Re: Boycott Brand America

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 22:19:29 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Charles Hawtrey)
wrote:

>Torsten Brinch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> staggered to the nearest keyboard
>and wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 19:14:35 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Charles Hawtrey)
>>wrote:
>>>Some numbers the anti-war crowd would rather not think about:
>>>Number of Iraqis who "disappeared" under Saddam's regime
>>>est. 250,000-290,000 
>>>http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0503/2.htm#_Toc41888352
>>>http://hrw.org/editorials/2003/iraqmassgraves.htm
>>
>>Charles, all I can get from that source is that  "Human Rights Watch
>>estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been "disappeared" by
>>the Iraqi government over the past two decades."   Where do you get
>>the lower figure in the estimate (250,000),  and do you know by which
>>method  it has been derived? 
>
>Did you actually read the references that I cited?  

Yes of course. 

>The second one
>states "More than 250,000 people were detained or murdered by the
>government of Saddam Hussein, and almost all of them have relatives
>who now want justice, or physical remains, or at the very least
>information about what happened to their loved ones."  This is the
>earlier of the two figures; the later figure of 290,000 comes from the
>first reference. (Of course, 290,000 is "more than" 250,000 so the two
>citations are consistent in the literal sense.)

Yes, I saw that too. But  ` detained or murdered ´  does not mean the
same  as ` "disappeared" ´. You can't  just take estimates
for two different things and combine them to a hi-lo estimate
for one of those things. 

>As for the methodology, this presumably 

Presumably?

>is detailed in the HRW
>publication "Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq and its
>Aftermath" (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992) which is cited on the
>web posts. 

Er, it is not described in that publication  even remotely.  

> HRW is by no means in collusion with the US government --
>quite the opposite, if anything -- so there is no reason to think the
>figure was inflated for the purpose of justifying the war.

What are you on about now, I certainly didn't suggest any 
such thing. However, you appear to be implying that  if the US
government has had a hand on the process leading to those 
figures, there is  reason to think they  have been inflated?

Why do you say that, and  what's this got to do with justifying the
war? 

  '(M)ake no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high 
confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. 
That is what this war was about and it is about.' 
(Ari Fleischer, 10 April 2003)

Where are the WMD?