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Death toll for Iraqis falls (pg. 7)
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| George Smiley |
For 's sake Latinlover why can't you just have one ing thread on the topic?
If you're too thick to work it out, there is gonna be a ing story every ing day about violence in Iraq, you don't need to repeat every ****ing one
Mods can we please merge all these pointless threads??? |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by George Smiley
For 's sake Latinlover why can't you just have one ing thread on the topic?
If you're too thick to work it out, there is gonna be a ing story every ing day about violence in Iraq, you don't need to repeat every ****ing one
Mods can we please merge all these pointless threads??? |
Yes.
I usually avoid merging threads because users often say it gets confusing. However, I really don't see why we should have so many different threads about the same sub-topic. |
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| George Smiley |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Yes.
I usually avoid merging threads because users often say it gets confusing. However, I really don't see why we should have so many different threads about the same sub-topic. |
Thank you and apologies for the language, it's just that one of my pet hates is people who just post news articles up with either no comments or where there are multiple topics by the same person! |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by LatinLover
Opus here is a tissue. The only onw crying in this board is you. Im sick and tired of you hijacking my threads to tell us about your frustrations. I mean Opus why dont you go and create a " Cry Out Thread" and take all the things you like to bitch about there. But please donot go to other peoples thread and hijack them :) |
Are you sure you don't need a hug? It just really sounds like you need some attention?
And I really don't mean to hijack your threads. Considering you've steadfastly refused to engage in any debate of any sort IN your thread as well as any other threads your participate in, I guess I just don't know what else to talk about with you, especially when you resort to nothing but outright smears and ad hominem attacks. I discuss your topics at hand, you call me and anyone who disagrees with you an "antiAmerican" using "propaganda" (with no substance to support your silly assertions), and that's it.
It's about as stimulating as a lobotomy.
I do engage with other posters in your threads and other threads, because, well, this is a debate forum and that's what everyone else here does. But for some gosh darn silly reason, a statistics and history instructor such as yourself just can't seem to come around and do the same. It's just so depressing, and again I must say my bleeding librul heart gives you pity.
So really, are you sure you're okay? |
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| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by LatinLover
My calculations indicate that by the end of 08 we will have a stabilized Iraq. |
I will ing hold you to that. |
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| XaNaX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
I will ing hold you to that. |
Yeah, the key here is what his definition of 'stabilized' is. |
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| LatinLover |
Opus,
I have told you multiple times that you have not shown the maturity, integrity to engage in a debate with me. You can provoke me all you want but I will not grant you that honor. Sometimes I express a bit of my opinion but till this day I have not debated anyone in this board or even tried too.
Now dont come and freak me out if I want a hug :rolleyes: where I come from men dont hug other men. From what ive seen this type of behavior starts with hugging and then it moves on to touching. So please Opus dont confuse my sexual orientation, I'm heterosexual. So please dont come and try to impose your opposite behaviors here to the board.
Moving on in a more serious note... All reports from the ground from our generals keep indicating that violence in Iraq has indeed decreased and that he are providing more security to the Iraqi people. The far left can come our and hammer this information with phony reports that more Americans are dying each day :rolleyes: but the facts state the opposite. The Anti-American movement can come up and discredit the efforts of our soldiers, but the movement cannot implement their pessimistic and losing philosophy. |
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| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by XaNaX
Yeah, the key here is what his definition of 'stabilized' is. |
My calculations indicate that by the end of 08 he will still have a definition of "stabilized" that is not congruent with the situation on the ground in that pesky sonofabitch called reality. |
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| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by LatinLover
Moving on in a more serious note... All reports from the ground from our generals keep indicating that violence in Iraq has indeed decreased and that he are providing more security to the Iraqi people. The far left can come our and hammer this information with phony reports that more Americans are dying each day :rolleyes: but the facts state the opposite. The Anti-American movement can come up and discredit the efforts of our soldiers, but the movement cannot implement their pessimistic and losing philosophy. |
Who here is discrediting their efforts? They are fighting tooth and nail for every sliver of progress being made. I fully agree that the violence has gone down. But "levels not seen since 2006" is not "stability". What you have to realize is that it is not a long-term solution. The surge cannot last, and making relationships with certain death squads and persons with outstanding vendettas is not going to lead to the success you speak of. What of completely corrupt Iraqi security officials and police? Consistent honor and revenge killings? Complete uncertainty as to who is really in charge? Are you denying that this is still the case? Pessimistic and losing philosophy? Is admitting defeat that unfathomable to you that you wish to pretend you still are and always have been winning?
