Troop levels to be reduced in Iraq

[Soxy]

You may be right about the draft - and I hope you are. But honestly, I am not sure about the Army Times and how it might be spinning the recruiting picture. Honestly, I know nothing about that publication.

 

I'll see if I can dig up the last thing I read on this. The picture painted was fairly bleak - fewer recruits incoming each year since 2003, and the need for more troops growing. But then, if the Army Times is talking about actual versus target, they may be right - maybe the Army has set declining targets. I do not know. I'll see what I can find.

They do appear to be meeting their recruitment targets. But I remember lots of press last year about declining numbers--your thought about lower goals is an interesting one. . .

 

2005 targets, with the notable exception of the Marines it looks like they did decrease goals.

[NorthSideSox72]

They do appear to be meeting their recruitment targets. But I remember lots of press last year about declining numbers--your thought about lower goals is an interesting one. . .

 

2005 targets, with the notable exception of the Marines it looks like they did decrease goals.

So their FY 2006 goal total was 288,497 accessions (whatever that means). For the year before, FY 2005, it was a total of 299,333. They decreased their goals by about 4% YOY.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

So their FY 2006 goal total was 288,497 accessions (whatever that means). For the year before, FY 2005, it was a total of 299,333. They decreased their goals by about 4% YOY.

 

 

accessions = people brought into the services.

 

 

I know the Air Force is in the process of drawing down right now. That might explain the overall reduction in people being brought in.

[NorthSideSox72]

I couldn't find a more recent Iraq thread, so...

 

Update:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061011/ts_nm/iraq_deaths_dc_2

 

Total deaths in Iraq pegged at 655,000 since the start of the war. That is 2.3% of the country's entire population.

 

I realize that some of those deaths were probably deserved. Many, however, were not. Let's not forget that it isn't just American soldiers and Islamic extremists/terrorists/insurgents dying over there.

 

And before you say it Nuke... yeah, that is the toll of war. Innocent lives. But that is exactly my point. Was Saddam worth this? Did Saddam kill even a small fraction of that number? And is BushCo's real mission, to set up an anchorhead (military, political and economic) in the Middle East, really worth this much death? Will the American public think so in 5 years, when Iraq still isn't stable?

 

Because rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq is at least a 10 year effort. I hope everyone realizes that, and realizes the continuing cost in lives and money and political capital that we face. Its a shame we were dragged into this nightmare - and sadly, we still need to see it through. We cannot leave now.

[KipWellsFan]

Iraq is absolute mayhem now.

 

2222 Civilians killed in August and in September 2660 were killed.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...epath=News/News

 

They're totally screwed.

[NorthSideSox72]

As a follow-up, the military seems to now be waking up to that reality:

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/...ll=chi-news-hed

 

Troop levels to be maintained through 2010. Now if they can increase them a bit, I'd be happy.

[Rex Kickass]

I couldn't find a more recent Iraq thread, so...

 

Update:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061011/ts_nm/iraq_deaths_dc_2

 

Total deaths in Iraq pegged at 655,000 since the start of the war. That is 2.3% of the country's entire population.

 

I realize that some of those deaths were probably deserved. Many, however, were not. Let's not forget that it isn't just American soldiers and Islamic extremists/terrorists/insurgents dying over there.

 

And before you say it Nuke... yeah, that is the toll of war. Innocent lives. But that is exactly my point. Was Saddam worth this? Did Saddam kill even a small fraction of that number? And is BushCo's real mission, to set up an anchorhead (military, political and economic) in the Middle East, really worth this much death? Will the American public think so in 5 years, when Iraq still isn't stable?

 

Because rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq is at least a 10 year effort. I hope everyone realizes that, and realizes the continuing cost in lives and money and political capital that we face. Its a shame we were dragged into this nightmare - and sadly, we still need to see it through. We cannot leave now.

 

I heard something the other day that more Iraqis are being killed per day now than under the Saddam Hussein regime when you average the estimates of deaths at his hand over the course of his rule or something like that.

 

This is a messy situation. Messy enough that Rice actually basically told the Iraqi government to get it together or we're out of here this week.

[Soxy]

Iraq is absolute mayhem now.

 

2222 Civilians killed in August and in September 2660 were killed.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...epath=News/News

 

They're totally screwed.

So, every month almost as many Iraqi's are dying as did American's in 9/11.

 

 

 

That's sad.

[Steff]

So are we going to send more over to help out? Nuke, would you be in line to go back?

[NorthSideSox72]

So are we going to send more over to help out? Nuke, would you be in line to go back?

And that right there is the crux, and what makes me sad when I think of the monstrous mistake we made in Iraq. The realities are that it will take 10 years, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, tens of thousands of American and British soldiers' lives, and trillions upon trillions of dollars to build a stable Iraq. And this was all done because the hawks in the current Administration decided it was worth that toll to set up that anchorhead.

