Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

It’s easier to suppose we just want America to lose than to believe we want America to win. That way, there’s no question of having to actually justify your actions, because your intentions are more benevolent than ours.

But they aren’t, and you know it (or should, at least). The extent of Edward Pitt’s manipulation was to help that soldier formulate the question he was already going to ask, and make sure it got asked. Did he allege something untrue? No, neither Pitts, nor the soldier alleged something untrue.

Soldiers are having to improvise armor out of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass. You understand that? Do you understand the desperation involved in basically rooting through wreckage and garbage to protect one’s vehicles? They aren’t doing this to be ecologically sensitive, they’re doing this because they believe their lives are at risk otherwise, and the vehicles that stand a chance of protecting them haven’t been deployed for their use. This is a real problem, and it’s a damn shame you see fit to turn this all into a liberal media rant combined with a screed on those damn anti-American intellectuals.

This isn’t just about politics, Eric. Most people on my column are wanting this war to succeed. Not fail, succeed. I’m one of them. Now you might be working under the impression that I’m just faking this attitude to get you off my back, but trust me, I don’t write the majority of my 70+ articles on Iraq because I’m insecure about your opinion of my politics.

Why has the focus been so strongly on the incompetence of the war, rather than it’s immorality? Incompetence doesn’t matter to those who don’t want the war in the first place. We Democrats believe, for the most part, that while this war was a terrible idea, we’re stuck in a situation where we have to win it anyways, if we don’t want our country even deeper in danger.

So I speak of incompetence, because I want out of Iraq, and the best way to get out of there is as victors. Maybe you don’t like the cynical edge of that, but you know something, I don’t like the cynical edge of your party getting us into this mess on some tangent of unsettled scores while the real danger waits and worsens.

Maybe to you, this is all about ideology, but to me, it’s about results, and your people have promised great results and delivered little.

Your party has grown too fond of flattery, not found enough of the hard truths. Too fond of image, not fond enough of substance. You’ve traded short term success and papered over solutions for real problem solving, and our country is suffering for it.

You should be ashamed of yourself, Eric Simonson. Choosing Politics over the lives of Soldiers. It is telling that you make no mention on whether the Lack of Armor Story is true or not. NO. You just focus on a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy to embarass Rumsfeld. It should not surprise me the neither you, Rumsfeld or Bush prioritize the People you sent to Iraq. After all, who among the Dear Leader’s Advisers actually went to war? The Army is now going after highschool students to fill recruitment needs. You know that? Perhaps you should volunteer. You could save an 18 year old. Do the decent thing, Simon. Go to Iraq. Then you can post how much Bush made thier lives better.

Aldous.

It is anti Americanism to protect our soldiers, Eric?

Your kind of have that backwards don’t you? Why is it you wish to continue to expose our soldiers to unneccessary danger? Is your hidden agenda to lure America into stupid tacitcs and encourage incompitence?

Where has your patriotism gone,Eric? You don’t address blunders by bureaucrats and instead attack freedom of speech?

What exactly IS your agenda, Eric? It appears that your clever plan to foil Americans who wish to protect our way of life and liberal democratic history is exposed in this rant. Why don’t you support opur troops in their quest not to commit suicide? Where is your patriotism?

Soldiers have been scrabbling for equipment for centuries, this is nothing new. In my time it was waterproof boots, foot powder to prevent fungus and anything larger than a .223 or 5.56 to shoot at the enemy with.

Sometimes the body armor I used was off a dead compatriot, and sitting on my helmet was the best form of small-arms protection while riding in a helo.

Nobody wishes to fund trained killers while they are sitting in their host country, not doing what they are trained to do, nobody. Look at the last three POTUS’, they all cut the heck out of defense.

Clinton gave defense the largest raise it has ever seen, yet it still didn’t equal what was taken from it in the previous six years of his term.

Bush 1 chopped the heck out of defense, mostly from the Int agencies, but still the soldiers were forced to “make do”.

Reagan himself tore the defense budget to shreds, but his went from the standing services to the Int services and missile R&D.

So anyone with any kind of memory, military and ex-military will remember better, will know that this is nothing but a ploy to use the services to attack the President.

Nothing new.

