I don't want this blog to get overly political, but this article really sums up the devastation, corruption, and folly of the "Surge". The next time you talk to somebody who thinks we shouldn't be pulling out, and that the surge should be "given a chance"...show them this:
The number of taxpayer-paid private contractors in Iraq,
the number of bullets fired for each insurgent killed,
the percentage of amputations performed on U.S. war-wounded:
a compilation of numbers puts Iraq into perspective.
Someday, we will undoubtedly discover that, in the term "surge" -- as in the President's "surge" plan (or "new way forward") announced to the nation in January -- was the urge to avoid the language (and experience) of the Vietnam era. As there were to be no "body bags" (or cameras to film them as the dead came home), as there were to be no "body counts" ("We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team" was the way the President put it), as there were to be no "quagmires," nor the need to search for that "light at the end of the tunnel," so, surely, there were to be no "escalations."
Read more.
Aus Rotten - The Flags Will Cover Coffins.
