I suspect he means “a calling beyond the Stars and Stripes”, referring to the flag he’s got himself wrapped in.
Nah, I bet he means the big invisable fella.
Paraphrase: “Poll asking if Bush is divisive divides America in half.”
Ohhh, I hope he means “Stars” like Bill Murray, and “Stripes” like the Bill Murray movie!
… Am I obsessing again?
Here’s another contortion to be challenged. Cite for my or AQA’s claiming these deaths and injuries are good.
We. Never. Said. Any. Such. Fucking. Thing. You. Bozo!
Again, I have to thank you Elvis, for providing yet another example of the hysterical, ridiculous ways that what we who support the war find our words distorted here.
I’m sure as well. They probably don’t flash a happy smile when Achmed steps out and flips them the finger (same gesture in Iraq, right?) Then it gets to the Bush spin machine…
“Iraqi fires off rude gesture at American pilot”
“Iraqi fires off hostile gesture at American pilot.”
“Hostile Iraqi fire on American pilot! (Casualty report classified)”
C’mon, Brutus, the kool-aid ain’t that tasty, is it? 700 shots and not one hit?
At least, that’s an exaggeration. Something actually happened, that’s something. Better than the “massive stockpiles” and the intercontinental drones of anthrax doom. Hard to exaggerate what flat doesn’t exist, I’m thinking…
But I wouldn’t put it past them. If anybody can do it, they would. And if it anybody could swallow it with a straight face…
Sure, but you’re assuming if both missile and plane are travelling at fixed trajectories at fixed speeds. Or, in other words, that the (American) pilot somehow ignores all the early-warning indicators that he’s being fired at, and fails to take any sort of corrective/evasive countermeasures.
Age Quod Agis, why do you hate American pilots so much?
This would be relevant only if the distance from the missile to the aircraft was on a comparable scale – e.g., 50-500 feet or so.
And I’ll pre-emptively ask you to not try and revise history here – I never said that a blind missile shot could never hit an American jet, only that the odds were damn low. Much like winning the lottery…
Excuse me, but I seem to remember hearing or reading that Iraqi radar was what coalition aircraft used to zero in on and destroy the facilites from which they were being fired on. Why has no one else commented on it? Did I dream it?
And I’ll retroactively ask you to not revise history here. You said:
Your cite says that we haven’t had a casualty in 200,000 flights. It does not say that the odds of a missile hitting an American flight are anywhere near the millions and millions to one of the Superball Lottery (for example, the odds of winning the Texas lotto are 1 in 47,784,352), nor does it say that any competent pilot could “easily” evade such an attack.
Let’s not confuse correlation with causation. Just because it’s been a couple hundred thousand laps since the last F1 casualty doesn’t mean that any competent driver who could get his/her car in gear could avoid the wall at 200 mph.
And lest we confuse the tenor of your excerpt with the tenor of the article you cited, please see the following from your cite:
Certainly, your quotes are accurate, and the pilots felt the chances that they’d be hit were slim, but your cite does not support your outrageous assertions. Nor do I think there’s much to say for the argument that taking even a one in a million chance to kill an American pilot is no big deal.
Astronomical Odds, Deadlier than Iraqi Missiles:
My post was in direct response to the bolded words. No one has claimed the only reason we went to war was to help the Iraqis. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, helping the Iraqi people was intimately tied in with the removal of Saddam Hussein. As the invasion began, President Bush stated a goal of the war was to liberate the Iraqi people and help them achieve “a united, stable and free country.” This was not the only one stated, but it was deemed an important enough goal to be the second one mentioned in the first sentence of his news conference when he informed the nation we were at war. So, yes, a major part of our mission in Iraq, as stated repeatedly by President Bush, was to help the Iraqi people. Whether it is was the defining goal is irrelevant. For better or worse, the administration has run with the term Iraqi Freedom and put liberation on the same level as the removal of Hussein.
Furthermore, this was not only put in front of the American people, but the world at large:
Press conference with President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, President Aznar, and Prime Minister Barroso - the Azores, Portugal(prewar)
Statement of the Atlantic Summit: A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi People (prewar)
US fighter jet. Velocity: supersonic. Altitude: High. Maneuverability: High.
Missile: Unguided.
There is a lot of sky. And although shooting someone with a gun at close range is easy, shooting something far away is much harder. Shooting something, moving, far away is much harder. Shooting something far away that’s moving and has the time to react to the flight path of your bullet is damn near impossible.
First of all, we’re not dealing with the whole sky. We’re dealing with the specific portion of sky in which the American or British plane is flying, because that’s where the bullets and/or missiles are aimed.
Second, you’d have no problem with me getting a few missiles and an anti-aircraft gun battery, going out to Iraq, and shooting at American and British planes as they flew past? You think the pilots should just shrug it off – “That kooky AQA down there having fun again”?