I’m not a highly educated person but I seem to remember a bit of grammer school civics. The president is but one man in charge of the executive branch of the government. Now if Im not mistaken it is the legislative branch that makes the rules, that passes the budgets and is the check and balances. Yes the President sets forth his policies but isn’t there a hundred or so other people whos jobs it is to make the rules - can’t they over rule him? Before you blame the president for this and that find out how your representives voted, if they even showed up for work or what they proposed as an alternative.

USA RET, DAV

I won’t question the fighting bona fides of anyone who claims here to support the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq. But you guys missed Eric’s point. Maybe he should have left Edward Pitt’s political theater out. The response of the troops involved indicates that the question, although contrived, hit a responsive cord. His main argument was with Professor Robert Jensen.

If Jensen is correctly quoted, I hope you will all join with me in condemning what he said. And forget the free speech arguments. Nobody is quarrelling with his right to say what he did, just as nobody can quarrel with the right of others to point out the stupidity of his position. That is the essence of free speech.

It is always amusing to listen to some people claim to love America. Do they like the current system of government? No. Do they like the current culture of most of the people? No. Are they proud of the history of our great republic? No. Do they think their country has been on balance a force for good? No. The list goes on, until you find that the only thing they seem to like about the U.S. is their absolute right to criticize everything else about it.

I am not saying this about any writer on this blog, but take a look at some of your allies. I have seen interviews with Michael Moore. He purports to love America and I believe he thinks he does. But what does he love about it, specifically? In his interviews, the only thing that he seems to mention is that it lets him make his critical films. Yet many people on the left consider him a hero. I can’t even sit through an interview with Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag or Noam Chomsky anymore, so I don’t know what they are saying recently, but unless they’ve changed their ways, it is more of the same. And the vacuous Hollywood cable is farther out. They identify themselves as liberals. If you don’t like them, reject them, or at least reject their dumber ideas. When someone says, “as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat.” You should just say no. Nuance is not required for this.

I don’t think all Democrats are pacifists. I remember and admire Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. But these kinds of Democrats died out and it looks like we will not soon see their like again. There is a reason why most Americans (Republicans, Democrats and moderates) identify Democrats as being weak on defense. Read this article in the (generally liberal) New Republic for background. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=whKP5U%2BbbaxbirV9FQhQuh%3D%3D

We need a liberal voice in military matters. I welcome it. I wrote about that on the other side. Let’s get ROTC on all campuses again and welcome military recruiters so that we can get more of them.

Eric,
I protested the Veit Nam war. I did it because I was well, young.

I am not a liberal, but I have a problem with Bush. No one has raised as much money as fast as G.W. Bush and that scares the bejesus out of me. In his first campaign it seemed as if he was annointed, and McCain was only going to be a close second. Especially after Bob Jones University.

I made a statement on the other side and I will repeat it here.
Our guys on the front lines don’t care if the guy covering their ass is a Democrat or a Republican, they just want to do the job and go home, preferably with all their limbs.
It has seemed to me that, from the start, we have been trying to fight the Iraq war on a budget. That isn’t the way to win anything.
The Republican response has always been “we support our troops”.

Well?

Jack, I don’t agree with all the professor said. But, look at what he is saying. He is seeking a way to stop war by ending the emperialism he believes is causing us to go and remain in Iraq. Right or wrong, his goal is get the U.S. back to peace.

I understand folks on the right disagreeing with the idea of invading Iraq as emperialism, but, to call a person a traitor and wishing to kill him for laying out an argument toward peace, is kind of telling about motives and values of some folks on the right.

Jack, P.S., the only flaw in the professor’s argument, that I can see, is that losing in Iraq would further the end of American emperialism. The fact is, as I see it, losing in Iraq, would only embroil the U.S. in further hostilities elsewhere, perhaps even here at home.

Losing in Iraq, will embolden opponents of the U.S., increase their recruiting and funding, and broaden their range of targets and symbols of American emperialism. That said, there will be no victory in Iraq until we pull out and Iraq stands on its own as a democracy and peaceful nation. The odds of that happening in the next decade or so are looking small, at best.

