A battlefield is a very dangerous place for everyone. In the Liberation of Kuwait, with every attack being carefully coordinated and with aircraft routinely demanding confirmation before they attacked, then most American deaths were due to friendly fire. How can this be, UT asks? Welcome to war. Even your own friends can be a very deadly threat. And this assumes death only from violent action.

Numbers say that as many as 30% of smart munitions have failed to strike their target. This can vary significantly for so many reasons including the targeting aircraft under fire, failure of the targeting munitions, bad weather, etc. Sometimes dumb bombs may be used because the 'smart' electronics may not be available to upgrade that dumb bomb. It is a battlefield. Use what you have. There are so many reasons why even smart munitions miss their targets. Technical reasons. Human failure.

Do you point an unloaded weapon at anyone? No. Absolutely not. Even an unloaded weapon can unexpectedly fire. Why does UT expect smart weapons to be any more reliable? Battlefields are very complex. Again, even friendly fire is a major source of death and destruction. Just one of so many reasons why people - military and civilian - die.

It's all over. It's all over.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ma/4217413.stm
I do hope the regulars have the gonads to check in after this post.

I am often wrong. This time I was right. It doesn't matter because we all start with a pretty-much clean slate every time a new thread starts.

Except for tw. The Iraqi Civvy Body Count now becomes his official aluminum tube albatross. How, tw, could you have BEEN so UTTERLY UTTERLY wrong? How could you write paragraph after paragraph backing information that was this bad? I await your self-analysis and the changes you will make in the future. And most importantly I await your apology for being a complete and total ASS through this whole discussion.

:mad2: Christ on a fuckin' stick, it covered the same time frame and the actual number was even outside of the study's incredible margin of sampling error! :mad2:

How does that limited time frame (on or after 2004), using data from a limited source (only hospitals), and only citing deaths due to violence correspond to the time frame of the Lancet published study? Trying to define a tomato using peach standards? You don't even specify a conclusion. Are we to guess what you point is?

Posted are some numbers that tell us nothing useful. Furthermore you assume that Iraqis take all dead bodies to the hospital - which furthermore assumes hospital exist everywhere in Iraq and that Iraqis everywhere can safely travel to hospitals. We know that Americans will not even travel the 5 mile road between Baghdad and the airport. Too dangerous.

Again, the study is about all deaths as a result of American action - not just those created by direct military action. Where are the numbers from 2003 and earlier? Oh. They were destroyed by the looting that Rumsfeld said was not happening.

I don't understand how limited records from hospitals provides us with significant facts? What is the point you are desperately trying to make? Are you saying these limited numbers prove a responsible study from The Lancet is wrong? Are you saying Jack Straw, a British politician with the bias of a flawed agenda, is more honest then something published by The Lancet? If you do, then your logic is only based in emotion (and red angry faces).

Where, pray tell, is your logical conclusion from those numbers? Numbers from a polticially biased source (that also tried to claim those aluminum tubes were for WMDs) must be correct? Jack Straw also claimed those WMD existed. Therefore anything Jack Straw says must be more accurate than what The Lancet publishes.

Somehow the integrity of that source and UT's numerically proven conclusion escapes me. But then I am not trying to justify an illegal and now well proven unjustified war.

Aw hell yer right sorry. :smack:

I find it intriguing that in March of 2003, the Health Ministry was ordered to cease the reporting of civilian casualties. A new head of the ministry was appointed and then fired 10 days later for having had too close a tie with the Saddam regime. There has been great difficulty finding qualified professionals in Iraq who did NOT have a tie with the Saddam regime, since such ties were a requirement for anybody to do much of anything at all in Saddam's Iraq. One can't help but wonder how the Health Ministry has managed to regain credibility in such a relatively short amount of time, and under war conditions, at that.

The Lancet survey measures excess death. The count of the Iraqi Health Ministry measures civilian casualties. A direct count is the most accurate measure, as long as it can be reasonably assumed that most victims would make it to hospitals or morgues. Frankly, I don't know if it is reasonable to make this assumption about victims in the Iraqi conflict or not.

To calculate excess mortality, one needs estimates of death rates before and after. The Lancet study estimates something like 5 per 1000 before and 7.5 per 1000 after.

I will be very interested to see how this story continues to evolve.

One more question. Where do you find some great emoticons?

What, for posting here? Hit the "Go Advanced" button, click on the "More" button at the bottom of the table of smilies.

magnimity in defeat, an enviable trait.

Yeah I blew the dates.

Anybody see any problems now that Hariri is dead?

From Reuters
Guess this means the invasion of Canada is a "GO"!

The perspective of my question was more about who makes these neat little artworks? I am sure the artist who made the original smiley face never in his wildest imagination thought he created a whole new species.

Of course not. Forrest Gump didn't even know he'd invented the smiley face at all!

Hello SC. I've been following this thread half heartedly and honestly dont really agree with much you say or your opinions.

That never stopped me from blasting in from far right field to make some goofy comment though, and when I saw this I just had to say.....

sounds like a damn fine idea to me! :)



slang

Well, now the ***ts hit the fan. Some 6th grade schoolchildren wrote to a soldier. While many of the letters were predictably patriotic, some questioned the war.

Not that I agree with all of the sentiments here, but it sounds like some kids do not want to play sheep and may be engaged in independent thinking. I'll have to remember this reaction whenever conservatives complain about conservatives speech being suppressed on campus. Apparently, some suppression is ok with Fox.

BTW, technically the US has targeted mosques, although it does so only in cases where soldiers come under fire or it suspects the mosque is housing weapons.

Damn that free speech. Damn.