Costof the Iraq War.
- Thread starter Tom-D
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EdFred
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I hope, for a long time. I supply to a BIG defense contractor, and their numbers are huge since Iraq began. Big numbers for them equals big numbers for me. Their numbers have increase 5.5 times what they were before the war.
woodstock
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have we really reached 2500?
Tom-D
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N2212R said:
I work for DOD, we have been told to stop production of engines not needed for direct support of the sandbox, because 75% of DOD budget is allocated to the ARMY.
To me this is a symptom of the Military being out of money.
wsuffa
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NC19143 said:
Or recognition that this is going to be a long war, and not just in the sandbox.
The furor over the cartoons, I am afraid, is just a small sample of what we'll see in the future.
Re: Cost of the Iraq War.
the question for me has always been, "for whose benefit should OUR tax dollars be spent?".
quite frankly, i don't see much return on my $$ for all this sturm und drang in the middle east. oil is a good deal more expensive than before we invaded iraq and a lot more of the wrong people are dead. osama is still on the loose and the fundamentalists now have a nifty training/recruiting camp in iraq.
so where's the benefit, folks? yeah, saddam's in jail; BFD. his antics never personally affected me, sfaik.
i'm thinking we should've spent all these billions on education, infrastructure and jobs IN THIS COUNTRY, not some dusty 3rd world hell-hole where they don't like us and never have.
maybe when there are no more hungry, uneducated children in our country then we can throw largess at some other unfortunates, hopefully those who like and respect us.
and, oh by the way, personal aviation in the u.s. is no better off now than before the iraq war. in fact, we're worse off i.e. TFR's, ADIZ, etc.
i say it's time we spend those billions of OUR tax dollars on developing alternative energy resources so that in xx years we can watch with morbid satisfaction as the middle east drowns in their USELESS supplies of crude oil.
just my $.02 worth.
NC19143 said:
the question for me has always been, "for whose benefit should OUR tax dollars be spent?".
quite frankly, i don't see much return on my $$ for all this sturm und drang in the middle east. oil is a good deal more expensive than before we invaded iraq and a lot more of the wrong people are dead. osama is still on the loose and the fundamentalists now have a nifty training/recruiting camp in iraq.
so where's the benefit, folks? yeah, saddam's in jail; BFD. his antics never personally affected me, sfaik.
i'm thinking we should've spent all these billions on education, infrastructure and jobs IN THIS COUNTRY, not some dusty 3rd world hell-hole where they don't like us and never have.
maybe when there are no more hungry, uneducated children in our country then we can throw largess at some other unfortunates, hopefully those who like and respect us.and, oh by the way, personal aviation in the u.s. is no better off now than before the iraq war. in fact, we're worse off i.e. TFR's, ADIZ, etc.
i say it's time we spend those billions of OUR tax dollars on developing alternative energy resources so that in xx years we can watch with morbid satisfaction as the middle east drowns in their USELESS supplies of crude oil.
just my $.02 worth.
astanley
En-Route
wsuffa said:
I wholeheartedly agree Bill, albiet sadly.
I started typing up a long, deep-thought view of the world, but it's just too deep for now. Maybe tonight when I get home... we have to wonder, though, how do we, as a nation, a Free people, live and integrate with a subsection of our world mired by totalitarianism and fundementalism? How do we juxtapose our own internal fundementalist movements with those abroad? Lastly, how do we prostletyze the word of democracy and capitalism while respecting democracy and capitalism when it takes hold? (Al Jazeera comes to mind; the first "free speech" network in the Arab world, which like our media, panders to the "great unwashed masses" with their contrived and heavily biased news reporting)
Sigh.
Cheers,
-Andrew
wsuffa
Touchdown! Greaser!
Andrew,
consider that part of the problem is this: for the last few centuries "wars" have generally been fought between countries, because the people living in each country normally shared enough common values that they bonded.
I think we're entering a different world environment now, one where country governments have less and less influence. It's not even really "tribal". In a sense, I think we may be seeing a shift toward "religion" being the form of ideaology that used to be controlled by governments. It is, almost, like the Crusades and other distant historical times, but not quite.
