-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Holocaust Denial, American Style
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Alternet - Nov 21, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/68568/
Holocaust Denial, American Style
By Mark Weisbrot
Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the
bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the
massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's flirtation with those who deny
the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But
another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the
holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi
civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The
most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual
number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one
million.
This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and
even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.
The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was
confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm
Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths
since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by
doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of
Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the
Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people
killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of
deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a
million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of
public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in
sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.
Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some
politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based on
random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the
dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of
education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is
inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don't believe in
random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell
him that he needs to take all of it.
The methods used in the estimates of Iraqi deaths are the same as those
used to estimate the deaths in Darfur, which are widely accepted in the
media. They are also consistent with the large numbers of refugees from
the violence (estimated at more than four million). There is no reason
to disbelieve them, or to accept tallies such as that the Iraq Body
Count (73,305 - 84,222), which include only a small pro****tion of those
killed, as an estimate of the overall death toll.
Of course, acknowledging the holocaust in Iraq might change the debate
over the war. While Iraqi lives do not count for much in US politics,
recognizing that a mass slaughter of this magnitude is taking place
could lead to more questions about how this horrible situation came to
be. Right now a convenient myth dominates the discussion: the fall of
Saddam Hussein simply unleashed a civil war that was waiting to happen,
and the violence is all due to Iraqis' inherent hatred of each other.
In fact, there is considerable evidence that the occupation itself -
including the strategy of the occupying forces - has played a large
role in escalating the violence to holocaust pro****tions. It is in the
nature of such an occupation, where the vast majority of the people are
opposed to the occupation and according to polls believe it is right to
try and kill the occupiers, to pit one ethnic group against another.
This was clear when ****ite troops were sent into Sunni Fallujah in
2004; it is obvious in the nature of the death-squad government, where
officials from the highest levels of the Interior Ministry to the
lowest ranking police officers - all trained and sup****ted by the US
military - have carried out a violent, sectarian mission of "ethnic
cleansing." (The largest pro****tion of the killings in Iraq are from
gunfire and executions, not from car bombs). It has become even more
obvious in recent months as the United States is now arming both sides
of the civil war, including Sunni militias in Anbar province as well as
the ****ite government militias.
Is Wa****ngton responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the question
that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the holocaust is denied.
[Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director and co-founder of the Center for Economic
and Policy Research http://www.cepr.net/
. He received his Ph.D. in
economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean
Baker, of "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" (University of Chicago
Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic
policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.]
*
=================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
Our main website: http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
iD8DBQFHRp0xiz2i76ou9wQRAhhIAJ9FVu7LAgx9l8N0onQQs/Wxu/VgXgCeMnAg
phNZ/vK7vuzHnzdu6IYq5CQ=
=v06E
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
