Iraq- winning or losing

Roshambo said:
Note to CCR: Fallujah is not an item on the Taco Bell menu.
Click to expand...
Note to Roshambo: There are a lot of crap journalists out there, this guy is probably one of them.
Second Note:This is not helping any kind of argument.
 
By the way, one thing that popped up out of Dubyah's speech and slapped me in the face was the remark that the Iraq war was a direct consequence of "the promise that after 9/11, America would never be attacked again"

I'm sorry to have to inform you people, but you're A BUNCH OF FUCKING CRY-BABIES. We're talking about one, *one*, terrorist strike from a single organisation (whose dual home-countries Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are conspicuously left alone), killing less than 3000 people. Fer Frith's sake, people, GROW THE FUCK UP, the world is a BAD place, shit happens, you're over-reactin'!

Agh, STATES.

So what about this old thing. Thoughts?
The Bush Butcher’s Bill: Officially, 72 US Military Deaths in Iraq from 2 through 25 May, 2005 – Official Total of 1,735 US Dead to date (and rising)

U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005. The ongoing, underreporting of the dead in Iraq, is not accurate. The DoD is deliberately reducing the figures. A review of many foreign news sites show that actual deaths are far higher than the newly reduced ones. Iraqi civilian casualties are never reported but International Red Cross, Red Crescent and UN figures indicate that as of 1 January 2005, the numbers are just under 100,000.
Click to expand...

Even ignoring the 9,000 American soldiers dead story, which is highly debateable, getting nearly 100,000 (at least 22,500) civilians killed because some other muslims just like them once blew up 3,000 of your own citizens seems a bit...off

I'd also like to raise another issue: you still haven't caught Bin Laden.

Trout. While on the subject of Afghanistan...
The loss of a military helicopter with 17 Americans aboard in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday comes at a time of growing insecurity here. For the first time since the United States overthrew the Taliban government three and a half years ago, Afghans say they are feeling uneasy about the future.

Violence has increased sharply in recent months, with a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations.

The steady stream of violence has dealt a new blow to this still traumatized nation of 25 million. In dozens of interviews conducted in recent weeks around the country, Afghans voiced concern that things were not improving, and that the Taliban and other dangerous players were gaining strength.

An American Chinook helicopter that crashed on Tuesday was brought down by hostile fire as it was landing during combat in a mountainous border area, American military officials said Wednesday. [Page A14.]

Afghans interviewed about the continuing violence also expressed increased dissatisfaction with their own government and the way the United States military was conducting its operations, and said they were suspicious of the Americans' long-term intentions.

''Three years on, the people are still hoping that things are going to work out, but they have become suspicious about why the Americans came, and why the Americans are treating the local people badly,'' said Jandad Spinghar, leader of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Nangarhar Province in the east, just across the Khyber Pass from Pakistan.

Poverty, joblessness, frustrated expectations and the culture of 25 years of war make for a volatile mix in which American military raids, shootings and imprisonments can inflame public opinion, many here say.
Click to expand...

Not to be anal or anything, but all the signs seem to point to either America losing the war or at the very least not winning it (like Korea, huh?)

Still, the whole leaking of international terrorists to Afghanistan and Iraq raises a question. Were both wars just a devilish machiavellian plot from GW Bush to concentrate and eleminate a very spread out enemy, using Iraqis and Afghanis as cannon fodder? Tres apropos.
 
No they did not use napalm in iraq, they used something that looks like napalm, that has just the same effects.

to quote the independent:

Last year The Independent on Sunday (UK) quoted an American commander, Colonel James Alles of Marine Air Group 11, admitting the use of napalm in Iraq.

He said: "We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches. Unfortunately there were people there ... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."

The Pentagon has denied using napalm, but there is evidence from several pilots and commanders that the weapons was deployed in the advance on Baghdad, dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris river, south of Baghdad.

An Australian newspaper reported a suspected napalm attack in the south of Iraq, and quoted a marine sergeant as saying: "I pity anyone who is in there. We told them to surrender."

Now, The Independent of 17 June 2005 reported that the US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq. The article was written by Colin Brown, the well-respected British paper's Deputy Political Editor.

Below are the relevant paragraphs from the story:

"American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

"Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.

"Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

"But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. 'The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you,' he told Mr Cohen. 'I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position.'

"Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003.
Click to expand...

You see? It was not napalm, and that makes it comepleatly fine to use it.
 
Kharn, I am curious about that figure. It wouldn't surprise me but so far the number of 6,210 seems to come from only one source, therefore I am a bit skeptical. If it is true, than the media is doing a shitting job on this- 7K dead looks a lot worse that 1.7K.

As for 3,000 dead in one strike, well that's similar to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and we nuked them. What that might have to do with Iraq, however, is anyone's guess.

That said, the helicopter crash in Afghanistan had, among it's dead, quite a few members of the Navy SEALS and other Special Operations people, might suggest something more ominous. In the Russian campaign during the 1980s, part of the mission of the US was to deny Russian airlift capacity by supplying the muslim guerrillas with surface to air missiles. Quite a few of those Stingers were not recovered. This could be more of the same strategy playing back on the US.
 
welsh said:
As for 3,000 dead in one strike, well that's similar to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and we nuked them. What that might have to do with Iraq, however, is anyone's guess.
Click to expand...

Yes, but that was a declaration of war from Japan, which was in a state of war anyway, to the US, that really was all set up to go into a state of war anyway.

You might compare it to Afghanistan, maybe, but it really doesn't fit into Iraq.
 
MrMarcus said:
Conservative talking heads to investigate Iraq themselves to disprove media
Click to expand...

I usually don't like to say this about civilians or even other military folk, but these are people who could use a few bullet holes in them to learn some valuable lessons. Or at least one of them should be kibbled in a bomb attack. Then they can try to put their spin onto that or learn to stow their garbage about things getting "better" in a wide brush, because "better" applies to extremely few things in Iraq, especially civilian life (but they can vote, and that is the most important thing of all!). Which these jackasses won't be anywhere near.

Too bad it looks just like more embedded hotel journalism, but with a red carpet and a Dick Cheney style of USO-ish asskissing, which anything negative the troops have to say then will be muted over the rest of the garbage. These morons are also going to be nowhere near where the US regularly commits war crimes, and pretty much anything other than what they see in the Green Zone will be fed to them. That still isn't real journalism.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top