[Reader-list] The War on Iraq IQ Test

[t byfield]

rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Thu 03/20/03 at 10:23 PM -0800):

> This is not quite true.  

there are other things that aren't true about it. i'm too tired to
kludge a cut-and-paste from a short response i sent to the 'hippies
from hell' list (subscribers in common are welcome to forward it);
but it's typical of these kinds of items that they're reductive in
the extreme. anyway:

> 148 americans and 16 brits died during the war.  
> 
> what is true, however, is that a higher percentage of
> these deaths than in any other modern war was
> accounted for by "friendly fire" - what the military
> calls "fratricide".  

'friendly fire' has been the dark secret of war following (a) the 
introduction of guns in combination with (b) the dissolution of 
strictly regimented deployment structures. put simply, when sol-
diers scatter all over the place and shoot, they shoot their com-
rades. this has been going on ever since the late 18th-C wars of
revolution.

i won't argue over terminology, but i will say that the extremely
high ratio of friendly to unfriendly fire in the gulf war is a tes-
tament -- a frightening testament -- to just how organized the US
and (mainly) european armies have become. the fact that they can 
drive an invading army back with barely any casulaties incurred by
enemy fire is mind-boggling. not that i *want* casualties: i don't.
but nor do i want too see men conscripted by force or by despera-
tion exterminated en masse.

> (Iraqi deaths were estimated at 50,000, with 100,000
> wounded.)

ugh. and many of these conscripts buried in an unmarked grave of the 
unknown soldier called 'the desert.' if they were american, the POW/MIA 
psychos would be going berserk 30+ years from now.

> but the pentagon thought a better system was needed
> and spent 10 years and $175 million on the Battlefield
> Combat Identification System.  

you mean better than the duct-tape inverted Vs they used in the gulf war? 

> the system has been more or less abandoned because it
> was not good enough.  soldiers are going into this war
> very frightened of fratricide.

all the while forgetting 'the brotherhood of man' that transcends geo-
graphy, ethnicity, religion, language, and just about any other parti-
tion you could name.

there's an american saying, which many of you may know, about 'wear-
ing the pants in the family': it's what Dad Does and Son Doesn't. i'm
getting really tired of watching GWB use the presidency -- to say no-
thing of the rest of the world -- as a way to put a pair of pants on.
he's desperately trying to compete with his father. and the more 'pro-
found' he tries to be, the more he looks like a shriveled little boy.

cheers,
t