Young, white country boys: the fodder of Bush’s war

IAN BRUCE January 02 2007


As America awoke yesterday to the grim New Year milestone of 3,000 military deaths in Iraq since 2003, a Pentagon study shows the majority of those killed were young, white and from rural backgrounds.
It also reveals that, while four out of five roadside booby-traps now fail to inflict losses, the devices are becoming more lethal and those that hit their targets are killing more soldiers than ever.

A total of 43% of fatalities in the past 12 months were caused by bombs. This compares with 16% in 2003. Deaths in 2005-06 were overwhelmingly among 18 to 24-year-old white, regular troops at 58%, with ethnic Hispanics making up 11% of the overall losses.

Sophisticated Electronic Triggers Despite spending hundreds of millions of pounds on ways to counter booby-traps – known as improvised explosive devices – and requesting almost £2bn in the coming year for new technology, the Pentagon admits it has not found the answers. Christine DeVries, a spokeswoman for the US military's IED countermeasures' organisation, said: "The enemy has had some success in adapting to what we are doing." New bombs employing infra-red detonators, sophisticated pressure switches and remote-controlled devices are continuing to pose challenges for military scientists.

The insurgents are also becoming more adept at concealing the bombs and are planting more of them to disrupt supply convoys and deterrent patrols. More than 1,200 bombs exploded in the US sector in August alone.
While better body armour, improved medical techniques, and heavily-protected vehicles have cut the death rate, more soldiers are surviving wounds that would have killed them on earlier battlefields.
Almost one in three of the troops injured in the Second World War died later of their wounds. That dropped to 24% in Vietnam. Now
almost everyone who survives being evacuated from a blast site to a military hospital and immediate trauma surgery lives.
Many of the 22,000 soldiers wounded since 2003 survived, but have amputations or brain injuries.
The analysis also shows that 20% of those who have died in Iraq were involved in traffic accidents or helicopter crashes caused by mechanical problems due to bad roads and sand damage to engines and rotor blades.
Almost 100 soldiers have also been killed by accidental discharges from their own or a comrade's weapon.
As reported by The Herald last week, 70 American female soldiers have also died. They make up 2% of the overall losses.
Only 22 women, almost all nurses, died in the Second World War. Only one was killed in Vietnam and just five in the 1991 Gulf war.
By March, Iraq will qualify as America's third-longest conflict after the War of Independence in the 1770s and Vietnam. Involvement in Iraq has already exceeded the time spent fighting in the Second World War.
US fatalities in previous major conflicts were: Vietnam: 58,000, Korea: 36,000, WW2: 405,000 and WW1: 116,000.
Although the Pentagon declared in December the struggle in Iraq was now predominantly a battle between Sunni and Shi'ite groups fighting for sectarian and political influence, the incidence of attacks on US forces increased by 22% between mid-August and mid-November.
British forces have suffered 127 deaths from all causes since the invasion in 2003.

Pelosi children

schwartz .... schwartzer

	NO, it's NOT her "shtick." Watch her movie. At the end of her "Jews Love Money" song she sings "Just like when schwartzers/call each other 'nigger'", followed up by zesty "cha-cha-cha!" into the face of two offended black men. In case you didn't know, "schwartzer" is the Yiddish word for "nigger." Explain to me how that's not coded racism.

fifth helicopter

"We have a CH-46 that is down," Caldwell said, referring to the twin-rotor Sea Knight, the Marine version of the Chinook, which can carry up to 25 passengers and four crew.

"We have a quick reaction force on site."

U.S. and Iraqi forces are preparing to launch a major offensive against militants in Baghdad that is regarded as a last-ditch attempt to prevent all-out civil war.

The U.S. military said "some new elements" of the plan had begun to be implemented although Iraqi officials said preparations were still being carried out.

"It is not going to be a sudden effort, it will be a gradual effort ... People have to be patient," Caldwell said.

An Iraqi policeman who had been to the area northwest of Baghdad where the helicopter came down told Reuters he had seen wreckage. Another witness also said he had seen wreckage.

