The Iraqi Death Toll

There appears to be quite a debate going on over the number of Iraqi deaths this year.

At the risk of being crass ... oh, hell - there's no risk, it absolutely is crass, I'm reminded of a joke that was going around right before the start of the war. There were various forms.

Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney walk into a DC bar prior to the invasion and Rumsfeld says to Cheney, "I don't know, Mr. Vice President ... I'm a little worried about how the American people are going to respond if there is a high number of Iraqi deaths from the war."

"Nonsense", says Cheney, "watch this." So Cheney says, being loud enough for others around them to hear, "So, Don, tell me about that missile that went off course. I heard it killed about a dozen Iraqis and one really gorgeous blond with huge tits."

Immediately a fellow on the next stool leaned in and said, "Mr. Vice President, pardon me for asking, but who was the blond?"

"Ya' see", said Cheney to Rumsfeld, "I told you Americans won't care that much about Iraqi deaths."

Jules Crittenden has links regarding the death toll debate.

Comments

[-asx-]

What the right-wing fails to grasp is that the people we allegedy are "helping," the Iraqis, have access to the internet, too. They see posts like this one. They hear Rush Limbaugh's call to "blow the whole place up" (OWTTE).

Now, maybe Dan Riehl thinks all they hear is George Bush's lofty statements about freedom and democracy. But the truth is that they know how the George Bush base really feels about them, and that's one of the big reasons they don't trust us.

Early in the war I was told my an Army friend of mine that Rush Limbaugh's program was being played in a Coalition HQ building inside the Green Zone. Dozens of Iraqi's and Americans were working together in the room.

At one point, Limbaugh made a series of blatantly racist jokes about the Iraqi people, concluding with the old canard about Arabs eat with one hand and wipe their ass with the other. Rush invoked this canard to dispel any concerns about the Iraqis who had been covered with fecal matter and forced to eat out of toilets at Abu Ghraib.

The outrage inside the Coalition HQ was immediate and powerful. Iraqis know that Rush is an important Bush partisan, and that Cheney frequently appears on his show.

You can't make allies out of people who you insult in the nastiest terms possible.

The democracy and freedom arguments were never serious, and never believable, because they come from a party of hate-filled racists who despise arabs, and muslims.

As much as any other explanation, the mess in Iraq is the fault of people like Dan Riehl and hate-filled posts like this one which reveal the true feelings of rightwingers towards a nation we still claim to want as an ally in the war on terror.

Just laughable.

[Rick]

"the mess in Iraq is the fault of people like Dan Riehl and hate-filled posts like this one which reveal the true feelings of rightwingers towards a nation we still claim to want as an ally in the war on terror.

Just laughable."

What is much more laughable is the lame attempt to excuse the Sunni & Shite caliphatemongers from any culpability. Their millenium-old festering civil war is *finally* being focused inwards, where it belongs. And that means there's a chance the "infidels" at the edges of the Muslim world won't have to pay such a price for Mohammed's followers to sort out each other's hash.

Cordially...

[Dan Riehl]

Looks like asx has a problem with blonds.

[Purple Avenger]

Time to send this fool some hot Panda pron ;->

[Phoenix]

PA,

What's 'hot Panda pron'?

[Phoenix]

Yay! I can post I can post... yippee. Tie a yellow ribbon 'round my pert little buns.....Take that Tony Orlando International Airport.

Stupid AOL. And Safari. And Firefox.

And that blowjob I was going to give you, Dan.

[old trooper]

6 June, 1944, D-Day:
“Casualties” refers to all losses suffered by the armed forces: killed, wounded, missing in action (meaning that their bodies were not found) and prisoners of war. There is no "official" casualty figure for D-Day. Under the circumstances, accurate record keeping was very difficult. For example, some troops who were listed as missing may actually have landed in the wrong place, and have rejoined their parent unit only later.

In April and May 1944, the Allied air forces lost nearly 12,000 men and over 2,000 aircraft in operations which paved the way for D-Day.

