actions of the Iraqi government, not the resistance.(Michael Schwartz)

the rest of the analysis can be found Michael Schwartz on Immediate Withdrawal (http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=23549)

a projected death toll of an iraqi civil war is attempted....

And they are right. Black Wednesday, September 14, with its 12 Baghdad car bombs, killing at least 160 Iraqis, and wounding upward of 600, offered a flash of civil-war-level violence. Ordinarily, Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence accounts, on average, for fewer than 100 civilian deaths a week. This was true even during the car-bomb offensive just after the January elections. If a Black Wednesday occurred every week, the death toll from such violence might reach 15,000 per year, and we could start talking about a real civil war.

thats 10,000 deaths less than what the americans inflict.

Golly, and all of that is nothing but pure speculation with little or nothing to back it up! How nice ....ya' got any more little items like that? ...they're fun to read - sorta' like the comics in the paper.

Baron Max

and you, baroness, would have it no other way
you and your murderous govt will never report any casualty figures other that those of the american military

yeah, what is it you say....collateral damage?. or is it....no civilians have died, they were all terrorists?

you however seem to be unable to dispute the figures
great. go back to to your comics

project censored (http://www.vermontguardian.com/dailies/0904/0919.shtml) a study out of sonoma state deal with the top ten under-covered stories during the period 04-05. here is #2

2. Media coverage fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the civilian death toll

Les Roberts, an investigator with the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, conducted a rigorous inquiry into pre- and post-invasion mortality in Iraq. The results were published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, on Oct. 29, 2004. Roberts and his team concluded that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is about 100,000 civilians, and may be much higher.

About 95 percent of those deaths were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry, and more than half of the fatalities were women and children. The study was done before the second invasion of Fallujah in fall 2004. More than 83 percent of Fallujah's 300,000 residents fled the city. Many families were forced to survive in fields, vacant lots and abandoned buildings without access to shelter, water, electricity, food or medical care.

so ahh.. four years down the road, military families, those with sons or daughters, brothers or sisters, mothers or fathers, boyfriends or girlfriends, or husbands or wives serving in iraq are at war. they are dealing with it on a daily basis; the worry, despair and tragedy that other americans don't have to think about. for them, it's personal.

for baron max, it is a comic strip

"My husband was killed inside Talafar a week ago. Today I went to check our house and see if everything was still there. I cannot stay there and [so I] returned to this camp because at least there is security here," said Samira Muhammad, 42, a tearful mother of four.

for baron max, it is a comic strip

Withdraw or stay, it doesn't really matter now. The consequences will be the same on the ground in Iraq, and the only difference will be in the total number of wounded and dead Americans and a slight difference from here on out in the total number of wounded and dead Iraqi. The difference in America will be between a nation that is willing to admit that it made an error of monumental and perhaps criminal proportions, and a nation that will continue to throw blood and treasure into a balck hole. That's all.

And no, Baron, this is not liberal-left-wing talking. This is a sober assessment of a nation with blood on its hands - mine, yours (assuming you are an American) and George Bush's. Yeah, that's right - I didn't vote for him but my guilt is just as deep as his. My taxes paid for his bombs and my inaction in the face of injustice, my unwillingness to risk anything meaningful, is just as reprehensible as his bullshit military service in the 70s and his chickenhawk position today.

There's no point in reasoning it out any longer. History will see us all damned.

perhaps then i must communicate with right wing fanatics such as baron max in a medium they understand

http://archive.salon.com/comics/tomo/2001/10/22/tomo/story.gif

:)

Heyyy, sure it sucks that 25,000 civilians have to die each year, but at least that'll still be less than the amount of civilians Saddam killed with his WMDs. Don't those fewer lives make it all worth it to have Saddam gone so that another 100,000-200,000 civilians won't ever die again???

