Hi Neocon; Re: "First, it should be mentioned that there was no trend, the numbers receded after April."
The spikes continue to increase in size. Unfortunately, that's a trend.
Re: "Second, what I said then, anticipating a fight, applies now that the operation has been launched."
I hope that this is the end of it, but my guess is that 3 months from now, we'll either be seeing continuing high US casualties in Falloujah, or, if we choose to withdraw, be seeing Falloujah return to its pre attack condition.
Re: "Third, there has been a fight, and it is not finished, so the war is on."
The war has been "on" and will remain "on" until we pull out.
Re: "Fourth, however much the public has misgivings about Iraq, Bush won, and his policy has not been repudiated."
I voted for Bush, and I repudiate his policy there.
Re: "Fifth, we barely had any troops in country during those low points, because we were just beginning to phase them in, or in the process of phasing them out, in Vietnam in '64 and '72."
US troop strength at the end of 1965 in Vietnam was 184,300. That's comparable to our strength in Iraq now. That year, the US only had about 1300 killed. While the early stages of Vietnam were rougher, this is entirely consistent with the undeniable fact that their civil war was already hot when we showed up to the party. They'd fought the French and Japanese for decades. The Iraqi people, by contrast, are still in the very early stages of guerilla war. It takes some time for guerillas to learn how to fight effectively. What you don't want to do is to hang around until they get good at it.
Re: "Sixth, Afghanistan demonstrated that a credible election can take place without a perfect security situation."
What's your point here? Do you really think that an election in Iraq will make even a slight difference to the war???
Let me remind you: We deposed Saddam, but the resistance grew. We killed his sons, but the resistance grew. We captured pretty much all the "cards", but the resistance grew. We increased the amount of electricity generation, but the resistance grew. We improved the economy, but the resistance grew. We built schools, but the resistance grew. We captured Saddam, but the resistance grew. We threatened Sadr, but the resistance grew.
How much of this has to go on before you catch on to the trend? Oh, that's right, as long as every new month is not a new high, you're convinced the war isn't heating up, LOL. Funny that you could voice sentiments like that on a stock trading website.
Re: "Seventh, a lot of our Iraqi allies performed well on the field of battle, though there were some disappointments."
The story of disappointments does remind one of Vietnam. Oh, did you notice that it's widely reported that the insurgents were using munitions we supplied to the Iraqi army?
Re: "Thus, it looks like our basic policy is on track."
This is basically more of the same.
Like I said before, how many dead US soldiers before you admit that "our basic policy is not on track." Or are you theoretically willing, if it came to it, to send every man and woman in this country to die in Iraq?
Just tell me how many American soldiers you think Iraq is "worth". If we lost 2,000 pacifying it, would you consider that a good strategy? How about 20,000? Or 200,000? Maybe 2,000,000? Come on, tell me how many of our guys the crappy little country of Iraq is worth to you.
-- Carl |
