I don't think she is an embarrassment to her profession. She is typical of everyone who works for the MSM.

I think you have it wrong Karol, unfortunately she is not an embarrassment to her profession, but she is an example of the typical behavior of her peers.

She is however an embarrassment to sane people everywhere.

What, because you didn't like the question, or because you couldn't face the answer?

because you couldn't face the answer?

How many people died in Rwanda because the international community refused to take sides or fight? How many people died in the Sudan, in Cambodia, in Sierra Leone?

How many people would have died and how many cultures would have been destroyed if we refused to fight in WWII? (or if we listened to the conspiracy theorists who claimed the Roosevelt instigated the Pearl Harbor attacks?)

You can't bring back a life.

hash, your momma drank lots of lead paint while carrying you eh?

No, regret won't bring back those innocents killed by Saddam Hussein. But we've done all we can on this earthly plane to bring about justice for those crimes.

wow...she's still alive? they were making "she's so old" jokes about her wen i was a kid.

Ah! Denial, obfuscation, and the usual lower-echelon invective.

Neocons never fail to disappoint when their own common racist motives override their own baseless hatreds.

Thanks for the lesson. Never do I tire of relearning it.

The lower echelon invective is courtesy of our resident liberal, actually.

TADS doesn't wear labels.

wow...she's still alive?

It's an open question.

Personally, I think she resides among the walking undead.

I think hash just assumes anyone he disagrees with is a neocon.

and therefore, he can conveniently create a reason why he dislikes neocons - he always disagrees with them!

yeah. it doesn't make sense to me either.

p.s. not a neocon.

You mean like calling someone an embarrassment to their field, simply because they actually did their job?

Karol,

You're kidding, right?

You consider that witless automaton at the podium to be anything other than a disgrace to our democracy? Watching her, one is affronted by the violence she does to honest communication. It's nice to know what a privilege it is to talk to our own government.

I like to kid, so here's my little joke. Remember that enthusiastic spokesman Hussein had in the last days? The Bush administration's spokesmen make him look like a paragon of sincerity.

Seriously though, how many innocent Iraqis are now dead because of this disastrous war? I'd love a hard number on it. Multiply that number by ten and you would get an equivalence to this happening in the USA.

Thomas hits the nail on the head. Our government doesn't have a firm idea of how many Iraqis, innocent and guilty, that we have slaughtered. The best we can manage is "regret". It's a disgrace.

Congrats to the numbskulls who lampoon that an old lady isn't as sharp as she used to be. Helen Thomas might dodder at times. At her worst, she's still got enough common sense to put most of us to shame.

The bottom line is that the spokeswoman is an ass and Thomas gets exasperated by the corporate doublespeak that is now neutering our public discourse.

"Regrets", indeed.

Cheers,

ME

At her worst, she's still got enough common sense to put most of us to shame.

Only you. And to be perfectly frank, that's not much of an accomplishment.

BTW, "not as sharp as she used to be?"

That would imply that she ever was "sharp."

Sorry to disabuse you of this fantasy, but she wasn't.

She's as dull now as she was for the past four centuries she's been a part of the D.C. press pool.

With one who signs off with "Cheers" and the other who says things like, "Never I do tire of...," I'd say Karol's resident Leftists are both 13 years old and packing six-sided dice.

"With one who signs off with "Cheers" and the other who says things like, "Never I do tire of...," I'd say Karol's resident Leftists are both 13 years old and packing six-sided dice."

I'm sorry, but, not being one to spend my evenings falling down drunk off a barstool or hanging around the craps tables in Atlantic City, I'm not really qualified to judge.

Please, carry on in your alternative universe...

"ME" wrote,
"Seriously though, how many innocent Iraqis are now dead because of this disastrous war?"
-----------

The answer is not anywhere close to the number that died in WW2---so do you wish to make the argument that WW2 was not worth fighting ?
There will always be collateral damage in war.

Of course, you fail to mention that many of the "innocent Iraqis who are dead" are dead as a result of Islamic terrorists.
They're the ones setting of car bombs and blowing up markets.

And by the way, we're killing mostly bad guys---not "innocent" Iraqis.
Additionally, many of the terrorists we're fighting in Iraq are from other countries. They travelled to Iraq to fight us there.

