Up to this point, April is shaping up to be the deadliest since the fall of Baghdad, with an average of almost 5 friendly deaths a day. What gives?

4/12/2007 1:50:02 PM

quagmire..........































.........ibtl

4/12/2007 1:58:04 PM

it takes awhile to even get out of kuwait with your vehicles, maybe a month or more.

also, more combat arms troops on the ground mean more patrols, more searching, more raids, and thus more contact with the enemy. leading to more injuries and deaths for both sides.

war is hell

4/12/2007 2:00:04 PM

Hard to say whether or not the surge works. I think most military analysts say its hard to say one way or the other until around the end of summer or so.

The question is whether or not Baghdad as a whole is safer (the original goal of the surge). From what I gather, the day to day has become a bit safer, but the less frequent attacks that do occur are becoming much more spectacular. Like the bombing of the Iraqi parliament.

4/12/2007 2:02:00 PM

Quote :

"the day to day has become a bit safer"

the first suicide bombing inside the green zone was a few days ago, so I don't know about that.

4/12/2007 2:11:11 PM

Quote :

"the less frequent attacks that do occur are becoming much more spectacular. Like the bombing of the Iraqi parliament."

Quote :

"the first suicide bombing inside the green zone was a few days ago, so I don't know about that."

Like I said, the general street violence seems to be going down, but the attacks that do occur are much more sophisticated (bigger targets, larger numbers of dead, etc.).

4/12/2007 2:13:16 PM

^i hear ya, but it's like trading death by hanging for a firing squad.

[Edited on April 12, 2007 at 2:15 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2007 2:15:39 PM

It's almost been 30 more days, is it working yet?

5/7/2007 12:30:40 PM

Yes, didn't you read? Mission Accomplished.

5/7/2007 12:41:34 PM

I find it asinine that it took nearly 4 years to realize what most generals had been saying from the start . . . we didn't go in with enough troops.

5/7/2007 12:44:13 PM

I'm not at all convinced our troops are helping.

If they're not, more only makes it worse.

5/7/2007 12:49:59 PM

^^ But, those generals didn't know what they were talking about, evidenced by their firings and replaced with new people.

5/7/2007 12:53:52 PM

^^^not just troop numbers, but they went in with no intentions of winning their hearts and minds. The aid they promised after the invasion never came.

5/7/2007 1:01:28 PM

I'm not referring to the State departments planning or lack thereof. I'm talking about Gen. Zinni, GEN Shinseki, et. al. who, following the Powell doctrine, said we simply needed more troops than Donald Rumsfeld was willing to stomach. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld so disliked Shinseki that they didn't even go to his retirement ceremony. That is flat out unheard of for a retiring Chief of Staff.

From some things I've heard, Rumsfeld's initial plan involved 2 combat brigades and special operations for the entire invasion. Ummm. Yeah.

I'm not sure what you mean by going in with no intentions of winning their hearts and minds. I think that was fully the intent, I just think the state department was completely inept at doing so.

5/7/2007 1:06:46 PM

how was it 'fully the intent'? they provided no support for the civilians, no food, no medicine, no idea on how to rebuild iraq. they just burst in there like cowboys, shoot up everything and destroy it.

5/7/2007 1:08:33 PM

The cute thing is when a certain poster (posters? maybe) chimes in that folks in Congress don't know anything about war and should keep their noses out, then in another thread will excoriate them for voting for a war that wasn't sold and ran like this one has been.

5/7/2007 1:09:15 PM

Quote :

"they provided no support for the civilians, no food, no medicine, no idea on how to rebuild iraq."

What? I happened to be there in late 03 / early 04 and that is completely not what I experienced. I don't think there was a solid plan at the strategic level, but at the local level this was going on left and right. I know in my battalion and across the 101st theymade it a point to set up programs to hire disenfranchised Iraqis for street clean-up programs etc. The lack of a strategy back in DC doesn't mean that genuine efforts weren't being made at lower echelons.

[Edited on May 7, 2007 at 1:20 PM. Reason : .]

5/7/2007 1:19:27 PM

^i wasn't talking about the soldiers. I've read plenty of examples of soldiers asking for care packages from back home to be sent for items for individual iraqi citizens that they've come across with needs. I'm talking about the whole process....the people that make the decisions decided not to do the right thing.

