Re: Silver Cloud Numbers

[Soldier's Dad]

The current violent death rate for non-combatants in Iraq is running at 21/day for the first 22 days of October..(from my own statistcs). Gun related deaths running at ~11 per day...Explosives death running at ~10 per day.

That comes out an annualized homicide death toll of 7665. Using a population of 27 million as a base..that results in an annualized homicide death rate of 28/100,000 population.

That makes Iraq statistically safer for locals than Jamaica,South Africa, Columbia or Swaziland. Of course Jamaicans and Afrikaners avoid shooting at the tourists which is a substantial difference if one happens to be on a US DOD all expense paid trip to Iraq.

The Fires of California

[Soldier's Mom]

Keeping the families affected by the California fires in our thoughts... many military families are affected and any number of milbloggers... Doc... Lex... FuzzyBear

Read and follow the links at Blackfive...

Here's a list of how you can help

of course, it didn't take the dhimocrats long to make it about the war in Iraq... honey, just how low can you go???

California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer complained on Capitol Hill Tuesday that the ability of the state's National Guard to respond to disasters like the fires has been compromised because too much of its equipment and personnel are committed in Iraq.

Just goes to show how little the friggin' woman knows about her own state's NG:

While less than a fourth of the California National Guard is deployed...

So, 20,000 NG members is CA... 5,000 deployed... and the Governator as activated... 1,500... of 15,000 available...

ok, Barbara... get a friking life... better yet, get a brain... my hope for you acquiring a conscience is too small to measure.

Four Months

[Greyhawk]

...with the WaPo's David Ignatious.

July 20, 2007 - Iraq is an inferno that will spread through the region:

The Bush administration is groping toward a diplomatic firewall strategy that might help keep the inferno in Iraq from spreading in the Middle East.

This approach has two basic components: pushing harder for negotiations to establish a Palestinian state and creating a standing "Iraq neighbors' conference" to prevent states in the region from taking advantage of Iraq's chaos or being infected by it.
<...>
To make real progress on either front -- Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations or a concert of Iraq's neighbors -- will require an intensity and deftness in diplomacy the administration hasn't yet shown.
<...>
Rice and Gates seem to agree that this diplomatic push is an essential response to the continuing violence in Iraq. In an administration often marked by intense disagreement between State and Defense, their alliance will help focus thinking about how to stabilize a region that is dangerously out of control.

July 27, 2007 - too bad we don't have a government like Englands, then we could dump that idiot Bush and get out of Iraq!

This is a moment when America would be better served by a parliamentary system. The Bush administration would have lost a vote of "no confidence" after November's congressional elections, and the Democrats would now have responsibility for overseeing the tricky process of extracting American forces from Iraq without doing even more damage.

August 24: Progress? Hah - it's all in Anbar where the Sunnis are playing us for stooges to get arms to fight the Shiites after we leave, and you'll never see al Qaeda in this discussion, brother.

What modest progress the United States has recently made in Iraq has largely been in Sunni areas, such as Anbar province. It's an alliance of convenience: The Sunnis increasingly see U.S. troops as their best ally for containing the power of Iran and its proxies in Iraq.

September 12 (Petraeus goes to Congress: Okay, there's been a little more progress than I thought, but Petraeus better hurry up cause he doesn't have time to fix this huge mess:

But Petraeus's ad hoc, ground-up security framework is not the same thing as stabilizing the country. In the time remaining, he has to pull things together as best he can -- connect local successes to provincial and national institutions; extend the Sunni rebellion against extremists into the Shiite regions; break the control that Shiite militias exert over the Interior Ministry and the police.

We do know how this is going to end: with U.S. troops returning home. The question is what they will leave behind. It's likely to be a ragged, patchwork quilt, and there isn't much time left to stitch it together.

October 19 (Insert your own interpretation here*):

Let's assume that the numbers from Iraq are right and that there has been a significant reduction in violence there. Let's even agree that the Bush administration's strategy is finally showing some success. Isn't that an argument for accelerating the transfer of security to the Iraqis -- and speeding up the withdrawal of some U.S. support troops?

After that much hard work, I think the man deserves a vacation.

October 23, 1983

[Soldier's Mom]

In the attack on the American barracks, the death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers. Sixty Americans were injured.

We have not forgotten

Team Badger Soldier Profiled

[badger 6]

Learn about Staff Sergeant Ian Freeman here.

Silver Cloud Numbers

[Eagle1]

You know, a few days ago our man Chap had a link to some interesting statistics putting Violence in Iraq in Perspective .

Right now, the violent death rate in Iraq is comparable to that in South Africa...

UPDATE: As noted in the comments to the linked post, "South Africa is a tad safer than Iraq" after an adjustment for Iraq's population was made.

And, yes, there really can be interesting statistics.

'Course there is that "How to Lie with Statistics" thing, but...

RE: SILVER CLOUDS

[Buck Sargent]

Quip of the year:

Bush fibbed, people lived!!!

Re: Silver Clouds

[Greyhawk]

It's not just the morgue workers who are suffering in Iraq:

Taxi driver Ahmed Khalil Baqir used to station himself outside Baghdad's main morgue, waiting for grieving families who went there to claim their relatives’ dead bodies.

"I was totally dependent on them for my living," Baqir, a 44-year-old father of four, said." I never thought about picking up people in the street as I was being hired five to eight times a day by these families. But now it is a waste of time to wait there and these days I wait only for about three hours in the morning and I continue my work picking up passengers in the street.”

But as for those morgue workers, don't worry about them:

According to Muhsin, the average number of dead bodies sent to Baghdad’s main morgue just over a year ago was between 100 and 150 a day. Now, it is no more than 10 bodies a day, and about 50 percent of them are dying in normal circumstances.

"There have been days this year when no dead bodies were sent to the morgue and this gave the morgue employees a chance to refurbish it, something they couldn't do in the past," Muhsin added.

But you're really not going to believe the latest Bush administration coverup exposed by Newsweek.

"Overall trends show a significant drop in violence over the last several months, according to previously unpublished military statistics obtained by NEWSWEEK."

It's the shocking secret that Bushco doesn't want America to know... "because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush's ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran's clerical regime"!!!!!!

(All the ugly details here - and just wait til the super secret UN report becomes public - impeachment is sure to follow!)

Violence Drops - NYT Hardest Hit

[Cassandra]

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep dark depression
Excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck
I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair and agony on me...

Click for larger image

Linked at The Cotillion