4,000 Dead

✌➬ · 03.24.2008, 12:11 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us...hp&oref=slogin

By the time Specialist Jerry Ryen King decided to write about his experiences in Iraq, the teen-age paratrooper had more to share than most soldiers.

In two operations to clear the outskirts of the village of Turki in the deadly Diyala Province, Specialist King and the rest of the Fifth Squadron faced days of firefights, grenade attacks and land mines. Well-trained insurgents had burrowed deep into muddy canals, a throwback to the trenches of World War I. As the fighting wore on, B-1 bombers and F-16s were called in to drop a series of powerful bombs.

Once the area was clear of insurgents, the squadron, part of the 82nd Airborne Division, uncovered hidden caches with thousands of weapons.

Two months later, Specialist King, a handsome former honors student and double-sport athlete from Georgia, sat down at his computer. In informal but powerful prose, he began a journal.

After 232 long, desolate, morose, but somewhat days of tranquility into deployment, I’ve decided that I should start writing some of the things I experienced here in Iraq. I have to say that the events that I have encountered here have changed my outlook on life...
The most recent mission started out as a 24-36 hour air-assault sniper mission in a known al-Qaida stronghold just north of Baghdad. We landed a few hours before daybreak and as soon as I got off the helicopter my night vision broke, I was surrounded by the sound of artillery rounds, people screaming in Arabic, automatic weapons, and the terrain didn’t look anything like what we were briefed. I knew it was going to be a bad day and a half.

Jerry Ryen King, journal entry, March 7, 2007

A month later, Specialist King was sitting inside his combat outpost, an abandoned school in Sadah, when suicide bombers exploded two dump trucks just outside the building. The school collapsed, killing Specialist King on April 23, 2007, along with eight other soldiers, and making the blast one of the most lethal for Americans fighting in Iraq.

In that instant, Specialist King became one of 4,000 service members and Defense Department civilians to die in the Iraq war — a milestone that was reached late Sunday, five years since the war began in March 2003. The last four members of that group, like the majority of the most recent 1,000 to die, were killed by an improvised explosive device. They died at 10 p.m. Sunday on a patrol in Baghdad, military officials said; their names have not yet been released.

✌➬ · 03.24.2008, 12:11 PM

The next day we cleared an area that made me feel as if I were in Vietnam. Honestly, it was one of the scariest times of my life. At one point I was in water up to my waist and heard an AK fire in my direction. But all in all the day was going pretty good, no one was hurt, I got to shoot a few rounds, toss a grenade, and we were walking to where the helicopter was supposed to pick us up.
Jerry Ryen King, journal entry, March 7, 2007

The year 2007 would prove to be especially hard on American service members; more of them died last year than in any other since the war began. Many of those deaths came in the midst of the 30,000-troop buildup known as “the surge,” the linchpin of President Bush’s strategy to tamp down widespread violence between Islamic Sunnis and Shiites, much of it in the country’s capital, Baghdad. In April, May and June alone, 331 American service members died, making it the deadliest three-month period since the war began.

But by fall, the strategy, bolstered by new alliances with Sunni tribal chiefs and a decision by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to order his militia to stop fighting, appeared to be paying off as the country entered a period of relative calm. Military casualties and Iraqi civilian deaths fell, and the October-December period produced the fewest casualties of any three months of the war. The past month, though, has seen an uptick in killings and explosions, particularly suicide bombings. Much of the violence has traveled north to Mosul, where the group calling itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remains strong.

Everything changed in a matter of 15 minutes... About the time I was opening my MRE (meal ready to eat) I heard an explosion. Everyone started running towards the sound of the explosion. Apparently a suicide bomber had blown himself up killing four soldiers from my squadron and injuring another. Our 36 hour mission turned into another air- assault into a totally different city, the clearing of it, and 5 more days. We did find over 100 RPG’s, IED making materials, insurgents implacing IED’s, artillery rounds, a sniper rifle, and sort of like a terrorist training book and cd’s.
Jerry Ryen King, journal entry, March 7, 2007

Unlike the soldiers of previous wars, who were only occasionally able to send letters back home to loved ones, many of those who died left behind an extraordinary electronic testimony describing in detail the labor, the fears and the banality of serving in Iraq.

