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Mussolini made the trains run on time.
http://search.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p07s01-woiq.html
What the US death toll in Iraq reveals
A new poll shows that 53 percent of Americans say the war wasn't worth it.
By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BAGHDAD – Sometime in the coming days, the United States military will probably report the 2,000th American military death of the Iraq war.
While in some ways an arbitrary milestone, the tragic figure only tells part of the story when it comes to the human costs and human successes - both foreign and local - of the war.
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Perhaps the most striking statistic from this war, compared with any other conflict in US history, shows troops today have a much better chance of surviving if wounded. This is because of vast improvements in body armor and strides in battlefield medicine.
For instance, the ratio of deaths to serious injuries in Iraq is less than half what it was in World War II. As recently as Vietnam, 28 percent of Americans hurt in action died. In Iraq, the ratio is 11 percent. In all, about 15,000 Americans have been wounded in combat here, about half of them seriously enough to go home.
What may be most telling about the number of deaths is whether it creates a major shift in American public opinion, which has largely been tolerant of the loss of life in Iraq.
"By any historical standards the casualties are incredibly low,'' says Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former US Defense Department official. "But America has changed. On the one hand, Americans don't have the stakes where their sons and daughters were subject to the draft. On the other, we have a media and a people that have been educated to believe in a precision, almost bloodless form of war."
This milestone will be visited by both antiwar protesters and war supporters who say that the dead should be honored by finishing the job. Who wins that debate will hinge on how Americans answer the following questions: Has the cost been worth it? Is America willing to pay much more?
Mr. Cordesman says at this time, the next few months will determine whether the military deaths will eventually become a rallying point for those who want America out of Iraq.
"There's nothing magic about any given number of casualties, but what virtually any serious study of this shows is that Americans will tolerate casualties if they believe the conflict is needed, well managed, and there's a real purpose in continuing it,'' he says. "It seems obvious from public opinion polls that fewer and fewer Americans believe that."
Improved rates of survival also mean that there are more amputees coming home. On a US base in Baquba, Iraq, recently, an Iraqi interpreter said he really missed his best friend in the army, a young woman lieutenant he served with. Asked what happened to her, he pulls from his wallet a snapshot of a young woman posing defiantly with the prosthesis for her right arm.
While hard data aren't available on the number of amputees, the issue has led to a boom in research and development of advanced prosthetics in the US, most funded by the US Army. Amputees are now being fitted with artificial legs, that have computer chips that ease movement and develop a sort of artificial "muscle-memory."
Also frequently neglected is looking at the war's cost to Iraqis. Roughly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the course of the war, and this year has been particularly deadly for Iraqi police and soldiers, who patrol the streets of Iraq without the armored vehicles, medical expertise, and heavy weaponry that US forces rely on.
Since the war began, about 3,300 Iraqi soldiers and police have been killed, 2,100 this year alone, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies released this week. The Iraqi Interior Ministry refuses to say how many police have been wounded.
Three police interviewed in Baghdad Tuesday have lost 12 coworkers since the war began. "Of course I'm afraid - working as a policeman makes me an enormous target,'' says Amar Hasan, young cop guarding an interior ministry building. "But I'm not going to quit. We have to do this."
Cordesman's data show that the US death rate is very low for a war of this size. But US support continues to slide. A Harris Interactive poll published in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal found that 53 percent of Americans now think invading Iraq was the "wrong thing to do." That's the first time that number has risen above 50 percent in the poll. The same poll in September found 49 percent of Americans opposed.
Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Your Thread based on one paragraph of the article. Most of the article is about reaching our 2000th death. Which we have. But consider this.
During our civil war we lost a total (both sides) of 970,000 dead. Was that war worth it based on your thoughts?
During our revolutionary war, we lost about 4,400 war dead. Out of a
population of 3.5 Million.
Was that war worth it? Both wars were for similar reasons.
Freedom isn't free...
And yes Democracy is worth the price.
If there was just some magic body count for Freedom or War... like this number for civis or the 2000 for U.S. military...
If it was that easy to defeat good then everyone on earth would be screwed .. I.E. bad guys would learn just to kill masses of people to overthrow governments.. ERR I.E. Spain.
On February 24, 1836, during Santa Anna's siege of the Alamo, Travis wrote a letter addressed "To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World":
Fellow citizens & compatriots—
I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country. Victory or Death
William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. comdt
P.S. The Lord is on our side. When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn. We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.
Travis
He gave this letter to rider Albert Martin to deliver. The letter, while unable to bring aid to the garrison at the Alamo, did much to motivate the Texan army and helped to rally support in America for the cause of Texan independence. It also cemented Travis's status as a hero of the Texas Revolution.
Last edited by Vashner; 11-01-2005 at 01:38 PM.
how easy for you hypocrits to say, that freedom isn't free, that democracy is worth turning the US into a mass murderer, it isn't your neighbors being bombed and your childen who walk to school with fear in their eyes.
The civil war was fought for entirely different reasons, and could have been avoided through some better choices on behalf of the founding fathers a century before hand.
