No Wonder Libs Are Upset - The Surge Is Working

[maineman]

RSR... when will you quit running?

 

[maineman]

Come on RSR...show me in the link you posted how the American death toll is 60% less because of the surge.

http://icasualties.org/oif/

 

[Superlative]

Youve been posting this long and you havent noticed that RSR wont respond when he cant call you names and label you? backing it up with Right wing propaganda.

 

[maineman]

I just love to keep the thread he started and now runs away from up on the first page of the leaderboard!

 

[actsnoblemartin]

where did you find that page?. It seems preety accurate to me, and im not supposed to agree with you lol.

So president maineman, can u refresh my memory about what u would do about iraq, and then, since you are a military veteran.

Any thought on china?, they could be threat to us right?, and north korea, and any other political ideas, you'd like to share with the group

 

[maineman]

where did you find that page?. It seems preety accurate to me, and im not supposed to agree with you lol.

So president maineman, can u refresh my memory about what u would do about iraq, and then, since you are a military veteran.

Any thought on china?, they could be threat to us right?, and north korea, and any other political ideas, you'd like to share with the group

where did I find that page? I asked RSR to provide me some proof that our casualties had dropped by 60% because of the surge and HE posted it. He's been running away from it ever since.

I would give the Iraqis a date certain when America would be gone...and between now and then I would redeploy to trade routes along the border to help interdict the flow of munitions and men into the fight....

I would then start fighting the war against islamic extremists that we abandoned at Tora Bora years ago.

China? We should continue to encourage their movement toward capitalism... and we should continue to trade with them....

North Korea? I think we need to continue to apply as much pressure as we can through as many different diplomatic channels as possible to get them to behave....

When you think of it: Bush used to rail about the axis of evil - Iraq, Iran and Norht Korea...and then he picked the one who was the LEAST threat to America and invaded it....and in so doing allowed the other two to get even more threatening.... another reason why the Iraq war is the most idiotic, dangerous, and counterproductive foreign policy blunder in our country's history.

 

[red states rule]

Is surge working? US commanders hail fall in Baghdad killings
Six weeks on, and America's bid to quell the insurgency in the capital is showing signs of success. But violence throughout Iraq is as bad as ever. Raymond Whitaker and Rupert Cornwell report
Published: 01 April 2007
US military commanders in Iraq have accused insurgents of using children in suicide bombings and staging poison gas attacks in a campaign to undermine the month-old security "surge" in Baghdad and Anbar province.

The clampdown in the capital is credited with bringing a sharp reduction in civilian deaths in recent weeks, even though the number of attacks has remained fairly constant. "There are tanks and Humvees on every street corner," said an independent observer who returned from Baghdad last week. "There is a real change of atmosphere from earlier this year, before the operation began." According to David Kilcullen, senior counter-insurgency adviser to General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, heightened security has forced suicide bombers to detonate their devices at checkpoints well away from targets such as markets and other public gatherings, "killing far fewer people than intended, and far fewer than in similar attacks last year".

Colonel Kilcullen, an Australian former special forces officer, added that several bombs failed to explode, "showing a loss of skill as key bomb-makers are taken off the streets". Other reports show a steep decline in the number of bodies found dumped overnight, indicating that the "surge" is curbing the activities of death squads.

Civilian deaths in Baghdad were at record levels in the final months of last year, and remained high in January. Then, the start of the "surge" around 20 February saw the number of deaths fall in that month by more than two thirds, to 446. But the difficulty of maintaining the improvement was shown by events in March. Another reduction in deaths seemed on the cards until last Thursday, when two suicide attackers wearing explosives vests blew themselves up in a market in the mainly Shia Shaab district, killing nearly 80 people.

Though counter-insurgency officials point out that suicide bombers are increasingly being forced by the security measures to attack their targets on foot rather than in vehicles, and that it will never be possible to prevent all bombings until the populace has been won over by follow-up measures, the dramatic loss of life is still a setback. Yesterday a car bomb killed another five people outside the Sadrayn hospital in the sensitive area of Sadr City, the Shia stronghold in Baghdad.

