More than 140 bodies turn up on Baghdad streets
Abuskedti
Posts: 1,917
I know I know we are staying for the good of Iraq
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I got into a discussion about Iraq with a friend and he said that Iraq was no more violent than Los angeles, Chicago or Detroit.
Last time I checked... 2,600 L.A.P.D. officers weren't killed in the past 3 years from R.P.G. or I.E.D. attacks.
Hail, Hail!!!
Its legitimate to ask how many bodies would be there if no U.S. troops were present, mind you. Maybe the same number, maybe fewer ... Maybe more.
And yeah, that's not a good comparison at all.
I basically agree ... There's no real way to "win" in Iraq, assuming there ever even was.
If all those Iraqis were killed in auto accidents on the streets and freeways... you know, by drunk driving and all... then, yeah. But, getting dragged out of your house and turning up in an alley a week later with your head chopped off... along with 13 other headless bodies... I can't remember that happening here in the U.S. on a regular basis. Leastwise, not in Los Angeles. I can't speak for Chicago or Detroit because I don't live there. But, i can guarantee you... 14 headless bodies found in an alley in Los Angeles would at least make the evening news.
Hail, Hail!!!
We are caught... I should say, our decisions have left our Military people caught in a very tough position. We should not stay because there are too many other factors that make our presense there part of the problem... yet, we cannot leave because the threat of our military force is keeping this ever increasing boiler under pressure.
'Stay the Course' and 'Cut And Run' are extremes (both of which were created and canned by this administration). Those are the ends of the spectrum... there are many options that fall between the two.
We can re-deploy our forces to Afghanistan and bolster that situation... something we should have been doing all along. Or we can INCREASE the number of forces to secure the place. But, we should be given an honest assessment of the situation. Like, Bush holds up the number of trainned Iraqis in place... 300,000 of them. What the fuck are they doing? Put their sorry, white flag waving asses on the line. Make those fuckers do the shit.
Our military has already done this... toppled the Hussein Regime, captured Saddam Hussein and turned him over for trial, got their government elected, trainned those sorry fuckers... maybe it's time for the fucking Iraqis to do some of the shit.
Hail, Hail!!!
For sure.
"What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact."
Camden 5-28-06
Washington, D.C. 6-22-08
Hey look... there's wrestling on T.V!!!
Hail, Hail!!!
lol now you Cosmo, are a comedical heavyweight!
"What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact."
Camden 5-28-06
Washington, D.C. 6-22-08
Sadly, this is true.
Supporters of the war confuse me. Do they think that as long as the occupying forces 'stay the course' everything will eventually be alright again? I'm not being biased. I just can't understand how people truly believe this. Iraq is hell. And it won't get any better until the people that created the situation admit this.
You don't understand because you believe everyone who supports the war thinks 'stay the course' is the correct line of action.
There are several areas that are hell right now. Fifteen of the Eighteen provinces routinely report hardly any violence at all on a day to day basis.
"What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact."
Camden 5-28-06
Washington, D.C. 6-22-08
it seems that the only right thing the US can do is to increase their troop numbers so that they can get on with the job of rebuilding iraq and repairing the damage done in the occupation and restoring the country's infrastructure
but this decision also seems to be unpopular at home because noone wants their kids to be over there, and a large part of the world doesn't want them to be over there.
12 people may make the one decision but that doesn't make it right.
Free Rob Farquharson, wrongfully imprisoned!!
www.factbeforetheory.net
I agree with this. not sure how we "lost" this war, or cant win like robbie said. its not about winning or losing. we toppled the Hussein Regime, captured Saddam Hussein and turned him over for trial, got their government elected. ok good. now its up to the iraqis to make a better life for themselves. they are the ones killing each other. not US troops.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
We killed their police and their military - now we arrogantly patrol their streets with weapons causing caos and division - and continue killing all those opposed..
The resulting crime that we don't stop is on us.
It doesn't matter that hundreds of people are being slaughtered everyday. They now have freedom and democracy.
Haditha? Falluja? Oh, sorry! We're supposed to forget about this, right?
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/30/1332253&mode=thread&tid=25
'AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned, Dahr, Fallujah before. And I would say most people in the United States have perhaps heard of it as a city. But why do you think it needs to be investigated to the extent that we're beginning to see with Haditha right now?
DAHR JAMAIL: Well, it needs to be investigated because there is irrefutable evidence that war crimes have been committed there. I saw with my own eyes during the April 2004 siege, where I sat in a clinic and watched men and women and young kids brought in, all saying they had been shot by snipers, when Marines pushed into the city, couldn't take the city, so they set up snipers on rooftops and just started a turkey shoot, which was exactly how it was described by one of the soldiers I ran into when I was leaving that city.
Watching a ten-year-old boy die in front of my face, because he was shot by Marines, other war crimes reported heavily. And that was just from the April siege when 736 people were killed, and then the November siege where between 4,000 and 6,000 people were killed. Indiscriminate bombings, snipers, war crimes being committed on the ground by hand, by U.S. Marines, as well, during that siege. And all of these are, of course, gross breeches of the Geneva Conventions. They are war crimes. And there is photographic evidence. There is video evidence. Doctors there to this day will talk to you about what happened. And there is absolutely no reason why all of these shouldn’t be investigated, as well.'
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2006/davies0206.html
'Their most significant finding was that the vast majority (79 percent) of violent deaths were caused by “coalition” forces using “helicopter gunships, rockets or other forms of aerial weaponry,” and that almost half (48 percent) of these were children, with a median age of 8.'
