You could use a brush-up on your history of WWII, if not a complete overhaul.

I’d suggest for a start The Second World War by Spartacus Educational.

Regarding your comparisons to Iraq, pay special attention to the section that describes the composition of the German army, air force and navy; the Imperial Japanese army, air force and navy; and the Italian army, air force and navy in WWII. Millions of combat troops, thousands of aircraft, hundreds of ships. In case you haven’t been following things closely in Iraq, the insurgents have none of these items in any quantity.

At any rate, read the website and, should you have any trouble with the big words or the concepts, come back here and we’ll help straighten you out. We understand that aristocrats, even the fake kind who haunt the Internet, often get things wrong.

To bad you can’t talk to my Pop! He was part of the Bataan Death March. He had a very good understanding of how the Japanese conducted themselves. He passed away 5 years ago with the cane he came home with. Ask your father about that campaign. I am sure he heard about it.

BTW I perscribe to the theory of using war as a last restort, and when you go to war you want 100% of the odds on your side, use the proper force strengths and take names and kick ass. Unfortunately that is not what we are doing in Iraq, my confused friend. If we are not going to fight a war the proper way, then either don’t get involved or get the hell out as soon as you can…

One last point… After Afghanistan was completed and its still not, I had assumed Iran was the next logical target, not Iraq. Anyone with any common sense knows that Iran was and is the ‘most active sponsor of terrorism” according to the state department back in 2000 and nothing changed since then and taking baghdad with the shia in control and buddies with Tehran would kind of make it harder to take on Iran. The arguement that Iraq was a stepping stone to Iran is about as logical as the verbal diarrhea that sometimes comes out of your mouth.

Your points are well taken, and you can say the same thing about Nixon’s campaign to bomb North Vietnam and no I don’t perscribe to the “kill them all, let God sort them out” combat theory. But you have to admit its effective. Just ask Hilter… (I hope you don’t het the chance)

And that is not the point I am making. You just cannot in any shape or form take WWII and compare it to Iraq. Even if the war started two years before our entrance. That still does not matter, we still did the “mission complete” dance in both theaters in less time than we have in one country (Iraq) and yes with greater inflection to all involved militaries and civies.

You make to some degree take a battle or campaign and compare them, to some degree with a lot of limitations. But the entire WWII Campaign? No way… reason for our entrance (we did not cherry pick the intel and lie about it), resources, technology, intelligence, tactics, politics, generational differences etc…where totaly different. That would be like trying to compare the Blackhawk Down story to the Little Big Horn story….

BTW, I did very well in history through out school… but thanks for sharing….

Since we are talking about these horrors, here is a post I just read that sheds even more light onto the savagry of this war compared to vietnam, as well as supports data with statistics…I found it an excellent read on the numbers on Iraq including contractors…

“The number of taxpayer-paid private contractors in Iraq, the number of bullets fired for each insurgent killed, the percentage of amputations performed on U.S. war-wounded: a compilation of numbers puts Iraq into perspective.”

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/59881

Zeus, you wrote: “surely you understand the point that Italy and Germany had nothing whatsoever to do with Pearl Harbor, and neither had committed any acts of war against the US at the time the US invaded Tunisia and, later, Italy. Try to come to grips with that fact. The point, for those still to slow to grasp it, is that you attack those who have hostile and warlike intentions toward you when and where you can. That is why we invaded Tunisia and Italy, and that is why we invaded Iraq.”

You’re dead wrong, Zeus, just as most of the rest of what you’ve written in dead wrong. According to the American Encyclopedia of Facts and Dates, a German submarine sunk the USS Reuben James on October 31, 1941, killing 100 American sailors, so Germany had committed an act of war against the US prior to the Pearl Harbor attack.

You’re also wrong to say that Italy and Germany had nothing to do with Japan; they were all part of the Axis Powers who cooperated strategically with each other.

We invaded Tunisia mainly to give our troops a chance to confront the battle-harded German Army in an area where a loss wouldn’t matter as much as it would have on European soil. We invaded Italy in 1943 because, not only did Mussolini’s army fight us in North Africa, but due to the presence of German troops in the country — and because they were part of the Axis nations that had declared war on us.

