Remember: 151,000 Iraqis killed since U.S.-led invasion-WHO

http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSL10424732

151,000 Iraqis killed since U.S.-led invasion-WHO

Wed Jan 9, 2008 7:51pm EST

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, Jan 9 (Reuters) - About 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of their country, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) research published on Wednesday.

The new study, which said violent deaths could have ranged from 104,000 to 223,000 between March 2003 and June 2006, is the most comprehensive since the war started.

The study drew on an Iraqi health ministry survey of nearly 10,000 households -- five times the number of those interviewed in a disputed 2006 John Hopkins University study that said more than 600,000 Iraqis had died over the period.

While well below that figure, the United Nations agency's estimate exceeds the widely-cited 80,000 to 87,000 death toll by the human rights group Iraq Body Count, which uses media reports and hospital and morgue records to calculate its tally.

"There are a lot of uncertainties in making such estimates," WHO statistician Mohamed Ali, who co-authored the study, told reporters on a conference call.

He said insecurity made parts of Baghdad and Anbar provinces unreachable for those conducting the survey, which included questions about other topics including pregnancy and disease.

Many families also fled their homes as a result of the violence, and some left the country, making it hard to give a precise assessment of the violence in Iraq. As a result, Ali said the margin of error for the toll was relatively high.

LARGE SCALE SURVEY

Still, he said the household survey's large scale gave the findings more weight than previous attempts to estimate the number of Iraqis killed in battles between and among military forces, insurgents and sectarian fighters.

The John Hopkins University report, published by the British medical journal Lancet, which was based on a smaller-scale Iraqi survey, drew criticism from the White House and elsewhere for appearing to exaggerate the Iraqi death rate.

Iraqi Health Minister Saleh al-Hasnawi described the latest WHO report as "very sound" and said the survey indicated "a massive death toll since the beginning of the conflict".

"I believe in these numbers," he told the conference call.

The White House said it had not seen the study, but mourned the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

"The unmistakable fact is that the vast majority of these deaths are caused by the willful, murderous intentions of extremists committed to taking innocent life," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

"It is also beyond dispute that more Iraqi citizens would be condemned to death and oppression if they were abandoned by America and our coalition partners."

The U.S. Department of Defense said enormous precautions were taken to avoid civilian deaths and injuries.

More than half of the violent deaths documented in the WHO report occurred in Baghdad.

An average of 128 Iraqis suffered violent deaths every day in the first year following the invasion. The next year, an average of 115 were killed daily and 126 died from violence each day in the third year after the war started.

Estimates of Iraq's civilian deaths have been hampered by the lack of a well-functioning death registration system, the WHO said.

Some 3,915 U.S. and 174 British forces have died since the war began. Between 4,900 and 6,375 Iraqi military personnel are thought to have died, though no reliable official figures have been issued since new security forces were set up in late 2003.

Death tolls have fallen in recent months as the number of violent attacks in Iraq has declined. (For more information on humanitarian crises and issues visit www.alertnet.org) (editing by Jonathan Lynn and Elizabeth Piper)

+++++++++++++++++++

Comment: Amerikan citizens who feel safe in their houses away from the battles in Iraq and the Middle East in general should all read this article and come to understand the 'bad karma' this all puts on their assume sense of safety. The U.S. military machine should exit Iraq-nam as soon as it can and avoid further unjust killings. It is not our country and we should leave it up to the Iraqui people to settle their own differences without us being killing in the killing of 151,000 Iraqis!!!

Posted by ~Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta

+++++++++++++++++++++
Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

Social Spin on 1-08-09-2007: By Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta

---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1WF734WQHs

Social Spin on 1-09-2008
+++++

*****

From: Peta51 Subscribe Unsubscribe Joined: 1 year ago Videos: 46

About This Video

Commentary behind electoral politics in Amerika... (more) Added: January 10, 2008 Commentary behind electoral politics in Amerika and prospecs for the future. http://liberation-now.blogspot.com/ (less) Added: January 10, 2008 Category: News & Politics Tags: Liberation

---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8JJmV5pK8Q

Social Spin on 1-08-2008
+++++


******

From: Peta51 Subscribe Unsubscribe Joined: 1 year ago Videos: 46

About This Video

Spin on New Hampshire results won by Hillary an... (more) Added: January 09, 2008 Spin on New Hampshire results won by Hillary and other stuff. http://liberation-now.blogspot.com/ (less) Added: January 09, 2008 Category: News & Politics Tags: Liberation