Actually, I don't know why I bother pasting links to articles which refute your baseless statements Jlew because you obviously never read them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061124/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_061124144022
When do we stop calling this "civilian strife" and start calling this "Bush's Civil War"?
up until his party got lambasted at the polls, "stay the course" was the only option for those supporting the war (according to Bush and Cheney anyways). anything else was looked at as defeatism.
people with that line of reasoning just don't get it. Our brand of democracy does not work for everyone. shit, it barely works for us.
i think we are starting to see now why Sadaam ruled the way he did. its just not fair to rewrite historyas "we did our part, but the iraqis didn't do theirs"
its not about winning or losing?????/ i though for sure i saw W. slither up to a podium on many occasions talking about total and complete VICTORY. according to this administration, anything less that total and complete VICTORY is a WIN for the terrorists. Shit, while campaigning he said a victory for the democrats means a victory for the terrorists and a loss for America. fact is we lost this war. i dont know if the "terrorists" won the war, but I do know we lost it. And thanks to W, and the way he has framed the argument, there is no other way to look at this than a victory for the terrorists. He not only LOST the war, he made it impossible to see anything less than a working flourishing democracy as a terrorist victory. we will eventually pull our troops out...... at that point i imagine the "terrorists" will celebrate and claim victory, they will replay everytime W. stated that anything less than victory is a terrorist win, and the point will be made and it will be inarguable. although there are ways to get out of this nightmare and it is the right thing to do, George has made it impossible. there is a difference between being scared away by the terrorists and running home, and leaving a situation because we have don eall we could, and have no business fighting in a civil war between iraqis. ut W. has taken the option of leaving for any other reason than being scared off by terrorists off the table with his gung ho cowboy talk......... what a goddamn mess you and your president have made.
Iraq has been lost, just as Afghanistan has largely been lost. In Afghanistan, the U.S. was supposed to curtail, if not eliminate, opium production b/c its proceeds were supporting the bad guys. Well, for the last 3-4 years that the U.S. has been in there, opium production has skyrocketed. Its just one indication of how things are going there:
http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fs%2Fnm%2F20061123%2Fhl_nm%2Fcocaine_heroin_dc
LISBON (Reuters) - Illegal drugs may be cheaper than ever before in Europe, with prices of heroin slumping 45 percent and cocaine down 22 percent over five years, according to the first Europe-wide report of its kind on drug prices.
The steep fall in heroin prices in 1999-2004 came as drug production in Afghanistan surged so much after the fall of the Taliban that supply could now be exceeding global demand for heroin, threatening to spur more drug use.
Afghanistan accounts for about 90 percent of world production of opium - the raw material for heroin - and its production has soared since a U.S.-led invasion ousted the government of the Islamist Taliban in 2001. NATO troops are currently battling a Taliban insurgency, which has been fueled by the drugs trade.
"Afghanistan is the key player in global heroin production and developments in the country have the potential to impact on the kind of drug problem we will face in Europe in the future," said Wolfgang Gotz, head of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), in a statement.
Gotz said "we cannot ignore the dangers posed by a growing surplus of heroin on the global illicit market." In 2004 a record 19 tonnes of heroin was seized in Europe, up 10 percent from 2003, the report said.
But according to the five-year price analysis in the Lisbon-based agency's 2006 annual report, the price of virtually all drugs in Europe, from cannabis to ecstasy, cocaine and heroin slumped from 1999 to 2004.
"Average prices were falling in most countries and for most substances, in some cases by almost half," the report said.
It said there is no long-term data on the street price of drugs, but available information indicated prices are lower now than they were a decade ago, with cocaine and ecstasy cheaper today than in the late 1980s.
Although there was a dip in European cocaine seizures in 2004 relative to 2003, the "overall long-term trend is probably still upwards."
Price is just one of many factors that prompt people to take drugs and there is no simple way of saying it is spurring more drug users, the report said.
"Nonetheless we cannot fail to be concerned that across Europe drugs are becoming cheaper in real terms," EMCDDA chairman Marcel Reimen said in a statement.
"If this means that those who have a tendency to consume drugs will use them more, then the ultimate cost of drug-taking in terms of healthcare and damage to our communities is likely to be considerable," he said.
Drug prices still varied considerably in different European countries, with cannabis ranging from 2.3 euros per gram in Portugal to 12 euros per gram in Norway and heroin going for 12 euros a gram in Turkey to 141 euros a gram in Sweden.
this is if you do not believe we (u.s. gvt) wanted the opium trade to go up...
but Afghanistan is an interesting case. It leads to my belief that either the Bush admin are complete idiots (i know...), or it fosters belief in "conspiracy" theories.
what better way to show saddam we mean business than to go into Afghanistan with 150,000 troops, rehaul the country, and prop it up as a democracy.
instead, we go in half assed, forget about it afterwards, and march into iraq.
idiots or conspiracy?
I dont give a fuck what W says. I was speaking of my own opinions on winning and losing. and last I checked he was your president too.
when will people understand the world doesnt revolve around your own opinon. I can easily say that you dont get it. our brand of democracy? how about something called freedom. is that worth fighting for sometimes? sure, people in the middle east may very well just not want it. they prefer to live under the rule of 1 person. that fine, lets just pack up and go home.
if Iraqis want freedom, then yes, theyhave to do their part.
Are you kidding me? So we bought them ice cream and it's up to them to eat it? Is this how u view this? It's more like we burned down their house and wonder why no one is mowing the lawn.
thats a cute analogy but no I dont view it like that.
Iraqis have to take responsibilty for themselves. people like mullah Al Sadar. he called for calm after yesterdays triple car bomb in his own neighborhood.