Staggering numbers on Syria..

[kentonio]

You said, with benefit of hindsight, that leaving US troops in Iraq was much worse than the current situation with ISIS. This is simply nonsense. Funny you should mention children.

J

What I said was that leaving US troops in Iraq would have exacerbated the situation, not helped it. The longer America stayed, the more the perception turned that you were a hostile presence rather than a friendly ally. Countless incidents of US mercenaries shooting Iraqis and driving around acting like they were on patrol in Vietnam didn't exactly help your case either. What was the point in staying exactly? So you could crush any local uprising with overwhelming military force, while the local insurgencies grew and grew? How long was it you were supposed to stay exactly? Another 10 years? Another 50?

The Iraqi government told you to leave. You had signed an agreement saying you would leave. There were no grounds to stay, unless you planned on becoming an illegal occupying force. America did exactly the right thing by pulling out, it's just a shame that the endless litany of previous mistakes had already condemned the place to years of chaos.

[C0ckney]

it's remarkable that there are still people who attribute iraq's problems to the US pull out when it's painfully obvious that these problems are a result of the invasion and the short-sighted decisions made in its wake. when one is in a hole at some point one has to stop digging.

moreover, this view seems to be motivated, not by considerations about the situation in iraq, but rather by a desire to criticise barack obama for something.

[I AM MOBIUS]

Wow, onechickenhawk could well be taking the crown for dumbest poster on poly.

Everything about the US' involvement in Iraq has been a massive cluster**** right from the beginning! It is difficult to imagine a more costly and counter-productive action ever!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314

(Reuters) - The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.

Six million million!!!

The war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

So, given this report is already two years old - before ISIS burst so spectacularly on the stage, if we take the 4x number, we're already pushing into the realms of one million dead...

When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war's death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000, the study said.

The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

It was also an update of a 2011 report the Watson Institute produced ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that assessed the cost in dollars and lives from the resulting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

The 2011 study said the combined cost of the wars was at least $3.7 trillion, based on actual expenditures from the U.S. Treasury and future commitments, such as the medical and disability claims of U.S. war veterans.
That estimate climbed to nearly $4 trillion in the update.

The estimated death toll from the three wars, previously at 224,000 to 258,000, increased to a range of 272,000 to 329,000 two years later.

Excluded were indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure, for example, while the costs left out trillions of dollars in interest the United States could pay over the next 40 years.

The interest on expenses for the Iraq war could amount to about $4 trillion during that period, the report said.
The report also examined the burden on U.S. veterans and their families, showing a deep social cost as well as an increase in spending on veterans. The 2011 study found U.S. medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war totaled $33 billion. Two years later, that number had risen to $134.7 billion.

Over 4,000 US dead; Over 32,000 physically wounded in action; hundreds of thousands with brain trauma - that last group a ticking time bomb in the communities across the US to which they've returned...

For what!!?

FEW GAINS

The report concluded the United States gained little from the war while Iraq was traumatized by it. The war reinvigorated radical Islamist militants in the region, set back women's rights, and weakened an already precarious healthcare system, the report said. Meanwhile, the $212 billion reconstruction effort was largely a failure with most of that money spent on security or lost to waste and fraud, it said.

Former President George W. Bush's administration cited its belief that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government held weapons of mass destruction to justify the decision to go to war. U.S. and allied forces later found that such stockpiles did not exist.

Supporters of the war argued that intelligence available at the time concluded Iraq held the banned weapons and noted that even some countries that opposed the invasion agreed with the assessment.

"Action needed to be taken," said Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think-tank.

Bucci, who was unconnected to the Watson study, agreed with its observation that the forecasts for the cost and duration of the war proved to be a tiny fraction of the real costs.

"If we had had the foresight to see how long it would last and even if it would have cost half the lives, we would not have gone in," Bucci said. "Just the time alone would have been enough to stop us. Everyone thought it would be short."

Only a ****ing moron wouldn't have had the ****ing foresight back in 2003...

