4um: US death toll in Iraq is ‘mostly white and poor’

The 4000 US soldiers killed in Iraq in the past five years were predominantly white and more than one in three came from poor southern states, according to a casualty analysis carried out by The Herald.

Almost one in 10 of the dead were officers, with a heavy toll of captains and lieutenants leading their men from the front. Overall, 97% of them died after the official end of hostilities in May 2003.

The fatalities included one Briton from Bedford and a Canadian, both of whom had joined the US Army to see action. There were also 40 native American tribesmen and 44 Pacific islanders.

The 36% of southern boys came from small towns such as Bauxite, Arkansas. There were also losses from Glasgow, Kentucky, and Midlothian, Virginia.

Texas was hardest hit of the old Confederate states,, losing 371 dead and 2840 wounded, but California suffered 429 deaths, the highest number of fatalities from any home state.

By ethnic group, the dead were 75% white, 11% Latino and 9% black. Between 40% and 55% were killed by roadside bombs, although rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire accounted for many of the 137 who fell during the assault on the insurgent-held city of Falluja in November, 2004.

US special forces also took heavy losses. Although the Pentagon does not comment on clandestine operations, two naval commanders, five lieutenant-commanders and 52 petty officers - most believed to be members of the US Navy Seals - have been killed.

Four colonels and 14 lieutenant-colonels from the army and Marine Corps were the most senior officers to die, joined by 36 majors and several hundred platoon and company commanders.

The vast majority of losses were in the 20 to 30 age group, with just 83 of the total aged over 45 and only 33 aged 18.

Despite the prohibition on women in combat, there were 98 female deaths, mainly in support units. The mortality rate for women soldiers is 2% of those given Iraq duty.

A US officer with Iraq experience said yesterday: "You'll find that the backbone of the US Army has long been poor, white and southern. Small-town rural Dixie has always been a prime recruiting area because there's a shortage of jobs and southerners have a proud military tradition. Sadly, that translates into casualties."

#1. To: Cynicom, Jethro Tull, robin, lodwick, sneakypete, bush_is_a_moonie, YertleTurtle (#0)

Poor and now "riddled" with PTSD. Of course. Better disarm the ones who have seen the horror of this administration's handiwork in person, preemptively.

Well, I have a 458 Winchester I don't care to shoot much. If they violate their 2nd Amendment rights at take their guns I'd give one of them this if he promised to use it on a few people I'm sure should be executed.

I sometimes think all the smart ones were killed off during the War Between the States, or else left and came north, like my ancestors.

Few have any idea they are dying for a Yankee like Bush, or a bunch of anti-American, anti-Christian Zionists. They think they're patriots.

A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

The clergyman prefered not to lodge a complaint with the police and told an acquaintance that he was used to being spat at by Jews. Many Jerusalem clergy have been subjected to abuse of this kind. For the most part, they ignore it but sometimes they cannot.

On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.

Both were questioned by police and the yeshiva student will be brought to trial. The Jerusalem District Court has meanwhile banned the student from approaching the Old City for 75 days.

But the Armenians are far from satisfied by the police action and say this sort of thing has been going on for years. Archbishop Nourhan Manougian says he expects the education minister to say something.

"When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don't they take harsher measures?" he asks.

According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, "as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country."

Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.

There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday."I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday," he says.

Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as "a huge disgrace." He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.

"I'm sure the phenomenon would end as soon as rabbis and well-known educators denounce it. In practice, rabbis of yeshivas ignore or even encourage it," he says.

Evyatar says he himself was spat at while walking with a Serbian bishop in the Jewish quarter, near his home. "A group of yeshiva students spat at us and their teacher just stood by and watched."

Jerusalem municipal officials said they are aware of the problem but it has to be dealt with by the police. Shmuel Ben-Ruby, the police spokesman, said they had only two complaints from Christians in the past two years. He said that, in both cases, the culprits were caught and punished.

He said the police deploy an inordinately high number of patrols and special technology in the Old City and its surroundings in an attempt to keep order.