The U.S. military said on Sunday it was adjusting its tactics after four helicopters were shot down in separate incidents over a two-week period. Twenty one U.S. servicemen and private security contractors were killed in those attacks.

The high number lost in such a short time has raised questions about whether militants have changed tactics or are using more sophisticated weapons.

BAGHDAD OFFENSIVE

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said preparations for the Baghdad offensive were still being worked out.

"There will be no sharp start for this operation," he said.

Caldwell said the operation would take time to build up. He said an Iraqi general, Abboud Qanbar, would head the campaign. U.S. forces will not take orders from the Iraqis.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered his military commanders on Tuesday to speed up preparations for the crackdown after a string of attacks killed hundreds of people in recent days.

There is growing frustration among Iraqis over the delay in launching the offensive that Maliki first announced nearly a month ago.

Iraqi officials say the planned crackdown was due to have started this week but that Iraqi security forces had asked for more time to get their troops in place.

Critics say a previous offensive last summer failed partly because too few Iraqi troops were involved.
 

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Seven people were killed Wednesday when a Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter went down outside Baghdad during "routine operations," the U.S. military said.

Crew members and passengers were among those on the chopper, and the military said the cause of the incident is under investigation.

An umbrella insurgent group claimed responsibility for downing the helicopter in Anbar province and "burning it down completely," according to a claim posted on various Islamist Web sites.

CNN was unable to confirm the authenticity of the statement from the group, which includes al Qaeda in Iraq.

It was the fifth U.S. helicopter to go down in Iraq in almost three weeks. (Watch smoke and flames spew from the downed chopper )

The Internet posting says that "the defense air brigade of the Islamic state of Iraq" shot down a Chinook helicopter in the Karma region of Anbar province, near Falluja.

The U.S. military has said the chopper was a CH-46 Sea Knight, not a Chinook.

"And hundreds of people, at least, watched it burn and their voices shouted, 'God is great,' thanking God," the Web posting says.

"And we say to the enemy of God that these are the proofs of God's conquest that he bestowed upon us so all thanks and praises are due to Him."

The posting is signed by "the Ministry of Information/Islamic State in Iraq."

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said a quick-reaction force went to the site of the downed helicopter, 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of the capital. Though the cause of the crash was not immediately known, military officials said they believe there is enemy action in the area.

The Chinook and Sea Knight are similar twin-rotor helicopters, and according to Boeing, which manufactures the choppers, the Chinook was designed for the Army while the Sea Knight was produced for the Navy.

Attacks raise concerns
Four U.S. helicopters -- three military and one civilian -- were shot down in Iraq between January 20 and Friday, raising concerns that insurgents are becoming more proficient at downing the aircraft. (Watch why the U.S. may need to rethink how it protects helicopters in Iraq )

Sixteen U.S. troops died in the three military chopper crashes, and five employees of the Blackwater private security company were killed when their helicopter came under heavy fire January 23 in eastern Baghdad.

The Senate Armed Services Committee raised the issue during a hearing Tuesday on the military budget.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, asked Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if the helicopter attacks mean "that enemy forces have achieved some higher level of capability with shoulder-fired missiles."

Pace responded that it was his understanding the choppers were shot down with small arms, not missiles.

He said each incident is investigated.

"At this point and time, I do not know whether or not it is the law of averages that caught up with us or if there's been a change in tactics, techniques and procedures on the part of the enemy, which is what the investigation will do," Pace said.
 

There were exceptions, of course. While most Swedish, French, and other European immigrants soon transferred their loyalty from the land of their ancestors in Europe to the new land in America, non-European groups as a rule did not. Gypsies still thought of themselves first and foremost as Gypsies. And Jews remained Jews, with a loyalty only to the Jewish people, wherever they might live.