/sarcasm

- N

perhaps then i must communicate with right wing fanatics such as baron max in a medium they understand

http://archive.salon.com/comics/tomo/2001/10/22/tomo/story.gif

:)
This comic brings up a point many liberals don't seem to understand. The people we are fighting are more like us (the right wingers) than you (the left). If you think the US is a theocracy, try living under the rule of the Islamofascists. The atheists, the homosexuals, the feminists would all be the first put to the knife if our adversary were to triumph. Yet it is the left that fails to see the need to fight.
Regarding the main topic of this thread, it is terrible that civilians, especially children, should die. But it brings up a question. Is it better to suffer under tyranny forever or to fight it? If you fight, people (including innocent people) will die. If you don't fight, injustice will prevail and people will die anyway (including innocents, including children). Pulling out now would render all the deaths meaningless and encourage the savages we are fighting against. It would be a show of weakness and cowardice. Again I say to you leftists, the enemy is more like me than you. He is conservative to a fanatical degree. I would see a pullout as a sign of weakness, and so would they.

This comic brings up a point many liberals don't seem to understand. The people we are fighting are more like us (the right wingers) than you (the left).

Any informed lefty knows that. Granted, many on the left just oppose any thing the right is for without stopping to think about it.

Now that we have established that the American right should be our psychological model for predicting our Arab enemy's behavior, what would the American right do if an American President ended our democracy, brutalized us and then invaded Canada. Then the French invade and defeate our military in order to remove our weapons of mass destruction. They kick us out of Canada and through our despot president turned dictator in jail and then 1:insisted that we remove "In God We Trust" from our money, 2: choose leaders for us then loot our treasury :3 force us to move to a parlimentary form of government, : and put pornography on all of our tv channels.

I am not saying that my analogy is good or talking about who are good guys or bad guys; My analogy is about how it feels to have foreigners running your country according to their whims. We are damn lucky that Saddam was hated and secular because otherwise Iraqi righties would be creating even more problems for us.

There is no reason why Iraqis should trust American intentions towards their nation. Bush intended to keep Iraq as an American pawn global geopolitics. Now Sistantani has almost taken the country from Bush. If Bush tries to keep Iraq against Sistani's will then Bush will have a serious insurgency to deal with. If Bush lets Sistani's allies have Iraq then Bush wasted a fortune because WMD and Saddam's evilness were not why Bush chose to invade Iraq.

madanthonywayne

This comic brings up a point many liberals don't seem to understand. The people we are fighting are more like us (the right wingers) than you (the left).

incredible. it is obvious to all what the christian right wing fanatics that are now the base of the republican party and in control, have as an agenda.

consider this.....

The rich Republicans of San Antonio's Bexar County consider themselves very conservative. And they are. But the politics of this new crowd gave them a bad scare. Not long after the Christian rightists staged their coup, the president of the Alamo City Republican Women's club just gave up and quit.
"The so-called Christian activists have finally gained control," she explained in her resignation letter, "and the Grand Old Party is more religious cult than political organization.

Next came the Pennsylvania primary ... the shock came the next day, when the votes for obscure Republican state committee positions were tallied. From nowhere, conservative Christians had grabbed dozens of seats. The militant newcomers are now close to controlling the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, too.

In June, in the San Diego County towns of Lemon Grove and El Cajon, a slate of "pro-family" Christian right activists financed by a group of conservative businessmen swept the Republican primary for all of the open council seats, along with a slew of state assembly seats. On the same day, several hundred miles to the north in Santa Clara Country, another slate of "biblically oriented" candidates--committed to the death penalty for such sins as homosexuality and abortion--captured 14 of 20 seats on the Republican county central committee. The GOP apparatus in the nation's most populous state is within a few votes of being absolutely controlled by the Christian right.

Across the nation, in primary after primary, stunned Republican leaders echoed the lament of one longtime party activist in Texas, a personal friend of Barbara Bush, who suddenly found herself ousted by the fundamentalists. "They organized and we didn't," she said. "I didn't think it was going to be this bad.Taking Over the Republican Party (http://www.theocracywatch.org/taking_over.htm)

f you think the US is a theocracy, try living under the rule of the Islamofascists. The atheists, the homosexuals, the feminists would all be the first put to the knife if our adversary were to triumph.

it is only us, the liberals, that keeps america from being ruled by the christian taliban

On Aug. 23, President Bush said, "The fact that Iraq will have a democratic constitution that honors women's rights, the rights of minorities, is, is going to be an important change in the, in the broader Middle East."

he lies, you heil
your adversary has triumphed. the sharia is going to be the sole basis of the law. if anything conflicts with it, the sharia takes precedence.

it is why the ayatollah is desperately pushing for the passage of the new constitution

Yet it is the left that fails to see the need to fight.

elaborate and be specific. fight whom. why? what does the enemy want?