...Both methods yielded similar results, which support the previous findings; that is, of all modern human samples, sub-Saharan Africans again exhibit the closest phenetic similarity to various African Plio-Pleistocene hominins...
Ancient teeth and modern human origins: An expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples, Journal of Human Evolution Volume 45, Issue 2, August 2003, Pages 113-144

Scorned, mocked and ridiculed by the "sophisticated" of this country the white trash are always the first to serve and first to die.

People in this forum are always ready with their, "if they are stupid enough to volunteer, what results is their own fault".

I disagree with that sentiment. These are human beings with real families, ties to America's age old past, and a great generosity given to preserving America's future.

And yes, I agree with your perspective. I don't see this changing any time soon.

I go way back to the 1930s when Roosevelt time after time promised, "I will never draft American boys to fight in a foreign war".

All that time he was plotting how to get a "draft" instituted, and finally did in 1940 by one vote margin in Congress.. Ten MILLION "boys" were dragged in, ten million.

Listening to Charles Lindbergh speak — with a totally open mind — is a real eye-opener. If we had followed his advice, the attacks in the Pacific would have either never come, or we would have decimated the Japanese attackers. Knowing that FDR was in Assistant Secretary of the Navy during WW1 is another eye-opener. Knowing that the Harrimans and the Bushes are linked through Union Bank is another piece of the puzzle. Such a shame.

Small-town America is dying in Iraq

The Record (Bergen County, NJ)

02-20-2007

Small-town America is dying in Iraq -- Most slain troops come from poor, rural areas
By KIMBERLY HEFLING, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Date: 02-20-2007, Tuesday
Section: NEWS
Edtion: All Editions

McKEESPORT, Pa. — Edward "Willie" Carman wanted a ticket out of town, and the Army provided it.

Raised in the projects by a single mother in this blighted, old industrial steel town outside Pittsburgh, the 18-year-old saw the U.S. military as an opportunity.

"I'm not doing it to you, I'm doing it for me," he told his mother, Joanna Hawthorne, after coming home from high school one day and surprising her with the news.

When Carman died in Iraq three years ago at age 27, he had money saved for college, a fiancée and two kids — including a baby son he'd never met. Neighbors in Hawthorne's mobile home park collected $400 and left it in an envelope in her door.

For a year after his death, Hawthorne took a chair to the cemetery nearly every day, sat next to his grave and talked quietly. Her vigil continues even now; the visits have slowed to once a week, but the pain sticks.

Across the nation, small towns are quietly bearing the war's burden. Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. One in five hailed from hometowns of less than 5,000.

The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in towns under 25,000 and in unincorporated areas, but it could not provide the number of people in living only in communities of less than 25,000. The 2000 census showed 16 percent of the population lived in unincorporated rural areas.

Many of the hometowns of the war dead aren't just small, they're poor. The AP analysis found that nearly three-quarters of those killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.

Some are old factory towns like McKeesport, once home to U.S. Steel's National Tube Works, which employed 8,000 people in its heyday. Now, residents' average income is just 60 percent of the national average, and one in eight lives below the federal poverty line.

On a per capita basis, states with mostly rural populations have suffered the highest casualties in Iraq. Vermont, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Delaware, Montana, Louisiana and Oregon top the list, the AP found.

There's a "basic unfairness" about the number of troops dying in Iraq who are from rural areas, said William O'Hare, senior visiting fellow at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, which examines rural issues.

Diminished opportunities are one factor in higher military enlistment rates in rural areas. From 1997 to 2003, 1.5 million rural workers lost their jobs due to changes in industries like manufacturing that have traditionally employed rural workers, according to the Carsey Institute.

Rural communities are "being asked to pay a bigger price for this military adventure, if I can use that word, than their urban counterparts," O'Hare said.

As a result, in more than a thousand small towns across the country — from Glendive, Mont., to Barnwell, S.C., to Caledonia, Miss., and from Hardwick, Vt., to Clinton, Ohio — friends and families have been left struggling to make sense of a loved one's death in Iraq. It's a struggle that hits with a special intensity in tight-knit, small towns.

"In a small community, even if you don't know somebody's name you at least know their face, you've seen them before, talked to them maybe," said Chuck Bevington, whose 22-year-old brother Allan, from Beaver Falls, Pa., died in Iraq, after volunteering for a second tour. "A small community feels it a lot tighter because they've had more contact with each other."

