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Which is roughly 1/10th the numbers of similar injuries/deaths from car accidents in the US during a similar time period.
That's fantasitic. Meaningless, but fantastic. It'd be a great comparision if we had 800 million troops in Iraq, but we don't.
Try making the argument that it's more dangerous to drive a car than to be in the military in Iraq right now, see how that goes.
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Look Smash. We all know that soldier's lives are in danger in Iraq. What do you hope to gain here? Do you think that if you keep repeating them over and over that the numbers will become worse suddenly?
They get worse every day. Every day more die, more are maimed, and more lives ruined. What I gain here is
reminding armchair heros like you that people
die because the politicians you support put them in harms way for no valid reason.
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Or are you hoping that the US will suddenly decide that Iraq isn't worth it and leave, condemning 10s of thousands of Iraqi's to die in the resulting civil war and convincing yet more people in that region that the US is a nation of half measures who leave at the first sign of difficulty?
Nah, I'd prefer we stay and kill the 10s of thousands ourselves. Then at least the ragheads will know we mean buisness, right?
I'm hoping that at some point, idiotic idealogues like you will say "Gee, I guess the war was a mistake after all. It probably wasn't worth the 5,000 kids losing arms or legs to remove Saddam from power.
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You are aware that most of the Iraqi's are angry at the US right now, not because of the occupation, but because we've been unable to protect them from the recent violence that has been erupting in Iraq.
*********
Where did you get that sentiment? The RNC website? It's about the only place I think that would have the balls to try that argument.
Do you know what's behind the violence in Falluja?
Let me tell you a story. I have a cousin who's a LT in the Army. He's in civil affairs. He just returned from Iraq a couple of weeks ago. His name's Kevin. I saw him at a welcome home party up in boston.
This is him:
http://www.eagletribune.com/news/stories/20040318/FP_002.htm
Lest I be accused of creating him for argument sake.
Now, we're a very military family. I'm named after a former headmaster at Anapolis. I served in the USAF and the DIA, my father in the USAF, most of my relatives have done at least a 5 year hitch in one of the services.
At any rate, I went to this party to welcome Kevin back. He's allways been a staunch Republican, as most Military officers are. I was ready to hold my tounge and be gracious as it was his day and not the time for a political debate.
But he surprised me. He came over to me at one point during the party and looked at me, shaking his head. I raised an eyebrow at him and asked him what was up.
"We shouldn't be there, Timmy. I don't know how it's going to end up over there, but they don't want us there and I really don't understand why we ARE there."
He went on to tell me of the six men he knew who had died while he was there. He told me that even in Kirkuk, sone of the least hostile places for an American to be, there was constant hatred and resentment.
Then he told me about Falluja. When the US first occupied Falluja, they set up operations in a school. A muslim school, which upset most of the population. A crowd gathered around the school, and in Arabic the crowd began shouting for the US troops to leave because it was a holy building.
The US troops had no one who could speak Arabic with them. They didn't know what the crowd was shouting. They felt threatened. There were rocks thrown. The troops fired into the crowd and killed eighteen Iraqis.
The intresting thing about this event is that simmilar things happen ALL THE TIME in Iraq. There isn't a day that goes by when US troops don't kill innocent Iraqi civilians because of confusion or misunderstanding. Such is the maddness of war. At any rate, if you see the people in Falluja cheering as the bodies of American's are dragged through the streets and you want to call them evil, or terrorist, or savages or whatever peice of propaganda meets your fancy, remember their dead.
Remember we slaughtered women and children who didn't want US troops in a Muslim school and we didn't have anyone who could speak Arabic.
Kevin told me He'll likely vote Democratic for the first time in his life. He's not alone. This will very likely be the first election where the Military doesn't vote overwhelmingly Republican.
The Commander in Cheif began his term in office with enormus respect, but he's lost all of it. Now most of these men just want to know why their freinds had to die and loose arms and legs.
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They want/expect us to protect them until a government has been established.
They want us gone. They've wanted us gone since day one. Anything else is ******** propaganda. EVERY SINGLE IMPARTIAL SOURCE says the same thing. They do not want us there.
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That's our responsibility to those people at this time. The fact that some extreme factions in Iraq desperately want us to leave so they can take control is apparently lost to you.
Yes, they're all terrorists. The constant resistance in every occupied area of Iraq is all caused by a tiny minority of terrorists who want us to leave so they can take controll.
Wake the fu'ck up. The Iraqi's want us gone en masse.
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You seem to be oblivious to the fact that those factions are attacking Iraqi's to make them angry at us, and us to make the folks at home decide that the cost for Iraq is "too high".
The cost is "too high". Clearly. No factions have to make the Iraqis angry at us. Dropping fire from the sky on them and shooting their wives and children in the face will do that all by itself.
Are you really this braindead that you BELIVE that it's a CONSPIRACY by evil terrorists to convince the Iraqi people not to WANT to be occuppied by us??
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You are, typically, falling for it. You may as well have "Puppet of terrorists" stamped on your forehead Smash. But hey. Keep the updates coming...
Yeah. I'm falling for it all right. I've been saying it since day one. You've been saying the people would welcome us as liberators and be thrilled to death to be occupied. IN fact, you've claimed more than once that there's no other possible thing for them to feel.
One of us is certainly the puppet of some overly simplistic propaganda machine's spewings, but unfortunately it's not me. I'm not the one who's saying the deaths and maimings of nearly 10,000 Americans isn't too a high a price to pay for removing Saddam from power. I'm not the one desperately trying to minimize the loss of life in Iraq by comparing it to car accident deaths.
I'm stating the facts and making the same case I was making a year ago. I don't have to manipulate facts to make my case, because the facts bear it out.
How many have to die before the cost is too high?
1,000?
10,000?
100,000?
Why don't you just give me a number that would satisfy you as too many dead Americans since you're certain that it hasn't been acheived yet.
Just how cheap are the lives of these people to you?
Edited, Mon Apr 5 19:04:18 2004 by Smasharoo