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No, once again you have misread - it’s not my quote, it’s Time magazine’s quote. You may not find Time as good of a source as your grapevine, and in some cases I may agree. However, in this case your grapevine equated the number of amputees to the total number of casualties, so I think it’s time to find a new grapevine - or at least stop misrepresenting what you hear.</p>
<p>Actually, I have no idea how many people have missing limbs. It could well be 20,000. We simply have no way of knowing, because no one wants to report the truth.</p>
<p>There was a special on CNN, where Iraqi amputees were tracked from hospital to home. Entire wards were filled, bed after bed, with men missing arms and legs. Literally a sea of men with missing limbs. And this was one hospital, and one ward.</p>
<p>We just don’t know.</p>
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Yeah, I’m thinking of changing my user name to Oscar. But, don’t you get tired of people making points with wildly distorted data or assumptions?</p>
<p>"Yeah, I’m thinking of changing my user name to Oscar. But, don’t you get tired of people making points with wildly distorted data or assumptions? "</p>
<p>WELL… for the most part I’ve been able to put up with you and your selective facts. We’ve both been here a while and I’ve seen your “facts” shot up before. Wouldn’t you prefer a friendlier discussion rather than this constant “in your face” stuff? </p>
<p>You did understand that post and you could have simply corrected with a question for clairification and kept the dialog on the original path. I know that’s not sporting and all, but what a concept. </p>
<p>As far as oscar do you mean the seasame street one or the little statue or the boxer or NBA legend?</p>
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<p>Ha–in my book FF is consistently the picture of restraint.</p>
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And 100% of the planes involved in 9/11 attacks were American.</p>
<p>And ALL of the pilots of the 9/11 attacks were trained by former U.S. military.</p>
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<p>I agree with mini. I would add that soldiers who think they’re somehow heroes for fighting in Iraq are just plain annoying and misinformed.</p>
<p>I would have said deceived, cheated, and lied to (and those who did the lying were not very good at it.)</p>
<p>AMEN AMEN AMEN to what Hoedown said up above – and to what he/she does. Thank you Hoedown.</p>
<p>A lot of the concern about not supporting the troops, as I have understood it, is that we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam. There were soldiers who came home from that war and they were spat at, reviled, treated horribly by people who felt they should have shown moral courage by going AWOL or otherwise resisting the draft and their duties. These people went through the grinder of Vietnam and came home to find themselves abused. I have always thought that a lot of the POW-MIA movement grew out of the guilt some people felt this happened.</p>
<p>Anyway, it is a rather crass and gross misrepresentation of people like me who were against this war from before the beginning to say that we all are liberal pansies or disloyal or inadequate patriots. Or even that we are pacifists all. </p>
<p>The media, I felt, has fed this perception, that people are either anti-war or behind this war. I am not anti-war. I am anti-stupid-war. It didn’t take a genius to see that fighting in a Muslim land where there are ethnic and religious divisions and no history of civil society or democracy – it didn’t take a genius to see this was going to be a difficult if not impossible nation-building exercise. To say the least.</p>
<p>I was 100% for the troops. I wanted them to stay home and not be sent on this fool’s errand. If I see a soldier in an airport I am in, I am friendly and respectful and wish them well. One time I got into a long discussion and did fess up to being against this war, but I didn’t rub it in the soldier’s face. There’s nothing he could do.</p>
<p>Anybody who upholds this dichotomy of either you are for this war or against the troops should stop calling themselves educated. You, many of you, are on this board to send your kids to avoid the kind of shoddy thinking that that implies. Maybe you need to go back to college, if you can’t see beneath that rhetoric. And by the way, I am not pointing at anyone in particular, so much as the posting of this title as if it should be that a difficult concept to sort out (though it’s not entirely clear what the original poster was exactly trying to say). It’s not.</p>