So far directors of the "surge" have managed to steer a course between Shia and Sunni suspicions. The operation began with heavy fighting in Doura, a heavily Sunni area in the south of the city, followed by clashes in the mixed Haifa Street district. Early this month, American and Iraqi forces moved into Sadr City without resistance from the Mehdi Army of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The onus is now on them, however, to show that they can prevent attacks by Sunni insurgents.

On Friday Nasser al-Rubaie, parliamentary spokesman for Mr Sadr's bloc, gave crucial support for the operation, saying "there is no alternative ... except anarchy". But those seeking to provoke anarchy are hitting back. The crackdown in Baghdad is driving violence into other areas, with the US military admitting last week that suicide and car bomb attacks in the whole of Iraq had jumped 30 per cent since the operation began.

Al-Qa'ida in Iraq is accused of involvement in a spate of bombings around Ramadi and Fallujah which have released chlorine gas, while a Pentagon spokesman, Major General Michael Barbero, pointed to two recent suicide attacks using children. In one, a car was allowed through a checkpoint because there were two small children on the back seat. The attackers later abandoned the car, allowing it to blow up with the children still inside.

More recently, an Iraqi police convoy was pursuing a suspicious vehicle in Anbar province. As they passed a 12-to-14 year old boy riding a bicycle, a bomb in his backpack exploded. "These acts - the use of poison gas and the use of children as weapons - are unacceptable in any civilised society and demonstrate the truly dishonourable nature of this enemy," Gen Barbero said.

Col Kilcullen argued that attacks by Sunnis against members of their own community, including the first use of poison gas in Iraq since Saddam Hussein killed thousands of Kurds in Halabja in 1988, showed "an incredible level of desperation". They were "own goals" which had contributed to a major shift in Anbar province, where he said only one out of 18 major tribes supported the Iraqi government a year ago. "Today 14 out of the 18 tribes are actively securing their people, providing recruits to the Iraqi police and hunting down al-Qa'ida."

But Gen Petraeus and his advisers emphasise that their strategy, with the troop "surge" only due to be complete by the end of June, will take time - possibly years - to achieve results. President George Bush's beleaguered administration in Washington needs dramatic success much more quickly.

TV news bulletins show daily rocket attacks on the supposedly secure Green Zone in Baghdad, and daily mass suicide bombings. While the capital may be getting marginally safer, all viewers in the US know is that slaughter is continuing on a daily basis in Iraq.

The Senate and House of Representatives have both voted for withdrawal next year as part of a military spending bill. All they have to agree on before sending the bill to Mr Bush is which month. The stage is set for a battle over hearts and minds in Washington which will rival any in Iraq for its influence on what happens to American forces on the ground. Unless the security operation in Baghdad can rescue Mr Bush, those conducting it are unlikely to be given the time they say they need.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2411393.ece#2007-04-01T00:00:04-00:00

 

[maineman]

you've posted those same words written by others already in this thread but continue to avoid addressing the questions that I posed IN MY OWN WORDS, with answers IN YOUR OWN WORDS.

will you be doing that any time soon?

 

[red states rule]

you've posted those same words written by others already in this thread but continue to avoid addressing the questions that I posed ION MY OWN WORDS, with answers IN YOUR OWN WORDS.

will you be doing that any time soon?

You do hate any facts that destroy your rants - don't you?

 

[maineman]

You do hate any facts that destroy your rants - don't you?

I posted numbers from the DoD that show that we have not seen a 60% decrease in casualties.

Those numbers came from the webpage YOU posted when asked to provide proof of your claims that we had seen such a decrease. Your own webpage disproves your own case.

And you post WORDS from other people...I POST FACTUAL NUMBERS verified by the Department of Defense. It seems to me that you are the one who HATES to deal with your own webpage!