But it brings up a question. Is it better to suffer under tyranny forever or to fight it?

mindless sloganeering and a disingenuous and probably hypocritical call to arms. it is better to live kneeling down than not live at all. we all suffer indignities in one form or the other. yet life goes on.

the trick is not to limit your options. violence and death is not the only way

If you fight, people (including innocent people) will die. If you don't fight, injustice will prevail and people will die anyway (including innocents, including children).

in this particular war. all stated objectives and goals have been miserable failures.

Pulling out now would render all the deaths meaningless and encourage the savages we are fighting against.

check out the insane logic....we honor the dead by sacrificing the live
ah the demonizing of the enemy. i bet mud does not know who it is he is fighting (who he wants others to fight)

It would be a show of weakness and cowardice.

america america america
yup. it is frikkin football game

Again I say to you leftists, the enemy is more like me than you. He is conservative to a fanatical degree. I would see a pullout as a sign of weakness, and so would they.]

thanks for the clarification
we will not rest untill you subhumans are wiped off the face of this earth

the trick is not to limit your options. violence and death is not the only way

we will not rest untill you subhumans are wiped off the face of this earth

wow.

can you explain how you didn't just contradict yourself to the point of being one of the sub-humans you think should be wiped off the face of the earth?

too easy

i do not buy into the "clarification"
subhuman=right wing christian fundie nazi pigs
me=liberal=possibly perfect
violence and death is a way

ja? no?

Heyyy, sure it sucks that 25,000 civilians have to die each year, but at least that'll still be less than the amount of civilians Saddam killed with his WMDs. Don't those fewer lives make it all worth it to have Saddam gone so that another 100,000-200,000 civilians won't ever die again???

/sarcasm

- N


/dolt!

has time stopped moving?
do some elementary math

too easy

i do not buy into the "clarification"

k.

subhuman=right wing christian fundie nazi pigs

= left wing propagandist perma-victim fundie morons.

Both of which are disgusting from a certain perspective.

me=liberal=possibly perfect

hehe.

violence and death is a way

ja? no?

just checking.

k.

actually i do buy into the clarification. it is not implicitly spelled out but the overall impression is that i do

*i posted cartoon
*i acknowledge.... "........... the christian right wing fanatics that are now the base of the republican party and in control, have as an agenda." etc

so how do i wriggle?
simple

why would i bomb sovereign nations that pose no threat? why do i care if they are theocracies or dictatorships? our liberties were hard fought. if they want freedom, let them struggle as we did.

what i will fight for is my liberty. liberty from tyranny
liberty from the drooling, wild eyed, right wing fanatics AKA subhumans

yeah, the very same that seek overturn our american values and return us back into the stone age.

they do not abide by fair and honest elections
thus i see no choice but to fight and exterminate the scum that are called republicans.

its war
pick a side

Withdraw or stay, it doesn't really matter now.

grow some balls and claim your country back from the fundie pigs
history should see this as a sordid first chapter. can we, the liberals, write the subsequent chapters in which we make things ok?

Wow, Gustav, you sure don't know sarcasm even when I show that I'm using it in the post with the end "/sarcasm" part.

- N

Wow, Gustav, you sure don't know sarcasm even when I show that I'm using it in the post with the end "/sarcasm" part.

- N

yikes!
sorry kiddo

i see no choice but to fight and exterminate the scum that are called republicans.
its war
pick a side
You sir, are a nut. Still, I don't think us Republicans have much to fear from a bunch of tree hugging hippies such as yourself. Bring it on, Captain Gars.

You sir, are a nut.
i refuse the label.
you merely project

witness the real crazed and wild eyed loons amongst us
The people we are fighting are more like us (the right wingers) than you (the left).
i agree with your analysis.......
republicans are terrorists
liberals are cool
The atheists, the homosexuals, the feminists would all be the first put to the knife if our adversary were to triumph.
and since the adversary is like you, you will put us to the knife if you were to triumph in your plot to talibanize america
you will be resisted. it will be a bloodbath
Again I say to you leftists, the enemy is more like me than you. He is conservative to a fanatical degree..
we liberals are well aware of the enemy...drooling, wild eyed, right wing fanatics

madanthonywayne

your honesty is appreciated.