<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
Liberation Now!
http://liberation-now.blogspot.com/

Humane-Rights-Agenda Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>

On the 2008 Campaign in the Winter of our Discontent:By Peter S. Lopez ~ January 6, 2008

http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/2008/01/on-2008-campaign-in-winter-of-our.html

View Peta-de-Aztlan's map

Taken in (See more photos here)

With U.S. history as a guide to action and the proven facts available to us it should be clear to all with open minds that the next President of the United States will be the same kind of President the United States has always had: a White man! The typical Amerikan voter is a middle-class middle-aged White man who is at least a subconscious racist in denial and his own racism blinds him from seeing people as they really are on the inside.

No way in hell will the White racist American voter, in the solitude and privacy of the voting booth where no one is snooping over his shoulder to see if he being politically correct, make a decision to vote for an intelligent African-American man whose father was born in Kenya and White mother in Kansas.

Obama represents a kind of twisted guilt trip for White Amerikans who do not want to admit their inner racism and think it is grand idea that a Black man can do well in his bid for the Presidency and may support him in his quest but only up to a critical point. The critical point where the racist mind will think twice about the Obama Candidacy is when he gets the mental image of having a Black man as Commander-In-Chief inside the Oval Office White House with a gun! White racist Amerika alone will never vote for a Black man for President.

Neither will the typical Amerikan voter vote for any woman for President because we still live in a male-dominated chauvinist society. Besides, Hilary has too much baggage, along with the trash connected with her husband, 'Billy-the-Kid' Clinton. To many people she is seen as a part of the usual corporate-supported business as usual in Washington D.C. Irregardless, most testosterone driven males have still not fully accepted the concept of equal rights for women in all realms and certainly will not have a White woman as their national leader.

In the deepest depth of their psyche, White Amerikans prefer a White man for President if they are to feel safe at home with their families and sleep well at night. The idea of a bold brainy woman or an intelligent Black man being President in the Oval Office just does not sit right in their minds nor does it jell well in their souls.

Many non-White people simply do not now vote in significant numbers enough to dramatically shift the outcomes of campaigns for the U.S. Presidency. Potential is not necessarily manifest and many eligible voters do not vote despite their woes and worries. The most consistent non-White voters who are U.S. citizens are Asian-Americans. Sadly, many Chicano-Latinos and African-Americans, who united together could sway Presidential Elections, simply do not stay awake and go out and vote on voting day for the Presidential candidate who would best represent and fight for their bosom survival interests under corporate Amerika.

Amerika is not color blind when it comes to race despite liberal pretensions to the contrary. The fact of one's outward racial makeup is still a key factor in choosing who will be the next President, along with the candidate's gender in terms of being a man of a woman. Keep in mind that the whole concept of separate races is a social invention since human beings together make up the race of humankind as a species of life upon Mother Earth and we still live in a macho patriarchal society. Thus, in connected reality today, one's race-identity matters and one's sex gender matters when people vote for President of the of Amerika!

The number one division among American citizens in present-day society is still White racism among White people. It links together the racist Aryan-brotherhood member on Death Row spewing venom with the Evil One now in the White House plotting away during his last days for more photo-ops. In their heart of hearts, the vast majority of White Amerikans in the general population have racist roots and have been carefully taught to continue to be racist from one generation to the next. Some may not really believe they are genetically superior to non-Whites but they know that they are in an environmentally superior position when it comes to personal safety, social standing and economic success and in a White racist dominated society. White racists profit from the benefits of institutionalized racism.



Despite some progress over the decades, we are still living in a racist society that has extended its psycho-social disease beyond White racism against Blacks to include Mexican immigrants and Middle-Eastern peoples. Historically, from the early mass genocide of natives indigenous to these lands, to the horrors of lynching under Black Slavery, the theft of Aztlan from Mexico under the barrel of the gun legitimatized in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, to being suspicious of Muslims in a public setting as if they could be suicide bombers. Amerikans have been and are haters and their silent role as accomplices to the insanity of the Bush Regime engenders real hatred against Amerikans in the hearts of billions of people outside the United States!

