Gary Rumor’s Anti-Entropic Continuum

This is from a post by Andy Robinson. He was diligent enough to check into the amount of fragging by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also checked into who is taking the casualties in these wars. You will have to cut and paste these links.

“There has been fragging, but it’s been isolated cases rather than a pattern.

http://www.msnbc. msn.com/id/ 8257256/
http://www.msnbc. msn.com/id/ 33678801/
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/world/ americas/ 4496989.stm

There’s also been a number of spree-killings, armed sieges and suicides
involving people who refuse to be deployed or redeployed, though they’re
evading my search queries.

The reason there has been less is because the soldiers are not conscripts.
Also, a lot of the fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere is not being
done by US or closely allied troops. Some is being done by ISAF (NATO)
from dozens of nations (in Afghanistan) , some by mercenaries, and
an awful lot by allied/hired Iraqi and Afghan troops - who are usually
deployed as the low-cost sacrificable grunt units in relation to the
higher-value US soldiers. Look here:

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Casualties_ of_the_Iraq_ War#Iraqi_ Security_ Forces_.28aligne d_with_Coalition .29total

Casualties for Iraq are appearing at between 9000 and 11000 US-allied
Iraqis killed, 4400 US troops, 318 UK and other allies, and 1300
mercenaries.

From what I’ve heard about the local allied units, they are very
unpredictable - mostly they’re members of ethnic or religious militias which
could just as well be part of the resistance if circumstances changed -
mainly Kurdish Peshmerga and Shi’ite groups in Iraq, and Hazara, Uzbek and
Tajik militias led by ex-Northern Alliance warlords in Afghanistan. A lot
of them are in and out of alliances, fighting for the US one day and against
the next (e.g. the Badr Organization, the Al-Mahdi Army and the Awakening
movement); some are moonlighting for the resistance, and a lot are playing
tricks such as claiming wages for nonexistent subordinates and selling
weapons on the black market. Hence a big slice of the bloodshed and other
risks (abuse cases etc), and a lot of the knockon effect on morale/infighting
problems, are being contracted-out to local allies and correspondingly kept
out of the media. It’s also a lot cheaper that way. According to this:

http://www.rawa. org/temp/ runews/2009/ 11/17/the- five-month- salary-of- an-afghan- soldier-is- equal-to- one-day-fare- of-a-generaland- 8217-s-transport ation.html

Afghan soldiers are receiving around $1200 a year, far cheaper than GI’s (or
robots).

Afghan army fraggings:

http://www.examiner .com/x-30980- Afghanistan- Headlines- Examiner~ y2010m7d15- Afghan-traitor- killing-spree- highlights- national- army-defects? cid=edition- by-channel- rss-National- News
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/8385634. stm

Another point: the Iraqi Shi’ite and Afghan Hazara forces are closely allied
to Iran, so if America went to war with Iran, these forces would instantly
switch from “local allies” to “insurgents” , roughly doubling the
insurgencies and halving the allied forces overnight. One of the reasons
America hasn’t attacked Iran, though the alliance between American forces
and pro-Iran militias didn’t stop McCain targeting Iran for supporting
“terrorists” in Iraq during the last election. Apparently without realizing
that this “terrorists” are America’s local allies who are taking two-thirds
of the casualties of the war.”

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! “ – Sir Walter Scott.