It is now your turn to take a deep breath.

The people that attacked my son in law, and several Iraqis from the village that were helping them were not from that village. We do not know where they were from as they did not carry any identification. BUT WE DO KNOW THEY WERE NOT FROM THAT VILLAGE. This means, we know thatt neither the American nor the Iraqi dead from that day were from that village. Your IBC Count no doubt dutifuly counted the Iraqi dead, but getting back to Tel’s point earlier they were not from Iraqis.

You say that you travel to the Middle East a lot. Well, I am betting that if you get out into the back country you will find that there is a general appreciation for the American presence. I have not been there, but I can base this proposal on two factors.

First, there is the direct reports I get from my kids and their friends. As a trained economist I know that this is not a random sample. But none the lesss, it comesfrom many, many villages.

Second, my In-Laws lived though the nightmar of Hitler’s postwar Germany. They and lots of there friends in their German social circle (once again not a random sample) were happy that the U S entered WW II and then brought stability to especially southern Germany after the war. This was due to the horrors of the Wolfs Hound units that slected Germans to be gildd

Read both sentences carefully. Then read them again. It IS easier to talk about necessary killing unless you’ve seen the faces of the killed/maimed children. Some of us, however, don’t have to see the pictures/faces of these kids to know it’s wrong. You’re splitting hairs.

No, I never said I’d seen them personally. Unlike you, I don’t have to.

Were we not over in Iraq riding around in Humvee’s, then folks wouldn’t be shooting as us. It’s not our country and we don’t belong there. Your logic makes no sense. We sent tanks and soldiers into any other country under false pretenses (WMD’s) and now you complain because people there are shooting at us. What the hell would YOU do if you were them?

Dig it.. We invade Iraq killing 20,000+ in the initial attacks. We then disband their army and outlaw the only political party they had. We then stood around and watched the whole infrastructure fall apart.

And I’m supposed to feel patriotic? I respect and support the armed forces where ever our policy sends them. It’s the neocon policy that put them there I have an issue with and a right and DUTY to question. I don’t hate anyone…but I have a right and a duty to call into question the calculated lies that have put us in this position. To send good people/soldiers somewhere for the wrong reasons and then to justify it because they’re ‘good soldiers’ is subderfuge and maddening.

“Yes, we’re re-building roads and water purification facilities etc… so quit complaining that we invaded your country and destabilized your infrastructure and caused the death of tens of thousands.”

Give…Me…A…Break.

March 26th 4:21 PM you stated:

It’s easy to talk about ‘necessary killing’…until you see the faces of the children maimed or killed by cluster bombs…

Which of your statement should we disregard, the March 26th posting or the latest one wherin you state: “I never claimed to witness the deaths of children.”

They both cannot be true.

Tell me, what would you have my son in law do when two of the four people in his Humvee have been killed and he is under attack? It is a little hard to walk over and ask for identification while somebody is trying to KILL you. Breaking out his guitar and playing Kumbaya probably wouldn’t get him out of the situation either.

Finally, did you actually read some of my posts above, or are you filled with hate for me as a Republican and a Veteran, and my kids as Soldiers? For if you had read them, you would have seen the discussion about their letters regarding putting in water purification, simple schools etc.
If you go to the Mid-East and more specificaly Iraq you might have seen some of these improvements.

Where on God’s green earth do you get the idea that the villagers that Jack and Josh are working with would be the ones shooting at them. Those people are grateful, and if you have talked to them you know darn well that they are grateful.

Lloyd

(pride’s a deadly sin you know)

Good rationale. “Yes, we’ve killed innocent people but so did Saddam”

“I’m pretty sure Saddam killed more innocent people than we did”

You also grope to justify the deaths of innocents.

Your son-in-law killed some insurgents. How exactly do you define insurgent? Some here would automatically call them Al qaeda. Are there Iraqis who simply feel we’ve invaded their homeland under false pretenses (isn’t that what we did) and are now an occupying force? How do you distinguish those folks?

I think I’ve been pretty clear that the problem hasn’t been the soldiers on the ground, but the Republican party that put them there.

I really don’t care what smoke screen (Vietnam?…good example) you throw up. It’s obvious you’re desensitized to human suffering and death.

I never claimed to witness the deaths of children.

The people of this country are fed up with folks who are so desensitized towards the human element.

The question’s come up a few times so I’ll answer it: I am in the oil business and travel fairly extensively to the Mid-East, Indonesia, China, Europe etc..

There are still some unanswer questions from my post, despicable thouth it may be.

1. Have you, or any other group concluded how many people would have died had Saddam stayed in power. Surely you are smart enough to know that this would have been greater than 0. In fact, in would have likely been more than the 19,000 that has been annualy averaged since the war began.

2. You stated about seeing one of the children dying. Was this a quote from one of the websites or have your actually been in a battle conditions? It might be great prose, but I want to know of your experience.

Finally, this is a new questions that a should have asked last night. My son in law needed to kill some insurgents that had killed two of the people in his Humvee. Are you counting these in the 89,000? They were not wearing uniforms, but they surely were not innocent civillians.

You know Vern, I have no idea how old you are, but you are starting to sound like those who gathered at the airports to yell “baby killers” etc. at my fellow Vietnam Era Veterans as they walked off of the airplanes in our uniforms.

No one said 89,000 died because of American bullets. 89k died because of the US/UK military action.

Tel, you and others would rather debate that point that acknowledge our responsibility.

That’s pretty despicable.

I went to the web site you referenced and found the following definition for the numbers you have been quoting.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/about/

Confusion about the numbers produced by the project can be avoided by bearing in mind that:

IBC’s figures are not ‘estimates’ but a record of actual, documented deaths.
IBC records solely violent deaths.
IBC records solely civilian (strictly, ‘non-combatant’) deaths.
IBC’s figures are constantly updated and revised as new data comes in, and frequent consultation is advised

Please note that this is VIOLENT deaths not deaths at the hand of United States Millitary. I do not know what the division is, but will grant that it is going to be greater than 1 letting you make your point about innocent deaths in Iraq.

Don’t be so stubborn with Tel. He is clearly trying to get you to admit that not all of the deaths are the result of U S Military, which is clearly labeled by the website you listed. Do you really maintain that 100% of the deaths on this website are due to the United States Military?

You talked about looking at one of the children dying. Was this your personal experience, or did you get it from the website? I guess I am asking have you ever been close enough to battle to smell the gunpowder? My son in law has first hand knowledge in watching violent death. Two of the people in his Humvee died from an attack. He fortunately was able to stand off the attackers with the other vehicles in his group. In answer to your question about prayer, yes I do pray everyday for my son, my son in law, and all of our country’s soldiers.

Since you are hung up on the 89,000 number, have you considered the alternative? I mean how many more people would have died had Saddam and his regime been allowed to continue? Somehow, I do not think that the Kurds feel as badly about the invasion as you are making out. Could it be that several thousand of them are breathing today because Saddam is not? What about his kids? We know that they were growing more violent. How many people would they have killed? What about the husbands seeing their wives raped, and then they were killed?

Your sense of moral outrage would have more traction if you also were condemning the sins that were eliminated by removing Saddam. Do you have any way of showing that fewer civillians are alive today than would have been had we not gone into Iraq.

Don’t try to move this into a reason for invading subtrefuge. I am talking about your 89,000 statistic and want to make sure that we are focused on that.

Lloyd

http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_Obama/ObamaLies.htm

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