Because our Dear Leader and Barbarian-Quelling Generalissimo has decreed that we shall carry on with Operation Vicarious Manhood until he leaves office, armed with blanket pardons to shield himself and his minions from any whiff of justice.
And of course his decrees are met with the usual fawning of a sycophantic shadow legislature.
ah.. right.. sorry. i forgot for a moment
we can't leave until we have won..winnign means that no one is left shootign at us......see we can't leave till then, but we are winning so we need to stay.
"Why are we still there?"
Good question, Hubris. :o)
Mostly, because if we leave, what used to be Iraq will NOT be what has generally been meant when the word "victory" is used.
If it stays together (highly unlikely) it will be dominatied by the Shiite majority which will be exchanging ass-rubs with Teheran.
The Kurds give fuckall about "greater Iraq". They want, and will eventually get, most of those northern fields. They will GIVE; us good basing opportunities, which will preclude full-on independence and will also prevent the Turks from "taking a notion".
The Shiites will have complete control of 85% of the oil in the country with the third largest reserves on the planet.
The power of the Saudis, and every other country in the mid-east, including Isreal, will be substantially reduced, as that of Iran, is substantially increased.
Oil prices may stabilize, but we will never again see the price for a gallon of gas below three dollars...with the attendant price-rise in all things dependent on the price for a barrel of oil; food, transportation, heating oil, etc.
No sweetheart deals for big oil.
The Green Zone will become the world's largest and most expensive mortar-training range.
The 2.4 million Iraqis who've decided to exit bush's mayhem opera will probably double, as factional payback rears it's ugly head.
(A lot of those will want to come to the U.S...at which point we will find out if Lou Dobbs will masturbate his ratings-erection-hard-on as diligently with dark-skinned people from george bush's monumental fuckup in Iraq, as diligently as he's gone after Mexicans and other latinos.)
All of this will happen no matter who wins the election. Which leaves us with the question of who gets blamed for "losing" Iraq? Since it's likely that Barack Obama and the dems will win, if he DOES end the occupation by the end of 2010, the fingerpointing will be something to behold.
Speaking of hards-on; Mt.-Suribachi- in-reverse-in-the-desert will mean that a lot of the american men who think with their scrotal sac instead of their brains, will have to buy REAL Viagra, instead of using the highly-priced "prescription" that george bush so thoughtfully ATTEMPTED to provide for them.
BTW, all of these things will happen if we occupy the country for 10 more months or 10 more years, so why not leave anyway?
As long as we stay, we're winning. If we leave, we're not winning any more.
You don't want to lose, do you?
I enjoyed the audio on the clip, Hub, but the video has been darkened to the point that it's hard to see it. And there's a message at the top that the video has been removed.
Whassup?
It occurs to me that YouTube is VERY subversive, with all of clips of the bushturds with their rosy assessments of how well things are going in Iraq juxtaposed with things like this.
Is Microsoft going to buy it, and then do spay and neuter?
Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset.
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
(because they didn't know better, they called it "civilization", when it was part of their slavery. to ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.)
tacitus
we make our own reality
karl rove
to punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.
robespierre
citizen marat? paging citizen jean-paul marat. . .
Soldiering is a dangerous business -- even in peacetime -- and we mourn the death of any member of our armed forces no matter what its cause. A new report for members of Congress from the Congressional Research Service provides some astounding statistics:
During the five-year period from March 19, 2003 to April 5, 2008, 4,005 members of our armed forces died in Operation Iraqi Freedom from all causes including illness and accident. This averages 801 deaths per year -- and every one a tragedy.
But the CRS also reports that in 2003, the total number of deaths among members of the active-duty US armed forces totaled 1,410 -- which means that Iraq accounted for a bit more than 50 percent of the total. The corresponding numbers for 2004 are 1,873, for 2005 up slightly to 1,941 and for 2006 down slightly to 1,875.
What's astonishing is that the corresponding number of active-duty deaths for 1982 -- President Reagan's first full year in office -- is 2,319. In 1989 - when President Reagan left office in January to be succeeded by President George H.W. Bush - total military deaths were 1,693.
In short, what the CRS study shows is that each year between 1,000 and 2,000 members of our active-duty armed forces die regardless of whether we're at war or peace.
In case you were wondering, back in 1980 -- President Jimmy Carter's last full year in office -- the total number of active-duty military deaths was 2,392 - higher than the number in any year of George W. Bush's presidency.
Read the CRS report; it's an eye-opener.
Cut and paste troll.
Google on the following string, including double quotes:
"But the CRS also reports that in 2003"
The source turns out to be a piece by Herbert E. Meyer in "The American Thinker". Url is http://www.americanthinker.com/
b...lty_number.html. If haloscan fails to resolve this, here's the same reference as an embedded link: A Hard Look at Casualty Numbers.
It cites this PDF: American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics, hosted at the FAS web site.
If you read down the PDF, those 1982 numbers, for instance, start to come clear. The reported rate of accidental death in 1982 is nearly three times the 2006 total: 1,495 fatalities versus 530.
In 1982, accident accounted for 65% of active duty military deaths.
