Five more soldiers died today ...

soldiers died today. just one day closer to "mission accomplished."

let's not forget good americans are dying every day.

 

Nothing but baiting.

 

TBF, I think you're probably correct in that you believe Tom is trying to lure people into a discussion here. I can't imagine, however, why you would object to it. Are you saying that the death of soldiers shouldn't stir emotions?

 

I personally have no problem with anyone starting a thread regarding the number of Americans who died in the fighting on a particular day.

However, I wonder about the ulterior motives present within TP's mind in his starting this thread.

 

chick·en·shit (ch?k'?n-sh?t') Vulgar Slang.

adj.

Contemptibly unimportant; petty.

Cowardly; afraid.

 

And we're off!

 

I guess you can say Tom is a master baiter

 

I said my piece, and now I'm done.

*Holding up hands, yelling, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Capt. David Rozelle not long ago. Capt. Rozelle is an amputee. A land mine blew off part of his left leg. I met him at the finish line of a race. Today, Capt. Rozelle works at Walter Reed, where he's leading a project that will improve medical care for other amputees. Such a great man, and all I could think was how much richer the world is for having men like him and how much we would have lost if he hadn't survived.

I watched the recent tribute to Walter Cronkite. They showed him covering wars, and I thought then about how the world might never have known Walter Cronkite.

To me, those thoughts do two things. First, they make this current war more sobering, as the numbers become faces and the losses become not just losses for families, but for our world. Every one of those deaths is the death of someone who was going to lead a baseball team to a city championship or teach a student to value education or save a child from a burning house.

What also comes to mind is how trivial it is to put these numbers on lives. It's as if 3,561 is somehow that much worse than 3,560. And, it is worse, by one human life. But it comes off, to me, as though we're counting dollars rather than humans when they report these numbers.

In any case, what the news of five more dead does is bring us closer to whatever number it is that alters our view of this war. For me, it was the first death. Perhaps it's 10,000 that would bother some folks. I hope we never see that number, but we'll likely be halfway there by next summer.

 

Good post, Hein. It is indeed sobering once you start putting names, faces and families to the numbers.

I remember, less than a year after the war started, talking to a local soldier who'd gotten wounded by a car bomb. It wasn't serious and he was getting ready to head back to Iraq for another tour.

As we're talking I asked him how he was sleeping while back home in the states. He said, "I have to turn on a war movie, with lots of guns and explosions, just so I can sleep. If I can't hear those noises, I can't go to sleep."

It was quiet after he said that and his mother was sobbing silently.


That being said, I too fear that we'll have to hit some magic number before the war becomes so unpalatable that they FORCE it to end.

 

Word of warning: Nixon hung his '68 campaign on an anti-war tip and the war lasted another 7 years.

Don't believe one word Hillary or Obama or Fred Thompson says.

 

So then who do we believe, Bat?
Seriously. Who's going to end this clusterfuck unless we do?