<p>“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”
-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)</p>
<p>I like having three branches of government, unlike Mr. Bush</p>
<p>I like the diversity</p>
<p>I like the wildnerness</p>
<p>I like the clean air</p>
<p>I like alot</p>
<p>I don’t like this administration and that is VERY different from our liking or disliking our nation- and I think you see the difference HH of disliking the leaders and liking the country, you just like to lump it altogether because it is simpler to understand for some you…I understand that…if that is what YOU need to do LOVE ALL that this administration does to feel safe, that is your right, but even the founding fathers had some serious issues with our government and our leaders at times, imagine that</p>
<p>and they made laws so that there would be checks and balances something that has been sorely lacking from this President…he just know has found a way to ignore congress…little dictator wannabee that he is</p>
<p>“Go ahead and name one thing you like about this country, ladies. I don’t think I’ve heard you mention one.”</p>
<p>Well, the thread is about the presidential race, and it quickly turned to a discussion of the war. If you have lots of positive things to say about wars, good for you. I don’t find this to be the proper place to gush about our extraordinary public universities or the glories of the independent federal judiciary.</p>
<p>But since you claim we didn’t mention anything we like, I direct you to my post #44:</p>
<p>“I like and respect both Obama and Edwards very much … Giuliani has many qualities I like.”</p>
<p>So that’s three things I already mentioned that I like about America, in a thread focused on one of our ugliest habits (our presidential politics). If you’re going to impugn my patriotism in the future, I suggest that you keep an eye on your facts.</p>
<p>My H would have gone to Afghanistant but he is too old…but he never would have gone to Iraq, I would have given up meat and sugar for the war in Afghanistan, but not Iraq, I would have bought war bonds for Afghanistan, but not for Iraq</p>
<p>HH- here is a question for you- tell me what this adminsitration has done wrong—anythign at all?</p>
<p>How many of the war lovers here have decided to be part of the 50,000!!! thought so</p>
<p>I don’t want ANY new soldiers to sign up for this fiasco and die…we don’t have the manpower, people have gone back for tour after tour…</p>
<p>Let’s all be sure to obey HH, I mean the President of Pakistan, and be silent about injustice so no one who supports the war can accuse us of “bad mouthing” the country.</p>
<p>Save the indignation, HH. You have ascribed more lousy and mean descriptors to others on this board than anyone has ascribed to you. You have snickered and laughed at me plenty. All I have done is provide evidence to refute many of your statements. Sorry if that upsets you. Oh well.</p>
<p>Look in the mirror, dear, before you cast aspersions on others.</p>
<p>“How many of the war lovers here have decided to be part of the 50,000!!! thought so”</p>
<p>I’m not sure anyone on here has claimed to be a “war lover,” so you probably won’t get any answers on this one. But I am one who certainly supports our troops and all they have done to help America feel safer after 9/11. At its least, I think our show of force has been symbolic of America’s commitment to fight for democracy and freedom. Symbols can be very powerful.</p>
<p>CGM, don’t forget that our military is made up 100% of volunteers. No one has forced them to fight, and I for one, am eternally grateful for their personal sacrifices.</p>
<p>(BTW, my S has expressed an interest in pursuing a military career, and I have chosen not to quash that. Some people feel it is their calling and that is good for the rest of us.)</p>
<p>Hereshoping, you did this yourself at least once in this thread, when you accused me of saying that nothing can be done about the Iraq war. Once again, I think you need to take the plank out of your own eye before trying to point out the speck in others’.</p>
<p>I have to wonder if during Bill Clinton’s time in the Oval Office, Hereshoping gave him the kind of blind, unquestioning support she insists we should be giving Bush. Somehow I doubt it. But in her world…as her remark above shows…she thinks she is so superior to anyone different from herself, there’s a completely different standard. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Bay, you forget to take the back door draft into account. People who served with honor and completed their time, are called back years later. Officers can be called back up to 20 years after their discharge if they don’t resign their commissions–and the military was not making this clear to them at the time of their discharge. </p>
<p>What’s more, one officer who did resign his commision (and thus should only have been open to reactivation for 4, not 20 years) was called anyway…they told him the resignation of his commision shouldn’t have been accepted. I don’t think it’s fair to say that he “volunteered” for Iraq. </p>
<p>You’re also forgetting that when the people who volunteered signed up, the limits on deployment were different. Many of them did sign up to defend their country within certain parameters. But (even setting aside that there was no real threat to national security in Iraq till we created one by invading), the rules have been changed, to allow for a lot more deployments and shorter time at home between.</p>
<p>The fact that many of our military did not volunteer for this, and yet they do it anyway, is even more reason to be grateful to them…and places even more responsibility on us as citizens to make sure that they are used wisely and well by our leaders.</p>
<p>While the original surge “only” called for 21,500 troops, it appears that the increase will likely be closer to 50,000. More and more reservists and so forth will be called back into duty, further straining the military, and at a cost of an additional $27B. My my.</p>