BBIAS,

I won't make the argument that WWII was not worth fighting. I'll certainly make the point that Vietnam was not worth fighting.

"Collateral damage" is a euphemism for the brutal deaths of innocents. That there is always such slaughter in war is not an argument that we should discount the tragedy of these deaths, but that we should despise war and its attendant horrors.

You are right that many if not most of the deaths (I don't have any hard numbers, perhaps you do) are caused by the enemy, and that many of these fighters are from outside Iraq. We have turned Iraq into a perpetual battlefield. We should not expect Iraqis to thank us for that.

But let's get back on topic: What is the death count in Iraq? Can anybody give me a straight answer on that?

That there is always such slaughter in war is not an argument that we should discount the tragedy of these deaths, but that we should despise war and its attendant horrors.

There was genocidal slaughter in Rwanda, in the Sudan and in Cambodia. Those deaths weren't the result of military action, they were the result of military inaction.

When mindless, faith-based pacifism demands that we "despise war and its attendant horrors" the result will usually be more death. Not that this matters to them.

When comparing deaths due to American military involvement to the millions dead as a result of pacifist-induced genocide, (or the 100 million dead as a result of Communism) the pacifist response usually echoes Stalin's favorite quote, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

So how many "innocents" died in Iraq? Probably about 1/100th of the number that would die if our troops left Iraq, as Thomas demands. Not that this matters to her.

To ensure peace, war is sometimes necessary.

"ME" wrote,

"I won't make the argument that WWII was not worth fighting. I'll certainly make the point that Vietnam was not worth fighting."
-----------------

Great, so you have no problem with the Communists murdering millions of people, you just have a problem with Western nations who attempt to pre-empt/stop the slaughter from taking place !

"ME" also wrote,
"That there is always such slaughter in war is not an argument that we should discount the tragedy of these deaths, but that we should despise war and its attendant horrors."
-------------------

No, it means we should despise the E-V-I-L that elicitied the circumstances.
Nazism, Communism, Islamic Jihad, to be particular.
War is merely a tool by which to stop evil.
As Mary adeptly points out, the number of deaths from a LACK of military intervention is staggering.
For examples, see the 20TH Century.

"ME," it's quite interesting that you don't sound particularly angry at the Islamic Jihadists for being responsible for deaths---rather, your anger seems to be reserved for the people who fight the Islamic Jihadists.
Likewise, in your Communist paradigm (the VietCong.)

Well, still not one attempt to answer the original question posed by Thomas: how many Iraqis have been killed in the war and ensuing occupation?

Still waiting for some hard numbers...

I fear that the responses elicited so far are symptomatic of why the current occupation is such a mess. The mindset of supporters of the war is one of moralistic righteousness. This is not to argue against the rightness of their moral views, only that such views have very little effective role in pacifying a country.

But these issues, I will again point out, are very much off topic. The question at hand is: how many Iraqis have been killed as a result of this war?

...in other words, "ME" lacks the confidence to defend his own arguments.

That's ok, "ME."
We wouldn't want to have to defend your weak arguments, either.

BBIAS,

I don't really see a need to defend what has not been adequately refuted. Your counter-arguments tend to rely on the "straw man" fallacy: arguing against insipid points I never made rather than tackling the real substance of what I say. Let us consider how this is true;

firstly, and most importantly, you have yet to show that supporters of the war have any idea of what the civilian death toll is. Helen Thomas' frustration at such willful ignorance is the basis for this discussion.

Secondly, you rely on arguing that I support Communists in extinct conflicts decades old. Your tenuous connection for making this assumption is that I stated that the Vietnam War was, in hindsight, not worthy of American involvement. It is plain to anyone but a child that arguing against involvement in a war is different than arguing for the cause of the enemy one would fight. Do you consider Eisenhower a mollifying pacifist? Eisenhower was strictly opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam conflict. Perhaps you are a great fan of the geopolitics of Lyndon Baines Johnson?

Thirdly, you suggest the despising of war, in general, is a capitulation to evil (or E-V-I-L, as you put it). This is such a puerile argument that it should be despised in and of itself. There are certainly those who fight wars with the best of intentions and sometimes the best of results. Nevertheless, the horrors of war are always a terrible misery to the participants and victims. It is a fair argument to say that sometimes the benefits of winning a war outweigh the costs of fighting it. It is a fundamental error to ignore the terrible cost of war.