Even strangers come up and hug his mother, he said.

Patriotism runs deep

Military tradition and patriotism run deep in rural America, and for some the drive to serve goes well beyond economics. Sometimes, the call is something even their parents don't completely understand.

When a Marine recruiter came to Ryan Kovacicek's two-story house outside Washington, Pa., off a rural mountain road surrounded by cattle pastures, his father, a Marine veteran of Vietnam, turned to his college student son and said, "You don't really understand what you're getting into."

"Yes, I do," he stubbornly told his father before signing the papers.

Their son was a jokester, easy going and popular. He loved golf and vacationing in Myrtle Beach, S.C. But there was a serious side too, and his parents said he believed in serving his country. As a bonus, he thought military service would help him one day get a job with the FBI or CIA.

Before leaving for Iraq, he took his girlfriend to a car dealership along I-79, pointed to a giant American flag flying overhead, and declared, "This is why I joined the Marines."

When his body came home, the hearse passed the same flag.

The day of Kovacicek's funeral, people lined Route 19, holding signs with his name. Little kids waved flags and men held their hands over their hearts to pay respect to the procession of more than 300 cars. His parents say they've been overwhelmed by the support of the community with tributes and phone calls from his friends and fellow Marines.

In Iraq, they later learned, he used to serenade his buddies with a song his father learned in boot camp and taught him as a boy. His voice choking, Joe Kovacicek recalled the words: "You can have your Army khaki, you can have your Navy blue, but here's another fighting man I'll introduce to you."

Among his belongings returned to the family was a tiny, worn-out Bible he carried in his pocket.

His mother, Judi, said she didn't watch President Bush's recent address on the war because they try to stay out of the politics of Iraq.

"If God was going to take him at 22, if he didn't take him like he did, how was he going to do it? I feel a lot better losing him this way because there was a lot of meaning behind what he did," his father said.

An issue of fairness

Death isn't the only burden the war has visited on the nation's small towns.

Entrepreneurs in many small communities have lost their businesses after deploying in the Guard and Reserves, said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. More federal dollars also are needed to ensure that returning troops have easy access to veterans' health centers, he said.

"It's an issue of fairness that these folks are willing to go over and fight wars and put their lives on the line and really back this country up the way they have. ... We owe it to them to live up to our obligation of benefits," Tester said.

Another fairness issue, raised by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., is the Pentagon's practice of transporting the remains of military personnel killed in Iraq only to the nearest major airport. Stupak said it "imposes a burden on the family and friends when they should instead receive our support." He has introduced a bill to require the DOD to deliver the remains to a military or civilian airport chosen by the family.

While support for the war in rural areas initially was high, there has been a sharp decline in the past three years. AP-Ipsos polls show that those in rural areas who said it was the right decision to go to war dropped from 73 percent in April 2004 to 39 percent now. In urban areas, support declined from 43 percent in 2004 to 30 percent now.

Marty Newell, chief operating officer of the Whitesburg, Ky.-based Center for Rural Strategies, said rural areas supported the war early on because so many of their young men and women were fighting it.

"The reason that support is dwindling now is the same reason that support would've been strong before, and that is that we know a lot more about it," he said. "We know what the real costs are and we know what the real story is. ... Every day there's another small town that has one of their own come home less than whole, and there are a lot of small towns like that."

As the war drags on into its fourth year, Vietnam War historian Christian Appy said the burden it has placed on smaller communities — just as it did in Vietnam — can be a very "embittering experience."

"I think people in many of those towns are deeply patriotic and want to support the country, but as time goes on, it's becoming increasingly clear to those people that their country and its security is not at stake in this war and in Vietnam," Appy said.

One who's conflicted about the U.S. role in Iraq is Marilyn Adams, 37, of Wexford, Pa. Her 3-year-old son opened the door in 2005 when an officer came to tell her of the death of her husband, Pennsylvania National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Brent Adams, 40, in Iraq.

"I'm torn," she said. "Should we finish the job? And then I go to the funerals of the local guys and I'm like, this is just stupid. ... I don't think we're going to finish it there. I don't think there's a finishing point. They're getting more efficient at killing us, that's a direct quote from the president."