the premises

1. The U.S. military is already killing more civilian Iraqis than would likely die in any threatened civil war;

2. The U.S. presence is actually aggravating terrorist (Iraqi-on-Iraqi) violence, not suppressing it;

3. Much of the current terrorist violence would be likely to subside if the U.S. left;

4. The longer the U.S. stays, the more likely that scenarios involving an authentic civil war will prove accurate. (Michael Schwartz)

the reasoning

*With some 600 checkpoints in Baghdad alone, and as many as 100 cars approaching each checkpoint during a non-curfew daylight hour, there are upwards of 250,000 chances each day for an Iraqi driver to fail to slow down soon enough, or, distracted, fail to see the checkpoint in time, or do something to make jumpy soldiers jump. If only one out of 40,000 drivers makes this mistake that still would produce perhaps 6 lethal incidents a day -- in which case about 2,000 Iraqis would meet Waleed Khaled's fate each year, although without the benefit of news coverage and a U.S. Army investigation, however perfunctory. (Note that, at this point, we have just about no way of knowing in any of the death situations discussed here and below how many Iraqis are dying, so these are the crudest of figures.)

*Second, American troops are constantly patrolling contested areas in Iraqi cities under instructions to use "overwhelming force" in firefights with actual or suspected resistance fighters. If they encounter sustained resistance, the rules of engagement call for demolishing buildings occupied by snipers, and treating all inhabitants of such buildings as the enemy. Among the several hundred patrols or more each day around Iraq, it appears that about one in ten result in lethal firefights. Even if fewer than half of these firefights produce a single collateral civilian death, this tiny percentage would yield perhaps 15 deaths on an average day or close to 5,000 civilian deaths a year.

*A third staple of the occupation is entering houses in search of suspected insurgents, either because they have been identified by informants, or as part of house-to-house searches after IED or other guerrilla attacks. U.S. statistics indicate that no fewer than 75% of all entered houses do not contain an insurgent....With several hundred such missions undertaken each day, and such patrols entering as many as a dozen houses on a patrol, American troops enter something like 2,000 Iraqi homes on an ordinary day. If only one of every one hundred entries results in violence, and far less than half end in a dead civilian, these home invasions can still account for 10 or so deaths per day, or another 3,500 per year.

*Fourth and finally, we come to American air power. When American patrols, large or small, encounter violent resistance, their rules of engagement call for the use of overwhelming fire power to eliminate the enemy. Where their immediate response fails to destroy the enemy, an air assault is often ordered, with either gunships or bombers. Air assaults are also ordered against suspected insurgent "safe houses."

American officials do concede that they average about "50 close air support and armed reconnaissance missions every day." These occur at all of the familiar urban hotspots: Baghdad, Falluja, Mosul, Tal Afar, Ramadi, Samarra, as well as numerous smaller towns. If only one in five of these missions produces civilian casualties, and if the average death toll is only four instead of 40, then 15,000 Iraqi civilians die every year from U.S. air attacks. (Michael Schwartz)

conclusion

*The depressing total of these very rough calculations is over 25,000 civilian deaths each year, more than five times the number caused by car bombs and other Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence.(Michael Schwartz)

this however seems to be a rather conservative estimate...

*In fact, the best estimate is that the occupation has been killing about 40,000 Iraqi civilians each year. These figures were first published a year ago in a path-breaking, yet largely neglected, study published in the British medical journal the Lancet by a mixed team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Iraqi universities; but careful vetting of war reports indicates that something close to these rates seems to have been maintained ever since. That helps explain why even the distinctly limited numbers collected by U.S. and Iraqi official sources (when released at all) almost always report that American (or other) occupation forces account for at least two-thirds of all civilian deaths in military actions, with an unknown proportion of the remainder due to the actions of the Iraqi government, not the resistance.(Michael Schwartz)

the rest of the analysis can be found Michael Schwartz on Immediate Withdrawal (http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=23549)

a projected death toll of an iraqi civil war is attempted....

And they are right. Black Wednesday, September 14, with its 12 Baghdad car bombs, killing at least 160 Iraqis, and wounding upward of 600, offered a flash of civil-war-level violence. Ordinarily, Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence accounts, on average, for fewer than 100 civilian deaths a week. This was true even during the car-bomb offensive just after the January elections. If a Black Wednesday occurred every week, the death toll from such violence might reach 15,000 per year, and we could start talking about a real civil war.

thats 10,000 deaths less than what the americans inflict.


