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Iraq was much worse. I heard it first hand from a US veteran who served in Iraq and then volunteered in Ukraine. We were driving together through Kharkiv survey

by _1tem 2y ago

Iraq was much worse. I heard it first hand from a US veteran who served in Iraq and then volunteered in Ukraine. We were driving together through Kharkiv surveying damage and he said: the damage here is nothing compared to what we did to Baghdad. Statistical estimates put civilian casualties in the Iraq war at about 10x the rate of the current Ukraine war.

varjag 2y ago
There are no official, broadly recognized statistics for Iraq nor for Ukraine. The lowest Iraq estimate 120k dead civilians or so in the course of decade long conflict. This certainly tracks with estimates of Ukrainian civilian deaths. And while Kharkiv was not thoroughly obliterated it was mainly though the strength of defensive efforts. Other cities were left in a condition that makes any comparison to Baghdad laughable.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mopsi 2y ago
  Marinka, Ukraine: https://x.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1632380947734618113 https://x.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1632380947734618113 A town of 10 000, completely destroyed, uninhabitable. Current population: 0. With scenes like these, threats of nuclear attack lose potency. Marinka looks indistinguishable from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bakhmut and other frontline towns didn't fare any better. A group of scientists tracked the destruction with a synthetic aperture radar: “After Hang processed the images and we saw the end result, it looked like a checkerboard or mesh,” Barbot said. “We asked, ‘Why is that?’ and we realized that it’s only the roads that survived. Everything else was collapsed, destroyed, evaporated, and the entire city is completely flattened.” “You can see a neighborhood going away, and then another and then there’s no progress because of a natural obstacle like a river,” Barbot said. “After they’ve bombarded enough stuff, the front line begins to move to the west and the Russian army advances through the crumbles. Eventually the story repeats itself and after a year, there’s just nothing left. It looks like cancer spreading throughout the body.” https://today.usc.edu/ukraine-devastation-cutting-through-the-fog-of-war-from-hundreds-of-miles-away/ https://today.usc.edu/ukraine-devastation-cutting-through-th...
  - _1tem 2y ago
    True but the 10,000 civilians were not all killed while they were living there. Most were evacuated as the battlefield front lines moved towards those towns. In Iraq, there were 10s of thousands of civilian casualties estimated within the first few days of the invasion. That's more than the entire casualty estimate for Ukraine so far.
    - varjag 2y ago
      There's estimated 47k to 100k civilians who have perished in a couple of months in siege of Mariupol, not sure what the "entire casualty estimate" you're talking about.
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        There's estimated 47k to 100k civilians who have perished in a couple of months in siege of Mariupol, The outside estimates I've seen from Ukrainian sources say 25k total. Your estimate is 2x-4x higher. How is that?
        dralley 2y ago
        Because you aren't using "estimates" for Ukrainian casualties, you're using the numbers that have been able to be verified with evidence by third parties. In Mariupol alone there were ~10,000 new graves on satellite imagery and some of them are large enough for multiple bodies, which we know was done in Lyman when those mass graves were excavated.
        aguaviva 2y ago
        Because you aren't using "estimates" Because you don't know what source I'm referring to, how can you possibly know?
    - mopsi 2y ago