Come on. I just can’t believe you guys really mean this. I realize you think there’s an argument to be made here, but not all possible arguments should be made. Some are just too ridiculous and short-sighted.
Ever walked through the woods using a compass to guide you? Know how off track you get if you’re off by a half of a degree and you take enough steps in that direction? How far off target does a missile get if it’s half a degree off and traveling tens of thousands of feet?
Um, no. I’d have problems with that. Because the intent does matter. But the fact is you’d be very unlikely to hit anything.
Mine is simply one of pragmatics and truth. The missiles were fired with murderous intent. But they also weren’t a very credible threat to our pilots.
Having worked on classified air-defense systems and being very well-acquainted with the flight performance statistics and offensive/defensive capabilities of many of the aircraft used by the US military, I’ll simply offer my not-classified assertion that Age Quod Agis is talking out of his posterior.
Yes, there was an incredibly unlikely small chance that a blind Iraqi missile shot could shoot down an America jet, even if that’d largely require the pilot to be wearing a blindfold, have cotton in his ears, and both arms tied behind his back. But only a Bush apologist would consider this highly improbable scenario as just cause for a Damn Fool War™.
Well there are those who are willing to argue that a little bit of tension over the US imposed no fly zones posed a significant enough threat to justify full scale invasion. Talk about straw-grasping!
You don’t even read your own crap, do you? You’re asserting that the current situation is preferable to the previous one, therefore the tradeoff (NOT the deaths and injuries) was a good one.
Nobody said they weren’t a threat at all, but you’re saying that constituted a threat to the US. “Some people” even claim that was part of a “grave and growing threat”. “Some people” have nothing left to justify their absolute support of this folly.
Since you mention it: How happy are the smiles of the soldiers and marines who are getting actually attacked something like 100 times a day and rising? How happy are the smiles of the bereaved families? How happy are the smiles of the amputees at Walter Reed? Maybe they are happy; they lived and they’re out of it.
Yet we’re not claiming that an actual war with actual deaths and maimings, is better than a hypothetical war with hypothetical deaths and maimings. Go figure, huh?
Pardon me for taking your words at face value. You said:
“The threat to Americans, to the extent it even existed, was traded for the reality of 1300+ dead, roughly 6000 permanently maimed. The SA’s and AQA’s of the world claim that’s good.”
Sure sounds to me like you’re claiming we think the injuries and deaths are good. Obviously, I recognize that death and injury are an unfortunate part of war; it doesn’t mean I think they are good. The war was necessary in order to prevent the liklihood of even more death and injury in the future. And the war is resulting in fewer Iraqi deaths by virtue of its own government as we speak.
This, to me, is what is good.
This is what flings your argument out the window. If you take a moment to think, you’ll find it will only result in more death and destruction in the future. In waking a “premptive war”, we’ve set a bad precident. Don’t forget that it cuts both ways. Shit, couldn’t Iran technically attack us using the same logic because we pose a threat to them? Coiuldn’t NK? Can’t India attack Pakistan? China retake Taiwan? Any country can now use “um…yeah…<eyes darting around>…they’re threatening us with the terrorism and all, we need to attack”.
So we’ve opened up any country in the world being able to wage war without provication, thanks to us, and this is a good thing?
Next, let’s talk about preventing death in the future. I strongly believe that in waging this war, we’ve created more terrorists then we’ve eliminated. We’ve given the next group of jihadists some nice hands on battlezone training (like the mujaheeden in Afghanistan got), that is above and beyond what they would get running through some tires at OBL’s training camp. Thanks to blowing up civilians willy nilly, a new generation of American haters is being breed as we speak. Each kid who is orphaned, or had a friend blown to pieces, will grow up chanting “death to America”. Simply put, we’d be better off (futurewise) if we hadn’t gone in.
What isn’t good is that Iraqis are still dying at the same clip as if SH remained in power. Of course because it’s not the government doing the killing, everything is peachy keen. That’s really the sad part, you guys sit around playiung little word games, trying to convince themselves that things are really better then they were under SH. The new governemnt is killling less people the the one we overthrew, yay, we win! (pssst, just as many people are dying, but instead of blaiming SH, now they blame us. WE LOSE)
To quote myself, with bolding added for the benefit of slow learners:
“The threat to Americans, to the extent it even existed, was traded for the reality of 1300+ dead, roughly 6000 permanently maimed. The SA’s and AQA’s of the world claim that’s good.” See what the antecedent of “that” is now? Go back and reread it, slowly, if it still isn’t clear. Got it now? Good. Now fuck off.
Explain that. The death and injury count is much higher now, as any number greater than zero would be.
Iraq has its own government now? Where did you get that idea from? The same source that made you think Iraq represented a grave and gathering threat to the US?