Bucci said the toppling of Saddam and the results of an unforeseen conflict between U.S.-led forces and al Qaeda militants drawn to Iraq were positive outcomes of the war.

"It was really in Iraq that 'al Qaeda central' died," Bucci said. "They got waxed."

Talking of childish, using the term 'waxed'...

Er, actually, Al Qaeda morphed into something far, far more dangerous and they did so expressly with the help of the US...

Only a total ****ing moron would claim that Iraq is better for what the US did, and that life for the average person in Iraq is better now than under Saddam...

Quite why anyone would happily sign up to a situation where each man, woman and child alive in the US today will personally be paying almost $19,000 EACH! Or how anyone would happily accept injuries and death to hundreds of thousands of their compatriots to **** up another nation, killing hundreds of thousands of its people, making that country hate them and making the world a more dangerous place...!?

Are you Americans happy that you all have to pony up $19,000 each for Iraq? Wouldn't you rather be spending your money on universal healthcare and eradicating poverty in your country instead...?

[kentonio]

Don't be too harsh with Jay, he served over there so the subject is always going to be quite emotive for him. He's also a really nice guy when he's not being a GOP lapdog.

[I AM MOBIUS]

Yeah, you're right, judging by his posts, he's probably one of those brain trauma sufferers in Dubya's successful War on the Brain, so we shouldn't be too harsh.

Brain trauma from blast force is the signature injury of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, afflicting hundreds of thousands of U.S. combat personnel. Although unseen, the damage strikes deeply into a soldier’s mind and psyche.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, between 2001 and 2014 some 230,000 soldiers and veterans were identified as suffering from so-called mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), mostly as a result of exposure to blast events. The variety of symptoms associated with the condition—headache, seizures, motor disorders, sleep disorders, dizziness, visual disturbances, ringing in the ears, mood changes, and cognitive, memory, and speech difficulties—the fact that they resemble symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the fact that exposure to blast events often was not logged in the early years of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq make it impossible to pin down casualty figures.

You don't have any of those, Jay?

Well, at least he's put his $19,000 where his mouth is...

[C0ckney]

Don't be too harsh with Jay, he served over there so the subject is always going to be quite emotive for him. He's also a really nice guy when he's not being a GOP lapdog.

on a semi-related note i met up with an old friend last year who i hadn't seen for a long time. he's in the army and has spent 3 tours in afghanistan. i'd heard that he was working in army intelligence, which was amusing because he was never the brightest lad, and i wanted to find out more. the conversation went something like this:

c: so what does your work out there involve?
cf: we intercept tabliban communications and pass on the intelligence gathered to our boys.
c: ah, interesting, so you speak pashto then?
cf: no.
c: dari?
cf: no.
c: uzbek, tajik?
cf: err no.
c: so how do you understand what is being said?
cf: we have people translate it for us.
c: i see...and do you get out to interact much with the afghans?
cf: rarely, and anyway the language barrier makes things difficult.
c: i'm sure it does...and how do you find the afghans in general?
cf: they're a bunch of c*nts.

i came rather closer to understanding why the west has lost the war in afghanistan.

[I AM MOBIUS]

[onejayhawk]

Don't be too harsh with Jay, he served over there so the subject is always going to be quite emotive for him. He's also a really nice guy when he's not being a GOP lapdog.

I volunteered. This was a case where I agreed with the President. There are a number of issues where I think he was a politician (which is worse than an idiot).

it's remarkable that there are still people who attribute iraq's problems to the US pull out when it's painfully obvious that these problems are a result of the invasion and the short-sighted decisions made in its wake. when one is in a hole at some point one has to stop digging.

moreover, this view seems to be motivated, not by considerations about the situation in iraq, but rather by a desire to criticise barack obama for something.

Even allowing this huge stretch of logic, it is beside the point. The US military was in Iraq, keeping order. Pulling them out predictably resulted in disorder.

J

PS Do not try to tell me that the troops were not keeping order. I just answered that canard.

[C0ckney]

I volunteered.

they say there's one born every minute...