My first blush of reading most of the material is that much of it is reliant on ifs and basic conspiracy theories.

Just reading the the schwartz article alone makes four speculative ifs statements. What was that again? Oh yea, argument to the future. If certain things were to happen, then. The argument is apparently okay to support your opinions, but not mine (of which I never made to begin with). But, of course, I am the hypocrite and ignoramus.

The conspiracy theories simply attempt to turn around factual statements and strategies to fit whatever it is lefties wish to believe.

I will say this: one of the if's (but it was not speculative) supports one of my legitimate arguments against going to Iraq.

It just seems like its saying we can never justify military action (aggressive or defensive) because civilians may get hurt, as well as our own military personnel getting hurt. And while those are legitimate concerns, they are part of warfare. Right or wrong the fact that this happens should not deter the mission. Did you ever hear your football coach tell you that playing hard lessens the chances of injury?

Ultimately, I think your articles make a better argument for a major military action that would hasten the end results sooner, rather than later.

"republicans are terrorists
liberals are cool"

lol.

The thread is entitled the consequences of a withdrawal from Iraq.

So exactly what are the consequences?

Civil war in Iraq? Of which you (or Schwartz is) are saying would happen irrespective of our presence.

Lower death totals? Okay not to sully the deaths of human beings, but would the lower total be for a specific year, or over the long haul? If for a specific year, then you may have a minor point. However, does that total increase over time given a civil war which would not be fought for one year? If so, does not a lower death total in one year accumulate to greater numbers over several years? As oppose to having a presence in the region where, perhaps, the total may be high for one year, but decreases over a period of years. I think this type of thinking is what happens when multiculturalism is allowed to run amok.

So exactly what are the consequences?

And finally, have you ever considered the consequences of Roe v Wade?

Have you considered (http://users.rcn.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm) that our foreign policy has produced less deaths since 1945, than our domestic policy of abortion has since 1973?

I mean since your greater concern is the death of "innocent" civilians, where is that same passion for the innocent, as yet to be born?

Personally, I mourn all the deaths. However while it does not make sense to me that we still fight wars and commit other tragic acts (terrorism), I am more confused that we set a deliberate, legal policy of killing those yet to be born.

Do you share the same passion, or is it that the Iraq war was fronted by Bush? Thus, generating your real anger.

Again, what are those consequences?

Naturally, I am only being illogical and hypocritical. So I will just pass off my points to that.




the premises

1. The U.S. military is already killing more civilian Iraqis than would likely die in any threatened civil war;

2. The U.S. presence is actually aggravating terrorist (Iraqi-on-Iraqi) violence, not suppressing it;

3. Much of the current terrorist violence would be likely to subside if the U.S. left;

4. The longer the U.S. stays, the more likely that scenarios involving an authentic civil war will prove accurate. (Michael Schwartz)

the reasoning

*With some 600 checkpoints in Baghdad alone, and as many as 100 cars approaching each checkpoint during a non-curfew daylight hour, there are upwards of 250,000 chances each day for an Iraqi driver to fail to slow down soon enough, or, distracted, fail to see the checkpoint in time, or do something to make jumpy soldiers jump. If only one out of 40,000 drivers makes this mistake that still would produce perhaps 6 lethal incidents a day -- in which case about 2,000 Iraqis would meet Waleed Khaled's fate each year, although without the benefit of news coverage and a U.S. Army investigation, however perfunctory. (Note that, at this point, we have just about no way of knowing in any of the death situations discussed here and below how many Iraqis are dying, so these are the crudest of figures.)

*Second, American troops are constantly patrolling contested areas in Iraqi cities under instructions to use "overwhelming force" in firefights with actual or suspected resistance fighters. If they encounter sustained resistance, the rules of engagement call for demolishing buildings occupied by snipers, and treating all inhabitants of such buildings as the enemy. Among the several hundred patrols or more each day around Iraq, it appears that about one in ten result in lethal firefights. Even if fewer than half of these firefights produce a single collateral civilian death, this tiny percentage would yield perhaps 15 deaths on an average day or close to 5,000 civilian deaths a year.

