US Marines Say Up To 100 Insurgents Killed In Fallujah Air Strikes

[Nambe]

FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sept 7 (AFP)

The rebel Iraqi city of Fallujah came under heavy US artillery fire and air strikes late Tuesday, leaving up to 100 insurgents killed, the US marines said in a statement. ..

Smoke mushroomed into the sky. War planes strafed the industrial zone The general hospital had received a undetermined number of casualties and panic swept the city, the reporter added.

One ambulance driver said he had taken two dead and 15 wounded to hospital, while families fleeing the air raids said there were more corpses and wounded trapped in the zone under attack.

Mosque loud speakers wailed "God is Great" amid the cacophony. ..

[MrSlayer]

1. Along with about 2,000 civilians.....

Mission Accomplished!

[InCogNeatOhMyGod]

10. Link to the 2000 civilians killed?

Is there one for this action?

[gristy]

17. MrSlayer was being sarcastic in his choice of the number 2,000

Regardless, don't you find it interesting, InCogNeatOhMyGod, that the news reports never mention any civilians being killed? No children killed? No elderly folks who couldn't hurt a fly if they wanted killed? They ARE being killed, you know. You do know that, don't you? Don't you?

[InCogNeatOhMyGod]

18. I only know what the news reports

Second guessing our brave soldiers right now is not good for the election. Not too many Americans support dissing our troops don't you know.

[gristy]

29. Have you seen this link?

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm Gives reported civilian deaths on an incident-by-incident basis, and their news source: AP, Reuters, NYT, and others.

[InCogNeatOhMyGod]

34. Who sponsers iraqbodycount.net?

IP lookup reports it as...
registrant-firstname: Hamit
registrant-lastname: Dardagan
registrant-organization: Iraq Body Count
registrant-street1: 33 Cornwall Gardens
registrant-pcode: SW7 4AP
registrant-city: London
registrant-ccode: GB
registrant-phone: [phone]
registrant-email: [e-mail]

Is this a legit news org or an individual with a mission?

[gristy]

38. This is a legitimate news source

He shows his info source (though it would be easier to check if he showed an outright link, I admit) for each civilian death estimate.

[InCogNeatOhMyGod]

39. It seems like a narrow focus for a news org

The site is named: "Iraq Body Count". Is that their only focus? Seems odd for a legit news org to be named and focused only on the Iraq Body Count. Know what I mean?

[gristy]

41. I didn't call it a news organization - you did.

Any other questions?

[BrotherBuzz]

45. Top notch Argument!

Welcome to DU!

extra credit if you can identify which of these Logicial Fallacies you actually used....


Ad Hominem Argument
The person rather than the position is attacked

Bandwagon Argument
Assumes the popular position is almost necessarily the correct one

Circular Argument
The truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises

Either/Or Argument
Two and only two options are provided when alternative positions are available

False Analogy
The two items compared are dissimilar

Hasty Generalization
The sample is too small to support the generalization

Non Sequiter Argument
A statement is made which does not logically follow from what has been just stated

Post Hoc Argument
Because one event follows another the first event is assumed to be the cause of the second event

Red Herring Argument
Argument which distracts the audience from the issue in question through the introduction of some irrelevancy

Slippery Slope Argument
A series of increasingly unacceptable, usually disastrous, consequences occur

Strawman Argument
Attacking an argument that is different and usually weaker than the opponent's best argument

[gristy]

48. I noticed that too and was even tempted to go find a link to help

me name the method being used. Looks like a Red Herring Argument.
Do I win? :)

[BrotherBuzz]

49. LOL, you win a link!

http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
http://atheism.about.com/od/logicalfallacies/a/overview.htm

there are more Logical Fallacies out there than my pea-brain could absorb in a lifetime. I listed the ones I was able to put to memory; the ones that work well for me. I recommend you do the same, you won't be disappointed.

[kymar57]

33. agree

Are we any better than the butchers at the school in Belsin just because we don't hold the people(kids included) in a school gym before we kill them:mad:

[mom cat]

20. Welcome to DU! You asked a good question. That is one stat I don't know

so I will be checking back for an answer too. Again, welcome aboard.
:hi:

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

46. Here's a link

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Civilians killed by US military "intervention in Iraq

Min Max
11793 13802

Suck on that.