Total Allied casualties on D-Day are estimated at 10,000, including 2500 dead. British casualties on D-Day have been estimated at approximately 2700. The Canadians lost 946 casualties. The US forces lost 6603 men. Note that the casualty figures for smaller units do not always add up to equal these overall figures exactly, however (this simply reflects the problems of obtaining accurate casualty statistics).

Casualties on the British beaches were roughly 1000 on Gold Beach and the same number on Sword Beach. The remainder of the British losses were amongst the airborne troops: some 600 were killed or wounded, and 600 more were missing; 100 glider pilots also became casualties. The losses of 3rd Canadian Division at Juno Beach have been given as 340 killed, 574 wounded and 47 taken prisoner.

The breakdown of US casualties was 1465 dead, 3184 wounded, 1928 missing and 26 captured. Of the total US figure, 2499 casualties were from the US airborne troops (238 of them being deaths). The casualties at Utah Beach were relatively light: 197, including 60 missing. However, the US 1st and 29th Divisions together suffered around 2000 casualties at Omaha Beach.

The total German casualties on D-Day are not known, but are estimated as being between 4000 and 9000 men.

Naval losses for June 1944 included 24 warships and 35 merchantmen or auxiliaries sunk, and a further 120 vessels damaged.

Over 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing during the Battle of Normandy. This figure includes over 209,000 Allied casualties, with nearly 37,000 dead amongst the ground forces and a further 16,714 deaths amongst the Allied air forces. Of the Allied casualties, 83,045 were from 21st Army Group (British, Canadian and Polish ground forces), 125,847 from the US ground forces. The losses of the German forces during the Battle of Normandy can only be estimated. Roughly 200,000 German troops were killed or wounded. The Allies also captured 200,000 prisoners of war (not included in the 425,000 total, above). During the fighting around the Falaise Pocket (August 1944) alone, the Germans suffered losses of around 90,000, including prisoners.

Today, twenty-seven war cemeteries hold the remains of over 110,000 dead from both sides: 77,866 German, 9386 American, 17,769 British, 5002 Canadian and 650 Poles.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were killed, mainly as a result of Allied bombing. Thousands more fled their homes to escape the fighting.

ALL ON ONE DAY, AND WE CARE ABOUT EVERY ONE OF THEM. BECAUSE OF THEIR SACRIFICE THE LIBERATION OF EUROPE WAS UNDERWAY.

ASX has a problem with the Price of Freedom.

[Phoenix]

Old Trooper,

Years ago, a friend and I spent a month or so traveling all over England and Europe. We did all the tourist spots, but because we were on our own, we were able to wander off and visit places not listed on tour maps and such. I was a photographer at the time, and I took tons of pictures and printed them myself to show my friends. I put all the photographs into albums and carefully detailed everything. One night someone asked what my favorite place had been on the trip. I had no photographs of it.

I am a military brat, well schooled in the appreciation of our armed forces. My mother spent years reading every book published about WWII, and before I left on the trip, my parents suggested I make sure and visit Normandy. I remember days in Paris that left us pooped from the nightlife and half-way ready to come home, but I remembered my parents' request and we set out for St. Mere Eglise and a visit to the cemetary overlooking the beaches of Normandy. It was June and there were flowers everywhere and the sky was bright blue. We got to the cemetary and looked at the fields of white crosses over immaculately kept green, and I think time stopped. There was a small marble podium with pillars that surrounded a statue of an angel-man holding the earth upwards in one hand as the other hand reached up towards the heavens. No one was about and everything was still except for a breeze that blew in over the water.

I'm not much for God, and, in fact, felt like cursing him as my vision floundered to recreate the cinema that called for such a sight. I distinctly remember having to force myself to breathe. I didn't curse God, but I recognized this was his territory; and I didn't touch my camera because I was sure angels would appear in the images as I developed them.

That was my favorite place. It put me in my place.

[-asx-]

So tell me, Old trooper, purple avenger, et al., what exactly does success in Iraq look like?

If Islam is the problem, and every Muslim is implicated, what's the solution?

Kill them all?

[Rick]

"If Islam is the problem, and every Muslim is implicated, what's the solution?