White people are fast becoming the real racial minority inside the United States but now they are still the numerical majority. Minus, we have many non-White people who deep inside their Amerikanized psyche wish they were white-skinned White Amerikans and desire to be fully accepted by White society and thereby cancel themselves out in the politics of the race game because of their lack of racial loyalty. Trust me, irrational racism is still alive and well in Amerika, though we know that it is morally wrong and ethically unsound. White racism against non-White peoples is a key element in Amerika's history, inheritance and national mentality.

In my humble estimation, the only viable humane candidate from the Democratic Party running for President is John Edwards, but if it comes down to Hilary or Obama as the Democratic Party candidate then Edwards will be out of the Presidential race. I seriously doubt that the typical Amerikan voter as profiled above will vote for either Obama or Hilary Clinton. If the Democratic Party is not wise, savvy and do the basic math they can very well lose their only chance for capturing the Presidency in 2008 after eight years and we will get a conservative and reactionary Republican President. Now many Democrats naively assume that they going to easily capture the White House. Remember the lessons of 2000! Shift happens!

I am not thrilled with any of the official candidates for President right now and am an independent voter. Being early in 2008 it looks like we are stuck with the same ol' LOTE (Lesser Of Two Evils) choice for casting our vote on voting day. Independent voters who tend to be Democratic-leaning can be a key factor as they were in 2000, but remember the result back then? Gore should have won the U.S. Presidency by a landslide but he failed to draft and invite then President Clinton to campaign for him because of Billy-the-kid's sexual indiscretions, not because of the Bush Family's grand theft. Back then I voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader as a symbolic protest vote and because Nader had a lot of longevity and credibility as a social reformer.

The independent voter can influence the Presidential Elections to a quantitative degree but can that influence really be a determining factor in the actual outcome on Election Day ~ Tuesday, November 4, 2008?

Millions of eligible voters are still not registered to vote nor even know where their local polling place is located and the necessary community-based machinery for mass mobilization is not in operation inside the United States. There still no strong humane rights movement nor an aggressive vanguard party inside the United States that could give hope, example and inspiration to the rest of the world suffering under the dictates of the Amerikan Empire.


During the reign of the rogue Bush Regime the United States has fallen as a failed state and is seen as the enemy of humankind in the eyes of the majority of the world's people who reside in the Third World: Latin America, Africa and Asia. Many of them must think that we are at least narrow-minded nationalists without any humane compassion for the plight of the wretched of the earth beyond its own artificial borders. At worst we are seen as a selfish sinful people or killers worthy of a Jihad against us.

Across the ocean the Iraq War rages on despite the splurges on surges and the Middle East madness expands further into Afghanistan, again. The genocide in Dakur goes on in Africa as AIDS spreads throughout the dark continent. Latin America still suffers from neo-imperialism under the boot of U.S. sponsored petty dictators, the archaic inhumane Cuban blockade is still up after decades, with Guantanamo prison on Cuban soil.

The appeal of the Presidential candidates is to the hearts, souls and bank accounts of middle-class Amerikans and they routinely ignore the millions of poor oppressed people inside the United States who feel they have no stake in politics in general, including the 12 million-plus illegal immigrants here now who are just trying to stay under the radar of the INS and work hard to support their families as they pay taxes as consumers.

Here in the good ol' U.S.A. people are dying now from criminal neglect, from social apathy and from Amerikan arrogance. The many prisons that function as domestic concentration camps are always overcrowded with horrors hidden from the public eye, thousands of hungry homeless veterans wander the streets who still remember their military training and many children who should have promising futures die out because of no medical coverage.

We are in a new Millennium still living in cruel barbaric times. In connected reality, we have as much claim to any real humane civilization as a pack of wild hyenas.

Research Links:

Will American Voters Elect a Black President? Listen Now [11 min 21 sec]
All Things Considered, December 18, 2006

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6642868

All Power to the People: by Cindy Sheehan
January 3, 2008 at 10:09:08

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_cindy_sh_080103_all_power_to_the_peo.htm

Latinos For Edwards

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/latinos/

U.S. PRESIDENT / NATIONAL / EXIT POLL

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

United States Election Project
http://elections.gmu.edu/

2008 Presidential Primaries, Caucuses, and Conventions Chronologically

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P08/events.phtml?s=c

United States presidential election, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008

c/s

+++++++++++++++++++++
Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
http://www.networkaztlan.com/

C/S

---

<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
Liberation Now!
http://liberation-now.blogspot.com/
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>