I really wish people like you would listen to SOLDIERS and not REPORTS BY GENERALS sitting in the green zone. Their testimonials are vastly different...
Also, do not bother replying to this or any of my posts. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by LatinLover
The Anti-American movement can come up and discredit the efforts of our soldiers, but the movement cannot implement their pessimistic and losing philosophy. |
| quote: | Originally posted by LatinLover
Sometimes I express a bit of my opinion but till this day I have not debated anyone in this board or even tried too. |
It's a shame you haven't debated with anyone yet because I tried to grant you your freedom of expression for as long as I could.
I had not suspended you, up to this point, because I value diversity, and think the users can benefit from that. However, I had already told you not to be judgemental, as I considered this "Anti-American" defence of yours a form of argumentum ad hominem. This is clearly a bannable offence.
During the next 2 weeks please think about the reasons why you keep posting in a debate forum if you're not bothered to debate at all. If you decide to join us (and debate), I will be the first to welcome you. However, if you keep your hubristic attitude, I'm afraid this will not the most suitable place for you. |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
I'd be remiss if I didn't voice my disagreement.
I don't condone the way Latin acts, and certainly think he's being childish, but I don't think he's done anything to warrant a suspension. He does level ad hominems from time to time, but to be fair he receives worse. And though he, by his own admission, scarcely puts any thought into any of his posts, I thought that this thread has represented more "effort" from him than any previous. I just can't shake the feeling that he's being lynched by a mob for being, in our view, wrong. It would definitely be nice to see some more support for his opinions. But the only thing he's hurt by refusing to supply support is, in my opinion, his own credibility. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
(Edited in lieu of Lira's post)
| quote: | Originally posted by LatinLover
Opus,
I have told you multiple times that you have not shown the maturity, integrity to engage in a debate with me. |
How deeply saddened I am for your continual refusal and downright ignorance to even try. Gosh, for a moment there I had a glimmer of hope.
| quote: | | You can provoke me all you want but I will not grant you that honor. |
No, Latin - provoking is someone who cries out "ANTI-AMERICAN" to anyone who disagrees with them. I'm honestly not provoking you at all.
I'm just left with pity for you.
| quote: | | Sometimes I express a bit of my opinion but till this day I have not debated anyone in this board or even tried too. |
What the hell are you even here in a DEBATE forum then?
Pity.
| quote: | | Now dont come and freak me out if I want a hug :rolleyes: where I come from men dont hug other men. |
How 'bout a butt-slap like they do in baseball and football?
Does that count?
| quote: | | From what ive seen this type of behavior starts with hugging and then it moves on to touching. |
From what I've seen only homophobic men have such fears to reach such conclusions.
| quote: | | So please Opus dont confuse my sexual orientation, I'm heterosexual. So please dont come and try to impose your opposite behaviors here to the board. |
Well I'll sure try my darnest. And I'll be sure to tell my wife about your grave fears as well. Lord knows she might so sooo upset.
| quote: | | Moving on in a more serious note... |
Oh, you're being serious now?
| quote: | | All reports from the ground from our generals keep indicating that violence in Iraq has indeed decreased and that he are providing more security to the Iraqi people. |
Agreed. So? Has political reconciliation taken place yet? You recall was the primary reason why we created the SURGE!
But hey, another day, another death of American troops and Iraqi civilians:
| quote: | 25 Dead in Iraq Bombings As Gates Visits
By HAMID AHMED – 1 day ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — A car bomb exploded in a largely Shiite neighborhood Wednesday, killing at least 16 people, just as Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the capital and said a secure and stable Iraq was within reach.
It was the deadliest of four bombs in Iraq on Wednesday that killed a total of 25 people. Earlier, a blast went off in the northern city of Mosul, where Gates had landed on his sixth trip to Iraq.
Gunfire and sirens followed the bombing in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood, and a plume of smoke rose in the sky.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5...s98w8wD8TBFGVO0 |
Oh, and here's yesterday's news:
| quote: | * BAGHDAD - A car bomb near a Shi'ite mosque in central Baghdad's Karrada district killed 15 people and wounded 33, police said.
* BAGHDAD - Four bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad, police said.
* SULAIMANIYA - Bombs destroyed a shop selling alcohol in the town of Sayyid Sadiq near the Iranian border southeast of Sulaimaniya, 330 km (205 miles) northeast of Baghdad, on Tuesday, police said.
KIRKUK - A parked car bomb killed two people in southern Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police and hospital sources said. The bomb targeted the convoy of a police commander, Brigadier-General Kakamen Hameed, who was among 10 people wounded. One of his bodyguards was among the two killed.
