At least 24 Americans died in Iraq Sat. 3rd deadliest day for troops since war began

[Philosoraptor]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070121/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Saturday was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in two years. It was also the third-highest of any single day since the war began in March 2003, eclipsed only by 37 U.S. deaths on Jan. 26, 2005, and 28 on the third day of the U.S. invasion. U.S. authorities also announced two American combat deaths from Friday.

• A bomb left in a bag struck a small bus carrying people to work in a predominantly Shiite area in Baghdad, killing seven passengers and wounding 15.

• A parked car bomb also exploded outside a restaurant in eastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding five, according to police.

• A suicide car bomber targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one woman and wounded five other people in the northern city of Mosul.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. We voted to end this war and we got escalation instead.

This is an outrage. Everyone of us who possibly can should be out in the streets protesting 1-27-07.

[malaise]

12. Bingo n/t

[cassiepriam]

2. A question, I do not understand something:

For many decades Americans have dumped vast amounts of money into the
military. And now the US is getting its behind whipped by what
Bush calls rag tag insurgents, a few troublemakers, etc.

I don't get how this is possible.

[MissWaverly]

3. well, I have never undestood our strategy there or our goals

first, I think a lot of our money has gone to fraud and waste in our defenese/industrial
complex industry, it's a cash cow. I think that a great deal of money has been put into
expensive items like the drones, which have only a limited effect on the war. We saw
the same thing in Vietnam, Steve Hadley has ties to Lockheed Martin, so we have not
had real objectivity in the White House, also the proportion of troops there vs the
total Iraqi population, is 5%, who can seriously imagine success with that type of
ratio. Plus the tactic of raiding people homes, constantly looking for insurgents
is alienating, we would have been more successful securing the country, then rebuilding,
providing services, you can't win hearts and minds with the butt of a gun or torturing
people. Is it too late to turn this around, I don't know.

[cassiepriam]

7. That is what I am thinking as well. Pentagon and defense industry has defrauded the American

people. We don't really have the military we have been paying for
all these years. No auditors have ever been able to do a successful Pentagon audit.

And then on top of it we have a ridiculous strategy in Iraq on top of a nonsensical rationale. So layers upon layers of fraud and incompetence, greed and hubris. And now the meme is that the military is broken and needs fixing, so more opportunity for the vultures to land with their hands out.

And then the Iraq people are going to care a whole lot more about that piece of
land then we ever will. Just like Viet Nam, people will fighto the death for their homeland. I cannot blame them.

[MissWaverly]

9. I believe Iraq was used to establish a new Cold War

This time with the islamic fundamentalists, it was never intended to be a "short war" it
is intended to last generations and secure profits for the oil lobby and the defense industry.

[cassiepriam]

10. Yes was a very good way to transfer the US treasury to sociopaths.

All perfectly legal and with the blessing of the American people.
Any one who complains can be labeled a traitor.

As I keep saying, the best sociopaths don't break the laws, they make them.

[MissWaverly]

11. there is so much to be alarmed about

Bush was asked by Jim Lehrer that if Iraq was so critical to our interest and global
stability, why doesn't Bush just institute a draft, send enough troops over to secure the
country, he said "Because that is not what I want." What does he want, this continual
suffering and chaos in Iraq. Then they say they are relying on Maliki when they continually
criticize him, I think Sen. McCain called Maliki "a slender reed." today.

[cassiepriam]

14. Notice Bush always talks about his wants, his needs, his beliefs.

That narcissistic core is always so evident.

And I am not sure even he knows what he really wants.
Unless it is some fantasy only known in his own mind.

[MissWaverly]

15. there is always a disconnect between him & what is needed

their defense for Katrina was how could anyone expect it would evolve like it did, it caught
everyone by surprise, their defense for Iraq, how could we know there weren't weapons of
mass destruction, how could we know that the insurgency would be this strong. The
responsibility of a leader is to know. Otherwise, we could just hire a delivery guy
from Pizza Hut to be president, after his delivery run, he could spend 15 minutes
making policies from his gut in his car and then e-mail them to all cabinet officials.

[cassiepriam]

17. Yep, I have noticed that. Big time :(

Sociopaths have one primary relationship in life, and that is with themselves.
No one else matters.

And sociopaths always make lame excuses.
The Bushopaths claim ignorance, "no one could have predicted (fill in the blank here). Or they blame others, it is always somebody else's fault.

