US death toll in Iraq is 'mostly white and poor'

better than vietnam!! where alot were brotha's from the hood.

what is the relevance of this? maybe a story about how many iraqi civilians have been killed in iraq. Screw the troops, they knew what they were getting into and its their fault they are still there, they can just walk off the line...but what about the Iraqi civi's that are being killed by the American troops? got a total on them?

I don't think you can really say it's better or worse... death is death.

what it looks like is that its better to stay inside during april and may, and its WAAAAAAY better to be in the airforce!

military dudes wanna say, airforce never gets into the fight....well guess what moron....aint too many of them dying!!!

and they get paid the same!!! that logic in the field deserves to get a leg blown off!

ill train the twins!! twins...meet the twins!!!

hahahaha!! now drop and give me 20!!! both of you!!! at the same time!! on tape!!

double time!!!!

Another irony is that a lot of whites in Southern states voted to keep Bush in office in 2004 ... It's amazing how some people will consistently vote against their own interests ... In this case because they were scared spitless about gay people getting married or something else totally irrelevant.

bingo belgrade!!!!!!!!

tatuaje....whites at the time made up more of the armed forces, but as a drafted percentage of the population...african americans were higher.....either way, i could care less.

as for knowing what they were getting into you are correct they were lied to, but now they know, and them staying in is their fault. if they had balls, they would walk off the line. there is no cowardace in that. i think it would be braver than following an order to kill a person knowing the reason you are there is false. that makes you an accomplice to murder. even though your nation wont prosecute you for it..because they are perpetrating the lie, but overall, it is murder no less!

my point is its irrelevant as to white or otherwise getting killed more or less. if you wanna be a dick about it...white people mostly supported bush so chickens coming home to roost?

naw i dont think thats it, its just a jacked up situation. but if you wanna really be upset about something....be upset about the hundreds of thousands killed. the millions killed by sanctions before the war, the shit loads after this war! i could give a shit about american troops...pray for the iraqi civilians........

I agree, they should walk off the line. But the military has been pretty aggressive in prosecuting those that do. Like I said before, most of these kids are in the military in the first place because that's the only place where they could find a job. They're trying to support families, get an education, etc. So you're right, it would be a LOT braver than taking orders to kill a person under false pretenses. Because walking off the line puts their families in danger. And that's where this country has the poor people by the balls: no matter what race. I'm not condoning their choices, only trying to gain more understanding of an issue that's too often spun as cut & dry.

And the relevance of all this, for me personally, is to put some sort of face to the kids coming home in body bags. And believe me, I've worked as a producer for an independent weekly tv show for over a year, and we've shown extremely graphic images of Iraqi civilians maimed and killed during this war. I've actually scene very few images of US military in the same way. Which, obviously, is by design courtesy of this current administration.

I don't pray. At least not in the classical sense. But I do think of the people in Iraq, and many other countries, who are innocent victims, often. And I mourn the US dead as well. They are all human beings dying because of greed and power and hubris.

"When the rich wage war it's the poor that die."

More and more, I think the people of the world will come to understand that the problems aren't between races, or nations, or religions, but between the haves and the have-nots......And when the have-nots stop killing for their rich masters, the haves might just start having a hell of a time maintaining their control.....

well said. but i had this argument via pm last week. i know many of those in the military are broke folks...the guy i was arguing with was how they will loose their benefits and money and stuff. versus killing an innocent person. well if you'd rather kill an innocent person rather than your own family having to work a little harder to get by.;.then thats a coward to me. dont think i dont get your point bro.....i do. and going to jail id do. i wouldnt stay long in fact if alot of people did it, you cant toss everyone in jail. that might bring this stipid shit to an end. i wish they did show the fucked up us soldiers bodies. might get some of these cheerleaders to STFU!!

show the nation how their sons were killed...and their mangled bodies....headless. i probably shouldnt say this, but remember that iraqi dude that had that video of him sniping us soldiers? last year. he shot like 90 to 100 troops. well one of the people he shot was a chick i was seeings first cousing. Brian luckey from Tampa. he was sniped. and i actually saw it! it was crazy. later i figured it was a dick move, but i told the chick was seeing (his cousin..they grew up together and were very close) about the video on youtube and she said she wanted to see it. i have never met brian, but she knew him and his likeness. we watched with the stupid music playing and all..and i dont know maybe 8-10 minutes into the video...when i went to the bathroom...i heard a loud scream and she just went ape shit. i ran in and she said she saw him.

now i lost people in the murrah bombing in okc, but this war never touched me at all. at that moment i was just trying to calm her down. it was fucking nuts. and i realised i should have never let her see it. i even told her its probably not a good idea. but she said since i told her, she would just look for it herself. she saw him get shot in the head popping his head out from the top of a tank or apc. at that point, i was 1000000% against this war. funny thing is, he was gung ho about it, but later he wrote to her that he fucking hated it there. and that his guys were pissed that they were being told stupid shit every day that they knew wasnt true. he was just home a month or two prior and got his wife pregnant and they just married while on leave. he told my friend who has the same last name as him, that alot of his people were thinking about dipping to kuwait.

at that point i took the position that he was taking. he was shot in early 2007 i think or late 2006 you can do a google search on brian luckey if you like....but its fucked. they need to just leave. his family is still in shambles and my friend and I stopped talking.

