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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Ulrich who wrote (128842)	4/10/2004 8:38:04 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Bill Ulrich; Re: "The LOL doesn't really offer a better, clearer number, does it now." If you're so disjoint from reality that you really think that the Sunni triangle takes up 2% of Iraq, I don't see why I should disabuse you of the notion. Re: "So, what's an example of a counter figure to adjust?" Didn't you read the sentence preceding the one you quote??? Here, let me repeat it again: "Every nation has minorities. For example, Japan has the Ainu, and Germany had numerous minorities (a lot of whom they gassed)." Algeria, also, had large minorities that were not in favor of the insurgents, and so did Vietnam. If you reduce the population of Iraq, then in order to compare it to the population of Vietnam, you must also similarly reduce the population of Vietnam. You could make the argument that only 5% of the Iraqi population ever fires a weapon at us in "anger", but that don't mean crap. Only 5% of the Vietnamese population ever fired a weapon at us, but that was enough to beat us. For that matter, we've only got 130,000 guys over there, and most of them aren't firing weapons. Most of them have duties far away from the front lines. Maybe we have 25,000 guys firing weapons in Iraq (and most of the casualties are concentrated among them). That's about 0.01% of the American population. Re: "If this is an equivalent situation to Iran, wouldn't the same happen to us?" The Shiite civilians *are* shooting the crap out of us right now. That they didn't earlier in the war was due to two factors. (a) A lot of Iraqis assumed that the US couldn't be beaten, and so didn't try. (b) A lot of Iraqis thought that the US would bring a better life, so they were not inclined to fight us. As time has gone on, and as we have failed to maintain an appearance of invulnerability and kindness, these beliefs have eroded, and the Shiites have started shooting the crap out of us. When Iran invaded, the Shiites already knew that Iran could be beaten, and the house to house fighting had already pissed them off. By contrast, the US avoided house to house fighting in Iraq, preferring to just move into a few government buildings. Iraq was not a truly conquered nation. They were not even disarmed. Re: "It hasn't played out that way, has it." War never plays out exactly the same way. History doesn't repeat, at best it only rhymes. But if you have difficulty figuring out who your friends and who your enemies are, just take a look at the casualty trend for our forces in Iraq. Here, this site keeps accurate figures: lunaville.org If you're thinking that all our problems are caused by the "Sunni triangle", then maybe you should take a look at the latest "sitrep" map from the geniuses running this war: Department of Defense, April 7, 2004 lib.utexas.edu -- Carl P.S. While you're at it, why don't you look up how much supplies 155,000 troops eat through per day. Here, I'll give you a link to help figure it out: Once you've got that number, you need to figure out how many trucks you will need to keep them supplied with ammo. Here's a map that will give you an idea about how many trips per day you can expect from each of your trucks: lib.utexas.edu To compare the problem with the resupply problem in Vietnam, you should remember that the US is a sea power, and that most of South Vietnam is no more than 100 miles from the ocean: \http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/vietnam_pol01.pdf With the Shiites rebelling, we've got a hell of a resupply problem getting set up in Iraq.