Democrats & Liberals Archives

“In the past, Democrats and other critics of the war who talked about benchmarks and timetables were labeled as defeatists, defeat-o-crats, or people who wanted to cut and run.”

No, actually only democrats who want to cut-n-run irresposibly were labeled as such. This includes republicans as well and rightfully so. The Cindy Sheehan democrats to be more accurate. To call this a DEMOCRATIC idea is silliness. This has been a military point of success all along. As republicans and military analyist have stated, to publish such a timetable would be mere foolishness.

So the dummy-crats (or even republicans) who think such a timetable should be public knowledge, prepare for more disappointment. The enmey is REAL, the war is REAL, not part of some preschool game.

In the past, whenever a Democrat asked the president for milestones by which we could base a phased withdrawal, he promptly changed the wording and said that they (Dems) wanted an immediate withdrawal, and avoided even answering the actual question. The Democrats didn’t say that they wanted it to be made public. They even acknowledged that it could be given to the proper committees in closed door sessions. All they wanted was some set of goals on which a withdrawal could be based. Every time, the President refused to offer that, and instead accused the Dems of wanting immediate withdrawal. It’s probably not even necessary to keep the milestones secret, since announcing the achievements of the Iraqi government would actually be good p.r. Although if a concrete reason for the secrecy were presented to me, I would probably revise my opinion on that matter.
So, to say that it has always been a part of the plan is completely incorrect. It’s revising history, just like Bush is doing by saying that he never advocated “staying the course”.

I, for one, have always wondered why a clear set of milestones were never presented to the Iraqis so that we and they could measure their performance against it. The statement that we will stand down as they stand up was too general and actually said nothing of substance. Yet, time after time, that is all that was offered.

Still, I suppose that we should be happy that the pres is finally at least giving lip service to what he would never before acknowledge, even though he’s only doing it for the election. He’ll never really change his position on the matter.

Curmudgeon-at-large-

“No, actually only democrats who want to cut-n-run irresposibly were labeled as such”

Have you not been reading these threads over the last few months? Anyone who even suggested anything but total commitment without restriction (vicotry at all costs) was branded as being anti-victory and ignorant of the “reality on the ground”. And yet, I never once saw any prominent democrats suggesting anything other than realistic guidelines and goals. But listening to the rhetoric of Cheney and Rumsfeld, you’d think democrats were staging anti-war protests. Ridiculous…and people knew it.

So why the sudden change in tone? Republicans, from the top down, are frantically trying to reinvent themselves into some kind of a rational party. But the war-hawks have been running their mouths and branding everyone a traitor and appeaser for so long now, you can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. They pushed the pendulum so far that it must now swing all the way back. I guess calling people names and using analogies to the most revolting acts in recent history hasn’t served to enlighten anyone, but instead have served to create a much deserved backlash.

Let’s parse some of fearless leader’s speech for truthiness, shall we?

Recently, American and Iraqi forces have launched some of the most aggressive operations on enemy forces in Baghdad since the war began.

Well, nothing we can disagree with there. In fact, the death toll supports his assertion that the operations are “aggressive”.

They’ve cleared neighborhoods of terrorists and death squads, and uncovered large caches of weapons, including sniper scopes and mortars and powerful bombs.

Okay, “cleared neighborhoods” could mean they were cleared out long-term, or just that they chased them away temporarily. If the former, I would say killed or captured xxx terrorists in yyy neighborhoods. If I were pasting a smiley face on the situation, I could say what he said in the latter case. And just how many “sniper scopes and mortars and ‘powerful’ bombs” did they find? One or two? Or a whole lot? If I had the goods, I would quote the impressive numbers. If not, I would say what he said.

There has been heavy fighting. Many enemy fighters have been killed or captured, and we’ve suffered casualties of our own.

Many?

This month we’ve lost 93 American service members in Iraq, the most since October of 2005. During roughly the same period, more than 300 Iraqi security personnel have given their lives in battle. Iraqi civilians have suffered unspeakable violence at the hands of the terrorists, insurgents, illegal militias, armed groups, and criminals.

This sounds more like truth than truthiness. Notice the actual quantitation, rather than vagueness.

These guys will keep lying up until the very bitter end. Vote Democrat and impeach the scoundrels, all of them.

AP:

Good to hear from you again.

“… after three and a half years, there are finally benchmarks for victory in Iraq. Unfortunately, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki doesn’t accept them.”

Seriously, does it or should it really matter if Maliki accepts the benchmarks or not? Is he in any position to refuse to cooperate with the occupying force? Have the puppet strings been cut? If so, it will be pandemonium on a biblical scale.. dogs and cats living together, etc, etc.

The entire region has be come such a clusterf***, people like me, who have no first hand knowledge of the middle east, are dumbfounded for a way to go.

I really think the best thing for our country is to split the branches of gov’t between the parties. A repub pres and the dems in control of at least one house. Things would move slowly, but they could move more sensibly.