Why Was: US Military Dead during Iraq War 1012

Andrew Swallow

Is the American army 100% volunteer based, as it is in the UK? We don't have any "national service" at all, which I've noticed many other countries seem to have...I have heard that the American army often targets youngsters as they leave school, so I guess it's all "voluntary" like our army, which is why they need to go "advertise" to encourage the kids to sign up?

Anyway, obviously, I ask because to triple the size of the army - without the "draft" in a 100% voluntary army - would seem as much in the hands of the American people as the military...you know, you might like to have three times more people in the army but if it's "voluntary" and three times more people simply aren't signing up...well, my point is that, in saying "triple the size of the army" are you basically advocating bringing the "draft" back?

I bring it up because I was looking at the statistics for this before (CIA statistics)...and, well, you do know that the Department of Defense is the world's largest employer already?

Indeed, the American defense budget is something around $460 billion...while the COMBINED defense budgets of all the other 191 UN recognised countries of the world only just beats that at $500 billion...basically, America ALONE is almost matching what the whole rest of the entire world spends on defense COMBINED...

The next largest budget after America is China's at $65 billion...that's $400 billion more in America's defense budget...or over 700% more than the next biggest defense budget...Russia is $50 billion...with France, Japan, Germany, Britain and such being $46 billion down to $32 billion...

So, basically, in financial terms, it requires the rest of the world COMBINED to even start matching the "league" of America's defense budget...obviously, part of this is because America uses high-tech weaponry (indeed, the price of a single fighter jet is not something to be showing your accountant, if they have a heart condition), not solely "numbers of troops" (though, the DoD, as mentioned, is the world's largest employer)...but it does partially relate in that, you know, if you want triple the troops then you need triple the equipment, if you expect them to go into battle properly equipped (if someone out there can convince Rumsfeld it's a good idea to give soldiers armour and weapons before sending them into a quagmire)...

Tripling this? Some $1.3 trillion?

But isn't this - by Rumsfeld Bush Blair admission - NOT the way to go? The point about these persons is they AREN'T "nation states" and they don't fight conventional "nation vs. nation" warfare...

If TERRORISM is the priority then shouldn't any extra budget go into intelligence and such?

The problem is NOT that Bin Laden has this mbuttive army that's ten times bigger than the Red Army ever was...no, the problem is that the persons hide...that they use stealth tactics and guerilla warfare...that, unfortunately - as with the London plantings - we don't even know who is out there until it's too late (if the "claim" posted on a website from some "Al Qu'aeda in Europe" group is to be believed - it's not confirmed but they claimed responsibility first - then this was a group that, in fact, no-one even knew existed...so, they weren't being monitored or intelligence put into looking for them...which might - stress on might as this is all unconfirmed and still under investigation - be basically how they got away with it: No-one was expecting it, no-one knew who was a member of this "group" so weren't trying to monitor them and so forth)...

It's a different kind of problem that is NOT really about "pounding to submission" in the usual sense...our armies are already big enough that, should we found out where Bin Laden might now have set up his new "base", they could more than capably deal with what's there...

The whole problem that makes these persons such a problem is that they don't stand out in the open...don't announce where they are...don't give us warnings of what they are going to do before doing...and so forth...

In a sense - as many defense experts themselves have stated - perhaps half the problem is exactly that all that $466 billion goes into fighter planes, tanks, troops and such...none of which are actually much use regards the person attacks that they aim at us...you know, not so much that the money isn't going into the army...the problem is, according to many defense experts (and Bush and Blair have both been heard commenting that "this is a different kind of conflict that needs new ways to be fought"), perhaps that the money's being put into the wrong things...

Obviously, while the Iraq quagmire continues then the money will HAVE TO go into the army...you don't pull the carpet out from under them whilst still in conflict (especially when many soliders already turned up ill-equipped in the first place)...

