Some Historical Facts:

yes, only 52. and another 50 not directly killed in combat.and how many british soldiers? how many iraqi's? how many civilians on either side? saying that iraqi is only about as deadly as detroit is a gross understatement, and ignoring whole sets of data.we're at war. people die in war. i think we're all adult enough here that we don't need to sugar-coat that.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 06-24-2005 01:16 PM

---

אָרַח

Which war would that be?

i didn't get that far in. the op has it's facts wrong for the get-go.tal should be ashamed for supporting the viewpoint of someone who is trying trivialize the lives and deaths of those like him, fighting in iraq. those 13 people his source left out have families, and lives they've sacrificed. you can't support our troops, and trivialize their deaths at the same time.

---

אָרַח

"... on terror."we're militarily occupying another country. and while it may not be congressionally-declared war, well, it never was. the old definition of declaring war clearly doesn't fit. we've "won" the war, but they're still fighting it, and we're still there. planting your flag and saying you've won doesn't really make sense if people are still shooting at you.

---

אָרַח

that's great and all. but we're still there, and they're still shooting at us. is anyone debating those facts?

---

אָרַח

Don't forget that the number of US troops in Iraq is rather less than the population of Detroit. An absolute number "only" 50% greater probably indicates a homicide rate several times greater.

that's 2004. which brings up a good question that maybe tal can answer.did you mean 2004 or 2005?

---

אָרַח

We ought not to have been there in the first place. It made no sense.But since we are there, we have to stay and try to finish it. The problem is it may not be finishable.More than a thousand of our soldiers have died and God knows how many Iraqis, on the theory that Hussein with his second rate army was some kind of direct threat to us. He was an irritant, but no threat. We didn't think Afghanistan was enough of an answer so we looked around for somebody else to attack. Why not Iraq? It would be good to get rid of Saddam anyway. Why not do it now and call it part of "the war on terror"? We can fit most any miliary operation under that vague umbrella.52 or 5200--it's all bad.

You seem to have been deeply affected by the September 11th incident. If September 11th happened 3 times in one year, I'm sure you'd be shocked and disgusted at the nasty terrorists. Estimates put 20,000 civillian deaths in Iraq. The number can be quibbled over - but either way, the horrors that happened to New York that morning are nothing compared to the horrors that happened to the citizens of Iraq during the war.Justifiable? Possibly, but it does no justice to the value of human life to gloss over this with distracting statistics.

another good point. let's a take a look.detroit's population is roughly 951,000.
us troops in iraq: 152,000so, 32/951,000 = 0.0034%
and 52/136,000 = 0.0342%that makes iraq roughly 10 times as deadly as detroit, in the month of january 2005. now, this assume tal's figure was accurate for detroit. i didn't look that up. it's also only counting murders/combat related death. accidental/other deaths are not included (why count natural causes? none of our troops are dying of old age, i think). and it's only counting us military death, not iraqi military/police death, or civilian death. which should also be included.so here's where it gets a little shaky. i'm gonna use some estimates from the two-year date to find some monthly averages.176 non-us coalition troops killed, so about 7 or 8 a month.
39,300 iraqi civilians killed, so about 1637 a month.
plus those 52 troops, for about 1700 in the month of january.so out of the total population of iraq, (22 million or so) that .0076% or a little over twice as deadly as detroit in adjusted figures. 32 times in actual numbers.

---

אָרַח

i've heard some good justification (from colin powell) but it basically amounted to "we had some data we believed, and we jumped the gun." yes. it's hard to get a good impression of what's going on from the media. do the iraqi citizens want us there? are we protecting them from insurgents? or do the insurgents represent the people? about 40,000. they may have been developing a nuclear program. i've talked to someone personally who claimed to be an exiled iraqi nuclear physicist, who claimed they were very close to developing a bomb. not sure what to make of his story. he could easily have been a conman.but either way, i don't see iraq as actually being a threat to us. sadam hussien could barely control his own country. the actual "war" against him was kind of short -- he ws vastly underequipped. i agree. but understating that number -- even by one person -- is a tragedy. we should not forget those who die in the line of fire. nor should we ask them to give their lives rashly over trivial matters.

---

אָרַח

Here's how the thinking went in Washington: This is our chance to attack Iraq and finish what we did not finish with Desert Storm. He probably has WMD's. Well, obviously he does since he used them years ago against his own people. Therefore, he is dangerous. He could give some of that poison gas to terrorists, and they could come over here with it and drop it somewhere. He might even be working on some crude atomic dirty bomb. He's probably harboring terrorists.The above, of course, could be said of many another country, but Iraq would be easy to attack due to the flat terrain. We can use our high-speed, ultra-modern tanks to great advantage.So all these are good reasons to attack Iraq. Let's do it.If worse comes to worse, and we don't find any WMD's, we can say that our goal was to free the Iraqi people.
___________________________________________We didn't seem to give a damn one way or the other about the Iraqi people in the past, since we used to help out Saddam against Iran, but that has all changed. Now we have a warm, benevolent feeling toward the Iraqi people, and it is our duty to free them.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-24-2005 01:20 PM

jesus if i hear about wmd's one more time i'm gonna scream.it's crap.

May I advise avoiding threads about the war in Iraq?

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that our reasons for going to Vietnam were a lot less foolish than our reasons for attacking Iraq. Vietnam was complicated and it was hard to know what to do.But this attack of Iraq is transparently foolish. It could be that it will all work out ok in the end, in the sense that Iraq will become a peaceful democratic country.But I have grave doubts. We can't be going around the world trying to rebuild nations like this even if the nation has a vicious government. It's too difficult.What is the future for Iraq?One future might be that the current situation is prolonged, and eventually we give up and leave with the insurgency still operating. What will happen then? Presumably a civil war.