 

[red states rule]

I posted numbers from the DoD that show that we have not seen a 60% decrease in casualties.

Those numbers came from the webpage YOU posted when asked to provide proof of your claims that we had seen such a decrease. Your own webpage disproves your own case.

And you post WORDS from other people...I POST FACTUAL NUMBERS verified by the Department of Defense. It seems to me that you are the one who HATES to deal with your own webpage!

This from the man who tries to say libs are not raising taxes despite all the sources I post to the contrary

 

[maineman]

here are the FACTS.... PLEASE address them!

and again.... the reason I am hanging around this particular thread is to TRY to get RSR to explain to me how the DoD can report a steady stream of American casualties but HE can claim that we have seen a 60% reduction because of the surge.

I understand that pumping a bunch of troops into Baghdad has caused the insurgents to take their killing outside of town, but that does not mean that it "went away" it just meant that the insurgents figured out where our troop concentrations WEREN'T and took the fight to us there.

RSR was the one who posted this website:

http://icasualties.org/oif/

THAT website shows the DoD confirmed casualty figures for the Iraq war.

THAT website shows the following monthly casualty figures for the past year:

4/06 76
5/06 69
6/06 61
7/06 43
8/06 65
9/06 72
10/06 106
11/06 70
12/06 112
1/07 83
2/07 80
3/07 81
4/07 18 already this month in only five days!

PLEASE SHOW ME THE 60% reduction in American casualties that RSR keeps touting. That is all I am asking.

The way I see it, we have seen a steady stream of carnage...and the last six months are nearly 40% WORSE than the previous six months.

Why would anyone think that was GOOD NEWS? I think it is horrible that so many Americans keep dying for a cause that does NOT make us any safer and does NOT advance the war against islamic extremists one iota...and PLEASE remember that it was islamic extremists who attacked US on 9/11 and not one of them was an Iraqi.

 

[red states rule]

Baghdad curfew eased as surge scores successes
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 4, 2007

BAGHDAD -- American and Iraqi soldiers yesterday killed six terrorists and captured another 41 insurgents and death-squad suspects in operations in Baghdad and outside Fallujah, military officials said.
The raids were part of the ongoing enormous effort by U.S. and Iraqi security forces to break the backs of the various armed groups warring in Iraq. The Iraqi government cited the success of that operation yesterday in announcing that the nightly curfew will be pushed back by two hours.
In Baghdad, a U.S. Stryker battalion and an Iraqi battalion fanned out in east Mansour, an area of the city where Shi'ite death squads have been forcing Sunni families out of their homes and replacing them with followers of Muqtada al-Sadr's radical militia.
Directed by Iraqi and American intelligence sources, the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team raided houses overnight, capturing nine members of what they said was a known death-squad cell.
"We think they are responsible for the deaths of 22 Sunnis in this area, as well as [rocket-propelled grenade] and small-arms attacks," said an intelligence officer involved in the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In separate operations, coalition forces killed six al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists and captured 13 other "facilitators" yesterday morning south of Fallujah and in al Qaim, on the border with Syria, the U.S. military said.
The men arrested in Baghdad were swiftly flex-cuffed, blindfolded and hauled off to one of the city's detention centers, where they sat with their backs against a wall waiting to be screened by U.S. medical personnel.
One man came in whimpering and limping on the arms of two American soldiers, his arm and leg bandaged after trying to escape the raid by jumping over several walls. Altogether, 28 detainees were brought into the holding center from raids across Baghdad.
The raids were part of the stepped-up U.S. security presence in Baghdad, but the significance is hard to judge. Although the military actions yesterday interrupted one death squad, the intelligence officer said, the long-term impact could be determined only by "going back to the neighbors and asking them if they feel safer now."
Iraqis say several neighborhoods have improved since the security plan went into operation almost eight weeks ago, an appraisal reflected in pushing back the start of the nightly curfew to 10 p.m.
Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the spokesman for the Baghdad security operation, said the decision was made "because the security situation has improved and people needed more time to go shopping."
However, residents of other neighborhoods say they are seeing a return to sectarian executions.

