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| 25 new of 166 responses total. |
tod
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response 135 of 166:
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Aug 27 19:40 UTC 2003 |
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cross
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response 136 of 166:
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Aug 27 21:20 UTC 2003 |
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tod
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response 137 of 166:
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Aug 27 21:35 UTC 2003 |
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mary
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response 138 of 166:
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Aug 27 23:34 UTC 2003 |
When I spoke of drones it was of those who sign-up, voluntarily, for the
military knowing they will have to do what they are told, wherever they
are told to do it, and how they might feel about those orders is of no
consequence, really.
Give you an example - six years ago some nice flag waving kind of guy
signs up for the Army. He gets his degree, does some special training,
and wakes up one morning on a transport plane to Iraq. Now, six years
ago little Bush wasn't on anyone's radar. We were still supporting
Saddam, our friend. But now this guy is told to shoot to kill if he sees
someone stealing food from a grocery store still smoking from our bombs.
He thinks that maybe we should have taken a more diplomatic approach,
maybe worked harder and make a case with real and convincing evidence.
Maybe worked within the UN instead of going cowboy. But he sure as heck
knows he doesn't want to be doing this gig. Does he follow his orders,
and shoot? Does he refuse?
His first mistake was signing up in the first place.
Fighting for a cause you believe in is one thing. But
this poor sod become a hired gun. I suspect he's not alone.
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mary
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response 139 of 166:
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Aug 28 00:04 UTC 2003 |
Actually, I think we stopped arming Saddam at the end
of the Iran/Iraq war. So that makes it like 1988 since
we've been friends. Time flies...
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tod
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response 140 of 166:
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Aug 28 00:14 UTC 2003 |
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cross
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response 141 of 166:
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Aug 28 00:15 UTC 2003 |
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cross
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response 142 of 166:
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Aug 28 00:19 UTC 2003 |
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pvn
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response 143 of 166:
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Aug 28 06:28 UTC 2003 |
And another thing, all military commissioned officers are far from
mindless. It is not at all uncommon for them to have post-grad degrees.
Indeed the professional trade schools such as West Point have academic
standards far higher than that of even such as UM (even EMU). Its why
their football teams suck.
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pvn
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response 144 of 166:
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Aug 28 06:30 UTC 2003 |
(think about it for a moment, if they were mindless hulking baby killers
they'd field a heck of a football team now wouldn't they.)
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mary
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response 145 of 166:
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Aug 28 12:22 UTC 2003 |
The "shoot looters as a deterrent" directive was reported in the New York
Times. It caused an uproar and an immediate damage control response from
Rumsfeld who when asked about it said, "We have rules of engagement; have
had; do today. They've not been changed. We will use whatever force is
necessary for self-defense or for other selected purposes," he added.
Rumsfeld, when speaking of looters also commented, "The forces there will
be using muscle to see that the people who are trying to disrupt what's
taking place in that city are stopped and either captured or killed."
U.S. officers said, "The rules of engagement haven't changed. Soldiers can
shoot suspected looters only if they ignore warning shots, resist arrest
or threaten U.S. troops." I find no comfort in the "only", not when
chaos reigns.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-05-14-iraq-security-usat_x.htm
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tod
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response 146 of 166:
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Aug 28 13:24 UTC 2003 |
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mary
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response 147 of 166:
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Aug 28 14:53 UTC 2003 |
I think that at the height of the crackdown on looters
our soldiers were put in the position of killing or
maiming Iraqis who were helping themselves to food
and other commodities. Maybe the looters didn't care
they put their lives on the line. Maybe they didn't
know that warning shot was meant for them. Maybe
they were running away out of fear they'd be taken
away, as many were.
And I also think there were soldiers there who didn't
think what they were being told to do was right and
moral but who were in a hard place so they simply did
what they were told.
The crux of the matter is some people find this obedience
an example of patriotism, in the extreme. I see it more
as a form of moral cowardice.
So we disagree.