We really do have a different world, and we should expect a struggle ahead.
JMHO.
consider that part of the problem is this: for the last few centuries "wars" have generally been fought between countries, because the people living in each country normally shared enough common values that they bonded.
I think we're entering a different world environment now, one where country governments have less and less influence. It's not even really "tribal". In a sense, I think we may be seeing a shift toward "religion" being the form of ideaology that used to be controlled by governments. It is, almost, like the Crusades and other distant historical times, but not quite.
We really do have a different world, and we should expect a struggle ahead.
JMHO.
woodstock
Final Approach
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html
an excellent article in the Post.
an excellent article in the Post.
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woodstock said:
Just under 2300 as of today. But would it make a difference? 2500 will just be a day that the press has an extra story to report. Each day, each loss, needs to be equally mourned and remembered.
Brian Austin
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This brings up an interesting point.N2212R said:
If you took 150,000 people and put them elsewhere, how close would the numbers be on a purely statistical basis?
Not discounting the value of their lives at all. Just wondering if, in the long run, did the country's military REALLY see losses that would have been far out of line with peacetime operations?
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Brian Austin said:
The numbers in this war are not really comparable to other wars or even peacetime. One of the huge underreported issues is that due to better, faster field medical care, better equipment the death rate is low compared to the injury rate. We are seeing a huge amount of amputees and brain injuries. The numbers are larger than anything the VA has seen before and is severaly impacting a cash strapped agency.
alaskaflyer
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Brian Austin said:
Yes, the amount of military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan related to accidents, suicides, homicides rather than combat losses as a total percentage of the whole is surprising (to me.)
EdFred
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I don't know if it is accurate or not, and I can't recall where it was from, but peacetime military deaths were not much lower per 1,000 active than they have been during Iraq. They were lower, but from what I recall, there wasn't even a 10% difference. Accident, suicide, etc, all those numbers were pretty much the same, or if I recall, lower during conflict. Of course the combat numbers were higher.
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Everything Offends Me
NC19143 said:
Plain and simple: The expenditure will continue until we have either made the Muslim's stop threatening us, or until we get a Democrat into office, who's shortsightedness will cause us to pull out and leave a mess behind. Just like JFK and his refusal to follow through in Cuba, the next Democrat President will embarrass us again (if the war is still going on).
I'd much rather stop the Muslims, then have to stop a president.
Darrell111
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SkyHog said:
I dont think you can stop Muslims, its pretty clear that their religion and beliefs are so deeply rooted in them they will fight till the end. I mean shoot, they are still protesting those cartoons!!
wbarnhill
Final Approach
Then you'd best be prepared to lose everything, because once you tell the world your decision is to "stop the Muslims", you sound eerily like a man from the 1940s. And at 1.3 billion people, if you decide to follow through with your threat, you look awful worse.SkyHog said:
Sorry, but this war will not be won on sheer brute force as this administration has seen. Once you kill an al Qaeda soldier, the organization now has more propoganda to recruit ten individuals to replace that soldier.
According to the 2001 Patterns of Global Terrorism as released by the State Dept, "I[SIZE=-1]raq provided bases to several terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), and the Abu Nidal organization (ANO)."
Of those organizations, only MEK is known to be currently active in Iraq. However, there are several new factions in Iraq which dwarf those in 2001. ANO only had membership in the 100s. al Qaeda now has membership in Iraq numbering in the 1000s. It is no coincidence that once Saddam was out of power, al Qaeda slipped in through the borders. And the question still remains, if al Qaeda and Saddam were so buddy buddy, why wasn't al Qaeda established in Iraq before the war?
[/SIZE]
Hopefully, for as long as we have to...
There is really no alternative IMO.
There is really no alternative IMO.
astanley
En-Route
N2212R said:
Of course, there are lies, damned lies, and then statistics.
Can you statistically prove that the 250k folks, of the general personality and social types that they are, would still be involved in a similar accident rate?
You can't, each life lost stinks, just like each young (or old) life stateside stinks. It's just a different kind of stink.
