[sasquatch2]

Superpowers have always seemed to fail to successfully project power.

The Spain of THE ARMADA is a classic example. Spain took at least three years to assemble equip and victual the force. This long assembly time taxed it's resources for the simple reason that the assembled host had to be feed during the mobilization. The Brits ussually exagerate the Spanish military. In fact the Aramada when it sailed was undermanned and armed. The Brits had thanks the Queen fostered a hard core of naval man-power and ships bristling with effective ordinance.

The success of the British raids on Cadiz is witness to the simple truth that Spain lacked a reaction force in spain and once the garrison of Cadiz was overwhelmed, the Brits could pillage in peace for over three days.

In the time of the Armada there was no pampered anti-war counter culture in Britain.

[Calbeck]

Thanos wrote:

Violence in Iraq post-surge might be down in relation to the level of violence in 2006. But violence in Iraq in 2006 was a couple of hundred times higher than in 2004

Actual figures: deaths per day averaged 20.2 in 2004 and 63.5 in 2006. So your "couple of hundred" was in fact "about three". Source: Iraqbodycount.org

Current violence levels are actually comparable, according to IBC's by-the-week graphing, to 2004, which itself was only marginally more violent than the period immediately after the invasion in 2003.

The graph shows violent deaths on a gradual but shallow climb from 2003-2005, with a sudden massive spike in 2006 prior to the surge --- about the time it was discovered that Iran had been assisting in the training and support of terrorist elements in Iraq.

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and 2004 was a couple of hundred times more lethally violent that was 2002. The last time this sort of pandemic violence in Iraq was held in check was (gasp!) when Saddam was in control.

Ah, in 2002, Saddam WAS in control. -:D And it wasn't "held in check", it was "government-sponsored". Hussein's regime killed over 1,000,000 Iraqis during his 25-year term in office, averaging out to 40,000/yr. That includes political assassinations, "disappearings", summary executions, gassing the Kurds, putting down the 1992 Shia rebellion, the purges that followed...the list goes on, and we are continuing to find mass graves that push the ultimate toll ever higher.

Now, if we take Saddam's yearly average and compare "2002" to the Coalition occupation of 2004, we get 40,000 vs. 7400. So the occupation you're blaming for all this death saved 32,600 lives in 2004 alone.

Isn't that just horrible? -:D

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then how come they don't ever mention how WW2 actually was won

You mean by deliberately bombing the crap out of the economic assets and population of Germany and Japan? Britain's RAF referred to the latter as "de-housing the industrial population".