"You want facts? Here's one. Leaving Iraq will do more harm than good."

Why? Prove that or at least explain it.

"they simply need to make Iraq look like a failure and that is exactly what they are doing."

What the hell are you talking about Iraq is a failure. There are tens of thousands of civilians dead since the occupation began, spiraling violence, overextended troop commitments, lack of exit strategy, Iraqi politicians actively criticizing American politicians, I mean maybe if a nuclear bomb went off, it would be worse, but "the goddamn plane has crashed into the fucking mountain!" to quote a funny movie.

There is no definition that could describe the occupation a success. Sure, we have a democratically elected government, we have Saddam dead, we have, well that's it. We have wasted half a trillion dollars to get this far, 3500 Americans have given their lives, there is no end in sight and no withdrawl date, the cycle of violence we see today is the exact same cycle we say in 2005, and 2006, it is not Q4 of 2007, and the plan is to stick it out until at least 2008 or 2009.

"The least we can do is give Iraq and it's people a fighting chance to stand on their own 2 feet."

I say that's bullshit. We have already given this country 5 years to get it's act together. What the least we could do was, push our interests,

A. Rid the country of WMD
B. Get rid of Saddam
C. setup a government to run the show
D. Leave


So far A-B-C are checks, the hold up on D is not our responsibility. These are not American citizens, they are people of course but they have to choose to fight for their own freedom.

You seem to believe that AQ is controlling events in Iraq and that is total bologne, the insurgency is 95-99% of what is going on. Why is there an insurgency, the government isn't working together to solve their problems.

Of course we could stay another 5 or 10 years at great financial cost, and human life cost, things would probably be better maybe even more than marginally so, but the trade-off is we cannot deal with Iran if we need to militarily, we cannot fight AQ in other areas of the world, and we cannot secure the financing of our nation's future.

That is a fact as well.

"But I guess that is why our children now a days are in more danger than before, because if it's not easy and don't ASAP and get 100% good results, it's not worth trying right?"

Charles you make is sound like we invaded in 2006. Recall we invaded in 2003.

Look at this one webpage and tell me this surge is working or that the situation is improving. On this page is the truth about what is going on, it's a compilation of suicide bombings. Note the frequency within the last few months. There is little if any progress being made on the security front. I would happily concede that we could stick it out longer, but there is no down trend in the violence. It is only increasing both in frequency and intensity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bombings_in_Iraq_since_2003

Do you want to know what shit isn't working in Iraq. Read here.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070730&s=hedges

Now before you post another single word referencing me, you read it, and then you comment on it.

I don't think you could possibly sugar coat whats going on in Iraq DAILY. It's a fucking mess over there. A fucking mess with no end in sight! That is the problem, the solution to that is not to commit to maintaining a fucking mess forever as the president has done since 2004. The solution is to clean it up. The fact it we are unable to do that. The majority of the country sees that an is unwilling to draft the one or two million troops necessary to do properly garrison Iraq. The alternative is to subcontract it out to the owners of the mess, i.e. Iraqi citizens.

The sooner we get started on that, the sooner we are able to apply our military to missions in the war on terror, and the sooner the Iraqis make or break their country.

Funny, I thought I explained that in the rest of my post. Maybe I can make it easier to understand. Why did we do the surge? Because every time we left one area to fight somewhere else the death toll in those areas would go up again. Kinda what Col is saying here about the surge and the fighting shifting. If when we move from one place to another they go to those areas and bring chaos again, what do you think will happen if we leave all together? Does that explain it? Does that prove my point or do you still think nothing will happen when actions around Iraq prove otherwise?



Iraq is a failure because you wanna believe it is. The death toll is not a sign of failure, people die in wars. This was has not been declared a success, it is a work in progress. But as I stated before, if it’s not done perfectly and within a day it’s a failure according to people like you. The irony is that you guys now point out the successful things is Iraq such as you did above, but that doesn’t matter, because you will smear it with the bad things. I guess when you have kids someday they will always be losers no matter how good they are because they too will make mistakes. I guess that makes you a loser as well, right?

I just love how you guys use the money and soldier death toll as your Ace in the hole.



What’s wrong, you don’t know how to finish something you start? They are fighting; last I check not every single American man woman and child fought during our civil war. Or does the Iraqi military not count now?



You can call it bologna, ham or salami for all I care, but I’m not the one who keeps crying about AQ being in Iraq because of us. And here’s the interesting part, we actually created a Gov’t composed of all 3 factions, yet you people expected them to forget the thousands of years of hatred and just get along over night. Perfection should be your modo. You are becoming one of Col’s drones. Next thing you know you will be saying “resistance is futile”.



When did I say that? Duh, we went in in 2003, the only confused one here is you. LOL, you link Wiki as a credible source? Hell I can create a Wiki page with all the bad stuff that happens in Iraq, I can even put 10 pictures of different angles of an attack and state it was several different attacks. Hey, you have the right to believe that nothing good is happening in Iraq while ignoring all the good that happens in Iraq if it makes you feel better. In the end we will really see the outcome.



