The mainstream media hasn't flinched a muscle when a study published by Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates the Iraqi deaths to have reached 655,000 since we have invaded Iraq. This is a study with a 95 percent degree of certainty that the "excess deaths" in Iraq since the invasion based on pre-invasion mortality rates, is between 393,000 and 943,000. 655,000 is the most likely actual number. The vast majority of the reported deaths in this study was backed by death certificates.
They will galvanize over the deaths, in comparison, a tiny particle of deaths, if they are U.S. lives.
The fact that the numbers of Iraqi being killed far exceeds than what was even happening under the Saddam Hussein regime in a similar span of time is not simply newsworthy, but it ought to be a moral imperative to inform U.S. citizens the much more horrible consequences than that of even the loss of U.S. life.
If 655,000 U.S. civilians were slaughterd over a few years span and the media of other developped countries buried the fact, would you not feel devalued and, most of all, righteously upset?
We have wholesale slaughter going on in a country we are supposedly occupying. The number of civilian deaths has only been on the rise since our occupation. Things have never got calm for a significant period of time. The violence and chaos is only escalating.
Our forces are already overstrained. They are already ill-equipped with body armor. They have no clear objectives of how to turn the tide of chaos. The violence shows only signs of intensfying. There is no evidence that our forces are stabilizing the region. There is more and more evidence that our presence is causing some of the destabilization. We are fresh meat for terrorist hornets to swarm over. It is basically their training grounds now and we are simply the best-equipped target practice that they can get.
This is the new Vietnam, Middle-Eastern style.
Cut and run sounds a hell lot better than sitting in a burning building engulfed in an inferno and expecting it to die out while you pour gasoline on it here and there.
Withdrawl is the only sensible solution. Staying the course, as we have seen its fruit, is not getting things under control, but making it worse.
It is time to go.
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We really DO need to get out of there. The story of T. E. Lawrence (sp?) (Lawrence of Arabia) is a perfect example of why this is so. He created peace through two or three muslim tribes for about three weeks. It was an amazing feat. But, three weeks was about as long as it could last.
This is the new vietnam. And yet, why is no one REALLY protesting? It seems that most of the youth today is behind this war. Could it be because of us all growing up with people saying "You're against the war and you're with the terrorists?"
Maggie
First off I am for the war and I disagree with the the Iraq is the new Vetnam, although i do belive that it could have been handled better.
On a different note its simple (and scary) why no one protestes. Every one in the US (and around the world is to distracted.) Internet, tv, you name it people would rather be doing something besides thinking about Iraq. And with increased distraction our susceptibility to an overreaching gov also increases. Next thing you know we will be taking soma and playing centrafugial bumble puppy.
Oddly enough, you may be disagreeing not just with me, but also President Bush himself. Bush told ABC News just the other day that it could be correct to compare Iraq's situation now to the 1968 Tet offensive then.
I think a major factor that plays in is that, unlike Vietnam, young people aren't being drafted into war. Seeing how the military has been struggling to keep recruitment up for quite some time now and Bush projecting our stay to (now) at least 2011, that may very well change.
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