It's over 4000! Iraq death toll.
 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/...ain/index.html

Discuss. (You probably don't want my input on this.)

To tell you the truth something like this is old news.
I constantly hear it in the news everyday that some poor soul and/or soldier has lost their lives in Iraq. Well what do you expect? It's a warzone started over oil and we took out the dictatorship so the little clans in between can fight for power.

I mean, we can on and on and on all day talking about why we're there and the fact that so many people have died for it. But, I'm not gonna say anymore about it. I live around and work with servicemembers, so I already know the politics and bizarre reasoning behind it all. The overall idea about it in the military community: "oh...f**k, here we go again..."

It isn't old news, but it isn't unexpected, as we were told we were getting close to it. Plus, violence has been picking up a bit with more bombings.

We spend something like $2 billion a week, and the Iraq government isn't playing ball yet. Heck, I think I read recently that the amount we're currently spending on rebuilding, could be made up by the oil profits, but because the Iraqi government is hardly functional, they can only agree to spend the profits on themselves.

Plus, a lot of it is apparently going to the insurgency.

I dunno, the 4,000 mark might help people see that the war isn't going as well as McCain claims, and certainly we need to do more than continue doing what we're doing. If McCain can't even come up with a plan to make the Iraqi government come together, he's dead in water on this issue (IMO).

SWB

You see, I actually think we're damn lucky that we live in a world where we feel the right to get all upset with the notion that fighting a war has cost us 4,000 lives in a five year period.
I mean I know that each of those 4,000 people were amazing people and none of them deserved to die for a war that was built on lies on half-truths, but nonetheless, to live in an era in which 4,000 deaths is considered a monstrous military tragedy? I mean past generations had it terrible compared to us...at least we're making some twisted form of progress.

Maybe that 4,000 figure seems small, but that's only because of advancements in medical tech. Given my understanding, its about as bloody as any other war.

But in reality, we should be taking a look at all the parapalegics & other wounded that are coming back as well. I'm sure if we looked at those figures, the 4,000 mark would be easily dwarfed.

SWB

Medical technology has advanced, but not to the point of that.

Military warfare has evolved to become something different. We no longer have to throw armies against each other in horrific bloodshed.

Warfare has focused more on strategy than numbers lately. That and the scale of combat has diminished. The only wars we can really compare it to involved alot more countries involved on both sides..

I will agree that we had took wonderfully small amount of casualties during the actual conflict with Iraq's military, which was only 139. However, we've since had 3861+ deaths at the hands of the civilian resistance, which is pretty bad. Furthermore, the grand total of 4000 Americans killed, while finally managing significant security gains, has failed to prompt the Iraqi government and many of its people to put together a functioning independent nation.

I can't help but feel that Iraq's new founding fathers aren't taking this seriously enough for the blood, sweat, tears, and cash that the US is paying into it.

I suspect America's founding fathers were similarly ungrateful for Britain's tears and toil.

I mean, just saying.

I dunno, at this point it's lapsed into surreality for me. There's four thousand American troops dead, plus those million or so Iraqis nobody much cares about, and every politician sings the same tune about how we just need to war Iraq harder! and our depleted-uranium shrapnel will bloom into the lilacs of Democratism. There's nothing anybody can do about it, and nothing anybody who can do anything about it will do about it, so I don't know, what the hell.

4000 people killed, around what? 50.000 people directly hurted for the rest of their lives? (Friends and Family)

Big number to me...

Ofcourse the number of people who died (and was as much of a innocent as any american soldier) on the other side is easily higher, but it would be for the best for us not to go down that statistical lane...

The issue here? It wont matter... this could drag on for another decade. The peope fighting there (not just the USA) cant back down or everythign will be the same as it were prior to going there. It's just not possible to get out of there untill it's really over.

The problem is that the Difenition of "Over" in the Iraq situation scares the shit out of me.

Except that Iraq isn't a collection of American colonies that were consistently drained of their money and resources with no governmental representation or payment for their contribution to the betterment of the ruling empire while being required to remain citizens of said empire, nor any intention of ever allowing them to be an independent state of their own.

You'll note that this is more or less the opposite of what we want to accomplish with Iraq.