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Great post Spree and also: Thanks so much for your sweet comments bout the Halo award!!..
Thanks and you SO deserved it. Congrats again!!!!
I know it surprises Republicans when a political party actually thinks it's OK to, you know, really debate an issue and disagree without being called a terrorist sympathizer or an enemy of America. But guess what? We're not all sheep like Republicans are. We actually disagree with the leadership from time.
"A novel idea for the Democrats of this world.... trying working WITH the administration..."
Hello Pot? This is Kettle? Maybe if Bush had tried to work WITH the Democrats, we wouldn't be in this unwinnable quagmire called Iraq to begin with.
Only unwinnable in the eyes of...YOU GOT IT..... Democrats!!!!!!!!!!!
Some people actually have confidence in our troops and, lo and behold, actually notice when they have success, acknowledge when they have progress.
Thank you so much for making my point with that line.
based on past results, all we have to do to win in iraq is the opposite of whatever W and his puppet masters come up with.
this war was lost when we went in with too few troops, and allowed the country to descend into anarchy by disbanding the army and govt.
y'all have stirred up a hornet's nest where there wasn't one before.
Yes, Iraq was such a peace loving country and Saddam was just "misunderstood"... what a joke!!!!
Do I really have to do a thing one day soon about nomadic Bedoin tribal life and the fact that most of the people in the Middle East don't recognize borders drawn by Colonial European governments?
Are the American people REALLY this fucking ignorant?
Unless you believe they are pretending....hee hee
I only wish it were the case...
It would seem that Bush has downgraded his definition of "winning" in Iraq. Remember a free and democratic society? Well, that's pretty much out of the picture now. It looks like they'll settle for another Saddam-like strong man to help keep a lid on things for the duration of Bush's term and put in some more IED fodder to the tune of 20 to 30 thousand, while they run down the clock. Leave it to Bush the Lesser to rely on others to clean up messes he's made. Even Republicans like Trent Lott are beginning to see the writing on the wall. I can't think of another person more uniquely unfit to serve as president during this critical period in our history than W. It's a tragedy that his personal psychological battles with his mommy and daddy have to be played out on the world stage.
Here's the best idea I've heard so far to resolving the conflict in Iraq. It has nothing to do with some undefinable concept of "winning". Partition the country into three separate entities for Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Move the US forces away from Baghdad, where they only incite more violence. Give up on the oil companies' ambitions of controlling the oil supply out of Iraq to keep their profits up. Get corrupt US corporations like Halliburton the hell out and help the Iraqis get their own economic system back up and running. Set up a system by which all factions are paid off by oil revenues. Give checks to everybody like they do in Alaska. Declare victory and go home.
A country that can sustain itself, defend itself and be an ally against terror... that has always been the definition.
The partition idea was already discussed and discarded...try something "new".
We have done nothing to help create a country that can sustain itself. Every thing we've done in Iraq seems to have been planned to have exactly the opposite affect. Are you kidding? In all the chaos we've unleashed in Iraq, we've given Bush'a friends the opportunity to make billions in easy unregulated largely unaudited dollars. People who fall for the the "ally against terrorism" ruse seem really naive to me.
What do you mean partition has been looked at and discarded? By who? Bush? The only people he seems to listen to are the neo-cons whack jobs from the American Enterprise Institute.
Actually by the Iraqi's....months ago..perhaps yous hould keep up!
Our (the U.S.) involvement in Iraq seems to be shaping up along similar lines to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviets were there for almost 10 years and lost somewhere around 14,000 troops, without ever having achieved victory (even though they had overwhelming military superiority and won most of the battles). The Afghan insurgents were supported by the U.S. and by neighboring countries like Pakistan. The Iraq insurgents are being supported by other Arab interests and by their neighbor Iran.
It’s fine for you to claim—without any evidence to support it—that some kind of troop surge will somehow help to achieve victory in Iraq. But given the model of Afghanistan, how can you be at all certain that 10 years might not go by with still no victory in sight? The parallels seem awfully hard to ignore.