That's really fucked Okinawamajik. Why'd you showe her the vid?

I saw some of thse decapitations. Those are just plain wrong. I can't ever watch any of that real stuff.

But yeah, it is weird: If the war is so unjust, then the soldiers should protest. We sure as hell created a reason to stay tho. Man-o-man.

Well once I said something I knew it was a bad idea. I never thought brian would be in it. The video came out maybe a month or so after he was killed. It was really a case of hey look what I found. The next day itwas a big deal on the news. She wasn't mad at me. Besides we always talked about the war. I would sit and watch videos of bombs blowing the shit outta us trucks and stuff. Ijust said hey look what I found. You can't really make out any gi's faces anyways. But a family member you are close to I assume you can recognize. To this day I feel like shit about it. But that didn't ruin our friendship. Over the last year we just stopped talking. On that video. I think it showed 63 or so us dudes taking a hot one. I think like 50 or so died. All attributed to this guy, I think like 100+ at that time. If this dude is still alive, I'm sure he's reached extra man status or has beat the game!

bro, its not that i value any one persons death more or less than another. But when a man knows that he is killing because of a lie, then i will side more with those that are simply defending themselves or their families. to repel the invading force. or to simply try to wait out the fighting until its over. trying to not go mad while it rages, and hang on to some symbolance of normalcy. yes i will then side with the iraqis more so. they do not have the liberty of walking off the line. they are just people whom war was brought to them. is there a difference..yes. absolutely. i will watch winter soldiers i havnt seen it yet, but it wont change my mind at all.

to make light of us troops dying? wll the us troops do it everyday dont you know? kinda like animal mother in full metal jacket..."yea git some, git some, you want some? huh git some!!!" even though that wasnt animal mother, it was the guy in the helicopter..but you get my point. American soldiers have ingrained into their minds, maybe to survive that all of them are trying to kill them, well with that thought, it makes it easier to kill innocent people...and because their CO's are there with them, they are kinda like...yea i can see how he could hve just over reacted!

fuck that...take out your service pistol and pop that fucker in the head! american or otherwise, because that dude is killing because he has no control...and that soldier knows that the reason he is there, the reason he is killing and the reason he is even in the position to overreact is based upon a lie that he knows was and is a lie. there for he murdered innocent people. its the powers that be that decide that those murdered people are not people, but unfortunate incidents. lets just try to limit those....not stop them entirely. fuck the troops bro! point blank!

edit..
no wait, i saw this before. so what, this supposed to move me for the us troops? the fact remains that as important as this dudes words are....its never gotten any play in the mainstream...it will be looked at as some miniscule sub sect of the troops coming back. and the long bearded young hippy looking guy in the front row will help reduce it to nothing but a bunch of seattle or portland coffee drinking goofballs. regardless of how true all of it really is, america will not care because they dont identify. and wont.

here you go.....last month worst for CIVILIANS.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080401/ts_nm/iraq_dc

923 failures of the us gov.

Though not very calming, there is probably a logical reason why the majority of soldiers dying in Iraq are white and poor. The most obvious reason that I can think of is that most of the soldiers who have volunteered are white, and poor.

For some reason people who are poor and of different ethnic backgrounds don't seem to volunteer as much for idiotic wars as white people. Sure we had a different distribution of what ethnic creeds were dying in Vietnam, but we also had a draft to get the people who didn't feel like volunteering.

Also, people who are not poor tend to not need the money that military service brings. I'm not saying in any way shape or form that the military pays its grunts well. I'm saying that the pay offered by the military is sometimes needed to help support a family, and if a person can't get that money anywhere else but the military then their choices are pretty limited.

Finally, people who are poor tend to be less informed about needed matters when it comes to making decisions of this scale. Why? Because it is more difficult for them to gain access to various sources like the internet. Many might be stuck with the information that they get from the FOX station that is broadcast over the local airwaves.

Anywho, though depressing that anyone is dying on either side of this immature conflict, it is by no means a surprise that the majority of soldiers whom become either injured or die are white and financially poor.