My belief is that Bushopaths are not at all incompetent. They brilliantly
took over America and its Treasury with only a few making a whimper. And now that people are objecting, BushCo just ignores them. The Bushopaths are extremely competent with it comes to obtaining money and power for themselves. And I also predict they will walk away scot free, with no consequence, laughing all the way to the bank :(

[MissWaverly]

19. No, I think they will not get off

they probably see all this as just another extension of dirty tricks campaigning but massive
damage has been wrought, how could they naively expect a country would be willing to
impeach Clinton over perjury and then not hold them accountable.

[cassiepriam]

31. From your mouth to God's ears. Please! nt

[MissWaverly]

34. remember Ney was convicted, Mr. I am really Innocent

and so was Jack Abramoff.

[cassiepriam]

35. But Shrub has never paid for any of his crimes, ever....

But there is always a first time.
I can only hope.

[MissWaverly]

36. what if the Middle East boycotted Europe & US

stating they would sell oil to Europe and US only there was an UN investigation of
the Iraq War, what would we do?

[cassiepriam]

38. I wish they would do that. But they are not going to boycott their biggest markets??

And they know bush would get out the nukes for sure if they touch what he considers his oil.

But I like your thinking.

And maybe it would spur the US into energy conservation and alt energy sources. Fast.

[MissWaverly]

39. well, they could do it at a conference attended by China & Russia

why should they care if they take a short term loss, they are sitting on a huge reserve
of cash, someone will buy their oil, we are the ones that need the oil, not them.

[cassiepriam]

40. Yes but China owns all of our debt and while they would love all the oil

if the US goes belly up wouldn't they lose big time?
Never get their money back. But then maybe if they have all of the Mideast oil they won't care?

I do agree with you that the Mideast seems to be in the catbird's seat. They can tell the US to take a hike and sell the oil to China, Japan and other countries.

[MissWaverly]

44. yes, I am wondering why they do all the nuclear swagger

when they can just gives us the bums rush, like a bartender with a drunken customer.

[cassiepriam]

45. A certain gender of the species, regardless of nationality, likes to wave their

nukes around.

[MissWaverly]

46. that's pretty funny, sad but true

and what would happen if there was a big macho war, we would all be suffering big time
and the entire planet would suffer; all over some misplaced egos and lack of diplomacy.

[indepat]

26. Our goal was to secure Iraq's oil reserves mostly for benefit of big oil, exert hegemony

over the area and build an empire. See that was so simple and plainly obvious from the git-go and the Halliburtons of the world get tens of billions of dollare largess in the meanwhile.

[MissWaverly]

28. well, obiviously that would never work

this is not the 1880s, the Iraqi people have mass communication, insurgent tv channel is
very popular, they can communicate on the web, this type of activity relies on secrecy
and propaganda, today's porous communication doomed this from the start, not to mention
the fact that the Middle East consists of 6 million people in Israel, and 121 million
islamic people in the surrounding countries.

[cassiepriam]

43. Then Bush is doing a bang up job of it. Everybody getting rich who was supposed to. NT

[frogcycle]

4. those vast amounts of money

go for naught when you send people into a war zone with their hands tied.

we have the capability, having spent those vast amounts of money, to wipe baghdad off the map by just running a conveyor belt of b-1 bombers. we have the capability of conducting a pretty effective ground assault a la gulf war I - or even the initial thrust of this one. But instead, we take people who have all sorts of high tech stuff like night vision goggles, sophisticated small arms, field artillery, etc., and send them driving up the road past bombs made from high-explosive artillery shells. they get blown to pieces. Or we send a sophisticated high-tech expensive helicopter flying over a region that has not been secured.

vast amounts of money mean nothing when you just pile it up and set fire to it.

[cassiepriam]

8. Goes to show you. You can't just throw money at something.

You actually have to have competence and intelligence.

[rockymountaindem]

27. Absolutely

That's almost exactly what I was going to say. We have a whole arsenal of highly damaging weapons we could use against Iraq. It's just that unleashing a 105mm artillery barrage in downtown Baghdad or using a whole squadron of fully-loaded B-52s against Fallujah wouldn't be worth it. Killing everybody isn't our objective, but if it was our objective, we'd be damn good at it.

[cassiepriam]

41. Killing every man, woman and child in Iraq seems to be the objective.

When everyone in the country is dead, I guess Bush can say
we "won".

[Warren Stupidity]

18. Asymmetric warfare: i.e. its Vietnam all over again.

We have a great army for fighting other great armies, and we can walk all over other not-so-great armies such as the pathetic Iraqi Army of 1991 and the even more pathetic Iraqi Army of 2003. We certainly spent enough to make that so, and it is so: best army on the planet.

