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You are so afraid of these cave-dwelling, impovershed "terrorists". You allowed yourself to be cowed by an fear-mongering president who was wrong. We kill 650,000 Iraqis and thousands of Afghanis, as well as tens of thousands of their combatants, and what are our losses? About 6000 dead (9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq), and 40,000 wounded.
Wake up. The USA spends over 1/2 of all of the world's defense spending, and you are afraid of guys in the Gaza Strip with AK-47s. 200,000 Americans have died on the roads since 9/11. Where is the terror of driving?
Why are we enmeshed in an insane part of the world? The best way to get out of the Middle East is to cut our dependence on oil. Then we can ignore them, like we ignore Africa, Russia, and Eastern Europe.
These poor terrorist slobs can't do anything that "ensures victory for the Worldwide Islamic Resistance". We and our allies can crush these uneducated, religious fanatics with superior force once we are out of their shooting gallery. Let them try to take over Indonesia, Pakistan, or Turkey. We'll give so much money to the secular governments there, they will have no chance.
As for poor threatened Israel, Israel has made life miserable for these poor bastards in the Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. They have no food, water, or freedom of movement. They can't even get tomatoes to market. The Palestinians will be emboldened? That will do them a lot of good against missile attacks from Israeli helicopter gunships. Those dangerous Hezbollah members got their ass kicked by Israel not too long ago.
The Al-Qaeda types in Iraq, drawn there by the easy targets of American soldiers in an urban guerilla war, are supported because the average Iraqi wants us in Iraq as much as we would want battalions of Iraqis driving around Washington DC.
If, as you state, only 2% of the WMD sites have been searched in Iraq, then the Republicans who are that incompetent should be fired or impeached. More logically, evidence of the WMD should be available through finding the people who worked on them. We tried to find these people. We offered tons of money and relocation to safe Western countries to any scientist who could give us details.
They didn't come forward. They didn't exist, because Saddam had no real nuclear program in 2002. The sanctions and inspections worked.
If these people did exist, and could give credible evidence, Bush would have trumpeted it from the heights. Even Bush admits there were no, zero, zilch WMDs. Possessing documents does not put you in possesion of chemical or biological weapons, or 1 year away from a nuke.
Where are the people who were building the bombs? Not one of the many would come forward, take a few million dollars, and rat out the program? It doesn't make sense. And don't give me some insane conspiracy plot. People are not that controllable and Bush would have paid any price for credible evidence of WMD.
The current US strategy in Iraq is a complet
The current US strategy in Iraq is a complete rejection of the Powell doctrine of going in with overwhelming force and a clear exit strategy. There is no victory for us to win there unless we pacify the country with 300,000 troops. The Republican strategy in Iraq has lasted 3 1/2 years and has yielded nothing but factional fighting and a weak government. The Republican decision to kick out all of the Baathist and Army members led them directly to starting a violent campaign. We took everything away from them, and predictably they struck back.
Hell, we weren't even that dumb when we took over Germany post-WWII. We allowed the mid-level bureaucrats and industrialists, and everyone who was complicit in accepting Nazism, to keep their place in society. It kept it stable to counter the looming Soviet threat.
The truth is, you are fear-mongering. Al-Qaeda's ability to hurt Americans in the USA or civilized countries is a joke compared to the other fatalities that we accept without thought.
As for the assertion, "democrats/liberals would sacrifice their freedom to win the war on terror", this is so ironic. It is the Radical Republicans who voted to sacrifice our cherished liberties in the name of winning against terror, which is cowardice. Republicans and cowardly Democrats have voted to suspend habeas corpus, allow fascist unsupervised wiretapping, promote un-American torture of prisoners, and sacrifice cherished freedoms by allowing the Orwellian "Patriot Act" to go through.
Your accusations that Democrats will help Al-Qaeda win insults every American of every political stripe. Your insistence that we keep the current failed strategy- not going in with overwhelming force, nor withdrawing understrength forces from a no-win guerilla war, is cowardice.