      > True but the 10,000 civilians were not all killed while they were living there. Baghdad still stands. Many Ukrainian towns are nothing but a name on a map and a pile of rubble on the ground. I didn't mean to leave an impression as if all inhabitants have been killed, but the towns have ceased to exist as places of human settlement. > In Iraq, there were 10s of thousands of civilian casualties estimated within the first few days of the invasion. Certainly not, that's an insane number. Common estimates put the number of civilian casualties in low thousands for the entire invasion phase that lasted several months, and these figures include deaths from indirect causes such as crime related to breakdown of social order, which contributed roughly as much as the invading force itself, if you trust the data from Iraqi Body Count project. > That's more than the entire casualty estimate for Ukraine so far. Everyone doing estimates stresses that they severely undercount due to lack of access to occupied areas. You are comparing a clearly inflated Iraqi figures against clearly undercounted Ukrainian figures. While formally not civilians, many who have died as Russian combatants were Ukrainian civilians who were forcibly conscripted from occupied areas. These so-called "mobiks" alone make up tens of thousands of dead because they were untrained, poorly equipped and expendable.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago
  [dead]
throwawaymaths 2y ago
Remember some context here: much of what happened in baghdad was localized on the ground internal violence and also the US faffing about getting involved in internal violence. Civilians got targetted and collateralized in ways that are categorically different from a state actor indiscriminately killing civilians from without with limited long range weaponry. There are places in Ukraine, like bakhmut, where it was ground combat and not long range weaponry, where you wouldn't make that side by side comparison with Iraq.
- kamikazeturtles 2y ago
  I find it hard to believe the US cared about civilian life in Iraq when the US military took out Iraq's water treatment facilities in the Gulf war then imposed sanctions to make sure they can't be repaired, killing 500,000 children in only the first 4 years of 12 years of sanctions. Even more chilling is the interview with Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, where she literally says the 500,000 died Iraqi children was worth it.
  - lern_too_spel 2y ago
    The Albright quote is apocryphal. https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/ https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
    - kamikazeturtles 2y ago
      There is a video clip from the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xL_6_GlU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xL_6_GlU4 The US intentionally took out water and sewage treatment facilities in the Gulf war and placed particular sanctions to make sure the population didn't have a clean water supply and so diseases could spread. Based on Wikileaks and declassified documents. https://progressive.org/latest/pentagon-documents-show-u.s.-intentionally-used-sanctions-destroy-iraq-s-water-supply./ https://progressive.org/latest/pentagon-documents-show-u.s.-...
      - 2y ago
oneshtein 2y ago
Multiple Ukrainian towns and villages are erased. None of Iraq towns or villages are erased.
linuxftw 2y ago
Maybe that's true for Kharkiv, but entire portions of other cities like Bakhmut were entirely leveled, and the bits that remain standing will need to be demolished. No person could live there.
dralley 2y ago
This is a category error. Baghdad was subject to capture by an invading force, Kharkiv was never captured. What was done to Mariupol, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Vulhedar, Popasna, Mariinka and dozens of other places far exeeds the damage done to Baghdad. These places are basically uninhabitable now.
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  > What was done to Mariupol ... These places are basically uninhabitable now Anyone can see the extent of the uninhabitability of Mariupol on the video: https://www.youtube.com/@MariupolVideo/videos https://www.youtube.com/@MariupolVideo/videos
  - windock 2y ago
    This channel is not available anymore
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      https://imgur.com/a/fh3CIMY https://imgur.com/a/fh3CIMY

