"IF" a Bull Frog had Wings he wouldn't bump his ass so much.. We had six hundred thousand die in our Civil War and we didn't have near the population then that Iraq has now... you want to put that in your "IF" numbers .....You ARE still in College... Shouldn't you be studying something ??
to 34%; still dismal but better than his low of 29% in July.
I was wondering what caused the upswing. Then I realized, nothing. It's just that he hasn't demonstrated his idiocy in several weeks, and Americans are overly forgiving and have short memories.
I believe July had the lowest # of American casualties in 8 months.
while this in and of itself is true, I do not believe this to be the correct gauge of the effectiveness of "the surge".
(Doc's snide aside: What a catchy sound bite phrase that is... "The Surge"... sounds like the name of a hair band from the 80's.)
The real measure of success should not be the number of American casualties. The real measure of success will be an ABSENCE of casualties... American or Iraqi.
I heard so many good things about Iraq (actually, I've heard more people saying they've heard so many good things about Iraq.) Also, since it's about 120 degrees in Iraq, there isn't much bad news. (Except Sunnis have pulled out of the government, but that's two days old.)
Meanwhile, Bush hasn't taken his usual July-August vacation, or he has taken it quietly anyway. He rushed to the bridge disaster site. So, if a hurricane does flatten a city again, we know he'll make a base camp now.
Mostly, though, the heat of summer is a slow for news, and the Administration is doing it's best to keep it that way.
You've heard so many good things about Iraq? If a cat is stuck in a tree in Iraq it's headline news as part of the "quagmire".
I would love to visit Bizarro-Liberal-Land one day to figure out what it is you guys are thinking. Perhaps it will be the next Disney World attraction.
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fucking cat - or god forbid, your ass.
Today's news:
"122 Dead in Civil War Violence;
The Collapse of the al-Maliki Cabinet"
Tnank you for demonstrating the conservative attitude that 122 dead Iraqis and the collapse of the government is as important as a cat getting stuck in a tree. Who's trying to skew the news here?
You think your head isn't being spun by the good news propaganda? It's hard to slow down for the good news while bad news cascades at a phenomenal rate.
If 122 Americans were killed in gang violence in a state in a single day, how much front-page space would be committed to a cat being returned to its owner?
Here's an example of spin from agiprop from the Brookings Institutions, Michael O'Hanlon: "I think we have reduced the amount of violence overall, but not to the point where the psychology has fundamentally changed, and Iraqi political leaders are not helping much yet in this process."
Actually, 1,690 Iraqi civilians and military died from political violence in Iraq. (If the country had the population of the US, the deaths would be 18,000 per month.) That's a 25 percent increase from July of last year. US troop deaths were 80, one fewer than in March when the surge began. In June, the latest statistics available, there was an all-time high of 177.8 guerrilla attacks
In July, political assassinations and bombings, in Bagdad, under the noses of our commanders continued.
Access to water and electricity is worse. There are two million Iraqis displaced internally and another million international refugees.
To say that the violence has abated, the government is firmly in control, or that services are being restored you have to simply turn from the overwhelming facts with the excuse that none of the good news is being reported. Is there any significant bad news to you?
You've caught the agiprop virus. As your doctor, I prescribe a one month summer vacation in Iraq.
"IF" a Bull Frog had Wings he wouldn't bump his ass so much.. We had six hundred thousand die in our Civil War and we didn't have near the population then that Iraq has now... you want to put that in your "IF" numbers .....You ARE still in College... Shouldn't you be studying something ??
Put "union confederacy population" and then "Iraq population" into Google.
At the time the civil war, there were 32 million people. Iraq has a population of 19.9 million, let's round that to 20 million. You could find it without a reference book these days. Are you willing to use Google to check the smallest fact?
There are some important differences: 1) Our civil war wasn't induced by a foreign invasion; 2) The vast majority of deaths in our Civil War weren't civilians; 3) Five percent of our population didn't run overseas; 4) Another 10 percent of our population didn't become internal refugees.
Besides, my post was about whether things were getting better in Iraq during the surge, as we've been hearing it a lot recently. By simple measures of guerrilla attacks, military casualties and civilian casualties, nothing has gotten better from the surge. In terms of government stability, things have obviously gotten much worse.
No matter what you believe the political choice is, staying in there, pulling out, changing the deployment, and so on-- those are the facts. Quite the opposite of what conservatives have been saying about the success of the surge.
This is straight out of Wikipedia... "The war produced about 970,000 casualties (3% of the population), including approximately 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease.[6] The war accounted for more casualties than all other U.S. wars combined.[7] The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of lingering controversy even today. The main results of the war were the restoration and strengthening of the Union (mainly by permanently ending the issue of secession), and the end of slavery in the United States. About 4 million black slaves were freed in 1865. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South".
You were right about Iraqs population .. I was thinking they had 40 million....maybe thats counting the Syrians and the Iranians ..I was also wrong on the Civil War deaths.. I was thinking the total deaths were 650 thousand. I forgot all about the three hundred thousand plus civilian deaths in our Civil War.In my defense its been a long time since eighth grade .. You do know I quit school in eighth grade?
My eight grade edumacation tells me Iraq has not seen a real Civil War or anything like it...Use your logic skills{if you have any} and "Imagine" with the weaponry available how many deaths there would be in Iraq if they were having the real Civil War like we had between the Rebels and the Union... You got me on Iraq population but you are so lame on substance..
I don't usually "imagine" as it seems to be your sides word however I was mocking your post and its nice to know you are in college..
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the Black Death killed 20 million people. If we don't kill 21 million Iraqis, we won't beat the record and don't have a hair on our ass. we'll have ta kill some Iranians, an ifn we run outta them, let's nuke Cairo an get somma them too.
Quad, do you know what a non-FUCKING-sequitur is? It's a quad-postal irrelevancy, which generally occurs about quad times your posts.