RE: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,145237,00.html

hmmm so now the surge is not working

Let's get a real effort going. I know the Republican members will listen and act on what you have to say, so let's flood them all.

Write Senators and Congresmen and get a level playing field for all you who are deployed. No "sanctuaries," no penalties or scanctions for "truely colateral damage or non-combatant death or injuries," and anything that moves on the Iranian or Syrian boarders is free fire zone. Anyone caught with anything beyond an AK47 either dies or goes to lockup. I know, I'm a bad person a baby killer from Vietnam. I'm just tired of seeing casualties that should be charged to our "Rules of Engagement" people.

If our experience in Viet Nam showed us anything, its that body counts are a HORRIBLE metric for measuring progress in a low-intensity counter-insurgency/police action.

Pro or Con, its a bad metric, one that the current admin and some war protestors seem to be all too fascinated with....

Case in point: the talking point, gleefully regurigitated by fox news et al. that 'only' 78 americans were killed in July.

Weeell, if you want to boil human lives down to statics (not saying you should), it goes down as the worst July ever... (the heat gets to the enemy too, a quiet Ramadan would be more impressive)

Its all pointless, as I said this is a counter-insurgency police action, not linear combat, which history shows boils down to a test of commitment and will.
Without:
A) resorting to ethinc cleansing and/or genocide OR
B) the establishment viable domestic source of governmental structure (providing infrastructure and law and order)

The 'away team' is destined to lose...

Remember that line from We were Soldiers?

Mcnamara: were gonna run the bastards home!
Col. Moore: Sir, they are home...

quote:

Originally posted by schmiddc:
Case in point: the talking point, gleefully regurigitated by fox news et al. that 'only' 78 americans were killed in July.

Compared to the talking point, gleefully regurgitated by CNN, MSNBC, Olberman, et al. that (insert number) have died in a losing war. I would prefer the fox talking points thank you very much.

Total killed in Iraq through Aug 12, 2007 3,728

Total wounded in Iraq through Aug 12, 2007 27,004

A check of the statistics indicates that, over the peried of the hostilities in Iraq, casualties have increased and decreased from month to month. I don't believe that a
decrease in any one month indicates any trend nor does it indicate that we are "winning".

I think that this unfortunate war has cost the US much. We have the casualties indicted
above -- the dead, of course, have sacrificed their lives already while many of the wounded
will spend the rest of their lives in military or veterans hospitals and others will struggle
for the remainder of their lives with terrible infirmities, both physical and mental. The war has cost the US billions and billions of dollars already and we are still counting. It has lost the US its moral position in the world; it has cost the US by dissipitating our military
strength in this one area thereby depleting our ability to project power in other areas of interest to us; it has alienated our major allies. The war in Iraq has cost much and we have gained nothing.

We are in a quagmire up to our necks and I don't think that the country fully realizes it as yet.

quote:

I would prefer the fox talking points thank you very much.

Whatever gets you through the night.
I would prefer definable goals, and metrics to measure our, and most importantly the iraqi government's, progress towards those definable goals.

You know; actual accountability versus chickenhawk swagger, pompus rhetoric, and invective...

Even the most willfully ignorant of us can only wade through broken bits of egg shell for so long until we come to the sober realization that humpty dumpty just has'nt been put back together again...

The admin has been doing a great job wriggling off the accountability hook for the last 4 years, but the public's patience is starting to run out...

The media needs to stop this game of "oh more soldiers died, that means it's not working" crap. Body counts don't mean a damn thing. You know, just once I would like to see a body count comparison of how many of our troops have died versus how many insurgents our guys and gals have killed... oh but the media wouldn't want to show that would they? That would discredit their claim of nothing working...

A news station is a news station. They're all "reporters" and "journalists" and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM stretch the truth and embellish the story to make it sell. The media is a business and their business is ratings. It doesn't matter what channel you watch, they're all a bunch of jerks.

quote:

Originally posted by schmiddc:

quote:

I would prefer the fox talking points thank you very much.

Whatever gets you through the night.
I would prefer definable goals, and metrics to measure our, and most importantly the iraqi government's, progress towards those definable goals.

You know; actual accountability versus chickenhawk swagger, pompus rhetoric, and invective...

Even the most willfully ignorant of us can only wade through broken bits of egg shell for so long until we come to the sober realization that humpty dumpty just has'nt been put back together again...

The admin has been doing a great job wriggling off the accountability hook for the last 4 years, but the public's patience is starting to run out...

I agreed with what you said, but you lost me when you said Fox talking points. Do you believe that Fox is the only news channel that has a point of view? You don't think that CNN and their ilk spins things to sway public opinion? Do you think the public's patience would be running out if the majority of the news was positive? I think that public opinion would be much better.

quote:

You know, just once I would like to see a body count comparison of how many of our troops have died versus how many insurgents our guys and gals have killed

That is vintage LBJ/Westmoreland talk. Again, body counts are bad way to measure the progress in a counter insurgency/police action...

That goes for lefties putting 3600 pairs of boots on the whitehouse sidewalk or righties crowing because we 'only' averaged slightly more than 2 servicemen dead per day last month...

quote:

Do you believe that Fox is the only news channel that has a point of view? You don't think that CNN and their ilk spins things to sway public opinion?