A father of two girls said he was moving out of his area after he and his family listened from their house as a teenage neighbor pleaded in the street for a Shi'ite death squad to spare his father's life. They killed him anyway.
"The Shi'ite militia are making trouble," said Hassan, who asked that his full name not be used. "They are idiots, stupid." After almost four years of war and a week of finding corpses outside his door, Hassan said, he has to move.
American forces, such as the Stryker brigades operating across the capital and in Diyala province, are working 12- to 14-hour days to clear both Sunni and Shi'ite neighborhoods block by block and house by house.
They also are trying to work side by side with the Iraqi army and police in order for them to establish trust among the local population. Many Iraqis feel the Iraqi forces are corrupt and part of the death squads.
"I myself never trust any Iraqi police and army," said a young woman called Jenan, whose pregnant sister was killed in a terrorist bombing.
Staff Sgt. Brian Long, 31, a fire support specialist for Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment with the Stryker Brigade Combat Team, said it was still "too early to tell if the surge is working."
He thinks progress has been made. "Even coming to an agreement to not kill each other is a step in a positive direction; it has happened in some neighborhoods," he said.
Layla, a Kurdish woman who lives in Baghdad, said shops were beginning to reopen on the shell-pocked main street of her neighborhood, which once bustled with juice stands, coffee shops, hamburger restaurants and small kitchenware stores.
"They attacked [the Zayoona neighborhood] several times in the last three or four months, but now people feel safe enough to open their stores," she said.
It is "not exactly" safe to go to the market, she said. "You don't know who is going to kill you, or kidnap you."
While most Iraqis are withholding judgment on the security surge, a cross-section of women and men said the U.S. military was the only thing preventing complete chaos.
"If they retreat and leave everything to the Iraqis, at that time the civil war in Iraq will start," Hassan said.

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20070404-121156-4055r_page2.htm

 

[red states rule]

Resilient Iraqis ask what civil war?

DESPITE sectarian slaughter, ethnic cleansing and suicide bombs, an opinion poll conducted on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq has found a striking resilience and optimism among the inhabitants.

The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, shows that by a majority of two to one, Iraqis prefer the current leadership to Saddam Hussein’s regime, regardless of the security crisis and a lack of public services.

The survey, published today, also reveals that contrary to the views of many western analysts, most Iraqis do not believe they are embroiled in a civil war.

Officials in Washington and London are likely to be buoyed by the poll conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), a respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18.
The 400 interviewers who fanned out across Iraq last month found that the sense of security felt by Baghdad residents had significantly improved since polling carried out before the US announced in January that it was sending in a “surge” of more than 20,000 extra troops.

The poll highlights the impact the sectarian violence has had. Some 26% of Iraqis - 15% of Sunnis and 34% of Shi’ites - have suffered the murder of a family member. Kidnapping has also played a terrifying role: 14% have had a relative, friend or colleague abducted, rising to 33% in Baghdad.

Yet 49% of those questioned preferred life under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, to living under Saddam. Only 26% said things had been better in Saddam’s era, while 16% said the two leaders were as bad as each other and the rest did not know or refused to answer.

Not surprisingly, the divisions in Iraqi society were reflected in statistics — Sunnis were more likely to back the previous Ba’athist regime (51%) while the Shi’ites (66%) preferred the Maliki government.

Maliki, who derives a significant element of his support from Moqtada al-Sadr, the hardline Shi’ite militant, and his Mahdi army, has begun trying to overcome criticism that his government favours the Shi’ites, going out of his way to be seen with Sunni tribal leaders. He is also under pressure from the US to include more Sunnis in an expected government reshuffle.

