Not to make too big of deal about it, but the Iraq war ended today.
Thank God the world is finally safe from Saddam Hussein’s nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction!
I mean, except for the nearly 5,000 U.S. soldiers and contractors killed in the conflict. And the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a result of the U.S. invasion.
I’m so glad George Bush is keeping us safe!
More people die from gun violence every year in America than American soldiers did in 9 years of fighting in Iraq. And they’re the threat?
More people die in traffic accidents per year than gun violence….drunk drivers are more dangerous than anybody else, why don’t we treat them as such?
Glad we are out of iraq…in a year the place will be a bigger hell hole disaster than it is now.
@3 “Glad we are out of iraq…in a year the place will be a bigger hell hole disaster than it is now.”
Yeah, but it won’t be our responsibility any more. It never should have been in the first place.
@4
Yep, I agree.
It’s going to be interesting indeed to see how the returning veterans of the last decade’s wars feel about supporting the party that sent them off for such fun and games and tried to prevent them from voting while they were gone.
Michael @ 2,
Comparing numbers of deaths from guns and military action is a false equivalence. There are many more Americans than U.S. soldiers in Iraq
One can compare the rate of deaths for guns and U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
For guns deaths (from 1990-1995), Americans had something around 15 deaths per 100,000 people per year.
For U.S. soldiers, the rate for the first three years of the Iraq war was 392 per 100,000 soldiers per year of duty.
Either way, it isn’t a “Iraq or guns” issue.
@7
Yeah, guess I screwed the pooch on that one.
re7: Is there a way deaths per year from 4 hour erections could figure into the numbers and shed additional light?
dd @ 9,
” Is there a way deaths per year from 4 hour erections could figure into the numbers and shed additional light?”
It’s probably correlated with gun deaths. You know, women attempting to shooting off her man’s dick to get rid if that infernal erection.
Just a hunch….
re 10: ‘Just a hunch…’
Intentional pun or Freudian slip? You be the Decider.
Dutch, dude!
Where are you?
Are you chickening out on me, little guy?
Or just waiting to sober up a bit?
@3 “drunk drivers are more dangerous than anybody else, why don’t we treat them as such?”
Probably because the average American voter doesn’t want to criminalize his sister, mother, neighbor, boss, golfing buddy, and his own sons and daughters.
Our justice system is incredibly lenient with drunk drivers. You can literally kill a whole family and serve only a couple years in jail for it. We need a civil commitment procedure, similar to the one we have for sex offenders, for people convicted of DUI who drive with suspended or revoked licenses.
Arizona’s Joe Arpaio is now officially the “Most Racist Sheriff In America.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....tment-says
Sadly, it should be so much more than a note in passing.
With rare exception the whole damn system broke.
From the intentionally distorted and perverted “intelligent reports”, through the GWB propaganda campaign, to the no-balls Congress (praise be to Sen Murray for being 1 of 21 to vote NO!), to the lackadaisical public who ignored the facts in front of them for over 5 years.
Oh, and how about one giant “F YOU!” to the bought and paid for media who gave us “Suck on it” and ignored the largest ever global demonstrations against our illegal aggression.
Mission Accomplished, indeed.
Roger Rabbit @ 14
“Our justice system is incredibly lenient with drunk drivers. You can literally kill a whole family and serve only a couple years in jail for it.”
Or nearly kill someone and serve eight years on the King County Council. At least if you are a Republican.
@17
or be looked up to as a progressive hero if your last name is Kennedy.
It is really sad that our troops leaving Iraq is just a footnote. The whole Iraq thing was so F’d up and sordid, people didn’t want to look at or think about it.
Michael,
“It is really sad that our troops leaving Iraq is just a footnote.”
I absolutely agree. It’s big (hence my sarcastic downplay above).
But Obama isn’t the type to land on a carrier all decked out in a codpiece….
Iraq War done – good! Now let’s get the guys and gals out of Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East. Then, Europe, then Asia, then the rest of the foreign lands out there. We’ve done enough for the rest of the world, including Israel. Time for the South Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Germans, Israelis, etc. to look out for themselves! We quit!
I wanted to celebrate for a minute, then remembered the country I love committed a massive war crime, as many as 1/2 million Iraqis lost lives. Think of the number of family members affected alone! Massive physical destruction to infrastructure which has been accelerated, not slowed, over the last 5 years. Women with freedom now being submitted to Islamic law, valued at 1/4 that of a man now stopped int he streets if not wearing “acceptable” garb. The new Taliban.
10 years of hell, now what? 100 more years of Hell. If anyone can afford a car, it breaks in a month, the roads are so bad. These people will never recover on their own.
It literally makes me physically sick to think of what we have done. We cannot be better than the dictators of the world if we just keep looking forward and never reflect back on our deeds.
Obama said he would end this war. He did nothing more than accept the Bush plan and keep it going as long as he could. The timing was Bush’s. Obama did nothing.
The mission accomplished banner on this post is identical to the one Bush flew in the first weeks of the war. This is sick. I can’t believe how seriously I was tricked in support of Barak OBanker.
@22
how many of those dead iraqis were killed by other iraqis – or iranians……
they killed each other at a much faster rate than we killed them…
with that said, Im glad we are out of there – fuck those assholes
…now just wait, because the killing will go into overdrive within a year…and will you say anythign then? the bloodletting will be epic, just like it always is in that part of the world.