In excerpts published here from journals, blogs and e-mail messages, five soldiers who died in the most recent group of 1,000 mostly skim the alarming particulars of combat, a kindness shown their relatives and close friends. Instead, they plunge readily into the mundane, but no less important rhythms of home. They fire off comments about holiday celebrations, impending weddings, credit card bills, school antics and the creeping anxiety of family members who are coping with one deployment too many.

At other moments, the service members describe the humor of daily life down range, as they call it. Hurriedly, with little time to worry about spelling or grammar, they riff on the chaos around them and reveal moments of fear. As casualties climb and the violence intensifies, so does their urge to share their grief and foreboding.

✌➬ · 03.24.2008, 12:12 PM

A Last Goodbye

Hey beautiful well we were on blackout again, we lost yet some more soldiers. I cant wait to get out of this place and return to you where i belong. I dont know how much more of this place i can take. i try to be hard and brave for my guys but i dont know how long i can keep that up you know. its like everytime we go out, any little bump or sounds freaks me out. maybe im jus stressin is all. hopefully ill get over it....
you know, you never think that anything is or can happen to you, at first you feel invincible, but then little by little things start to wear on you...
well im sure well be able to save a couple of bucks if you stay with your mom....and at the same time you can help her with some of the bills for the time being. it doesnt bother me. as long as you guys are content is all that matters. I love and miss you guys like crazy. I know i miss both of you too. at times id like to even just spend 1 minute out of this nightmare just to hold and kiss you guys to make it seem a little bit easier. im sure he will like whatever you get him for xmas, and i know that as he gets older he’ll understand how things work. well things here always seem to be......uhm whats the word.....interesting i guess you can say. you never know whats gonna happen and thats the worst part. do me a favor though, when you go to my sisters or moms or wherever you see my family let them know that i love them very much..ok? well i better get going, i have a lot of stuff to do. but hopefully ill get to hear from you pretty soon.*muah* and hugs. tell mijo im proud of him too!
love always,
your other half
Juan Campos, e-mail message to his wife, Dec. 12, 2006.

When Staff Sgt. Juan Campos, 27, flew from Baghdad to Texas for two weeks last year, there was more on his mind than rest and relaxation. He visited his father’s grave, which he had never seen. He spent time with his grandparents and touched base with the rest of his rambling, extended family ........

Dead-Air · 03.24.2008, 01:23 PM

4,000 is also just the number of U.S. military (i.e. not "contractors" or other civilians) who died on the ground. If a soldier is seriously wounded they often rush them to a hospital in Kuwait or elsewhere and if they die there, or shortly after getting home, they aren't counted as deaths in Iraq.

tesla69 · 03.24.2008, 02:04 PM

The actual number may be like 70K. Wouldn't matter if that number was out, the Bushies are made of teflon, they could kill and eat raw children on live TV and americans would just wipe the drool off their faces and go duh, while they loaded up the next video game. Bush has killed more americans than osama! A achievement the republocrats can be proud of. Nothing like keeping us safe by killing us off.

SuchFriendsAreDangerous · 03.24.2008, 02:55 PM

this thread makes me sick. soldiers die in war, that is the way war works. buy the ticket, take the ride, put on the boots, go to war, simple as that. but let me be brutally honest here,

there are more then just Americans dying out there in Iraq. BBC reports that 650,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003, In fact, that is more then one hundred to one.

Lurker · 03.24.2008, 03:07 PM

Nor did they buy the ticket to be ruled by a brutal dictator.

tesla69 · 03.24.2008, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lurker

Nor did they buy the ticket to be ruled by a brutal dictator.

I'm quite certain the US has killed more Iraqi's than Saddam ever did. We have no moral authority there, just bigger bombs to drop on children while they sleep.

tesla69 · 03.24.2008, 03:27 PM

it really is a war crime being perpetrated there.