The poll suggests a significant increase in support for Maliki. A survey conducted by ORB in September last year found that only 29% of Iraqis had a favourable opinion of the prime minister.

Another surprise was that only 27% believed they were caught up in a civil war. Again, that number divided along religious lines, with 41% of Sunnis believing Iraq was in a civil war, compared with only 15% of Shi’ites.

The survey is a rare snapshot of Iraqi opinion because of the difficulty of working in the country, with the exception of Kurdish areas which are run as an essentially autonomous province.

Most international organisations have pulled out of Iraq and diplomats are mostly holed-up in the Green Zone. The unexpected degree of optimism may signal a groundswell of hope at signs the American “surge” is starting to take effect.

This weekend comments from Baghdad residents reflected the poll’s findings. Many said they were starting to feel more secure on the streets, although horrific bombings have continued. “The Americans have checkpoints and the most important thing is they don’t ask for ID, whether you are Sunni or Shi’ite,” said one resident. “There are no more fake checkpoints so you don’t need to be scared.”

The inhabitants of a northern Baghdad district were heartened to see on the concrete blocks protecting an Iraqi army checkpoint the lettering: “Down, down with the militias, we are fighting for the sake of Iraq.”

It would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago. Residents said they noted that armed militias were off the streets.

One question showed the sharp divide in attitudes towards the continued presence of foreign troops in Iraq. Some 53% of Iraqis nationwide agree that the security situation will improve in the weeks after a withdrawal by international forces, while only 26% think it will get worse.

“We’ve been polling in Iraq since 2005 and the finding that most surprised us was how many Iraqis expressed support for the present government,” said Johnny Heald, managing director of ORB. “Given the level of violence in Iraq, it shows an unexpected level of optimism.”

Despite the sectarian divide, 64% of Iraqis still want to see a united Iraq under a central national government.

One statistic that bodes ill for Iraq’s future is the number who have fled the country, many of them middle-class professionals. Baghdad has been hard hit by the brain drain — 35% said a family member had left the country.

Additional reporting: Ali Rifat

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1530526.e

 

[Bullypulpit]

Ya know, both the Johnson and Nixon administrations had the Pentagon publish inflated body counts during the Vietnam war to try and paint a rosier picture of the situation than it actually was. The current body counts, absent independent verification, are a similar attempt by the Bush administration to try and put a shine on the turd that is the occupation of Iraq.

 

[maineman]

I post cold hard facts....

RSR ignores those facts and posts other people's words.

we report. you decide.

 

[red states rule]

I post cold hard facts....

RSR ignores those facts and posts other people's words.

we report. you decide.

I knew you would ignore the poll showing the people of Iraq did not believe they were in a civil war

 

[red states rule]

Another example of the biased reporting from Iraq - this time exposed


America's Broken-Down Media
By Ray Robison

According to Mark Thompson, writer for Time magazine, America's army is broken. While it can not be argued that the military can possibly maintain the same state of readiness in war time as it does in peace time, broken has a certain specific ring to it: incapable, demoralized and poorly trained.

Mr. Thompson begins the article, - featured on the Drudge Report - with the story of Private Matthew Zeimer. Brave PVT Zeimer died within hours of his arrival at a Forward Operating Base in Iraq. Thompson describes PVT Zeimer's training before going on to make the case that the surge cut the young Private's training short. In Mr. Thompson's recounting of PVT Zeimer's tale, he essentially was killed because he had insufficient training.

If Zeimer's combat career was brief, so was his training. He enlisted last June at age 17, three weeks after graduating from Dawson County High School in eastern Montana. After finishing nine weeks of basic training and additional preparation in infantry tactics in Oklahoma, he arrived at Fort Stewart, Ga., in early December. But Zeimer had missed the intense four-week pre-Iraq training-a taste of what troops will face in combat-that his 1st Brigade comrades got at their home post in October. Instead, Zeimer and about 140 other members of the 4,000-strong brigade got a cut-rate, 10-day course on weapon use, first aid and Iraqi culture. That's the same length as the course that teaches soldiers assigned to generals' household staffs the finer points of table service.
Mr. Thompson finds confirmation from Congressman Murtha:


The truncated training-the rush to get underprepared troops to the war zone-"is absolutely unacceptable," says Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and opponent of the war who chairs the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. A decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam, Murtha is experiencing a sense of déjà vu. "The readiness of the Army's ground forces is as bad as it was right after Vietnam."

