Talk:Gulf War oil spill

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2020 and 18 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ees129.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:50, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled

I think it would be better NPOV if the cause of the spill were attributed to the Iraqi regime. There is no reason to pretend uncertainty on this issue.NeonGeniuses 23:42, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes there is. The only reports on who was responsible come from the U.S. army during wartime. More notorious liars cannot be found. Also, they later admitted that a significant portion of the spilling was due to U.S. bombing. There are also credible reports that the oil fires were caused by American bombing, which the U.S. also blamed on the Iraqis. There are Iraqi denials available of the latter, anyway. These at least cast some clouds that I think, in these murky waters, deserve mention, barring a better investigation (which may never happen, unless some crackerjack reporter gets on this). Graft 01:22, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"More notorious liars cannot be found."

I concur the US State and military forces are, to say the least, less than honest. However, portraying them as the worse there is, that I cannot agree with. For a farcical example, consider Bagdad Bob, the Information Minister in the more recent war. For a more serious example, consider say State and armed forces of a wide range of countries, such as Saudia Arabia, Russia, China, etc. Toby Douglass (talk) 13:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

In fact, now I think more about this, dispuing the Iraq Army caused this seems to me to approach a conspiracy theory. The US Army had no motive to cause these oil spills; it did them no good. I could believe some spillage occurred as a byproduct of air raids, but I don't believe that many hundreds of millions of barrels of spillage occurred *or could have occurred* that way. Toby Douglass (talk) 14:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

What you happened to 'think' is irrelevant. Since their is no conclusive evidence one way or another both points of view should be included. It is up to readers to make up their own mind not simply be told what you 'think'. It is also irrelevant who is a bigger liar. Neither party can be considered a trusted source of information. TomRennell (talk) 15:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

NPOV of Enviornmental Claims

"The spill did little long-term damage. About half the oil evaporated, a million barrels were recovered and 2 million to 3 million barrels washed ashore, mainly in Saudi Arabia."

A cursory glance at actual research on this subject (I couldn't find the UNESCO report mentioned in the NYT article) suggests that this is a gloss at best. Perhaps we can add something more neutral here (like "Experts disagree about the lasting environmental impact of this oil spill.") and then direct people to some actual research on the subject in the footnotes. (e.g. http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_III/Geographie/phygeo/downloads/barthcoast.pdf or 161.252.8.203:8000/localfiles/kisr/isd/isdpub/013.pdf ) As it stands, "The spill did little long-term damage" is a ridiculous statement. However, even though I couldn't find any support for this claim, I wil settle for something neutral followed by links to legitimate research. And I would suggest that, in the future, a six sentence article from the NYT with no references is not sufficient backing for such a dramatic claim...

thanks -- BloodyBlackPudding —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.170.80.131 (talk) 22:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes - I too found this hard to believe. 450 million tons of oil and "little harm was done"? Toby Douglass (talk) 13:04, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You're off by a factor of around 10^3. No-one knows the exact amount but 450,000 tonnes is probably close. And a lot of harm was done although it may be true that relatively little long-term damage was done. The Arabian/Persian Gulf has been subjected to numerous natural oil seepages for millennia or longer - that's where all the Saudi oil is as well as Kuwait and Iraq and most of Iran's - and there is a measure of natural recovery.Cross Reference (talk) 23:11, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

5 inches thick?

If one looks at oil spill, 5 inches would be much much thicker than the scale they use on that page. --Shanedidona (talk) 01:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Pictures

This would be much better if there was a gallery of photos relating to the spill and maybe the chart shown here. If I have time I will try to do this myself, but life is pretty busy right now.
-timothymh, who is definitely not a bunny. Or a hippopotamus.
I <3 Wikipedia! 22:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Largest oil spill?

This article calls the Gulf War oil spill the "largest oil spill in history," while the article on oil spills lists the Lakeview Gusher as the largest. Which is correct? -- 71.126.248.149 (talk) 14:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

All the references backing up statements from the Lakeview Gusher spill are offline, so I for one can't compare them to the sources for this spill. But I will assume good faith and assume the Gusher spill is the larger. I'll reword this article accordingly. Freikorp (talk) 00:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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Upcoming Edits

Hi, I am soon planning on posting extensive edits on this article. I am going to add new sections to the article touching on the spill's background, the spill itself, the clean-up efforts on the spill, and finally on the political and economic impacts of the spill. Much of The Spill section is going to contain information that is currently in the Lead and environmental impacts sections of the article that I feel would fit better in its own section. The other new sections will have new information about the spill in order to fill content gaps in the article and to more extensively cover the spill. I also plan to rewrite some of the environmental impacts section in order to reduce the amount of block quotes used in the article and will add more information about research studies done on the spill. Finally, I am going to rewrite some of the Lead to reflect the new information I am adding, and I will add some images to flesh out the article. Feel free to see annotations on the sources I will be using here. Ees129 (talk) 03:37, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The oil spill was caused by allied bombing.

The Gulf War oil spill was caused by allied forces bombing docked Iraqi oil tankers. The whole 'deliberate oil spill' story was simply cover for that. History is written by Washington. This is why Wikipedia is totally unreliable regarding anything regarding warfare. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 51.148.151.252 (talk) 11:47, 2 December 2021 (UTC)