A second deployment

Long before football great Joe Namath put Beaver Falls on the map, the Pennsylvania mountain town was known for its cold-drawn steel. But like much of the Steel Belt, it's had a decline in population and jobs.

Allan Bevington, who enjoyed heavy metal music and loved to fish, talked to his older brother, Chuck, about his time in the Army, and eventually decided it was a way for him to get an education and support his country.

In his first tour in Iraq, he worked as a combat engineer dismantling roadside bombs. He believed he was saving American lives and helping the Iraqi people. After returning home, he volunteered for a second deployment, only to be killed by a roadside bomb.

"He really felt what he was doing was helping the Iraqi people. He had a lot of bad experiences the first time, but he had just as many good experiences," Bevington said. "He was very proud of what he was doing. He would never tell you that to your face, but you could see it in his eyes."

Before his second deployment, Bevington purchased a 2002 cobalt blue Ford Mustang. Now, it sits in his brother's driveway because neither he nor his mother have the heart to move it.

Chuck Bevington doesn't like what he calls the politicizing of the troops.

"The last thing these men need are people second guessing what's going on," he said. "That's something for the history books to decide whether it's right or wrong.

"If they end it right now, they're going to make it worse then it ever was."

***

Illustrations/Photos: COLOR PHOTO - ASSOCIATED PRESS - Joanna Hawthorne, the mother of Army Staff Sgt. Edward Carman, sitting by the grave of her son in a McKeesport, Pa., cemetery.

Of course the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was the event that gave FDR the reason to shelve those words and launch this nation into a two front world war. Gone were the days of an isolationist foreign policy to one of interventionism. I've lost my patience to read books of late, but I did read this a few years back - Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. To anyone who doubts that FDR knew in advance of the attack, this book will dispel that notion.

The reason I'm not a school teacher that I would get fired and not hired anywhere else in the U.S.

"Son, you're not a patriot. You're dying for Yankees like Bush, who, like almost all graduates of those East Coast Ivy League colleges, have been avoiding the military since before the War Between the States. You're also dying for Zionists who have infiltrated the administration and are using it to protect Israel. They're not joining the military, either.

"Then you got your Christian Zionists, who think they're gonnna bring Jesus back through war. Well, son, that's not Christianity, that's fake Christianity contaminated by Zionism.

This very argument blew apart the former forum most of us spent time on. Of course you'd be fired, and yes it's true.

Plan Orange was instituted as a plan of action in the event Japan struck South for oil and expansion, to the Dutch East Indies, Philippines and Hawaii. Roosevelt knew over twenty years in advance that the possibility existed and what would be the instigation, namely "OIL".

When blue water navies were converted from coal to oil, that was the signal to the War Dept. that Japan would be on the move, as they had zero oil.

Roosevelt knew twenty years in advance the why and the how to prompt Japan to go to war. FDR was a lying SOB.

No doubt this same sentiment was expressed by many "good Germans" - right up until the end.

“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston

White middle and lower class Republicans have become the equivalent of the black "sucker" portion of Democrat Party.

Having had a mentor that lived through all of that, I listened to untold hours concerning German life prior to and during WW2. The German people staggered into chaos during the 1930s just as we are doing now, bit by bit, day by day.

The gun and the noose became the order of the day, the people looked for survival.

Excellent info, Cyni. Thanks. I'll print this out and take it to the Obama rally at PSU today. I'm sure he'll be happy with this knowledge :)

What is your bazarro obsession with race in America? Jim Crow is dead, LBJ has infused the racial huckster industry with trillions and your children are now on the back of the line thanks to Affirmative Action. Yet, you still play the race card like some guilt ridden goof. It isn't becoming.

The core and bottom-line conflicting issue, in my observation, is this: either you are an Israel First American or you are not. I tend to lean towards the latter.

Any sane and intelligent American paying even half attention must realize the onerous, paramount and monumentally disasterous long-term effect of this cabal on American society, culture, and world standing:

AIPAC/AEI/SPLC/ADL/PNAC/NAACP/JINSA/ACLU/Hollywood/Federal Media/Federal Reserve.