*A third staple of the occupation is entering houses in search of suspected insurgents, either because they have been identified by informants, or as part of house-to-house searches after IED or other guerrilla attacks. U.S. statistics indicate that no fewer than 75% of all entered houses do not contain an insurgent....With several hundred such missions undertaken each day, and such patrols entering as many as a dozen houses on a patrol, American troops enter something like 2,000 Iraqi homes on an ordinary day. If only one of every one hundred entries results in violence, and far less than half end in a dead civilian, these home invasions can still account for 10 or so deaths per day, or another 3,500 per year.

*Fourth and finally, we come to American air power. When American patrols, large or small, encounter violent resistance, their rules of engagement call for the use of overwhelming fire power to eliminate the enemy. Where their immediate response fails to destroy the enemy, an air assault is often ordered, with either gunships or bombers. Air assaults are also ordered against suspected insurgent "safe houses."

American officials do concede that they average about "50 close air support and armed reconnaissance missions every day." These occur at all of the familiar urban hotspots: Baghdad, Falluja, Mosul, Tal Afar, Ramadi, Samarra, as well as numerous smaller towns. If only one in five of these missions produces civilian casualties, and if the average death toll is only four instead of 40, then 15,000 Iraqi civilians die every year from U.S. air attacks. (Michael Schwartz)

conclusion

*The depressing total of these very rough calculations is over 25,000 civilian deaths each year, more than five times the number caused by car bombs and other Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence.(Michael Schwartz)

this however seems to be a rather conservative estimate...

*In fact, the best estimate is that the occupation has been killing about 40,000 Iraqi civilians each year. These figures were first published a year ago in a path-breaking, yet largely neglected, study published in the British medical journal the Lancet by a mixed team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Iraqi universities; but careful vetting of war reports indicates that something close to these rates seems to have been maintained ever since. That helps explain why even the distinctly limited numbers collected by U.S. and Iraqi official sources (when released at all) almost always report that American (or other) occupation forces account for at least two-thirds of all civilian deaths in military actions, with an unknown proportion of the remainder due to the actions of the Iraqi government, not the resistance.(Michael Schwartz)

the rest of the analysis can be found Michael Schwartz on Immediate Withdrawal (http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=23549)

a projected death toll of an iraqi civil war is attempted....

And they are right. Black Wednesday, September 14, with its 12 Baghdad car bombs, killing at least 160 Iraqis, and wounding upward of 600, offered a flash of civil-war-level violence. Ordinarily, Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence accounts, on average, for fewer than 100 civilian deaths a week. This was true even during the car-bomb offensive just after the January elections. If a Black Wednesday occurred every week, the death toll from such violence might reach 15,000 per year, and we could start talking about a real civil war.

thats 10,000 deaths less than what the americans inflict.

But, of course, I am the hypocrite and ignoramus.
Naturally, I am only being illogical and hypocritical. So I will just pass off my points to that.
that is not so. you have made some decent points and i will attempt to address them soon

that is not so. you have made some decent points and i will attempt to address them soon

I look forward to them.

I am not concerned with # of people killed, but ultimate state of the nations involved.

A US withdrawl at this point would return Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia to Islamic fundamentalist tribalism, which I support.

USA and Israel should withdraw from Arab lands.

randicand

So exactly what are the consequences?
Civil war in Iraq? Of which you (or Schwartz is) are saying would happen irrespective of our presence.

it has already begun. label it as you see fit. there is violent conflict b/w the shia and sunni. the kurds have been keeping out of it so far

Lower death totals? Okay not to sully the deaths of human beings, but would the lower total be for a specific year, or over the long haul?.

the estimates are given per year

If for a specific year, then you may have a minor point. However, does that total increase over time given a civil war which would not be fought for one year? If so, does not a lower death total in one year accumulate to greater numbers over several years? .

well naturally it will. it is simple addition. i must also remind you that this point holds true for the death toll caused or will be caused by the coalition forces.

secondly..If a Black Wednesday occurred every week, the death toll from such violence might reach 15,000 per year, and we could start talking about a real civil war.(Schwartz)

it could be two per week. it could be one every two weeks.
all i do is guesstimates based on trends

As oppose to having a presence in the region where, perhaps, the total may be high for one year, but decreases over a period of years..

your premise is not supported by the trends observed. the death toll has increased yearly since the invasion, it is logical to expect it to be stable or increase. i cannot justify an assertion that it would drop. lets look at what is proposed in the constitution....semi autonomous zones within a unified iraq. resources mostly benefit the individual zones that have them.

the sunnis are left with nothing. it is most likely they will keep fighting

all this however is conventional wisdom. if you know of any realistic variables that change the equation thereby producing a different outcome(s), bring them to the table. lets consider.