So the words of a few soldiers is enough to convince you? If I found and equal or higher amount of soldier that said to the contrary, would you take their words for it or would you claim Bush threatened them like Col does?


You see, you problem is that you are not 100% sure of anything. Hey, there will be soldiers who don’t think things are going good and there will be those with the opposite. Are you gonna ignore those soldiers just like Col does just so you can push your agenda? Do you ever follow ShadowWar’s articles? How come you don’t take that as good coming from Iraq, oh yea, you don’t believe anything good happens there.

Do me a favor; don’t demand me to read anything, especially on someone else’s article. I won’t waste my time with things when you yourself won’t read other peoples stuff that proves to the contrary. And you wonder why I compare you to Col.

BTW, I'm not gonna keep up with little game with you. I should have learned from the last time we got into it like this. It's not worth it when you already have your mind set to ignore and be right all the time.

the man in that office before bush was a draft dodger. and he gave aid and comfort to the enemy. where is your outrage about this.

"Iraq is a failure because you wanna believe it is. "

Iraq's post war is a failure because hundreds of thousands are dead because of our actions, millions are refugees, the surrounding nations are sending in foreign fighters, we don't have the forces to fight this war, and because we have no option but stay in or cut our losses and "hope" Iraq can make it on it's own.

That is a complete and total failure of the goals of the post war. The violence is only escalating, not leveling, or drawing down.

"The death toll is not a sign of failure, people die in wars."

Fuck that, soldiers die in war, civilians die when there isn't enough overwhelming force to bring the violence to a speedy conclusion. In this case, it just goes on and on. The goal of war is to bring a decision in a conflict with the minimal amount of damage to both sides, it's called battlefield efficiency and though it is a disgusting concept, it is a necessary study and learned field for commanders in war.

You acceptance of the staggering civilian death toll, the crazy amount of treasure spent thus far, the lack of any possible ending in sight is the sure sign of someone who is either making up their own facts, drawing their conclusion in absence of the facts, or not of sound enough mind to be doing either.

"So the words of a few soldiers is enough to convince you?"

Absolutely, above and beyond the credibility of the commander in chief is the word of the man and woman pulling the trigger, picking the dead 10 year old off the street.

"BTW, I'm not gonna keep up with little game with you. "

Good. Then you can stop posting in threads with cheap two sentence shots on a topic you clearly are out of touch with the reality on.

77,000



more civilians died in world war 2 than soldiers.

Total Human Losses
The total estimated human loss of life caused by World War II was roughly 72 million people. The civilian toll was around 47 million, including about 20 million due to war related famine and disease. The military toll was about 25 million, including the deaths about 5 million prisoners of war in captivity. The Allies lost around 61 million people, and the Axis lost 11 million.

WWW Link

col Gene's lack of facts and context up 200%!!!!!

It may be true that the deaths are double that of last year, this is a good thing! we have three times the troops and about double the deaths according to Gene. This means that we are losing less people, and the surge is working.

You say 77,000 but that is bogus number.

more civilians died in world war 2 than soldiers.

That's right, because the militaries of the time did not discriminate between civilians and military targets because their weapons systems were not capable of doing it effectively.

Today, in modern war, the military is much more able to do that. In urban warfare not so much, because you have a hard time avoiding civilian casualties because of the close proximity of the civilians to the forces.

Also, AQ and the insurgency doesn't seem to value life the way trained military forces are trained to do, fighting war by the rule of law.

Civilians also died because of disease, starvation, and other causes that the fighting. The fighting is what brings about those secondary causes however.

Which is why avoiding this shit storm should have been the priority, not occupying the country.

how do you tell the civilian wearing a bulls shirt from the non civilian wearing a bulls shirt. oh and they are both armed

"how do you tell the civilian wearing a bulls shirt from the non civilian wearing a bulls shirt. oh and they are both armed"

What?

exactly

Reply By: Island Dog Posted: Wednesday, September 05, 2007
“Since most of the sources are either agencies like the Treasury, Census people like George Tenet, I know what post is true.


The problem gene, is you completely misrepresent these facts. Case in point is how you automatically use Tenet as a source, and then hold your hand over your ears when we show counter points to what Tenet said. Just because someone like Tenet "said" something, doesn't exactly make it true, or show the whole picture.”



What Tenet said is the collective judgment of the CIA and the work of thousands of people dedicated to produce the very warnings that Bush and Rice ignored. You appear to be saying all that work by all those people was WRONG?? The truth is that were correct since we were attacked on 9/11. You seem to think that what Tenet said in his book was his single judgment- That is simply not correct.

When I post the exact dollars amounts from the U.S. Treasury Web Sight, HOW IS THAT WRONG? When I post the data from the Census Bureau HOW IS THAT WRONG?

Do you mean like when we said that all those people and all that money said that Iraq was re-starting its wmd program? Remember that slam dunk tenant said that it was a fact. and you said that it was not. So your point is that Mr. Bush ignored the warnings and we were attacked, but did not ignore the other warnings and he should have known that Tennant was lying. Yup makes perfect sense, not to me cause I am sane.



So you admit that Mr. Bush was justified in making war on Iraq? Great! Welcome to the world where reality rules!