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cross
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response 148 of 166:
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Aug 28 15:25 UTC 2003 |
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klg
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response 149 of 166:
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Aug 28 16:15 UTC 2003 |
So, how many actual looters were shot and killed?
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tod
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response 150 of 166:
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Aug 28 16:19 UTC 2003 |
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mary
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response 151 of 166:
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Aug 28 17:03 UTC 2003 |
Well, according to General Tommy Franks, "We don't do body counts".
So an exact number of looters shot and or killed would be hard to
find, I'd guess. But a simple Google search brings up reports on
looters being shot, so I guess it does happen.
Now, the *civilian* death toll in Iraq, since we started this war,
is estimated to be somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 people. Most
sources seem to agree on the range.
I sure am glad we don't have an issue with the Iraqi people and
we're just after Saddam. I shudder to think how many we'd kill if
we weren't trying to help them out.
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klg
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response 152 of 166:
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Aug 28 19:06 UTC 2003 |
During the same time period, how many people would Saddam and his sons
have killed? (Or, perhaps, it doesn't count when they kill their own
people.) (And how many lives have been saved by military doctors
working in Iraq. Naw. I spose those wouldn't count, either.)
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tod
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response 153 of 166:
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Aug 28 19:36 UTC 2003 |
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mary
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response 154 of 166:
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Aug 28 20:26 UTC 2003 |
Let's do the math. Saddam killed somewhere between 100,000
and 250,000 of his people between 1968 and his ouster.
Let's take a middle figure, 175,000, and divide it out.
He killed about 416 people a month, on average.
In 6 months we've killed, say, 6,500 civilians. We're
averaging 1083 a month. WE'VE GOT A WINNER!
A silly question deserves a silly answer. We aren't in
competition with a despot. We're there to help the Iraqi
people. How are we doing?
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polytarp
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response 155 of 166:
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Aug 28 20:29 UTC 2003 |
haha.
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cross
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response 156 of 166:
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Aug 28 21:02 UTC 2003 |
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pvn
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response 157 of 166:
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Aug 29 05:24 UTC 2003 |
How many of those "civilians" were militia and other irregulars like
sadaam fedayeen? If you kill two guys driving around in a "civilian
vehicle" such as a pickup, who were not wearing a military uniform -
wearing civilian clothes- because one of them was firing a .51 heavy
machine gun mounted in the bed at you, did you just kill civilians?
I betcha the NYT thinks so - I betchas those "statistics" are gathered
at morgues and hospitals where everyone who looks like a civilian is a
"civilian casualty".
Hmm, 9/11 -3000 "civilian casualties"/19 in one day. Gulf War-II,
-8000 "civilian casualties"/~100 over the course of how many days?
Their kill ratio is still orders of magnitude higher.
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klg
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response 158 of 166:
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Aug 29 16:28 UTC 2003 |
re: "#154 (mary): Let's do the math."
Don't forget to net out the lives that we're saving.
Then there's the small matter of approximately 1 million people who
died during the Iran/Iraq and Kuwait wars.
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lk
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response 159 of 166:
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Aug 30 04:17 UTC 2003 |
This isn't just a math problem. Assuming that Saddam did kill 175,000
of his own civilians, the average would be better calculated by using
the year in which he came to power rather than 11 years earlier. The
Baath coup was in 1968, but Saddam didn't become president until 1979.
So on *average*, Saddam killed over 600 people per month.
Using Mary's numbers, that's a bit less than the numbers killed during
the war, but these are *averages*. As stability returns, the average
will quickly drop. Of course, I'm not sure that including civilian
casualties caused by Baathist guerrillas should accrue in the US death
toll, but that's another issue.
For nice round numbers, let's just say that the number killed in the
12 months since the war will equal the number that would have been
killed by Saddam. So we're no better or worse of in that category,
except for one thing: Saddam is no longer in power and in the next
year (and those thereafter) some 7500 lives will have been saved.
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