Over 70,000 deaths, and over 1 million disabilities among American soldiers attributed to Iraq Wars says U.S. government data
by Peter Tremblay and Libertyforlife.com researchers

According to U.S. media reports, there are well below 5,000 U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq. However, this data appears to be very misleading. Why? Because many tens of thousands of American soldiers have apparently been killed to-date, as a result of being exposed to radiation poisoning from the indiscriminate killing machines of U.S. military weaponry. Ironically, the only Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that Americans soldiers have found in Iraq are "Made in America".

U.S. investigative researchers have discovered an official U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs official, but not well publicized count, of 73,846 U.S. soldiers who have perished as an apparent result of Depleted Uranium based bio-chemical warfare exposure. This exceeds an estimate of 58,000 U.S. soldiers who had been killed in relation to the Vietnam War.

Well over 200,000 American soldiers could be killed by 2010, as a result of the after effects of exposure to U.S. dirty bombs.

Over One million U.S. soldiers have apparently been disabled from Depleted Uranium based biochemical exposure. Over one million Iraqis have also been documented to have been killed.
This is what the U.S. ruling elite including U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Republican Presidential candidate John McCain calls a "success".

Dead-Air · 03.24.2008, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tesla69

The actual number may be like 70K. Wouldn't matter if that number was out, the Bushies are made of teflon, they could kill and eat raw children on live TV and americans would just wipe the drool off their faces and go duh, while they loaded up the next video game. Bush has killed more americans than osama! A achievement the republocrats can be proud of. Nothing like keeping us safe by killing us off.

I don't think that's exactly true - not the teflon part. Bush has the lowest approval rating of any standing president ever.

I know, so why was he elected a second term? I'm open for conspiracy theories about that, but mostly it's because the Democrats ran a milk-toast phony that didn't look any better to a bunch of people, like they always do - a veteran turned war protestor who would never speak about his protesting and just go on about his purple hearts. So the jaded middle Americans figured they should stay with the guy who made the mess to begin with (I heard people actually say that).

So he may go down in history as our worst president ever, which is not teflon like Reagan was. Nonetheless, he'll still reap massive profits from all the damage he did, since he still owns all those oil shares, and he sure drove up the price of oil.

03.24.2008, 12:11 PM	#1
✌➬ invito al cielo Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: ιλ Posts: 5,754	http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us...hp&oref=slogin By the time Specialist Jerry Ryen King decided to write about his experiences in Iraq, the teen-age paratrooper had more to share than most soldiers. In two operations to clear the outskirts of the village of Turki in the deadly Diyala Province, Specialist King and the rest of the Fifth Squadron faced days of firefights, grenade attacks and land mines. Well-trained insurgents had burrowed deep into muddy canals, a throwback to the trenches of World War I. As the fighting wore on, B-1 bombers and F-16s were called in to drop a series of powerful bombs. Once the area was clear of insurgents, the squadron, part of the 82nd Airborne Division, uncovered hidden caches with thousands of weapons. Two months later, Specialist King, a handsome former honors student and double-sport athlete from Georgia, sat down at his computer. In informal but powerful prose, he began a journal. After 232 long, desolate, morose, but somewhat days of tranquility into deployment, I’ve decided that I should start writing some of the things I experienced here in Iraq. I have to say that the events that I have encountered here have changed my outlook on life... The most recent mission started out as a 24-36 hour air-assault sniper mission in a known al-Qaida stronghold just north of Baghdad. We landed a few hours before daybreak and as soon as I got off the helicopter my night vision broke, I was surrounded by the sound of artillery rounds, people screaming in Arabic, automatic weapons, and the terrain didn’t look anything like what we were briefed. I knew it was going to be a bad day and a half. Jerry Ryen King, journal entry, March 7, 2007 A month later, Specialist King was sitting inside his combat outpost, an abandoned school in Sadah, when suicide bombers exploded two dump trucks just outside the building. The school collapsed, killing Specialist King on April 23, 2007, along with eight other soldiers, and making the blast one of the most lethal for Americans fighting in Iraq. In that instant, Specialist King became one of 4,000 service members and Defense Department civilians to die in the Iraq war — a milestone that was reached late Sunday, five years since the war began in March 2003. The last four members of that group, like the majority of the most recent 1,000 to die, were killed by an improvised explosive device. They died at 10 p.m. Sunday on a patrol in Baghdad, military officials said; their names have not yet been released. __________________ We Kill Homosexuals!!!
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

