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he's unamerican!!!!
if he doesnt like this country, he can GIT OUT!!!!
he's unamerican!!!!
if he doesnt like this country, he can GIT OUT!!!!
I wonder if he quits all his jobs when they aren't finished.
We aren't finished in Iraq and we can't abandon them now.
1. What are the criterion for being "finished in Iraq"?
2. How many young Americans do we have to bury and cripple to accomplish them?
It's called waking up, and it happened to him at the funeral of one of his cons uants. I guess it's just easier for you to dump on someone than to use your brain to see what a quagmire we have gotten ourselves into AGAIN, though. Enjoy living in your little jingoistic world.
what happened to him is what the terrorists want... they figure kill an american and we will run...
if we pull out now, then all the people who died will have died for nothing. staying there til the job is finished will be worth it.
Waking up is called some of you realizing if we pull out now, we:
1. lose all credibility in the Middle East
2. lose clout over the Saudi empire
3. embolden Tehran
4. Embolden North Korea
5. Take it on the chin when Osama follows up with a WMD attack in America.
No thanks.
Easy to say when the odds of you dieing for the cause is approximately zero.
I'll save you the trouble of replying, .... Manny has big ears and you paid high taxes in Germany.
Does that cover everything?
nice one... but i've already served my country overseas in many different countries in the military as well as in the private sector... i also have friends all over the middle east... they are doing good work, but people like you would never acknowledge that. you'd rather see the u.s. fail.
Somewhere very near Saudi Arabia I taught Sri Lankans with guns how to use the word " " in a sentence.
Top that!
"Who gives a ?"
1. We have none
2. We have none.
3. Anything could cause this.
4. Anything could cause this.
5. The US being in Iraq does nothing to stop him.
Staying the course in order to not admit a horrible mistake is an even more horrible mistake. There is no plan. There is no strategy. There is only the overwhelming fear to admit that the Bush adminstration ed up in a major way, and continues to do so.
Light bulb goes on in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ......
what do you think would happen if we pulled out now?
the iraqi police forces are in the streets like never before. progress is being made. Godbless our troops.
please tell me what good a pullout date would do?
do we need the enemy to know all our military plans and strategies?
cuz there watching it all on satellite tv you know.
First off, I don't think Rep. Jones is calling for an immediate pullout, just a timeline. I think that's a good idea in theory, but I would prefer for the timeline to be set based on (very) specific objectives rather than simply dates.
I agree that setting a date gives insurgents a timeline for attacking without US resistance.
well said, 100% agreement!!!
Unfortunately, Rep. Jones isn't thinking about our troops safety, or the damage that Iraq is doing to America's credibility when he calls for a time-table for a pull-out. The simple fact is we are running out of troops to keep Afghanistan and Iraq calm while still being able to appear as a viable force to the rest of the world. Jones sees the draft card coming, and he knows how politically damaging that could be for him. Its always about them.
they already have objectives that must be accomplished in order for us to pull out. what more do you want... specific timelines aren't needed...
On #1 (cred)... the credibility I am referring to is the belief (thanks to Vietnam, Somalia, Gulf War I, Lebanon, Clinton's cruise missile strike) that if you bloody the nose of America by killing a few soldiers, we'll back down and go home, that we don't have the will to fight.1. We have none
2. We have none.
Osama didn't think we'd put troops on the ground in Afghanistan. Oops. Neither Iraq nor Iran thought we'd show up on their front porch either.
Regarding #2...
Saudi Arabia didn't think we had the balls to do anything in their neck of the woods when we kept asking for their help reigning in terrorists. By going into their backyard we got their attention (notice the more aggressive arrests/weeding out terrorists in Saudi Arabia since we went into Iraq).
I'm not gonna bother reciting it all, but I recommend you read "America's Secret War" by George Friedman. It explains the Saudi equation in great detail.
(And yes he is critical of the Bush administration some too, so spare me the partisan rhetoric).
There is no good way out of a mistake, and no good way to save face. The idea is to know WTF you are doing before you go in, all the way to an exit strategy. The Bush II administration screwed the pooch on that one. They majorly underestimated the resistance, thinking that the soldiers would have ing rose petals thrown at their feet, but instead it's grenades.
The worst fallacy was that we could somehow bestow freedom to the Iraqi people. Freedom must be earned. It cannot be given. We've been there over two years. If they can't take over in, say, the next year, it's just never going to happen, and we'll be stuck with a puppet government client state and more thousands of dead and maimed GIs with no end in sight.
I've written before that I think the administration made two key mistakes...The worst fallacy was that we could somehow bestow freedom to the Iraqi people. Freedom must be earned. It cannot be given. We've been there over two years. If they can't take over in, say, the next year, it's just never going to happen, and we'll be stuck with a puppet government client state and more thousands of dead and maimed GIs with no end in sight.
1. Not going in without enough Troops and heavy Armour. Leaving huge ammo dumps like Al-QaQa unguarded was and still is excuseable, and the Iraqi National Museum? Common?
2. Doing away with all the Baathist's controlled police force, and breaking up the Iraqi Military, in effect giving most of Iraq's militarily experienced fighters a lot of free time to seethe their hate. The Baathist controlled everything in Iraq before the invasion, and he who ownes the gold usually run the country, well, except for Venezuela, and well, maybe soon Bolivia, but, you get the point...
I think you can give freedom (examples Japan and Germany after WW II), but the people have to want it and support it and be capable of taking over. The US has put an enormous effort into training Iraqis, but the insurgents are still a huge problem despite the combined efforts of the US and the Iraqi military and police. I think we need to start pulling out so the Iraqis realize that they have to take care of the situation themselves. If they can't start doing this at this point in time, the US is just wasting its blood and money.
1. yes
2. yes, but what cons utes the "saudi empire"
3. yes.
4. yes
5. Bullpuckey.
Regardless of why we are there, we have incurred a moral debt to the Iraqi people. We owe them our best effort. Too bad they got Bush and the ignorant neocons instead.
Withdrawing now would mean a slide into a civil war.
On a semi-related topic, I think the next 6-12 months we will finally get a picture on whether the Iraq experiment will succeed. I am gaurdedly optimistic, but still regard failure and despotism as a very real possibility after our eventual withdrawal.
I think that we will be there in large numbers for the next 5 years or so and are about 2 years from the start of any meaningful withdrawal.
We could have done MUCH better if the Bush administration could find their ass with both hands. I think if we had gone in with ANY effort at post-war planning, we could have avoided most of the carnage that has resulted from an insurgency that should have been anticipated.
As a vet, this angers me beyond words. We charged in there expecting a WW2 france-type liberation where we could swoop in, topple saddam, and swoop out. , I've been out of Army intelligence for over a decade, and *I* knew what was going to happen. I know there has got to be people in the current intel community that could have told the Idiot-in-Chief what to expect if he had bothered asking.
Too bad "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead"-style diplomacy doesn't allow for thinking about what happens afterwards. Very typical short-sighted neo-con thinking.
(edited a typo)
There were highly-regarded Generals telling W that this could happen, but as the Downing Street Memos now help to conclude, the administration wasn't listening. Your absolutely correct though, if this invasion had been done right with more planning for the after-war peace, we would be withdrawling 1700 more troops today.As a vet, this angers me beyond words. We charged in there expecting a WW2 france-type liberation where we could swoop in, topple saddam, and swoop out. , I've been out of Army intelligence for over a decade, and *I* knew what was going to happen. I know there has got to be people in the current intel community that could have told the Idiot-in-Chief what to expect if he had bothered asking.
Can Iraq still come around? 50-50 at best.
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