........Great news! I'm sure the families of those 73 are thrilled. And how many Iraqis died in July? Oh wait, that doesnt matter......
Reference the Post from spidergoat, blames President Bush for screwing up and then gives him no credit for changing directions and improving the situation and getting on the right track for stabilizing Iraq and defeating the terrorist in Iraq.
73 is actually a relatively low number, when one considers other military conflicts in American history (in Vietnam, for example, that many died per day). Plus, these numbers occurred during the surge, which increased US military activity. Of course, nothing but zero and pulling out will please some people...
A relatively low number? An amazingly low number. I've read that more servicemen died during the Clinton presidency due to random accidents and whatever than have died during the Iraq war. Of course every American death is a trajedy. It seems damned near every day I'm hearing about some Hoosier that died in Iraq. But despite the wishes of Democrats and others who live in fantasyland, freedom isn't free. These men are dying to serve their country. They volunteered, and are heros. Without men like them our country wouldn't stand for long. As Jefferson said, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of heros and tyrants.
So why did they waste so many years and so many lives before appointing Petraeus. It does look like he's learnt how to do these things properly.
They surrounded themselves with liers, yes-men, and party hacks. They were deluded by an insane foriegn policy philosophy and the influence of Iraqi exiles who also told them what they wanted to hear. They were also rushed, since they had to take advantage of 9/11, otherwise no one would have agreed to a unilateral invasion.
Read von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, translated into English as On War, and his theory of the Friction of War, also known as the Fog of War. Remember the initial invasion was very successful, and we crushed the forces of Saddam, and we didn't loose the tens of thousands that were predicted by the loony left, were we screwed the pooch was when we failed to plan for the actions of Saddams loyalist, and the actions of the al Quaida Terrorist, and allowed them to get established. The left doesn't seem to want to believe that the terrorist have the ability to react to our forces, and for a time they were making our Forces react to them, that has now changed and we are making the Terrorist react to our action, that is how you win a war, you make the enemy react to your strategies, and don't allow him to set the pace and tempo of battle, that is what we are doing now and the terrorist are being destroyed, and they are loosing their support from the population because of their attack against civilian targets and their sadism to the people of Iraq, instead of fighting the U.S. and our allies.
As of June 13, 2006, MNF-I reported that 27 countries (including the US) maintained responsibility over the six major areas of Iraq. Since that time, Japan has withdrawn all of its forces from Iraq. For the purposes of this tally, only countries that contribute troops as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom are counted. Countries which had troops in or supported operations in Iraq at one point but have pulled out since: Nicaragua (Feb. 2004); Spain (late-Apr. 2004); Dominican Republic (early-May 2004); Honduras (late-May 2004); Philippines (~Jul. 19, 2004); Thailand (late-Aug. 2004); New Zealand (late Sep. 2004); Tonga (mid-Dec. 2004) Portugal (mid-Feb. 2005); The Netherlands (Mar. 2005); Hungary (Mar. 2005); Singapore (Mar. 2005); Norway (Oct. 2005); Ukraine (Dec. 2005); Japan (July 17, 2006); Italy (Nov. 2006); Slovakia (Jan 2007). Countries planning to withdraw from Iraq: Poland had earlier claimed that it would withdraw all soldiers by the end of 2006. It however extended the mandate of its contingent through at least mid-2007. Denmark announced that it would withdraw its troop contingent by August 2007. Countries which have recently reduced or are planning to reduce their troop commitment: South Korea is planning to withdraw up to 1000 soldiers by the end of 2006. Poland withdrew 700 soldiers in Feb. 2005. Between May 2005 and May 2006, the United Kingdom reduced the size of its contingent by 1,300. The United Kingdom also is planning to reduce significantly the size of its contingent by the end of 2007, with an initial reduction of 1,600 troops followed by an additional 500 troops by end of 2007.
With the exception of Britain, those are merely symbolic numbers of foriegn troops. As far as your previous post, get with the times. The Transformation of War by Martin Van Creveld is way more relevent than Clausewitz. There's no "fog of war" involved here, just complete ignorance of what it takes to occupy a nation, which is at least one troop for every 40 civilians.