Do you really think that there’s any strategy left that our side hasn’t yet tried in Iraq? There’s still no evidence at all of a winning formula. In fact, things have only gotten worse. Continuing to throw billions of dollars and thousands of dead American soldiers at Iraq—when nothing that’s been tried yet has worked—is not a formula for victory. It’s repeating the same mistake over and over again. It’s primarily an attempt to postpone that inevitable day when those of you who thought that this war was a good idea will have to admit that you were wrong.
First I never said a troop surge is a winning formula, but it is worth a try. The only ideas people like you have is to tuck our tails between our legs, suck on your thumbs and run crying home to mommy....yes THAT is how to "try".
Giving up and declaring defeat before everything possible can be done to try to actually WIN...(yes I know winning is beyond your thinking capacity) is nothing but a defeatists attitude.
Ya'll continue to discuss how to lose, since it is all you seem capable of thinking about. I have things to do, but please continue to make my point for me about Democrats not knowing what the word "victory" is.
I'm in a quandry here. I've never been at a point where I was more proud of our military, and more disgusted by the civilian populace. I can't IMAGINE how those still in uniform feel....
We don't have to imagine what they think... we show their words here quite often.
This is what they think:
http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree....th-
soldier.html
http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree....o-
american.html
http://wwwwakeupamericans-
spree....oliticians.html
http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree....s-
coverage.html
The list goes on and on and on. They continually tell us what they think, what we are not being told, they state OUTRIGHT that the American people are being misled, but only certainpeople actually listen to them and it isn't the liberals, because the liberals don't want to hear what they have to say.
So they cover their ears, sing, lalalalalalalala, and pretend the soldiers never said anything.
Ignorance is fucking bliss, I reckon.
I guess so
I love that you're trying to blame the Democrats for not coming up with a winning solution for Iraq.
That's like a 6-year old smashing mom's vase into a million pieces and then blaming his parents for not being able to glue it all back together.
Some people will just never "get it". You are one of them. Fact is it was the Reps/Dems BOTH that saw the intelligence and agreed to go into Iraq.
Fact is the intelligence was flawed. Fact is that Hussein was a danger or as Hillary Clinton put it in 2004 "a grave threat" even without WMD'S.
Fact is the on the senate floor in 2002, before we went into Iraq, Kerry told ALLLLL the senate, Reps and Dems, that this would be costly and take YEARS and we must be prepared to "stay the course" (were you even aware that the stay the course line came from the dems?).
Fact is that when the "polls" said it was becoming unpopular the dems jumped like rats off of a sinking ship...only a chosen few had the courage or the honor to keep to their principles and insist we finish what we started... Re: Joe Lieberman.
Rewriting the facts do not make them change...
If the Democrats tried to actually HELP solve the logistical problems instead of trying to block everything that has been needed, this might indeed be going bettter...it is a fact that more than one brain thinking about a problem can bring a variety of solutions.
Ya'll just deliberately made yourselves part of the problem instead of the solution.
You're assuming what Bush wants to do is a solution.
Hint: It's not.
That is your opinion, which means as much as mine. Stalemate.
“The only ideas people like you have is to tuck our tails between our legs, suck on your thumbs and run crying home to mommy . . .”
The problem is, whenever you proponents of this war have had to answer tough, legitimate questions, all you could ever offer was more cheap rhetoric like the above childish taunts. Cheap rhetoric never helped to figure out a winning strategy, or even to decide the serious and legitimate question of whether victory was even possible. We don’t need more chickenhawks offering empty slogans in the face of serious questions, as they throw more lives and more billions of dollars down the hole. We need serious, responsible leadership that has actually done their homework and listened to sound advice (for a change).
War is serious business, and shouldn’t be started for insufficient reasons by people who never did their homework. Because of the irresponsibility of our leaders and those who led the cheers, we’re stuck in a fiasco. “It’s worth a try” is not a sound strategy. It’s another crap-shoot by people who’ve never known what the hell they’re doing.
I am sure that armchair quarterbacks such as yourself that watch television are have become such experts have much better ideas for "winning" right?
Chickenhawks? Talk about childish!!!!! LOLOL.
Fact is that at least the president is trying to win, unlike the suggestions for "running with our tails between our legs" which is all I have heard from the other side of the aisle.
Truth hurts, doesn't it?
Of course war is a serious business, that is a no brainer....losing is also a serious business and it should never be considered a "plan"...yet to so many of you..it is.