 

There is just one problem - the American public has caught on to the fact that they were sold a false bill of goods (saying this was about terrorists or 9/11 or WMD or Saddam, or that it would be no long term commitment). And their reaction is becoming more and more that they do not have the will to put in that price for what it turned out to be. So what happens when the public overwhelmingly says, its time to go? Even though all indications are that leaving will create a power vacuum and leave the region much worse off than before this all started?

 

There is no happy ending to this.

[KipWellsFan]

And that right there is the crux, and what makes me sad when I think of the monstrous mistake we made in Iraq. The realities are that it will take 10 years, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, tens of thousands of American and British soldiers' lives, and trillions upon trillions of dollars to build a stable Iraq. And this was all done because the hawks in the current Administration decided it was worth that toll to set up that anchorhead.

 

There is just one problem - the American public has caught on to the fact that they were sold a false bill of goods (saying this was about terrorists or 9/11 or WMD or Saddam, or that it would be no long term commitment). And their reaction is becoming more and more that they do not have the will to put in that price for what it turned out to be. So what happens when the public overwhelmingly says, its time to go? Even though all indications are that leaving will create a power vacuum and leave the region much worse off than before this all started?

 

There is no happy ending to this.

 

You forgot that the Taliban in Afghanistan is slowly coming back while the US is not paying attention.

[FlaSoxxJim]

And when you read figures like that estimated death toll and figure that there is no possible way to put a positive spin on that, GWB chimes in:

 

Bush: I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

I'm actually going to counterpoint myself here...

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15215574/

 

Estimating the actual death toll in Iraq is of course difficult. The numbers used from reliable media reports is more like 50k. But then, only a fraction of the deaths will actually be reported. But what fraction? This study used other methods, which may also have material bias.

 

So, just to be clear... the number may not be 655k. It may be 200k, or 400k, or 800k. Hard to tell. But logic, and looking at the way the various stats are derived, put it into the hundreds of thousands in any case. My reason for posting the article wasn't the specific number - it was the generally large amounts of human destruction. Just to be clear.

[Balta1701]

I'm actually going to counterpoint myself here...

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15215574/

 

Estimating the actual death toll in Iraq is of course difficult. The numbers used from reliable media reports is more like 50k. But then, only a fraction of the deaths will actually be reported. But what fraction? This study used other methods, which may also have material bias.

 

So, just to be clear... the number may not be 655k. It may be 200k, or 400k, or 800k. Hard to tell. But logic, and looking at the way the various stats are derived, put it into the hundreds of thousands in any case. My reason for posting the article wasn't the specific number - it was the generally large amounts of human destruction. Just to be clear.

The key question in this study to determine whether or not it is biased is whether or not the majority of Iraqi people can be counted on to give honest replies when they are asked about their family members and deaths.

 

This study seems to have done everything the right way. They took a large sample size, larger than the one used for the 2004 study that estimated about 100k were dead at that time. They selected their sampling targets randomly, and wound up not including Fallujah this time (which they sampled last time but threw out before publishing). They dropped 3 clusters from their analysis that failed statistical tests.

 

They're giving you 655k as the most likely number, and based on statistics, that's the most likely one from their data. There is some finite probability that just by random chance it is slightly off, but based on their data, if you did this same study 100 times, assuming it is not biased by people not answering the questions truthfully, you would come up with a number between about 400,000 and 800,000 95 times.

 

It's probably also worth noting that this is a very standard techinque of accounting for casualties, in places like Iraq before the U.S. invasion and in Darfur now those same sorts of numbers have been used to make the case against specific goverments or regimes.

[southsider2k5]

I couldn't find a more recent Iraq thread, so...

 

Update:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061011/ts_nm/iraq_deaths_dc_2

 

Total deaths in Iraq pegged at 655,000 since the start of the war. That is 2.3% of the country's entire population.

 

I realize that some of those deaths were probably deserved. Many, however, were not. Let's not forget that it isn't just American soldiers and Islamic extremists/terrorists/insurgents dying over there.

 

And before you say it Nuke... yeah, that is the toll of war. Innocent lives. But that is exactly my point. Was Saddam worth this? Did Saddam kill even a small fraction of that number? And is BushCo's real mission, to set up an anchorhead (military, political and economic) in the Middle East, really worth this much death? Will the American public think so in 5 years, when Iraq still isn't stable?

 

Because rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq is at least a 10 year effort. I hope everyone realizes that, and realizes the continuing cost in lives and money and political capital that we face. Its a shame we were dragged into this nightmare - and sadly, we still need to see it through. We cannot leave now.

 

Interesting thing I just read said that if the 655,000 dead number is to be believed, that is about 512 people a day. Even the civilian dead numbers that shocked everyone from last month said 2600 dead, which works out to about 89 a day, so where are the other 420ish people a day coming from?

 

I haven't looked at the numbers that closely myself, it was just something I heard.

