RobTheDrummer wrote:
Yea, only 4,000 in 5 years. In terms of war, that's really good. It sucks, but war is war.
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." - Josef Stalin
Each one of those 4,000 lives is somebody's son, daughter, mother, father, brother, sister, and friend.
War is war; everyone here knows that I hate making generalizations, but in my experience, most veterans I know believe in avoiding war until absolutely necessary, because they know it's hell. You know I respect you Rob, but it's really easy to say shit like that when you're living in your comfortable world in Tyrone.
"He's the electric horseman, you better back off!" - old sKool making a reference to the culturally relevant 1979 film.
Yeah, because in a War waged in a swag of personal vendetta and oil profiteering... one dead American soldier... is excess.
Extrapolate that to 4,000. Each. Single. Death. Should. Be. One. Count. of. Murder.
Rob, I know you're just crunching up numbers in comparison to WW1, WW2, Civil War, and maybe even Vietnam... but 4,000 dead soldiers over the base of 5 years -- is 800 soldiers a year.
800 soldiers a year... in a "modern day" war... is a fucking atrocity.
I think Longcat is a pretty cool guy. eh is loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong and doesn't afraid of anything.
Yeah, based on what we were told, I would have, and in fact did, support going in and "fusing the desert sand into glass" (my exact words, I think). Al Qaeda was supposedly setting up training bases all over Iraq, supported by Saddam, who was also attempting to obtain The Bomb. He got caught with aluminum tubes used either for extracting uranium or rocket bodies. There were little children dying in hospitals because of lack of medical care, and rape rooms in every basement. We would be welcomed as heroes, and it would be a few days of shock and awe, followed shortly by glorious democracy. We had to do it.
Mission Accomplished.
Also, if 3000 was a lot of people on 9/11, 4000 is a lot in the War.--->JMS
This war was sold on the principles that Iraq was "the most dangerous nation in the world", that they were assembling a large amount of Weapons of Mass Destruction, as well as Chemical and Biological weapons. We were told that Saddam Hussein had opened his country to Al Qaeda training camps, and was preparing to launch a full-out attack on Israel.
Not a single bit of that was true...
In fact, all one would have had to do is a little research to see past the lies. Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden were known to hold disdain for eachother. bin Laden considered Hussein a threat to "Radical Islam" with his transgressions, and allowing secularism to occur (Iraq had, and still has a very LARGE Christian demographic... Tariq Aziz is "Christian", and he was what, Vice President?) and Hussein has made claims that bin Laden was a threat to the overall rule of Iraq.
Are we to believe that Hussein... would suddenly "get it", and open his doors to the Al Qaeda Network? Yeah... because that's happened all the time... paranoid dictators opening their doors to let possible opposition get a foot in the door.
Have we found any weapons of mass destruction? Shit, have we even looked? How many chemical and biological weapons factories have we found there? Not many? What a tragedy...
Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice both did an Interview with BBC back in 2001, stating that Iraq was indeed NOT a threat, and that they were NOT creating WMDs, and there was no reason to take action on them. Shit -- until shortly after 9/11... we hadn't heard all that much out of Iraq for some 11 years. Aside from the occasional "no fly zone" intrusion or air strike, or Saddam Hussein joke. Why all the sudden -- they're the bad guys?
Richard Clarke gives account of Cheney meeting with the Military personnel on 9/12/01 asking them to find any possible way this can be pushed onto Iraq.
Given the lies in which this war was sold... I do not blame Clinton, or Kerry for authorizing it... Barack Obama said "no" from the get-go. Amazing that he got it, even when nobody else did.
I think Longcat is a pretty cool guy. eh is loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong and doesn't afraid of anything.
Barfight wrote:Given the lies in which this war was sold... I do not blame Clinton, or Kerry for authorizing it... Barack Obama said "no" from the get-go. Amazing that he got it, even when nobody else did.
Obama wasn't even in the Senate until 2 years after the fact. He didn't have to make that decision and there's no telling what he would have done if put into that situation.
It wasn't like Saddam was threatening Springfield.
...Oh, the freedom of the day that yielded to no rule or time...
Paul hit the nail right on. My father was a Veteran of the Korean War, and he didn't even like to watch M.A.S.H. let alone talk about seeing buddies die and killing others. He had spent time, twice, in a M.A.S.H.; once with Malaria, the second time after he was wounded.
The main reason I was against the ones who decided to invade Iraq: I seem to recall they were asked to merely wait 3 WEEKS, to give the U.N. inspectors time to finish seeking out WsMD. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, whom ever it was, told the U.N. and Iraq we couldn't wait and Iraq was invaded a few days later. Because the invasion couldn't wait, I figured WsMD would most likely never be found. Once I discovered The Partnership For The New American Century, many of this administration's decisions and actions made sense.