5/7/2007 1:42:28 PM

You're making broad blanket statements that aren't arguable or defensible for that matter.

Quote :

"they provided no support for the civilians, no food, no medicine, no idea on how to rebuild iraq"

All false.

5/7/2007 1:49:26 PM

Quote :

"Is the surge working?"

no

5/7/2007 1:51:09 PM

Quote :

"no idea on how to rebuild iraq"

I don't know that I'd say that was completely false.

At least one person in the State Department was quoted as recommending Wolfowitz to run Iraq in the interem because "if we install a Jew, it will show them that its not about religion."

I mean, the dude is fucking up the World Bank right now, Iraq might actually have been worse off. (Though Mel Brooks could have played him in a movie version of the War.)

5/7/2007 2:20:44 PM

Quote :

"Up to this point, April is shaping up to be the deadliest since the fall of Baghdad, with an average of almost 5 friendly deaths a day. What gives?"

Did you know that 750 soldiers died and another 300 were wounded just in the rehearsal for the Battle of Normandy? Lots of people die in war.

5/7/2007 4:29:40 PM

Too early to tell / probably not.

5/7/2007 4:31:34 PM

You're comparing a war that pitted several top tier nations fighting against several other top tier nations involving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on both sides per battle to Iraq?

5/7/2007 4:31:46 PM

No, I'm just curious what people thought what back then when almost a thousand people died in one day in a training exercise. Today people use words like "deadliest day" and "massacre" when 12 people die in a car bombing.

5/7/2007 4:35:12 PM

I'm sure people were horrified but knew that giving up would lead to their nation being taken over. At least if we leave Iraq they'll come here, and we know the quickest swimming routes and can easily kill their swimmers before they get here.

5/7/2007 4:36:53 PM

Lol

5/7/2007 4:39:38 PM

Seriously though, if we were fighting another sovereign nation I do not believe anyone would be arguing for a pullout of any sort, even if the war was based on bullshit lies. There would certainly be pressure to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the war (as there was in WW2 IIRC) but not for surrender.

The fact that we're fighting an 'ideology' with very few 'hard targets' makes this a shaky battle to begin with. On top of that, the fact that top officials say that the war on terror can never be truly won makes people very distrustful of operations like this, especially when there is no end in sight.

5/7/2007 4:44:01 PM

If it makes you feel better, probably a million Iraqis have died because of the war by now.

See that Lancet study.

5/7/2007 4:44:55 PM

Quote :

"On top of that, the fact that top officials say that the war on terror can never be truly won "

do top officials have to say it for it to be believed by people?

it is common sense, come on!

5/7/2007 4:46:35 PM

war has changed, as well as people's (Americans & Europeans, at least) expectations of acceptable losses. There are a thousand reasons why expectations have changed - more media coverage, instant worldwide communication, a decreased sense of obligation for sacrifice, higher precision weaponry, better body armor, better field medicine, whatever. That's not the point. The point is, expectations have changed in the past 60 years, even in the past 30 years since Vietnam, and what was acceptable in WWII is no longer the same. So don't bother trying to make comparisons. It's like saying in the Revolutionary War, 1000s of soldiers died simply because they didn't have boots or blankets and froze to death. Just because that happened then doesn't mean it's OK to happen now.

5/7/2007 4:47:35 PM

My point is, there's always going to be terrorism of some sort or another, it's stupid to have a war on 'terror.'

Balls up and say it's a war against muslims and be done with it. BTW, you can't win that war either (see: the crusades).

5/7/2007 4:49:00 PM

Calling it a "war against Islam" is the surest way to insure that it fails.

It's a propaganda war, and you can't win a propaganda war without marginalizing the enemy within their own camp. "Terror" is the wrong word, but so is "Islam"... You might be able to call it "Radical Islam" or "Islamic Extremism"...

But those don't fit nicely on a bumper sticker.

5/7/2007 4:52:48 PM

Quote :

"war has changed, as well as people's (Americans & Europeans, at least) expectations of acceptable losses"

Foreign Affairs had an interesting article about this about a year and a half ago. Basically, the premise of the article was that the American public will accept losses so long as they feel the war is winnable and worth winning. At the point where they feel it is not, they'll rapidly turn against it. It isn't so much the magnitude (means) but the result (ends) that matters.

