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Here's some real news for you war mongers.
Shame, shame, shame on all of you. :-( U=2ES. Military Deaths in Top 1,500 Drumbeat of Attacks Continues to Roil Post-Election Iraq By TOM RAUM, AP AFP/Getty Images Of the 1,502 U.S. troop deaths in Iraq, at least 1,030 resulted from hostile action, the military said. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= ----- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= ----- =B7 Army Misses Recruiting Goal =B7 Another $1.8 Billion for Wars? =B7 Lawyer Seeks Delay for Saddam =B7 Iraq's Oil Industry Crippled Talk About It: Post | Chat BAGHDAD, Iraq (March 3) - The conflict in Iraq can be told in numbers and milestones, from the more than 1,500 troops who now have died to the number of weapons of mass destruction found - zero. Two American soldiers died in Baghdad of injuries from a roadside bomb and another was killed in Babil province south of Baghdad, the military said on Thursday. That brought to 1,502 the number of U.S. troops who have died since President Bush launched the invasion in March 2003, according to an AP count. There are other milestones, other important numbers, some reached, some soon to be, as the conflict in Iraq nears its third year. - Roughly 60,000 National Guard and Reserve troops are deployed in Iraq. As of Wednesday, 300 had died there since the war began. - May 1 will be the second anniversary of Bush's ''mission accomplished'' aircraft carrier speech in which he announced an end to major combat operations. - The price tag is over $300 billion and climbing, including $81.9 more just requested from Congress. The money also covers operations in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror, but the bulk is for Iraq. When Lawrence Lindsey, then chairman of Bush's National Economic Council, predicted in September 2002 that the cost of war with Iraq could range from $100 billion to $200 billion, the White House openly contradicted him and said the figure was far too high. He was eased out in a shake-up of Bush's economic team. ''Americans need to take note of these sorts of milestones because it's a way to show respect for the sacrifices of troops and reassess strategy,'' said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst with the Brookings Institution. ''But I'm much more interested in trends,'' he added, citing indications pointing to the relative strength of the insurgency and whether violence is declining or increasing. On that, the signs are mixed. The top U.S. general in the region said that about 3,500 insurgents took part in election day violence in Iraq on Jan. 30, citing estimates from field commanders. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid suggested the failure to prevent millions of Iraqis from voting showed the insurgency was losing potency. ''They threw their whole force at us, we think, and yet they were unable to disrupt the elections because people wanted to vote,'' Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. But his comments came just a day after one of the biggest attacks by insurgents since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003. A suicide car bombing in the town of Hillah killed at least 125 people, including dozens of recruits for Iraq's security forces. From Jan. 1 until Iraq's election day, 234 people were killed and 429 people were injured in at least 55 incidents, according to an AP count. Casualties rose in February, with 38 incidents resulting in at least 311 deaths and 433 injuries. Meanwhile, the United States is losing some partners in its ''coalition of the willing.'' Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced this week that Ukraine would withdraw its 1,650-strong military contingent by October. Poland is withdrawing about a third of its 2,400 troops. Last year, Spain's new Socialist government withdrew its 1,300 troops. At the same time, Bush drew commitments during his visit to Europe last week from all 26 NATO countries for contributions to NATO's training of Iraqi security forces - either inside or outside Iraq or in cash. Even harsh war critic France will send one officer to help mission coordination at NATO headquarters in Belgium and has separately offered to train 1,500 Iraqi military police in Qatar. More than half of Americans remain convinced of the importance of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, though polls suggest widespread doubts about the handling of the war and Iraq's prospects. An AP-Ipsos poll in February found that 42 percent approved of the president's handling of Iraq, while 57 percent disapproved. A slight majority in recent AP-Ipsos polling expressed doubts that a stable Iraq can be established. Another milestone will come the day Iraq's security forces are sufficiently trained and equipped to deal with the insurgency - and to permit the United States to begin leaving. There have been conflicting reports on this, too. The administration says there are 140,000 ''trained and equipped'' Iraqi military, security and police officers. But Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, puts the number of Iraqi troops able to stand up to serious insurgent attack at fewer than 20,000. ''Everything we do in Iraq will fail unless we develop a convincing plan to create Iraqi forces'' able to defend their country without U.S. help, Cordesman said. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said some administration documents suggest that there are no more than about 40,000 trained Iraq forces and that they are lightly equipped. ''We've been given wildly different numbers of these security forces,'' Levin complained to Abizaid. ''Senator, the big question doesn't really have to do with numbers; the question has to do with institution building,'' Abizaid responded. ''I remind you ... that institution building takes a long time.'' ''I agree,'' Levin said. ''But we shouldn't kid ourselves as to how long it does take.'' |
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#3
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John H wrote:
Does attempting to provide good news to go along with the bad make one a war monger ********************************* No, but discounting all aspects of the tragedy of war and concentrating only on the rare humanitarian moments or the rebuilding of bombed out infrastructure does. Rooting, tooting, blood-lusting, and abandoning critical thought in favor of flag waving patriotic zeal on the eve of war makes one a war monger. Discounting or rejecting other solutions and ignoring all evidence contrary to the trumped up justification for invading another country makes one a war monger. Despairing that we have not killed a sufficient number of foreign persons and calling for the wide spread use of nuclear weapons in a region (as some in this forum have done) makes one a war monger. Accepting ridiculous claims as the basis for the invasion of another country, and then allowing, accepting, endorsing, and applauding the tactic of shifting the justification between a series of additional reasons as the former claims are proven untrue makes one a war monger. When we were kids we were told that Russia was a threat to the US. They were likely to invade us and try to set up their preferred form of government here. Now that the US is doing *exactly* that elsewhere in the world, it is no longer an unthinkable, shameful, immoral action- it's a heroic quest? Believing that makes one a war monger. So if you see yourself described in one or more paragraphs above, shame on you for war mongering. |
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#4
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#5
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Warmongers?
