The Countervailing Force

September 2008 US Casualties in Iraq

2008-10-05T06:16:00.000-07:00

This may be my last post on this blog. My other site: Global Warming Clearinghouse is taking up most of my time and interest.

Finally, we can see that things may be just about over in Iraq, and we have won. As always from Icasualties.

We had slight up tick in nonhostile deaths due to a helicopter crash and a slight down tick in hostile deaths due to the fighting to remove al Qaeda vestiges from Baghdad and the Diyala hinterlands.

Breaking down the numbers, out of the twenty five September US casualties we have 17 deaths from non-hostile causes, and 8 deaths that were killed in action. Let's hope and pray that the trend continues.

Late on the august Casualties

2008-09-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've had a request for the August casualties. So here goes.

Finally, we can see that things may be just about over in Iraq, and we have won. As always from Icasualties.

We had slight up tick in hostile deaths due to the fighting to remove al Qaeda from the Diyala hinterlands. Breaking down the numbers, out of the twenty three August US casualties we have 11 deaths from non-hostile causes, and 12 deaths that were killed in action. Let's hope and pray that the trend continues.

Gone for a few days!

2008-08-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'll be gone and out of computer services for a few days. So the keys are yours! Be nice to each other, and NO WILD PARTIES. Especially without inviting Ms. CoRev and myself.

July 2008 Casualty Count in Iraq Lowest Since Start of War

2008-07-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

Finally, we can see that things may be just about over in Iraq, and we have won. As always from Icasualties.

Breaking down the numbers, out of the twelve July US casualties we have four deaths from nonhostile causes, and two deaths that occurred in 2007 (and the bodies just recovered), leaving six that were killed in action. Let's hope and pray that the trend continues.

A Report From the Afghan Front? Perhaps!

2008-07-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

This is at the very least an interesting read:

Subject: Rude awakening for us
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:43:52 -0500

Subject: Eloquent U.S. Marine (in a manner of speaking) This is from a Reconnaissance Marine in Afghanistan

It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and>> shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.

I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but them scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.

The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food
and drink water. That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and>> storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the>> coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware, we bash some
heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement.

It's all> about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.

I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit a bloody ear into his face and plunge my nickel> plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me. I'm a romantic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: This country blows, man. It's not even a country. There
are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.

Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu if that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.

I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen and even a
couple of Pushtins for over a month and a half now and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns. Actual, living Huns. They LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do.

They have no respect for anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on each others barbarism.

Cavemen with AK47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky. I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.

Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre.
Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the> word they are looking for is 'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who> create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.

They've spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality o life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.

OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I'm good at it. Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives.

The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control. The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here because you have no idea what we're doing and, really, you don't want to know. We are your military and we are doing what you sent us here to do.

Europe Reports on Obama's Trip

2008-07-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

From one of my favorite sites, EU Referendum, we have this:

Furthermore, when it comes to the crunch all those hysterical groupies are unlikely to be pro-American even if Senator Obama becomes President Obama. And there is the problem of the European Union and the evolving common foreign policy, which cuts across any ideas of a Western alliance. Given the poor knowledge Senator Obama and his campaign have displayed of foreign lands, it is unlikely that they have heard of this particular problem. They'll learn.

Then, of course, we have the London Times editorial:

He ventured forth to bring light to the world
The anointed one's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers...

Read the whole thing. It's hilarious.

What if Obama's Iraq strategy had been followed

2008-07-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

From the NY Post we have this alternative history lesson.

Imagine:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama overflew the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Najaf Monday, where the mass graves for an estimated 240,000 victims of sectarian violence killed since 2007 were visible even from an altitude.

Sen. Obama was on his way to meet with American soldiers completing the US withdrawal from Iraq in Kuwaiti ports. Miles away, Iranian and Saudi delegations were meeting in an emergency summit in Kuwait City in an effort to keep the Iraqi civil war from boiling over into open regional conflict. Both sides have accused the other of providing advanced weaponry and training, while faulting American leaders for the bloody collapse of the Iraqi state.

Fortunately, of course, none of that happened.

But, no one wants to pursue this path to an alternative history. Nope, our MSM prefers the path that allows Obama to say in this interview:

Q: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?

Obama: No. Because, keep in mind that —

Q: You wouldn’t?

Obama: Keep in mind, these kind of hypotheticals are very difficult. You know hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one I just disagreed with.

From here. Now, that's an excellent example of "Cognitive Dissonance" or... sorry, for a second there I forgot he's just another politician. It's just more political speech.

Mid-month review of US causalties in Iraq.

2008-07-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

I don't usually provide a mid-month review, but this month is significant. As of 7/15/2008 we have seven casualties. Two are from 2007 (bodies found of two Missing In Action), three are noncombat deaths, and three are due to enemy action. As always from Icasualties.

State Climatologists Fired for Speaking Truth?

2008-07-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

There are 51 State climatology offices. Not all have State Climatologists. Only Tennessee does not have an office and therfore no official in this capacity. If you are interested in looking at your own state, the information can be found here at The American Association of State Climatologists.

So why have so many been fired? A quick Google search show us that Washington's Mark Albright, Oregon's George Taylor, Delaware's David R. Legates and Virginia's Patrick Michaels have either been fired or threatened of such. That's sixteen percent of the existing State Climatologists. Is it just because they have been politically INcorrect to question the validity of Anthropogenic global Warming (AGW)?

In the late Nineties a survey of the State Climatologists indicated that a majority did not believe. It isn't clear today what percentage might not be beleivers in AGW, but what is clear is few are going to OPENLY admit it if they were skeptical. Would you???

So have we won yet?

2008-07-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

From the Times Online in an article titled: "Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda" we have this.

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

(My emphasis)

I leave you with this comparison of strategies. Consider the results of the traditional strategy as represented in Japan, Germany, S. Korea, etc., and that of Vietnam. How many millions killed after our withdrawal versus when we remained? Just a thought!!!!