Did the US military use computer models in the winter of 2002-2003, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, to estimate the number of Iraqis who would be killed?

Note the important work of the NRDC.  That organization has come under fire in Gristmill for being too defensive of clean-coal technology (or whatever).  The impression we get is that none of the big environmental groups are perfect; they have different departments, with different agendas; and sometimes their activities are praiseworthy, and sometimes less so.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Canis, you're quite correct that NRDC has been the leader on this issue, though there are also smaller groups that have done some good work on it.  But NRDC is a very conservative environmental group, significantly to the right of Sierra Club, which is basically in the middle.

 "Low frequency active sonar, the type used by U.S. submarines, is a known cause of whale and dolphin beachings. Scientists are so sure that active sonar kills cetaceans that they have banned the use of sonar in the oceans off Hawaii."
[source: http://www.shoalwaterbay.org/news/news.php ]

Meanwhile our crappy corporate media continue to periodically report on the 'unexplained' beachings of whales and dolphins (often en masse), who clearly are being tortured to death by governments' navies, including the U.S.'s - and one suspects also by the likes of mining companies using sonar to map potential undersea petroleum exploitation areas.

Driving whales and dolphins onto land with sonar is as immoral and heartless as, say, following a person round with a 10,000 watt speaker feedback-howling in their ear until they jump into water and drown rather than take any more torture. Of course Western governments and their armed forces don't the latter - partly because people protest. Let us protest the unnecessary and evil cruelty to the non-human animals dolphins and whales inflicted by unnecessary sonar, until such time as it ceases.

Unnecessary it certainly is; note that navy 'exercises' are mentioned in the Grist report - the sonar could easily be simulated during exercises if navy management/government gave a rat's. Or if they just have to use real sonar, different or varying frequencies? The people hired to kill people are clearly not the right people to be deciding how to treat non-human animals [with due respect to our courageous and necessary fighting forces].

And of course we must not vote anyone into government (e.g. Bush), or enable them to get in (e.g. by splitting the left vote), who is enough of an uncompassionate scumbag to turn a blind eye to such wrong behaviour.

Personally I'm gonna take time to write a letter of complaint to whatever media corporation hosts the next news report claiming 'mysterious' beachings of the innocent animals, hope you will too, dear reader.


Steven Stevenson

<<
The outbreak of the Second World War brought a pause to the purposeful slaughter of whales in the Antarctic, but it brought new setbacks to the slowly recovering populations of whales in the other oceans of the world.  The war at sea was primarily a war between submarines and surface ships, and the submarine -- which is no more than a manmade imitation of a whale, in form -- came under increasingly sophisticated and sustained attack as the war went on.

Such technological marvels as sonar and asdic [?] were refined to detect and follow underwater objects with great accuracy, and could guide depth charges, bombs and other deadly devices to the unseen target.  Although, to my knowledge, the matter has never been investigated or even publicly discussed, there is no doubt that tens of thousands of whales were killed by the men who hunted submarines with ships or planes.

A commander in the Royal Canadian Navy who served four years in corvettes, frigates and destroyers in the North Atlantic told me he believed a high percentage of the depth charges fired from his ships had been directed at submerged whales rather than submarines.  The drifting carcaasses of bombed or depth-charged whales were a common enough sight to lookouts aboard naval and merchant ships.  Wars are deadly, not only to mankind, but to those most innocent bystanders, the other forms of life which share the planet with us.

....

Until after the Second World War there were almost no sightings of great whales off the south coast of Newfoundland.  Then, in the late 1940s, U.S. naval aircraft flying out of the leased base at Argentia in southeast Newfoundland began spotting an occasional big whale.  News of these sightings came to light in the mid-1950s when it was learned that whales had become a useful addition to the navy's anti-submarine training.  Aircraft crews engaged in practice patrol work had been instructed to pretend that any whales they spotted were Russian submarines.  The whales became targets for cannon fire, rockets, bombs and depth charges!

In 1957 an outcry by Harold Horwood, a crusading columnist on the St. John's Evening Telegram, resulted in a promise from the Argentia officials that whales would no longer be used as targets.  However, the number which had been attacked, wounded or killed over a ten-year-period was never released.  Presumably it was classified information.

The Americans were certainly not the only military people who were sacrificing whales "in defence of freedom."  Most countries with sea goasts to guard, and aircraft and ships to exercise, were probably also abusing whales in like manner, and may very well still be doing so
>>

One would like to think that times have changed, and at least some military people have evolved, so that not only are whales no longer being deliberately targeted in naval exercises, but there are some sailors who feel genuinely bad about injuring whales in any way.

Nevertheless, the attitude that the appeal to the "defence of freedom" trumps all other values, and that all operations and goings-on must be kept classified, plainly persists.

TasPar,
the subject of whether the restrictions can be enforced was discussed a little while ago on another thread, in which it was argued that the Navy's use of sonar can indeed be independently monitored.  But like you, I remain skeptical.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Nice sentiment, but whom would you suggest we vote for and support?  Obama and Clinton are big supporters of the military, with both having filled their foreign adviser ranks with people from the military industrial complex.  Moreover, the left hasn't been a significant factor in U.S. presidential politics since the days of George McGovern in 1972.

Even more importantly, the left is often no better than the right when it comes to attitude toward the Earth and non-humans.  As a late friend from the American Indian Movement used to say, the left and right both want to take our lands, just for different reasons.  The left is generally made up of anthropocentric people who always put human wants and needs above those of other species and the environment, even though humans are grossly overpopulated.  Those of us who don't give humans any special consideration are a tiny minority.