by _1tem 2y ago

varjag 2y ago

There are no official, broadly recognized statistics for Iraq nor for Ukraine. The lowest Iraq estimate 120k dead civilians or so in the course of decade long conflict. This certainly tracks with estimates of Ukrainian civilian deaths. And while Kharkiv was not thoroughly obliterated it was mainly though the strength of defensive efforts. Other cities were left in a condition that makes any comparison to Baghdad laughable.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mopsi 2y ago
Marinka, Ukraine: https://x.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1632380947734618113 https://x.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1632380947734618113 A town of 10 000, completely destroyed, uninhabitable. Current population: 0. With scenes like these, threats of nuclear attack lose potency. Marinka looks indistinguishable from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bakhmut and other frontline towns didn't fare any better. A group of scientists tracked the destruction with a synthetic aperture radar: “After Hang processed the images and we saw the end result, it looked like a checkerboard or mesh,” Barbot said. “We asked, ‘Why is that?’ and we realized that it’s only the roads that survived. Everything else was collapsed, destroyed, evaporated, and the entire city is completely flattened.” “You can see a neighborhood going away, and then another and then there’s no progress because of a natural obstacle like a river,” Barbot said. “After they’ve bombarded enough stuff, the front line begins to move to the west and the Russian army advances through the crumbles. Eventually the story repeats itself and after a year, there’s just nothing left. It looks like cancer spreading throughout the body.” https://today.usc.edu/ukraine-devastation-cutting-through-the-fog-of-war-from-hundreds-of-miles-away/ https://today.usc.edu/ukraine-devastation-cutting-through-th...
- _1tem 2y ago
  True but the 10,000 civilians were not all killed while they were living there. Most were evacuated as the battlefield front lines moved towards those towns. In Iraq, there were 10s of thousands of civilian casualties estimated within the first few days of the invasion. That's more than the entire casualty estimate for Ukraine so far.
  - varjag 2y ago
    There's estimated 47k to 100k civilians who have perished in a couple of months in siege of Mariupol, not sure what the "entire casualty estimate" you're talking about.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      There's estimated 47k to 100k civilians who have perished in a couple of months in siege of Mariupol, The outside estimates I've seen from Ukrainian sources say 25k total. Your estimate is 2x-4x higher. How is that?
      - dralley 2y ago
        Because you aren't using "estimates" for Ukrainian casualties, you're using the numbers that have been able to be verified with evidence by third parties. In Mariupol alone there were ~10,000 new graves on satellite imagery and some of them are large enough for multiple bodies, which we know was done in Lyman when those mass graves were excavated.
        aguaviva 2y ago
        Because you aren't using "estimates" Because you don't know what source I'm referring to, how can you possibly know?
  - mopsi 2y ago
    > True but the 10,000 civilians were not all killed while they were living there. Baghdad still stands. Many Ukrainian towns are nothing but a name on a map and a pile of rubble on the ground. I didn't mean to leave an impression as if all inhabitants have been killed, but the towns have ceased to exist as places of human settlement. > In Iraq, there were 10s of thousands of civilian casualties estimated within the first few days of the invasion. Certainly not, that's an insane number. Common estimates put the number of civilian casualties in low thousands for the entire invasion phase that lasted several months, and these figures include deaths from indirect causes such as crime related to breakdown of social order, which contributed roughly as much as the invading force itself, if you trust the data from Iraqi Body Count project. > That's more than the entire casualty estimate for Ukraine so far. Everyone doing estimates stresses that they severely undercount due to lack of access to occupied areas. You are comparing a clearly inflated Iraqi figures against clearly undercounted Ukrainian figures. While formally not civilians, many who have died as Russian combatants were Ukrainian civilians who were forcibly conscripted from occupied areas. These so-called "mobiks" alone make up tens of thousands of dead because they were untrained, poorly equipped and expendable.
helpfulContrib 2y ago
[dead]

throwawaymaths 2y ago

Remember some context here: much of what happened in baghdad was localized on the ground internal violence and also the US faffing about getting involved in internal violence. Civilians got targetted and collateralized in ways that are categorically different from a state actor indiscriminately killing civilians from without with limited long range weaponry. There are places in Ukraine, like bakhmut, where it was ground combat and not long range weaponry, where you wouldn't make that side by side comparison with Iraq.

kamikazeturtles 2y ago
I find it hard to believe the US cared about civilian life in Iraq when the US military took out Iraq's water treatment facilities in the Gulf war then imposed sanctions to make sure they can't be repaired, killing 500,000 children in only the first 4 years of 12 years of sanctions. Even more chilling is the interview with Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, where she literally says the 500,000 died Iraqi children was worth it.
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  The Albright quote is apocryphal. https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/ https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
  - kamikazeturtles 2y ago
    There is a video clip from the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xL_6_GlU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xL_6_GlU4 The US intentionally took out water and sewage treatment facilities in the Gulf war and placed particular sanctions to make sure the population didn't have a clean water supply and so diseases could spread. Based on Wikileaks and declassified documents. https://progressive.org/latest/pentagon-documents-show-u.s.-intentionally-used-sanctions-destroy-iraq-s-water-supply./ https://progressive.org/latest/pentagon-documents-show-u.s.-...
    - 2y ago

oneshtein 2y ago

Multiple Ukrainian towns and villages are erased. None of Iraq towns or villages are erased.

linuxftw 2y ago

Maybe that's true for Kharkiv, but entire portions of other cities like Bakhmut were entirely leveled, and the bits that remain standing will need to be demolished. No person could live there.

dralley 2y ago

This is a category error. Baghdad was subject to capture by an invading force, Kharkiv was never captured. What was done to Mariupol, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Vulhedar, Popasna, Mariinka and dozens of other places far exeeds the damage done to Baghdad. These places are basically uninhabitable now.

justsomehnguy 2y ago
> What was done to Mariupol ... These places are basically uninhabitable now Anyone can see the extent of the uninhabitability of Mariupol on the video: https://www.youtube.com/@MariupolVideo/videos https://www.youtube.com/@MariupolVideo/videos
- windock 2y ago
  This channel is not available anymore
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    https://imgur.com/a/fh3CIMY https://imgur.com/a/fh3CIMY