5/7/2007 5:45:30 PM

would it make everyone happy if we just bombed that place like we did germany and japan in WWII?

I'm pleased that we have the technology to fight a battle and limit most of the death and destruction to the enemy

5/7/2007 6:02:50 PM

Quote :

"All false."

says you? my info comes from people that were actually there and facts.

5/7/2007 9:54:12 PM

Quote :

"and facts"

I'm not sure you have ever posted a fact, and backed it up with a source in your entire soap box career. And I don't take the 1 person you know in Iraq as enough information to stake a claim on.

5/8/2007 10:22:41 AM

Quote :

"The fact that we're fighting an 'ideology' with very few 'hard targets' makes this a shaky battle to begin with. On top of that, the fact that top officials say that the war on terror can never be truly won makes people very distrustful of operations like this, especially when there is no end in sight."

True. Very true.

We are pretty much screwed either way. So I guess we should pull out, let Iran invade and take over, and then go back over because the American people will like it more that way? But then when the Iranian government is crushed and it's just random Iranian insurgents, we pull out again and let the next group take over? I'm using hyperbole here obviously, just saying it is funny how our view point of war has changed.

5/8/2007 10:29:38 AM

Obviously I don't want Iraqi's to suffer more than they are now, I don't think we should have gone there in the first place. I don't think we can pick up and go either. I think we're going to eventually have to pull a real multi-national force in there for several years to stabilize the area, I don't think the current mainly-American lead force can be effective for much longer.

I also don't believe that Iran will take over Iraq if we leave, but there's not enough evidence to prove either way.

5/8/2007 10:41:31 AM

Quote :

"Did you know that 750 soldiers died and another 300 were wounded just in the rehearsal for the Battle of Normandy? Lots of people die in war."

You do realize that a large # of those deaths occurred as a result of an attack on the convoy from German e-boats, right? Granted there were some issues with artillery and panic, but it's not like the exercise itself would have caused that many deaths if not for the German attack.

5/8/2007 11:51:52 AM

if you're really interested in getting an "inside" perspective:

Hypocrisy has a Human Price on the Streets of Baghdad - http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/hypocrisy_has_a_human_price_on.html

[Edited on May 8, 2007 at 2:29 PM. Reason : also the surge isn't fully implemented due to funding stall]

5/8/2007 2:27:11 PM

^ Yeah, yeah. If we leave, they'll kill each other. If we stay, we'll kill them.

We certainly have a moral obligation to Iraq, but I don't believe our soldiers are helping.

We should pull out and pay them reparations for while.

5/8/2007 2:51:17 PM

That "account" reads pretty incredulously. The data has shown suicide bombings has gone UP since the surge, yet more shops are open, more people on the streets, etc.

5/8/2007 3:27:17 PM

The point is, liberals want to kill Iraqis.

To some extent, it's a fair criticism. I hate it when I see Dems going on about how we've done our parts and Iraqis have to stand up now.

5/8/2007 3:35:51 PM

But was it not the Iraqi parliament that was proposing a 2 month vacation for their government? Where would we be if at the pinnacle moment in our nations history, our founding fathers decided they needed a break for awhile?

5/8/2007 3:39:43 PM

Quote :

"The point is, liberals want to kill Iraqis. To some extent, it's a fair criticism. I hate it when I see Dems going on about how we've done our parts and Iraqis have to stand up now."

With your logic I can safely say that conservatives just want to kill muslims, regardless of nation.

5/8/2007 3:40:35 PM

Quote :

"But was it not the Iraqi parliament that was proposing a 2 month vacation for their government? Where would we be if at the pinnacle moment in our nations history, our founding fathers decided they needed a break for awhile?"

I don't mean to say anything good about the Iraqi government. But there's no way we can get out of our obligation to the country. While our soldiers should leave, it'd be criminal to just say we did our part and move on.

Kind of like when Jimmy Carter refused to even apologize for the Vietnam War because "the destruction was mutual."

[Edited on May 8, 2007 at 3:49 PM. Reason : d]

5/8/2007 3:48:56 PM

Of course the surge is working. the media never shows the progress. there are some safe neighborhoods in baghdad now. alot of change has happened.

5/8/2007 4:42:11 PM

Alright then, how about you show us the progress.

5/8/2007 4:47:42 PM

this guy thinks progress is being made:

5/8/2007 4:50:38 PM