Stop counting!

[cgannon64]

Originally posted by rmsharpe


Which is a statement that is entirely valid. Saddam Hussein started this war, he was the silent aggressor.

I suppose all those Vietnamese villagers killed themselves too, because they started that war?

 

[Norlamand]

Count the bodies (Viet Nam) and you're a morbid warmonger.
Don't count the bodies (Iraq) and you're a deceptive warmonger.

 

[amadeus]

How does Vietnam apply here? It doesn't, because it was a different era, different mission, and different strategic position.

 

[Norlamand]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
How does Vietnam apply here? It doesn't, because it was a different era, different mission, and different strategic position.

Simple comparison of the inconsistent attitude towards "body counts". We were bad because we counted bodies in Viet Nam and we now bad because we don't count bodies in Iraq. The irony being that the US is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. I thought that would be self evident...

 

[cgannon64]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
How does Vietnam apply here? It doesn't, because it was a different era, different mission, and different strategic position.

I was simply pointing out how it is ridiculous for you to blame civilizans WE killed on the enemy.

 

[amadeus]

Originally posted by cgannon64


I was simply pointing out how it is ridiculous for you to blame civilizans WE killed on the enemy.

No Saddam, no problem. No problem, no war. No war, no inflicted deaths.

 

[Archer 007]

Originally posted by rmsharpe


Which is a statement that is entirely valid. Saddam Hussein started this war, he was the silent aggressor.

Yes, Saddam started the war with that lighting anthrax attack on the whole army Did anyone see it? Wait! It didnt happen.

 

[amadeus]

You missed my point.

The whole world would be jumping on Iraq if it had invaded Kuwait and was killing thousands of people.

But many nations seemed to ignore Iraq when it was killing people, the people just were not outside of the borders of Iraq.

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

Count the bodies (Viet Nam) and you're a morbid warmonger.
Don't count the bodies (Iraq) and you're a deceptive warmonger.

Isn't the biggest thing in Vietnam, you know, collecting the bones of fallen pilots and all that? But who counts how many people - civilians - we killed with toxins, sprays, and bombs? In both South and North Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia? Do we even have an estimate?

We know how many of our men died in Iraq. Hell, we know how many of our soldiers SPRAINED ANKLES in Iraq. Within ten thousand, we couldn't state a figure saying how many people we killed. And now it's going to be impossible because the government doesn't want to take the responsibility and find out.

If this CPA government were really a government of Iraqis, for Iraqis, wouldn't they have as great a concern for the Iraqis who died INDIRECTLY or ACCIDENTALLY in combat - NOT Saddam's soldiers - as we apparently do for our "fallen heroes"? Wouldn't they want to preserve this piece of history and honor the accidental victims who had to be sacrificed to make Iraq free?

It seems to me that ordinary Iraqis working in various departments were collecting numbers and someone high up told the CPA to tell them to lay off. Why the bother? Probably because the civilian toll in this "clean" war was probably higher than we'll ever find out.

 

[amadeus]

The Iraqi authorities operate independently from the Department of Defense, so there's a completely logical reason as to why we have kept track of injuries in our citizens versus what the Iraqis are doing.

But I wonder: what good do the bodycounts do? The only potential purpose they could serve is by giving hatemongers rhetoric to use against the U.S., creating rebels against both the Iraqi authorities and the U.S., which would lead to more U.S. and civilian deaths in Iraq.

 

[Archer 007]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
You missed my point.

The whole world would be jumping on Iraq if it had invaded Kuwait and was killing thousands of people.

But many nations seemed to ignore Iraq when it was killing people, the people just were not outside of the borders of Iraq.

The reason people weren't complaining was because it wasnt effecting them. All people are self-centred on some level. Part of human nature. I agree with you that Saddam was a bad man, but killing internal enemies is not a deleclation of war, and never has been.

 

[Tassadar]

Originally posted by rmsharpe


Which is a statement that is entirely valid. Saddam Hussein started this war, he was the silent aggressor.

So now it is not necesary to attack a country to start a war, only beeing a ''silent" agressor with ''illusionary" WMD is enough.

Darn the third world war is already going on in your fertile imagination.