[Balta1701]

Interesting thing I just read said that if the 655,000 dead number is to be believed, that is about 512 people a day. Even the civilian dead numbers that shocked everyone from last month said 2600 dead, which works out to about 89 a day, so where are the other 420ish people a day coming from?

 

I haven't looked at the numbers that closely myself, it was just something I heard.

The only ones that are reported are the bodies who wind up in government official hands, i.e. going to a Morgue or in an area the police arrive at. In Islamic cultures, usually if a person is killed, they are laid to rest that same day in a simple wooden casket by the family. A non-trivial amount of bodies are also dumped into the rivers every day...usually there are a bundle that turn up on the riverbanks every day, so you sort of have to wonder how many don't turn up.

 

Give you an example...last May, in Basra, the government in that city basically collapsed, and the few institutions left came out and said that a person was being killed in that city every hour. That's 24 a day, nearly 200 a week, just from one city, and press reports never really carried accounts of more than a few of those deaths.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Interesting thing I just read said that if the 655,000 dead number is to be believed, that is about 512 people a day. Even the civilian dead numbers that shocked everyone from last month said 2600 dead, which works out to about 89 a day, so where are the other 420ish people a day coming from?

 

I haven't looked at the numbers that closely myself, it was just something I heard.

 

One of the Coauthors of the Lancet paper was on Democracy Now this morning and he went up and down the stratified random sampling methodology, explained where the variance derives from and confirmed that there is essentially a 2% chance that the actual casualty count is below 400K, and likewise a 2% chance that it is actually above 950K. He further suggested that independent corroboration that they are in the ballpark would be easy enough to obtain by randomly picking out villages and talking to the gravediggers to confirm that they are burying 4x the bodies now compared to before the invasion. If the answer is yes, then the numbers from this report holds up.

 

But, if the administration doesn't at least take a serious look at the report and engage the possibility that their Iraq civilian casualty estimates are horribly off, it would be a great disservice to the memory of the almost three hundred Americans who died on 9/11 when the so-called Global War on Terror began.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I couldn't find a more recent Iraq thread, so...

 

Update:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061011/ts_nm/iraq_deaths_dc_2

 

Total deaths in Iraq pegged at 655,000 since the start of the war. That is 2.3% of the country's entire population.

 

I realize that some of those deaths were probably deserved. Many, however, were not. Let's not forget that it isn't just American soldiers and Islamic extremists/terrorists/insurgents dying over there.

 

And before you say it Nuke... yeah, that is the toll of war. Innocent lives. But that is exactly my point. Was Saddam worth this? Did Saddam kill even a small fraction of that number? And is BushCo's real mission, to set up an anchorhead (military, political and economic) in the Middle East, really worth this much death? Will the American public think so in 5 years, when Iraq still isn't stable?

 

Because rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq is at least a 10 year effort. I hope everyone realizes that, and realizes the continuing cost in lives and money and political capital that we face. Its a shame we were dragged into this nightmare - and sadly, we still need to see it through. We cannot leave now.

 

 

How bout I say this instead........that number is totally f***ing bogus and insane.

 

This same group put out a similar survey , just before the 2004 election, that said 100,000 Iraqi's had died since the invasion. Now this same group is saying 655,000?!?!? I know it's been rough over there but to say that more than half a million people have been killed over there in 2 years is retarded.

 

Just to add some perspective thats saying that Iraq's death rate is ahead of Darfur. Methinks........no.

 

I also want to point out that one of the authors of this survey was quoted as saying that he wanted this to get out before the election. LOL! CNBC pretty much slam dunked this bunk last night by pointing out that those who took the survey, instead of going off actual confirmed deaths, used statistical sampling. I other words they took the most violent parts of the country and extrapolated it throughout the whole.

 

This is Johns Hopkins playing their bi-annual political games trying to get Democrats elected. Another institution of "higher learning" has discredited itself.

 

 

 

So are we going to send more over to help out? Nuke, would you be in line to go back?

 

 

Writing's on the wall. Looks like sometime early next year for me.

[Steff]

Writing's on the wall. Looks like sometime early next year for me.

 

 

Will you at least get to spend Christmas and New Year's with your family...?

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Will you at least get to spend Christmas and New Year's with your family...?

 

 

They're talking about late winter so yeah. We leave for Ft. Irwin later this month to do our deployment validations and then we'll probably head out sometime in Feb or March.

[jackie hayes]

CNBC pretty much slam dunked this bunk last night by pointing out that those who took the survey, instead of going off actual confirmed deaths, used statistical sampling. I other words they took the most violent parts of the country and extrapolated it throughout the whole.

That's not even remotely close to what "statistical sampling" means, but hey, go for it...

[Balta1701]

So for people interested in discussing that study, here's some rapid-fire links looking at it from both sides of the issue.

[Texsox]

Everytime I see the thread title I think about the sad reality of war, that Troop levels get reduced every time some soldier has his or her life ended prematurely.