Parenthetically, from a strictly stylistic point of view, "elicit the circumstances" is practically nonsensical. Also, when you say "Communist paradigm (the VietCong)" your usage is ill-considered and erroneous. One shouldn't resort to big words if one doesn't know what they mean.

In summation, I have not nitpicked your arguments because; firstly, they're beside the point; secondly, they rely on faulty logic; and thirdly, they are based on a petulantly juvenile viewpoint and are poorly expressed.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Going back to the original point, I am still waiting for a straight answer on how many people have died in this Iraqi War.

Cheers,

ME

P.S. I do stand by my earlier statement alluding to the uselessness of moral rightness in winning a war. I have meant to argue dispassionately, as the matter is a serious one and deserves serious, mature attention. I'm sure BBIAS and everyone else are very nice people and sensible enough not to get themselves killed in a stupid war and I hope that there are no hard feelings.

Going back to the original point, I am still waiting for a straight answer on how many people have died in this Iraqi War.

I'll tell you...just as soon as you tell me how lives have been saved since Saddam was removed from power.

Shawn, I will plead my ignorance. Why don't you tell us both numbers.

-ME

Shawn, I will plead my ignorance.

I win.

Congratulations, Shawn. You can now brag about your victory to all of your pals in the third grade.

Well, now that we've established that we're both being childish about this, why don't I just lay this to rest by saying that possibly thousands of lives were saved by removing Saddam from power and suggest that the answers you seek are only a search engine query away?

Shawn, the original point of this discussion was not my knowledge, but the knowledge of the US government.

Helen Thomas asked a pretty straightforward question but rather than getting a straight answer, got doublespeak spin and totally inappropriate chastisement.

Death counts for Iraq, both under Hussein and after Hussein, are all over the place. There seems to be no official interest in quantifying the human cost of this war and that is a disgrace.

As far as I can tell, using my best judgement and common sense, the Iraqis are worse off for our invasion. This is certainly a debatable point and one I am not interested in pursuing in this forum.

So I do find it troubling that our government is unable to address this very serious issue with the appropriate gravity and preciseness. Instead we are given spin, duplicitous and equivocal pronouncements taking the place of serious civic discussion.

Helen Thomas was trying to get a straight answer, instead she got a offensive obfuscation.

Our competency and conduct of this war are important issues. That our government is not taking civilian casualties seriously enough to keep a count suggests, at best, criminal incompetency. Far worse than criminal incompetency is the more likely scenario, that our government has a pretty good handle on how many people have been killed, and that these numbers reveal a war and foreign policy that are disastrous.

But we have sunk so low that we can't even count the dead. Worse, we've sunk so low that the suggestion that the dead be counted is viewed as dangerous.

What's the death count? Civilian and military; US and Iraqi; Hussein and Post-Hussein. If you want to chop it up finer, be my guest.

I'm calling everyone's bluff here. So c'mon folks, throw down your cards.

Helen Thomas was trying to get a straight answer, instead she got a offensive obfuscation.

She got an offensive obfuscation because she was being difficult to start with. Thomas asked why we should depend on the commander in the field and then followed up with "You mean how many more we kill?"

That chunk of convo could certainly be taken out of context, but I read that and think "Gosh, she's not really being an unbiased seeker of truth here."

We can certainly discuss the execution of this war til we're both blue in the face and as old as dirt (personally, I thought too few troops were committed to begin with). But it cannot be ignored that Thomas was stirring the pot.

And frankly, I don't think you'll get a hard number on this or any other war. War isn't neat or clean.

I'm calling everyone's bluff here. So c'mon folks, throw down your cards.

Everyone else has moved on and rightly so.

just for my loathing of not getting the last word in edgewise...

Stirring the pot is the press' job. You ever start banging your head against a wall when you try to talk to customer service over the phone? That's how our government has started communicating and I share Thomas' frustration.

Here are the numbers as best as I can find them

Iraqi civilians killed, documented: roughly 80,000 (Iraqi Body Count)

Civilians killed by Hussein:150,000-300,000 (Speech by US Human Rights Ambassador, 2000)

I'll let others contribute a bit of research for other numbers.

Thank god our country is so united in war.