 

[Syterion]

But I wonder: what good do the bodycounts do? The only potential purpose they could serve is by giving hatemongers rhetoric to use against the U.S., creating rebels against both the Iraqi authorities and the U.S., which would lead to more U.S. and civilian deaths in Iraq.

What good does not counting them do? The only potential purpose they could serve is by giving hatemongers rhetoric to use against the U.S., because the U.S. doesn't want to release the numbers because they are a lot more than they should be in a "civilian friendly" war, creating rebels against both the Iraqi authorities and the U.S., which would lead to more U.S. and civilian deaths in Iraq.

Your argument doesn't work, because it works for both sides. U.S. can't win here.

I also find it extremely interesting that you never mentioned the death of the actual insurgents, only the U.S. soldiers and civilians.

 

[samildanach]

If they are not going to identify and count the civilian victims of the war then we may run into problems with foreign subversives coming into Iraq and assuming the identities of the dead.
Hopefully the British are keeping tabs on casualties in their zone-can't imagine we would be this slack though anyway.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Saddam Hussein started this war, he was the silent aggressor.

Exactly. We asked to Saddam to destroy its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and he destroyed only the WMD we knew he had. He didn't destroy the WMD we thought he could have and was certainly hiding somewhere. So when Saddam has said : "I've destroyed everything you asked me to destroy"... that was a pure and simple declaration of war since he wasn't mentionning the weapons we thought he could hide. The fact we didn't already find those WMD proves how well they have been hidden...

This war is actually the first where the one who declares it, Saddam, is destroying his weapons before the war begins !!

 

[Peri]

Originally posted by rmsharpe


Which is a statement that is entirely valid. Saddam Hussein started this war, he was the silent aggressor.

Quite right. Heaven forbid that the US accepts blame for anything. That would be letting the terrorists win. People are just being anti-American when they say that the civilian deaths caused by US soldiers are the fault of those soldiers.

 

[Peri]

Originally posted by rmsharpe


No Saddam, no problem. No problem, no war. No war, no inflicted deaths.

Or no Bush, no invasion, no increase in hostility to US, no civilian deaths, no soldiers' deaths, NO PROBLEM

 

[Peri]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
But I wonder: what good do the bodycounts do? The only potential purpose they could serve is by giving hatemongers rhetoric to use against the U.S., creating rebels against both the Iraqi authorities and the U.S., which would lead to more U.S. and civilian deaths in Iraq.

I agree with you again. Telling the truth about the horrors of this war is just undemocratic and anti American. These people were just illegal civilians picked off on the battlefield. They should not have been there in the first place.

 

[Marla_Singer]

But I wonder: what good do the bodycounts do? The only potential purpose they could serve is by giving hatemongers rhetoric to use against the U.S., creating rebels against both the Iraqi authorities and the U.S., which would lead to more U.S. and civilian deaths in Iraq.

There's a French proverb saying : "You can't beat facts. Facts are mulish". It means that you can do whatever you want to distort reality, to deny it, this one will always exist.

 

[amadeus]

Originally posted by Syterion
What good does not counting them do? The only potential purpose they could serve is by giving hatemongers rhetoric to use against the U.S., because the U.S. doesn't want to release the numbers because they are a lot more than they should be in a "civilian friendly" war, creating rebels against both the Iraqi authorities and the U.S., which would lead to more U.S. and civilian deaths in Iraq.

False. It is the Iraqis that have stopped the counting. Suggesting that it is the U.S. has done this is pure fiction.

Originally posted by Marla_Singer
Exactly. We asked to Saddam to destroy its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and he destroyed only the WMD we knew he had.

Of course, we could trust Saddam to be completely honest in his saying that he had destroyed whatever he had, oddly at the same time, saying he never had any, and ordering his troops to prepare to deploy the weapons that he destroyed but never had in the first place, right?

Originally posted by Peri
Or no Bush, no invasion, no increase in hostility to US, no civilian deaths, no soldiers' deaths, NO PROBLEM

Of course! Saddam isn't the terrorist or tyrant, it's George Bush. This would appear to me to be almost hero-worshipping one of the most deadly tyrants of the late 20th century.