MOSUL - A parked car bomb killed one civilian and wounded seven others, including a policeman, in central Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two policemen were wounded by a roadside bomb targeting their patrol in Baghdad's western Yarmouk district, police said.
DHULUIYA - One body was found with gunshot wounds in the town of Dhuluiya, 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
BAQUBA - A parked car bomb killed five people and wounded 13 on a road near a number of government offices in the city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
SALAHUDDIN PROVINCE - Two U.S. soldiers were killed and two others wounded when gunmen opened fire after a roadside bomb exploded in Salahuddin province on Tuesday, the U.S. military said.
WASIT PROVINCE - Iraqi security forces arrested a suspected al Qaeda militant with three others believed to be involved in killing civilians in Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad, a security source said. A Katyusha rocket launcher that had targeted a Georgian military position in the town of Numaniya, 120 km (72 miles) south of Baghdad, was also found, the source said.
ANBAR PROVINCE - One U.S. soldier was killed and two injured by an explosion in Anbar province in western Iraq on Monday, the U.S. military said.
KUT - Gunmen killed a sheikh in a drive by-shooting in western Kut, 170 km (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05138348.htm |
But thank goodness things are just so rosy all over! And just in time for the redeployment of the SURGE! to begin! Aren't cha just happy as a clam, Latin?
Doesn't it just make you wanna join up and help out with this tremendous success?
| quote: | | The far left can come our and hammer this information with phony reports that more Americans are dying each day :rolleyes: but the facts state the opposite. |
Demonstrate precisely what reports that have been given to you so far have been "phony". Don't give us your bull rhetoric with no substance behind it. Demonstrate it or concede.
Oh wait, that's right - you don't engage anyone in debating, nor do you even bother verifying and refuting anything anyone says, do you?
Gosh, you really are a beacon of joy and love for everyone.
| quote: | | The Anti-American movement can come up and discredit the efforts of our soldiers, but the movement cannot implement their pessimistic and losing philosophy. |
You mean that darn pessimistic and philosophy of the American people that we, the "far-left" share?
Well I'll let this article apply to everyone else but you, Latin, since you don't bother reading what others post. So avert your eyes as others can read this from an author that happens to know a thing or two about the Middle East:
| quote: | Why Bush's troop surge won't save Iraq
The influx of U.S. troops brought a relative lull in violence -- but the failing state remains in political chaos and is headed for collapse.
By Juan Cole
Dec. 04, 2007 | Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia gave some needed perspective on the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq. Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, recently returned from a visit to Iraq. He said that it was inaccurate to attribute the recent reduction in violence entirely to Bush's troop escalation. Moreover, Webb said that any security improvements in Iraq would only help if accompanied by political progress. He criticized the administration for "the failure for the last five years to match the quality of our military performance with robust regional diplomacy."
Webb was correct to point out that the only truly good news to come from Iraq would be good news regarding the political landscape. And there, Iraq is still beset with problems. In recent days, parts of northern Iraq have been invaded by Turkey, an ally of the United States. In Baghdad, Sunni members of parliament staged a walkout to defend their leader, whose bodyguards were implicated in fashioning car bombs. Proposed legislation reducing sanctions against Sunni Arabs who once belonged to the Baath Party nearly produced a riot in parliament. Meanwhile, Britain and Australia, among Bush's few remaining allies with combat troops in Iraq, are planning to depart in 2008, raising questions about security in the key southern port city of Basra, the major route for the country's lucrative oil exports. |
But, but, but, the SURGE! is working! Iraq is so gosh darn peaceful now! Things are great, and it's all working out now, right?
RIGHT????!??!?!!
| quote: | | What the recent publicity about the "success" of the troop surge has ignored is this: The Bush administration has downplayed the collapsing political situation in Iraq by directing the public's attention to fluctuating numbers of civilians killed. While there have been some relative gains in security recently, even there the picture remains dubious. The Iraqi ministry of health, long known for cooking the books, says that a few hundred Iraqis were killed in political violence in November. However, independent observers such as Iraq Body Count cite a much higher number -- some 1,100 civilians killed in Iraq in November. They reported that bombings and assassinations accounted for 63 persons on Saturday, the first day of December, alone. |
(puts fingers in ears)
La la la la la la, I love Bush, war good, Dems bad, la la la la la la la la la, Bush is war hero, fight, fight, fight, la la la la la, I can't hear you........
