A knowledge of history relays a sense of perspective.

all that you say is very true, but wouldnt the plural of stephanopoulos be stephanopouli?

Plural of Stephanpoulos is too awful to contemplate. One is bad enough.

Just a stone's throw from my digs here in Charlottesville is the Confederate Cementary where there are buried far more than 1000 casualties who died in the Civil War era hospitals at the University of Virginia.

All around the noble rotunda of Jefferson the floors were stained with blood and the halls knew the screams and whimpers of the dying. Virginia alone lost 17,000 killed in the Civil War, many at Antietam and Gettysburg.

In the First and Second War War 100,000 Scots were killed in action almost three quarters in the Great War.
Frankly, all this hand wringing over the low casualty totals the USA has taken sounds very wimpy. But then the liberals of today are so cowardly, effeminate, wimpy and politically correct that they would scunner Harry Truman or Scoop Jackson not to mention Andrew Jackson, an imperfect man but a great Democrat and a great solider and leader who did much to keep the union together. I cannot believe any of these men would be Democrats today. Not even Jefferson would be a Democrat today, in my opinion.

Every casualty is a a bitter loss and a costly sacrifice on the altar of freedom but it reminds us all that freedom isn't free. If it took one million American lives to assure the survival and success of our republic Americans should be prepared to pay that price. I thank God the casualties are as low as they have been but there will be more losses in the future. We can only hope that each one counts for something and that these brave soldiers will not have died in vain.

"Ne Obliviscaris"
"Do Not Forget"

"Sans Peur"
"Without Fear"

Semper Fidelis
"Always Faithful"

God Bless America and her Red, White and Blue.
"C -130 comin' down the strip,
Jump school Daddy gonna take a little trip,
Step out shuffle to the door,
Jump right out and count to four,
If that chute don't too
Bury me in my DRESS BLUES!!!!"

DRILL SONG OF US MARINES circa 1975

We Munro,
Like men of old,
we serve a worthy, lady O!
Hear our drums,
Hear our pipes,
Hear our marchin'
Three by three,
Wi' bayonet and cannon ball
We'll serve our worthy, lady, O
We'll no' flee, we'd rather dee
For we serve a worthy lady O!

SONG OF THE MUNRO COMPANY AT BALAKLAVA, 93rd Highlanders
***
O, wha can fill a coward's grave
Wha saw base as be a slave
Let them turn and flee!

By opressions woes and pains
we will drain our deartest veins
But they shall be free!

SCOTS WHA HAE (Fragment; Robert Burns)

Scunners me, really to think of all the pusillanimous wimps who call themselves my countrymen.

Reminds me of the French officer who said to the US Marine "Retreat! Run for your lives!"
and the Marine answered "Retreat? Hell, we just got here."

On another occasion a Marine NCO told his men,
"Do you want to live forever?"

The bottom line is you can't live forever.

Hide in a hole or paint your face one inch thick and in 100 years somos todos calvos -we are all sticks and bones -goners. I am going to die and you who read this is going to die. No one is master of the line of his life. Damn the Modernists: DULCE ET DECORUM PRO PATRIA MORI. Better to die serving your country than under a bridge O.D.'ed

The important thing is to live with honor and defend the land you love and what it stand for because this is the citadel of freedom and safety for your friend, your kindred, your children.

"Greater love hath no man that to lay down his life for his friend."

Our lives are just a stone upon the cairn and God willing others will carry in freedom and defend future generations so that they can live in peace and freedom.

Let the craven cowards turn and flee.

It is just what Bin Laden is counting on.

We have to be tougher than him and brave enough to take it until he is drowning in his own blood.

For such an evil killer I won't mince words. He deserves far worse but sending him to meet his final judgment will do.

AL QAIDA DELENDA EST

BUSH, BLAIR AND HOWARD...heroes of the Red, White and Blue worthy of Churchill, FDR, Lincoln, Wilson, George and Washington.

JFKerry for president...of Club Med...

My impression over a long period of time, garnered from leftists whom I have known & some leftists whom I still know, has been that leftists’ wailing about combat deaths is decidedly absent when they strongly favor the combat. I have heard more than one leftist suddenly equate a million deaths to just one death, when the argument took such a turn as to render such an equation seemingly advantageous to their side of the argument.

* * *

I think that the plural of “Stephanopoulos” would be “Stephanopouloi.”

That was exactly my thought when I heard that 1,000 number. So what, how long have we been over there? And we are barely reaching a thousand now after all the times we've heard this compared to Vietnam?

Blech!

As the dominant country in the world, against a country like Iraq, who was supposed to welcome us with flowers and sweets... Isn't anyone here a little suprised at how many more have died since the end of major combat operations? Since the capture of Saddam Hussein (which has obviously made us all safer)? Since the installation of a new transitional government, which was supposed to ease tensions?

What's the point of comparing this to Antietam? The dead at Antietam -- don't those counts include the dead from both sides, when war used completely different technologies? We're supposed to use Antietam as the new standard? That if it's less than Antietam, it's OK? Or D-Day, when the military situation was completely different?

Doesn't anyone here know an irrelevant comparison when they see one? I mean, that's like saying oh well, at least Guantanamo isn't like the Warsaw ghetto. Doesn't anyone have a sense of scope before they utter such silliness?