Kill them all?"

Nah...just don't be in a hurry to stop the Religious Right extremists from killing each other.

Cordially...

[old trooper]

asx: At this point, Iraqis have proven themselves to be perfectly capable, willing and able to kill themselves without our help.

You have obviously spent no time whatsoever in the Middle East.

After the nazis were defeated, why were europeans were not killing themselves at the rate of 90+ per day.

Answer that one.

[old trooper]

Casualities

On February 28, 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) raided the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located 9 miles east-northeast of Waco, Texas. The raid resulted in the deaths of four agents and six Davidians. The subsequent 51-day siege by the FBI ended on April 19 when fire completely consumed the complex, killing 76 people, including 21 children and Davidian leader David Koresh.

Shootings
Several documentaries suggest that the FBI fired weapons into the building, which the FBI denies. The main evidence for gunfire is bright flashes in aerial infrared recordings known as forward looking infrared or FLIR. Edward Allard, a former government specialist on infrared imagery submitted an affidavit in which he declared that the video, recorded by the government during the gas assault, revealed bursts of automatic gunfire coming from government agents. Another independent FLIR expert, Carlos Ghigliotti, also confirms gunfire, when shown the cleaner video kept by government officials.

International experts hired by the Office of Special Counsel claimed that the flashes were not gunfire because (1) they lasted too long, (2) there were no guns or people on the tapes anywhere near the flashes; and (3) the flashes were consistent with reflections off debris and other materials near the building. Edward Allard commented on the reflection theory, saying that it was impossible for the flashes on the FLIR film to be reflections, because FLIR does not record light, it records heat, and reflections do not produce enough heat to be noticeable on tape. Maurice Cox, a former analyst from the US Intelligence community tested the reflection theory using the principles of solar geometry. Maurice Cox's Sun Reflection Report concluded that the flashes seen on the FLIR footage could only be from gunfire. In January 1999 Mr. Cox challenged FBI director Louis Freeh and FBI scientists to dispute his findings. There was no response. For more analysis on this controversy, see the external links below.

Secondary proof was a summary of a statement made by FBI sniper Charles Riley several weeks after the incident to an FBI investigator that he had heard shots fired from sniper position Sierra 1. The Blue sniper team had included Lon Horiuchi and Christopher Curran, both who had been involved in the Ruby Ridge incident, the former having fired the fatal shots. In 1995, when attorneys submitted that FBI report as evidence to Judge Smith, the FBI produced an additional interview in which Riley clarified that he had heard the statement "shots fired" from Sierra 1, which meant that agents at Sierra 1 had observed shots being fired at the FBI vehicles by the Davidians. Given the conflict between the summary and Riley's clarification, the latter could not be used to have the claims dismissed early in the lawsuit.

The .308 shell casings found at Sierra 1 were examined by ballistics experts hired by the Branch Davidians, who agreed with Government experts that the casings matched guns used by the ATF on February 28, and the Davidians dropped that claim in their lawsuit against the Government.

Autopsies revealed some of the women and children found beneath the remains of a concrete wall of a storage room died of skull injuries. However, photographs taken after the fire show that the CEV that penetrated the structure while injecting CS gas did not come close enough to cause the collapse -- the collapse was more likely the result of the fire and the thousands of rounds of ammunition that "cooked off" in that room during the fire. Autopsy photographs depicting bodies of other children locked in what appear to be spasmic death poses have been attributed by some to cyanide poisoning produced by burning CS gas. However, these poses can also be attributed to the post-mortem "boxer pose" all bodies caught in fires eventually assume, created as ligaments connecting bones together shorten as the fire dries them. Autopsy records indicate that on April 19 at least 20 Davidians were shot, including 5 children under the age of 14[7].

Look asx...we have enough dirty laundry here. Did the aftermath at Waco "Look like Success?"

Worry about something that You can change. Sunis and Shia have been killing themselves for centuries.
It may serve you better to comment upon things that you have some knowlege of understanding of.

[Purple Avenger]

"what exactly does success in Iraq look like?"

It looks like Jordan or Turkey.