Posted on 07/26/2007 9:51:28 PM PDT by conservativeimage
As a result of Hugh Hewitt's conversation with General Petraeus a few days ago, the question has been brought up of how many terrorist combatants have been killed due to the United States' fighting the War Against Islamic Terror in Iraq. This has been a complaint of mine for a couple of years now. Why do we never hear how many bad guys are killed from day to day from the television news journalists? All we ever hear is how many American Soldiers are killed each day, nothing else. The reason is because the TV news channels are antiwar pacifists and don't want the U.S. to win this war. They are attempting to control the outcome of the war by undermining support for it, just like they were successful in aborting the war in Vietnam. This is why I quit watching TV news in 2004, and you need to quit too. Well I don't need the antiwar networks to get a good idea of how many Muslim terrorists are killed in Iraq. I recall at the end of the 2001 film "Blackhawk Down" we were told that 18 U.S. Servicemen were killed and over 1000 Somalian fighters were killed. To satisfy my curiosity I use the Blackhawk Down incident as a way of fairly metering the kill ratio in todays war. Before I do the math let me say that I know a man; the life of one's son can not be equated to a number. As I do this, I am remembering Captain Sean Sims from Eddy, Texas. He was killed on 11/13/04 while liberating the city of Fallujah from extremist forces.
1000 enemy combatants divided between 18 U.S. soldiers produces a ratio of 55.5 to 1. I can imagine how General Patton would respond to this. He would've been both proud and emotionally moved. He would've called them "boys." If we were apply that outcome to our loss of 3600 service men since March 20, 2003, that would mean over 200,000 terrorists have been killed. I believe the number of enemy casualties today is even higher than that compensating for over 13 years of advances in technology and training.
One problem with trying to do an accurate body count of dead terrorists is the instant they die, they become unarmed civilians. We've heard how participators will clean bodies of weapons then begin wailing in front of antiwar TV news cameras because we killed one of their cousins. Remember this as your watching the news, terrorists tactics work on pacifists and the U.N.. You shouldn't be watching that stuff.
Fight the war at home, slap a journalist.
Like your line. Interested in the statistics...have read in several military articles that the average rounds expended in Iraq is 250,000 per terrorist. Read also that the military ran low of ammo about the time of Fallujah as the US only produced 1 billion rounds per year from Olin in the US..procurement was added for 3 billion rounds per year with 1 bil from an Israeli firm (ammo not to be used in ME for politico/religious pc reasons) and an additional 1 billion rounds from a second US firm.
None. Remember, there are no terrorists in Iraq. They are only ‘insurgents.’ /s
How many? ... not enough.
Regards
After slapping the journalist, make him watch this new Patton speech VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyUX6wV1lBQ
Ya, what’s up with that? Its not even an insurgency anymore, its a “civil war.” Now I’m cussing.
Aren’t they called Minutemen?
I’ve got to make a new bumper sticker design: “We’re not pulling out of anything. Let the enemy do that.”
I want to know “by jingo”.
I thought it was policy not to perform body counts following Vietnam.
What do you mean “For public consumption?”
And I’m not so sure about knowing how many you kill, a lot of the jihadis in Iraq are killed with personal and direct fire weapons compared to previous wars, but I’ll bet plenty have been killed indirectly in airstrikes and with artillery/mortar fire (like that AQ guy recently). Also, if keeping count of rounds expended is anything like counting kills, I think any accurate count can be ruled out.
I doubt the jihadis police their dead and wounded, but even so, I can’t imagine squad leaders asking their squad members how many jihadis they think they’ve killed, and I certainly can’t imagine going around and counting ala Vietnam.
"I cant imagine squad leaders asking their squad members how many jihadis they think theyve killed"
I would love to get an answer from a FReeper in the military. Why not? If intel bothers to know HOW MANY why not HOW MANY are there after an encounter?
A memoire (Highway to Hell by John Geddes)by a former member of the SAS working as a private military contractor in Iraq states that the official US estimate as at December 2005 at 53,470 against 2389 coalition troops. 30,000 civilians killed by both sides.
Ah, gotcha.
But the left routinely says we’ve killed 600,000 “innocent” Iraqis. Does this number include the terrorists or are they all Scott Beauchamps just randomly slaughtering women and children for no reason at all?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.