To remain in Iraq as occupier, or even insurance policy against civil war, is a form of defeat we must avoid. That is why I view Iraq as a quagmire with similarities to Viet Nam that many here on the right either fear might be true or refuse to acknowledge as possibly true.

Eric,
These definitions are from the Merrium-Webster Online dictionary.

Main Entry: trea·son
Pronunciation: ‘trE-z&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English tresoun, from Old French traison, from Latin tradition-, traditio act of handing over, from tradere to hand over, betray — more at TRAITOR
1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family

Main Entry: trai·tor
Pronunciation: ‘trA-t&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English traitre, from Old French, from Latin traditor, from tradere to hand over, deliver, betray, from trans-, tra- trans- + dare to give — more at DATE
1 : one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty
2 : one who commits treason

Why is the Far right likes to throw these words around at will?

Eric, one more thing.

“Is it a coincidence that so many on the left equate Bush with Hitler and America as the Fourth Reich?”

Do you understand the concept of extremeism?

I seems to me that the far right sees anything to the left of them as communists, and the far left sees anything to the right of them as fasists.

Why do you continue to propagate these stereotypes?

First of all Eric,

It should be clear to all, that you Bush apologists are running out of people to blame, in your continued attempt to divert attention from the real problem of how badly executed the Iraq War has been.

You even went back to a John Kerry vote to blame us Liberals for the lack of proper Humvee body armor? Were you even going to mention that the military contractor told the Pentagon that it was still producing under capacity, and only needed (and was waiting on) new orders from the Defense Dept?

These days, you need to dig deep and distort public pronouncements of the likes of Micheal Moore, taking the place of John Kerry as the anti-American, pro-Terrorist traitor whipping boy, who want us to fail in Iraq.

But think about it Eric - if you were successful in silencing and blocking the efforts of that embedded reporter, effectively muting the criticism and attention paid to a serious problem, and thereby preventing the subsequent resolution - is that helping us win or be defeated?

Stephen,

Your party has grown too fond of flattery, not found enough of the hard truths. Too fond of image, not fond enough of substance. You’ve traded short term success and papered over solutions for real problem solving, and our country is suffering for it.

I have no idea where you get this idea. If anything, Bush has opted for long term solutions at the expense of short term political gain. The short term success would have been to take the Clinton route of merely bombing Iraq. Creating a democracy out of a dictatorship is not what I would call a papered over solution. It’s the hardest work possible. But it is the option that truly solves the problem instead of papering it over- as all of Kerry’s proposals were!

We all know war is hell. That it’s going to take alot of work to transform the middle east into a functioning and stable part of the world that does not breed international terrorists. My contention is that the left does not see an American success in Iraq as a viable solution.

If America were to succeed in Iraq, what would that mean for your point of view? What would that mean for those who have invested heavily in failure and in painting this war as a collossal mistake, indeed another Vietnam? It would mean defeat, disgrace, and discredit. That is where the left has positioned itself. Maybe by pointing this out I am actually trying to help the left get back into the fold. Or maybe it just bothers me that so many speak of defeating my country to save it.

Aldous, Greg,

You should be ashamed of yourself, Eric Simonson. Choosing Politics over the lives of Soldiers.

…It is anti Americanism to protect our soldiers, Eric?

No, it is not anti-american to want to protect our soldiers. I am merely pointing out the ideology that drives alot of the left’s opposition to the war, to any war, and to American wars in particular. It’s rather self serving for the left to be claiming they care about protecting soldiers by saying Rumsfeld must resign. Is the issue about armor or bringing down your political opponents? Is the left at war against the insurgents along with the troops or are they actually at war with Republicans?

You have the cause-celeb-hero of the Democratic party, Michael Moore, saying that Iraqi insurgents are patriots and America needs to pay in blood for the crime of invading Iraq so that maybe god will forgive us. What is that but treason?

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush? You closed down a friggin’ weekly newspaper, you great giver of freedom and democracy! Then all hell broke loose. The paper only had 10,000 readers! Why are you smirking?

…I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I’m sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end. michaelmoore-on.com

The issue of “up-armoring” vehicles is a good one. I’m glad to have so many liberals now on record for spending more on defense so that we can armor every military vehicle in service. As I recall Kerry voted against it.

