Reuters: W.House defends Bush use of Iraqi body counts

[babylonsister]

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8664

December 14th, 2006 5:33 pm
W.House defends Bush use of Iraqi body counts

By Steve Holland / Reuters

WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday defended President George W. Bush's rare use of a body count to describe Iraqi insurgent deaths as a way to show Americans that U.S. troops are fighting hard in Iraq.

Bush said on Wednesday on a visit to the Pentagon that U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed or captured 5,900 of the enemy during the months of October, November and early December.

It was a rare use of a body count by the president and came after public opinion polls said many Americans are concerned about rising U.S. casualties and believe the United States is losing the war in Iraq.

snip//

But Bush is eager to show signs of progress at a time when Americans have become disenchanted with the Iraq war, and wants to demonstrate that his policy has not been stalled by his plans to change Iraq strategy early next year.

more...

[Lerkfish]

1. dead iraqis is "progress"????????wtf?????

we are in the seventh concentric ring of hell, folks

[NoAmericanTaliban]

2. Signs of progress that it is now another Vietnam

if not worse. They used body counts then to claim the Vietcon was being defeated. One of McNamara's metrics to measure the war. Military became obsessed with body counts, but that didn't detemine who was winning.

[FVZA_Colonel]

3. I was just about to comment on that.

I had thought it sounded similar to what we did in Vietnam, and I know that certainly didn't work out well.

[HereSince1628]

4. the numbers were put-up and the press knew it.

I think they called the daily BS press sessions the 5 o'clock follies.

This war is beyond winning. The WH just hasn't figured out a catch-phrase that will work. Yet.

In Vietnam it was "Peace with Honor."

[amandabeech]

5. I remember General Westmoreland giving the body count

every night on Walter Chronkite.

After a few years, I started to wonder whether there were any Vietnamese men left.

This brings back lots of bad memories. I'm really surprised that the Bushies did it.

[Monkeyman]

6. Memories and bad dreams

[rebel with a cause]

14. And were not those numbers cooked?

Exaggerated for the Vietnamese dead and underestimated for the Americans.

[amandabeech]

15. The numbers were as cooked as Enron's books.

Unfortunately, none of those responsible did the perp walk like some of the Enron folks.

[arewenotdemo]

18. Considering that I've read that 3 million Vietnamese were killed

during the war, I'm not too sure that the numbers of dead weren't accurate.

Of course, in Vietnam there were no INNOCENT Vietnamese. Ditto for Iraq.

Every one of the men and women complicit to this genocide should be hanged. Some higher than others, but all hanged for genocide and treason.

[aquart]

7. So we're sending in more soldiers to have more "progress"???

George W. Bush, may the evil you do come back to you from every place it has gone, from every one it has harmed.

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. fundamental error of reasoning - that the "enemy" is finite...doesn't take

into consideration the impact of this as a way to exponentially increase the "enemy". This is so reminiscent of early on when we used the card deck approach to mark the death of the "management structure" of the enemy - as if the organization does not have a mechanism to replace these key individuals. Do they not realize that as we proceed with this war, we are creating enemies at a far greater rate just through our actions?

This must be the most ignorant, stupid, criminal president/administration in history.

[rodeodance]

9. Jr. is in perpetual campaign mode.

[endarkenment]

10. Oh great now we are in the body count phase.

5,000 down, only 25,000,000 or so to go.

[VegasWolf]

11. W.House defends Bush, WH=BUSH, BUSH=WH, SHIT=W,H, SHIT=SHIT. nt

[catnhatnh]

12. I want them to give us an exact count of insurgents killed....

over which dates and coalition losses so I can compute the kill ratio....once they have done that, we have arrived.

[babylonsister]

13. It'll never happen. They've discounted the Lancet report totally;

they don't want any actual numbers to surface.

[rodeodance]

16. but they don't hear about what's going on," says Snowy

White House spokesman Tony Snow said one reason Bush gave the body count number was to offset concern about U.S. casualties and deaths that included 103 in October alone.

"And there is quite often the impression ... that our people aren't doing anything; they're just targets. And I think there's a certain amount of unease in the American public because they hear about deaths, but they don't hear about what's going on," Snow told reporters.

[babylonsister]

17. Translation: they're killin' us, but we're killin' them, too! nt

[rebel with a cause]

19. Why doesn't he mention

the number of innocent Iraqis that have been killed, the number of innocent Iraqis and American soldiers that have been maimed and left disabled, and the amount of damage done to the country (Iraq) on the whole. His followers might not be impressed by the American soldier's disabled, but I'm sure the other numbers might impress them. Oh, and why doesn't he release all those other pictures from Abu Ghraib so the public can see the full glory of what our presence has meant to the Iraqi people. :sarcasm:

[babylonsister]

20. He's in denial, or doesn't give a shit. And welcome to DU,

rebel with a cause! :hi:

[rebel with a cause]

21. Thanks

:pals:

[tanyev]

22. How come an Iraqi body count is an indicator of progress,

but an American body count is "just a number"?

[MissMillie]

23. Are any of us arguing that the troops are not fighting hard?

I never thought they were there getting spa treatments.

Isn't the biggest problem with this whole thing is that Bush sees this as a military problem, when really, it's a diplomatic one?

How does the body count matter if framed this way?