Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 01:26:30 -0800
From: Judy <jaw-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: GLOBAL PEACE DEMONSTRATIONS


>Lois wrote:
>>  Hugh, I followed your link and came to the site in which
>>  Tony Blair defends his aliiance with the US.
>>  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2765705.stm
>>
>>  On that site Blair says:
>>  "Anti-war demonstrators should remember the hundreds of
>>  thousands of people whose deaths the Iraqi leader was
>>  responsible for, Mr Blair said. "
>>
>>  "Hundreds of thousands?"  Anyone know of a site that gives
>>  numbers?  The numbers I have heard, at least that I recall,
>>  are much less.
>
>Could easily be more than a hundred thousand.  An Iranian minister in a TV
>interview a couple of nights ago said Saddam's weapons of mass destruction
>killed 70,000 Iranans.
>in that war.


To contextualize, is there an estimate of the number of Iraqis killed 
by Iranians?


>
>As I remember, tens of thousands of Kurds were killed during or immediately
>after the end of the Gulf War.


For context again, did these happen to be Kurds who were supporting 
armed rebellion agaisnt the government?  Do we know what the source 
of these numbers is?  Amnesty International?  Who did they hear it 
from?



>   Don't know how many Kuwaitis or Americans.


My impression has been, though I don't know, that far more Americans 
were killed by Americans than by iraqis, both by "friendly fire" and 
other accidents, and in ways that are related to the Gulf War 
Syndrome, according to Captain Joyce Riley, a US military nurse who 
worked with Gulf War soldiers and contracted Gulf War Syndrome 
herself--I heard her being interviewed a couple of days ago on Radio 
Pacifica.   How many Iraqis did the Americans kill in and since 
Desert Storm?  I think it might be in that same 100,000 range 
estimate.

How many Americans have been killed by Kuwaitis over the years?  One 
of those mass murders of American military personnel in Beirut or 
somewhere was by a Kuwaiti suicide bomber, I believe.

I bring these questions up because I'm hyper-sensitized to 
demonization of the Iraq government these days.  It feels like a 
weapon, and that's how I tend to react to it.


>
>But if he only killed a few thousand of other Iraquis each year with guns
>and torture, it must be a very large number after his decades in power.
>
>As to the demonstrations,  Le Journal, French news on TV, gave substantial
>coverage of  the crowds in Rome, (est.3 million) Brussels, Berlin, Paris,
>London, Moscow, London, Melbourne, less coverage to about 15 or 20 other
>cities around the world.
>
>CNN reported huge crowds in Sydney, where it was 2:00 pm Sunday.
>
>best regards,
>Hugh


I heard there were about a million in Spain and about a million in 
London.  Interesting that the biggest numbers were in countries where 
the governments are supporting the Bush regime agenda.  What does 
that mean?
Judy



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