<p>Um, I’m afraid calling our soldiers drunks, junkies. criminals, annoying, misinformed, uneducated, low-IQ (deceived, cheated and lied to and too stupid to realize it), mercenary, etc. etc. might just possibly fit the dictionary definition of being “reviled” and “abused.”</p>
<p>"(deceived, cheated and lied to and too stupid to realize it) - there were a lot of very HIGH IQ people who were deceived, cheated, and lied to - begin with Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Brown, who now believes that what the President is doing is “criminal”. Then there is Chuck Hagel. </p>
<p>I no more revile the soldiers than I do Hagel and Brown. As for the liars, cheaters, and deceivers, revile is too weak a description.</p>
<p>hereshoping, I said soldiers *who think they are heroes for fighting in Iraq * are the ones who are annoying and misinformed. I have more respect for soldiers who acknowledge that their efforts will amount to little or nothing.</p>
<p>Well, basically, I want them to say “I regret fighting in this war.”</p>
<p>And whomever said those things, hereshoping, misplaces their verbal abuse, I think. It should be reserved for those in the Administration that misled Congress and the nation into this tragic misadventure. A misadventure most tragic for our brave soldiers who fight no matter what they may think of the validity of their mission</p>
<p>I’m glad that the new Congress is supporting the troops in a meaningful way–by providing more funding for medical care for veterans. </p>
<p>I wonder how many of you who support the surge have written to your governor to demand that more National Guard and Reserve units from your state be deployed to fight it? Some states, like Florida, Texas, Ohio, Massachussets, have very low per capita deployment rates compared to other states. If your state’s rate is less than the median, and you really want this surge to suceed, shouldn’t you be advocating–hard–for men and women from your state to do their part? </p>
<p>Or do you support the war only if citizens of other states bear the brunt of it?</p>
<p>Pointing out that the men and women in the armed forces were lied to, as we all were by our wanna-be-a-wartime President, is not implying that they are low IQ. Too trusting, perhaps, but not stupid. </p>
<p>Check out the comments of Lt. Fabian Bouthillette, 26, a 2003 Naval Academy graduate now in the Individual Ready Reserve. “This administration has betrayed our armed forces. I actually believe that the conduct of this administration is more detrimental to the Constitution than anything else. This was begun on an illegal, immoral basis. And we were lied to.”</p>
<p>Or the comments of Matt Peters, a Navy electronics technician assigned to the carrier Enterprise. He enlisted in November 2001, following the 9-11 attacks. “I signed up and said I’m going to do this,” said Peters, 23, who along with his shipmates returned from duty off Iraq and elsewhere in November and remains on tap to redeploy if the carrier is called upon. “But I don’t believe in what we’re doing over there. I still do my job. Is it something that kind of hurts to do? Yes.”</p>
<p>“We’re not anti-war,” said Jonathan Hutto, a Navy mass communications specialist 3rd class who enlisted in 2004 is assigned to the Norfolk-based carrier Theodore Roosevelt. “We’re not pacifists. We’re anti-Iraq war.”</p>
<p>They are some of the voices of American active-duty service persons who have called for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. I think their views and voices deserve to be heard at least as much as the eagerly patriotic Harvard runner or the wags engaged in teasing “Jon Carry.” These are not cowards or cringing hand-wringing lefties. They were and are in the thick of it and they, like the majority of Americans, want this fiasco brought to a end.</p>
<p>For more see <a href=“http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012307B.shtml[/url]”>http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012307B.shtml</a></p>
<p>and <a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6874417[/url]”>Military Personnel Present Iraq Petition at Capitol : NPR;
<p>I just heard a podcast interview last night with a medical corpsman from Iraq and I about vomited listening to his descriptions at how troops are going psycho on Iraqi families walking down the street.
It is getting worse- we aren’t going to turn a corner- we turn a corner and there are just bodies.</p>
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<p>There have been posters here who have not only implied it, but stated it, in past threads.</p>
<p>Please link to the posts that support this accusation. I have read a lot of the political posts here, and I don’t remember seeing that.</p>