...And allowed one of the most dreadful dictators, a supporter of terrorism and an enemy of the United States in power. Knowing the nature of Saddam and his successors, Uday and Qusay, do you really think they'd comply with the US? It is a miracle that Qaddafi did away with his WMD program. Bush is looking at this war on terror using goggles that show us the way 10 or 20 years down the road, and how the political atmosphere will change becuase of our actions and sacrifices NOW.
Only the Liberals are quick to say we are losing the war. Their optimism is pathetic, despite the fact our losses are minimal compared to the overall force.
Do Liberals go to their child's soccer games and cheer for the opposing team only because they don't agree with the coach? There is only so much you can blame on the US. Evil exists and it lives amongst our enemies.
Now is our chance to unite and defeat terrorism and liberalism in one opportunity for our children's sake.
Originally posted by Val: There is no better boat for the Sound than Pathfinder, period.
I think you are just jealous. When Kerry is elected I will invite you and JFM for a day of fishing and celebration aboard the FIN-TASIA. [/b]
More liberal lies. We all know Keryy is unelectable. And both John and my boats are better than yours.
Militant Bluefish Jihadist
"Our leaders are stupid, they are stupid people," "It's just very, very sad" - Donald Trump 2011
"With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it." - JAMES M. INHOFE
"Most meteorological research is funded by the federal government. And boy, if you want to get federal funding, you better not come out and say human-induced global warming is a hoax because you stand the chance of not getting funded." - WILLIAM GRAY
"The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span those hours spent in fishing" - Babylonian proverb
#398154 - 10/21/0411:37 AM
Re: Political Discussion: One Thread Only!
Anonymous
Unregistered
Henry,
No hard feelings! BTW, I LOVE "Tombstone", one of my favorite movies!
You said :
"Liberals feel that the military cannot make mistakes and are quick to blame the President."
There is alot of information out there that leads me to believe that Bush disregarded certain advice and input from his military leaders. Who else is to blame for his refusal to heed the advice of his military advisors?
I realize that war is war, no one has a crystal ball, and mistakes will be made, by whomever. However, Bush lacked a clear justification for invading Iraq, when he did. THAT and THAT ALONE is MY basis for opposing the war; the lack of "just cause".
If I believed in the rationale and justification for going to war in Iraq at that point, then I would not have a problem with our casualty rate, which BTW is VERY LOW by any reasonable standard; or our progress in stabilizing the country, recognizing the difficulty of the task at hand, which you have so aptly illustrated. It's not that I lack resolve, or commitment; I never complained during the first Gulf War, nor during our efforts in Afghanistan. Nor is it that I expect 100% success. Not nearly!
But the "cause" has to be worth the sacrifice. I feel that Bush lacked such a cause, and seized upon an opportunity which was politically convenient, and that he resorted to military force too quickly, too easily, and too eagerly. Using force may very well have been inevitable and unavoidable, but other solutions were not tried or given a reasonable opportunity, if only to show our good faith, and demonstrate that we did not want war and prove to EVERYONE that we tried to avoid it.
Instead, it now appears to me, and many other Americans, not to mention much of the world, that Bush used faulty intel as an excuse to rush into a war which was politically advantageous for him, economically advantageous for his base constituents, and in which he held a personal stake as a result of past relations with Hussein, without a bonafide, legitimate, just cause. In other words, with a personal agenda, from which he stood to gain, personally. It SMACKS of opportunism and politics, not acceptable as a basis for waging war; the price is simply too high, there is no margin for error where going to war is concerned, and this is unprecedented in our history.
And even if that is not completely true, the mere appearance of that damages our standing and credibility in the world, and in the world of today, we cannot afford such a perception, we cannot afford to have our standing and credibility diminished. All the more reason we do not rush into such actions without demonstrating reasonable efforts to avoid doing so, without due reflection, without due course. So we do not APPEAR to be doing so out of some other motivation which is convenient or otherwise advantageous, and that our action is CLEARLY JUST and unavoidable. THAT is the "global test" to which Kerry refers.
We should never go to war on suppostions, and maybes, and "we thinks". We have to be 100% certain! It is not our success which must be 100%, but rather, the certainty of our justification that has to be 100%. Mistakes can be made while undertaking the war effort, but NOT when making the decision to go to war in the first place.