Back to work now, feel free to continue making my point for me, you are doing it so well.
Spree it must be nice to live in a fantasy land where America never loses, Vietnam never happened, and other superpower-vs-middle east country wars (see: USSR vs Afghanistan) never took place.
We did not lose this war. It was unwinnable. And blindly, desperately pressing forward in an attempt to "win" at the expense of our brave men and women in uniform's lives is anti-American and traitorous.
Again, saying it was "unwinnable" isn't in any way, shape or form provable. It is simply blather.
Considering our brave men and women in the military are REenlisting in record numbers, which I have linked to the number in many posts, it must be nice for them to see people like you telling them, that what they have seen, accomplished and the progress they have made, means squat to to some of the American people.
You just keep watching your television news shows and deciding you know more than the soldiers that speak with their boots on the ground IN Iraq.
THAT is fantasyland!!!!
Spree, you should know that the bill that cutoff funding for Vietnam passed over a presidential veto. That should tell you that there was a lot of Republican support to end that godforsaken war too.
Y'all want to know the *real* reason we went into Iraq?
Come one, just ask me! It involves Syria, the 2000 Palestinian Intifada, oil, conspiracies, and the world's largest game of Whack-A-Mole.
Umm, Lefties, don't change hands just yet.
In the summer of 2000, Hafez Assad died. Yeah, great, wonderful, you say. What does this have to do with Iraq?
Everything. In the eyes of those watching, it was a dress rehearsal---and we did not like the way it was shaping up. All of a sudden, America, Israel, and all of the allies found out the hard way that all the means by which we had worked over the years to diplomatically contain Syria were really containing Hafez. No more Hafez, no more containment.
Oh, the fact that the Intifada began in the following fall was absolutely no accident. Bashar Assad was thumbing his nose, knowing the West would have to start at Square One at re-containing Syria.
Let's look a little to the east of Syria, to this place called Iraq. There was another Baathist strongman getting up there in years, the Syria fiasco proved that we were literally one heartbeat away from losing all containment on Iraq. And worse yet, Iraq had oil. Because of this oil, containment was already beginning to fail in Iraq.
But Clinton was a big believer in his "legacy" most of which consisted of kicking problems on down the road.
Then came 2001, a new President, and 9-11. The Afghan invasion was a given at that point. But if we did nothing to cut off the terrorists' line of supplies, Afghanistan would have turned into the world's largest game of Whack-A-Mole, with Iraq or Iran re-supplying, training, and recruiting Taliban allies as quickly as we could kill them.
At that point, it was down to Iraq or Iran. Now we go back to 2000. Add to this any reports we might have been getting about conspiracies on the part of Saddam's sons or other high-ranking Baathists in Iraq. Now was not the time for Saddam to kick the bucket while still on the throne. So Iraq got the short straw.
That is one theory I haven't heard yet.
Welcome to Wake up America and thanks for stopping by and giving us your imput.
"Again, saying it was "unwinnable" isn't in any way, shape or form provable. It is simply blather."
Um...but if it's not winnable, saying it's winnable is the exact same thing.
You could keep trying to "win" forever.
There are so many cliches to match this right now, it is almost a pity to not actually use them.
So.... if at first you don't succeed....QUIT, right?
Or how about, when the going gets tough...RUN!!!!!!
Too easy and I have things to do... have a good day and thanks for stopping by Wake up America.
"one has to wonder if they are missing a step"
Yes we are missing a step, we are missing the 'lock step' Republicans are so good at.
Thanks for the welcome, Spree.
Any army, even an "army" of terrorists, thugs, and saboteurs, needs things. They need weapons, they need supplies, they need safe houses, they need supporters, and they need a surrounding population either too supportive or too afraid to stand up to them.
You win by denying them these things long enough for their movement to collapse.
If they won't march at your gun to be shot, you have to starve them out, logistically. This implies a long-term strategy of cutting communication and supply lines, sometimes with actions whose explanations can't fit on a bumper sticker.
This also implies a large amount of time. The jihadis have to burn through what they had before the lines were cut, just like a besieged city will have to exhaust its food supplies before the besiegers have any hope of getting the city to surrender. Election cycles are irrelevant to this timetable.
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