Uzbekistan Eyewitnesses See Dozens of US Casualties

jamesd at echeque.com jamesd at echeque.com
Mon Dec 17 09:17:46 PST 2001


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On 13 Dec 2001, at 7:04, !Dr. Joe Baptista wrote:
> > > Once again I am seeing eyewitness reports claiming more 
> > > U.S. Casualties.  Yet I don't see simular reports in 
> > > the U.S. Press confirming or denying these claims.

James A. Donald:
> > The dogs bark but the caravan moves on. In the US, unlike 
> > most other countries, there is still sufficient freedom 
> > of speech that soldiers cannot go missing without it 
> > becoming widely known.  The US army does underreport 
> > wounded, and minimize the severity of wounds, but dead is 
> > dead.

On 16 Dec 2001, at 22:48, Petro wrote:
> Of course, sometimes soldiers who die in a place they 
> weren't supposed to be come up missing in "training 
> accidents" somewhere else.

The US, unlike the countries whose system so many prefer to 
impose on the US, has sufficient freedom of speech that that 
cannot happen without causing grave embarrassment.  Recollect 
that dying in battle gives very different honors, 
compensation etc.  If if the army falsified the circumstances 
of a soldier's death there would be mutiny in the ranks.

CIA deaths can go unreported, and probably usualy do.  Army 
deaths cannot, because of a system designed to encourage and 
recognize valor.

The low death rates in recent conflicts have made some people 
suspicious.  How can the US army get casualty ratio of 
something like ten thousand to one, when fighting against 
people with comparable weapons?  And if the US is made of 
supermen, why did it suffer heavy casualties in Vietnam and 
Korea?

In my judgment the big change is the change from a conscript 
army, a slave army, to a warrior army.  Firstly this makes 
the soldiers more valuable to the officers, since deaths cost 
the army big money.  Every casualty means that the pay and 
benefits have to be considerably higher.  In a free market, 
the burden of hazardous employment falls on the employer, so 
the employer has an incentive to provide safe employment. 
Secondly, the apparatus of coercion that attempts to force 
conscripts to fight against their will frequently forces them 
into danger that a competent warrior would never have gone 
into, or would promptly have left.

With warrior armies, the losing side typically suffers almost 
one hundred percent of the casualties.  These absurdly 
lopsided casualty rates have been normal throughout much of
the last few thousand years of history.  These recent figures
do not indicate the US army is composed of supermen, merely
that recent wars have been victorious, and that the US army
is now composed of warriors. 

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         James A. Donald
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