Iraqis are fighting, and dying, on both sides of the conflict.
Their deaths are tragic.
I honor their sacrifices.
I have scattered ashes over my clothes and torn my hair from my scalp over their deaths.
Edwards was discussing the consequences of not having a broader and more meaningful coalition when entering Iraq.
Edwards was pointing out that because we didn’t have a broader coalition, among that coalition that we did have when we entered Iraq, virtually all of the meaningful action was undertaken by the US.
To illustrate this point, he listed casualties incurred by members of that coalition.
Cheney, in order to obscure the point that the “coalition” consisted in reality of almost entirely US soldiers and funds, mentioned a fraction of the Iraqis who have died in the conflict.
How about all those Iraqi chilodren who were killed by the car bombs last week, while they were waiting for the US soldiers to hand out candy? Are we supposed to number them among our brave coalition freedom fighters?
I personally don’t need a cite, I remember how we left them swinging in the breeze. On the other hand, maybe it would be a good idea to put it on here anyway, for the benefit of those who either don’t remember, or choose to forget.
You’ve given me so many posts to choose from. But, I like this one the most:
Cheney says that they are “almost 50%” of the casualties. Factcheck.org says that that they are 38% of the casualties. Whichever of these we choose to beleive, they are certainly a “major participant” of the war. For Edwards and many posters in this thread to ignore them is disrespectful. Cheney (and myself) saw this the moment it was said in the debate, and pointed it out.
First, perhaps I’m wrong: perhaps the majority of these deaths were in combat operations, rather than car bombs outside of police stations. Certainly the impression I’ve gotten is that the overwhelming majority of them haven’t received half the training that an average US cop has received, much less the training you’d want somebody in a battleground to have.
Second, maybe you and Cheney saw it, but Bush didn’t see it when Kerry said exactly the same thing a week earlier. Why not?
Third, fuck you again for saying I’m ignoring their deaths. I’m no more ignoring their deaths than you are; but because you cannot win this argument on substance, you’ve retreated to attacking my character. Totally classless.
From what I understand, most of the US deaths are the same type. Roadside bombs and car bombs are blowing troops is the cause of lots of casualties, not troops dying in combat operations. So what?
Maybe Cheney and I are better debaters than Bush?
It’s my character who was attacked first. I was getting flamed by posters here before I even knew that this thread existed.
Well, if they’re getting killed by ambushes, and if they’re worse-trained than your average US cop, I fail to understand how you say they’re major participants in the war, rather than victims. However, if you have stats showing that they’re directly responsible for a significant number of enemy kills, this would be the time to reveal those stats. Maybe they’re being killed in ambushes, and maybe they’re very poorly trained and equipped, but nonetheless the ones that died were playing a major role in the war effort. I’ve seen no evidence to indicate that’s true.
Given that Kerry’s been making this argument for awhile, show me, showmeshowmeshowme, that anyone in the Administration used this counterargument before 9/30/04. I claim that it’s a novel interpretation of events. If so, it’s disingenuous to claim that people categorizing casualty figures in the way that everyone categorized them one week ago are ignoring Iraqi deaths.
I wasn’t flaming you; your “dumb fucks” toward me are wholly unnecessary and obnoxious.
Your first post to the thread is some of the dumbest stuff I’ve seen. You’ve shown that you don’t know about the most basic issues regarding Iraq such as the transfer of sovereignty. You twist yourself into knots trying to redefine the Iraqi security personel into something that justifys not counting their deaths. At the same time you continue to insist that you aren’t disrespecting their sacrifice. Your posts aren’t just dumb, their fucking dumb. That makes you a dumb fuck.
Since when is Iraq a member of the coalition against… Iraq?
You may count them as Iraqi casualties all you wish. Build a memorial if you like.
Cheney isn’t doing that. He’s counting them as coalition deaths, which is just about as disingenuous as a statement can possibly get.
There are twenty people patiently explaining to you that you are a moron, and none really disagreeing except you. The odds on us being wrong aren’t good.
Holy shit Debaser. Disengage, give up, submit to defeat, and fuck off for a bit. Your take on events is as “creative” as is Cheney’s. Just because you parrot the night’s soundbites and impugn all Democrats(or anti-bushes), who want the facts and figures used properly and genuously, doesn’t make either you or the administration right.
You can twist this story up all you like, but the spin being applied by the Administration and Cheney doesn’t fly with most of us.
Chewbacca watched his best friend being tortured and then frozen in carbonite during his struggle to bring freedom to the galaxy. By ignoring his sacrifice, you disrespect everyone who died to destroy the Death Star you insensitive buttmunch.
You know, if I have to watch one more Republican pretend to be offended and outraged over some imaginary lack of concern/respect for the lives of a group of people it hasn’t previously given two shits about in the past, I think I’m going to puke. Seriously.
If you actually cared about the Iraqis, you’d have cared about them when they were starving under the U.S. sanctions on food and medicine from 1991-1995. If you actually cared about the Iraqis, you might have considered them as a reason not to rush to war unless absolutely necessary. If you actually cared about the Iraqis, you might have expressed some regret in the last year over the more than ten thousand civilians killed by this invasion or the very real possibility that we’re going to leave their country in chaos and civil war.
To you, these people are nothing more than a political tool, to be used when convenient and ignored the rest of the time. You assholes make me sick.
Huh? DtC says Cheney is calling Iraq an ally against itself, and they you say “nobody is doing that”. You then proceed to quote Cheney counting Iraqis as allies. Nobody’s counting the Iraqis as allies, they’re just…uh…counting the Iraqis as allies. Stop the world; I want to get off.
At the point in the debate when Cheney went all “Chewbacca defense”, I thought I’d had missed something. Did I have the auditory equivalent of a blink and miss why Cheney was berating Edwards for dissing the Iraqis? One minute they were talking about coalition causalities and I was following along well enough. But in the very next minute, they were talking about Edwards being a big meano for not recognizing all those slain Iraqis that died fighting against…whoever they were fighting against…you know, when they died.
What the holy hell?
And maybe I’m just not informed enough here, but it’s not as if the Iraqis begged us to go over there and start a TWAT in their backyards. So I’m not sure you can count them among the Coalition of the Willing seeing how they don’t have much choice right now but to fight back. They don’t have enough free-will at this point to group them within the CoW. It’s not like they can withdraw and go back to their normal lives, like the US can.
I’m starting to think Cheney was being just a tiny bit disingenuous. Edwards was clearly talking about American casualties and expenditures as a percentage of Coalition casualties and expenditures. The fact that Iraqi soldiers, fighting on our side, are now getting killed is irrelevant to the question because they’re not members of the Coalition.
Took me a while to see what happened because Cheney is truly a master of the straw man; his delivery is so shameless and poker-faced that it may render an opponent speechless. Bush, on the other hand, excels at turning aside a question and then repeating one of two or three points as if it were relevant. Master of the non sequitur.
Kerry and Edwards have both shown a slippery side occasionally, but unlike Cheney, they never give me the impression of actually being some hitherto-unknown form of reptilian life.
Nooooooooooo, what ever led you to that conclusion? Of course, to be disingenuous, one must show a genuous side as well and I don’t think we’ve seen that from the veep in the last 4 years.
Are you sure on that? I mean, it’s not like his politics have ever been remotely gusting…
Daniel
(Oh, and thanks, folks, for the reality check–I was starting to feel the same way Edwards felt when Cheney confronted him with that awful argument, as if I’d just gone into Bizarro land. This thread has exactly the right title!)