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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (129038)	4/12/2004 7:45:17 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "His view, which I am beginning to concur with, is that this digression from suicide bombings and outright uprising, to hostage taking, is a sign that the opposition is weakening and trying to play for "high drama" in order to convince CPA partners from giving support." There's been little or no digression from the "outright uprising". The most recent date we've got more or less complete data on is April 11th, and 7 US soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice (i.e. were "martyred") that day: lunaville.org The military is letting out the casualty figures late so that it perpetually looks like the battles have ended, but they go on. The news that there is a "cease fire" is bogus. What's happened is that we've taken so many casualties that some of our units are no longer effective. Modern medicine and body armor are saving lives, but even though they survive, a lot of these guys are too badly wounded to fight on. For example: ... Echo Company, a 165-man unit of the battalion, now is down by 50 dead or wounded, mostly since the devastating series of ambushes on Tuesday. ... duluthsuperior.com I hope you never served in a company that took 30% casualties in one week. In fact, that's a far far worse casualty ratio than the guys who stormed ashore at D-Day took. One of the facts about our modern military that a lot of people don't realize is that it has a huge "tooth to tail" ratio. To a certain extent, a guerilla war will reduce that ratio but only by increasing the number of targets (take a look at what is happening to our logistics units, or the "contractors" hired to replace them). But that huge tooth to tail ratio means that a relatively small number of casualties can put a modern military machine hors de combat a hell of a lot faster than one would expect just from looking at the naked numbers. -- Carl

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (129038)	4/13/2004 5:28:55 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

< Why try and play to the media with these threats of burning hostages alive?> To win friends and influence people? I don't think everyone on Earth will think those Islamic Jihadis are really good guys if they do some good, olde-fashioned burnings at the stake. But the Europeans did that and ended up ruling the world. Maybe, like children learning to do things, they have to go through the stages, like crawling, eating sand, pooping their pants before inventing the theory or relativity or something. They are just up to the burning-alive stage. I notice that some of the Iraqis don't think it's good publicity, so some are at more advanced stages of development. Mq