You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Terror Networks
Team Obama’s B.S. ISIS Body Count
2015-06-08
[DailyBeast] It sounded so authoritative, when a top B.O. regime official claimed this week that the U.S. killed roughly 10,000 bully boy in its fight with the self-proclaimed Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
. Until that figure was contradicted by a second official. And then undercut by a third.

Not only could B.O. regime officials not agree on the final corpse count, they could not say how they determined such a figure with no ground forces in Iraq and Syria to assess Arclight airstrike damage. Nor could those officials articulate how well such a statistic measures progress against the terror army.

By the end of the week, many administration officials were admitting a defeat of sorts. They conceded that it was foolish to talk openly about body counts in the first place, when dead fighters are such an irrelevant measure of the conflict.
So they finally learned a lesson from Vietnam, did they...
"The killed in action and other activities should only be measured in how much those deaths affect ISIS's capability to conduct operations, how it affects its maneuvering, its logistics, its command and control, or impinge its effectiveness to maintain the initiative and conduct operations," said retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Derek Harvey, who testified last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the U.S. strategy.

Or as an adviser to the U.S. military on its campaign against ISIS explained to The Daily Beast: "These are the types of numbers that novices apply."
The journalist clearly does not think highly of this approach. More at the link.
Posted by:trailing wife

#5  FYI PRAVDA > ONLY IRAN CAN BREAK ISIS BY INVADING IRAQ AND SYRIA.

* TOPIX > [Russia Today = Middle East] IMPRISONED ISIS CELL LEADER "WON'T HESITATE" TO FIGHT [+ kill] AMERICANS, NO CARE FOR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.

VERSUS

* BIGNEWSNETWORK > [Independent.UK] SAUDI ARABIA COULD GO NUCLEAR UNLESS IRAN TALKS [P5+1] LEADS TO "WATERTIGHT" AGREEMENT, WARNS AMBASSADOR [KSA to UK Ambassador].

* TOPIX > [Bloomberg] SCUD ATTACK ON SAUDIS MARKS NEW PHASE OF CONFLICT IN YEMEN.

KSA-vs-Iran rivalry for Regional-Global Power???
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2015-06-08 22:21  

#4  when dead fighters are such an irrelevant measure of the conflict

How do I interpret thee?
Let me count the ways.
Posted by: gorb   2015-06-08 17:01  

#3  Why should they be anymore accurate than -

The economy
The employment numbers
The debt
Obamacare enrollment numbers
NOAA temperature reporting numbers
Number of illegal aliens
etc etc
Posted by: Procopius2k   2015-06-08 12:04  

#2  It is beyond his capability or inclination to tell the truth about anything--the mark of a sociopath.
Posted by: JohnQC   2015-06-08 11:02  

#1  Whatever the body count is we can determine that:

A) It isn't as much as it should be
B) It isn't enough to keep ISIS from advancing
c) ISIS is refilling its ranks just as fast or faster than we are killing them
Posted by: DarthVader   2015-06-08 09:54  

00:00