sledge - 15 Aug 03 - 03:06 AM

Bush hypocisy?? What on earth are you talking about??

The "US declining to sign an agreement is accetptable" - Of course its acceptable, that is the exercise of free choice, or do you subscribe to the belief that everyone should sign up to everything and accept terms and conditions irrespective of the fact that you believe, or know, them to be impractical and against your own interests?

"Iraq doing so is bad and good enough reason to invade" - Come along!! It had nothing to do with Iraq declining to sign an agreement. It was about Iraq having signed and agreed to comply with the conditions stated in a number of UN Security Council Resolutions, then completely failing to honour its obligations to the international community - that's what brought about the invasion.

The number of dead reported, at least in UK news bulletins, does include those who later die of their wounds. To paraphrase a typical example of how this is done:

"Iraq, US Forces came under attack today in the town of Al-Hilla, there were no casualties reported. One of the American soldiers injured during an attack in Falluja two days ago has since died of his wounds, bringing the total number of dead since 1st May, to XX."

I did actually say that I was not making a comparison between France and Iraq. The title of the thread was the point being compared, in a relatively small part of Iraq 58 people have died as a result of attacks over a period of 106 days, in a relatively small part of France 50 people have died as a result of the recent heat wave over a period of four days, reported this morning on BBC news the total number of deaths in France attributed to the effects of the weather over the last two months is around 3000. Now in terms of lives lost and empty seats at tables, etc - which situation is worse? The counter-point, that one situation was avoidable and the other wasn't, doesn't work - both were avoidable, in Iraq Saddam Hussein could have complied fully with the UNSC Resolutions he agreed to from the outset in 1991 (he chose not to), in France, according to the medical profession there, successive governments should have invested more in their health-care schemes and infrastructure.

With regard to civilian casualties, some put these down entirely to the actions of the US/UK forces, not one word about Saddam's deliberate tactic of nesting his forces in the middle of his civilian population. That is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention, but predictable, Saddam had used "Human Shields" before, as I've said, not one word of condemnation raised regarding that in this forum.