OK, let's pretend that the ghastly stalemate at Antietam accomplished what you claim for it. Makes those deaths meaningful, huh? What have the 1000 American deaths in Iraq accomplished? Do you really think a million American deaths there would "drown Osama in his own blood?" (and are you getting your metaphores strictly from Jihadist literature?)

And how dare you trivialize 1000 dead and thousands more horribly wounded? I am effete for condemning these losses which have been sustained mosly after "mission accomplished" was declared, given creating an endless morass that was predicted by Bush's own State Department and even his own father?

Have you gone, joined your local Guard and volunteered for Iraq? Remember Gung Ho means "pull together," not "you go while I stay home and talk trash on right-wing blogs."

Seems the tag-team duo of Sam and Jerry are at it again, asking silly questions and making sillier comments. Sam, the whole point of Stephen's post was - as you so adeptly put it - to lend "a sense of scope", to place the casualities we've suffered in Iraq in context of what our effort is trying to accomplish. And Jerry, let me try to assuage your misplaced sense of outrage somewhat by suggesting that no-one is attempting to "trivialize 1000 dead and thousands more horribly wounded".

Maybe you could save your anger for the terrorists?

And as I said, comparing the 1,000 we've lost to D-Day is irrelevant. Let's compare it to how many you lose in a cake walk, shall we?

Fair point, Sam: I think there were two factors supporting the war, neither of which were humanitarian.

#1: the administration's conflation of Saddam Hussein with 9/11 (roughly 60% thought he was behind 9/11 thanks to this, and roughly 60% supported the war).

#2: perceptions that it would be a cake walk.

I doubt support would have run so high had D-day-like scenarios been presented to the American people. So the relevant comparison is not to worst case scenarios but to what was expected.

You know, I bet Bush et al are really glad that the fatalities so far aren't close to D-Day. Can you imagine how low his favorability ratings would be if the fatalities were that high, given that there are no WMDs there and that Iraq was not involved in 9-11?

Good words on Antietam. I still grieve for the US dead in Iraq, but as you say, slavery is the worst thing. TonyS

Bernard:
"So what, how long have we been over there? And we are barely reaching a thousand now..." Maybe not everyone is trivializing the number, but some are specifically and "putting the number in context" comes damn close. The major point being that these lives have been given creating through Bush's ineptness a morass that his own people predict a dismal best case scenario for.

"So the relevant comparison is not to worst case scenarios but to what was expected." What was to be expected was clearly spelled out in his own State Department's extensive memo, intelligence available before it was mangled by Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, and Bush's father's memoirs.

"...save (my) anger for the terrorists?" Like Osama, whom Bush doesn't think about much? Like the Saudis (the great majority), Egyptian, and Lebonese 9/11 terrorists with no connection to Iraq? Or you tell me: which terrorists connected to Iraq should I be saving my anger for?

Jerry, I didn't expect a cake walk, and I gather you didn't either. But I wonder what the American people's expectations were, given the neocons who were talking about cake walks and being greeted by Whitmans Samplers. I wonder how many prepared themselves for D-day like fatalities, and, as Jasper hinted, were prepared to take them for no WMDs or involvement in 9/11?

Jerry, I forgot to say: bring some friends here. This looks like a good place to hang out. Maybe we can take over the place.

Sam -

None of 'em, bud. Not while they were being told by our President and Secretary of State that it would be as easy and clean as Gulf War I, and that the people would flock to us like adoring children when Saddam was gone. And that the presence of WMD was "incontrovertable fact" (Powell at the UN)

To slightly paraphrase Groucho, I wouldn't belng to a club like this that would have me as a memeber.

Besides, they need a place to play quietly with each other while ignoring "silly" questions and facts. Note how they resort to name calling and ignore questions of substance?

A little fresh air never hurt anybody -- why, think about the canned questions Bush gets at his appearances.

America would never flinch over a thousand deaths were it a worthy cause. There is no doubt in my mind but that the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussein in power; but I'm not sure that this is the best way to have done it, I'm not sure if this is the best result for the world, and I'm not convinced it's stabilized the region: should democracy occur and the newly-recruited terrorists dissipate, where will they go?

Stephen, The War between the States was a sad and terrible time in our history. For anyone to use any episode from that tragedy, to rationalise what is going on in Iraq, is to mix apples with green beans. Not applicable!! The war between the states was a conflict between those that wanted a week central government, and those that believed that the Federal government had to have powers that were greater than the individual states. We invaded Iraq, and now we are occuping the country. The deaths that occured during the battle of Antietam were not glorious or even noble. It was a nightmare that accomplished nothing. And only armchair generals who never met the elephant say otherwise. Go to any VA hospital and look at the men and now women coming back from the glorious war. Ask them about the moment their bodies were torn from them by an explosive device, or grenade, or sniper bullet. then post more of this trivia, if you can. We are killing women and children, and turning the Iraqi into what they were not before, terrorist.
Lift the blinders from your eyes, I challege you, look at the result of the invasion and rape of Iraq. No true patriot is proud of what has happened, we all of us the blue and the red are responsible for those thousand dead, and sixteen thousand and counting wounded.

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