We invaded Iraq for the oil and to give sweet no-bid contracts to Bush’s biggest campaign contributors. It had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, global terrorists, nor any of the other rot they’ve been spewing. It was, and is, all about the money.

For example, only a confused person with neocon tendencies would write a line like “Italy and Japan had even less of an operational relationship than Iraq and Al Qaeda-indeed, they had none at all.”

Italy and Japan, along with Nazi Germany, were part of the Axis Powers and they had a very close operational relationship strategically. But this is only one of the many errors and vacuous flaws in your dizzy diatribe.

I suggest you read, for a start, The Second World War by Spartacus Educational.

Regarding your comparisons to Iraq, pay special attention to the section that describes the composition of the German army, air force and navy; the Imperial Japanese army, air force and navy; and the Italian army, air force and navy in WWII. Millions of combat troops, thousands of aircraft, hundreds of ships. In case you haven’t been following things closely in Iraq, the insurgents have none of these items in any quantity.

At any rate, read the website and, should you have any trouble with the big words or the concepts, come back here and we’ll help straighten you out. We understand that aristocrats often get things wrong.

But it seems to me that the whole comparison is skewed because we are comparing armed U.S. soldiers’ deaths in Iraq with mostly unarmed civilian deaths in D.C. That is wrong. In D.C., I will bet the number of armed policemen killed in combat by either gunshot or bombs is much lower than it is in Iraq. Expecially if we count Iraqi police.

But if we are just counting just Americans in Iraq, I do not see any numbers in the story about American contractors. Surely those need to be included. And what about injured? I’ll bet there haven’t been 30,000 people in D.C. shot or blown up on the last few years.

99% of those who live in or visit D.C. are able to go about their lives without wearing armor and carrying a big gun, and suffer no injury. They do not have to travel in aromored vehicles in groups. I’ve never been to D.C. but I’ll bet you can get from the airport to a hotel without dodging I.E.D.s all the way.

I would love to see whoever wrote that story go for a stroll through any part of Iraq unarmed, with no armor or army to protect them. And that includes the so-called safe Green Zone.

*****

Today, broadcasters say/”report” “15 troops were killed today” without even mentioning how many of our troops were injured. Back in the Vietnam days, the networks, of which they were only three, would report casualties, and not ferret out only the dead, in a craven attempt to make the numbers sound lower.

let me say that again slowly,they declared a special forces group of soldiers a terrorist group. aren’t special forces in any country or soldiers in general supposed to terrorize and kill people? Isn’t that what they are trained to do efficiently? hell while they’re at it why not call the Chinese, the russians or any other army we don’t care for the same thing? Or why don’t they call ours terrorist for that matter? This is fucking goofiness at it’s greatest.

Regarding this prominent placement, don’t you think that for the sake of searchers coming here in the future, it is preferable that they don’t be fooled into believing that the anonymous spinmaster has a valid point? Again, pls point out the real problem with that insane comparison in an addendum here and at Booman tribune!

P.S.: I just noticed that noone less than Brad DeLong debunked this shit in November 2005! And still this piece of crap is circulating and fooling people into believing that service in Iraq is essentially the same as holidays in Washington, D.C. Unbef***ingleavable!
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/001736.html

“Let’s assume for a moment that the statistics supplied are correct:

160,000 troops / 100,000 = 1.6

2,112 / 1.6 = 1,320 deaths per 100,000 troops

Versus 80.6 per 100,000 in DC

So, right away, one must wonder how this email continues to be offered by so many as support for their pro-Iraq war position. I mean, really, the conclusions are staggeringly wrong.”

Actually, that’s the first hit you get when you google for “160,000 troops Iraq 22 months 2,112 deaths”:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=160%2C000+troops+Iraq+22+months+2%2C112+deaths+&btnG=Google+Search

Both approaches, the mathematical and the empirical, debunk the crap once and forever. Discussing whether deaths by IEDs and firearms are comparable leaves a shady appearance of nitpicking and may convince some readers that the anonymous right winger made a valid point. But he didn’t.