Sounds like a pretty solid case doesn't it? But something just didn't sit right with me. I immediately knew this wasn't the full story. So I used a journalistic research tool, possibly unavailable to Time, called Google.

You see, this article makes the brave young Matthew Zeimer sound like an infantry soldier. Infantry soldiers go to the Infantry Training Brigade for 14 weeks of intense training after completing basic training. How can it be he didn't go? Is the army so bad off infantry soldiers don't go to Advanced Infantry Training anymore?

In my research, I found this article "Soldier's last days at home memorable" at the Billings Gazette. The article tells the story of the brave Private's short military career as told by his family and friends.

Matthew had come home on leave Nov. 8, after more than five months of basic training
Five months of basic training? What this article means is that he did nine weeks of Basic Training, which every soldier does, and then went for three more months of Advanced Individual Training in which a soldier trains on their MOS (Military Occupational Skill). About.com explains the process well:


Individuals who enlist under the 13X Infantry option attend Field Artillery OSUT (One Station Unit Training), which combines Army Basic Training and Field Artillery AIT (Advanced Individual Training), all in one course.

But most civilians just think of it all as basic training. The point being, this is three more months of a 24 hour a day resident course, tough as nails training that Mr. Thompson has neglected to mention. Three months is a significant amount of training.

And it doesn't stop there. According to the Billings Gazette:


Staff Sgt. Thad Rule, with the U.S. Army Recruiting Office in Glendive, said Matt joined the Future Soldier Program at the start of his senior year of high school, shortly after he turned 17. He spent nearly 10 months learning some of the basics about the Army, preparing him for his training.

Rule said Matt "wanted to do a combat job" and couldn't wait to join the Army. To speed things up, he opted to undergo artillery support training rather than going into the infantry, a move that got him into the Army a month earlier.


Not only did PVT Zeimer do three more months of training than Thompson lets on, he spent ten months of training before he even went in the army. While this certainly does not equate to training in an active duty setting, it is a training opportunity that most soldiers don't get. In real terms, this brave young man was ahead of the training that a typical artillery junior enlisted soldier received when I was an artillery officer in the mid-90s under President Clinton.

So was this truncated training as Murtha called it effective? Was he really ready? The Gazette goes on:


Matt was 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighed maybe 175 pounds when he went in for basic training.

"The kid came back and he was fit," Rule said. "I'd say his confidence was the big thing."

Tessa Hopper, Matt's former girlfriend, noted the same thing when she spoke Sunday evening during a wake service for Matt.

"He was proud as a peacock when he came home for the holidays," she said.
Damon noticed it, too. Matt had always liked to exercise, he said, but he got in excellent shape during basic training.

"He loved the way he looked when he came home from basic," Damon said.


So according to PVT Zeimer's loved ones, he was fit, proud, motivated and anything but broken-down. He was a soldier damn it! Not a victim. Not a political talking point.

Mr. Thompson also tells us:


The Army and the White House insist the abbreviated training was adequate. "They can get desert training elsewhere," spokesman Tony Snow said Feb. 28, "like in Iraq." But outside military experts and Zeimer's mother disagree. The Army's rush to carry out President George W. Bush's order to send thousands of additional troops more quickly to Iraq is forcing two of the five new brigades bound for the war to skip standard training at Fort Irwin, Calif. These soldiers aren't getting the benefit of participating in war games on the wide Mojave Desert, where gun-jamming sand and faux insurgents closely resemble conditions in Iraq.

