Another Friedman Unit down, and another Friedman Unit in the making. Call back in six months, and maybe we'll have an answer then...
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Music Notes
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The big loss in music this week was that of Zakir Hussain, dead at 73. I
had a few chances to see the great tabla player here and there but never
did. Si...
8 hours ago
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2 comments:
How easy it is to manipulate the media with obfuscations of “surge statistics” while we forget the long litany of mismanagement, incompetence, and deceptions that have characterized this war since inception. Let me count the ways:
145,000
The estimated number of American soldiers who were rushed into an ad hoc, itchy-trigger-finger war without flack jackets or armored protection.
3,774
The number of American soldiers killed in Iraq (as of September 10, 2007).
80%
The estimated amount of American casualties that would have been prevented had our troops been supplied with flack jackets and armored-vehicles.
27,186
The number of American soldiers wounded (as of September 10, 2007) of whom 8,298 will never lead normal lives and will be dependent on the VAMC and a government that will abandon them like the Vietnam vets who were abandoned generations ago.
250,000
The amount in tons of missing ordinance spread around Iraqi weapons sites that our government failed to secure. These became veritable shopping malls of explosives left for looting by would-be insurgents. During the presidential election, Bush accused Kerry of making "wild charges" about missing explosives. Nevertheless, Dr, David Kay, our WMD inspector in Iraq, confirmed: “Thousands of tons of ammunition were being looted, and that is what is fueling the insurgency." Bush lied about Kerry’s charges to deceive voters.
350,000
The estimated number of Iraqi Army personnel and Ba’athist civil servants turned out of their jobs and left unemployed. “An examination of personnel records showed that important Ba’athists did not appear in large numbers until the rank of major general. Even then, only 50 per cent of those officers were affected” (Gordon, NYT, Oct 21, 04). It was those unemployed Iraqis who swelled the ranks of the insurgency, complements of Bush, Cheney and Bremer.
750,000
The estimated number of Iraqis killed to date.
$3,000,000,000,000.00
Three billion dollars per week is the estimated cost of the Iraq war borne by American taxpayers.
ZERO
The amount of active-duty military experience on the resumes of key members of the Bush administration: President George W. Bush – ZERO; National Security Advisor Condo Lisa Rice – ZERO; Vice-President Dick Cheney – ZERO; Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld - ZERO. When asked by a reporter why he never served in the military, VP Dick Cheney stated that he had “more important things to do."
FUNGIBLES
The term used by Donald Rumsfeld to portray soldiers as mere commodities, or as one commentator noted: “Rumsfeld calls our soldiers ‘fungibles,’ dehumanizing them to the level of the little wooden objects on his war table. He is oblivious to the harm done to America, to our military, to the suffering he has caused to our soldiers and Iraqis. He should have been fired long ago … But we have a commander who calls our precious Constitution, which he has sworn to defend, “nothing but a g__ d___ piece of paper,” a commander who laughs and jokes on camera about not finding any WMDs behind his chair. All while soldiers are dying and getting their limbs blown off” (A. J. McAllister, Military City, November 10, 2006).
“INTELLECTUALLY BANKRUPT”
The term used by General Sir Michael Jackson, former chief of British forces in Iraq, to describe Donald Rumsfeld. In The Daily Telegraph (Sunday September 2, 2007), Sir Michael was particularly critical of Bush's decision to hand over control of running post-invasion Iraq to the Department of Defense. "All the planning carried out by the State Department went to waste," wrote Sir Michael Jackson. Furthermore, he said, the US decision to disband the Iraqi army after Saddam's overthrow was "very short-sighted ... We should have kept the Iraqi security services … and put them under the command of the coalition."
“A THOUSAND TACTICAL MISTAKES”
The admission made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to Blackburn England one year ago. "I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure," she said. But what she didn’t say is that there is a legal distinction between a minor fender-bender versus felony manslaughter resulting in catastrophic loss of life.
Not to mention the terrible judgment of history that will come back to haunt our nation for generations.
It is a real shame that to some, your paragraph headers are just numbers and words, and as long as there is a glimmer of some kinda amorpheus "honor" in continuing to do the same--& in the process, add more to your counts & statistics--it's all worth it, no matter how much & how many.
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