<p>What is success? Staying the course?</p>
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<p>At this point, I think the only rational definition of “success” is getting the hell out of there with as few additional American casualties as possible and with a reemphasis of diplomacy-based foreign policy with a goal of assisting the neighboring countries in bringing as much stability and prosperity to the region as possible.</p>
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<p>You’re right – I apologize. I think I must really lack the gift of debate and should stay off of these threads.</p>
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<p>ROFLM*O</p>
<p>conyat: If you’re not a trial lawyer, you should be. You have an amazing gift for twisting words and intent (in the service of the greater good, of course).</p>
<p>“I still think it’s a slap in the face to the Congressmen who prior to this election actually risked their lives to fight in this war–all of them Democrats.”
Ever seen this one?
<a href=“http://www.conservativecartoons.com/2006/reenlisted.gif[/url]”>http://www.conservativecartoons.com/2006/reenlisted.gif</a></p>
![http://www.conservativecartoons.com/2006/reenlisted.gif[/url]](http://www.conservativecartoons.com/2006/reenlisted.gif%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>higherlead – you should take your foot out of your mouth about now. your entire bigoted description of a religion was nothing more than a lucid portrayal of the AMERICAN EMPIRE. wake up. turn off fox news. you should be crabby at a bunch of haughty, rich republicans – not at largely poor, consistently victimized desert-dwellers.</p>
<p>“not at largely poor, consistently victimized desert-dwellers.”</p>
<p>Talk about a stereotype.</p>
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Do you have a source for this?</p>
<p>I do somewhere, but I am also sure there are other sources that would dispute it. </p>
<p>The French government does not take official statistics and even if they did a large chunk of the Muslim population, like our hispanic population, is illegal and undocumented. Once you start talking undocumented numbers everybody has an ideological axe to grind.</p>
<p>The undisouted point is the Muslim minority is large and their women have a lifetime fertility rate more than 2x the native population pls the French borders themselves are as difficult to secure as our own southern border. There is no reason to think immigration legal or illegal will shrink in the coming decades and no evidence that lifetime fertility rates are declining among Muslim women living in France or that the native fertility rate will increase dramatically.</p>
<p>The French government has taken steps to try to increase middle class fecunditiy by increasing benefits to French families and while it has had some positive effect it is unlikely to prove dramatic.</p>
<p>Here’s a damning article about the adminsitration’s machinations leading up to the invasion in the WashPost (interestingly, the WashPost and LATimes had a no. of articles, prior to the invasion, which placed serious doubt, if not debunk many of the administration’s claims about Iraq - sadly, the same couldn’t be said for the NYTimes).</p>
<p>**It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous – later retracted – 16 words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”</p>
<p>Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush’s remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?</p>
<p>Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.</p>
<p>Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.</p>
<p>In February 2002, the CIA received the verbatim text of one of the documents, filled with errors easily identifiable through a simple Internet search, the interviews show. Many low- and mid-level intelligence officials were already skeptical that Iraq was in pursuit of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.</p>
<p>Burba, who had no special expertise in Africa or nuclear technology, was able to quickly unravel the fraud. Yet the claims clung to life within the Bush administration for months, eventually finding their way into the State of the Union address.**</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201777.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201777.html</a></p>
<p>sjmom - “Am I correct in thinking that you see political bias on CC? Just take a look at the titles of recent threads in the cafe. I think it’s clear that the majority of these threads have a decidedly liberal tone.”</p>
<p>Maybe it’s actually dealing with facts and realities on the ground instead stubbornly sticking to some neocon idealism (which, btw, many traditional conservatives scoff at).</p>
<p>And let’s not forgot the astronomical growth of K-street and pork-barrel spending under the previously Republican-controlled Congress (the $315 million “bridge to nowhere” project in Alaska still isn’t dead) - which really ****es off old style, fiscal conservative Republicans such as myself.</p>
