Hussein's Kill Skill - Just Got to Ring that Bell

Here's some pre-war hype from the New York Times in which they say 'figures of a million dead Iraqis, in war and through terror, may not be far from the mark' which in English means I'm just pulling a number out of the air. (NYT: The World; How Many People Has Hussein Killed?)

You've got to expect not much from any news article starting with 'In the unlit blackness of an October night' and you can credit John F Burns with that piece of literature.

Tip for Johnnie boy:  what other kind of blackness is there?  Your name may direct you toward writing poetry.  Don't do it.


Normally Wiki is a useful reference but for this situation they quote a number that was crap to start: 'According to The New York Times, "he [Saddam] murdered as many as a million of his people.' (WIKI: Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq)

Someone at Stanford has a figure of 600,000 but it's based on an information from another organization and there's no link.  (Stanford University: IRAQ: Deaths under Saddam Hussein)

Tip:  the above site is shabby and half ass.

This is the last one as this was already tedious.  The count comes up to 200,000 or so. (About Education: Top 5 Crimes of Saddam Hussein)

In summary, they have no fucking idea.  He killed a lot of people.  I'm not clear where the surprise is found in this.  The fascinating part is America did business with him for forty years and sold him the weapons for the war with Iran ... then bitches about how many people got croaked.

This adds up ... in no way at all.

The darkest part of all is that estimates ranging from 200,000 to 1,000,000 are just about the same as the estimated death toll from the U.S. invasion.  It looks like no-one rings the bell.  It's a tie.