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what a fool. can he not see that with 20,000 more he'll fail? he'll fail even if with a 100,000 more!
anyway, i hope there won't be much objections to his last ditch plan and the democrats will fail to block him...just too sadistic to want to savour his failure and for history to remember him as a modern day hitler who gets his own folks massacred...
it would be too lame to see him remembered as the new millenium lyndon johnson if he does the right thing and pull out.
Comments
(I never heard Bush can paint, for instance)
iraq is identical to vietnam which then had a civil war of ideology (communism against puppet democracy)...except this time america again intervened under the same pretext of implanting puppet democracy in iraq which was on a very short fuse of a racial civil war.
in the case of vietnam, america actually wanted to whack china and communist terrorism while oiling their war industry and now this time america wanted to whack iran and the islamist terrorists and oil their war industry.
americans! you all had better find a next president who studies history...sad, sad, sad.
don't know why they don't just round up the yokels from trailer parks and give them a rifle and send them to Iraq.... oh hang on they already do that. ;)
Last June I told Jack Murtha that I agreed with him and that I was happy that he had been at the boundary layer of this effort to swinging the pendulum back the other way. I postited the same question to him that I will pose to you: If we pull out then what happens inthe power vacuum? It becomes a mess and when my 7 year old tunrs 18 he goes back to clean this up. Not acceptable. We've got to have a solution so this does nto turn into a gaza / northern Ireland generational war.
For anyone who has read Fiasco, Cobra II, or Bob Woodward's new book or even read the news, then you alredy know that Rumsfeld held back the force level that the field commanders and troops recognized we needed. Feet on the ground. We needed 300,000 troop minimun when we 'won' in order to stabilize the situation which is now worse. We are worse off now than then and most of it is a result of the incerdibly low troop levels. We needed a presence and troops on the ground then. We should have been working with the locals wht way the Marine units where and not like the 4 ID.
If we pulled out then what? pulling out and reducing troops destabilizes an already unstable situation. Yes, that situation is the fuult of Mssrs. Bush and Cronies. But that is irrelevant to the case at hand. We need to look forward to how we get a perm fix for the future. Stabilization.
See the article posted 6 jan 2006 "the US, Iraq, and the War on Terror" by Lee Kuan Yew on my blog and follow the link for the entire article : berniemartin.blogspot.com
if you put in another 100,000 troops you still need to work with one or two of the 3 factions to have a chance of getting there and it's still by no means a guarantee you'll get there.
so the faction that you need to work with is probably mutaqda (through his cronie whom he pleases to support be he maliki or another shia) and the shias. after america and the shias have nearly temporarily fixed the sunnis, the shias will then fix america...please mark my words.
america has just got to abandon iraq and any of the middle-eastern conflicts which are occuring now or in the future. this region is the hell bed where the devils/shaitans are out to annihilate each other with God standingby looking in amusement.
the permanent fix you are looking for will never come and while pursuing it, you'll bankrupt america within the next 10 years...with the complete collapse of the dollar!
oil will be traded in gold dinars or chinese yuan before long or massive wars will be fought over it.
[Edited on 10-1-07 by FactyCrab]
Facty - just come out and say it - you hate America and all we stand for. You lust for our failure is just under the surface. Let it out man - you'll feel better!
Don't take me so seriously.
Still, the way things are going with 3K+ already dead, many will be cannon fodder.... they'll never see the blast coming.
[Edited on 10-1-07 by MinardiP1]
BTW - why does every one focus on the tragic loss of the 3000+ U.S. dead and not CELEBRATE the souls we have set to Allah!
Bush is an embarrassing plodder, not an evil lunatic, nor even a meglamaniac. From where I stand, he is something like the end result of a process that started after Roosevelt, where the President becomes a popular totem pole for the people, whilst the executive decision making is the result of debate and lobbying by the senior staff.
There is indeed a parallel to Vietnam, wherein disparate factions sought to control the population and engaged in the process of fatigueing a conventional army to achieve it. But then, the parallel to Russia v Afghanistan, Crimea, Boer War, Boxer Rebellion, Malayan Emergency (to bring it a little closer to home), pick one, are also good examples. S'called war mate, look it up.
The sad fact is that the only way to control and unify under these circumstances is precisely what Iraq had under Saddam. Mate, these folks are using the freedoms now available to pursue minority religious agendas. Fact is Fifi, that as long as no two Moslems agree on what Islam ought to be, this whole area is going to be a fucking mess.
If the United Nations was truly a world organisation, they would put a rope around most of the Middle East, and most of Africa, and ADMINISTER them for the next hundred years.
After that, you might have half a chance of limited self-determination.
As to the 20,000; well sometimes a bigger hammer helps. The real problem there is that the achilles heel of US military policy is the unshakeable belief that they are the best, and therefore no-one else can decide stategy and tactics, but them. The reality is that they have had their share of brilliant leaders (Bradley, Patton, Ike, Grant, Nimitz) but by no means have a franchise. What is really needed in Iraq is an original thinker such as Monash (OK, an Aussie), or Kemal Attaturk, or Napoleon; in other words, someone who can best use their resources in the prevailing conditions, not military theory, to break the nexus.
but no, under the pretext of world security, fighting terrorism, expanding democracy became their justification when in actual fact the americans most important reason for the invasion is to profit from control of some oil.