This is the part where I give a depressed sigh, shake my head, chuckle, stroke my beard, and consider where, exactly, to dive in. Let's take the word "impeach" first, just to get it on out of the way, again, so that we're all clear on exactly what an impeachment is. Impeachment is bringing of charges against someone in public office, it is not a punishment, it is a part of due process of law. Impeachment in no way automatically labels someone as guilty, any more than filing an indictment against someone the in the civilian world.
Now let's deal with that "cave dwelling" part about the Afghanis, shall we? Take a look back in the 1980's. The Soviet military machine rolled into Afghanistan on Christmas day of 1979 expecting to take it over and control it with little real resistance. Their expectation was to conquer the region, establishing another foothold in expanding the influence of communism in the world. That happened, right? Right? On the 15th of February, 1989 they announced that the last of their forces had withdrawn from Afghanistan. These "cave dwellers" fought and held off one of the worlds superpowers for ten years, and during that time we supplied and aided them in their efforts. How often we forget the lessons of history.
We had little reason to suspect, at that time, that the Mujahadeen would eventually lead to the Taliban and the Al Qaeda and the subsequent attacks upon the US that followed in the years between then and now. The whole story is available, in brief, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Sov..._of_Afghanistan if you want to go check it out for yourself.
to be continued...
The use of highway fatality statistics is a cry of desperation, in my estimation, to make some sort of lame comparison between the loss of life in combat and the loss of life due to both accidents and blatant stupidity, i.e. drunken driving and such. Let’s not try to compare apples to oranges, shall we? It demeans and degrades the lives of our soldiers. And let us NOT forget, while we’re at it, that our military is an ALL VOLUNTEER military.
NOW, on to that “coward” comment that really, really sticks hard in my craw. You really, really don’t know much about your history, do you? If you look BACK through history, go back to say, the crusades, you’ll see that the warriors of the middle east, let’s not delineate between nations right now because we’re going to go way, way back, have a history and a tradition of being fierce, fearless fighters who fight to the last man standing. Let’s go back further, to the ORIGINAL Israel and the Kingdom of Judah, a time when the world was ruled by the Hittites and the Philistines and the Babylonians and the Persians and and and shall I go ON? NEED I go on? War is a way of life for most of these people, that’s something most westerners forget.
As to uneducated? How many of them have you met? How many of them have you spoken with? You’ll find that there are a great many of them who are VERY well educated and in the key positions to lead others, for good or bad. What left wingers like you fail to take into consideration is that they believe that Islam is the only TRUE religion, and that is their duty to Allah to spread a cleansing fire across the world to rid it of the Infidel. That’s you and me, amigo, and anyone else who doesn’t worship all mighty Allah according to the Koran.
once again, to be continued...
As to your commentary on military strategy? Well, obviously I’m dealing with the superior intellect of an arm chair general here, so I won’t even get INTO a debate on strategy with you, other than to say that I do believe we need to commit more troops and equipment to this and prepare for a long term occupation of the region (let us refer ourselves to post WWII Germany and Japan here, where we still today maintain a military presence). I would dare say the closest you’ve been to a military uniform is seeing one in an airport on someone else. Tactical operations, we were taught when I was in the service (a fact that I allude to in my posting “I am an American Fighting Man” http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree....rican-fighting-
man.html )take time to formulate and to implement. Sometimes strategies have to be adjusted, adapted, or scrapped entirely depending on the changes in logistics and conditions of the field of battle. That’s war. War, in and of itself, is one of the finest examples of how life changes, drastically, from moment to moment. Soldiers, police officers, fire fighters… understand that. It is what it is, no more, no less.
This that we are involved in in the Middle East is a war. Like it or not, our nation is at war. The enemy may not be a consolidated nation this time, but an ideology. Just this last week yet another of their “holy men” called for all out jihad against the west. There is no middle ground in this conflict; there are no compromises to be met. Proof of this is shown in every car bomb, every suicide attack, and every martyr that drops dead in the name of the jihad. The enemy is willing to die for their cause; let’s help as many of them achieve that end as we possibly can on the road to complete and total victory. Torture is un-American, you say? Should we behead them, filming the event, and release it to the news media instead? The concern about taking a moral high ground in this war HAS to be set aside for this one reason: we are not fighting one nation against another; we are fighting a mindset that calls for the extermination of both Israel and the west. It hasn’t sunk in yet, to the masses, that this is for survival. So call it fear mongering if you wish, but know this: the liberty that we have, here, to debate this doesn’t exist where our enemy lives. They take dissenters out and execute them.
