As Cordesman said, we don't know how strong this trend is. Does it have to do with the troop surge, or is it something else? Of course I'm glad that things are better. But that doesn't change the fact that things are still fairly terrible, and this 50% figure is little consolation for families of soldiers and Iraqis who are dying. And, additionally, because this is just based on AP reporting of violent deaths, we don't even know how precise the 50% figure is. What percentage of extra deaths caused directly or indirectly by this conflict are actually being registered under this study? I'm not saying we should move out all the troops without paying attention to the consequences. My attitude is we made a huge mistake going into Iraq to begin with, we created a devestating situation, and its our responsibility to fix that. How to "fix it", I'm not sure. I don't believe our military or our politicians are any kind of authority on improving/stabilizing a country decimated by our bombings, if history is any indication.
I think a 50% drop is quite remarkable and should be something we can all celebrate and provide hope for the future. I mean, the violence was cut in half! That's remarkable progress.
Well, the closest thing to Hitler among current world leaders is no one else but your George Walker Bush.
Do you know where's the data on Iraqi deaths, month by month? It will be easier to gauge trends from that. Edit: Found this: source Also, from article:
mathematically this is really insignifigant. its not like the terrorists line people up and decide how many to kill each month to fill their quota. sometimes a car bomb will kill 100 people sometimes it will kill 5, it is random also in august 500 people died in one day in a coordinated series of truck bombing, that really throws your statistics off, that one day accounts for the 50% drawdown from august -> september call me when this becomes a trend over 6 months to a year hopefully for everyone involved it does become a trend. losing 900 people a month to terrorists is sick, thats like a 9/11 attack hitting new york every 2-3 months
This is good news. But the $64 billion question is what is the good enough news that can make the Bush Admin bring our troops home? I don't think Dubya even knows. That's why I think we will be there for 100 years.
i think we have to consider the fact that there are still 2 million refugees scattered thoughout syria, jordan, kurdistan, turkey, iran, europe, and a hand ful in the us. theres still a long way to go before iraq can be considered safe. progress, yes... but who is to say there wont be a spike next month. we have to remain vigilant.
Sure, you can always fish for a but, and look at things pessimistically, but at least we can all agree to what you say here - and that's we need to keep going and see how things turn out. If it spikes up next month, then this might be an aberration, but continued success would make us all have to rethink this war.
some like to call it pessimism but i like to call it realism i think even if we succeed and iraq is fiinally esablished as a democracy... we still lose bc of the billions and billions of dollars we'll have to pump into the country...
Not me. No matter what the outcome is, it wasn't worth the billions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted. We could have taken that money, invested it in alternative fuel resources, and permanently ended this country's dependence on foreign oil, a dependence that will eventually bring the United States to it's knees.
it's not a question of what's been lost, it's a question of what we need to do going forward. Was the war a mistake? Yes. But does that mean you must pull out now and leave a nation in a mess? No. Especially when you are finally beginning to make progress.
Progress isn't supposed to be measured in the amount of civilians killed in a month. It's supposed to be measured in whether the Iraqi government can begin to operate on it's own and defend itself. There is no proof of that. This number does not give me any greater hope that things are getting better. It just means there were less roadside bombs last month and the security companies shot at less innocent civilians.
What a ridiculous post. I have my own issues with Bush but I find that I struggle to discuss them with a lot liberals because this is the stance they take. Bush is not Satan and he doesn't compare to Hitler. When both sides cut out the extreme rhetoric it is much easier to have a reasonable conversation.
But anyway - even if the numbers are skewed because AP doesn't account for swift burials etc, they never have accounted for those things. So we are seeing a measurable decrease which is undoubtably good.