[alcuno]

2. Only 10,957,403 to go.

[bahrbearian]

3. "That baby with the Rattle , looked pretty threating."

[shadu]

4. 100 brave men killed by cowards

how fuckin' pitiful!

[samtob]

8. WHAT????

Cowards? Explain yourself please.

[DrWeird]

19. Well, it is pretty cowardly...

to launch air strikes and artillery against essentially defenseless civilian populations.

You have to admit that regardless of how much you enjoy killing civilians.

[gristy]

31. You're out of line, Dr.

Completely out of line.

[DrWeird]

35. Really?

I'd think raping and torturing children is out of line. But what do I know?

[gristy]

40. That's a broad brush you are painting with

I understand your anger, but justice demands that charges be brought and that the charged be prosecuted and punished. NOT an entire class of people (i.e., soldiers in general).

[Radius]

44. Save your breath

This guy will not accept that the troops were sent to Iraq with congressional funding, both candidates support the war, and that it will continue no matter who wins in november.

Soldiers following orders in his mind are criminals and the Iraqi's (or syrians, jordanians, and Iranians) trying to kill them are freedom fighters.

His comparison to chechens killing insurgents should be a clue that you have gone down a rabbit hole..

You are fighting a lost cause. I do agree with you as does the mainstream democratic party and the people who will be elected to the White House. So don't worry.

[mom cat]

26. Our weaponry makes the fight so uneven that it is like shooting

fish in a barrel. The spray and slay tactics mean few losses for us and monstrous losses for them. I think that the policy is one of brutally subjugating a people who are not nor ever were our enemy, had nothing to do with Saddam and who are being slaughtered by the thousands because they oppose our illegal war and an occupation that violates all the laws of occupation. If an outside power were doing something like that to my homeland I would fight like hell and think that those tactics were cowardly.

[InCogNeatOhMyGod]

12. Which cowards killed these 100 brave insurgents?

Could you please be specific? Who killed these uniformed regulars that are fighting the enemy?

[mom cat]

27. See my answer to the post above. Welcome again.

[tritsofme]

23. I know a few of these men

You know what's really fucking pitiful? When you denigrate our soldiers in the field, when the real criminal is in the White House.

Coward.

[DrWeird]

25. Regardless of who gave the orders...

it's still pretty cowardly.

[tritsofme]

28. I happen to think its cowardly to sit back here at home

and criticize these young men and women who have no choice in the matter from a computer screen.

[DrWeird]

30. I think it's cowardly to drop bombs on civilians.

That's as cowardly as flying jetliners into office buildings, only more so because it doesn't entail any personal sacrifice.

Don't you agree?

[tritsofme]

43. Likening American soldiers to the terrorists of 9-11 is completely

disgusting.

Way beyond the pale.

[mom cat]

32. I agree. The tactics and war plans are cowardly and come from

the draft dodger in the White House. The people following orders have been fed a line of bull, lied to and trapped there for a lot longer than they ever dreamed. They do not have the cushy guard jobs that AWOL had. It is sadistic how he is socking it to the Guard and the reserves after he used it to dodge Vietnam

[hadrons]

5. "US Marines Say Up To 100 Insurgents Killed ...."

yeah, from what??? Starting from zero to 100??? I guess they have to report this "good news" to blunt the 1,000 dead troops

[IndianaGreen]

6. Nothing like a free fire zone

to turn every living thing in it into an insurgent.

[Gin]

9. so that makes up for dead Americans? I heard that justification from

Rummy today....yes our guys died...but...we got many more of the bad guys. What a bunch of a-holes.

There must be a ratio of dead Americans to insurgents that they use.

[IndianaGreen]

14. We are back to body counts

as we did in Vietnam. There is no way of Iraq other than a total and immediate withdrawal.

[mom cat]

37. Since when are children, women and old folks and men who are trying

to defend them from an illegal invasion "the bad Guys" ? this is sick. :puke:

[Zynx]

7. Probably more like 7

Note that they didn't actually go into the city to, you know, COUNT.

Propaganda.

