"It's a number"

Re: "Its's a number"

So would Fenian Bastard

 

Re: "Its's a number"

You couldn't resist throwing in a bit of your typical vitriol, could you? You couldn't let it stay civil, could you?

 

Re: "Its's a number"

SC --
23? An editor?
OK, I am officially now a message board geezer.
You and I are doing fine, and I'm glad you found a likeminded fellow who seems to be doing the right thing as he sees it. The problem I have is that most of those people are working at the lower-management levels of this particular enterprise.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Somebody at one of my former ports of call is 23 — AND FEMALE!

 

Re: "Its's a number"

23 is a number, too.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060617/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=ArtNAST95GeTu8S3895DRqys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

But it's OK because Fredo got a bump in the polls all the way up to 37 percent.
If the Democratic party had a pulse, they'd hang "It's just a number" around this WH's neck the way that "I did not have sex with that woman" got hung around the neck of the previous one.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Who was it that said "One death is a tragedy, ten million 2,500 deaths is a statistic?"

 

Re: "Its's a number"

SC (and others),

For the past four years I have been back-and-forth in my opinions on whether we should have gone to Iraq. I've been leaning more on the never-should-have side the last couple years, but I still keep coming back to many of the same arguments that SC has mentioned. At heart I believe it's a good thing to use American power - whether it be military, diplomatic or economic - to make the world a better place. I've felt that way since I was a kid growing up living overseas, my father being a diplomat in poor countries, and seeing the U.S. as the best force for good in the world.

I still feel we can be that, but I don't think anyone can argue that we're not viewed positively anymore. And much of that has to be laid at the feet of the current administration. It's a hypothetical, but I tend to think that if the first George Bush or Bill Clinton had been in office in '03, they also would have gone into Iraq. (Gore would have not.) But I'm convinced Bush I and Clinton would have done it more slowly, would have listened to their generals when they said they needed more troops, and would have gotten plenty more support from the rest of the world. And if the support still wasn't there, I'll guess it would have given Bush I and Clinton more pause than it did this President.

My point being - Iraq could have been a noble cause, that is debatable. But the poor execution of the aftermath of the invasion, well that's just not debatable.

And S.C., and Lyman and others, I hope that you were in favor of going into Kosovo in 1999, as Clinton did. Because if the reason to go into Iraq was to get rid of a genocidal dictator, the same exact factors were involved with Milosevic and Kosovo. In fact we were probably late doing something about him. But when Clinton organized the NATO bombing, many Republicans were against it, and during one of the 2000 debates George W. Bush said he would not have done it.

Every war has its reasons. But I think it very suspect that many Republicans have suddenly discovered that they believe wars over human rights as a noble cause. But I also find it amusing that suddenly many Democrats have had a change of heart about the same issue.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

1337.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Tell me again, Bushies, how we've turned a corner in Iraq.

Tell me again, Bushies, how the Zarkawi death was a "mortal blow" to the insurgency.

Tell me again, Bushies, how important it is we stay the course...

I suggest you read the entire account, because the details at the bottom never make the daily news, but repeat almost daily...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060617/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq


There are about 100 bodies a day brought to the Baghdad morgue. By a conservative estimate, for each body brought to the morgue, there are 2 others left unnoticed elsewhere in Baghdad and Iraq. That's 300 Iraqis killed a day.

They are SO much better off under Bush than Saddam.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Let me give you the other side of the "soldier in Iraq" perspective.

I mentioned before that a buddy of mine who is an officer in the Army (I think I said National Guard in an early post, but that was incorrect) recently returned from a six-month tour. While in Iraq, he led a forward observation unit of 24 men and 10 Iraqis. If you're wondering what a "forward observation" unit does, it basically goes into the towns known for high terrorist/insurgent activity, weeds out the citizens from the killers, sets up bombing raids and serves arrest warrants on known terrorists/insurgents. For all intents and purposes, they're the Army's version of a SWAT team, only they've got air support and the freedom to shoot first and ask later.

Few weeks back, the friend of mine stopped by for a little party we were having. My boy gets a little alcohol in him and he starts talking. We're sitting around a table and he's just throwing out stories. Here's one of those and his comments on the whole situation. Do with them what you please.  

Their camp is set up alongside a river (I believe he said the Tigris, but don't hold me to that), in a little shithole town. Town's got like 12 buildings, including houses and one big-ass Mosque. His army unit has taken over an empty store as its base and is sitting approximately 30 yards from the Mosque. They come back from patrol one day and are winding down for the night when they suddenly start taking machine gun fire -- lots of it. After a few minutes, they figure out the shit's coming from the MOSQUE. Eight gunmen have knocked out the windows and are peppering the store with gunfire. Now, it's a damn mosque, so my buddy says he doesn't want to go running in there and tear the place apart. So he radios in, informs the higher-ups what's happening and he waits. Ends up waiting for damn near an hour, as these eight gunmen have 24 Americans pinned down, so someone at the PENTAGON can make a call. Finally, the word comes back to him: Do what you feel is best. So, he calls in air support and blows the damn thing up. A week later, a CNN reporter is waiting on the unit when it arrives in another town to ask about the "unnecessary destruction" of a mosque.

Now, you might think at this point that you know where he's going with this story, but you don't. He's not blaming the media for trying to make something out of what happened there. He says, "This is the kind of thing that happens when you're involved in something like this. When what you're doing isn't right, and people are dying and towns are being wiped out and kids are being killed, and it's for a purpose less than honorable, this happens. No matter what you do, it's wrong. No matter who you shoot, what you blow up, who dies, it doesn't solve anything. Sure, blowing up the mosque managed to get us the hell out of there, but it created 20 other problems. That's what we're doing in Iraq. For every problem we solve, we're creating 20 more. For every terrorist we kill, we're creating 20 more. We're not winning. We're maintaining. We'll never win that war because we don't know what we're fighting for. We don't know who we're fighting for. We're just there trying not to die."

I think that pretty much sums things up.

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Ben Hecht chimed in with his typical vitriol and lack of civility. How could he do that?

Re-read his post and re-read mine. Whose language is more coarse, whose is filled with name-calling, and whose isn't? Objectively, there's only one way you could answer that question. You didn't.

I guess vitriol or civility is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

Nice to see another brain stem making his mark in the echo chamber.

(And yes, Ralph, I did support going to Kosovo in 1999.)

 

Re: "Its's a number"

Well, yes, they are. Maybe you need to be taken from your home in the middle of the night and shot between the eyes, or maybe gassed to death by your own leader, before you can understand that.

Brain Stem No. 2 has reported for duty, I see.