More American troop deaths will not change the brutal civil war in Iraq.

1. 
   SUPPORT THE TROOPS: BRING THEM HOME!
    
2. The Iraq war is spending lives. As of April 1, 2008 4,011 U.S. troops have died and over 29,496 have been wounded. On average a thousand innocent Iraqis die each month. Between 151,000 to 665,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the war began four years ago.
3. Displaced Iraqis have more than doubled from 499,000 to 1.1 million since the American troop increase in February 2007. Twenty-five percent of Iraqis said they were forcibly removed from their homes and sixty-percent said their lives were threatened. Seventy-one percent are women and children.
4. As of July 15, 2007 around 600 U.S. troops have been killed since the Iraq troop escalation. Under the strain of successive redeployment our already stretched military has continued to decline in effectiveness.
5. There were 99 suicides among active duty soldiers up from 88 the previous year making 2006 the highest rate in 26 years. The soldiers only get a two-week break to return to family between their 12 to 15 month deployments. The military says around 30 percent of troops suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but others believe the statistic is higher.
6. Twenty thousand service members have deserted the Army since the war began.
7. Four years after the start of the Iraq war the Bush administration has still not equipped all the soldiers with the armor they need. Because of spending in Iraq, the Army had a $530 million budget shortfall.
8. The August 23, 2007 National Intelligence Estimate or NIE (A consensus view of America’s16 intelligence agencies) says a paralyzed Iraqi government is unable to take advantage of the security gains achieved by the thousands of extra American troops dispatched to Iraq in February 2007.
9. The Shiite dominated security forces of Prime Minster Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government has become and instrument of domination and revenge against the Sunnis.
10. Seven enlisted men serving in Baghdad said in an Op-Ed piece in the Aug. 19, 2007 "New York Times" that the "Report that a majority of Iraqi army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric"
11. The NIE says that although the surge has produced uneven improvement it cannot heal the deep sectarian rifts before next spring. It predicted that Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria would step up efforts to exert influence over Iraq’s feuding factions.
12. Every second America stays in Iraq we taxpayers pay $6,300. Several studies suggest the tab could be between $1 to $2 trillion. This does not include the medical and disability costs to American veterans with injuries.
13. America is borrowing the money from China and other countries to finance the war. We add $200 billion every year the troops remain in Iraq. The vast sums of money going to Iraq would be better spent rescuing the American health care and school system, developing alternative forms of energy and reducing poverty.
14. America should become independent of Middle East oil. It’s hard to walk away from the Middle East while chained to its oil and economy. Kurt Vonnegut the author of "Slaughterhouse-Five" wrote in the magazine "In These Times: "Dear future generation; Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum."
15. Some experts believe Iraqis would, after a brief explosion of violence, regain control of their country. Setting a U.S. withdrawal date would force the Iraqis to take control before the U.S. pullout.
16. A U.S. troop withdrawal would diminish Iraq as a focal point of anti-Americanism.
17. President George W. Bush says "The same people who attacked us on September 11^th is the crowd that in now bombing people…trying to stop the advance of a system based on liberty." President Bush is wrong. No more than 5% of the Sunni insurgency are al-Qaeda.
18. The Bush administration was also wrong when they said that Iraq could use its oil to "finance its own reconstruction." The current daily production is far less than the prewar production.
19. There are 73 investigations into $5 billion in contracts that include bribes, kickbacks, rigged bids, product substitution and double billing. An army major and his family were recently indicted of charges of pocketing $9.6 million in bribes in exchange for contracts in Iraq.
20. The Iraqi police force lacks sufficient weapons as one-hundred-and-ninety thousand U.S. weapons—110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols shipped to Iraq for the Iraqi security forces went missing in 2004 and 2005. They vanished while General David Petraeus—now commanding the U.S. forces in Iraq was in charge of rebuilding the Iraqi army. The missing arms and ammo may have ended up in the hands of the insurgents in Iraq.
21. President Bush, a "Christian," said it is better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than in the U.S. What happened to Jesus’ mandate that we treat others as we would like to be treated?
22. Al-Qauda is just as strong as it was six years ago when it launched the attacks on September 11.
23. A July 2007 poll shows that seventy-one percent of Americans support the removal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by April 1, 2008.
24. We could drive every last Islamic extremist out of Iraq, and the country would still be in the midst of a civil war that is tending toward chaos.
    
     
25. America cannot justify allowing thousands more American and Iraqi deaths when there is little chance winning a military victory in Iraq.