Now look in the mirror and ask yourself this, would you be the one being executed, or a member of your family? Another question, are you willing to die for your beliefs because you think you’ll be rewarded in the next life for it? That is what we face. That is what our military faces daily in the field.
It would behoove us all to bear that in mind.
AMEN... well said.
At the end of the day, the 2006 election is a choice between the ignorant and gullible and the smart and practical.
Republicans continually buy into the Bush rhetoric that Iraq is about al-Qaeda and the War on Terror. Their very lives hinge on our success in Iraq. Why Republicans believe this is true is beyond me? If it were true, why isn't Rice/Rumsfeld/Cheney spending the majority of their time in Iraq? Why haven't we raised taxes to meet the $2,000,000,000/day commitment? Why did we try and fight this 'war' on the cheap? If this war is so important, why aren't we fighting it with all we've got?
The fact is that the Iraq War was supposed to be the 'low hanging fruit' in a multi-generation fight against radical Islam. It has not at all turned out to be low-hanging fruit, so if we can't win the easy games, how are we going to win the hard ones?
If Iraq does become a safe-haven for terrorists, it will be the fault of the Republicans for overthrowing a stable government and replacing it with an Iran-friendly, anti-US government which is as unstable as Liza Minelli. Whether the US leaves or stays in Iraq is moot; the line between Democracy and Civil War has already been crossed. Iraq already is a safe haven for terrorists. We have the Bush administration to thank for this.
Hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of lives and our strong global reputation have all been lost for nothing. Indeed, we're worse off now than we were when Saddam was in power.
I hope the Republicans keep control of the House and Senate; they'll surely alienate the remaining 30%-40% of the country by 2008 at the rate they're going.
However, if you don't want to see our country flail for the next two years, you need to ask yourself: Am I smart and practical or dumb and gullible? If you're the former, vote for a Democrat; if you're the latter, go to a timeshare sales presentation on November 7th.
In the south, our democratic and republican candidates tend to be good men. Neither of them are going to go to Washington and suddenly become loons, despite the myriad campaign ads and commentaries that say they will. They're not going to support terrorists, they're not going to decide we shouldn't protect ourselves from them, they're not going to raise taxes and they're not going to support gay marriage.
Our foreign policy is a mess. The crowning decision not to vote republican for me was the foreign policy debacle in Nicaragua. Rather than support a moderate, this administration is going to put a leninist in as president. I don't question the intents of this administration. I believe they mean well but I am convinced they are one of the least competent administrations with respect to foreign policy that we have ever had and I genuinely believe incompetence in our foreign policy has made us less safe.
I'm not ready to roll the dice and see if we can do better with a loon. However, I'm ready to give a conservative democrat a shot. Might do better and I don't think he could do any worse...
Good men still vote along party lines when it comes to important bills. With nancy pelosi as speaker and charlie rangel as ways and means chairman, a good democrat will also vote "democrat" on national security issues, which the two democrats that would be in charge are VERY weak on. Take a look at BOTH of their voting records on national security. I have BOTH of their records on the site. Look for yourself.
Wow..the ole media slamming us again..great post and again..ty for the link! 
Pleasure and thanks for coming by!!!
Porico said:
"We kill 650,000 Iraqis"
That study has been debunked, dear. The total figure is closer to 55,000 and the VAST MAJORITY committed by terrorists, not US Soldiers. That study that gave you the 650,000 figure didn't even differentiate Iraqi civilians from terrorists! Give me a break.
Most Iraqis will tell you they are better off with Saddam gone. I got an e-mail from an Iraqi friend of mine in Baghdad who urged me to vote for Bush Republicans so that Iraq will not be abandoned. I gave him my word.
PS.... Al Qaeda has admitted that a vote for Democrats is a vote for them. John Kerry cited his 2004 Presidential election loss to the endorsement of Bin Laden, remember that?
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