<p>“The report said a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces would lead to massive civilian casualties, the possible intervention by Iraq’s neighbors, including a military incursion by Turkey, and that the Iraqi government would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian institution and that al Qaeda would use parts of Iraq to plan attacks inside and outside the country.”</p>
<p>So we currently have massive civilian casualties, and 1.8 million refugees. According to the Bush Administration, we currently have intervention by Iraq’s neighbors. There will be military intervention from Turkey the moment the Kurds claim independence, regardless. The Iraqi government doesn’t currently exist as a non-sectarian institution outside of a very small corner, less than 300 meters square, inside the Green Zone (where they are still serving pork three meals a day), and Al Qaeda is currently using parts of Iraq to plan attacks inside and outside the country.</p>
<p>Got any news? The better question is how much of this is caused by the continued presence of the aggressive and hostile occupying forces.</p>
<p>(The NIE - aren’t these the same people who brought us WMD? The “Good Humor” trucks? The thousands of tons?)</p>
<p>What I don’t get is how the people who understand what an awful, dire situation Bush and his party have created in Iraq…don’t think they should have to resign in disgrace–or even be criticized for it.</p>
<p>The administration went out of its way to insure that the invasion was conducted with far, far less than the maximum competence, to put it charitably. Advisors who pointed to Bush 41’s warnings and tried to plan for a long invasion? Dick Cheney threatened to fire them–he didn’t want a plan for anything longer than 6 months. </p>
<p>I’ve literally never heard of anything like that. During WWII, the Cold War, etc., people made plan after plan for every conceivable eventuality. Mandating that our troops go in unprepared? It makes no sense.</p>
<p>The rebuilding effort was plagued by instances where good competent people, even world renowned experts–the kind of people that Roosevelt and Truman went out of their way to bring IN to the war effort–were forced out of civilian jobs in favor of cronies.</p>
<p>How can anyone who thinks Iraq is so important, think it was OK to treat it so lightly?</p>
<p>I don’t think there is any knowledgeable disagreement about the Iraqi conditions you quote, both today and in the future.</p>
<p>The thing that has knowledgeable observers so puzzled is why the Bush administration isn’t exhibiting any sense of urgency in trying to address those conditions. For example, everyone agrees that any improvement in Iraq and the region must be political in nature. So it is very difficult to understand the administration’s lack of diplomatic initiative. It is difficult to understand why the administration is fanning the flames of regional tension with increased sabre rattling.</p>
<p>Personally, I’m a little confused at the sentiment that Iraq is a “military” failure. I think that view is unfair to our troops and their commanders. IMO, the blame for Iraq falls squarely on the civilian leadership, including abysmal failures at the very top of the Defense Department, State Department, and President/Vice President’s offices.</p>
<p>As near as I can tell, the professional intelligence community (including the CIA and the State Department) never felt that Saddam was a short-term threat in nuclear weapons. They knew that the programs had been destroyed in the early 1990s and that the combination of sanctions/inspections had pretty much crippled Iraq’s technology infrastructure.</p>
<p>The champions of the WMD story were the neo-cons, primarily Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bush, etc. Much of the professional intelligence community was in shock and awe at the false claims being made by the administration. For example, the whole cockamamie Niger yellow cake story was not even referenced in the National Intelligence Estimate prepared at the time. The CIA knew that Mohammed Atif had not met with iraqi agents in Europe because they had his credit card receipts from Virginia covering all those dates. The intelligence community knew that the aluminum tubes were not for uranium centrifuges because they had already consulted with our own nuclear experts at Oak Ridge Laboratories and confirmed that the tubes were unsuitable for that. Furthermore, they had confirmed that the tubes’ dimensions did match the dimensions of one of Saddam’s artillery shells (it was later shown that these tubes were indeed used in the manufacturer of conventional weapon rocket launchers). Long before the invasion of Iraq, CIA operatives had managed to crawl around in the so-called “mobile weapons lab” trucks. They knew that these were cobweb covered moth-balled refrigerator trucks with zero trace evidence of chemical weapons. </p>
<p>There is blame to go around in the intelligence community on many issues. However, WMD is not one of them. The intelligence community got that one right. They were ignored (and attacked – see the Wilson/Plame effort). This wasn’t an intelligence failure; it was the blatant mispresentation of available intelligence by an administration hellbent on justifying an invasion of Iraq that had been discussed during the first national security meeting of the administration, long before 9-11.</p>
<p>The thing that bothers me the most about this administration is the systematic undermining of the professional foreign policy apparatus. While that professional foreign policy machine may be slow, cautious, and sometimes unweildy, it has played a steadying role in US foreign policy for many decades and serves as an important safeguard against what would otherwise be whip-saw oscillations in foreign policy from president to president. I think Bush’s total rejection of the professional foreign policy, intelligence, and military communities lies at the heart of his mistakes. A potent combination of arrogance and ignorance.</p>