Help John Kerry and moveon.org "End it in September"

I don't think I got this today. This is excellent! There's already an event in Eugene, I think I'll plan to scoot over there.

I'm disgusted you've had it up for what appears to be an hour, with no response. Some things never change.

:)

Please send useful data links to me: skip@louisiana.edu and I'll add prior to report.

This is primarily a list of hot links DUers can use to put the "surge" in perspective by giving valuable data on the war, it costs in lives, blood, and treasure for both the Americans as well as the Iraqis and contractors. PLEASE SEND MORE LINKS AND I WILL ADD THEM and periodically repost this document in expand form. It sould be easy to use.

Prelminary important data from http://icasualties.org/oif / (see below).

Deaths: | US/UK | Iraqi

9/06   | 75   | 3539
10/06  | 108 | 1539
11/06  |  76  | 1864
12/06  | 113 | 1752
1/07   |  86  | 1802
2/07   |  84  | 3014
3/07   |  84  | 2977
4/07   | 116  | 1821
5/07   | 129  | 1980
6/07   | 108  | 1345
7/07   |  88  | 1690
8/07   | 53+ | 1194+

(Iraqi deaths are civilians and soldiers.)

NOTE: Whereas American deaths in July declined by nearly 21 from the average of the previous two months (128 & 108), Iraqi deaths increased by almost 20 durning the same month over the average of the previous two months (1,345 & 1,690). That makes the overall death rate pretty level from May to the present.




LIST OF LINKS TO STATISTICS


CAUSUALITY STATS:



Iraq Coalition Casualty Count provided the list at the top of this page and is a great first place to go for reliable data

http://icasualties.org/oif /


It has a number of tables charting such things as numbers of deaths (by time and country) medical evacuations (by service), wounded (by week), and so forth. A Great site for collecting initial stats. It also contains links to fatalities and injuries by state, services, etc., and one to contractor causalities.



Military Deaths in the Conquest of Iraq

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/USfatalities.html

Provides two fine graphs showing number of US deaths since March 2003. One is a bar graph giving a month-by-month number of killed. The top one shows the total number of deaths which notes several relevant historical occurrences.



US Causalities in Iraq

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm

Provides a table for a month-by-month list of the numbers of US dead and wounded and two bar graphs below it which the some information in visual form. (Herein you can note that some of the summer months have had the fewest causalities. It's probably has hard to kill in 114 degree heat as it is to do anything else.)





OVERALL STATS:


From the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings' The Iraq Index
http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex
attempts to provide "a statistical compilation of economic, public opinion, and security data. . . . updated information on various criteria, including crime, telephone and water service, troop fatalities, unemployment, Iraqi security forces, oil production, and coalition troop strength." It has hundreds of graphs in a month-by-month statistical assement of the war in pdf. format which provide very nuanced (and valuable for someone willing to dig) including such things as numbers of Iraqis and foreign nationals kidnapped, reporters killed, deaths from multiple-causality bombs, estimated strength of insurgency, etc. Extremely valuable!


Asia Times on Line's article ("Dispaches from America: Escalation in Iraq by the Numbers") by Tom Engelhardt
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IH15Ak03.html
Provides a list of numbers of troops, attacks, contractors, companies, prisoners, electrical blackouts as well as such things as projected costs, temperatures, availability and cost of water, Iraqi government stats and amount of oil, etc. In short, although is not presented in tables or graphs, it provides data to help determine the total context of the war. A very valuable collection of information that will aid to see the full picture.






STATS ON IRAQI RESOURCES:

The Oxfam Report on Resources Iraqi resources
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/conflict_disasters/bp105_iraq.html
provides a list of list of percentages related to the current conditions for Iraqi citizens concentrating on the availability of food, water, sanatation, shelter and so forth as well as their employment figures.




Thanks to all who have provided links. Please send more. I'll annotate (as above) and add. Think of the value of the following types of information:
# of Iraqi refugees leaving country
# of Iraqi refugees internally displaced
# of IED attacks on American/Coalition Forces
# of Iraqis kidnapped and tortured, found dumped

DU's gratuitous intelligently realizes the value of "numbers for things like reliable electricity, schools and hospitals that an American would recognize as open for business. . . ."

:)

Carl Levin reveals the Democrats' Iraq "strategy"



Really, the most important points of the article are not even touched on in the above excerpt - everyone should read the article in full. My selection was geared just to show the emerging deliberate betrayal that is underway, with Levin and Hillary Clinton in the lead. To summarize: the military and the Bush Administration are successfully binding the Iraq War narrative to the idea of winning and losing : win-lose, us-them terms that have small relevance to the nature of the conflict going on in Iraq. They (the War Party, whether R or D) continue to frame the debate in terms of waging virtuous war on behalf of a legitimate ally (the elected govt. of Iraq) while in reality the United States military and political leadership have shifted to a DIVIDE AND CONQUER STRATEGY, playing Iraq's sectarian divisions off against one another. They are arming and encouraging separatist elements (Sunnis in Anbar) against the elected government in Baghdad - THAT is the "progress" in Anbar Hillary is lavishing praise on now. Then they blame the government in Baghdad for any failures of the country to look united and governable.

That's all to say that the "debate" the Rs and Ds are having and are going to have is meaninglessly abstracted away from the real actors and tensions in Iraq and will take place on the home territory of the American imagination, where we in the White Hats representing Good, eternally square off against the Black Hatted Enemy who is Evil. This is in the spirit of "If they can get you to keep asking the wrong questions, they don't need to worry about the answer." The fact that the US is now pursuing a strategy of ruthless & genocidal division directly opposed to its stated intentions & moral justifications of defending and stabilizing a sovereign state will appear nowhere in the upcoming "debate" between Reps & Dems in September, nor in Nov. 08. Once more as in 2002 a bi-partisan consensus for endless slaughter is restored to its rightful place as the centerpiece and guiding light of US foreign policy.

:kick:

and maybe set up an event? Huh?

Eh? Eh?

Not actually celebrating people who are trying to draw attention to ending the war.

but no luck so far

That seems to be the holy trifecta of flamewars.

or would that be too over the top?

That ought to get you about 200 replies

:rofl:

Nice post, Mussolini.

:hug:

:hug: