Talk:Highway of Death: Difference between revisions

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I realize the temptation is great for some people to insert the anti-American propaganda associated with the "Highway of Death", but this either must be done in a non-POV manner in accordance with the policies of this site, or not at all.

All sources I have deleted were not only POV, they were factually inaccurate. There is no evidence supporting a claim that "tens of thousands" of Iraqi soldiers died thanks to the US destruction of their vehicles. There is similarly no evidence that civilians were killed. If these claims are to be included in the article, they must either be accompanied by an evidentiary basis, or they must be properly described as speculative, unsupported allegations, and the sources must be identified so readers can assess their credibility.

Personally, I think the existing article sums up the best evidence available to date in a non-POV way. For those who might be confused what I mean when I say POV in regard to this article, here are some illustrations:

pro-American / anti-Iraqi POV: "Those Iraqi aggressor scum deserved to die on that road! Their charred vehicles are proof that God was on America's side that day!"

anti-American / pro-Iraqi POV: "The Americans committed a war crime. The American cowards, wearing uniforms, attacked retreating army to feel good about its power.

I deleted several links because the whole point of the linked articles was to accuse US forces of war crimes. Given the evidence at hand, such claims are ridiculous propaganda. They do not further a good faith search for truth.

- Kaltes, February 04, 2005

Fair comments. I've yet to read an account that looks properly researched with verifiable sources. The key point to me, however, is that the only people desperate to get from Kuwait to Iraq during the last days of the conflict (or at any point from the invasion of August 1990) were Iraqi soldiers, which makes the claim of widespread civilian loss implausible. They were attacked during hostilities - and that, after all, is what war, regrettably, is about (killing the enemy) - so it wasn't some sort of 'war crime'. In fact the US was criticised afterwards for thinking it had destroyed Saddam's army when it plainly had not, hence the gross miscalculation in thinking that the uprising would succeed, sitting back waiting for it to happen, and thence leaving thousands to die. That was the real crime of the first Gulf War JRJW 20 December 2005

I concur. As one can clearly see in the pictures, they are all (with no exception) Iraqi military vehicles, well, what remained. I don't think such comments about mass fatalities among civilians should be added unless there is an actual source (credible, not Aljazeera). - Eagle^a^mⁿ 12:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There were some civilians in the convoy, many families of a collaborants (many former Palestinian workers in Kuwait, who after the Iraqi invasion had formed a militia to help the occupation - Arafat was the only pro-Saddam Arab national leader in the war), but also Kuwaiti prisoners and hostages. Most of a vehicles were actually various civilian and stolen in Kuwait (including even fire trucks), often loaded with a loot you see scattered in the photos.

80

Various sources identify the road as 'Highway 80'; this link [1] in particular is handy, as it has a rough map of the road (it's the second red arrow from the left). The thing is, did the Iraqis call it Highway 80, the Kuwaitis, the Americans, or who? I assume that, one day, Wikipedia will have articles on every major road in the world, in which case this page will have to be renamed. -Ashley Pomeroy 01:43, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why would we rename the page based on that? We usually call battles "the battle of arbitrary_landmark" or "operation totally_irrelevant_word", not "the battle of x longitude and y latitude". OTOH, it is pretty much inevitable that an even more heinous attack will occur on some highway at some point in the future, at which point it may be more desirable to repurpose the name for that... Straker 23:36, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. Besides, there is no consistent naming for other highways in that area, so it wouldn't make much sense to rename it, even if the battle itself never happened and it's just known as that. -- Eagle^a^mⁿ 06:45, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The Movie Jarhead

I think some mention of the highway's appearance in the movie Jarhead might be warranted, but I'm not certain how to go about doing it appropriately. Are there any other mentions in popular culture or literature? I imagine that scene is taken from the book Jarhead.

Insert a "Fictional Depictions" section at the end of the article, before the references section, then devote a short (1 to 2 sentences) paragraph to each separate depiction. That would seem to be the standard. As for other references, I have no idea. You'd have to sniff around. TaintedMustard 15:24, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A few hundred death?

This is nonsense. You don't destroy almost 2000 vehicles and only kill "a few hundred". Time to call for {{totallydisputed}}. Please get your facts right. Dabljuh 03:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article reads a fair one at the moment. I don't see the justification of the "totally disputed" since part of it is a direct quote and part is to the WW2 incident. GraemeLeggett 10:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Its a PBS quote - PUBLIC broadcasting service - Government owned. "No, we didn't do no war crimes". A google lucky search on "Highway of Death" produces this, quite a startling report of the incidence at the Highway of Death. Even more startling however is that the only sort of detailed account of what happened in the article is an US government presentation, that says "No we didn't do no war crimes". I think that would be non-NPOV and also factually disputable. And here, even more details can be found. I don't think the current article has any relationship with what really happened there, or it is heavily slanted in favor of the US POV. More here still. Thus {{totallydisputed}} would be appropriate. Hell, why do you think they called it "Highway of Death" and not "Highway of many totally destroyed vehicles"? There is some significant amount of "POV" (facts) missing in there. Dabljuh 14:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article doesn't claim that "a few hundred" were killed; the U.S. Government does, and the article makes that very clear. If you want to add external references, or expand on the claims of human rights activists and the others, then go ahead. It's a lot more efficient than adding a disputed tag and then complaining on the talk page (no offense). TaintedMustard 15:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

agreed. this seems cut and dry to me. If there are reports saying otherwise (there are) put them in. But the US governments opinion on this is certainly relevent, and may be biased by default. Oreo man 16:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ramsey Clark

The German interwiki article on this subject mentions that former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark also cited the bombings as a war crime. If someone has a source for this, please include it. Thanks. Gilliamjf 09:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 39: / Line 39: @@
 :The ''article'' doesn't claim that "a few hundred" were killed; the U.S. Government does, and the article makes that very clear. If you want to add external references, or expand on the claims of human rights activists and the others, then go ahead. It's a lot more efficient than adding a disputed tag and then complaining on the talk page (no offense). [[User:TaintedMustard|TaintedMustard]] 15:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
+:: agreed.  this seems cut and dry to me.  If there are reports saying otherwise (there are) put them in.  But the US governments opinion on this is certainly relevent, and may be biased by default.  [[User:Oreo man|Oreo man]] 16:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 == Ramsey Clark ==