Oh absolutely I do, nobody is pure as wind driven snow on that issue.
I was just making the observation that this particular talking point, i.e that the fact that only 72 soldiers died last month is an indication that the surge is 'working', was being worked by the right-wing echo chamber ad naseum...

To tell if the surge is truelly accomplishing its goal we need to define metrics to measure the progress of Iraqi Infrastructure, Iraqi Social Services, Idenpendent Iraqi law and order, etc.

We then need to measure progress towards those goals...
If everything is going so well, the facts will bear it out. If not? well they will bear that out too...

So far we haven't gotten this proof, just rhetoric and obfuscation, I wish i thought it would change, but I doubt it

quote:

Originally posted by schmiddc:

quote:

You know, just once I would like to see a body count comparison of how many of our troops have died versus how many insurgents our guys and gals have killed

That is vintage LBJ/Westmoreland talk. Again, body counts are bad way to measure the progress in a counter insurgency/police action...

That goes for lefties putting 3600 pairs of boots on the whitehouse sidewalk or righties crowing because we 'only' averaged slightly more than 2 servicemen dead per day last month...

And if you would have read what I said just before what you quoted you would see that I agree with you. Body counts shouldn't matter one bit.

quote:

Originally posted by armywifefigueroa:
You know, just once I would like to see a body count comparison of how many of our troops have died versus how many insurgents our guys and gals have killed...

Based on these numbers (see links below), US troops are killing about 4 "insurgents" for every 1 US troop killed.

That number seems low to me.

I would double that estimate (8 to 1).

For some perspective, the US military had about a 20 to 1 "kill ratio" during the Vietnam War.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_insurgents_killed_in_Iraq

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003

quote:

That number seems low to me.

I would double that estimate (8 to 1).

If it was, it would be about the first time in record history that was so. Compare the claims of enemy kills against the actual number of aircraft destroyed, for example.

Insurgents don't come equipped with ID sprayed on their heads in Day-Glo green ... all we can count are the dead. I don't know which way the estimates go ... whether it is high or low. But it is a very good idea not to use enemy dead as a metric, because quotas would follow close on the heels of any such decision, and creative measures by a commander with a fitrep next month and a shortfall in numbers getting creative shortly after that. We need that like another war.

I need to revise my earlier "kill ratio" estimates.

I completely forgot that US troops in Iraq are fighting alongside some of the "natives" (as they did in Vietnam) so you would have to include Iraqi military and police deaths along with US deaths when figuring out the "kill ratios".

About 7300 Iraqi security forces have been killed in fighting so we're talking a total of about 11,000 "good guy" deaths and, in my own estimate, about 24,000 "bad guy" deaths.

A little better than 2 to 1 kill ratio.

http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx



As far as Vietnam goes, I forgot to include ARVN casualties.

The ARVN lost about 220,000 in fighting the NVA/VC.

With about 50,000 US troops KIA that would be about 270,000 total deaths (for "our side") compared to about 1,000,000 deaths for the NVA/VC.

About a 4 to 1 "kill ratio".

http://www.ktroop.com/HonorRoll/casualty.pdf


Of course, as somebody mentioned earlier, the accuracy of body counts are highly questionable and their usefulness in assertaining military "success" is highly debatable.

quote:

Originally posted by oldmole:

quote:

That number seems low to me.

I would double that estimate (8 to 1).

If it was, it would be about the first time in record history that was so. Compare the claims of enemy kills against the actual number of aircraft destroyed, for example.

Insurgents don't come equipped with ID sprayed on their heads in Day-Glo green ... all we can count are the dead. I don't know which way the estimates go ... whether it is high or low. But it is a very good idea not to use enemy dead as a metric, because quotas would follow close on the heels of any such decision, and creative measures by a commander with a fitrep next month and a shortfall in numbers getting creative shortly after that. We need that like another war.

OM,

I agree.

See my follow up post.

quote:

Originally posted by schmiddc:

quote:

You know, just once I would like to see a body count comparison of how many of our troops have died versus how many insurgents our guys and gals have killed

That is vintage LBJ/Westmoreland talk. Again, body counts are bad way to measure the progress in a counter insurgency/police action...

That goes for lefties putting 3600 pairs of boots on the whitehouse sidewalk or righties crowing because we 'only' averaged slightly more than 2 servicemen dead per day last month...

quote:

Do you believe that Fox is the only news channel that has a point of view? You don't think that CNN and their ilk spins things to sway public opinion?

Oh absolutely I do, nobody is pure as wind driven snow on that issue.
I was just making the observation that this particular talking point, i.e that the fact that only 72 soldiers died last month is an indication that the surge is 'working', was being worked by the right-wing echo chamber ad naseum...

To tell if the surge is truelly accomplishing its goal we need to define metrics to measure the progress of Iraqi Infrastructure, Iraqi Social Services, Idenpendent Iraqi law and order, etc.

We then need to measure progress towards those goals...
If everything is going so well, the facts will bear it out. If not? well they will bear that out too...

So far we haven't gotten this proof, just rhetoric and obfuscation, I wish i thought it would change, but I doubt it