2 million bombs. Just from one air wing in Iraq.

I was watching Seymour Hersh on a panel discussion at the National Security Archive on C-span2 this afternoon. He gave this figure last week in another interview I saw last week, but he expanded on it more today.

He said that for most of the invasion, the military hasn't released any info on ordnance released. No information on the numbers of sorties either. Back during Vietnam it was released on a weekly or monthly basis. He said he caught a bit of information from a single Marine air wing that said between Sept 2003, and Nov 2004 the amount of bombs dropped by just this one air wing was 500,000 tons.

He said that this particular wing does mostly close air support missions and low level bombing, and mainly use 500 pound bombs. Thats 4 bombs per ton x 500,000. Thats 2 MILLION 500 pound bombs, dropped by just this unit.

Thats not including what the Navy or the Air Force drops. Or artillery.

:wtf:

I know we're supposed to be using precision bombs (yeah, right.)

And shrub said today, that we've killed 30,000 Iraqis. Thats how many bombs per Iraqi? Shrub, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are even crazier than I gave them credit for.

To murder people who never attacked us and couldn't have if they'd wanted to?

is making a killing ..... seriously, monetarily and immorally. Nuf said. sigh ....

bombs?

It was probably a lot more, though--probably around 600,000.

The Marines like to brag about their self-sufficiency, and usually it's good. If you're doing aerial bombardment, the Marines are handicapped in that their bombers aren't very big. The Air Force's primary strategic bomber is the B-52, and according to stratofortress.org, that jet will hold 50 500-pound bombs. If you run three missions a day, which you can do over Iraq with no problem because it's not very big and it's close to countries that owe Bush favors, 36 B-52s can drop two million bombs in less than a year's time.

The Marines' bomber is the F/A-18 Hornet. According to Boeing, the aircraft has nine weapons stations: two wingtip stations for Sidewinder missiles, two outboard wing stations for air-to-air or air-to-ground weapons, two inboard wing stations for fuel tanks, air-to-air or air-to-ground weapons, two nacelle fuselage stations for AMRAAMs, Sparrows or sensor pods, and one centerline station for fuel or air-to-ground weapons. So if the guy really wants to go out loaded for bear, he's got five hardpoints to hang bombs on if he chooses not to fly with external fuel stores. Something tells me that the only way you could possibly run a mission configured that way is if Milo tasked you to bomb the mess hall so he could get rid of all of that cotton. With no external fuel, you're not going very far.

If I was an F/A-18 driver, I'd think four bombs was the maximum I could carry--fuel on the centerline station, bombs on the four wing stations--and this only for extreme situations like going up to kill Osama bin Laden because, with so little fuel onboard, my wingman's gonna be driving a KA-6. Three bombs--one under each wing and a third on centerline--would be typical.

Either way, that is a LOT of flying.

would be left?

Here's the scariest part: this is the ordnance numbers for ONE Marine air wing. There is more than one MAW over there. The Marines aren't the only ones dropping bombs.

In the race to see who can kill more Iraqis, Bush has GOT to be in front of Saddam by now.

in the army. When US went in there was only 450,000. Guess the 400,000 does not exist in the first place.

Lots of question just no straight answer.

I've got my tin foil hat on so I bet the Saudis broker the peace and take control of the oil reserves, and the bush family once again make out like bandits. It's not about the bombs, it's about driving Islam into fanaticism, and letting Saudi Arabia(the most fundy Islamic country) take over and broker a peace.