Iraq is fucked

A young man who claimed to be from Vietnam (but probably was a Vietnamese American) came in to our Skypecast in Skypeland and said that Iraq was a disaster because 4000 people had died in Iraq (Okay, he didn't say it was a disaster, he said it was fucked. Also, 3814 US service members have died to date in Iraq. I think it is interesting he was only interested in the Americans that died, and not the other coalition forces, or the Iraqi forces, or the civilian deaths.). I asked him how long the US had been in Iraq. He said that the US had been in Iraq since 2005. I pointed out that he was wrong and the war had been going on since 2003 (The US invaded in March of 2003, actually). I asked him how long the Vietnam War combat operations lasted. He did not know and did not care and said it did not matter (An amazing statement, considering that he was Vietnamese himself and probably would not be living in the US if this war had not happened). I told him that the main combat had lasted about 10 years (Actually it was about 8 years, and the American involvement lasted a total of about 16 years.). I asked him how many troops had died in Vietnam (58,200 American troops died in Vietnam.). He did not know, and said he did not care and said it did not matter and started to get angry. I asked him how long World War II had lasted, and how many people had died in World War II. By this time he was sufficiently angry that he would not let me continue. I tried to say that I was trying to give him some means of understanding and gauging the situation. He was too furious to discuss this and we got into an argument (Too bad this young man could not spend some time back in Vietnam to see the outcome the US tried to prevent in Vietnam and why they sacrified so many American lives there for Vietnam to prevent it from falling into communist hands).

The host thankfully intervened, and pointed out to him that the US soldiers were volunteers and had known when they signed up that they might be sent into combat. Also, the government had made a determination to have a war now, to avoid killing far more later. This character had never considered this and apparently this was the first time he had ever heard this (Holy cow, where do these people come from? This guy had not heard about the WMD that were feared to be in Iraq? None of these people ever remember the UN WMD inspectors in Iraq and the run-around they were given for over 10 years. I have to admit, this tactic of the host's worked a lot better than mine.).

A man ostensibly from Germany entered and said that 600,000 Iraqi civilians had died and 28,000 US soldiers had diedin the war in Iraq to date (actually 3814 US soldiers have died so far in Iraq), but that the US government was lying and stating that only 7000 had died (Huh? Where did they state this?). He said he knew the US government figures were lies since there were 6000 US injured in the military hospitals in Germany (Now that makes a lot of sense...).

I pointed out to him that being injured was not the same as being dead, and he was confused at this (maybe this was a bit too deep for him?). He became irate at having this hole in his argument exposed. I said that the Iraqi government's own figures of civilian deaths was different than his figures of 600,000 and he dismissed them derisively with a snort (Iraqi Health ministry estimates 100,000-150,000 civilian deaths, US military estimates 69,000-75,500 civilian deaths, Lancet study estimate is 392,979 to 942,636 excess civilian deaths).

Such deep analytical minds we deal with in Skypeland. Both of these gentlemen were good enough to insult me repeatedly and tell me how uneducated I am...as compared to them, of course...