Hostage crisis in Iraq!

[Arpanet]

Good post.

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[Seta-San]

Originally Posted by RZetlin

Let's look at the numbers shall we:

9/11 civilians deaths: 2,998

Kurds gased by Saddam: 5,000

Innocent civilians killed in Iraq: 8865 (Min)


From the looks of it America has killed more innocent Iraqis than Saddam ever did.

how did you manage to forget about the other people killed by sadam. those who were killed in private and never publically talked about? best estimates from what i heard(i forget where) there are about 1000 less deaths/week in iraq today then there was when sadam was in power.

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[Syed Fawad]

Originally Posted by Seta-San

how did you manage to forget about the other people killed by sadam. those who were killed in private and never publically talked about? best estimates from what i heard(i forget where) there are about 1000 less deaths/week in iraq today then there was when sadam was in power.

First tell me, how come YOU believe that the numbers we have on innocent civilian deaths from the Iraq war is complete and not altered?


And Netghost 2.0, post like that of yours make me feel that I am in a right place (NGemu).

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[wise_evian]

War is bad. Starting war is bad. Defending your country **like 9/11 with afghanistan** good. Rushing peeps countries because you cant find one man is bad. Spending all kinds of $ on int and not having the ability to find one man in the mountains is bad. Catching the bad guy is good. Killing is bad. No one is God: God is no person. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 thats just bs if you ask me. Go after Osama who shouts proudly that it was his doing.. oh wait you cant find him can you? so lets see mr. bush lets target everybody who disagrees with the usa and punish them? hmm i smell a child.

[Syed Fawad]

Originally Posted by wise_evian

War is bad. Starting war is bad. Defending your country **like 9/11 with afghanistan** good. Rushing peeps countries because you cant find one man is bad. Spending all kinds of $ on int and not having the ability to find one man in the mountains is bad. Catching the bad guy is good. Killing is bad. No one is God: God is no person. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 thats just bs if you ask me. Go after Osama who shouts proudly that it was his doing.. oh wait you cant find him can you? so lets see mr. bush lets target everybody who disagrees with the usa and punish them? hmm i smell a child.

I smell a chimp

Anyways, whatever happened to Osama? I can foresee US going after Pakistan saying "Hey yo, You ain't givin' me Osama. Gimme the territory and I'll look for myself"

I bet that'll happen if Bush remains in power.

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[cloudvii]

weren't japanese hastages freed yesterday
it's over now , but i didn't understand why they were freed while japanese army is still at iraq !!!?

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[Kane]

Maybe they realised they weren't gonna get what they wanted from the Japanese. Come on, they kidnapped citizens of a country that practicaly invented honourable suicide. All they were gonna do was piss people off and possibly end up with more Japanese troops in Iraq. To be honest tho it doesn't matter. Iraq is a warzone and as such every person who goes there must be aware of the risks.

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[Katsuya]

First off Kane, That suicide comment was a bit uneducated and rather insensitive.

But I'll forgive you.

Anyway back to the topic.

Originally Posted by cloudvii

weren't japanese hastages freed yesterday
it's over now , but i didn't understand why they were freed while japanese army is still at iraq !!!?

Solders have been recalled. But now two or more Japanese citizens have been taken.

BAGHDAD -- Three Japanese civilians taken hostage last week by gunmen in Iraq were freed Thursday and arrived safely at the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad, government officials said.

Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera, which broke the news of the release, showed video footage of the three sitting on sofas in the Baghdad office of the Islamic Clerics Association and reported that they are in good health.

Their safety was later confirmed by the Foreign Ministry. In Tokyo, ruling coalition sources said Japan is considering sending a chartered plane to Baghdad to pick up the three.


The trio telephoned their relatives in Japan after arriving at the embassy. Takato reportedly apologized to her parents for causing them "a lot of trouble."

"We've confirmed that the three have been released and are in safe hands. I couldn't be happier," Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaaki Yamazaki told reporters in Tokyo on Thursday night.

Yamazaki said it has "been a very long week," referring to the seven days since the hostage crisis began.

He said the government has no information about two Japanese civilians feared kidnapped Wednesday in Iraq. Tokyo would do its best to rescue them if it turns out that they have been taken hostage, he said.

Koriyama, Takato and Imai were captured by an unknown group that identified itself as Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades) last week while on their way to Baghdad from Amman. They were apparently held in or around Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

In the video message broadcast April 8 by Al-Jazeera, the captors threatened to kill the hostages unless Japan decided to withdraw its Self-Defense Forces troops from Iraq within three days.

But Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promptly rejected this demand and said he would not cave in to the demands of "terrorists."

On Sunday, the group sent a message to Al-Jazeera promising to release the hostages within 24 hours. But their status remained unknown, intensifying concern and frustration within the Japanese government and the families of the abductees.

Al-Jazeera said that the Islamic Clerics Association was informed by Saraya al-Mujahideen at 12:30 a.m. Thursday (5:30 a.m. Japan time) that the three would be released in response to calls by the clerics group.