I think this type of thinking is what happens when multiculturalism is allowed to run amok..

complete non-sequiter

Personally, I mourn all the deaths. However while it does not make sense to me that we still fight wars and commit other tragic acts (terrorism), I am more confused that we set a deliberate, legal policy of killing those yet to be born..

perhaps you are a more compassionate person than me. regardless i find the abortion issue irrelevant to this discussion

Do you share the same passion, or is it that the Iraq war was fronted by Bush? Thus, generating your real anger..

i focus on illegal wars and the slaughter of civilians. no one is exempt from condemnation or impeachment
eyeball my posts in propagandist mikasa11's thread. (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=859538#post859538)

Fair enough, but you still have not answered the question what are the consequences of withdrawal.

your premise is not supported by the trends observed. the death toll has increased yearly since the invasion, it is logical to expect it to be stable or increase. i cannot justify an assertion that it would drop.


Similarly, you cannot justify an assertion it would go up.
This (http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=3120) author wrote in July of 2004 about Iraq descending into civil war. Thus, if civil war began that day it has been more than a year since it started. My point was from the time of civil war it would be more beneficial to remain with the purpose of reducing deaths. And, according to this source civil war could only be a little over a year. Thus any death total could not be seen as decreasing, since another year of civil war has not passed.

I think this type of thinking is what happens when multiculturalism is allowed to run amok..

complete non-sequiter

This cannot be a non-sequitor since I never explained the reason it was in there. My point with this was that many think we have no business being anywhere trying to democratize another nation. Most of the time the reason is that just because another culture does not have freedom, does not mean that freedom is right for them. In other words, whatever their culture is is okay. I will grant that was not a point you brought up. It was something that occurred to me as I was writing.

regardless i find the abortion issue irrelevant to this discussion

This cannot be totally true because:

i focus on illegal wars and the slaughter of civilians

Abortions are the slaughter of innocent babies. Additionally, the greater point was that since 1945 our foreign policies have resulted in less deaths than our domestic policies since 1973. I also noticed the slight shift in focus from the killing of civilians to the legality of war.

The war is legal and properly voted for by congress, in fact authority was given twice.

Either way you answered the question over your concern of civilian slaughter, or the fact the Bush fronted the war.

But still unanswered is the question of what consequences of withdrawal. All you have stated is what I had already anticipated civil war and civilian deaths.

But still unanswered is the question of what consequences of withdrawal. All you have stated is what I had already anticipated civil war and civilian deaths.

conventional wisdom has it that the withdrawal of american troops will result in something that resembles armageddon
i hold that it would not be as bad as what is happening now

the premises again....

1. The U.S. military is already killing more civilian Iraqis than would likely die in any threatened civil war;

2. The U.S. presence is actually aggravating terrorist (Iraqi-on-Iraqi) violence, not suppressing it;

3. Much of the current terrorist violence would be likely to subside if the U.S. left;

4. The longer the U.S. stays, the more likely that scenarios involving an authentic civil war will prove accurate. (Michael Schwartz)

you are welcome to go back and read the topic post again
i also would like you to consider that a civil war has already begun

Have any of you even taken into account the positions of other nearby Islamic countries? Kuwaities, for example, support our efforts 100%, as do the Kurds, Saudi Arabians, some Iranians, and Turks (who are trying to reconnect with Turkish tribes in northern Iraq.) In toppling the Ba'ath party we have re-ignited long suppressed ethnic rivalries and that has undoubtly caused a lot of violence, but this was expected as the natural condition of that region. Transition command is allowing Iraqis to replace Americans day by day and is giving the Iraqis control over their own destiny.

randicand

Similarly, you cannot justify an assertion it would go up.

correct. there is also no need to do so as schwartz's objectives are quite specific. there are no "what if's" involved in the premises being offered up. the comparisons are made thru statistical analysis utilizing actual events and then extrapolating them into the future. a rather basic and mundane exercise, i think.

furthermore, the facts on ground render the assertion moot. from zero deaths prior to the invasion, it has been climbing upwards albeit in fits and spurts. i will find some numbers if possible to validate my statement

This (http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=3120) author wrote in July of 2004 about Iraq descending into civil war. Thus, if civil war began that day it has been more than a year since it started.

i object to lind's reasoning and reject it outright. lets look at his argument. he makes this absurd statement...

