[fit2rule]

Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Ask yourself this: why is it so important to leak information that is being held in secrecy by a state that is committing war crimes at an alarming rate?

The answer is: because the 5-eyes War Coalition is committing war crimes at an alarming rate. It literally started what it hoped to conflagration into World War 3, by invading Iraq illegally and on false pretences in 2003. And every day since that invasion, the world has been on fire.

The world has not forgotten the victims of these wars. Millions of innocent people have been massacred by the USA and its War Coalition in an utterly dire conflagration. The sheer SCALE of the war, of which the Western public are indeed extremely ignorant, is staggering.

If you had two criminals in the room, one of them was thieving the cutlery and the other was burning a pile of dead bodies in the corner, which would you want to deal with, first?

The USA and its War Coalition has a lot of criminal activity going on. Like, a lot. And every twenty minutes for twenty years, it has been dropping bombs - mostly on innocent people - for its own economic purposes.

That is a fire that the leaks will put out.

(The leaks will continue, because the crimes are huge.)

[lordlimecat]

> And every day since that invasion, the world has been on fire.

Obviously things were peacable around the world beforehand, and every conflict or human rights violation since then can be blamed on the Iraq invasion.

Never mind that civilian casualties by coalition forces are absolutely dwarfed by those by the opposition, or that US in general gets an extremely high degree of scrutiny and commits relatively few war crimes / civilian casualties.

This is a brilliant attempt at distraction from the incredible corruption and human rights violations from other countries such as Russia. Should the US get a free pass? Of course not, but it's rather tiresome to hear Chinese and Russian agitators say "but what about the 10k civilian casualties over 10 years" while asking the world to please ignore the Uighur genocide or the invasions of Ukraine.

The fact is that Wikileaks has a well established bias. They publish things that are true when it harms the US, and often leave out as much exonerating context as possible. Collateral murder for instance specifically tried to downplay the aspects where the gunner provided a rationale for engaging and sought approval, instead using voiceovers and editing to imply a lack of ROE.

>Millions of innocent people have been massacred by the USA and its War Coalition in an utterly dire conflagration.

I'd love to see a source on this. The most critical estimate I've seen (Iraq Body Count) has coalition innocents killed around 30k, Over 15 years. While opposition are over 300k. Please source your facts.

[fit2rule]

"The world is always at war" is not an excuse for the following illegal military murder and death campaigns waged against innocent people: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen.

The bombing must stop. The drones must be denied.

>Body Count:

https://www.psr.org/blog/resource/body-count/

2 million people lost in one war 'arena' is one thing. Another war arena, is another thing. 12 of them, for 20 years, is shear lunacy.

Iraq lost 5% of its population to US war.

[lordlimecat]

You should probably read the source you provide. Like many of these body counts, they make no attempt to differentiate US-caused, coalition-caused, Russian-caused, or opposition-caused deaths--or even whether the rise in mortality was actually caused by the war!

So, as is reasonable, you are just blaming them all on the US.

[fit2rule]

I think you didn't read the report. It very definitely does make an attempt to differentiate. If only this task was made more reliable and accurate by way of true facts from the very people dropping the bombs.

Alas, the American military is as terrified of the true statistics as anyone could be. Even General McMaster, an utter war criminal, has made an effort to ensure all his peers know how much danger they are all in, should the true scale of the wars be revealed to the American public.

"Good thing" there is a lot going on right now to distract people from the burning piles of rubble America has left all over the world.

I assure you, the victims and the families of those victims, and the friends of those victims HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN.

[jessaustin]

...even whether the rise in mortality was actually caused by the war!

You need proof that war causes death? This seems like some sort of nadir of tabula rasa foolishness.

[lordlimecat]

If you're going to choose to misrepresent / misunderstand what I said, there isnt going to be much point in discussion.

But in case there was confusion here, I would like a claim that X deaths were caused by Y war to be backed up by evidence rather than "obviously war causes death, so this war must have caused that death!"

The rise in mortality could be partly caused by war, and partly by changing political factors, and partly by changing responses to vaccinations (relevant in Pakistan re: polio), and partly by a hundred other factors.

[jessaustin]

When you ask how many deaths in Iraq were caused by "the Russians", you lose any assumption of intent to engage in good-faith discussion. We know you didn't read the 97-page study linked by GP, because it discussed the question of who caused the many deaths in several sections, including one beginning on page 28. Before examining the figures more closely, the Physicians for Social Responsibility observe the following:

A priori, of course, those who started the war also carry the main responsibility for all victims. Since the assault on Iraq unequivocally constituted an aggression in violation of international law, the U.S. and its allies are also responsible for all its consequences.

What could you possibly be thinking? "Of the million violent combat deaths in Iraq through 2012, we should only blame USA for 600k, not 850k!" Such an argument would be silly, if it weren't completely monstrous.