The kidnappers took the three to the Kubaissi mosque in Baghdad, the Al-Jazeera report said.

A spokesman for the clerics association meanwhile said that growing public calls in Japan for the SDF troops to be withdrawn from Iraq led to the release of three Japanese. The clerics group is believed to have served as a mediator with the kidnappers.

Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad received a phone call from an unidentified person just before 3 p.m. local time, or 8 p.m. Japan time, asking embassy staff to come to a mosque in the Amiriya district of Baghdad, where the three were waiting.

"It is surely a happy moment," Kawaguchi told a hastily arranged news conference. "I express my profound joy to the families (of the three) who had been worried sick."

Kawaguchi also thanked "the people of Iraq who helped with the release of the three, and other nations for their support in the incident."

She denied that the government had received a demand from the captors' group other than the withdrawal of the SDF troops, and refused to say whether the government had any contact with Saraya al-Mujahideen.

Divulging details on such matters might hamper efforts to find out the whereabouts of the two other Japanese still missing in Iraq, she said.

Kawaguchi repeatedly urged Japanese nationals to not enter Iraq under any circumstance, saying the government has issued the highest-level travel warning calling for Japanese to evacuate the country as quickly as possible.

Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Shinzo Abe meanwhile said he was glad the three hostages were released without Japan having to cave in to the kidnappers' demand. "I'd like the SDF to continue to carry out its task for the reconstruction of Iraq," he said.

Japan now plans to work with the U.S.-led occupation authorities in Iraq to try to find out more about Saraya al-Mujahideen, whose demand that the SDF be withdrawn in exchange for the lives of the hostages posed one of the biggest political challenges yet for the Koizumi administration.

Saraya al-Mujahideen was unknown before the three Japanese were taken hostage.

Earlier in the day, Dubai-based satellite channel Al-Arabia reported that Saraya al-Mujahideen entrusted a French journalist released from captivity Wednesday with a statement in which the group said it is abducting people from the United States and its allies.

Dozens of foreigners have been abducted in Iraq recently, and some kidnappings have ended with the release of hostages, including three Russians, seven Chinese and a Frenchman -- all from countries critical of the U.S.-led war on Iraq and that have not sent troops to the country.

A video of 4 ore more Italian nationals held hostage was released. On the tape one of the hostages is killed.

This is allegedly a message to the Italian government for failing to negotiate fast enough.

The group that took the Italians captive said it killed the hostage because Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi rejected its demand to withdraw Italian troops, according to its statement aired Thursday by Al-Jazeera.

Italy's Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of the four Italians was slain. Berlusconi vowed the same day to keep the troops in Iraq.

Later when I have time I'll add the list of reported hostages.

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Last edited by Katsuya; April 16th, 2004 at 23:25..

[ammoQ]

Originally Posted by SC_Steve

but the thing about the Al Samud missiles was all over the news. Who knows why they didn't use them... but they were there (probably old). But their still long range missiles that they should have destroyed and didn't

Did you see the figures? Iraq was allowed to have missiles with a range of 150 km, but Al-Samud-2 went about 180 km. Iraquis claimed that this range was only reached without a warhead, and that the range with a warhead would have been within limit.
However, a few days before the war started, Iraq started to destroy these missiles.
Al-Samud-2 went a bit longer than allowed, but by military standards, it was still a short range missile. It would not even have reached Israel, not to mention Europe or even the US.

About the "democratic domino effect": netghost2.0 has put together arguments why it will not work in his great post. The Iraq is not a country populated by a more-or-less homogeneous population. They are more compareable to, say, the former yugoslavia. It will be very difficult and expensive to install democracy there instead of a civil war. There are two more likely effects that could happen (alternatively or successively): The "anarchy domino effect" and the "taliban domino effect". How long do the US troops plan to stay there to prevent these effects? 10 years? 20 years? Forever?

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Last edited by ammoQ; April 18th, 2004 at 23:52..

[Boltzmann]

Some facts and figures taken from a comment in a Betterhumans.com column:

Americans killed by Iraqi WMD: 0
Americans killed by 9/11 terrorists: 2,973 (1)
Funding for "War on Terror" and Iraq war and occupation for 2003/2004: $128.2 billion (2)

Americans killed by hypothetical terrorist nuke: 10,000 - 250,000 (1)
Funding for Department of Homeland Security: $50 billion / year (1)

Americans killed by diseases that could be treated as a result of stem cell and therapeutic cloning research: 1.4 million in 2002 (3, 4, 5)
Funding for Federal-level, stem cell and therapeutic cloning research: severely cut or banned (6, 7)

Nuff said.

(1) http://www.harpers.org/ARunOnTerror.html
(2) http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm
(3) http://www.stemcellfunding.org/fasta...ews.asp?id=167
(4) http://www.stemcellfunding.org/fasta...ews.asp?id=171
(5) http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_13.pdf
(6) http://www.stemcellfunding.org/fasta...ews.asp?id=795
(7) http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?...contentID=3518

Sad facts, indeed

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