<p>And the end result…Vietnam went down in history as a disaster, as will Iraq.</p>
<p>There hasn’t been a “released intelligence report.” There has been selective leaking, probably by the same CIA and State Dept. functionaries that brought us Plamegate and Merry Fitzmas. It would be a good idea for the president to declassify as much of this latest NIE as he can, and put it out there for context. Of course, if he did that, many of you would call that leaking by the president and call for his impeachment.</p>
<p>And replace him with Sir Halliburton? Surely you jest.</p>
<p>Luckily, Mr. Cheap plans to provide $25 mil less for the army than the Sec. of the Army is asking for, and it is good to see Mr. Sleaze following the lead of the professionals.</p>
<p>weenie,
What is your confusion about the general mission of the war? What do you think the mission should be at this point?</p>
<p>US paid millions for Al-Qaeda prisoners: Musharraf
Sep 25 3:40 PM US/Eastern</p>
<p>US intelligence has paid Pakistan millions of dollars for handing over Al-Qaeda suspects it captured, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says in a new book.
In a collection of memoirs entitled “In the Line of Fire,” Musharraf details how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paid undisclosed rewards totalling millions of dollars for the more than 350 prisoners Pakistan has handed over.</p>
<p>“We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars,” Musharraf says in the book.</p>
<p>“Those who habitually accuse us of ‘not doing enough’ in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan,” he says, without specifying where the money came from.</p>
<p>The US Justice Department runs a “Rewards For Justice” program promising millions of dollars in return for information leading to the arrest or conviction of a number of key suspects wanted for specific militant attacks.</p>
<p>The department says it has paid out more than 62 million dollars for information that prevented attacks or helped bring suspects to justice.</p>
<p>(wonder how many really were al-queda, and how swell, to pay Pakistan GOVERNMENT- after threatening to bomb them back to the stone age)</p>
<p>But remeber Bush believes him, so guess its all true</p>
<p>logoprincipal, what is the mission? why are we STILL there? I thought it was all over a couple of years ago? why is it getting worse? why why why?</p>
<p>
The most disastrous part about Vietnam was the slaughter of those in the South who had put their trust in the US making good on its commitment - not realizing the power of the left who was adamant on abandoning them. Now the left want to repeat the slaughter in Iraq. (Yet many of them call themselves “pacifists” … indeed.)</p>
<p>Don’t be silly, we all know why the occupation continues. Control the pipeline, secure permanent military bases. Wolfowitz was quite candid about it. The mission is open, and public, and now that the war is long over, the question is whether the mission can be accomplished, or is worth accomplishing.</p>
<p>In the long run, what happens in Iraq has very little to do with us.</p>
<p>Driver - sorry if I was unclear about who “the messenger” is that you attack: it’s the press. I understand that the right has been beating the “liberal press” drum for years to make the general public unsure of the truth of anything other than what those in power say (just as the “liberal judges” drum has been beaten for years.) It makes a good excuse for just believing in, well, whatever yoiu want to believe, or are told to believe, since “you can’t believe anything you read in the newspaper.” Every misstep of a prominent paper is dissected ad nauseum (here and elsewhere) while industry funded hacks like Fox’s Steven Milloy are held up as paragons of credibility. Yeah, the press is imperfect. They sat on their hands during the whole build up to the Iraq war, in a recent example of listlessness. But in my opinion the New York Times et al. are a lot less biased and a lot more credible than your blogs are. A reasonably high percentage of their reporting does turn out to be reasonably accurate. On the other hand, I’m still waiting for Ronnie Earl to be disbarred and indicted.</p>
<p>To the topic: I don’t doubt that many career military personnel have a positive attitude about the work they’ve done in Iraq and the impact it has had - and I haven’t expressed the opinion that they don’t. It would be truly sad if it were otherwise. But it’s not a particularly significant barometer of how things are actually going, as much as it is an example of human nature. People don’t want to think that their sacrifice and effort, and that of their friends and co-workers, was wasted and pointless; they don’t want to think that the actions and efforts they believed in wholeheartedly whle they were doing them had no purpose. For a serviceman to return from Iraq and say that they accomplished nothing would be truly remarkable. </p>
<p>What’s also remarkable is for a high ranking military analyst to write a formal report saying that there’s no way our effort will succeed. Unlike the average individual soldier, Col. Devlin’s job was to gather widespread data and analyze it, and it’s not in his self-interest -psychological, career, or otherwise, to reach a negative conclusion. So I find his report more significant than anecdotal stories about “what the soldiers I know tell me” - without questioning either your credibility or the sincerity of the soldiers you know.</p>
<p>Well, I have no idea how to reconcile what my nephew told me (and it so horrified him that he left the service the exact day he finished his twenty years) with the official reports. I do know they operated on many Iraqis–clearly not reported in the news stories. Perhaps his 100/day figure was the peak day of a very bad time–or perhaps it included surgeries that he considered amputations but the military does not (is a single finger an amputation if it’s not disabling? Damned if I know how to read these stats.). It seems clear that the official reports are 20K US wounded and 500 (ish) of those are amputees. Estimates of Iraqi injuries are from 10x to 20x American casualties.</p>
<p>" What is your confusion about the general mission of the war? What do you think the mission should be at this point?"</p>
<p>1.) I, like most Americans, have no idea why we are in Iraq.