This transfer of loyalty on the part of European immigrants gave America the cohesion it needed to grow and prosper. Unfortunately, it also provided a handle for the Jews and their collaborators to use in manipulating public opinion in America and setting America against Europe in two fratricidal and horribly destructive world wars in this century. Patriotism is a powerful force even when it is misguided. Governments can use it for purposes which are not in the interests of the people. Even when the Jews don't have a hand in things, there still can be bad governments and unnecessary wars, but no government is likely to deliberately and consistently work against the interests of its own people over an extended period. The Jewish presence in America in the 20th century, however, has resulted in patriotism being used against the interests of the American people in a systematic way, at least through the Vietnam war.

Incidentally, recently published statistics from the Vietnam war provide powerful support for the suspicion which always has existed that, though Jews may manipulate the patriotic feelings of the rest of us, they themselves retain their own Jewish patriotism and do not share our patriotism. If one counts Stars of David in military cemeteries from the Second World War, one finds them conspicuously underrepresented in the fields of crosses.

In a book published just last year, Stolen Valor, a study of the Vietnam war and its veterans, B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley cite a 1992 study of Department of Defense records by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Arnold Barnett and West Point's Captain Timothy Stanley which provided much more precise data on the matter of Jewish patriotism.  Draft-age Jews in America, it turns out, suffered losses in Vietnam at a rate less than one-fifth their proportion of the population. This was not simply a matter of rich boys avoiding service while poor boys got killed: young White men -- that is, White Gentiles -- from high-income families suffered approximately the same overall casualty rate as low-income Whites. Although some high-income Whites avoided the draft as university students, Whites from high-income families made up most of the officer corps, which suffered a disproportionately high casualty rate, and the average death rate for high-income

Whites was nearly the same as for low-income Whites.

For Jews, however, the difference is striking: making up slightly over 2.5 per cent of the population, Jews accounted for only 0.46 per cent of the GIs killed in Vietnam. This remarkable difference reflects a remarkable difference in attitudes between Jews and Whites.

Even as late as the Vietnam war, with Bill Clinton and his Jewish and leftist friends demonstrating for the Viet Cong, traditional American patriotism remained a powerful force. Most young White men still looked on military service in time of war as a patriotic duty. Phrases such as "serving your country" were still taken seriously. There was great respect for military heroism and military sacrifice. And although many Vietnam veterans were offended by being called "baby killers" and the like by leftist demonstrators in the United States, the general feeling in the White population remained that men in military "service" deserved the support of everyone on the home front. There still was the feeling that America's armed forces were "defending America."

As I said, this is really a big and important change in the nature of things. The Jews always were impatient with our old-fashioned sense of patriotism. It gave them a handle for manipulating us, but they always were a little afraid of it, always a little worried that it might turn against them someday. So now they've changed the equation of patriotism. Now they've dropped the pretense. That's one more step in the remaking of America in the Jewish image, and judging from what some of the more reckless Jews have been saying recently, they feel pretty good about it. At least, they don't have to apologize any longer for the sort of statistics I just cited on Vietnam casualties. Now they can simply cite their success in evading service as proof that they're smarter than we are.

carmichael

To: Editor, Readers Letters Yorkshire Post Dear Sir, May I offer my thanks to Bill Carmichael for exposing the blatant lies aired, with no rebuttal, by the BBC by the Reverend Bell. He claimed to have met an 18 year old Arab named Adam who, he said, had been conscripted into the Israeli army to kill children. This is the type of blood libel, echoing the non-existent 'massacre' of Jenin, that we Israelis, we Jews, have suffered for years by the Western media and broadcasting networks while being blown up in our buses, cafes, streets, markets, and discos.

I am sure that your readers are unaware that we Israelis have suffered no less than twenty four thousand separate terror attacks since the Palestinian Authority launched its latest intifada in September 2000 after Israel had made the most generous and painful peace concessions.Twenty four thousand terror attacks are not the work of a few desolate souls. Twenty four thousand terror strikes is the coordinated work of a society not determined to create a state of their own, but to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. The Palestinians need more than a state. Like the Reverend Bell, they need a new state of mind. Barry Shaw is Chairman of the Netanya Terror Victims Fund in Netanya, Israel. Contact him at netre@matav.net.il