Name one other military conflict in our history where we ever came away from it with egg on our face? Name one other military action on the part of the United States where we had to admit after the fact, "Oops, our intel was flawed. But he was a bad guy anyway and we're better off with him gone." :rolleyes: Oops don't cut it where war is concerned! Lives are lost and ruined forever over war, and it is not a risk we take lightly, without being CERTAIN that it cannot be avoided. And the end NEVER justifies the means.
Even at whatever point Bush decided to use force, he could have chosen to use more limited and measured force, like limited air strikes, for a prolonged period, for example, before committing ground troops. With all of his "intel" why not pound selected targets, relentlessly, while still applying diplomatic and international pressure? Why the rush, why the urgency? With all of our technology and all of our military and intel assets we could have virtually shut down Iraq, and crippled her infrastructure. From a military standpoint, Hussein wouldn't have been able to sneeze without us knowing about it, metaphorically speaking!
And while removing Hussein is a postive it was not, nor should it have been, our mission. Again, the end does not justify the means. And this sets a dangerous precedent. Are we now going to assume the posture that we are empowered (divinely perhaps?) to go around forcing regime changes anywhere we have an issue with another sovereign country's leadership?
As far as sanctions, you make a very good point. I still think we could have come up with something more creative to apply pressure to Hussein. While I was concerned for his people over those sanctions, my attitude was always, that is Hussein's fault. When they get tired enough of it, THEY'LL get rid of him We can only be expected to do so much. At some point they have to accept responsibility for their own country.
Bush may indeed have goggles on... BEER GOGGLES! Or POWER GOGGLES! Please, a mistake is a mistake, we really need to own this, finish it, and move on. While removing Hussein was certainly a positive, we are clearly no more safe today than we were when he was in power. If that were true, then why is Cheney telling everyone that we could face a terrorist attack using WMD's in one of our major cities?
You also said:
"Only the Liberals are quick to say we are losing the war. Their optimism is pathetic, despite the fact our losses are minimal compared to the overall force."
First, I have never said we were losing. I don't believe for a minute that we are, or that we will. But this may not be "winnable" by any reasonable, objective definition of "victory". And wether or not it is or isn't, at what cost? And to what end? I am not a pessimist, nor do I lack resolve or conviction, but I AM A REALIST!!
Is that your "faith-based" intellect coming through? Perhaps not in God, but in Bush and America? Guess what, Henry, we don't always "WIN"! Look at Korea, look at Vietnam. Did we "WIN" either of those "police actions" as they have been called? You have on some goggles too, I see. With red, white, and blue lenses. Your youthful romanticism and idealism about our country and our military is touching, really; but take off the glasses and take a long, hard look at the world around you, and at history. You need a dose of realism to temper your youthful exuberance. This isn't a Spielberg movie, or a video game. America may very well NOT win the day in Iraq. We certainly won't LOSE, but that is NOT the same as WINNING.
And in light of the recent admissions by the Bush administration that there were no WMD's, nor any link between Iraq and Al-Queda, or 9-11, a clear distinction must be made between the war in Iraq, and the war on terrorism. Despite all of Bush's propaganda and disinformation to the contrary, diseminated over the last two plus years, one has nothing to do with the other. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are two different things, separate and distinct topics. So winning in Iraq does not equate to winning the war on terror. And the war on terror is where we should be focusing our efforts, and THAT is a war we most certainly cannot afford to LOSE!!
One last point, I know this is very long, I do apologize, but you also said:
"Do Liberals go to their child's soccer games and cheer for the opposing team only because they don't agree with the coach?"
That is not the first time you have said that. Please don't say that, Henry. That is a terrible thing to say, I am personally very deeply insulted and offended by that.
Do you think for one minute that I am cheering for the terrorists? Do you think I am on their side? Do you think that I want them to win? How can you equate me opposing an action taken by my country with rooting for our enemy? I don't want us to lose, I just didn't want us to start this in the first place, at least not yet, not that way, at that point in time. I don't know ANYONE in this country, any AMERICAN, anyway, who is CHEERING for the terrorists.
That is a TERRIBLE, HURTFUL, and DISRESPECTFUL thing for you to say to ANY AMERICAN! All your rhetoric about Michael Moore and others is GARBAGE!! You have NO RIGHT to label people like that. That is nothing but groundless, ludicrous, rhetoric, and hate speech.
I have EVERY RIGHT to disagree with the President, and to voice my disagreement, that is the foundation of our freedom, otherwise, WE would be living in a DICTATORSHIP! That in NO WAY makes me an ENEMY OF THE STATE, AN AGENT OF AL-QUEDA, or can be interpreted to mean that I AM CHEERING FOR THE OTHER TEAM.
