103 US Soldiers died on Sunday in the Battle of Nasiriya.

Regardless of whether or not you believe you are racist, it was a racist statement and you are still stereotyping the Arab people.

You are getting too involved in being defensive about your position. Just step back and think about it. Look at the post in which the comments of the former human shield are posted.

Arabs listen to the Voice of America.
If you believe what was reported, some Iraqi Arabs fear that not only they, but that their entire family will be killed if they voice the wrong opinion.

If you were from another country, what would you think about Americans? If you took only the most vocal minority to be representative, you would think that the population was against the war and the Bush administration is acting on its own accord, independent of anyone else in the country. Or what about the French? Do you believe that every single Frenchman believes as Chirac does? or every Russian as Putin?

If the Iraqi Arabs are so bloody stupid and fanatical, why even make a show about minimizing civilian deaths and just go after the primary target without regard to anything else? Supposedly, intelligence says he most likely hasn't left Baghdad. If our only goal is oil, well, Baghdad isn't exactly in the oil producing region, so why don't we just level the place and get it over with ... Hey, if that's where the WMDs are, then just make the place a radioactive wasteland and then no one could get to them.

Personally, I'm no fan of the current "don't hurt anyone's feelings and destroy their psyche" stuff, but your comments about Arabs are wrong.

Whats up withe these Iraqis , why dont they want to be 'liberated' (aka invaded) ? jeeze...some people i tell you.....they obviously dont know whats good for them....guess we have to make sure they know what's good for them. i hate war....and am starting to rethink my previous endorsement of this war.

Been watching SkyNews, EuroNews, DW , FOX and CNN, and all i can is... lol..... it's a sad state of affairs. FOX n CNN are showing everything to boost support for the war, and all the positive aspects of the American campaign. Sky News n BBC are a little more objective, but still a bit too one sided. The best, objective coverage of this war has been from EuroNews n DW. i especially like the 'No Comment' scenes. and the commentators make sure the news from both the camps are given...example....

"Iraqi officials, have claimed to have shot down a coalition plan over Baghdad. Pentagon officials have denied any such reports" (video being played are of the American crew captured by iraqi officials) (not exact quote)...but quite hilarious. And the almost daily anti-war protests seen around the world are shown with no holds barred..... something i havent seen on FOX or CNN since the war began.

EuroNews....tune in....it's worth it for objective news.

Cheers.

cnn, abc, fox

why don't you just say "I know you are but what am I?"

Is the 103 number actually dead soldiers or casualties?

The military counts injured as casualty as well. So the 50 number that was in the US media was not dead. it was about 40 known injured and 10 dead. Casualty numbers from the military, then, need to be broken down before we can make sense of them.

For someone who, along with zimphire, has a negligible grasp of his own language, you really do use the word "dumb" very often.

There's a saying somewhere that says that the true sign of intelligence is one's ability to realise how "dumb" one is.

To be fair, you're in good company on these boards, as spelling and grammar have yet to make it into the mainstream digital world it seems.

To be even more fair, claiming that you're stating the facts, whereby you're sitting at home watching the news on TV and reading it on the internet, be it American or Arabic news channels, does not make you privy to insider information on the average levels of intelligence anywhere in this world. How do you know that all the information on CNN is accurate? How do you know that the information on Al-Jazeera is inaccurate. Watching both I noticed that CNN does not broadcast pictures of dead Iraqi children (which would undermine the support for the war back home in the USA) and Al-Jazeera does not broadcast images of American soldiers tending to Iraqi wounded (which would undermine the preconception in that part of the world that Americans are ruthless killers). Take your pick.

Or better yet, take both picks, and actually learn something.

Snap quiz: Where did we get our decimal numeric system from and from which people did we get the concept of the number zero?

In order not to overly tax your "skilz", I'll give you the answer. The Arabs.

What's the betting that the Hong Kong papers are using Iraqi statistics? Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with an independent news agency using either side's numbers. It's just that based on the last Gulf War, those Iraq statistics tend to be a little inflated.

US casualty figures for our own side tend to be pretty accurate. Our military has good command and control, and excellent communications. So the figure reported up to commanders tends to be pretty accurate - especially when you are talking small numbers. Then we also have an independent media that checks the numbers of coffins returning to the families against the official figures. With local media reporting each casualty it would be hard to hide casualties 2x the official figure. Again, this is easier to verify when you are talking small numbers such as these. Iraq does not have either good military communications, or an independent media. I'd therefore take their numbers with a huge pinch of salt.

Secondly, it is inherently easier to count your own casualties than the enemy's because you know who you had, and who you lost. Much of the distrust of US figures comes from the wildly optimistic "body counts" of the Vietnam war when the enemy often was shot at without even being properly seen. But the wildly inaccurate estimates were of enemy casualties, not American.

I have to agree here. (Goddammit Simey, I am far too much in agreement with you these days. Somethings wrong ) From what I can gather, given the information we have, the Allies tend to admit their casualties late but it seems that they at least check them first. I can not, for the life of me, imagine the Iraqis admitting they shot down one of their own aircraft, as the Allies have done. They seem to have no problems blaming the casualties of stray anti-aircraft rounds on Allied bombing. Not to say that that bombing is not killing or wounding any Iraqi civillians.

What is interesting though is that I have read no estimates on Iraqi dead from official western sources in any news channel. I wonder whether this is to avoid the negative impact of the news on the opinions back home, or whether it is simply impossible to tell?

