The National Guard and Reserve suffered more combat deaths in Iraq during the first 10 days of August – at least 32, according to a Pentagon count – than in any full month of the entire war.
AP
AP
Bush has created a fiasco. Cindy Sheehan has captured the American imagination and, like a pied piper, she is gathering a different army of recruits. Meanwhile, the Guard and Reserves are having trouble:
The recent surge in Guard and Reserve combat deaths comes as the Army National Guard and Army Reserve are stuck in a prolonged recruiting slump that some attribute in large measure to young people’s fear of getting sent to Iraq. More than 1,840 U.S. service members – active and reserve – have died since the war began.
On Wednesday the Pentagon announced that as of July 31 the Army National Guard was running 23 percent behind in recruiting for the year and the Army Reserve was 20 percent behind. The Marine Reserve was right at its goal.
Nice work, Bush. Seems like a lot of people have no desire to fight a war in Asia based on a pack of lies. Who woulda thunk it? I mean, wouldn’t you rather, I don’t know, go to Harvard Business School, or something?
20 from Ohio, 7 from Pennsylvania, do you know where the other 5 were from?
one of them was from Philly, and he was 2 months from fulfilling his guard obligations when he got sent over. He was pissed off. Now he’s dead.
He’s getting a lot of local coverage.
That was the boxer/fighter, wasn’t it? Wasn’t he about to be married as well?
They actually did a report on the personal details for all of them last night on (I think) Channel 10.
that’s the guy, I think he was going to become a police officer like his father.
Also since the beginning of this year over 800 people have been killed in Afghanistan which includes at least 41 of American troops. At least 5 or 6 I believe were killed just in the last week or so. Also what is becoming a de rigour story-we once again bombed civilians and killed women/children while the military spokesperson said their ‘intelligence’ said the village had no civilians or some such shit.
Since our invasion in Afghanistan the number of just our troops killed has increased yearly. So I guess that means we’re winning right.
As for meeting enlistment goals-funny that. I keep reading that military branches can’t meet their goals yet just yesterday as I glanced at Headline News there in huge letters it states: Military Meets Recruiting Goals…goddam the media anyway. And if they have it’s because of army now accepting high school dropouts, raising age, and recruiting outside of the country among other new rules.
I’d also like to find out how many troops have died from wounds after leaving battlefield..I read somewhere that this number could be as high as 3 thousand or so. And I can’t remember where I read that.
The carnage in Iraq is horrendous and some asshole on tv yesterday was once again saying the liberal media was playing up the ‘bad stories’ and ignoring the ‘good’ stories from Iraq. Yeah like this good story from several days ago. Ten Iraqi doctors from Bagdad I believe were on their way to a smaller town to help out with all the wounded and were gunned down and killed…all goddam ten of these doctors-dead.
I am now sticking my fingers in my ears and saying na na na na na..don’t want to here bad news ..
It does seem like the Afghanistan part of this is just forgotten, doesn’t it?
I think they just make up numbers about those goals anyway. Forget Harvard Business School, I’d prefer working at McDonald’s to serving in Iraq (even though they have one of the highest rates of job-related shooting deaths in the country).
seem to be okay, but huge swaths, and the most politically important swaths, are just a cauldron of hell.
It’s a funny thing about dicatators. No one ever asks whether there was another way to maintain order and security.
Iraq was cobbled together from 3 different Ottoman Empire provinces, and it is not a natural nation that has a common cultural history. About the only thing they can coalesce around is Islam. But even that is difficult because of sectarian differences.
If we wanted to use a country to make an example of the virtues of Democracy, we should have picked a different country with less internal strife.
Yes and now many of the Shia Muslims and clerics are really getting serious and pushing to have an autonamous state in the south like the Kurds have in the north.
Here’s a very good history of the cobbling together and the conflicting interests involved: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin. I found it available here, but your friendly independent bookseller or local library can get it for you.
Fromkin is, as I recall, a history professor in Boston, and this is a very readable work.
Maybe we should inundate the WH with copies of this book…then again an unread book does us no good.
The time for DC insiders to have read it was when it first came out circa 1989, before Gulf War I. Now we have Gulf War II and, as the rap song says, “We got a war for me and a war for you.”
and two more of the constitution writers were killed today too. The Military spokesperson was asked this morning who was in charge of keeping those Iraqis safe. He really did not have an answer. Disgusting!
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IRAQ US & Coalition Casualties
US Fatalities by State
08/12/05 NAME NOT RELEASED YET Pending Confirmation
08/10/05 Herrera, Evenor C.
08/10/05 Benson, Michael A.
08/09/05 Carrasquillo, Miguel Pending Confirmation
08/09/05 Kulick, John
08/09/05 Ostrom, Ryan S. Pending Confirmation
08/09/05 Detample, Nathaniel E. “Nate”
08/09/05 Pellegrini Jr., Gennaro
08/09/05 Straub Jr., Francis J.
08/08/05 Gonzales Cordova, Ramon E.
08/07/05 Reyna, Seferino J.
08/07/05 Kalladeen, Anthony Pending Confirmation
08/06/05 Cromley, Chase Johnson
08/06/05 Jeffcoat, Brahim J.
08/06/05 Krout, Kurt E.
08/05/05 Derenda, Robert V.
08/05/05 Walden, Brett Eugene
08/05/05 Ball Jr., Terry W.
08/04/05 Thompson, Nils George
08/04/05 Simon, Chad J.
08/03/05 Reed, Aaron H.
08/03/05 Kreuter, David Kenneth J.
08/03/05 Dyer, Christopher Jenkins
08/03/05 Schroeder II, Edward August
08/03/05 Hoffman, Justin F.
08/03/05 Harper, Bradley J.
08/03/05 Cifuentes, Michael J.
08/03/05 Bernholtz, Eric J.
08/03/05 Wightman, William Brett
08/03/05 Bell Jr., Timothy Michael
08/03/05 Waruinge, Kevin G.
08/03/05 Gibbs, Mathew V.
08/03/05 Warren, Charles Houghton
08/03/05 Ganey Jr., Jerry Lewis
08/03/05 Fraser, Grant B.
08/03/05 Strain, Adam J.
08/03/05 Stewart, David S.
08/03/05 Bloem, Nicholas William B.
08/02/05 McNaughton, James D.
08/02/05 Hull, Thomas C.
08/01/05 Coullard, David J.
08/01/05 Deyarmin Jr., Daniel Nathan
08/01/05 Rock, Nathaniel S.
08/01/05 Montgomery, Brian P.
08/01/05 Graham III, James R.
08/01/05 Boskovitch, Jeffrey A.
08/01/05 Castleberry Jr., Roger D.
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Here’s another source for casualty statistics. There’s a link for casualties by month so that you, too, can keep track of how many people have been killed while George W. Bush hides out at his rich ranchette and refuses to talk to Cindy Sheehan.
As of two days ago, James Wolcott reported, it was 43. By now, at least 75.
I misread the numbers and added the 32 to the existing 43. So the total is, I hope, considerably lower than 75.
Sorry about that.
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That was the essence of AP article. Looking at stats, you see the casualties jump when the US launch a sweeping attack on Iraqi strongholds.
Link to monthly chart
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Note, too, that 7 Americans have died in Afghanistan in the last 8 days.