Cheers,
-Andrew
wbarnhill
Final Approach
RotaryWingBob said:
I don't know of an alternative either, but I just don't feel that sheer brute force is going to work. There is no government to weaken, no infrastructure to destroy. Bombs and gunfire only add fuel to an already extremely volatile flame. These terrorists become matyrs. How do you win a war when every enemy you kill is replaced by 10 others?
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N2212R said:
Muslims are the dominant religion from the Africa to across southern Asia to the Pacific. How do you propose to do that?
ScottM
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N2212R said:
Mien Gott or somthing like that??
woodstock
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wbarnhill said:
kinda like that guy in the Matrix??
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The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
- Sun Tzu
- Sun Tzu
Richard
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Ack...city life
That is just what the Allied commanders did in the waning days of WWII. The Luftwaffe was still able to get a surprising number of fighters in the air even in those last days and Allied casualties had not decreased as predicted.N2212R said:
The plan was for multiple bombing raids on German towns as a diversion so the Allied fighters (not acting as bomber escorts) could shoot the Luftwaffe out of the air once and for all. The plan was achieved but only because the diversions concentrated the Luftwaffe in a centralized location.
Flanking your enemy is a brilliant tactic. The best way to flank your enemy is to get them all in one place, a place of your choosing. Concentration of firepower, etc.
Fast n' Furious
Line Up and Wait
Uhhh, fellas. Point of strategic and tactical, if not political, reality. We ain't flanking anybody here. We're surrounded. Check your maps. This movement is now three generations deep and growing. Keep your powder dry 'cause this one is long term.
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tsk tsk. political commentary. its over when its over. the pain threshold has to go over the line for one side and then the other side will stop. Unfortunately, they have more will than we do. Your wish will come true william. and we will all be so much better off I am sure.
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Ack...city life
Attrition? But before that is change in ideology. What can be learned can be unlearned.wbarnhill said:
SteveR
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Darrell111 said:I dont think you can stop Muslims, its pretty clear that their religion and beliefs are so deeply rooted in them they will fight till the end. I mean shoot, they are still protesting those cartoons!!
I agree, and it scares me too. What will it take to stop them? They remind me of the Japanese in WWII. The Japanese before WWII thought their Emperor was a descendant of the Sun Goddess, and thought that it was a great honor to die for him. Anything else was dishonorable. Sound familiar? And look at what it took to bring them back to reality. Today they are one of our greatest allies, and enjoy a very high standard of living thanks to our help after the war. Lets hope this time it doesn't have to go that far before they wake up. Many of them are crazy, brainwashed people though...that is for sure.
gkainz
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The answer to that one is in the last chapter of the Book. (at least in my opinion)SteveR said:
Darrell111
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SteveR said:
Most people from the Red forum already know i am not a big fan of Bush.. however i will give him credit on his current initiative for reducing foreign oil. I dont think he or any other president in the near future is going to really do what it takes to really become self sufficient energy wise because of the lobbying power of the oil industry, but it is a start. There are so many other fuel options that could be used instead of oil but of course we all know a sudden change in what we use to fuel our automobiles would create serious financial issues in the US and world because so much of our economy is based on oil.
Our NEED for foreign oil is what entangles us in the Muslims and Middle easterners lives. If we can get out of the region which obviously will take decades we can stop a big part of the problem. Of course there are still many many other reasons they hate us but IMO thats the biggest.
How about other options...
One option that would be so easy to use and can also be used for so many other options cant be used because of perception. Hemp for example can be grown without any THC in it so basically it would be completely safe to grow but we wont because of its association with "weed".
http://www.hemp4fuel.com/nontesters/hemp4fuel/biodiesel.html
woodstock
Final Approach
I was interested to learn we actually get more oil from Canada than the Middle East. can't remember the author's name, will look it up later and repost. (but we gotta reduce ME oil to zippo)
Darrell111
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woodstock said:
That would be interesting to validate. I couldnt imagine that even being remotely possible but hey lifes full of lots of little surprises.
ScottM
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Right you arewoodstock said:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html