It's simple math, more troops = more deaths

[sabra]

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N27704283

US has 161,000 troops in Iraq, highest of the war


WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The United States has increased its forces in Iraq to the highest total of the war at 161,000 troops, and the Pentagon said on Thursday it expected a similar number in place for the December elections.

The U.S. military increased its force in Iraq in advance of the Oct. 15 referendum in which Iraqis approved a new constitution. The current total is about 23,000 higher than the usual level of 138,000, which includes 17 brigades.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq

Six GIs Killed in Iraq; 20 Die in Bombing

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber detonated a minibus Wednesday in an outdoor market packed with shoppers ahead of a Muslim festival, killing about 20 people and wounding more than 60 in a Shiite town south of Baghdad. Six U.S. troops were killed, two in a helicopter crash west of the capital.


Also Wednesday, the U.S. command confirmed moves to step up training on how to combat roadside bombs — now the biggest killers of American troops in Iraq. At least 2,034 U.S. military service members have died since the Iraq conflict began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Military Fatalities
Period US UK Other* Total Avg Days
10-2005 96 2 1 99 3.19 31

I feel like we are going in the total opposite direction :-(

[sasquatch]

1. I think we're screwed blue and tattoo'd because of *

[Jacobin]

2. More targets

Smirk is now doing an "LBJ".....who increased troop levels to 550,000 to 'win the war in Viet Nam"

See how that worked out?

[sabra]

3. so true and so sad :-(

[Bluerthanblue]

4. don't know any other ways to say this, that doesn't sound

crude, and callous but illustrates the point better than any other analogy I have ever heard.... but you know the concept of a 'money-pit', as in a house, car, business that you keep putting money into over and over and over again, but will never actually find success in doing, because it is a lost cause..... well, Iraq is the 'humanity pit'- where we continue to offer up the lives people on all sides, without any real, or rational hope of ever succeeding in a TRUE, lasting peace-

That thought came to me at the vigil for the 2000th death- that and the fact that our candles couldn't stay lit in the wind that we had- (even those which were set into glass containers, or surrounded by guards)....
i kept hearing Elton John singing
".... you lived your life like a candle in the wind..."
no matter how many times we re-lit them, they kept dying... and then came- Dylan's "the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind...the answer is blowing in the wind".
When the speakers began talking, about operation "Homeward Bound", all i could hear was

"Homeward bound i wish they were- homeward bound
Home, where their thought’s escaping
Home, where our music’s playing
Home, where such love lies waiting
Silently for them....
Tonight we'll sing our songs again
play the game and pretend
But all these words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptyness in harmony
we need a way to make this cease-
Homeward, bound- i wish they were...."

And then, the chant:
"Not one more death, Not one more dollar"- and i just couldn't join in that one.... because there is no price tag big enough for any life- i'd honestly give every last penny i have if it would 'buy' this world peace-

Which is when the 'money-pit' analogy came to me-
and i realized how screwed we are.