03.24.2008, 12:11 PM	#2
✌➬ invito al cielo Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: ιλ Posts: 5,754	The next day we cleared an area that made me feel as if I were in Vietnam. Honestly, it was one of the scariest times of my life. At one point I was in water up to my waist and heard an AK fire in my direction. But all in all the day was going pretty good, no one was hurt, I got to shoot a few rounds, toss a grenade, and we were walking to where the helicopter was supposed to pick us up. Jerry Ryen King, journal entry, March 7, 2007 The year 2007 would prove to be especially hard on American service members; more of them died last year than in any other since the war began. Many of those deaths came in the midst of the 30,000-troop buildup known as “the surge,” the linchpin of President Bush’s strategy to tamp down widespread violence between Islamic Sunnis and Shiites, much of it in the country’s capital, Baghdad. In April, May and June alone, 331 American service members died, making it the deadliest three-month period since the war began. But by fall, the strategy, bolstered by new alliances with Sunni tribal chiefs and a decision by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to order his militia to stop fighting, appeared to be paying off as the country entered a period of relative calm. Military casualties and Iraqi civilian deaths fell, and the October-December period produced the fewest casualties of any three months of the war. The past month, though, has seen an uptick in killings and explosions, particularly suicide bombings. Much of the violence has traveled north to Mosul, where the group calling itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remains strong. Everything changed in a matter of 15 minutes... About the time I was opening my MRE (meal ready to eat) I heard an explosion. Everyone started running towards the sound of the explosion. Apparently a suicide bomber had blown himself up killing four soldiers from my squadron and injuring another. Our 36 hour mission turned into another air- assault into a totally different city, the clearing of it, and 5 more days. We did find over 100 RPG’s, IED making materials, insurgents implacing IED’s, artillery rounds, a sniper rifle, and sort of like a terrorist training book and cd’s. Jerry Ryen King, journal entry, March 7, 2007 Unlike the soldiers of previous wars, who were only occasionally able to send letters back home to loved ones, many of those who died left behind an extraordinary electronic testimony describing in detail the labor, the fears and the banality of serving in Iraq. In excerpts published here from journals, blogs and e-mail messages, five soldiers who died in the most recent group of 1,000 mostly skim the alarming particulars of combat, a kindness shown their relatives and close friends. Instead, they plunge readily into the mundane, but no less important rhythms of home. They fire off comments about holiday celebrations, impending weddings, credit card bills, school antics and the creeping anxiety of family members who are coping with one deployment too many. At other moments, the service members describe the humor of daily life down range, as they call it. Hurriedly, with little time to worry about spelling or grammar, they riff on the chaos around them and reveal moments of fear. As casualties climb and the violence intensifies, so does their urge to share their grief and foreboding. __________________ We Kill Homosexuals!!!
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