The answer is that civil war is already underway in Iraq. Most people do not see it, because it is not following the Sunni/Shi'ite/Kurd fault lines on which we have been lead to focus. As is usually the case in war, we are the victims not of deception but of self-deception.

followed by another one....

In Iraq's civil war, the most prominent faction is what America calls Iraq's "government." It is, of course, not a government, because there is no state. The "government's" goal is to recreate an Iraqi state and become a real government. What are its chances of success?

that is ridiculous. in essence, there is a civil war and americans are just one of the factions. while one can logically take this stance, i see a conceptual error in doing so. the interim govts are extensions of the american occupation forces. attack one and you symbolically attack the other. the distinctions are slight

My point was ............year of civil war has not passed.

i find this too convoluted and must confess my brain has maxed out

I also noticed the slight shift in focus from the killing of civilians to the legality of war.

no you did not. you noticed only the statement. i had not considered the legalities of the invasion in this thread nor do i desire to do so

radicand

basic conspiracy theories

quote them. lets discuss

Just reading the the schwartz article alone makes four speculative ifs statements.

quote them. lets discuss

Have any of you even taken into account the positions of other nearby Islamic countries? Kuwaities, for example, support our efforts 100%, as do the Kurds, Saudi Arabians, some Iranians, and Turks (who are trying to reconnect with Turkish tribes in northern Iraq.) In toppling the Ba'ath party we have re-ignited long suppressed ethnic rivalries and that has undoubtly caused a lot of violence, but this was expected as the natural condition of that region. Transition command is allowing Iraqis to replace Americans day by day and is giving the Iraqis control over their own destiny.

ok
i'll take into account we have some "islamic" supporters
whats next? how should my position change?

the re-ignition was expected by whom?

what is an iraqi? who controls what? be specific

I do not think we are far apart concerning civil war, as far as America being involved. I agree with you that at least for now, the Iraqi government and America are one. Although, we may differ on the extent of statement.

As to the rest of your post, I will not contend until I believe you have something with which to do so. I am clear on your position. That is not to say that I agree, but I at least understand where you are coming from.

If I have forgotten something, or discover a another contention I will post it.


randicand

Similarly, you cannot justify an assertion it would go up.

correct. there is also no need to do so as schwartz's objectives are quite specific. there are no "what if's" involved in the premises being offered up. the comparisons are made thru statistical analysis utilizing actual events and then extrapolating them into the future. a rather basic and mundane exercise, i think.

furthermore, the facts on ground render the assertion moot. from zero deaths prior to the invasion, it has been climbing upwards albeit in fits and spurts. i will find some numbers if possible to validate my statement

This (http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=3120) author wrote in July of 2004 about Iraq descending into civil war. Thus, if civil war began that day it has been more than a year since it started.

i object to lind's reasoning and reject it outright. lets look at his argument. he makes this absurd statement...

The answer is that civil war is already underway in Iraq. Most people do not see it, because it is not following the Sunni/Shi'ite/Kurd fault lines on which we have been lead to focus. As is usually the case in war, we are the victims not of deception but of self-deception.

followed by another one....

In Iraq's civil war, the most prominent faction is what America calls Iraq's "government." It is, of course, not a government, because there is no state. The "government's" goal is to recreate an Iraqi state and become a real government. What are its chances of success?

that is ridiculous. in essence, there is a civil war and americans are just one of the factions. while one can logically take this stance, i see a conceptual error in doing so. the interim govts are extensions of the american occupation forces. attack one and you symbolically attack the other. the distinctions are slight

My point was ............year of civil war has not passed.

i find this too convoluted and must confess my brain has maxed out

I also noticed the slight shift in focus from the killing of civilians to the legality of war.

no you did not. you noticed only the statement. i had not considered the legalities of the invasion in this thread nor do i desire to do so