The revolutainoary war was also fought by voulanteers who wanted to break away from their parent country, Iraq was invaded you dumbass by a foreign power.
The Sunni insurgents who are targeting Shia civilians rather than U.S. soldiers -- why do you think they do this? What are they trying to accomplish? What are the possible outcomes at this point?
What is a reasonable expectation for a government in Iraq? Would it be possible for a government that reflects the wishes of ordinary Iraqis today to have the rights and freedoms that we enjoy, such as freedom of religion and rights for women?
What is the political climate like in surrounding countries as opposed to four years ago?
Which is better from a security standpoint: a moderate government that is critical of America, or a repressive police state that is reflexively pro-American? Was the answer the same twenty years ago?
The civil war was fought for entirely different reasons, and could have been avoided through some better choices on behalf of the founding fathers a century before hand.That, sir, is a cop-out.
What is the current conflict right now? Is it Iraqis against the foreign power at this point? What are the two sides? What are they fighting for? Is either of the outcomes preferrable to the situation four years ago?The revolutainoary war was also fought by voulanteers who wanted to break away from their parent country, Iraq was invaded you dumbass by a foreign power.
Unfortunately, debate on the war pretty much has whittled down to two sets of talking points easy for partisan idiots to parrot:
Right: "The Iraq conflict is a just cause to bring democracy and freedom to all the Iraqi people."
Left: "The Iraq conflict is a hopeless quagmire massacre of Iraqis brought about by lies from the Bush cabal to help their oil buddies."
Both answers are facile.
Are you serious? I think its preety clear that 25,000 Iraqi deaths are entirely the fault of the American invasion! I think we can say for certain that the situation RIGHT now is far worse than it was with Saddam at the helm. Yeah, there was no freedom, but was there as much Iraq bloodshed?
Furthermore, not only was the invasion of Iraq detrimental to the US' interests but in the end, when the US is forced to leave Iraq under the cover of the "succesful" implementation of a bogus cons ution, civil war is certain to unleash and a hotbed for future terrorist cells will be formed creating a far worse scenario than could have been imagined. That's what I think.
May I direct you to this link?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_situation_in_Saddam's_Iraq
Yeah, Saddam was the BESTEST.
how many of his own people did Saddam kill?
Look I'm not for Saddam. He was a cold blooded son of a who deserves whatever he gets! But you can't possibly tell me the situation right now, with 25,000 Iraqui people dead is better than 4 years ago!! My point is, the American invasion hasn't improved the Iraqui situation in 4 years, and by the looks of it, it won't improve by the time the US leaves Iraq.
In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern and Southern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi do ents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mus gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.
Yep, the Iraqis were better off with ol' Saddam in charge.In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 40,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.
Is the 25,000 people a number of civilians that were killed by US soldiers or just the number who have died during the conflict?
We have a winner. You know, if you think about it, the world would've been a lot better if nobody had bothered to try to take out Hitler and friends back in the day.
I'm thinking Saddam Hussein has been responsible for at least 10 times that many people -- just between 1990 and the 1st Annual National Spider Hole Day. God only knows how many political opponents, dissidents, critics, or people who happened to sneeze in his presence just "disappeared" over the term of his despotic reign.
Didn't he have a bunch of his cronies marched outside and shot the evening he took power in Iraq? Kind of set the tone for his whole rule.
Ok, this was an ill-advised and incorrect comment but if everyone wants to talk about the atrocities that Saddam committed, there can be another thread for that (and I'm sure there has been).
Plus we all know that there have been governments that have committed much worse than Saddam's (and I cut him no slack here), but where was the US response then? Governments committing mass genocide are prime candidates for invasion and should be overthrown. Where were we? Standing at the corner of our yards and shaking a stick in their direction, if we even bothered to get out of our lawn chairs at all. Why did we choose Iraq to invade? Because they control a resource we need and because "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad".
That all aside, the comment MM made threw the thread off track and the original intention and discussion regarding the article should be restored.
Can't be everywhere and the government owes an obligation to the American People to only engage in military action when vital U.S. interests are at stake or when the public demands it.
In the former case, we can argue 'til the cows come home over the legitimacy of the Iraq invasion and, in the latter category, Rwanda came damn close.
yeah, 'cause that's the reason the US went into Iraq, to save the Kurds and put a stop to all the inhume slaughterings. Give me a break! 25,000 dead due to American intervention, that's acceptable casualties, but Saddam offs 100,000 thousand and its an inhumane massacre. They are both EQUALLY ED UP!! the only difference is Saddam is going to fry and the US army will continue to do it with impunity.
This war will yield nothing but death, suffering, and debt! LOTS AND LOTS OF debt! but hey the American people is the one paying for this, so in the end its on you. Whoever really believes that the Iraqui people will live peacefully under a bogus cons ution that goes against 1000 years of tradition (albeit ed up tradition, which I am totally against, but tradition none the less) is not being realistic.
For all the military intelligence used in this war, I find it hard to believe noone saw this coming...