<p>“Swiftboater named Belgian ambassador in recess appointment”</p>
<p>Great, just great.</p>
<p>Ya gotta admit the guy’s got a set of cha cha’s. He isn’t going to be touched, so he will continue to do his thing meanwhile the country will prepare to move in a different direction in two years. If I were a goper politican, I’d start to worry about relection. Gw’s actions already cost a great many gopers their positions. Round two coming up. </p>
<p>I worry because while I support a few goper causes, I still want balance. I beleive balance spares the American population as a group, harm from poor policy making. When one side dominates goper or demo, the general population takes a hit. Remember we’re all Americans, I know that’s hard for some. So come on gopers start letting Gw know you still plan to be in office and not on book tour. If you don’t, you will be. This is the middle speaking… don’t call it the left just cause your in the ditch on the right hand side of the road.</p>
<p>Right. No balance.</p>
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<p>Bush won’t be on the ballot in 2008 and we will either be dealing with the aftermath of our self-inflicted defeat or getting ready to shoot ourselves in the foot and head home. </p>
<p>The Dems entire platform in 2006 consisted of we are not Bush rather than what they are for. I don’t blame them for doing that. It is what I would have done but it is not a platform. At the moment it looks like they are either going to run a total cipher or Lady MacBeth. I don’t think it will be quit the cake walk they are expecting unless the gopers lose their courage (such as it is).</p>
<p>HH, except that Republican Congresscritters and Deputy Secs of States have been going to Syria and meeting with Assad. And the Baker commission, in a last gallant but futile attempt to throw idiot-child a life raft, recommended engagement as opposed to isolation. </p>
<p>HL, dont’ bet on it: one of the best moments of the 2008 campaign season is going to be Bush at the GOP convention. The Dems are going to take that footage and ram it right up the GOP’s electoral-- I don’t see any Republican getting the nomination without trying to assure the base that they will continue with Bush’s Iraq policy, more or less. </p>
<p>I think there are reasonable chances that the GOP’s general outcome in 2008 will make them long for the good old days of 2006.</p>
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<p>Bush has lost his mind. </p>
<p>Why on earth would he further antagonize Congress? For what? Just to appoint some hack as Ambassador for 18 months?</p>
<p>It’s like poking a rattlesnake.</p>
<p>It is one thing to say you are for immediate withdrawal and it is another to say it and then know you are going to have to live with the aftermath and consequences on your shift. Since that is what the Dems will demand of their candidate they will nominate either a liar or a fool.</p>
<p>HL: We - that is, we Americans - are going to have to live with the aftermath and consequences of the failed (and stupid) Bush policy in Iraq regardlessof who is elected in 2008 and what platform they run on. Yes, I know that the Bush game plan is to drag things out, sacrificing the lives of hundreds more American soldiers, so that there will be ugly photo ops to be had after the GOP loses the next election. But most Americans won’t be stupid enough (or have short enough memories) to forget who got us there in the first place, and who never had a viable plan to get us out with anything worth the cost of the trip.</p>
<p>The idea that occupying Iraq forever will magically “solve” the problem there is just dumb. I don’t think even W believes that fairy tale. Cut 'n run today, cut 'n run in 2009, cut 'n run in 2020 - the only difference is how many Americans get pointlessly killed and maimed.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, all three of them–those bad boys.</p>
<p>The war won’t end when we cut and run only the battlefield will change.</p>
<p>What we are facing in Iraq is not a general insurrection against American occupation. That war never really materialize and AlQada couldn’t get it stirred up. When Plan A failed the decided to stir up a civil war in hopes that the ensuing violence would drive us out and they could inherit a new Afghanistn.</p>
<p>A pull out will result in a regional conflict. Nature hates a vacuum. When we toppled Saddam something had to take his place and it was us. The trick now is to replace ourselves with something. In the ideal world that would be a self-governing multi-ethnic democratic Iraqi state. It’s pretty clear it is not an ideal world, but don’t think for a minute that things can’t get worse than the slow bleed for us if we pull out.</p>