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I'm not belittling the deaths going on in Iraq.
Yes, you absolutely are. You're minimizing them. Declaring them statistically insignifigant.
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I am merely suggesting that sitting around counting bodies is not the most productive use of one's time. The stats suggest that for an average person in the age range between 18 and 35, you are at worse about 3 times more likely to die if you have been in Iraq for the past year then you would if you were living normally in the US. How dangerous is living in the US folks? Multiply your chance of dying on any given day by 3. Alarming? Probably not.
You are 200 times more likely to loose a leg in Iraq.
Multiply your chances of losing a leg on any given day by 200, folks. Alarming? Nah, it's just a leg. You can learn to ski one leggeded without too much trouble. And we'll give you a medal and a fifty percent pension.
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I think you'd need to make a more convincing argument that we're not getting anything in return for those deaths.
I think you need to go to a single family member of one of the dead troops and explain that to them. More importantly, I think President Bush needs to.
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You can argue about uprisings in this area or that, or incidents like the one you linked to earlier. However, there is a government in Iraq that is being put in place. It is one that most Iraqi's believe will work.
Based on what? Your ***? What do you base the fact that most Iraqi's believe the new "democracy" will do anything but leave them a puppet state of the US?
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You can always find the extremist point of view in any situation if you look for it. That's all I'm saying.
The view you hold IS the extremist view. The body count is no big deal, it's all worth it? The Iraqi's want us to put this new government in place, they think it will work?
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It's really easy to simply point to 610 dead, and some articles written decrying the operation in Iraq, and quotes from Iraqis saying they don't like the US there, but that's a pretty skewed view of the whole picture.
It's really easy to point to the 600 dead and ignore the 10,000 disabled. TEN THOUSAND who were injured badly enough to be unable to return to active duty. What's happened in the US military is that they've gotten very good at keeping people alive. Which is a great thing. A fantastic thing. It has the unfortunate side effect, however, of distorting the danger troops are faced with.
While loosing a hand is absolutely better than being dead, it still implies a much greater level of risk than walking down the street in Des Moines does.
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There are just as many articles saying that things are progressing (ok. Maybe not "just as many", but then it's always better news to make it look like things are going badly).
The US media allowed themselves to be completely under the control and censorship of the US military in exchange for nifty satalite phone "embed" reports. And even they realize it's a dismal failure.
Not because it sells better. Because it's true.
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There are also quotes from Iraqis who are looking forward to the process with hope. We can't just look at one point of view and ignore the rest.
Unless it furthers your agenda. In which case there doesn't even need to be evidence to support your point of view. I know.
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And legally we have a responsibility to deal with the situation now. We're the "occupying force". By international law, we *can't* just abandon Iraq now. So keeping a body count is just counterproductive. Especially when that count is still relatively low.
It's not low. It's 610 more dead Americans than there would have been if we hadn't invaded. That's not low. That's signifigant. More signifigant is the 10,000 wounded. Disabled, actually, the wounded number is even higher. LEst we forget, the tens of thousands of civilian Iraqi casualties count as well.
I realize as American's we care so much less about dead Iraqis, but deaths are deaths. That doesn't include the estimated 100,000 dead Iraqi troops. That number's probably actually too low.
Those numbers are signifigant. They do mean a great deal.
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What? Low?! Want me to pull some links to articles and debates going on before the Iraqi war started? I don't think I could find the thread, but I'm positive that you Smash predicted somewhere in the 2-3k range of dead US personnel in the first year.
I predicted lower than the actuall count, actually. It's in the prediction thread. I did have the highest total though.
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Look. I'm sorry that reality hasn't met your expectations, but I think relative to that we're doing pretty well. I find it amusing that even though the death toll has been lower then predicted folks are making a point of counting each body and making that much bigger of a deal about it. I guess when you've got less dead people, you have to make sure we hear about each one that much more...
Yeah, it's only dead Americans. No big deal. I don't know why anyone even bothers to report it.
So give me a number then. What's too many dead? Is it 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000?
I say we're long past what's too many dead, you say we're not. Where would you draw the line? Grow some balls and take a position. Pick a number.
How about the suicide rate in Iraq? 30 of the 610 deaths are *offcially* suicides. Must be because everything's so great over there. How's the suicide rate compare with the rest of the population?
Edited, Tue Apr 6 03:45:54 2004 by Smasharoo