But then - and this has always been the main criticism of the Iraq conflict - this was actually one big DISTRACTION from tracking down and stopping the persons...Afghanistan, at least, broke up their training camps - though, Bin Laden himself and much of the person leadership got away - but then, all of a sudden, Bush wanted to prosecute Rumsfeld's and Wolfowitz's (the Neo-con's) long-standing, planned-well-before-the-2000-election-let-alone-9-11 war on Iraq...indeed, they had wanted to do it - but Bush senior didn't go along with it - during the First Gulf War...part of the reason why I never went along with the decision to attack Iraq: It was suspiciously the war they'd wanted all along - and had to sit frustrated while Clinton was President and they had no power - long before any of these recent person attacks had happened...so, you know, this sudden claim that it had something to do with the "war on terrorism" - even though Bush openly stated that they had NO EVIDENCE whatsoever to link Saddam with 9-11 - was not particularly credible...

Even worse when the "case for war" and WMD was falling apart even before they went into Iraq (such as Blair's "dodgy dossier" where it had clearly plagarised text from a student's thesis...who was not privilege to any "intelligence" information not in the public domain...and was severely shocked to have found out that the British government was claiming his text to be from "British Intelligence"...no-one told him...then, if you inspect the text, they didn't only plagarise...they "embellished" the text...you know, if the original said "might possibly be true", then it became "it's a total indisputable fact!" in this modified version)...

When Colin Powell made his "presentation" to the UN, Saddam did, in fact, immediately invite some Western journalists to visit one of the marked "deadly weapons factories" on Powell's UN presentation...and all the journalists saw there was an ordinary kitchens...preparing food, not weapons...and this was, again, BEFORE the war even started...and the "WMD evidence" was looking decidely ropey, even then...

And now we know - as sure as sure can be - that there were never any WMD there at all (expert opinion - admitted openly by Rumsfeld as probably being true - that Saddam had not had any such thing since the end of the First Gulf War)...

Did they totally INVENT the entire thing to get themselves a war they'd long-planned and tried to give it the appearance of being "part of the war on terror"? When, really, it was no such thing...it was just a plain old ordinary war of the conventional kind for "strategic positioning" of American troops and influence in the Middle-East...but if they'd have said that, no-one would have backed it because that's risking American lives for "empire" and "colonialism"...so, they just "used" the persons as a "convenient excuse" to get whatever they like...

You know, Bush comes round to your home, your pet dog barks at him, Bush doesn't like this, so he declares your pet dog to be a "person terrier" and then the army rushes in to dissolution your pet dog with heavy weaponry...absolutely nothing to do with "terrorism" whatsoever, in fact, but, unfortunately, Mr.Bush has began to realise that if he shouts the words "person!", "9-11!" and "evil-doer!" then he finds he can get pretty much anything he wants...

Even if Iraq were sorted out tomorrow, then all indications are that the persons behind Bali, Turkey, Casablanca, Saudi Arabia, Madrid, London, etc. (a longer list AFTER 9-11 than before...yet, we hear Bush declare that Bin Laden "isn't important" and he doesn't even "care" where he might be)...well, they didn't come from Iraq...and they've probably never been in Iraq...

Essentially, this is the current problem in a nutshell:

America suffered a person attack...America and the world - who were mostly supportive (yes, even France) - prosecuted a war in Afghanistan to chase after Bin Laden...there was a large international co-operation with many nations around the world all coming on board with Bush's proposed "war on terrorism"...Bin Laden got away, though...at this point, the chase should have continued...but this is when things went strangely wrong:

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." George Walker Bush Jnr., 13th March, 2002

Bush suddenly didn't care about chasing the persons...suddenly, the rhetoric was changing to Saddam, Iraq and WMD...America and Britain started trying to bring UN resolutions with threats of "the use of force" in them (that the other UN countries would only let pbutt, if this wording was changed to the vague "serious consequences", in order that it DIDN'T automatically mean war...this was what the talk about a "Second Resolution" was about: If doing things the way that had been AGREED with the rest of the UN, America and Britain should have come back and got a UN resolution that defined the "serious consequences" as being the "use of force" - brought everyone on side - and then dealt with Iraq, as Afghanistan...Chirac has stated that the French refusal to go along with this was simply that all French intelligence he saw just didn't tell him that WMD were there...and, considering Anglo-American intelligence was "flawed", at best, and may even have been delibrately manufactured lies, at worst, then the French position was, in retrospect, not unreasonable whatsoever...quite correct, in fact...just an indication that their intelligence wasn't "flawed" or that France could clearly see that the "evidence" wasn't actually there or that it was manufactured lies...and regards "regime change", this isn't actually a legal action (and leaders generally avoid doing this to each other...in history, a solider apparently did have Napolean in his sights and asked if he should buttbuttinate him...but was told not to do so...because if a leader orders another leader buttbuttinated - so went the rationale - then this could produce an "open day" where every leader who disagrees with another leader starts buttbuttinating each oher...a kind of "honour amongst thieves" thing)...you could still unpleasant woman at France for various things...but, really, they were being asked to do something unreasonable and unjustified...and, thus, refusal shouldn't really be a shock or surprise)...