[lapfog_1]

11. This brings up a question that's been bugging me all day.

Today being the sad day of the official 1000th US casualty.

The military says that this war in Iraq is not a "body-count"
war, no records are kept of estimated kill or kill ratios or
any such echo of the Vietnam War. But, rethuglicans are just
as eager to point out that we are fighting the terrorists "there"
instead of here in the "homeland" and that we haven't been attacked
here in the homeland since 9/11 because of our Great Leader.

So I'm guessing that the low estimate would be 10 enemy combatants
to every US KIA, possibly as high as 30 to 50. That would mean,
according to rethuglican thinking, that we've "offed" about 10,000
to 30,000 terrorists. Does anyone know if they estimated the
number of Al Queada members there were on 9/11? And total number
of Islamic terrorists in the world. Anything like 10,000? or
30,000? or 50,000? And how many are in the world now?

I mean, if the reason for sacrificing our young men and women in
Iraq is that we are fighting the terrorists there rather than
here, wouldn't it be prudent to have some sort of gage or yardstick
to see how effective this is... and even if we are making progress?

[kymar57]

42. 1 dead Iraqi=10 new terrorists

just a guess. But think about it. We kill one innocent civilian. Now his/her father hates us,mother hates us, all the brothers, sisters hate us. Then you go to uncles and aunts,cousins. Oh, they were married, thats a whole new family. 10 is repug conservative.

[jcappy]

13. in vietnam the ratio was 40 to one

that is, 40 dead vietnamese for each american soldier

given the true context of this invasion of Iraq, an "insurgent" is equally innocent to civilians (or i would not want to measure the degree of difference)

[Disturbed]

15. "Winning hearts and minds."

That has been shit canned. In it's place is "Slaughter as many Iraqis as it takes." The new strategy is geared toward "All quiet on the ME Front" in time to re-select the Neo Fascists.

[DrWeird]

22. Yeah, but in Vietnam we killed more Vietnamese then existed.

I mean, if you sum up all of the enemy death tolls like this one.

[Malva Zebrina]

16. children playing ball in an empty lot

real insurgents for sure.

[LynnTheDem]

21. Insurgents?

Oh, the IRAQIS fighting the FOREIGN INVADERS.

The Iraqi FREEDOM FIGHTERS.

At least in Fallujah the dead won't be Shi'ites the US forces have been slaughtering for months after using the slaughtering of the Shi'ite rebels in 1991 as their excuse to invade & occupy Iraq in 2003.

Hmmm. Nope, doesn't make it sound any better.

[DrWeird]

24. Yeah, Chechans killed 300 insurgents just the other day.

Score another one for the good guys. I guess.

[Disturbed]

36. I wonder if...

J. Kerry and J. Edwards approve of the new policy in Iraq.

In my view this is Terrorism. No "official" policy of killing and maiming "non-combatents" but surely a policy just the same.

[teryang]

47. If it's a "no go" zone how do they know who or how many...

...they've killed? They are guessing. Wartime intelligence in a foreign land, fighting a popular uprising equals guessing. Guessing about political objectives, guessing about targets, guessing about casualties, guessing about effectiveness. Guessing about objectives and effectiveness in a war essentially based upon fraud.

How good do you think our chauvinistic culture is in the game of tactical intelligence in a guerilla war? Americans rarely have any profound understanding of a foreign culture unless they are naturalized natives of the culture with which we are at war. The latter group when employed by the government often lack the professional training needed and embrace the martial cause with the misleading zeal of the newly converted. How deep can understanding be when it must serve the policy interests of a lying leadership of machiavellians and profiteers?

Note the bizarre statement of the corrupt blundering leadership at the top:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20040908/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_040908000729

<Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited progress on multiple fronts in the Bush administration's global war on terrorism and said U.S. enemies should not underestimate the willingness of the American people and its coalition allies to suffer casualties in Iraq and elsewhere.>

This is a bizarre statement to say the least. Willingness to suffer casualties? This foreshadows military and political defeat. Twisting the language to make losses sound like a positive quality.

They're into body counts because they've got nothing else.

[LauraK]

50. Agence France Press seems to have people inside...

these zones. Hope they don't get friendly fired.