Don't get me wrong, I wish everyone in the world could live and accept democracy like the US does. It is IMO the best form of government. however, you sure as cannot forcefeed "love, peace, and the persuit of happiness" down someone's throat when it is clear they aren't buying into it.
I will give you that. That comment was out of line. I never thought that, and that was not what I meant to say. Sometimes, I'm inclined to blurt out, even if I don't really believe them LOL, I'm working on that. However, I do believe most of my point was legitimate.
I didn't say it was. But if you are going to start criticizing the invasion for its dead and claiming that things were better off before the invasion, then you're going to be called out on it.
Solid moral equivalence. It's not hard to see why Buenos Aires was so hospitable to some Germanic visitors back in the day.Give me a break! 25,000 dead due to American intervention, that's acceptable casualties, but Saddam offs 100,000 thousand and its an inhumane massacre. They are both EQUALLY ED UP!! the only difference is Saddam is going to fry and the US army will continue to do it with impunity.
So don't do anything that creates mass casualties, including taking out a dictator who specialized in those.This war will yield nothing but death, suffering, and debt! LOTS AND LOTS OF debt! but hey the American people is the one paying for this, so in the end its on you. Whoever really believes that the Iraqui people will live peacefully under a bogus cons ution that goes against 1000 years of tradition (albeit ed up tradition, which I am totally against, but tradition none the less) is not being realistic.
You're right. The US shouldn't give a about the rest of the world. Let them stew in their own filth.For all the military intelligence used in this war, I find it hard to believe noone saw this coming...
Don't get me wrong, I wish everyone in the world could live and accept democracy like the US does. It is IMO the best form of government. however, you sure as cannot forcefeed "love, peace, and the persuit of happiness" down someone's throat when it is clear they aren't buying into it.
Wow! Do you even read the news? Free and fair elections are being held in Iraq.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans died during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars to guarantee this for us. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died during two World Wars to guarantee this for Europe.
Twenty-five thousand is a small price to pay for your own ing freedom.
Interesting how it takes somebody outside the U.S. to see the conflict outside the prism of our own politics, huh?
I'm pretty skeptical myself about whether this Iraq war will have any benefit to U.S. interests. It looks like whatever government we put in there will collapse in the inevitable Sunni-Shia civil war that will erupt whenever our forces leave, and that the government that emrges out of that conflict will be comparable either to Saddam's regime (if the Sunni win) or the Islamic Republic of Iran (if the Shia win).
Bush's plan was to catalyze change in the region, hoping that whatever "good" was done in Iraq would spread to the rest of the Middle East and defuse the political frustration which manifests itself as terrorism. The neocons were convinced that a stable, moderate regime in Iraq would result in a stable, moderate Middle East, and that it would be relatively easy to set it up there. The "WMD's" were a ruse to get us to go along with it.
Obviously, this was a huge risk, given the possible unintended consequences that could result, and I don't think those possibilities were well thought out at all.
While there have been some democratic reforms in places like Lebanon and Egypt, I question whether they will persist in the face of civil war in Iraq. Right now the Arab street is disgusted with Al-Zarqawi's attacks against Arab Shia and thoroughly disenchanted with Al-Qaeda. That's one good thing, at least. Once the Islamic terrorists started killing other Muslims rather than American infidels, ordinary people saw them for what they really are. But will the at udes change when Sunni and Shia openly are killing one another in Iraq in a civil war?
Meanwhile, with Iraq weakened, Iran has filled the vacuum of power for now. There is nobody to restrain their nuclear ambition, and they appear quite willing to fire nuclear weapons to annihilate Israel, even if they lose 50 million Muslims in exchange for 6 million Jews. With the U.S. tied down in Iraq, the greatest deterrent to Iran's ambitions is EU trade restrictions, and I'm sure we all know how effective those are (*cough* oil for food *cough*).
Now, Al-Qaeda is pretty much toast. And it does seem that Bush was right that whatever happened in Iraq would spread to its neighbors. However, it looks like what is going to spread is war. And, even with Al-Qaeda weakened, little conflagrations of Islamic extremism and terrorism are flaring up all over the world in response to what's happening in Iraq. That's bad, bad news.
If there were a decent chance for a stable, moderate government in Iraq, I think all this would be worth it. The lives of tens of millions would be changed for the better, and the security situation in the West would be improved immensely. But I don't see how we get there from here.
right, a price they didn't ask to pay
Look, I'm not vouching for Saddam. I will admit I had my numbers wrong, and yes, what I said was a stretch, I was just trying to impress upon people what I think of the war. Clearly I was in error. Its funny that you think that by implying us Argentinians are pro-nazi you'll change my point of view about a war that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with WW2 or the holocaust. Why is it you people turn to insults when you can't make a solid point?? Could it be ignorance? Lets not forget we werent' the only ones to accept NAZI refuegees after WW2, so let's not be hypocrites.
Half of your problem as an American is thinking the US is heaven, and the rest of the world is filth. Could you be more self righteous??
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