Thompson tells us that the army callously failed to train the young private in desert warfare (which is not a deployment requirement for US Army soldiers anyway). His writing certainly makes Tony Snow appear flippant about the issue. But we learn this from the Billings Gazette:


After leaving the U.S. on Jan. 13, Damon said, Matt went to Kuwait for additional training before shipping out to Iraq on Jan. 25.

Yet more training? Yes, and it was in the desert just like Tony Snow indicated. But what about that training in Fort Irwin at the National Training Center (NTC) that Mr. Thompson referred to in his article? Would that have helped the brave Private? You bet. More training is always better. But at some point the training stops when the fighting starts (actually, it continues even in combat, but not at a training facility). And a better understanding of what the NTC training mission is makes this clear:


NTC MISSION

Provide tough, realistic joint and combined arms training

Focus at the battalion task force and brigade levels

Assist commanders in developing trained, competent leaders and soldiers

Identify unit training deficiencies, provide feedback to improve the force and prepare for success on the future joint battlefield

Provide a venue for transformation

Take care of soldiers, civilians, and family members


Joint, combined, battalion, brigade, these are all keywords which mean that the NTC is first and foremost a unit trainer. The individual soldier goes to NTC more by providence than by design. Nobody keeps track of your NTC rotations. It is not a training requirement for individual readiness. An individual unit may not be scheduled for rotation to the NTC for as long as two years. It is one facility and there are many brigades. The NTC is not and has never been a requirement for individual deployment.

What happens at NTC? A unit rotation lasts four weeks. The unit typically spends the first week in preparation and the last week in recovery. That means that the unit spends two weeks "in the box". While the training is valuable, and is the best two weeks of training a unit can get in the army, it is only two weeks after all.

While it certainly increases the skills of the individual soldier, you don't have to send a soldier to brigade level training to learn how to clean the sand out of your weapon as Mr. Thompson laments. And dealing with civilians on the battlefield can be taught anywhere.

Mr. Thompson's article also states:


Under cover of darkness, Sunni insurgents were attacking his new post from nearby buildings. Amid the smoke, noise and confusion, a blast suddenly ripped through the 3-ft. concrete wall shielding Zeimer and a fellow soldier, killing them both.

What Mr. Thompson doesn't tell the reader is than the soldier that was killed with PVT Zeimer was "Spc. Alan E. McPeek, a 20-year-old who had been in Iraq for 14 months" according to the Gazette. Of course, it's difficult to make a soldier appear to have died due to lack of training when the soldier who died next to him was a 14 month combat veteran, isn't it?

As disgusted as I am by the absolutely misleading nature of Mr. Thompson's article and how it affects the general public's perceptions, I am far more sickened by these vultures not explaining to the families of men like PVT Zeimer that their son was a hero, not a victim to be used in creating a political talking point for shoddy journalists and opportunist politicians. Army officials should explain what the standards of deployment training are to the families of our brave soldiers before rotten tomatoes like these convince them that heroes like Matthew died for lack of training.

God bless you Private Zeimer.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/americas_brokendown_media_1.html

 

[maineman]

I knew you would ignore the poll showing the people of Iraq did not believe they were in a civil war

when will you show me the link that backs up your claim that the "citizens of Baghdad" were the ones being polled?

When will you ever address the fact that the casualty figures from the DoD - which are in a link that YOU provided - clearly show that we have not seen a 60% reduction in American casualties because of the "surge" as you incorrectly claim?

 

[red states rule]

when will you show me the link that backs up your claim that the "citizens of Baghdad" were the ones being polled?

When will you ever address the fact that the casualty figures from the DoD - which are in a link that YOU provided - clearly show that we have not seen a 60% reduction in American casualties because of the surge?

Much like on the tax increase thread - you will ignore the good news and postive news from Iraq

Libs are not only consumed with doom ad gloom but also hate and rage for outlets that report the good news