Either Hillbilly Jim can't do math over at Blackfive or they are he is just following his faithful leader (GWB) in "making shit up". In their quest at Blackfive to be "anything against the Democrats", they appear to have sided with the Australian Prime Minister when he said that the world would come to an end if Barack and the Democrats won the 2008 election.
Nevermind that this is a foreign Country meddling in our affairs; it does not matter to the Blackfive crowd. Here is the truly funny item stated on Blackfive. They (Actually, Hillbilly Jim) stated:
"Obama then made a fool of himself by telling Howard if he wanted Obama's valuable attention he needed to pony up 20, 000 troops, not respecting the fact that Australia's commitment is already quite impressive based on population."
Ok, let's check this out with some hillbilly math. Australia has a population of 20,090,000 and the United States has a population of 301,167,891. Now, Australia has a whopping 850 soldiers in Iraq and 1400 total in "theater" so let's use the 850 number. See, what you can do with math HJ is you can use this ratio (the Australian one.. a ratio is when you divide one number by another) to extrapolate what the US commitment should be. So, based on this, if we were to provide the same ratio of troops to the population the US would provide..... 12,742 troops in theater.
Now, I believe we have a few more than that but maybe one of the really smart milbloggers can dispute that.
So, HJ, you call the 850 impressive? Well, that shows your analytical thought process and the standards you set for our allies..
No, Obama was absolutely right. If all these "bad things" are going to happen if the US leaves Iraq then I suggest Australia "saddle up" and ride. For Australia to have just the same ratio as us (based on us having 140,000 troops in theater), Australia would need approximately 9,400 soldiers there (not to mention all the money that is pouring in.
HJ and his ilk have been snookered by Australia. Let the US do all the work and they will just keep the flame burning so they do not have to do anything. Perhaps we should use Australia as a penal colony like the English did and just take all the prisoners and bring them there. Nah, maybe not.
In a total state of denial, this fact about the numbers was highlighted by one commenter but was immediately rebuffed by another lemming who stated:
"The numbers don't matter. They never do with quality military forces. It was only the sovies and chinese that believed that there was a quality to quantity all on its own."
This is like saying, "The facts don't matter.. don't let them get in the way of a good story". But, if what this person says is true, then this is great! Since we have the greatest Army in the world, we should only need about 500 people there right?
The conservative right wing lunes... "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story".
You Can Resist Even if You are In The Military!