I've only read about a few here and a few there, not global number. I doubt tallying the enemy dead is very high in the priority list.

It is disturbing.




I think its a little of both, but also because the Pentagon is very skittish about repeating the mistake of the Vietnam years by releasing estimates.

Of course, there is a twist. The MacNamara Pentagon was so warped they started measuring success by how many Viet Kong they cleaimed to have killed (i.e. the more the merrier). Today, the political pressure would probably be to report as low a figure as possible. But either way, I don't think they want to be caught making up numbers again. And since there is no way to be really certain on a fluid battlefield, I think they are just keeping quiet for now.

I'm sorry, but if that's not racist I don't know what is.

Al Jazeera might be biased due to most employees being Arabian, but I haven't heard a good reason yet to believe the might not be independent in their judgement.

and how many civilians are dead?
how many (iraquian) kids?

Hey, Theolein:

Yesterday, we were discussing the restraint in tactics obviously being used by the coalition forces. I don't recall which thread that was in, but I thought you might be interested in this in today's Telegraph, so I'll post it here. It discusses the frustration the troops are experiencing not being allowed to use heavy weapons, and the way the Iraqis are using civilian clothes to blend in with the civilian population (another war crime, by the way). In particular, this struck me:


And also this passage:

Anyway, an interesting (if disturbing) read.

Some definitely. I think it's goddamn sick that children have to suffer so much in this world. But I think it's difficult to tell how many. The Iraqis will push that number up and the west will tend to push that number down.

But even one is one too much, really.

Last I heard, the Red Cross was reporting 32 injured, 1 dead. That was yesterday morning (3/24).

They also indicated that most of those injured were injured by falling anti-aircraft fire (i.e. Iraqi "friendly" fire).

It's quite apparent the coalition is doing their best to prevent civilian casualties and injuries. They are also being careful to protect Iraq's infrastructure (in an all out campaign, there would be no lights on in Baghdad, no clean water, no TV station, no radio.)

It's also been said that the Iraqi TV station is located in a building that houses a day-care/child-care unit. That is why we haven't tried to knock it out yet.

So the talk of "thousands" of civilians being carpet bombed is a red herring. But I knew that months ago.

How many children died when Saddam gassed the Kurds?

One is too many, right?

I think this is an important point when talking about the accuracy of war casualties. There are lots of things that the U.S. military can lie about, but one thing that can't be covered up is the number of casualties among the regular forces. Between the reporters "embedded" in these units, and the people waiting for them back home, it does not serve the military's interests to lie about the number of casualties. It's an all-volunteer army, and every person going there knew there was a chance they wouldn't come back, and signed up anyway.

Now, they could lie about where and how they died, and they probably don't report on any deaths in Special Forces that are operating secretly. There may also be a day or so lag in the official conformation of combat deaths. But you can be sure that the political price of lying about the number of casualties is so great that the military is better off telling the truth about the raw numbers.

I saw a rather telling statistic on CNN, which unlike a lot of their "reporting", does seem like it rings true. In previous wars (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam), roughly one out of every fifteen boys we sent over did not come back. In the First Gulf War, roughly one out of every 1500 troops did not come back.

When you run the numbers of how many casualties people are "expecting", it is closer to the 1-in-1500 proportion. However, this is a different war than Gulf War I. We are actively engaging the Iraqis in a number of different cities, and quite possibly engaging in Urban Warfare. It's unrealistic to expect that we would have the same casualty rate as Gulf War I.

If 1-in-15 of our troops do not come home, like other wars, we should expect 17,000 combat deaths! The final answer won't be that high, if for no other reason than this war will (hopefully) not last as long as those. Still, faces with numbers like that, losing 100 troops at once doesn't seem that far fetched...

This is what will push that number up if it is true.


Unlike allied soldiers, civilians in those areas do not have masks and suits. Let's hope that either the report is wrong, or that the Iraqi troops ignore that particular order.

Thanks for the link and the quote Simey. It rhymes with at least some of the images that I've seen of armed Iraqis in civillian clothes. It is also typical of Saddam and his baboons. I've read a bit about the Fedayeen, and they seem to be nothing more than your run of the mill death squad, experts at terrifying civilians and nothing else. I think on the one hand it was obvious that Saddam would resort to tactics like this, but on the other it really does testify to the absolute brutality of his goons when one sees how fearful the people are of him, even after the Allies have arrived.

I was and am against this war because I really hate suffering and death (I have seen quite a bit in my life) but also because I worry that the aftermath of the war will cause more problems than there were before. But seeing and reading the absolute brutatlity of Saddam and his dickwads, I really hope this gets over with quickly. I realise that using guerrilla tactics is Saddams only vaguely effective tactic in the face of the overwhelming superiority of the Allied forces, but the consequences for the Iraqi population are obvious and highly frustrating (containment, lack of aid and medical supplies etc).

There was an interview on French TV last night (they actually have first class reporting, I must say. Not pro one or the other and very in depth looks at the whole situation in the middle east as regards politcs, Islam and oil - very interesting and pointed interviews with heads of French, British and Arab oil companies) where they interviewed about twenty members of the council of 65, the Iraqi opposition. One of those 65, an ex Iraqi head of military inteeligence was pointedly asked if it was possible that he had blood on his hands. He then tried to get the reporters to turn of the camera and when that was refused he got incredibly abusive. Interesting, because one does ask oneself what the future government of Iraq is going to be like. I wish more people in the USA could see these reports, because it does paint a very different image of the French than has been portrayed in the US and the UK.