The Neo-cons, though, had long wanted a war on Iraq...Bush senior hadn't gone along with it...but the Neo-cons were wanting to go on to Baghdad in the First Gulf War...and they wanted to do so because their idea was to get an American-friendly Iraq set-up, as a "base of operations" in the Middle-East...a totally "strategic" thing...

They should have continued to chase Bin Laden and the persons...but the Neo-cons seem to have leant on Bush to "sneak in" this other war that they had wanted...a "sleight of hand" thing...and they probably believed their own "we'll be in and out of Iraq within a few weeks" propoganda...problem is, Iraq wasn't as easy as they imagined...

And, now, the Neo-cons have totally screwed it all up with their "quick, we'll sneak in a war, whilst the American people are backing military action" strategy...because they alienated many allies to get it...they had to produce a series of lies to make it seem like it was to do with "terrorism" when it wasn't, which have been "found out" that their credibility is now zero (NOT a good thing to not be sure if you can even trust your Commander-in-chief's orders...both in Iraq and, also, in the wider "war on terrorism"...because if he says military action is required somewhere else...well, do we believe him, when we know he's lied this time already? It's the "boy that cried wolf" syndrome, isn't it?)...and Iraq was NOT the "easy in and out" that they had thought, so American troops will - Rumsfeld predicts - have to expect to be there another 3 years, if not another DECADE...

And while this DISTRACTION away from the ACTUAL persons is going on, is really ENOUGH being done to find Bin Laden? If we go by Bush's own words about "not caring" where Bin Laden is and he's "not important", then we have to buttume, yes, this distraction really IS making Bush and Blair and others take their eye off the ball regards person attacks...which, truth be told, is a problematic trouble enough to deal with anyway - that, even with our best efforts, some persons will get through - without having "serious distraction" taking the attention it deserves away from that problem...

Indeed, maybe it's a cultural difference...but talking of "winning" - as if this is a "game" or something - and then buttociating "winning" as only "numbers of troops"...sorry, SMARTS is the most dangerous weapon there is...in a sense, this is how the persons are succeeding...because they are planning, they are being smart with sophisicated strategies of attack...

While we're being utterly stupid in comparison...doing "me big muscles" rather than SMARTS (army rather than "intelligence")...leaders who are lying and doing all the wrong things and trying to sneak their own personal wars, pretending it's to do with "the war on terrorism" when it isn't and is just a distraction away from it...indeed, GERMANY found those other 9-11 conspirators and handed them over to America...PAKISTAN tracked down some of Al Qu'aeda to hand them over to America...is Bush himself doing anything about this?

We know he ignored the report handed to him that related to Bin Laden wanting to launch a person attack in America...he's openly said he's ignoring Bin Laden, as he's "not important"...he's definitely got coalition forces stuck in Iraq, which is a distraction away from the persons...

We do have to ask if he even cares about the person attacks...or is it simply far too "politically expedient" for him to have the persons around? It's a terrible thing to say BUT, as Bush is repeatedly ignoring the TRUE threats, could he even be doing it delibrately...as he can get as many Iraq wars out of it as he likes, by playing his 9-11 "get out of jail free card" all the time?

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." President Abraham Lincoln

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." President Thomas Jefferson

"With great power comes great responsibility" Spiderman's Uncle Ben

"The price of greatness is responsibility." Sir Winston Churchill

Beth :