4,000 dead Americans

[snuffbox 0]

The new book on Iraq's costs, Three Trillion Dollar War, is highly recommended by snuffbox.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

*rushes out the door to his local bookstore*

[SuperJerk 0]

The new book on Iraq's costs, Three Trillion Dollar War, is highly recommended by snuffbox.

All my questions on the subject of the war's costs were answered in the book's title.

[snuffbox 0]

Well, yeah. But there's more to it all than just that!

[BorneAgain 0]

Frontline on PBS just did a great episode on the war that you can watch on their website.

 

Bush's War

 

It's long (Part 1 runs 2:30 and part 2 is two hours), but its quite exaustive and really helps with the chronology of major events.

 

 

 

 

[snuffbox 0]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080327/D8VLG8JG1.html

 

Also, 2 more dead yesterday.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

My roommate just fielded a rather distressed call from one of our coworkers over in Iraq. Apparently the rocket attacks on the IZ are considerably worse than what CNN and the like are conveying, and Embassy staff are puking all over the place out of anxiety. I kind of just wanted to pass along that puking detail. Tasty!

[snuffbox 0]

God damn the American liberal media.

[Guest Vitamin X]

You would think the liberal media would point out how bad the war still is, though.

[snuffbox 0]

You'd think so.

[NoCalMike 0]

Not if their coverage during the run up to the war is any indication of their new-found "investigative journalism"

[SuperJerk 0]

In the lead up to the war, it was more important to look patriotic than to explain to the American people the weaknesses of the U.S. governments case for invading Iraq that almost the entire rest of the world was aware of.

[NoCalMike 0]

In the lead up to the war, it was more important to look patriotic than to explain to the American people the weaknesses of the U.S. governments case for invading Iraq that almost the entire rest of the world was aware of.

 

Well that and which network could offer the most video game-like "missles dropping on Iraqi cities" presentation.

[snuffbox 0]

Two more romantic adventues came to an end today.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

I don't know how Mccain, a guy who himself fought in an unwinnable war, can say this is working. You can't ever outlast insurgents in their own country.

[At Home 0]

Yep, it's the dynamics of asymmetrical warfare. It becomes a war of attrition, who gives up first. Not to mention there are virtually no military objectives (who's army is there to defeat?) and the political objectives are always changing.

[Firestarter 0]

You pansy-ass twits. Take off the leash and you'd see what we can do. This shit would have been over years ago if it weren't for your side carping and bellyaching and bitching about the goddamn enemy casualties all the fucking time.

 

Hello. Reality calling.

 

In a war the objective IS to BUTCHER as many ENEMY SOLDIERS as possible in the least amount of time. Plain and simple. You cut bloody swathes through their ranks and you leave them filled with the fucking fear of God. We didn't do that because you assholes wouldn't let us. Fuck you. The fact that we're fighting this war with both our hands tied behind our backs is entirely on your heads.

[EricMM 0]

Oh God. x2

[Firestarter 0]

Die.

[EricMM 0]

This is what I heard on the radio the other day. NPR. Caller calls in and says, "why aren't we talking about our kill ratio, our number of terrorists killed?"

 

I think that's true, at least for other wars you could make the case that yes, the Battle of the Bulge was horrible, but we also attacked them an did damage etcetera. But now we're not even doing that.

 

And I think there's a few reasons. Most people, when given a statistic at this point like, "America killed x number of insurgants today" wouldn't even believe it anymore. The enemy doesn't wear uniforms, so who's to say that that number might not contain 10% or 30% innocents? Further, your average American has no gripe with going to war with the people that caused 9/11, people who want to come over here and blow us up. But we have absolutely zero interest in having our own people go off and die fighting both sides of a civil war that has nothing to do with us anymore.

 

American lives, capitol, and worldwide power and renown are worth more than the Iraqi civil war.

[Firestarter 0]

Wow, an Eric post to which I have absolutely zero objections.

[SuperJerk 0]

You pansy-ass twits. Take off the leash and you'd see what we can do. This shit would have been over years ago if it weren't for your side carping and bellyaching and bitching about the goddamn enemy casualties all the fucking time.

 

Hello. Reality calling.

