The NewsHour honorsthe dead as they are identified, about once a week. Every time, I stop and watch, look at the faces, look at the names and homes. Look at their age, and the rank.
Numbers only tell half the story. At least half of the dead, every time, are Noncoms. The bones of the Army, Sargeants and Corporals, that hold the thing together through experience and ability and toughness. And Bush is bleeding them dry.
How many troops have been wounded, do we have any kind of accurate count? And how many of the wounded will recover and serve again, or not?
Posted by Duckman GR at April 22, 2008 10:55 PM"...the increase of more than 30,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has put unsustainable levels of stress on U.S. ground forces and has put their readiness to fight other conflicts at the lowest level in years."
I don't get why this is treated as a negative. Given the Bush regime's (and the U.S. in general's) propensity toward military aggression in the name of the empire, it looks to me like the only silver lining on the huge black cloud of the last seven years.
Posted by at April 23, 2008 05:08 AMPS When was the last time the United States used its military for actual defence? Certainly not in Iraq, and not in Afghanistan, which was not about eliminating a threat, but was really about striking back for the Sept 11 attacks in order to be seen as "doing something".
Posted by Shirin at April 23, 2008 05:14 AMWasn't the last time 1776 ?
We have never needed to use the military for defense, that is why the Constitution does not provide for a standing army .
Things like message force multipliers, stock market prices, miniature golf scores, post-drugged semen levels, and chronic back pain and flatulence can fluctuate naturally and may regress towards the mean and uncalled for, even if you're being nice for a change. The logical flaw is to make predictions that expect exceptional results to continue as if they were the average, a representativeness heuristic if I ever saw one, wouldn't you agree?
People are most likely to take action when dissent, like morning wood, is at its peak. Then after results become more normal or less turgid, they believe that their action was the cause of the change when in fact it was not causal, wherein cohesion between objects of similar silly appearance is assumed, as long as you don't let the pipe go out. While often very useful in everyday life, it can also result in neglect of relevant base rates and volumes, an inability to play funk, and other errors, not to mention a tendancy to cough at embarassing or inconvenient times.
Another snag you may encounter involves describing some occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem, when, throughout say Petraeus's garbled history, or his campaign to hush the truth about his anal rape, it’s been commonly identified again and again that, if the nuns of the order of Sisters of Saint Joseph are to be believed, he is the one with the “problem”. Though misleading vividness does nothing to support an argument logically, it can have a very strong psychological effect because of a cognitive forceful brainwashing called the availability heuristic. It's at times like these that you need to reload with quality product.
What is this?
I just saw on Fox News that Bush supports the troops, so how could what you write be true?
(snark)
Posted by Robert in BA at April 23, 2008 01:36 PM