Even allowing this huge stretch of logic, it is beside the point. The US military was in Iraq, keeping order. Pulling them out predictably resulted in disorder.

J

PS Do not try to tell me that the troops were not keeping order. I just answered that canard.

it's not a leap of logic, nor is it beside the point. the chain of causation is very clear. i provided some evidence a few posts back of the decision to disband the iraqi army pushing those men into insurgent groups and that many of those men are now in leading positions in the islamic state. if you wish to dispute any of my claims, then you're welcome to try.

[Cort Haus]

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[onejayhawk]

it's not a leap of logic, nor is it beside the point. the chain of causation is very clear. i provided some evidence a few posts back of the decision to disband the iraqi army pushing those men into insurgent groups and that many of those men are now in leading positions in the islamic state. if you wish to dispute any of my claims, then you're welcome to try.

It is beside the point and your evidence is not germane, because it does not deal with the situation that existed.

Regardless of how and why, the troops are there, providing support. Remove the support and the whole situation collapses, which it did. I find it difficult to believe a fair minded can come to a different conclusion. Pulling the troops out is about as directly causitive of ISIS as it can get.

J

[C0ckney]

it explains how the situation came about. you'd have to be an imbecile not to see how the invasion of iraq and the decisions made in its wake affected the situation iraq found itself in.

and this claim, the only one you make:

Pulling the troops out is about as directly causitive of ISIS as it can get.

is just plain wrong. from the islamic of iraq's wiki:

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Jordanian Salafi Jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his militant group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, founded in 1999, achieved notoriety in the early stages of the Iraqi insurgency for the suicide attacks on Shia Islamic mosques, civilians, Iraqi government institutions and Italian soldiers partaking in the US-led 'Multi-National Force'.

......

In a letter to al-Zarqawi in July 2005, al-Qaeda's then deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri outlined a four-stage plan to expand the Iraq War. The plan included expelling US forces from Iraq, establishing an Islamic authority as a caliphate, spreading the conflict to Iraq's secular neighbours, and clashing with Israel, which the letter says "was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity".

....

By 2008, the ISI was describing itself as being in a state of "extraordinary crisis". Its violent attempts to govern its territory led to a backlash from Sunni Iraqis and other insurgent groups and a temporary decline in the group, which was attributable to a number of factors, notably the Anbar Awakening.

....

In late 2009, the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, stated that the ISI "has transformed significantly in the last two years. What once was dominated by foreign individuals has now become more and more dominated by Iraqi citizens".

....

From at least since 2004, a significant goal of the group has been the foundation of an Islamic state. Specifically, ISIL has sought to establish itself as a Caliphate, an Islamic state led by a group of religious authorities under a supreme leader—the Caliph—who is believed to be the successor to Muhammad.

and so on. in other words the organisation that became the islamic state was fighting US and coalition forces in iraq from the invasion onwards.

thanks for playing, better luck next time.

[Hauldren Collider]

The Palestinians should hold a referendum and maybe Putin will go in and liberate them too.

They did, and swiftly elected Hamas.

[Hauldren Collider]

Why do you think Syria was destabilized in the first place?
To curb Russia's stronghold there and facilitate Israel.

This is so bonkers. For starters, Israel would rather have assad than any passenger in the Syrian opposition clown car. Or ****ing ISIS, for that matter. And second, if Israel really wanted Assad gone that badly, they could probably roll over all of Syria--even pre-civil war Syria--at any time with ease.

[kentonio]

This is so bonkers. For starters, Israel would rather have assad than any passenger in the Syrian opposition clown car. Or ****ing ISIS, for that matter. And second, if Israel really wanted Assad gone that badly, they could probably roll over all of Syria--even pre-civil war Syria--at any time with ease.

No they couldn't. Invading Syria would have resulted in an absolute bloodbath, which is why they weren't stupid enough to do it. It would also have led to attacks from all sorts of directions against Israel. Look at how 'easy' Israels last intervention into Lebanon was, and then remind yourself that Syria were the ones with a proper army.