| quote: | | Indeed, the "good news" of a lull in violence is relative at best. In fact, Iraq's overall death rate makes it among the worst civil conflicts in the world. Even if one accepted the official Iraqi government statistics, the average number of Iraqi deaths directly attributable to political violence in the past three full months has been around 700 per month. That pace, if maintained, would work out to about 8,400 deaths a year. (I am citing the kind of war statistics produced by passive information gathering such as in newspapers. Using a more comprehensive public health study such as the one that appeared in the Lancet last year, which takes into account deaths from criminal violence and insecurity generally, would result in much higher numbers.) In all of Northern Ireland's troubles over 30 years, only about 3,000 persons are thought to have been killed. In Kashmir since 1989, some 40,000 to 90,000 persons have been killed in communal and guerrilla violence; if we take the higher number, that's roughly 419 killed per month. Perhaps only Somalia and Sudan witness killings on that scale, and no one would say that "good news" is coming out of either of those places. |
la la la la la la la, I can't hear you......
| quote: | | The current "good news" campaign from the Bush administration regarding the troop surge is only the latest in a long history of whitewashing the war since the 2003 invasion. First, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied that there was massive looting following the fall of Baghdad. Then he denied that there was a rising guerrilla war. Then, after the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani maneuvered an unwilling Bush administration into holding relatively free elections, the victory of Shiite fundamentalists close to Iran was obscured by the "purple thumb" good news campaign. That is, the administration focused on the democratic process and relative success of the voting, diverting attention from the bad news that the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq had taken over. |
Hey, those purple thumbs were AWESOME! I still have scars from cutting off my goosebumps as memoirs of that moment in Bush's SOTU speech!
Totally awesome!
| quote: | Later, it was good news when the Iraqi parliament produced a theocratic constitution with all the weaknesses of the U.S. Articles of Confederation, even though all three Sunni-majority provinces rejected it in the subsequent referendum. What was in the constitution was not important, only that it existed. The Bush administration has heralded any number of such "milestones" reached, but not whether they led to worthwhile results.
Obscured by these "milestones" is that the orgy of violence in Iraq has displaced 2 million persons abroad and another 2 million internally, and left tens of thousands dead. But now the "good news" is that the guerrillas appear not to have been able to keep up the pace of violence characteristic of 2006 and early 2007, even if the pace they maintain today is horrific. |
Ehh, those 2 million displaced just weren't patriotic enough to love their own country and America.
| quote: | Moreover, the relative reduction in violence is artificial and probably cannot endure. Blast walls enclose once posh Baghdad districts like Adhamiya, but although they keep out death squads they also keep out the customers that shopkeepers depend on. When a Baghdad pet market was bombed recently, it was revealed that the US military had banned vehicles in its vicinity for some time, but allowed cars to drive there again just a few days before the bombing. Vehicle bans are effective, but not practical in the medium or long term. When they end, what will prevent the bombs from returning?
Recent political developments have been ominous on multiple fronts. On Saturday, Turkey says it launched an attack inside Iraq on positions of the radical Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations. The Turkish press reported that 100 Turkish special operations troops went into Iraq. In short, there was a small invasion. Turkey charges that PKK guerrillas have conducted cross-border raids, killing dozens of Turkish troops. Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States -- but the Iraqi Kurds are virtually the only firm friends Washington has in Iraq, so the Bush administration is now caught between the anvil and the fire.
In Baghdad, politics are a mess. Critics of Bush's policy complain that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite fundamentalist, has not reached out with sufficient vigor to Sunni Arabs to seek reconciliation. In fact, the situation is far worse than that.
The case of one Sunni Arab leader is emblematic: On Saturday, the members of the Iraqi Accord Front in parliament staged a mass walkout, charging that the U.S. military had put their leader, Adnan Dulaimi, under house arrest. In Tikrit, a Sunni Arab city north of Baghdad known as Saddam Hussein's hometown, hundreds of citizens demonstrated on behalf of Dulaimi. The boycott ended on Sunday when U.S. troops brought Dulaimi to the Al-Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone, so that he could be safe enough to attend parliament.
The bizarre dispute had begun Thursday night when U.S. forces were investigating violence against members of the local "Awakening Council," tribal fighters paid by the Americans to fight radical jihadis. (This is the strategy the U.S. has used with some success in the Anbar province.) U.S. troops traced the cars used in the attack to Dulaimi's compound, then found a rigged-up car bomb nearby, to which one of Dulaimi's guards had the key. The U.S. military detained some 40 of the Sunni leader's bodyguards, as well has his son, Makki.