03.24.2008, 12:12 PM	#3
✌➬ invito al cielo Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: ιλ Posts: 5,754	A Last Goodbye Hey beautiful well we were on blackout again, we lost yet some more soldiers. I cant wait to get out of this place and return to you where i belong. I dont know how much more of this place i can take. i try to be hard and brave for my guys but i dont know how long i can keep that up you know. its like everytime we go out, any little bump or sounds freaks me out. maybe im jus stressin is all. hopefully ill get over it.... you know, you never think that anything is or can happen to you, at first you feel invincible, but then little by little things start to wear on you... well im sure well be able to save a couple of bucks if you stay with your mom....and at the same time you can help her with some of the bills for the time being. it doesnt bother me. as long as you guys are content is all that matters. I love and miss you guys like crazy. I know i miss both of you too. at times id like to even just spend 1 minute out of this nightmare just to hold and kiss you guys to make it seem a little bit easier. im sure he will like whatever you get him for xmas, and i know that as he gets older he’ll understand how things work. well things here always seem to be......uhm whats the word.....interesting i guess you can say. you never know whats gonna happen and thats the worst part. do me a favor though, when you go to my sisters or moms or wherever you see my family let them know that i love them very much..ok? well i better get going, i have a lot of stuff to do. but hopefully ill get to hear from you pretty soon.muah and hugs. tell mijo im proud of him too! love always, your other half Juan Campos, e-mail message to his wife, Dec. 12, 2006. When Staff Sgt. Juan Campos, 27, flew from Baghdad to Texas for two weeks last year, there was more on his mind than rest and relaxation. He visited his father’s grave, which he had never seen. He spent time with his grandparents and touched base with the rest of his rambling, extended family ........ __________________ We Kill Homosexuals!!!
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

03.24.2008, 01:23 PM	#4
Dead-Air invito al cielo Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Portland OR Posts: 4,300	4,000 is also just the number of U.S. military (i.e. not "contractors" or other civilians) who died on the ground. If a soldier is seriously wounded they often rush them to a hospital in Kuwait or elsewhere and if they die there, or shortly after getting home, they aren't counted as deaths in Iraq. __________________ FuckBook; My Band; My Radio Show; My Flickr Page; Science Fiction Message Board
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

03.24.2008, 02:04 PM	#5
tesla69 Banned Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: NYC Posts: 4,055	The actual number may be like 70K. Wouldn't matter if that number was out, the Bushies are made of teflon, they could kill and eat raw children on live TV and americans would just wipe the drool off their faces and go duh, while they loaded up the next video game. Bush has killed more americans than osama! A achievement the republocrats can be proud of. Nothing like keeping us safe by killing us off.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

03.24.2008, 02:55 PM	#6
SuchFriendsAreDangerous invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: fucking Los Angeles Posts: 14,801	this thread makes me sick. soldiers die in war, that is the way war works. buy the ticket, take the ride, put on the boots, go to war, simple as that. but let me be brutally honest here, there are more then just Americans dying out there in Iraq. BBC reports that 650,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003, *In fact, that is more then one hundred to one.* __________________ Today Rap music is the Lakers
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

03.24.2008, 03:07 PM	#7
Lurker invito al cielo Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: No. 10 Posts: 3,289	Nor did they buy the ticket to be ruled by a brutal dictator.
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03.24.2008, 03:27 PM	#9
tesla69 Banned Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: NYC Posts: 4,055	it really is a war crime being perpetrated there. Over 70,000 deaths, and over 1 million disabilities among American soldiers attributed to Iraq Wars says U.S. government data by Peter Tremblay and Libertyforlife.com researchers According to U.S. media reports, there are well below 5,000 U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq. However, this data appears to be very misleading. Why? Because many tens of thousands of American soldiers have apparently been killed to-date, as a result of being exposed to radiation poisoning from the indiscriminate killing machines of U.S. military weaponry. Ironically, the only Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that Americans soldiers have found in Iraq are "Made in America". U.S. investigative researchers have discovered an official U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs official, but not well publicized count, of 73,846 U.S. soldiers who have perished as an apparent result of Depleted Uranium based bio-chemical warfare exposure. This exceeds an estimate of 58,000 U.S. soldiers who had been killed in relation to the Vietnam War. Well over 200,000 American soldiers could be killed by 2010, as a result of the after effects of exposure to U.S. dirty bombs. Over One million U.S. soldiers have apparently been disabled from Depleted Uranium based biochemical exposure. Over one million Iraqis have also been documented to have been killed. This is what the U.S. ruling elite including U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Republican Presidential candidate John McCain calls a "success".
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|