Gulf War I casualty % / cost %

These are grim statistics, but they come up in the debates. Useful to compare current stats to Gulf War I stats, which was UN approved.

US deaths = 293
UK deaths = 24
France deaths = 2
Germany deaths = 0
Canada deaths = 0
Arab (non-Iraq) deaths = 39
Total = 358

This, despite the fact that non-US forces were 24 percent of all forces. As usual, the US forces (and the Brits) take on the tougher jobs on the ground and in the front lines. The Arabs were on the front lines in the first battles near the Kuwait/Saudi border, but that was mostly symbolic, as they just don’t have the training or equipment of US/UK troops.

Remove Arab deaths, as free Iraq would never allow occupation from dictator Arab states, so no point in including them in any possible coalition (not that they ever would anyway, with any amount of diplomacy, them being dictators and all)

War cost estimated $61B to $71B.
Arab states pitched $36B (it was sort of a “for-hire” job for us, to some degree)
Germany and Japan pitched $16B (they need that oil just as much as we do, Germany even more)
Leaving US with $9B to $19B price tag

Notice the high amount from France. ??? Well, we got much much more out of the French this time around, if you can count Iraq debt forgiveness. Maybe $3B to $5B (although actual number unknown at this point). If you don’t want to count that, well, no big deal, they didn’t really break out the big checkbook last time either.

Of course, Arab states were never going to pitch in for the current war. They had total self-interest to pitch in for the last one. And Japan is already pitching a bit on the Iraq war, as well as troops. So we are really only missing out on Germany this go around, moneywise at least.

But if you do include debt forgiveness, which really should count as much of the money we are pitching is for building infrastructure, the non-allies really are pitching in a decent amount to Iraq.

Total debt is about $120B to various countries and individuals. Talks are on to forgive about half of this.

I think Kerry says it's 90% American, casualties and $$.
Surely Gen. George S. Patton was right: in war, the only casualties worth bragging about are those inflicted on the enemy.
But if friendly casualties there must be, there is something to be said for leading. America led the coalition, and in doing so it put its own troops in the forefront of the battle. In a true "coalition of the bribed and coerced," the dominant actor would exploit its allies by placing their troops in the most dangerous positions. Which is, according to the History Channel special on Sparta of a year ago or so, exactly what the Spartans used to do. Sparta would use its allies as "cannon fodder" against its main opponent, and use its own troops to hack up the weaker allies of that main opponent.
Kerry prattles about getting important "allies" to "help" - but in fact his proposal is to retroactively repeat the mistake of the Gulf War, that of allowing the coalition to define the mission. Bush's position is that "the mission must define the coalition" - which is simply another way of saying that America must lead if America's interests (meaning a democratic Iraq) are to prevail.
The price of getting "help" which Bush couldn't get is only giving up American control of the mission - IOW, surrender by another name. Lt. John Kerry advocated surrender by another name in 1971, and he advocates surrender by another name now. He is, was, and will be a Quisling.

Surely Gen. George S. Patton was right: in war, the only casualties worth bragging about are those inflicted on the enemy.

All I need to know about life, I learned from Gen. George Patton...

I would say in this war, the casualties are about 90% bad guys and terrorists. Let's see if we can't get that number up a little higher...

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