How about all the people like yourself that oppose any action in Iraq and just wanted to let Saddam keep the status quo, doesn't that make all of you oppressors or at least enablers? Case in point if someone is getting mugged right in front of you, and you do nothing; then doesn't your coward ness make you just as guilty as the mugger because you have not taken action and allowed the mugger to commit his crime? Society cannot allow these types of things let this to happen anymore, we can't just look the other way. These injustices have allowed the creation of the terrorist of the world. Don't get me wrong I am not saying that we need to invade every country with a dictator who is abusing his people, but in the case of Iraq, it was the right thing to do and that is justified by the fact that the people of Iraq came out and voted against all odds. They have finally been heard after months and months of people like you drowning out their voices saying that we shouldn't have helped them. The effects of Iraq are spreading to other countries like Lebanon and elsewhere, where the people have heard from the USA for years that we are for freedom, but we have never shown them that are intentions are truthful by supporting the dictators that keep them suppressed. In Lebanon we are not dropping bombs but are giving support and putting pressure on Syria, thereby helping the people of Lebanon gain their own liberty. The positive changes in the Middle East are happening right in front of you and at greater speed than most thought. Although time will tell, at the moment Bush's strategy seems to have been right!  |
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#6
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Mule wrote:
Warmongers? How about all the people like yourself that oppose any action in Iraq and just wanted to let Saddam keep the status quo, doesn't that make all of you oppressors or at least enablers? *********** People who opposed taking any sort of action in Iraq and "just wanted to let Saddam keep the status quo" are very much un-like myself, so the rest of your nonsense is barely worthy of a reply. People like myself would have at least heard what Hussein had to say when he asked for a meeting with Bush or the Secty of State just hours before the invasion began, rather than responding that it was "too late" for diplomacy. Heck, for all we know he might have offered to go into exile if we'd let him take a couple of billion of his bucks with him. We would have been hundreds of billions ahead, with 100,000 deaths and injuries prevented, and probably further into the political reform of Iraq than we are today. When we faced the Russians in the Cuban Missle Crisis we used the military to make the other side "blink". That was statesmanship. We prevailed. Using the other side's "blink" as a prime opportunity to hit the opponent with eyes closed may be effective, but it's not statesmanship and it will come back to bite us on the butt. |
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#7
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#8
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#9
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Your sense of recent history is really confused. Since you don't
seem to remember ... We haggle with the UN for months on end to comply with their own resolutions to no avail. Bush gave a deadline to Saddam and the UN and nothing was done. *************** Really? Think back to December 2002. You may recall a deadline by which we demanded that Saddam Hussein account for the disposition of all the WMD's that we knew he, at one time or another, had in Iraq. Iraq met that deadline, delivering something like 17 volumes of printed material and some extensive computer files to the United Nations. A matter of hours later, George Bush was already dismissing the 17 volumes as "all lies". Think back a bit further to September 12, 2001. Bush calls his cabinet together and asks, "What evidence can we find that Iraq was involved in these attacks?" One of his top security advisors said, "Mr. President, there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in any way at all." Bush's response: "Wrong answer." We were destined to go to war with Iraq beginning on the first day of Bush II's regime. When we couldn't find a good excuse, we invented one. |
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