 

In a war the objective IS to BUTCHER as many ENEMY SOLDIERS as possible in the least amount of time. Plain and simple. You cut bloody swathes through their ranks and you leave them filled with the fucking fear of God. We didn't do that because you assholes wouldn't let us. Fuck you. The fact that we're fighting this war with both our hands tied behind our backs is entirely on your heads.

 

Thank you, General Patton.

 

Yeah, its all the objections to civilian casualties (not poor planning by civilian leaders, faulty intelligence, and constantly changing objectives) that made the Iraq War a failure. Right.

 

In your head I guess you think we're in fighting the World War II, where the enemies were clearly defined and were nice enough to wear self-identifying uniforms and have publicly acknowledged leaders. In Iraq we are fighting a decentralized covert force that can't simply be wiped out by indiscriminantly shooting "bad guys."

[Gary Floyd 0]

Marney and Jerk: The feud I never asked for.

[BorneAgain 0]

Its actually quite hilariously tragic at how many of the current problems in the war essentially stem or were made possible from fuck-ups within that first year, especially from the CPA.

 

-Naive attempts to automatically transform the Iraqi economy into a free market in an absurdly short amount of time.

-De-Baathification

-Disbanding of the Iraqi army (without actually disarming them first)

-Gross misunderstanding of the Shiite-Sunni relations in the country

-General lack of action towards the looting

-Rumsfeld's outright shitty military edicts

[NoCalMike 0]

Its actually quite hilariously tragic at how many of the current problems in the war essentially stem or were made possible from fuck-ups within that first year, especially from the CPA.

 

-Naive attempts to automatically transform the Iraqi economy into a free market in an absurdly short amount of time.

-De-Baathification

-Disbanding of the Iraqi army (without actually disarming them first)

-Gross misunderstanding of the Shiite-Sunni relations in the country

-General lack of action towards the looting

-Rumsfeld's outright shitty military edicts

 

The bolded one continues today and will probably continue forever as long as our elected officials refer to all of our Iraq problems as "Al Qaeda"

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolchsto%C3%9Flegende

 

Learn to love it!

[Guest (Loggins Name)]

I love how the Germans are able to take phrases and abstract concepts and render them as one word. Coming up with Schadenfreude is one of the greatest linguistic achievements ever, if you ask me.

 

EDIT: Bildungsroman, too, for that matter!

[Atticus Chaos 0]

I find it quite scary that John Mccain has went on record as saying the US were winning in Vietnam, but public opinion forced them out. Safe to say, he probably views Iraq that way too. How can a war hero know so little about war?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

His scale of winning a war appears to be "look at how many we killed vs. how many of our guys died." We killed 100,000 brown folk, guys! Great. They probably would have killed each other anyway without us having to flop our big world heroes/presumptuous interventionist dong down on Baghdad.

 

Lots of people look at war that way. Casualty comparisons and cost. Vietnam cost 2% of our GDP, and I can't find the stats now, but I believe Iraq round 2 is well under 1%. If these are your criteria, then yeah, keep on fighting, who cares. I think they're miserable criteria, but if you can accept that a war enthusiast is more likely to frame it in the context of damages not done/costs not accrued to our side, it's a bit easier to understand "we'll stay 100 years if we have to."

[NoCalMike 0]

His scale of winning a war appears to be "look at how many we killed vs. how many of our guys died." We killed 100,000 brown folk, guys! Great. They probably would have killed each other anyway without us having to flop our big world heroes/presumptuous interventionist dong down on Baghdad.

 

Lots of people look at war that way. Casualty comparisons and cost. Vietnam cost 2% of our GDP, and I can't find the stats now, but I believe Iraq round 2 is well under 1%. If these are your criteria, then yeah, keep on fighting, who cares. I think they're miserable criteria, but if you can accept that a war enthusiast is more likely to frame it in the context of damages not done/costs not accrued to our side, it's a bit easier to understand "we'll stay 100 years if we have to."

 

As silly as that kind of logic is, it is actually a pretty accurate account of what McCain has said on the campaign trail. On more than one occassion he has talked about keeping a large presence in Iraq and how it is ok as long as we are "not taking casualties" and then he points to other countries around the world, as if every post-war torn country will offer the same situation and variables when ALREADY Iraq has shown to be nothing like Germany and/or Japan post-WWII.