And BTW, this aint no soccer match! THIS IS WAR, AND DEATH, AND MASSIVE DESTRUCTION, AND PEOPLE'S LIVES ARE BEING DESTROYED, AMERICAN AS WELL AS INNOCENT IRAQI.
Yeah, call me crazy, Henry, call me a pacifist, call me a traitor, call me an agent of Al-Queda, call me WHATEVER YOU WANT! I AM ALWAYS AGAINST WAR!!
Put it in the context that the anti-abortion rights lobby does.:
#398155 - 10/21/0411:47 AM
Re: Political Discussion: One Thread Only!
Anonymous
Unregistered
Henry,
Quote:
There is a difference. I administer my international views based on what I have researched or am researching. What history has shown us, and what trends may show us. I do not base my decisions on the Bible.
Quote:
Over the summer I read Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack twice and felt Bush did underestimate the post-war effort by insurgents. The US comitted 2 errors at the onset of war. First, the troops failed to secure the borders. Sewcond, the Iraqi army was dissolved and disbanded.
These quotes prove that unlike the Commander-in-Chief you are reality based. He and his National Security team never admitted any errors. Because, unlike you and the Liberals, he is 'faith-based'. As a student of history you must know that to solve problems the 'leaders' first have to admit them. Our leader sees no problems. He is always right. Right?
You are wrong that "The US committed 2 errors at the onset of war". We committed several more cardinal errors.
Rather than counting the errors I am cutting and pasting the following article in its entirety. I have been accused of quoting bits and pieces out of context. I will let you count the blunders.
BTW, Nobody can accuse Knight-Ridder of being a Liberal organization. They own a lot of newspapers in the 'heartland' where Liberalism does not sell.
Published on Saturday, July 12, 2003 by Knight-Ridder
Pentagon Civilians' Lack of Planning Contributed to Chaos in Iraq
by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel
WASHINGTON - The small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department who dominated planning for postwar Iraq failed to prepare for the setbacks that have erupted over the past two months.
The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan.
Today, American forces face instability in Iraq, where they are losing soldiers almost daily to escalating guerrilla attacks, the cost of occupation is exploding to almost $4 billion a month and withdrawal appears untold years away.
"There was no real planning for postwar Iraq," said a former senior U.S. official who left government recently.
The story of the flawed postwar planning process was gathered in interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior government officials.
One senior defense official told Knight Ridder that the failure of Pentagon civilians to set specific objectives - short-, medium- and long-term - for Iraq's stabilization and reconstruction after Saddam Hussein's regime fell even left U.S. military commanders uncertain about how many and what kinds of troops would be needed after the war.
In contrast, years before World War II ended, American planners plotted extraordinarily detailed blueprints for administering postwar Germany and Japan, designing everything from rebuilt economies to law enforcement and democratic governments.
The disenchanted U.S. officials today think the failure of the Pentagon civilians to develop such detailed plans contributed to the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq.
"We could have done so much better," lamented a former senior Pentagon official, who is still a Defense Department adviser. While most officials requested anonymity because going public could force them out of government service, some were willing to talk on the record.
Ultimately, however, the responsibility for ensuring that post-Saddam planning anticipated all possible complications lay with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, current and former officials said.
The Pentagon planning group, directed by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, the department's No. 3 official, included hard-line conservatives who had long advocated using the American military to overthrow Saddam. Its day-to-day boss was William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney before joining the Pentagon.
The Pentagon group insisted on doing it its way because it had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil trade and encircle Iran with U.S. friends and allies. The problem was that officials at the State Department and CIA thought the vision was badly flawed and impractical, so the Pentagon planners simply excluded their rivals from involvement.
Feith, Luti and their advisers wanted to put Ahmad Chalabi - the controversial Iraqi exile leader of a coalition of opposition groups - in power in Baghdad. The Pentagon planners were convinced that Iraqis would warmly welcome the American-led coalition and that Chalabi, who boasted of having a secret network inside and outside the regime, and his supporters would replace Saddam and impose order.
Feith, in a series of responses Friday to written questions, denied that the Pentagon wanted to put Chalabi in charge.
But Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, who at the time was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board - an influential group of outside advisers to the Pentagon - and is close to Feith and Luti, acknowledged in an interview that installing Chalabi was the plan.