Ah yes, dismissal of the facts, to say that you have won the debate, sorry the fact show that it wasn't unilateral, and that there were many nations that backed the Invasion, and they backed this with Troops from their countries, and many of them are still there. 27 countries went to war with us, Big and Small, they supported the removal of Saddam. That is a interesting opinion that you have, Occupy Iraq? We went their to remove Saddam, and to establish a new government, not to occupy the country. Please provide any proof of a policy decision by the U.S. government, that we went into Iraq to occupy the country. We didn't even have those numbers for the occupation of Japan or Germany, and Germany after the war was still not pacified and safe for Allied troops.
Take your head out of your butt. The people dying are soldiers. They aren't making money, except the nominal amounts the armed forces pay for combat service.
The "coalition" wasn't really a coalition of any major nations (except Britain). That's a fact. Most of them pulled out already. If we didn't anticipate occupying Iraq, then you can list that among the many mistakes Bush made. ...The Americans were still thinking entirely in terms of classical warfare, which involved finding the enemy’s focal point and eliminating it. The enemy army and political centre comprise the focal point. According to these guidelines, the war, with the capture of Baghdad, had settled the argument. But the literature about war has been in doubt for quite some time about whether such wars do still exist. In the pioneering work The Transformation of War, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote in 1991 that modern-day military conflicts no longer fit into the pattern of more or less rational wars between states. Failure The entire project to liberate Iraq and to make a democracy of it was doomed to failure. The formation of stable democratic states in general is an exceptional historical process in which foreign intervention seldom works out favourably. In Iraq, three factors helped to guarantee that the process became a fiasco. This article makes the case that there was a fog of war involved, and that one of our biggest mistakes was the hubris of the US that mere technology could overcome it. Beyond this was an ideological blindness to recognize how war has really changed in the 21st century. Obviously, the Bush administration has not taken Creveld to heart, they are stuck in the Napoleonic era with Clausewitz.
The fact some people profit off war is irrelevant. We can disagree with the war and its reasons, but make no mistake, the men doing the dying are willing to do so because they know they are supposed to die for their country, right or wrong...
Yeah, people can be recruited for any ideology; the LTTE haven't run short of suicide bombers since the 1970s.
Yes S.A.M. can insult and belittle all but her own Islamic terrorist, as long as they are on Jihad they are immune from criticism, if it is done in the name of Allah and Jihad nothing is forbidden in the eyes of S.A.M. and her brand of Islamo-terrorism, kill the innocent, kill the children, kill the women, kill your fellow Moslem, on Jihad all is forgiven in the name of Allah, Yes S.A.M. is a old fashion kind of girl, she believes in the Dhimmitude and the law of Jizya, the Moslem protection racket, better know as extortion, for protection, S.A.M. is typical of islamists to sugarcoat the bitter truths. When they are pointed to hadiths saying prophet had sex with young and beautiful wives of infidels after killing them, they say he honored them by taking them as wives. When you point out to the captured women he distributed among his jihadis after a raid, they say those ladies had become homeless so they were given shelter . When you point out to the cold blood beheading of 900 quraizan Jews they say they had committed treachery. When you point out to his raids and violence, they say they were defensive tactics. When you point out to the jizya he imposed on the survivors after brutal raids death and destruction, they say it was harmless little protection money. Well the first harmless little protection money of Islam was on the survivors of Khaybar raid by Mohammed. It was 50% levied on the poor wretched surviving Jews of Khaybar whose land was occupied. Men were killed and women were captured and raped. Mohammed slept with 17 year old beautiful wife of their chief Kinana after brutally torturing and then beheading him. The islamists have the audacity to say that Safia happily accepted Islam and enjoyed sleeping with the 60 year old killer of her father, brothers and husband. Here are related sahih hadths. Bukhari,Volume 5, Book 59, Number 512: Narrated Anas: The Prophet offered the Fajr Prayer near Khaibar when it was still dark and then said, "Allahu-Akbar! Khaibar is destroyed, for whenever we approach a (hostile) nation (to fight), then evil will be the morning for those who have been warned." Then the inhabitants of Khaibar came out running on the roads. The Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives. Safiya was amongst the captives, She first came in the share of Dahya Alkali but later on she belonged to the Prophet . The Prophet made her manumission as her 'Mahr'. Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 543: Narrated 'Umar: But for the other Muslims (i.e. coming generations) I would divide (the land of) whatever villages the Muslims might conquer (among the fighters), as the Prophet divided (the land of) Khaibar. Bukhari Volume 5, Book 59, Number 550: Narrated 'Abdullah: The Prophet gave (the land of) Khaibar to the Jews (of Khaibar) on condition that they would work on it and cultivate it and they would have half of its yield.
