COMMENTS:
Yo, cmon man, I know wh're not angels, but this is nuts. Every poll seems to be about this stuff. Ok, here's my view. They say this is gonna be the biggest US combat operation since Vietnam, this particular attack, that is. I think it will be bombing raids followed by urban warfare. Now, if they wanted to, they COULD just wipe the fucking place off the map with a nuke or a flattening air assault, but they ARE trying to minimize civilian casualties. So please, if anyone tried to accuse the US of not caring about the civilians, reread this comment.
ah, forgive my usual typos...
Cletus
I know this is not popular opinion on here, but these insertions are killing innocent Iraqis every day, I'm sure they have safe houses or targets to go after. Yes many cilvilians will probably be killed, but what is the alternative, continue to allow the insertions to kill innocent Iraqis, I wanted to say Americans too but know most of you don't care about them. My brother will be one of those marines going into FALLUJAH, and I hate it. If I had my way he would come home right now. But I know that is not going to happen, so have to be realistic about this whole thing.
just my opinion , take it or leave it.
larry: You make a good point and I do not disagree.
I have serious concerns about how we're addressing the problem, though.
Cletus: Damn, my masterful monologue addressing your point seems not to have made it into the comments section.
I'll try to recollect what I had meant to say.
For a dollar, I'll let it pass. ;-)
I know cathexis, but we made this mess in Iraq, I don't think we should have gone there in the first place, but now that we have, I don't know what else can be done. We took away their military, we left them defenseless, if there was a way to do this without military force, that would be great. But I don't see that happening
Like I said, DAMNED if I know...
You know what is amazing to me, that people can be so ignorant.
Here is why the numbers are skewed:
All deaths in iraq are attributed, by media spinning, in some way to the United States military. Persons killed by foreign insurgents, persons who die in car accidents, even those dying of natural deaths, are all tallied up under one column without any sort of breakdown was to how they died. Hell, even the foreign insurgents themselves, killed by the Iraqi or US military, legitimate albeit unfortunate casualties, are added to this total.
Also, the completely ridiculous total of 100,000 civilian casualties that was come up with by that supposed 'impartial' study, is absolutely outlandish. First off, even by their own account, the 100,000 is NOT the number of civilians that have died, that's the 'arbitrary' number of deaths they 'believe' could happen before the situation in Iraq settles down.
How did they achieve this number? Well, they went into the most war torn neighborhoods in Fallujah and two other especially war torn cities, and asked RESIDENTS there how may people in their households had died.
They ignored any areas that were relatively peaceful in this data collection process. Then they took this already skewed data and multiplied it by the number of households in ALL of Iraq, basically subjugating every area of Iraq under the same situation of violence and death toll as the worst areas overall.
Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous... add to this the impeccable timing of the creators of this study, releasing it just days before the United States election...
well, only a damned fool would believe what this study says, let's just leave it at that.
Informed and highly placed sources say the Bush administration will soon change the official name of this war from "Operation Iraqi Freedom" to "Vietnam II: The Sequel!". Further details will be reported as they become available...
jappy, your assessment of the study doesn't really detract from the ballot question.
The basic premise is flawed. Guerillas do have bases of operations. They have headquarters, they have weapons and ammo stores, they have communications equipment, they have training grounds, they have places set aside for building explosives and suicide weapons. All of these things must be based somewhere. All of these places can be found and destroyed and thus severely weaken their ability to fight back.
They can run and scatter, which would leave them with some disorganized, leaderless light infantry with no heavy weapons and limited capabilities.
It won't be easy, and it won't come without casualties, but it is worthlwhile and absolutely vital to winning the war.
The war on who?
'The war on who?'
Terrorists, or terrorism, or islamic extremism. Whatever you want to call it, it's all the same people.
'P.S. You cannot stop an insurgency simply by killing more insurgents.'
No, you stop an insurgency by killing all the insurgents AND destroying their bases of operations AND their weapons stores AND cutting off their supply of new weapons (as they have no manufacturing plants of their own these must come from other nations). This operation is a huge step in the right direction.
See, I think it's right here where there is a fundamental difference of opinion as to what is the most rational way to eliminate the threat of terrorism. I think everyone can agree that terrorism is terrifying. The question then becomes, what is the best way to deal with it?
And, as it would turn out, the question is incredibly complex when you take into account the history of intelligence in the U.S., feasable federal security measures, global interactions, and the like.
I do not believe that this "problem" which apparently we're now calling Islam can be solved solely by military means. I think that is the rusty old mindset of the 1950s or 60s that "got the job done" but forgot about the last century.
In a way, in only makes sense that we should be talking about killing "insurgents" today instead of talking about revamping our intel. "They" got us; bad. For awhile, we weren't exactly sure of who they were--we we're told that Usama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were the people who attacked us, and someway, somewhere in there we got confused. Somehow we learned that the enemy was in fact in a place that we were largely unfamiliar with, and after a lot of drinking and vomiting, two people woke up and started yelling at each other.
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