Semper Fi

"Kill one, scare ten thousand"
~Sun Tzu

I don't know about others, but I'm sick of stupid opinion polls from MSM and the IRRESPONSIBLE influence they are having on public perception. Iraq is not Vietnam...but it's like the leftstream wants to relive the glory days of influencing a war, so that even though we don't lose the war on the battlefield, we lose it from propaganda pushed by our own media and a hostile, anti-American media overseas. For every tragedy and the slightest bad news that gets pushed by the media into screaming at the top of its lungs, "Quagmire!", it feeds into the morale of the insurgency, (some of which are paid fighters and not Sunni/Iraqi patriots), and invites for more attacks against our soldiers, Coalition Forces, and Iraqi civilians, to batter our will and weaken our constitution to see this through. We are turning into our own worst enemy, and bringing to reality the statement Osama bin Laden made in '98 about America being a "Paper tiger", and not having what it takes to engage in warfare and defend itself. Thank God for the courage of our brave military which does not kowtow to the enemy, and the enemy within.

The following is from A Soldier's Perspective:

The Death Toll
Blogged by CJ Friday August 5, 2005
I know things have been light lately, but I want to shift gears for a second and talk about something serious: deaths in Iraq.

To the best of my knowledge, we have lost about 1,828 soldiers in Iraq. This number does not include contractors and DA civilians I don’t think. If they were, the number wouldn’t be too much higher. Before I get into the meat of this, I want to say for the record that even one American is too many. There’s no such thing as ONLY one or ONLY 1,828 when you’re talking to those surviving family members. To them, that one person is everything. With that said, let me continue.

The media likes to throw around this number at every opportunity they can. I swear they have a huge jellybean machine that drops another jelly bean for everyone to munch one whenever another soldier dies. “Well, guys, that’s 1,828 jelly beans so far.” These bean counters have made it a point to highlight this fact numerous times. “And today, two more soldiers were killed by an IED outside [insert town], bringing the number of dead Americans to 1,828 to date.”

Allow me to bring a little perspective to these numbers. There have been more than 1,100,000 military personnel stationed in Iraq. This number includes multiple deployments. In other words, if I deployed twice and took myself out of this figure, it’d only be 1,099,998. So, more than 1,100,000 deployed to Iraq. That is .16% of the total number of personnel who were deployed that were killed. Not even a full percent. Judging by what our esteemed media would have you believe, our soldiers are dropping like flies.

In Los Angeles alone, a city of 3.8 million people, there are about 1,070 homocides reported each year. Therefore, since March 2003 when we first went into Iraq, there have been approximately 2,675 homocides…deaths to the uneducated. Par that down to the per 1,000,000 percentage and you get about 705 deaths.
Now let’s add in another city. In New York City, there are approximately 710 reported homocides each year. That’s about 1775 people since March 2003 averaging.

These are two of the largest cities we have in the US. The numbers listed above reflect ONLY homocide. It doesn’t include the people killed during armed robberies, arson, or other violent crimes. Nationwide, there are over 15,000 people killed in violent crimes. That’s 37,500 since March 2003. That number is .02% of the entire American population, not much higher than in Iraq.

Now, here’s another curveball the media doesn’t tell you about. You know all those deaths their reporting after a story about 2 soldiers killed by an IED? Only 1423 are from hostile fire. 405 are from accidents, illnesses, or other reasons. That drops the percentage to about .13%.

With all this said, let me restate again that I never wanted to see that number jump past zero. However, as soldiers we realize that our lives may be shorter than yours. We sacrifice that time with our wives, our husbands, our children, and our friends for that very reason. We don’t want to die, but if that’s what it takes spread freedom and defeat corruption, we’ll do it.

Those 1800+ soldiers died helping people they don’t know personally nor have a vested interest in. The Iraqi people are just as worthy of our sacrifice as we are. Every person on this planet is. You won’t find many soldiers who think we’re wasting our time over there. And you’ll find even fewer among those who have actually gone.

I’m tired of hearing the number as if every soldier to deploy is dropping like a fly. I’m tired of the scare tactics used by the media to force public perception their way. I’m tired of the media telling me what they THINK we want to know as opposed to what we should know. All the good stories are coming from guys and girls willing to get their hands dirty and ride with the troops through the trenches. The desk jockeys stuck in their little fortresses and getting out far enough to interview Iraqis walking past the gate are misinformed playing the enemy’s information operations game to a tee. Osama is probably grinning with each report.

Another, great, recent blog entry from the same milblogger; if it doesn't stir something deeply noble and patriotic and an unconditional love for our military men and women within you....then I can't relate at all to what makes you tick. It's not the first time I've seen this e-mail forward of which he speaks of. Definitely worth passing along.

Of related interest, is the under-reporting of military reenlistments

God bless and protect the families of the 21 Marines killed last week from the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment. Since arriving in Iraq, they have lost (at least) 37 Marines. A couple of good write ups from Black Five.

Interesting write-up on milblogs.