In 2006, accident accounted for 28% of them.
But hostile action fatalities jumped from zero to 761.
And this does not count injuries resulting in permanent physical or psychiatric disabilities, because that is beyond the scope of the report.
"The American Thinker", as you might expect, is yet another part of the Mighty Wurlitzer. Check out the rest of the content there and I think you'll agree.
Oh, I neglected to mention this, but you've probably touched the base already.
The PDF at the FAS site also implicitly assumes that the military is accurately reporting both total fatality numbers and their breakdown by cause of death.
Good luck with that one, Jimmy Kotter. Or whoever you are.
NotSoWelcomeBackCotter:
And how many people who had jackshit to do with 9-11 were killed as a result of Carter's decision-making?
and what policy of Carter's was costing us $3 billion a week, 5 and a half years after he made it?
All of which has NO END IN SIGHT.
The clip is still up on YouTube. See if we can access it from a new link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T...h?v=TTMp-
YNaDdg
Yep.
BTW, good work, StormCrow! :o)
The Iraqi Parliament just pushed provincial elections back into the distant future. This lack of resolution will probably cause violence to spike in the near future, even if Sadr decides to keep the ceasefire going through the American election.
There's not much to really say about a war that has destroyed so much and whose premise was based on a web of lies. Ron Suskind's new book looks to be the smoking gun, but the corporate media is covering the DC political establishment's ass again, so I am predicting very little will come of it. Since the ruling class has to bear very little negative consequence of this imperial adventure, I predict that an Iranian strike is in the offing for sometime around Christmas. A big "Fuck You Everyone" would be the ultimate gift from Bush to Americans that he has been killing and screwing since he was a cheerleader at Andover.
Cut them some slack and give them to the end of the month to come up with a 'new and improved' reason. Never thought that creative writing skills could command such high govt salaries.
Oh give me a break. First, you are going to denigrate the deaths of troops in combat. Second, its funny how paunchy momma's boys such as your self can talk about this death and that death when the closest you will ever get to death is choking on a cheeto.
fuck you, you massive turd.
how dare you try to lessen the sacrifice that our soldiers have made.
you worthless prick.
>Soldiering is a dangerous business -- even in peacetime --
HOW THE FUCK WOULD YOU KNOW?
all those walls.
I had a viseral reaction to all those 9-10-20 ft. walls. no vista, no way out. like rats in a maze.
Wow, we must be loved there so much by now. Greeted like liberators--my ass!
sigh
Those are the numbers. They don't lie. Deal with it.
Hubris Sonic,
Your anger is righteous and well-justified, but dull-witted gatecrashers like Kotter are just doing their jobs: spraying right wing misinformation all over the internet, day after day, so it can be picked up on mass emails and forwarded over and over from one office to another by credulous dimwits who add 'this is what the LIEberal media won't tell you' and send it on. The lies keep moving despite repeated debunking and debate gets poisoned accordingly.
Kotter's main business here is to spout BS and get smacked down so he can go running back to his fellow wingnuts and boast of how he deigned to cast pearls of truth before swine and the liberal barbarians didn't appreciate it.
Sour Kraut, you are so right!
hear hear
Deal with the fact that you denigrate the sacrifice those soldiers make. besides the fact that yes, soldiers die in the U.S. in accidents all the time. In fact they are doing it now, in North Carolina, Texas, etc. These are in addition to the ones losing their lives fighting for our country, while shitbags like yourself "blog". [clap,clap,clap]
"Why are we still there?"
$$$$$
Again, those are the numbers. I don't recall augmenting or saying otherwise. Deal with it.
But...but...but...Jeebus! And Cheetos! And painted schools!
Whatever... that's your argument? people die, who cares? nice one. what a stupid motherfucker... no wonder the GOP is about to have its ass handed to it in Nov.
Can you say permanent minority? sure you can.
Why are we still there?
Because not only does it make money for the right sort of people, it's a dandy place to train a private army, and a great laboratory to test the latest techniques and machinery for controlling restive urban populations. (Which is liable to come in real handy at home sometime in the near future, as the Banana-ization of the Republic proceeds apace.)
On the domestic front, it bought the Republicans two Congressional cycles and another four years of the Presidency to put the pedal to the metal in their continuing plan to subvert the Constitution and neuter any function of government that interferes with the upward transfer of wealth.
Plus it'll furnish yet more grist for the Right's dolchstosslegend of Liberal perfidy, when we finally do leave.
See? If you just approach it as if you're a complete sociopath, it makes all sorts of sense.
We are still there because the current 'Democrat' Party leader$hip can't wait to belly up to the trough and start swillin' it down.
It's all about the Benjamins and Miss Nancy, 'The Rabbit' Emmanuel, Hoyer, Schumer and the rest can count. That's one thing all politicians are good at counting....
The money in this case.
.
Prof Fate and A Citizen seem to understand. The more things change, the more things stay the same. It's irrelevant who wins in November. All this political rah! rah! rah! bullshit is just an exercise in distraction.
Jimmy Kotter = air theif
thief (sigh)
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