Tuesday 24th of December 2024
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lethally stupid .....

lethally stupid .....

As the American military death toll in Iraq reached 4,000, President Bush conferred yesterday with top U.S. officials in Washington and in Baghdad and vowed in a public statement that the outcome of the war "will merit the sacrifice." 

Bush held a two-hour videoconference with Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. Petraeus reiterated his plan to halt U.S. troop withdrawals, begun late last fall, at the end of July. At that point, he has said, he will "evaluate" whether Iraqi forces and a reduced number of U.S. troops can maintain the lower levels of violence. 

"We have every desire to continue with the withdrawal of forces" at some time after July, one military official said. "The issue will be once we remove over 25 percent of combat power plus other associated units . . . we let the dust settle . . . and look to see where we're at," he said, adding that the evaluation period would probably be at least six weeks. Petraeus has offered no guarantee that conditions will allow further withdrawals before Bush leaves office. 

In congressional testimony next month, Petraeus and Crocker are expected to describe continued but slow improvement in military and political conditions, even as recent weeks have seen an increase in suicide bombings, along with Sunday's renewal of rocket attacks on Baghdad's Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government are located. 

Among the wounded in four separate attacks were an American military contractor and an embassy employee from Jordan, both of whom remain in serious condition, a U.S. official in Baghdad said. Military officials said the munitions were Iranian-made, fired from northeastern Baghdad by renegade Shiite militia groups. 

Bush Says War's Outcome 'Will Merit The Sacrifice'

vice psycho .....

Yes Gus, what an extraordinary situation. 

What can we think when Americans had 300 million of their countrymen to choose from & they still managed to find a draft dodging sociopath to lead them to catastrophe - twice. 

But wait, that’s not all ….. those crazy yanks pulled a ‘double-header’ by coming-up with the gun lobby’s favourite poster boy; that other great American military hero …. the one that fearlessly guns down old lawyers for sport ….. 

This from the ‘vice psycho’ ….. 

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.  

Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.  

Cheney Exclusive: On 4,000 Dead In Iraq, He Says They Volunteered

another 25 centuries to go...

Two Views of Life, Enduring, Unyielding
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Books of The Times
WORLDS AT WAR

The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West
By Anthony Pagden

If nothing else, the struggle between East and West has a distinguished pedigree. In “Worlds at War” the British historian Anthony Pagden traces the seemingly endless series of misunderstandings and armed conflicts between “an ever-shifting West and equally amorphous East” to the time of myth, when Paris abducted Helen, provoking the Trojan War.

With the passage of centuries, boundaries shifted, tribes and peoples replaced one another, new religions appeared, empires rose and fell. Yet a remarkably constant theme asserted itself: the irreconcilable differences between two competing views of the world, memorably expressed by Herodotus in his history of the struggles between the Greeks and the Persians, which pivoted not on politics but on “an understanding of what it was to be and to live like a human being.”

The Greeks subscribed, broadly, to “an individualistic view of humanity.” The Persians displayed courage and ferocity on the battlefield but as a society, Mr. Pagden writes, paraphrasing Herodotus, they were “craven, slavish, reverential and parochial, incapable of individual initiative, a horde rather than a people.”
...
So here we are, after 2,500 years, back in the same place. On one side stand the liberal democracies of the West, convinced that their Enlightenment values and political ideas apply to all peoples everywhere. On the other side, a restless and aggrieved Islamic world defines itself as a vast community of faith, its members convinced that their beliefs, too, are universal. It may take another 2,500 years to sort this out.

a heavy heart and an empty head...

Having started the whole catastrophe, the president was carrying the biggest burden..., so tells us His Majesty VP, the puppet master referring to, I suppose, having to send fodder to stupid battleflieds, with a heavy heart and an empty head.

rejected ultimatum

Iraq's Sadr tells followers to keep arms -aide
NAJAF, Iraq, March 29 (Reuters) Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has told his followers not to lay down their arms, rejecting a demand by the Iraqi government which launched a crackdown against them this week, a top aide said today.

''Moqtada al-Sadr asks his followers not to deliver weapons to the government. Weapons should be turned over only to a government which can expel the occupiers,'' aide Hassan Zargani told Reuters by telephone.

A member of the Sadrist political committee in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, Haidar al-Jabari, confirmed the remarks.

Iraqi security forces launched an offensive against Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Sadr in the southern oil port of Basra but have so far failed to dislodge the militants from their strongholds.

4102

4102 dead US soldiers in Iraq to this date.

more dead

Since mid last year, the US has lost only about 15 soldier a month... Thus since the milestone of 4000 dead soldiers, another 252 died. Quite a few more were maimed...

Still not roses despite some of the concrete walls being dismantled in Baghdad... Meanwhile on US roads about 2,500 persons got killed... Safer to be in Iraq, thus? No... 2500 dead on the road represent about 1 per 120,000 while 15 dead troops in Iraq represent about 12 dead for 120,000... Of course the media does not mention them anymore...

May they rest in peace...

milestones in the sands of life...

After 18-year ban, media see return of war dead

Photographers get OK from family to attend solemn ceremony at base

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Delaware - The Pentagon's 18-year ban on media covering the return of fallen U.S. service members ended with a solemn ceremony for the arrival of a flag-draped casket of an airman felled in Afghanistan.

After receiving permission from family members, the military opened Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to the media Sunday night for the return of the body of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Virginia.

The 30-year-old airman was killed April 4 near Helmand province, Afghanistan, when he was hit with an improvised explosive device, the Department of Defense said.

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Honor the dead soldiers but impeach the mad men who sent them to war.

Dead US soldiers in Iraq                   4266

other countries dead soldiers in Iraq   318

Nato soldiers dead in afghanistan      1124

Injured US soldiers in Iraq             45,583

Iraqi deaths                          > 1,000,000

Iraqi displaced                      ± 4,500,000

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see toon at top....