PauLL,

“Where is your proof that most Australians are opposed to the war?”

http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2006/4015/ 59% say we shouldn't have a military presence in Iraq.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/394.php?lb=btis&pnt=394&nid=&id=&gclid=CIemprOg_48CFRIUagodQUiLtA

“Who declared the war to be illegal? Where is your proof for this? There are plenty of lawyers who will tell you that the dozen or so UN resolutions concerning Iraq allowed for the military intervention which occurred.”

Well, I’m not a lawyer so I’m going with the International Commission of Jurists http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/ilaw-m26.shtml , Australian legal experts http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/law-f27.shtml and 31 Canadian professors of Law http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/lawy-m22.shtml, to name but a few.

“At this point there is no evidence that the US intends to attack Iran in the near future.”

In August, two British academics released a report which can be found at http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/IranStudy082807a.pdf

The authors, Dr Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher, concluded on the basis of publicly available sources that “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets within Iran in a few hours. US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.” The targets include not only ‘suspected’ nuclear weapon sites but the infrastructure upon which 65 million Iraqi’s rely. Sounds like another “shock and awe” to me.

According to the British-based Sunday Times in October, Australian special forces have been operating with their US and British counterparts along the Iraqi border, and possibly already inside Iran.

"If you have any understanding of the conflict at all you will remember that sanctions, which was the preferred method of the anti war activists, actually killed hundreds of thousands due to malnutrition, most of whom were children. The regime hardly suffered.
Posted by Paul.L,"

In 2004 The Lancet 's mean figure was 655,000 dead- now add a further 3 years. I suppose 4,000,000 weren't fleeing the violence and cluster bombs and white phosphorous and depleted uranium, they just fancied a holiday in Syria or Jordan? I have no reason to disbelieve the Oxfam statistics. We all know the first thing that were secured were the oil fields, and not the lives of children.

The United Nations was created because of the WWII - where Nuremberg concluded aggressive war was the biggest crime against humanity. 193 countries signed up to the UN representing billions of people and people like Bush, Blair and Howard have trashed the hard work of thousands of people over the last 60 years.

I will remain ashamed of my country's actions in this travesty for the rest of my life. Virtually the whole world was against this action - but some people believe they are so powerful they can do what they like. Such a pathology is generally known as megalomania.

TAO,

Don’t send me links to socialist organizations and I won’t send you links to Fox news and Geraldo Rivera. A majority supported the original intervention and if the gov’t reacted to every poll our foreign policy would be a joke. The average person hasn’t got a clue what the best thing to do for Iraq is. Many are so ignorant they think that if we just left everything would be OK. But to leave Iraq now would condemn the country to becoming a failed state with warlords in control and far more bloodshed than we have seen so far.

I am sure there are some who believe the war is illegal but the UN and the international courts don’t seem to have seen it that way.

Your understanding of military matters is poor. There is little doubt the US has moved significant military assets to the region however this does not presage a military strike. There are a number of reasons special-forces could be operating inside Iran. The most obvious is that IRGC forces are directly involved in the war in Iraq, in particular supplying the explosively formed projectiles which are doing so much damage. These fanatics are using safe havens just over the border to hide up and rearm before they return to Iraq. It is a very long bow to draw to suggest that special-forces operating in Iran means that a strike is imminent.

I have no doubt the US has fully planned for such a strike on Iran but one of the military’s jobs is to be prepared for any eventuality and that includes planning and war gaming strikes on many countries. Iran is certainly not alone in this respect, plans exist for interventions all across the world.

Kevin,

The Lancet is significantly out of step with other monitoring organizations on this issue. Check out the Iraq Body count. Their figures are not extrapolations of small group samples, they count actual reported deaths. Their MAXIMUM is 74,000 deaths. Quibbling over casualties is loathsome, but the ridiculous numbers you are spouting demands a response. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/about/

PauLL,

“Don’t send me links to socialist organizations and I won’t send you links to Fox news and Geraldo Rivera.”

You don’t need to send me links, I can tell where you get your rationale from.

As to the content of the links on the illegality of the war, there is no doubt that many prominent lawyers in Australia and worldwide consider that the war was illegal. There was no immanent threat from Iraq – the US cabal and its allies manufactured “intelligence” (oh, sorry, it got ‘bad’ advice as JH claimed). In my judgement, and the judgement of many others, they are guilty of war crimes.

