Thanks for the post Alison but I must admit I really don't know and I don't
know how you can say something is statistically quite credible, you know, on
what authority do you say that? obviously there have been a lot of deaths in
Iraq, but how many? Who knows? That any murder occurs, never mind how many,
diminishes us, to paraphrase John Donne, I'm as against the war as you are,
but I don't think the kind of self-righteous rhetoric that some indulge in
helps matters, nor do I think that naivety about Islam is of use, one of the
things that has cried out for attention was the murder of Theo Van Gogh and
the fatwa on his partner, which seems to been have met with silence in
certain quarters.
If the Iraqis are all Arabs, apart from a minority as you say, which
includes the Kurds, who are about one third of the population, what happened
to the people who were there before? yes, Arab and Moslem are not entirely
synonymous, but almost.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: Robert Fisk
> On 1/3/06 1:47 AM, "David Bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
> > "The only difference now is that we are pushing hundreds of
> > thousands of Arabs though the butchers' shops -"
> >
> > in that I don't feel sure about the implied numbers - 'hundreds of
> > thousands' - really? it is a rhetorical pick up from an earlier sentence
> > about the Great War - and too the word 'Arabs'. Are Iraqis Arabs? I know
> > there are marsh ones, or were, the Kurds certainly aren't, Iraq aka
> > Mesopotamia aka the Land between Two Rivers had a long standing
indigenous
> > population before the Moslem invasion and takeover, so I'm not sure
about
> > that.
>
> The estimation published in Lancet some time ago - widely discredited by
> governments but actually stastically very credible - came up with the
figure
> of 100,000 deaths as a result of the Iraqi occupation. Some people are
> suggesting figures now of around 250,000. And yes, most Iraqis are Arabs,
> although there are significant minorities among the population. Muslim is
> not an synonym for Arabic.
>
> Best
>
> A
>
>
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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