Posted on 03/10/2006 5:26:23 AM PST by Tolik
Thus speaks the rabid Know Nothings who probably have never even been out of their own country. Amazing how rabidly arrogant the people who KNOW NOTHING about the topic are in dictating how the rest of the world should order their lives. I suppose next you will be telling us about the "White Mans burden". You people are on the WRONG side of history. At least have the decency to recognize your utter ignorance on the topic instead of just mindlessly regurgitating Mike Savage's utter stupidity.
I get my data from daily briefings, from reports from the field (friends and former students there), and other sources. I'm confident in them. This equates very well with the rates that we were killing "insurgents" in the Filipino Insurrection.
So what are the rates, i.e., the body count?
I'm figuring we are in the neighborhood of 20,000 killed since 2003, and that doesn't count wounded and discouraged. We bagged about 2,000 in the Fallujah operation alone. The question is, how many jihadists are coming in? I seriously doubt it's anywhere near 1000 a month that would be needed to sustain major operations. Further, places like Iran and Syria can't "suggest" too many of these people go off to be killed, because they need them in their own armies.
That's really funny considering 1300 years of history with the religion of "peace" being anything but that.
Not all societies are equal. Not all civilizations are equal. Have I traveled to the ME? No. Do I want to? No.
All I know is that anywhere muslims are, there is conflict and war. Everywhere in the world these people go, there is a problem.
It is not a huge problem in our country because they are so outnumbered. Look at Europe. Are they bigots because they are sick of these animals behaving as such? Look at Africa - genocide at the hands of the followers of the religion of peace. Look at the Philippines - do the words Tamal Tigers mean anything to you??? Look at anywhere there is strife in the world today, you are likely to find a muslim involved.
You sit there and claim to be the enlighted one, the tolerant one, the informed one, but in reality, you are not and simply parrot everything told to you by your king.
"Trying to tell people how they must live is IMPERIALISM. It doesn't work."
No kidding, in fact it tends to make people hate you. That doesn't change the fact that until Iraqi's give up their tribal Islamic culture, democracy stands little chance.
No-fly-zones, oil-for-food, Saddam blustering and taunting, and the rest of the whole sordid mess in a post-9/11 environment would simply be intolerable.
20,000 since March 2003 works out to 555 a month. How many of the those are foreign fighters?
The question is, how many jihadists are coming in? I seriously doubt it's anywhere near 1000 a month that would be needed to sustain major operations.
It is my understanding that foreign fighters make up 4 to 10% of the 30,000 strong insurgency. The 'myth' of Iraq's foreign fighters
Further, places like Iran and Syria can't "suggest" too many of these people go off to be killed, because they need them in their own armies.
The numbers are relatively small compared to the size of the military, especially in Iran.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Maybe I need more coffee.
We can't wait for 2 yrs for it to be "Iran's turn". The American people won't support the war in Iraq, or Afghanistan or anywhere else for that long. And in the meantime, our soldiers and innocent Iraqis are being killed by bombs and support coming from Iran. (not to mention hostility from the likes of alSadr who works for the regime and various other disruptive elements.) Iraq is infested with regime agents. If we don't destroy the nest, we don't stand a chance stopping the infestation.
The sooner we get rid of the Iranian regime, the sooner we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The longer we wait, the longer we have to fight and the more fed up the American people will become. (we'll be forced out of Iraq by public consensus and the Iranian regime will take over)
Also, getting rid of the regime erases the nuclear weapons threat.
It also helps the democratic movement in Lebanon, because Syria is dependent on Iran. The regime in Syria will collapse without Iran, and the Lebanese can delouse their country of Syrian agents and disrupters.
In order for President's Bush's plans and dreams of seeing peace and democracy in the Middle East to materialize, he MUST get rid of the Iranian regime. The sooner the better.
With all the threats coming from Iran, I think it's a good time for the President to stand up and say enough is enough. I'd like him to announce to the Iranian regime (and the American people) "You've been threatening us for a long time and we're not going to take it any more. You've got 48 hrs to resign and turn yourselves in, or we're taking you out. You've been brutalizing your own people for 27 yrs and you've been supporting the terrorists in Iraq which has cost American lives.
We're not going to stand by and watch you inprison and torture and kill your people any more. The Iranian people have spoken and they don't want you. They want to be free.
Come out or we're coming in to get you."
[Of course we'd have to be watching the borders, and have air traffic controllers over neighboring countries refuse entry into their air space, because they'll be a lot of sudden departing flights with very important people on board]
(I think if he went on American TV and listed the regime's involvement in terrorist acts over the past 27 yrs and their threats against us, especially those in the past 2 yrs or so, and told Americans that getting rid of the regime would also take care of the nuclear weapons threat, he'd have the support of the American people to take them out.)
bump
I don't listen to the talking heads. It was just my humble opinion.
2. Each American death in combat or at the hands of "insurgent" murderers/cowards is precious. Nonetheless, let us not get carried away over what has been a VERY low casualty war.
3. Greater love no man hath than that he should lay down his life for a friend.
4. If you doubt there are friends among the Iraqis, re-read Valin's #21, the letter from the Iraqi mayor in which he thanks American soldiers from his town (Ninewa?? Ninevah???) that was the heart of darkness under Al Qaeda's Al-Zarqawi.
AND, Iraq's new government hanged 13 of the SOB's this morning. May it hang many more.
See #35.
While I was in Nam in 69 we were losing four to five hundred a week!
And like you said, every life is precious but to liberate fifty million people in three years with less than three thousand casualties borders on miraculous! FDR & LBJ couldn't have dreamed of numbers like that!
Thanks for posting this.
Most of us who voted for GW in the last election, over 62,000,000 of us, could care less what these conservative hot house orchids fed and groomed by the left wing media have to say. William F. Buckley, Niall Ferguson, Francis Fukuyama, George Will, to a name only a very few are the equivalent of the Black Over Seers on the Plantations before the civil war. They have a paycheck and perceived power only if the MSM elite owners continue to want them.
They are Dinosaurs created and established by the old MSM. They exist because the elite left wing created them, fed them and cared for them the past few decades. Their job was to appear on the Sunday TV talk shows to get battered by the liberals and to whine like tethered goats. They were paid to do this and got to set up magazines and sites for the real conservative newsletters for a nice steady income. They have as much power over America as Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw do.
These token conservative darlings of the media suffer everyday as the major fishwraps who carry their columns of whining, dispair and hatred of GW, lose more and more paid readers and subscribers. As the voters for GW abandon the Sunday talk roasts, their self perceived power and importance diminishes.
They hate the successes of GW even more than their liberal elite benefactors.
Still, whatever number you use, the fact that everyone seems to forget is that there is a FINITE NUMBER, and it is rapidly decreasing. Further, all previous wars/insurgencies show that with each additional terroist death, it becomes even more difficult to win.
2) Given the failure to produce overwhelming evidence of WMDs in Iraq (I think the evidence is conclusive, but the "Average Joe" probably doesn't), we are NOT going to war with Iran short of a clear-cut, deliberate Iranian attack on the U.S. homeland, and that isn't going to happen. They would fire a missile at the Jews first, but no Mullah is that stupid as to attack us.
3) Militarily, unless we pull all our people out of Germany and Korea, we wouldn't have the military power to invade (much less hold) Iran and Iraq at this point.
This is exactly why Bush has not pushed this yet. You are NOT going to make a sufficient case to the American public (no matter how reasonable strategically) to invade Iran without a direct attack.
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