“I am sure there are some who believe the war is illegal but the UN and the international courts don’t seem to have seen it that way.”

That the UN den of thieves has done nothing to restrain it’s most powerful member is hardly surprising. The US doesn’t submit itself to the authority of the international courts, don’t you know?

“A majority supported the original intervention ….. The average person hasn’t got a clue what the best thing to do for Iraq is.”

On the contrary, I’d suggest that the average person is no longer taken in by Howard’s fear campaigns – e.g. the Haneef affair, and has seen through the lies and deception about the war. That is why the Iraq war could barely be mentioned, let alone debated, in this election. They would figure out that Labor isn’t really intending to get out of Iraq. As I said originally, neither major party represents the interests of ordinary people.

As to your assessment of the possibility of a strike on Iran, I suppose we will see what we shall see. It is being openly discussed in the US and worldwide – but not in Australia during the election. I wonder why that is? If you recall, leading up to the invasion of Iraq, John Howard was saying he hadn’t committed. We found out later that Australian troops had begun the attack before the official announcement that the invasion had begun.

With regard the exchange between PauLL and Kevin about deaths since the invasion of Iraq, in September, ORB, a British polling company, released a poll indicating 1.2 million deaths since the invasion, see http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78 . This supports the findings of the Lancet study.

As to the Lancet Study itself, its methodology is sound and both the United Nations and the US government have used the method in determining mortality, including after the Kosovo and Afghan wars, Darfur and the Congo.

Iraq Body Count itself has noted on its web site, “It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media.” Difficult then to obtain an accurate number from media reports, one would imagine.

PauLL, I know you’re not interested in links from socialist organisations so for you the post ends here.

Kevin

You might be interested in the following exchange between the World Socialist Web Site and the IBC people on the accuracy of both the Lancet study and the IBC.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/ibc-a06.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/ibc-m17.shtml

They include the following response from one of the Lancet study’s authors to an IBC critique:

“The basic problem is the body counters are not epidemiologists or demographers, and do not grasp the central principle that in very few situations can comprehensive national estimates be derived from reports of deaths, whether in the newspapers or even through reports from hospitals, and Iraq is not one of the countries where these estimates can be made (along with much or the world). Almost everything we know about mortality, disease prevalence, causes of deaths in probably 80 percent of the world’s population is derived from surveys—usually cluster surveys such as the one we carried out in Iraq. How many people died in Darfur? In Kosovo? In Congo? What is the death rate in Uganda, or Cambodia, or Angola? The answer almost without exception comes from cluster surveys.

“When there is such vigorous denial of a standard demographic and epidemiological tool as the cluster survey, one needs to look for other reasons why the results are not acceptable.”

Tao

>> You don’t need to send me links, I can tell where you get your rationale from.

You don’t have a clue where I get my rationale from Tao. And it seems either you didn’t understand that for me the socialist organisations are not unbiased observers, or you didn’t like the comparison with Geraldo. My point is that relying on the socialist websites for your information is exactly the same mistake that Fox viewers make on the opposite side of the spectrum.

I am struggling to work out how you can argue that the invasion is illegal if you don’t believe in the integrity of the UN. Who else would decide an invasion was illegal.

If the average person is so clued up with respect to Iraq why wasn’t a bigger deal made about our involvement there? Your argument that both parties didn’t want to talk about it not really the issue. The majority of people wanted to get rid of “work choices” and so Rudd campaigned on this issue. If there was widespread feeling about the Iraq issue Rudd would have had to listen. But there isn’t. The lefties would like to pretend that Australians are strongly opposed to the war, but where is the evidence? Where are the moratorium marches?

I don’t see how you think the casualty figures help your case. The fact that very large numbers of Iraqis died merely highlights the fact that the current casualty rates are the lowest they have been in a long time and that they are part of a significant downward turn in recent months. We are moving closer to the goal of a safe, democratic, stable Iraq. That is, we are winning. This scares the leftists absolutely rigid. They don’t give a toss about the future of the Iraqi people they just want to make sure the Americans get taught a lesson

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