no, i don't hate americans but i do hate anyone who justify war and invasion under any circumstance. yes, the terrorism is evil, yes, ethnic cleansing is evil, yes anti-semiticsm is evil and any justification to kill using religious rationale like the christian inquisition by the spanish, the "orange" wars and the islamic jihad are evil...AND so is war!
yes too, emmet, there is no option now but failure for the americans but which do you choose? a smaller failure ala lyndon baines johnson's or a catastrophic failure with more troops sent in and more americans killed?
i seemed to be in the same voice as nearly all your american democrats reps and some 30% of your republican reps who oppose "surge" read "escalation" and want the troops home...do they too hate americans?
i just heard over the cnn report that one pro-surge republican said the only way to secure the iraqi civilians is to send in more troops...hic...which iraqi civilians? - the sunnis who are blasting the americans to bits or the shias who will later definitely turn against americans like ben ladin did and like sadam did after the americans had supported them against the russians and iran respectively just not so long ago?
come off it! pick on your fellow americans who are against this war (after allowing america to go in) if you want to pick on me as well.
peace...
lets face it this world has too many of us homo sapiens around...in my earlier life, there were 4 billion now we are pushing 7 billion - if we double every one homo sapien's lifetime the earth will not sustain us. it is our common God's ecological balancing act to wipe some of us off through our evil deeds like in palestine, iraq, dafur, congo, chechya, afghanistan, new orleans, acheh and sri lanka and through wars, floods and storms etc. etc. etc....err and, thru diseases like bird flu, aids and cancer!
why participate in this? i would stand clear and look on instead.
tell you all what, here is another "forecast" of what will happen:
al-maliki and the shias installed gangs who fled from sadam to save his skin will gain another few hundreds of million dollars more (along with their huge monetary gains) already stashed in secret accounts) and having bought a year or less time more, will organise his ill-gotten riches better...and then just like david copperfield, they will all "vanish" to safety before total chaos in iraq and use their ill-gotten gains on more devious scams - funding more terrorism not discounted.
mark my words non of the 2 factions of sunnis and shias in iraq can be trusted. the kurds maybe more trustworthy but their northern territories are too rugged and too barren for corporate america to want to be there.
this will end with a bigger defeat for america than withdrawing NOW...
he admits to mistakes made. he said he needs these additional troops to assist the government (al-maliki led) to establish peace so that they can function. and he agreed with al-maliki that he will deploy these additional troops based on on mere fact: that al-maliki promised that he WILL act against all violent acts and violent adversaries and these include the sunni insurgency as well as the shias death squads which were killing only sunnis.
so, isn't this exactly muqtada of sadr city wants? and following this, isn't this exactly what ahmadjehidine of iran wants? the shias want control in iraq and they are not able to do this if the americans and the al-maliki led government cannot quell the sunni insurgency...they need more troops to annihilate more sunnis so that the shias can control iraq.
so, bush is working for the iranians...and i thought he didn't trust iran!
why and how come he can act this way based on a mere "promise" from al-maliki that his government will act against the shias in sadr city!! he IS so gullible, or maybe he's just grasping on a last flimsy straw.
i can tell him quite easily that at best al-maliki will kill half a dozen sacrificial shia criminals with the approval of muqtada and declare they are members of the death squads...while the additional us troops and shia dominated iraqi army go on to kill nother 20,000 real sunni terrorists and 30,000 innocent sunni bystanders...yup, the americans are NOT learning from history again...the one you work with today WILL be the one that fights you tomorrow!
20,000 is fiddling at the edges not changing the dynamics.
George W Bush is part of the problem if not the main remaining ingredient in America’s failure to date.
If he can so alienate moderate citizens around the world, just imagine how much he must embolden and infuriate the extremists!
If the US can’t get Bush out of the way, then they are going to have to put up with another two years of the same or worse. That’s the consequence of electing an arrogant fool as POTUS.
America needs to be concerned about loss control. Limit the costs and losses and try to rebuild the respect around the world which the Bush regime has so severely damaged
Talk about pulling out emboldening the insurgents is total rubbish. They don’t need “emboldening”. They are bold enough already, and their motivation is the US forces occupying their country.
If America leave Iraq, most of their “enemies” will be more concerned with getting on with their lives in Iraq than chasing the forces back to America. Their beef is not with US citizens, but with intruders, occupiers and forces killing their friends and families.
US forces may be educated and knowledgeable about their weapons, but most admit that they weren’t prepared for their task or at all knowledgeable about Iraq or Iraqis.
Emmet, I know this does not answer anything. I can only say again, I didn’t start this war. I warned about its consequences and for that got heaps of criticism. It is to be hoped that those who supported this misadventure have leaned a modicum of humility. (Sorry, in reality we know that Bush for one hasn’t learned anything, certainly not humility, but hopefully many of his former supporters have.)
Finally, there are worse outcomes than an immediate controlled withdrawal.
Just wait and see!
Hey I just bought a new carbon fibre frame bike, 10 speed change and all the fittings.
A few bits to put together and then,
.....I'm on my bike!
Spin
That is one really interesting statistic.
[Edited on 11-1-07 by Stan]
Warning From Pakistan
This morning, from a cave somewhere in Pakistan, Taliban Minister of
Migration, Mohammed Omar, warned the United States that if military
action against Iraq continues, Taliban authorities will cut off
America's supply of convenience store managers. And if this action
does not yield sufficient results, cab drivers will be next, followed
by Dell customer service reps.
emmet, that's really scary.
we have the same syndrom here, we won't know what to do if they repatriate all our indonesian, bangladeshi, burmese and phillipino labour from our country!