Referring to the Chalabi scenario, Perle said: "The Department of Defense proposed a plan that would have resulted in a substantial number of Iraqis available to assist in the immediate postwar period." Had it been accepted, "we'd be in much better shape today," he said.
Perle said blame for any planning failures belonged to the State Department and other agencies that opposed the Chalabi route.
A senior administration official, who requested anonymity, said the Pentagon officials were enamored of Chalabi because he advocated normal diplomatic relations with Israel. They believed that would have "taken off the board" one of the only remaining major Arab threats to Israeli security.
Moreover, Chalabi was key to containing the influence of Iran's radical Islamic leaders in the region, because he would have provided bases in Iraq for U.S. troops. That would complete Iran's encirclement by American military forces around the Persian Gulf and U.S. friends in Russia and Central Asia, he said.
But the failure to consult more widely on what to do if the Chalabi scenario failed denied American planners the benefits of a vast reservoir of expertise gained from peacekeeping and reconstruction in shattered nations from Bosnia to East Timor.
As one example, the Pentagon planners ignored an eight-month-long effort led by the State Department to prepare for the day when Saddam's dictatorship was gone. The "Future of Iraq" project, which involved dozens of exiled Iraqi professionals and 17 U.S. agencies, including the Pentagon, prepared strategies for everything from drawing up a new Iraqi judicial code to restoring the unique ecosystem of Iraq's southern marshes, which Saddam's regime had drained.
Virtually none of the "Future of Iraq" project's work was used once Saddam fell.
The first U.S. administrator in Iraq, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, wanted the Future of Iraq project director, Tom Warrick, to join his staff in Baghdad. Warrick had begun packing his bags, but Pentagon civilians vetoed his appointment, said one current and one former official.
Meanwhile, postwar planning documents from the State Department, CIA and elsewhere were "simply disappearing down the black hole" at the Pentagon, said a former U.S. official with long Middle East experience who recently returned from Iraq.
Archaeological experts who were worried about protecting Iraq's immense cultural treasures were rebuffed in their requests for meetings before the war. After it, Iraq's museum treasures were looted.
Responsibility for preparing for post-Saddam Iraq lay with senior officials who supervised the Office of Special Plans, a highly secretive group of analysts and consultants in the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau. The office was physically isolated from the rest of the bureau.
Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who retired from the Near East bureau on July 1, said she and her colleagues were allowed little contact with the Office of Special Plans and often were told by the officials who ran it to ignore the State Department's concerns and views.
"We almost disemboweled State," Kwiatkowski said.
Senior State Department and White House officials verified her account and cited many instances where officials from other agencies were excluded from meetings or decisions.
The Chalabi plan, fiercely opposed by the CIA and the State Department, ran into major problems.
President Bush, after meeting with Iraqi exiles in January, told aides that, while he admired the Iraqi exiles, they wouldn't be rewarded with power in Baghdad. "The future of this country … is not going to be charted by people who sat out the sonofabitch (Saddam) in London or Cambridge, Massachusetts," one former senior White House official quoted Bush as saying.
After that, the White House quashed the Pentagon's plan to create - before the war started - an Iraqi-government-in-exile that included Chalabi.
The Chalabi scheme was dealt another major blow in February, a month before the war started, when U.S. intelligence agencies monitored him conferring with hard-line Islamic leaders in Tehran, Iran, a State Department official said. About the same time, an Iraqi Shiite militia that was based in Iran and known as the Badr Brigade began moving into northern Iraq, setting off alarm bells in Washington.
At the State Department, officials drafted a memo, titled "The Perfect Storm," warning of a confluence of catastrophic developments that would endanger the goals of the coming U.S. invasion.
Cheney, once a strong Chalabi backer, ordered the Pentagon to curb its support for the exiles, the official said.
Yet Chalabi continued to receive Pentagon assistance, including backing for a 700-man paramilitary unit. The U.S. military flew Chalabi and his men at the height of the war from the safety of northern Iraq, which was outside Saddam's control, to an air base outside the southern city of Nasiriyah in expectation that he would soon take power.
Chalabi settled into a former hunting club in the fashionable Mansour section of Baghdad. He was joined by Harold Rhode, a top Feith aide, said the former U.S. official who recently returned from Iraq.
But Chalabi lacked popular support - graffiti in Iraq referred to "Ahmad the Thief" - and anti-American anger was growing over the looting and anarchy that followed Saddam's ouster.
