Jimmy Higgins

We have a history of that sort of crap. Why break with tradition? Pump them up and let them get slaughtered, a proud American tradition.
Tens of thousands? I wasn't aware the number was this high.

I meant a plan that had the best interests of the Iraqis. Of course, why would the US do that when they could just get all the money. I hate our foreign policy.

Jimmy Higgins

Wasn't saying it was as low as possible, but geesh. We dropped millions of tons of explosives on Iraq. The numbers were probably as low as you can expect with this technology. The problem is we have a military that isn't willing to die in order to save civilian lives.
Was that proven to be an American strike or was it really Hussein's batteries that messed up. I can't keep up with the propaganda any more.

I meant it more rhetorically.

I'd ease up on the use "massacre". Its an extreme word and usually is used in form of hyperbole. We didn't firebomb Baghdad. We could have ruthlessly bombed Iraq into dust to evict Hussein. What the US did for why it did it, was wrong. The US was neglectful, it was arrogent, it was ignorant, but to say it was a massacre is stepping out of bounds. It is simple enough to say it was wrong.

Ion

I am with this:
I remember reading that in the first day of the war, a man from Jordan was the first victim.

Followed by over 7,000 others, and many more mutilated, until now.

The man from Jordan, was living up to that time, and I am sure was making plans for the next week, thinking about what he needed to correct in his life from last week, etc..

What was the reason for the man from Jordan to die?

Other than walking in the street?

Well, a foreign culture, led by Bush the liar, attacked Iraq and caught him in the 'big picture' of Bush's lies.

I am against the death of that man from Jordan, and 7,000 more afterwards, while many were and are mutilated, because a liar from a foreign culture starts lying.

RLV

International press. Mind you, it appeared quite clearly in black on white in several Catalan and Spanish newspapers. None of them belonged to any leftist organization, before you say it.

It didn't appear in the US media, are you saying? Funny, isn't it?

Btw, I have no problem with bombing bridges. It's a normal move in a war to hinder the movility of the enemy. What I have a problem is with the US military claiming to care about civlians and then bombing undefended bridges without bothering to check if there are civilians on them.

No relation to the incident I remember. It was a bridge on a road leading to the Syrian frontier. There were no AA defences. An US plane dropped bombs on it, at the same time that a bus full of Syrian workers going back home to escape the war was crossing it.

No, it hasn't. It has only been cautious in not suffering losses, not in avoiding losses to Iraqi civilians.

I've never said 'intentionally'. I've said 'not caring'. The first priority of the US military was achieving its objectives. The second priority was the safety of its personnel. And far, far down the scale of priorities was the safety of the Iraqi civlians.

Do you want more examples? The many incidents in which unarmed civilians were killed by US soldiers in road checkpoints. As some US soldiers had suffered an attack from a car, they started shooting at the slightest suspicion of any danger. As a result, many Iraqi civilians were killed or injured, including women and children.


RLV

RLV

That site with the Iraqi body count (can anybody post the link, please? I don't have it here) put the number, last time I checked, at 6.000-7.000 civilians, and they admit that there may be more victims of which they have no news.
You'll have to add the Iraqi soldiers, of which there is no official number, but they were said to be more than ten thousand.
And then there are all the people injured and mutilated, some of which will certainly die.

You are not the only one. Just think how ordinary muslim people must feel about this.

If there is another big terrorist attack in the US (let's hope not), I bet USan people will again ask themselves in bewilderment 'why do they hate us?'

Yes, probably this is the best description of the picture. Civilians were not targeted intentionally, I guess. But then, the safety of the US military was much more important than the lives of Iraqi civilans, by several orders of magnitude.
Take the incident of the bridge and the Syrian bus. To avoid such a low risk as the pilot of that plane would have faced if he had flied lower to verify that there was no traffic on the bridge, several innocent civilians died.

I don't think there will ever be any independent investigation, but the Spanish reporters that visited the site dismissed the idea of any other cause than two cruise missiles. All of them, including the reporters working for newspapers close to the Spanish government, who was a staunch supporter of the invasion.

Well, we could argue about the precise meaning of the word, but to say simply that 'something wrong was done' would not reflect the fact that tens of thousans of people have been killed, injured or mutilated. This sounds quite like a massacre to me, to be frank.

However, I think both of us have more or less the same view of what's happening in Iraq, so there is no reason to argue about one word.


RLV

beyelzu

I think bush was just trying to make a point that attacks on the us military will not dissuade us. I dont view his words to be particularly offensive or reckless.


as to your second paragraph, red dave, do you really believe that that view is accurate?

beyelzu

I respect everyone man and woman who serves in our military. However, I respectfully disagree with you as to Bush making irresponsible comments. I think he was just trying to make a point that we would not be dissuaded by these attacks on our servicemen.

Jacey

B-

As soon as I read his cowboy comment in a nonspun way (AP report or something) I said "what the fuck?"

It's easy for him to not be dissuaded when he's far in the rear and not in the heat and dirt getting shot at. Nothing pisses off a grunt more than that shit from a general, and certainly the "when are you coming home?" letters the Marines and other servicemembers are getting.

BTW- in the interest of full disclosure I'm a Marine in case anyone reading this didn't know.

Cicero

That's right. Bush is a grate hero who is not a deserter which nobody can prove, so stop saying that. He is a master of strategery, and these durned libruls have no solutions of their own, and if they did they would be commie socialist ones, so there.

Bush is a grate president because he liberated Iraq from the Iraqis, and now he is going to liberate Liberia for the Librarians, and that is what I call accountantability and integerity.

These libruls should just move to France which is now called Freedom, and leave America to the real Americuns.

Apologies to Bob Boudelang, for stealing his style.

Loren Pechtel

Flying low enough to visually verify it means not only flying into the AAA/infantry SAM envelope but it means fiddling around down there--you're going to have to come back to drop your bomb.

For any one mission with no known defenses, yes, the risk is small. However, there were *MANY* missions--the risk adds up.