2.) The mission should be to get the hell out of there.</p>
<p>What’s you point CGM? Sometimes in this world money works and it’s less expensive in many ways than having our guys running all over the mountains.</p>
<p>Here’s a wonderful “blast from the past”:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cfr.org/publication/5456/time_running_out_for_iraq_wolfowitz_says.html[/url]”>http://www.cfr.org/publication/5456/time_running_out_for_iraq_wolfowitz_says.html</a></p>
<p>"“I find it startling when you ask if you can trust the United States government.” ;)</p>
<p>Average soldiers to military generals: many have expressed concern to downright contempt for the current operation in Iraq.</p>
<p>And I have always said that it makes perfect sense that the family members of servicepeople would stand behind this mission 100%, as well as support the commander in chief. How else could they live with themselves if they really thought or believed that their loved ones’ lives were at stake for a war with no end? How could they believe that the adminsitration and DoD would be so cavalier about the value of their individual children’s or relatives’ lives?</p>
<p>Were I in their position, I would have to believe Bush and the purpose (whatever that is) of the mission too. I just couldn’t imagine the alternative.</p>
<p>
I disagree. It makes a good argument for analyzing anything you read in the newspaper after reading counterarguments–rather than swallowing it whole and regurgitating it on CC as scripture just because it’s in the paper.</p>
<p>
In 1864 the Democrats ran the former commanding general of all Union forces against Lincoln. Didn’t make McClellan a good option, or even right.</p>
<p>I thought maybe I was unique in thinking that I understood the general mission of our military in Iraq, so I asked a couple of other people what they think it is. Since their answers were the same as mine, it must not be all that unclear.</p>
<p>1) To establish a stable government in Iraq
2) To rout out the terrorists operating there.</p>
<p>Then I went to the White House website to see what it says there:</p>
<p>“Our mission in Iraq is clear. We’re hunting down the terrorists. We’re helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We’re advancing freedom in the broader Middle East. We are removing a source of violence and instability, and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren.”</p>
<p>Whether or not you agree with it, what is the confusion?</p>
<p>It’s as easy to dismiss the soldiers’ opinions of what is going on in Iraq and to ascribe their optimism to a psychological need to feel that their work is valid as it is to dismiss the opinions of younger posters on CC and to believe that if they were only older and wiser they would see things more like I do.</p>
<p>Logosprincipal, it is foolish to ascribe a weight to the opinion of a person without taking into consideration their ability to perceive that which they speak about, their underlying bias, and any psychological factors which reasonably can be considered to influence their opinion. I don’t “dismiss” the opinions of the anonymous soldiers cited by the various posters in this thread; I simply weigh the opinions of other people in a rational way. I tend to give more weight to the expressed opinions of people which are contrary to their evident self-interest than those which are not, whether that self-interest be financial or psychological. In particular, I tend to trust the expressed opinion of an experienced and apparently qualified person which appears to run counter to his self interest. People are slow to belief an unpleasant truth, and will let go of a comfortable belief well after it is quite evident that it is not true. That’s just human nature. I would consider it foolhardy not to utilize those considerations in weighing peoples’ opinions on matter I lack first-hand knowledge of. Yes, it’s true: all other things being equal, I will ascribe less weight to the opinion of a teenager than the opinion of a more experienced person. I also give more weight to the opinions of people who have demonstrated that they are thoughtful and wise than to the opinions of those I know to be foolhardy or blowhards. Not all opinions should rationally be considered equal.</p>
<p>I agree with your statement as to America’s “mission” in Iraq, as perceived and ratified by the American people. Unfortunately, the accomplishment of either prong of that mission is a receding goal.</p>
<p>logos:
</p>
<p>How unfortunate that we need to hunt down terroists in Iraq, since they weren’t an issue there before our invasion. How odd that the Iraqis have never had a “free nation,” nor is that their goal now. How odd to believe that you could impose stability on a region that has never been stable. Not to mention, how does it improve our stability now that we are universally hated and distrusted around the world? How crazy is it to believe that today’s USA is a model for anything resembling peace?</p>
<p>If I had been paying attention to the Bush lies, here are a few of the reasons I might have thought we were at war:</p>
<p>I thought it was because they had WMDs and were ready to use them.</p>
<p>I thought it was because Hussein had used WMDs in the past.</p>
<p>I thought it was for regime change.</p>
<p>I thought it was to further the war on terror.</p>
<p>I thought it was because of Iraq’s violations of UN resolutions.</p>
<p>I thought it was because Iraq was an imminent threat.</p>
<p>I thought it was because we needed to disarm Iraq.</p>
<p>I thought it was to conclude the 1991 Gulf War.</p>
<p>I thought it was because of Iraq’s links to al Qaeda.</p>
<p>I thought it was because of 9/11.</p>
<p>I thought it was because Hussein was a threat to the region.</p>
<p>I thought it was for the safety of the world.</p>
<p>I thought it was to support the United Nations.</p>
<p>I thought it was to further the war on terror.</p>
<p>I thought it was to liberate Iraq.</p>
<p>I thought it was to stablilize Iraq. </p>
<p>I thought it was to stabilize the middle east.</p>
<p>I thought it was to prevent an Iraq civil war.</p>
<p>I thought it was to fix Iraq’s wrecked infrastructure.</p>
<p>I thought it was to preserve peace around the globe.</p>
<p>I thought it was because Iraq represented a “unique threat.”</p>
<p>I thought it was to “transform the region.”</p>
<p>I thought it was as a warning to other terrorist nations.</p>
<p>I thought it was because “Hussein hates the US and will act against it.”</p>
<p>I thought it was because “history calls the US to action.”</p>
<p>I thought is was to prevent the oil fields from falling into the hands of terrorists.</p>
<p>I thought it was to “turn that country into a democratic ally, just as the United States did with Japan after World War II.”</p>
<p>I think it’s time to admit we made a, uh, slight, mistake. We need to get out of Iraq. We need to save the lives of our service men and women who are over there. We need to spend that money on becoming energy independent. We need to be the world leader in energy alternatives. We need that money to protect our borders, secure our homeland, and fix New Orleans for cryin’ out loud.</p>