On the other hand in fighting a counter insurgency, unless one is prepared to commit world class atrocities, having the planet's best army doesn't mean squat. What is the strategic objective of a counter-insurgency? Does it have anything at all with taking territory? The territory is already taken. With destroying the capacity of an opposing army to fight? There is no opposing army, there are only the people of the occupied territory, some of whom are ambushing you on a regular basis. Does it really matter how many 100's of billions of dollars of high tech high bang crap you have? We lost this war in the first few months when we lost the people of Iraq. Perhaps we could never have won them anyway, given that we were a foreign occupying army of crusader heathens who did not even speak the language, but we simply did everything possible to make sure we couldn't win them over.

For almost four years we have been stalled waiting for our 'leaders' to have the balls to admit defeat. All that is going on now is manuevering to tag one of our teams or the other with 'the loss'. It is a game played with the lives of our soldiers and the Iraqi people, and it is both shameful and a war crime.

[cassiepriam]

32. For the $ billions and billions poured into the military for decades

and since VN, I would think we could fight a guerrilla war.

But yes you are right, you can win the battle but lose the war. Even if we could "win" in Iraq, we have lost everything.

[Recursion]

37. You need a strategy and goals to win

We don't have either. The best army in the world can't win if it doesn't have goals.

Also, because we have a 15-20 year acquisition cycle, a lot of that money is still being spent on stuff that was designed to keep the USSR from overrunning Europe (and for all of Rummy's screw-ups, trying to fix that was actually a good thing he did). But a 155mm howitzer doesn't really help much against irregular light infantry.

[cassiepriam]

42. Unless the goal was for BushCo to get rich. :(

[AnotherMother4Peace]

5. God help this country - These are our sons & daughters - They are not "just a comma"

Bush's words "just a comma in history" He must be a cold SOB. He reminds me of the Iceman, the infamous hit-man for the mob. The man without a conscience.

My prayers are with you and your families, dear soldiers. My prayers are with the wounded. I pray that this administration will be held accountable, and be STOPPED. I pray for the country of Iraq, and it's people, the orphans, the broken, the dead. God help us.

[AnotherMother4Peace]

6. Kick for the dead and wounded

[lies and propaganda]

13. get our kids the fuck out of there....

but instead Carlyle is dissolving because they fulfilled their goal and Halliburton is going to get how much richer over this dumbfuck escalation? sickening.

[MissWaverly]

16. yes, never were the Iraqis given jobs to rebuild their country

if we hired Iraqis, they would have had a vested interest in its success and would not have
been sun bathing around a pool in the green zone. Now there is a push to have the Iraqis
hand over vested interests in their oil fields for the next 30 years to foreign companies, mostly US oil. That is going to refuel the insurgency just as we are sending more troops in.

[lies and propaganda]

21. you could also subsitute New Orleans for Iraq

they screwed us just as bad as well..

[MissWaverly]

24. yes, very interesting

Baghdad and New Orleans are almost sister cities, contractors triumphant with little
tangible results.

[blogslut]

20. And you may ask yourself,

Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?

We will suffer the consequences of this administration's power grabbing, freedom killing, money grubbing, murdering mission for generations.

I pray that this will be the last straw but I've seen bushels of last straws.

The man has got to be stopped. I am all for investigations, house legislation and rules of order but dammit, can we step up the proceedings for god's sake? People are dying and that rat bastard needs to bring them home!

[malaise]

22. Another British soldier was also killed today

heard that on BBC International.

[smoogatz]

23. There's your "surge," Mr. pResident.

Are we winning yet?

[Initech]

25. So, um... why haven't we ended the war yet?

:argh: :grr: :nuke:

[MissWaverly]

29. because the American people want a solution

Bush has promised them that they have a "new" general and a "new" strategy, nobody wants
Iraq to fall into total chaos and mass killings, if this strategy does not work maybe
the American people will demand accountability and a real policy change not spin.

[frogcycle]

30. aside from the huge one-day number

which has prompted a variety of responses, as someone so aptly put it, "those are our kids over there"

I will continue to monitor the DoD press releases for names, get pictures and hometown paper stories as quickly as I can.

These 24 should not be lost in the shuffle or coincidence of having died on a big-number day. Each deserves at least moment of quiet reflection and a quiet salute from every American. There are many websites that post names, some put pictures, some put links to online tribute "guest books".
I check a lot of them, and try to aggregate the latest info from all. Sometimes it takes quite a while for information to come out. I just posted 10-15 pictures yesterday for December fatalities.

Please check in every now and then and pay your respects however you choose.

Fallen

[spanone]

33. 'They' are admitting to 25 dead now. Stay tuned.