On Sunday, the Iraqi government charged that chemical tests showed that seven of Dulaimi's bodyguards had been handling explosives. The most charitable interpretation one could put on the evidence released so far is that a terror ring was operating among Dulaimi's bodyguards without his knowledge. If that were so, it would suggest a shocking lack of judgment on his part. Or, as he himself suggested, it is not impossible that the rogue guards were planning to assassinate Dulaimi himself; several prominent Sunni Arab politicians have been attacked by their own security guards.
But of the three possibilities -- that Dulaimi or his son is actively implicated in political violence; that unbeknownst to him, his mansion was being used for bomb making; or that his household had been infiltrated by radical Sunni fundamentalists intent on killing him -- none qualifies remotely as the type of "good news" for which Bush's supporters are looking.
The bloc in parliament that Dulaimi leads had withdrawn this summer from the so-called national unity government of al-Maliki, with its six cabinet ministers resigning. Al-Maliki for a while declined to accept their resignations, then abruptly accused them of absenteeism and dismissed them, depriving them of pensions and perquisites. Then he attempted to appoint other Sunnis to his cabinet, from the tribal Awakening Councils that are on the U.S. payroll, but parliamentarians complained that these individuals had not been elected to office.
The Iraqi Accord Front comprises Sunni Arabs who until recently had been willing to serve in al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government. They have shown no inclination to rejoin him. The tribal Awakening Councils in al-Anbar Province and elsewhere have turned against the Salafi jihadis (who sometimes style themselves "al-Qaida," though they have no direct ties to Osama bin Laden). But most of their members are still deeply distrustful of the al-Maliki government, which they tend to view as Iranian. (Iranians are also Shiites, but unlike Iraqis do not speak Arabic.)
There are other signs that efforts toward political reconciliation are failing miserably. A significant element in the Sunni guerrilla movement around Mosul is the Izzat al-Duri faction of the Baath Party, which also has support in Baghdad neighborhoods such as Adhamiya. In a quest to mollify these guerrillas and their sympathizers and bring them in from the cold, the Bush administration has pressed the al-Maliki government to pass legislation softening the decrees that excluded tens of thousands of former Baath Party members from government employment. But when the cabinet presented such a bill to parliament last week, deputies loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr banged their desks and disrupted the proceedings. Parliament adjourned with shouting and scuffling. Indeed, there is some question about whether a measure so repugnant to the Shiite and Kurdish blocs in parliament has much chance of being passed.
In the deep south at Basra -- in the past cited as a more stable part of the country -- aides of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiites, have complained of a wave of some 200 assassinations. Security is not good in the city, with Shiite militias and tribal forces often battling one another for control of petroleum smuggling. Basra Province contains Iraq's only ports, and it exports most of Iraq's petroleum. The main guarantors of security in Basra and surrounding provinces had been the British, who are now leaving. By March, plans to diminish the number of British troops will leave only 2,500 of them at Basra airport, and some members of the British parliament are now worried that those troops will become increasingly vulnerable to attack as Britain's overall troop level dwindles. The 500 Australian combat troops in southern Iraq will also leave by next summer, according to newly elected Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
The lack of virtually any good political news from around the country is what drives the war boosters to cite death statistics. Obviously, the people of al-Anbar Province are tired of their young men being blown up by Saudi and Moroccan jihadis, and they have mobilized to stop the foreigners. But no one is arguing that al-Anbar's roughly 1 million predominantly Sunni citizens have suddenly become enamored of the Shiite government in Baghdad. Nor has the strategy of using local Awakening Councils to combat the so-called forces of al-Qaida been nearly as successful in Diyala Province, which is mixed, with Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
Obviously, if the U.S. military wants to stop car bombings by banning vehicular traffic to certain markets, it can do so, especially using thousands of extra troops concentrated in specific areas. But although there has been a relative lull in violence in the U.S.-reinforced Baghdad, the U.S. military acknowledges that the Iraqi capital is still a very dangerous place. One question is whether the violence will explode again when U.S. forces inevitably withdraw. But the far more important question is this: How much longer can Iraq limp along as a failing state before it really begins to collapse?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/featur...iraq/index.html |
It's over, Latin. You can look this way now again.....
Ehh, who cares about that silly political process thingy! The SURGE! works!
And we're all safe from terrorism as a result!
And the Iraqis have rejoiced and showered us with love (and bombs)!
And ol' Yeller actually didn't die after all!
It's just so wonderful! Yeah Bush! You've been so incredibly vindicated after all these years! Whooopie!!!!! |
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