> anyone on the left who can read accountable for
> stuff that Chomsky says and get down to some
real
> discussion.
Luke
>>??? I don't understand what you're trying to
say here, which makes it difficult to reply. <<
Then don't!
CJ
> Bull shit. Just what is the official war dead
> count for Afghanistan? How many dead Taliban
> (many of them just boys drafted into black
> turban), Al Qaeda, tribesman and civilians? You
> can't say, and the US government doesn't care.
Luke
>Didn't stop them from compiling body counts
during Vietnam.
Precisely the best point to be made, Luke-chan. The US inflated enemy body counts then to keep public opinion in the US on their side, or at least progress was being made. In the Persian Gulf War, the US is in denial about how many Iraqis it killed including civilians but also conscripts, many of them killed in ways that contravene rules of engagement. How much discussion was there, really, over the 25,000-30,000 slaughtered south of Basra in revenge for the 27 army reservists who were killed by a random Scud? War dead, Bush or Rumsfeld don't give a fuck, unless knowing it might help them get ready for the campaign against the axis of evil.
CJ
> If the most conservative estimates say 3-5
thousand
> 'civilians'
Luke
>Those aren't the most conservative estimates, as
you (should) well know.
Keep it up, Luke, and you'll join the list for axis of aggressive ignorance. Independent sources put the civilian dead at 3-5 thousand, which means no one even tried to tally combatants, many who were Taliban conscripts undoubtedly.
CJ
> you can be sure a lot more people died in the
bombing than that.
Luke Of that, yes, we can be sure.
If that's your attempt to be ironic, then I'm hardly impressed. No wait, from you, that's pretty good, because I think you were trying to be informative.
CJ
> Which means about the only thing we know for
sure is that far more
> people died in the campaign against Afghanistan
> than on 9/11. Vengeance is mine sayeth the
> Empire, again and again and again.
Luke
>What was your post 9-11 gameplan, Charles? The
prevention of future
>atrocities, even by horribly violent means, is
not equivalent to >trying to avenge past ills.
My game plan? To spend hours educating ignorant children such as yourself on LBO Talk.
CJ
> But the deaths are indeed untold.
>>Luke:
And I shudder to think of the awesome numbers of
dead bodies that would've piled up in the absence
of military action. But then again, 9-11 was
probably just Al Qaeda's call for diplomacy, and,
even if they hadn't left it at that, we all know
that they could never ever really kill all that
many
people.-- Luke <<
Oh, my , you probably wet yourself, too. But as you know, this is just history for an alternative universe known as Lukeworld. Can't wait for the sequel.
CJ
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