U.S. military has highest body count in Iraq since 2009

I wonder what the families of the dead and wounded think about that?

There are also reports that the US might keep troops in Iraq if the Iraqi government asks....

This is crazy.

edit...link went bad

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/04/ap-gates-iraq-040811/

Just a stunningly stupid decision to go in there in the first place. We wiped out their military, so now the country is a power vacuum with a ton of oil and Iran right next door. The second we leave, Iran will walk right in and take over those oil fields. Saddam may have been a despicable human being, but so are the dipshits running Iran. The two balanced each other out. And we undermined this important dynamic in Middle East politics. We might be stuck in Iraq forever as a result.

11 deaths the whole year and more than half completely non-combat related. Give me a break. True war, as we've seen, yields much higher casualties than that over half a year. By your logic, we must have been at war with Texas when the Fort Hood shooting occurred. Its doubly more disgusting that you would use the deaths of people serving to try and make a case to claim that the war isn't over. Thats an insult to their deaths because you are using their deaths to push a falsehood. The war in Iraq, for all intents and purposes of being a real war, is over. Soldiers dying while being deployed in a foreign country does not automatically equate to a war.

The war isn't over. We have 47,000 still in Iraq, engaging in combat at times.

We could have 57,000, 67,000, 77,000, 107,000, still deployed there, and it'd still be over.

http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByMonth.aspx

You can see there the number on the year is 22. It is still a war, we are still occupying the country. We have expanded the largest embassy in the world there and are currently hiring a private army so that Obama can claim he held to his promise of getting the troops out by the end of the year. However, that even is being debated now as 10,000 may remain after 2011.

Your own link says only 11 fatalities were hostile fatalities.

We occupy a lot of countries. We have large, expanded embassies in many countries. We aren't engaged in any serious combat operations. Not much is really going on there at all. A handful of soldiers are going to die ANYWHERE they exist because people tend to die wherever people tend to live. Telling me 11 or 22 or 33 people died there this year does not make it a war.

I know you are clinging onto it so hard because you want it to still be a war so badly. But its not. The Iraq war is over. This pathetically small amount of military activity still going on there means nothing. War is a lot more serious than that and the term shouldn't be bandied around and raped to death like this.

Tell the families of the dead that "pathetically small amount of military activity still going on there means nothing". The war has subsided to be sure, but it is still a war. There are still people dying daily in attacks in Iraq. We still have armed troops in the country fighting, killing and dying.

There are no embassies in the world like the one in Iraq. None, not by the US or any other country. You should look into it, it is massive. No other embassy has the private army that ours has, either. War contractors and troops still operate in Iraq, we still carry out strikes. You can say the war is over, but it is not. It has lessened, but not ended.

"Tell the families...", I'll just stop you right there and tell you to get off your high horse over the families. They aren't to be used as a baseball bat for you to verbally bludgeon me with anymore than your whoring of the word war is.

I don't really care about the size of the embassy. Embassy size has nothing to do with whether or not a war is going on. We could have no embassy or world trade center sized embassy. It would make no difference as to whether or not we are still at war in Iraq. Drop that from your argument. Its getting you nowhere.

Contractors and troops operate all over the world. We are still maintaining some security operations there yes. That is not war. We are not at war with any particular entity in Iraq. We are not at war with Iraq. The country has its own government, its own elections and we aren't at war with it. War is a lot bigger and brasher than what we are doing there right now. According to your insane logic, we could be at war with half the world since you are basing it on embassies, troop presence and any measure of aggressive activity. Your criteria for what constitutes as war is laughable, ridiculous and dead wrong.

Let go of your precious war. Its over.

And when there is no longer live fire going towards or from those troops.

But I reserve the term "war" for much more serious business.

foreign policy, unless it is a purely humanitarian mission. If we are using live ammo on another party at any point, that is an act of war.

the theater.

I don't care if you call it war, occupation, or a tidily winks.

We are becoming Bush era Republicans as a party.

And therefore, there is no avoiding continuing some of the same generic practices that must take place whenever any government has such issues to deal with.

I opposed the war in Iraq from day 1. But after we went ahead and did it, I said then, several years ago, that now we've broken it, so we've inherently bought it. Thats why I support responsible, cautious withdrawal which is exactly what we are seeing take place. Just because we (liberal Democrats, progressives, etc) never wanted our presence there in the first place doesn't give us a license to drop the whole thing in one fail swoop and leave these countries, that our country uprooted in the first place, completely on their own. I did not approve of instigating the sacrifice. But it was instigated and we have to deal with it responsibly. Gradual withdrawal and continuing security support are part of that. Its inconvenient. It sucks, for lack of a better way to put it. But its also very true.

influx of private military contractors to take their place.

The war is not over, it's just be retuned and renamed.

The subject of military contractors coming in is a serious subject and one that deserves scrutiny. Their presence does not make it a war. People simple being somewhere does not make that something a war. You people are all abusing the use of the word war and are thus causing it to lose meaning.

individuals participating in combat operations is a pretty precise definition of war. There's no abuse of the word. Groups of people firing at one another is exactly what war is.

when everyone doesn't go along with the game that it is over because it isn't. The drain on resources human and otherwise continues.

patrol in countries like Germany, Japan. A soldier has a better chance of surviving a year long tour on the DMZ where we're still officially at war with North Korea.

The 11 deaths were in ONE MONTH not the whole year. But keep beating the drums.

Are we now trying to minimize what is happening in Iraq by only counting what are termed "hostile" deaths? Maybe we should do that in all wars. Make some feel better apparently.

way to many on DU continue to dismiss the wars we conduct now that we have a dem president.

Obama ended the war last year! Oh my, some people were so gullible, celebrating what I knew from the start was just a change on paper.

And ALL the rest were the result of being ambushed. Exactly what am I supposed to be outraged about here?

None of these were as a result of active ongoing military operations. US Soldiers can, and have been, ambushed and killed in many parts of the world, even parts we are peacefully allied with.

I think it is good to be aware that we still have troops killing and dying in Iraq. It shouldn't be ignored or forgotten that we are still at war in Iraq.

No need to be outraged, but you can feel sympathy for the families of the dead and insist that we get them out sooner rather than later.

in official counts.

:sarcasm:

in this thread is incredible. I'm actually at a loss for words.....

I wish we had spent all that Iraq war money on the United States infrastructure and establishing a single payer health care system.