Looking back through the mists of history, one can see some weak justification for the US leadership allowing a crystallizing event to impart a sense of urgency for entering the war in Americans. The September 1940 Tripartite agreement among Germany and its Italian/Japanese allies indicated where the war was going as early as the 1936 Comintern Pact. It is clear that not enough was done to protect our servicemen and their supporting civilians in Hawaii and the Philippines, and the rest of the Pacific. More could have been done, if as Charles Lindbergh had suggested, we use our war materiel to defend ourselves instead of the Soviets and the British.

However, given the Schiff involvement in Kuhn/Loeb's investment in the Japanese navy, at the turn of the century, we're looking at a very twisted situation by the late 1930s. All that aside, by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the lies had gotten out of control. By the time 9/11 came around, utter mayhem was ensuing. Besides the fact that subsonic aircraft were permitted to penetrate the Pentagon's defenses, Saddam had no WMD and no direct involvement in al Qaeda. A war completely justified by the 9/11 attacks was needless. The Islamic world posed no technological threat to the United States. Israel was its only potential foe. The real threat of multiculturalism was never addressed by the President's cabinet and the State Department. We see the impact of open immigration on France and Holland, yet while we went to war to crusade against Isalmic extremism in the Mideast, we continued to leave our borders open, and we continued to permit immigration from Islamic countries.

We see a killer instinct beginning to emerge, where it is not any longer outrageous to suggest that the American government has become willing to see its own people killed in order to propagate its geopolitical strategies.

It is up to the American people to demand that its government and the forces behind it cease using these manipulations to get us embroiled in war.

Americans are taught what the few consider to be needed, everything else one has to learn on their own or join the sheep.

I have respect for people that can cast aside their personal bias and see history for what it really was.

Pre-programmed non self thinking people here on the rum reveal themselves from day one.

Aside from the racialist accusations made against Lindbergh, no patriot can argue with his September 1941 speech in which he pleads for stronger defenses at edges of America's spheres of influence.

Yet the Israel-firsters running our presses and our broadcast media establishment insist that Lindbergh was a collaborator of the worst kind.

And, thankfully and fortunately, God is on the side of the war mongering United States.

I wonder if America could go 100 years without bombing, invading or shooting up some other country. 50?

The prime reason was that the Elder Lindbergh in Congress in 1913 had fought against the "Federal Reserve". The Jewish cabal destroyed Lindberghs political career, the main culprit being the New York Times. When his son came along he received the same treatment. The cabal never forgets.

Charles Lindbergh Sr. was the first American to warn against the Federal Reserve and paid the price as did his son.

It's up to us. We're not doing so well, if Ron Paul's and Dennis Kucinich's support at the polls would indicate.

FDR was prime military material, that is why he was hiding out in the Navy Dept. because he was "exempt" from military service. When the war was over he left, a fine American warrior.

My obsession, demonstrated on these threads time and time again, is the complete and utter deterioration of the Republican Party.

What's left of this miserable bunch of big gubmint, neocon betrayers does not represent me ... if you think it does you then hang right in there and you'll get a third helping.

The scoreboard showing that the best choice left is a black man is simply a coincidence of history. The fact that his color is a deal breaker for so many is unfortunate for the nation in my estimation, but que sera sera.

You're tilting at windmills. The power we are up against is manifested in both parties.

buck, old friend, I know full well you are anything but happy with the current political picture, but what on earth is it going to take to shake you back into the present?

And the fact that Obama is the first front runner in either party in decades to show an inclination to back away from this craziness is encouraging to me.

The fact that so many here can't smell the coffee even as its poured over their heads boggles my mind.

Conservatives in this republic have a golden opportunity to send a message to the the Traitorous Plutocrat Party, perhaps even a stake in their black hearts.

The only thing Quixotic about my dreams is my fading hope for a fifty state reversal for this scum.

The fact that you believe a politician will act in the best interest of the American people, given your age, tells me you've absorbed nothing but spin for more than seven decades. You're a walking tribute to the System. Without folks like you it would be exposed for the fraud it is and Lord knows how awful that would be.