"It was very clear that there was an expectation that the exiles would be the core of an Iraqi interim (governing) authority," retired U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney said. He was in Iraq in April to help with postwar reconstruction.
Once Saddam's regime fell, American authorities "quickly grasped" that Chalabi and his people couldn't take charge, Carney said.
However, the Pentagon had devised no backup plan. Numerous officials in positions to know said that if Pentagon civilians had a detailed plan that anticipated what could happen after Saddam fell, it was invisible to them.
Garner's team didn't even have such basics as working cell phones and adequate transportation. And Garner was replaced in May - much earlier than planned - by L. Paul Bremer.
In his e-mail response to questions, Feith denied that officials in his office were instructed to ignore the concerns of other agencies and departments. He contended that in planning for Iraq, there was a "robust interagency process," led by the National Security Council staff at the White House.
Feith repeated a theme that he struck in a speech Tuesday in Washington, when he said planners prepared for "a long list of problems" that never happened, including destruction of oil fields, Saddam's use of chemical and biological weapons, food shortages, a collapse of the Iraqi currency and large-scale refugee flows.
"Instead, we are facing some of the problems brought on by our very success in the war," he said.
Feith rejected criticisms that the Pentagon should have used more troops to invade Iraq. That might have prevented postwar looting, he said, but U.S. military commanders would have lost tactical surprise by waiting for extra troops, and thus "might have had the other terrible problems that we anticipated."
"War, like life in general, always involves trade-offs," Feith said. "It is not right to assume that any current problems in Iraq can be attributed to poor planning."
Other officials, while critical of the Pentagon, say it is unfair to lay sole blame on civilians such as Feith who are working under Rumsfeld.
The former senior White House official said Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, never took the logical - if politically risky - step of acknowledging that American troops would have to occupy Iraq for years to stabilize and rebuild the country.
"You let him (Bush) go into this without a serious plan … for the endgame," the official said. It was "staggeringly negligent on their part."
Still, the Defense Department was in charge of day-to-day postwar planning. And the problems were numerous, the current and former officials said. Key allies with a huge stake in Iraq's future were often left uninformed of the details of U.S. postwar planning.
For example, the government of Turkey, which borders Iraq to the north and was being asked by Washington to allow 60,000 American troops to invade Iraq from its soil, peppered the U.S. government with 51 questions about postwar plans.
The reply came in a cable Feb. 5, more than 10 pages long, from the State Department. Largely drafted by the Pentagon, it answered many of Ankara's queries, but on some questions, including the structure of the postwar government in Iraq, the cable affirmed that "no decision has been made," a senior administration official said.
The response was "still in work, still in work … we're still working on that," Kwiatkowski said. "Basically an empty answer."
Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Renee Schoof and researcher Tish Wells contributed to this report.
(c) 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
#398156 - 10/21/0401:09 PM
Re: Political Discussion: One Thread Only!
Anonymous
Unregistered
Oh, I almost forgot:
Henry also stated:
"It is a miracle that the victory in Iraq was the fastest in modern history."
I think this may be a bit of an overstatement, all things considered. I would hardly call our military effort there a "victory" in light of the causalties we have suffered since taking Baghdad, and the insurgency that we continue to combat.
We may very well be militarily in "control" of the country, (and I use the term "control" loosely), Hussein is in custody and no longer in power, but the war is far from "over". Our troops continue to fight, and defend themselves, and suffer casualties, every day. That does not indicate to me that the war is "over" or that we have "won".
The war will be "over" and we can claim "victory" when shots are no longer fired and bombings are no longer aimed at our troops. Until then, the war is very much "ongoing", and we have not yet "won".
#398157 - 10/21/0405:52 PM
Re: Political Discussion: One Thread Only!
Anonymous
Unregistered
I was watching the news just last night and there was a report about one of the companies hired in Florida to install and maintain the new voting machines.
The company in question was Diebold, and just prior to getting the contract the CEO held a fund raiser for the Republican Party.
Seems like all its used for right now is for someone on Comcast being a wanker and claiming he is someone else (who i know is a dial-up user).
On a topic related note, and to break up the cut-n-paste, i see that Wal-Mart isnt going to carry Jon Stewart's (and Daily Show) book America. I find it odd that the corporation that wants to take over the retail world wont sell something because of content. I can also respect that knowing maybe a few kids will grow up not wanting to be a Whiteface Killa, or whatever..
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