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RUSH: There’s an interesting story today, or column. Well, it’s a story. It’s in the New York Sun. It’s by Alicia Colon, and it’s entitled, ‘Heroes and Cowards.’ But here’s the interesting paragraph. “The total military dead in the Iraq war between 2003 and this month stands at about 3,133. This is tragic, as are all deaths due to war, and we are facing a cowardly enemy unlike any other in our past that hides behind innocent citizens. Each death is blazoned in the headlines of newspapers and Internet sites. What is never compared is the number of military deaths during the Clinton administration: 1,245 in 1993; 1,109 in 1994; 1,055 in 1995; 1,008 in 1996. That’s 4,417 deaths in peacetime but, of course, who’s counting?”

Now, you might wonder, well, she doesn’t cite the source of these figures. But we found them. There’s a Department of Defense pdf file on death rates that you can download. I went to download it and I got it and then subsequent attempts after that the site was either down or it was locked and loaded. The point here is, of course these 4,417 deaths between 1993 and 1996, those are deaths in peacetime, those are for the most part accidental deaths. And you’ve heard people say this, I just wanted to get this out there and on the record: more deaths in four years of the Clinton administration due to military accidents than deaths in Iraq. If you look at this pdf, you will find that in 1980, which was the last year of the Carter administration, there were far more military deaths in 1980 than in any year of the Bush administration. The death rate was also higher, and that’s because of differences in the care given the training and standards and so forth. The point here is that we’re fighting the Iraq war with lower casualties than casualties expected from training accidents during peacetime.

I mention this just to show you how out of proportion and agenda oriented the death count in Iraq is. We’ve mentioned this before, as a matter of theory and prophecy. But here it is documented, and these numbers are available to anybody. Any journalist can go to the Department of Defense site and take a look and find these numbers. There is no interest on the part of any journalist to do so, because it would confound the agenda and the purpose of tallying up these deaths because these 3,133 deaths form the basis, do they not, of “We’ve got to get out of there! This is out of control, why, 3,133 battlefield deaths, whoa, this is horrible! We support the troops. We gotta get ’em out of harm’s way in a pointless, unjust war,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, when in fact this war is rather successful in terms of the number of deaths, especially when you compare it to the number of troops who have been deployed.

END TRANSCRIPT


Heroes And Cowards
BY ALICIA COLON
February 20, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/48926



Corporal Thomas Saba was buried in the Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island last Friday. One of seven Marines killed when their helicopter was shot down in Iraq on February 7, Saba, 30, enlisted in the spring of 2002 in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. He extended his five-year tour by five months so that he could go with his squadron to Iraq.

It is absolutely amazing how America can continue to produce heroes such as Saba while electing cowardly politicians who mock their sacrifices.

Rep. John Murtha, who once suggested we redeploy our troops to Japan, and other congressional defeatists must be jubilant over the passage of that ridiculous House resolution rebuking the president’s request for more troops. Meanwhile Saba was laid to rest with full military honors near the grave of another American hero, Army Sergeant Yevgenly Ryndychin, 24, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Ramadi, Iraq, on December 6.

The last Marine funeral I attended was for Adam Ogbu, a 19-year-old Nigerian-American who was my son’s best friend. Young Ogbu died while on a Special Forces training run in Texas. He was in perfect health, and the cause of his death was never fully investigated. This was in 2000, and I mention this because the mainstream press is constantly bombarding us with the number of military casualties, and it is clear that the reports are meant to incite anger about the Iraqi war. How refreshing it would be if partisan politics could be set aside and reporters put news in the proper perspective without bias.

The total military dead in the Iraq war between 2003 and this month stands at about 3,133. This is tragic, as are all deaths due to war, and we are facing a cowardly enemy unlike any other in our past that hides behind innocent citizens. Each death is blazoned in the headlines of newspapers and Internet sites. What is never compared is the number of military deaths during the Clinton administration: 1,245 in 1993; 1,109 in 1994; 1,055 in 1995; 1,008 in 1996. That’s 4,417 deaths in peacetime but, of course, who’s counting?

A neighbor of mine, Harry Colon, was 19 when he was killed in Vietnam. He had been drafted, and many of those protesting against that war have admitted that it was fear of conscription that was behind much of their anti-war activity. It is so pathetic now (while we have this valiant volunteer military) to watch these hoary relics of the 1960s trying to recapture the relevance of that period. Only a few veteran protesters of that era have the integrity to distinguish between these two conflicts.

The noted Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff wrote in an April 3, 2003, column headlined ‘Why I Am Not Marching’: ‘I participated in many demonstrations against the Vietnam War. … But I could not participate in the demonstrations against the war on Iraq.’ He had learned of Saddam’s atrocities again the Iraqi people and said, ‘If people want to talk about containing [Saddam Hussein] and don’t want to go in forcefully and remove him, how do they propose doing something about the horrors he is inflicting on his people who live in such fear of him?’ That’s a question these protesters fail to address.

Perhaps the most touching reappraisal of an anti-war position was penned by Pat Conroy, author of ‘The Great Santini,’ who wrote, ‘An Honest Confession of an American Coward.’ He admitted being a draft dodger and an antiwar demonstrator to an old college teammate, Al Kroboth, whom he was interviewing for a book he was writing. Mr. Kroboth had been a POW and Mr. Conroy learned the details of his experience. Mr. Kroboth endured unspeakable pain while being tortured by his captors, yet he was saved by the extraordinary camaraderie among his fellow prisoners. As Mr. Conroy was demonstrating against Nixon and the Christmas bombings in Hanoi, the POWs were holding hands and singing ‘God Bless America’ under the full fury of the bombs. It was those bombs that ultimately led to the release of the POWs.

After that night in Mr. Kroboth’s New Jersey home, Pat Conroy researched the history of world totalitarianism during what he calls ‘the unspeakable century we just left behind.’ He concluded about our country: ‘I knew then in my bones but lacked the courage to act on: America is good enough to die for even when she is wrong.’

The ‘bring ’em home’ Democrat majority and the 17 Republican turncoats who voted for that resolution apparently disagree.

February 20, 2007 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version

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