Thursday, October 18, 2007
Comparing Iraq to Viet Nam
Here are a couple graphs compairing the severity of the campaign in Iraq to the war in Viet Nam. There is really very little comparison, just as there was little comparison to the Viet Nam war and World War II. There are valid comparisons of course, but as a whole they are all completely different animals.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
I Casualties Vs Global Security
A comparison of Global Security's numbers and I Casualties. In case you haven't noticed these graphs are linked to a full page version. Makes it easier on old eyes.
Friday, October 12, 2007
A little house cleaning:
Enky, 8:07am
I don’t dispute victors tell their side of the story as virtuous, so do losers, that is why it is so important that historians be as unbiased as possible. I don’t have a problem with the authors historical correctness, although I don’t know enough about that period to say he is right or wrong, I have a problem with his comparison of us to the bad guys in his story. Here is how it goes one more time.
Kings and Knights = power (a)
Peasants= weakness (b)
America=power (c)
Arabs=weakness (d)
Kings and Knights=brutal pillagers, rapists, and thugs (e)
America=brutal pillagers, rapists and thugs (f)
But just because a and b are correct and resulted in e doesn’t mean that just because c and d are correct f is also correct. And the rest of his piece is built around that assumption.
Power can be used for good or bad, in this case we are using it for good, and at times in our history we have used it for bad.
Now on to the 650,000 dead.
The war started March 30 2003 the Lancet report came out October 11 2006, 1301 days. So get your calculators out boys and girls, 650,000 divided by 1301 equals 499.61, we’ll call it 500. So in your story of collateral damage, which I’m not disputing, there were 15 innocents and 15 bad guys, I’ll give you both, so 30, back to the calculators 500 divided by 30, this tragedy would have to be repeated over 16 times EVERY SINGLE DAY for three and a half years. I think that would get noticed.
TV,
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if Knarly were partially correct and there were hundreds or thousands of pounds of thermite wrapped around columns in the WTC, but it wasn’t placed there by Bush or Cheney but by Arabs before the first bombing of the WTC in the Clinton administration. Unfortunately the terrorist bosses put Richard Reid in charge of detonating those charges because he insisted on using the traditional methods of Mohammad, no fancy cell phone detonators for Reid, no sir, only a fuse lit by the holy book of matches that had been blessed by the holy man in Mecca with holy water would do. So some secretary named Marge sat and filed her nails with nothing but 5/8 inch of drywall between her and enough explosives to down the building for almost a decade.
Question, I think I remember in one of Knarly’s links a picture of the mysterious molten metal and sparks were just below the hole where the plane entered the building, this was supposedly the thermite charge. But earlier there were reports of “hundreds” of people that heard explosions on the first several floors, is that correct? Bush being in better shape than Cheney probably took the upper floors when they were setting the explosives.
Enky, 8:07am
I don’t dispute victors tell their side of the story as virtuous, so do losers, that is why it is so important that historians be as unbiased as possible. I don’t have a problem with the authors historical correctness, although I don’t know enough about that period to say he is right or wrong, I have a problem with his comparison of us to the bad guys in his story. Here is how it goes one more time.
Kings and Knights = power (a)
Peasants= weakness (b)
America=power (c)
Arabs=weakness (d)
Kings and Knights=brutal pillagers, rapists, and thugs (e)
America=brutal pillagers, rapists and thugs (f)
But just because a and b are correct and resulted in e doesn’t mean that just because c and d are correct f is also correct. And the rest of his piece is built around that assumption.
Power can be used for good or bad, in this case we are using it for good, and at times in our history we have used it for bad.
Now on to the 650,000 dead.
The war started March 30 2003 the Lancet report came out October 11 2006, 1301 days. So get your calculators out boys and girls, 650,000 divided by 1301 equals 499.61, we’ll call it 500. So in your story of collateral damage, which I’m not disputing, there were 15 innocents and 15 bad guys, I’ll give you both, so 30, back to the calculators 500 divided by 30, this tragedy would have to be repeated over 16 times EVERY SINGLE DAY for three and a half years. I think that would get noticed.
TV,
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if Knarly were partially correct and there were hundreds or thousands of pounds of thermite wrapped around columns in the WTC, but it wasn’t placed there by Bush or Cheney but by Arabs before the first bombing of the WTC in the Clinton administration. Unfortunately the terrorist bosses put Richard Reid in charge of detonating those charges because he insisted on using the traditional methods of Mohammad, no fancy cell phone detonators for Reid, no sir, only a fuse lit by the holy book of matches that had been blessed by the holy man in Mecca with holy water would do. So some secretary named Marge sat and filed her nails with nothing but 5/8 inch of drywall between her and enough explosives to down the building for almost a decade.
Question, I think I remember in one of Knarly’s links a picture of the mysterious molten metal and sparks were just below the hole where the plane entered the building, this was supposedly the thermite charge. But earlier there were reports of “hundreds” of people that heard explosions on the first several floors, is that correct? Bush being in better shape than Cheney probably took the upper floors when they were setting the explosives.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Troop Deaths
I made this graph showing the number of dead versus the number of wounded. I find it interesting that the number of wounded dropped so sharply in September. It certainly may just be an anomaly, we’ll have to wait and see. These numbers are all the dead no matter what the cause, but only the wounded in battle. So if a soldier is killed in a traffic accident it is counted, if another soldier is hurt in that same accident it is not shown.
The average dead through the campaign is about 68 so the 62 last month is down, but not that much. But with the wounded average at 515, 186 is significant. I was also interested in the 2004 numbers, it looks to me like this timeframe was the perfect storm of the enemy having better tactics than us and the elections (theirs and ours) being held. The elections made it imperative to terrorize the locals and try and convince the anti war left in America to surrender. Terrorizing the locals was probably harder.
This was about the time we were getting our asses handed to us by the enemy with their use of IEDs and RPGs. They were very effective against the lightly armored humvees. So we adapted with slat armor on the vehicles and rushed systems like Stryker and the Buffalo into service along with a host of robots to clear the roads of the booby traps, we also developed jamming equipment to jam the cell phone signals the enemy was using to detonate the bombs. After that year injuries dropped significantly and leveled off. That of course is how wars are fought, won and lost. You attack your enemies weaknesses, they adapt and you change your tactics adapting to changes in their tactics and so on. The side with the most resources, innovations and will wins.
The average dead through the campaign is about 68 so the 62 last month is down, but not that much. But with the wounded average at 515, 186 is significant. I was also interested in the 2004 numbers, it looks to me like this timeframe was the perfect storm of the enemy having better tactics than us and the elections (theirs and ours) being held. The elections made it imperative to terrorize the locals and try and convince the anti war left in America to surrender. Terrorizing the locals was probably harder.
This was about the time we were getting our asses handed to us by the enemy with their use of IEDs and RPGs. They were very effective against the lightly armored humvees. So we adapted with slat armor on the vehicles and rushed systems like Stryker and the Buffalo into service along with a host of robots to clear the roads of the booby traps, we also developed jamming equipment to jam the cell phone signals the enemy was using to detonate the bombs. After that year injuries dropped significantly and leveled off. That of course is how wars are fought, won and lost. You attack your enemies weaknesses, they adapt and you change your tactics adapting to changes in their tactics and so on. The side with the most resources, innovations and will wins.
Source: GlobalSecurity.org
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