Yet as far back as 1993, the military knew it might have a problem. Following the loss of 18 U.S. troops in Mogadishu, Somalia, that year, the Army and several other military institutions, including the Marine Corps Command College and the Army War College, undertook reviews of what had gone wrong. The headlines, of course, focused on poor strategic and command decisions allowing a U.N. humanitarian operation to turn into a manhunt, failing to set up a rational working relationship between U.S. commanders and the U.N. command.

But the reliance on poorly armored or unarmored vehicles, including Humvees, was another lesson supposedly learned. One of the many official studies of the issue, a 1997 paper by Maj. Clifford E. Day at the Air Command and Staff College in Alabama, concluded the reliance on soft-skinned Humvees needlessly put their troops in harms way without the proper equipment to successfully complete the mission.

American ingenuity
Battlefield adjustments are as old as war itself, of course, and armoring Humvees will not prevent American troops riding in them from becoming casualties. But no one argues they are better off unarmored.

Troops on the ground know this better than anyone. In World War II, U.S. tank crews reacted to an earlier such error German shells were passing right through the armor on their Sherman, Grant and Stuart tanks by applying iron Band-Aids, spare strips of tank track welded to the hulls of their tanks.

Supply problems also play their part. msnbc

You can either say that they should have had the armor before they were sent to Iraq (how would John Kerry have voted on that one?) or that under Bush things like this are actually taken care of. It’s not as though something isn’t being done now whereas it had been done in the past. Hence you go to war with the army you have.

Rocky,

I am not a liberal, but I have a problem with Bush. No one has raised as much money as fast as G.W. Bush and that scares the bejesus out of me.

I’m non-plussed by this comment. What scares you about money?

Ynot, so what you are saying is that our troops should stop their bitching and moaning and just go die like a man, right?

That kind of position is what absolutely scares the hell out of me about war hawks. They don’t give a second thought to spending other people’s lives. As long as they and theirs are safe, they are always willing to spend as many other’s lives as it takes for them to proclaim they were right and justified.

We went into Iraq with one clear goal, remove Saddam Hussein from power. We did that. When we did that, we should have announced we were pulling out in 6 months and Iraq would then either get its act together or become a regional problem for regional neighboring nations to deal with.

BUT NO! The damn war hawks have to prove they were right and justified in invading in the first place to compensate for all of the false statements they made to sell the public on the invasion, WMD, future threat, biological warfare mobile factories, yellow cake, etc. etc. etc. So, for Bush’s, Rice’s, Rumsfeld’s and other hawks honor, they are still spending American soldier’s lives.

This is a form of extremism I will always oppose. If only it were there children dying over there for the honor of justifying mistakes and lies, it would be a very different scenario entirely. Compassionate? What a sad, sad, joke.

Eric,
what scares me about money, is it just might be used to buy a presidency.

Yep, Eric. That Jensen guy’s a crackpot.

Chicken Hawks!!! They are called Chicken Hawks!!! To call them War Hawks implies that they are really Warriors instead of the Draft-Dodging, Deferment-Grabbing Armchair Generals that they are.

Aldous.

Jack-
The Bush administration has been rather stringent on message control, and that means who gets to ask them questions too. I believe the Reporter’s motive was to get past this message control. The ethical issue is not whether the should have help the soldier formulate his question, but whether he should have been more clear to readers about his participation. He should have been. That way, we all could have avoided this spin cycle by the Republicans about how it’s worse to plant a question to get past the excessive Public Relations restrictions of an Administration, than it is to kill soldiers by not getting them the armor that they need. A matter of good image vs. bad image as opposed to life vs. death.

The question was asked willingly by a member of our armed forces, and cheered willingly by his comrades. The Soldier in question went to the report to ask his help in formulating the question. In short, the soldier was given no help he didn’t want. The reporter didn’t blackmail the poor guy into asking the question. The other soldiers cheered, because they are the ones whose asses are on the line, and who face the insurgency on the streets. If you want to make your support of our soldiers more than lip service, you must support the question that was asked.

re:love of America
Jack, to love America, you need not admire all of it’s history, nor believe that it has always done the right thing or been a force for the right things throughout all it’s history. You don’t need to like the way people are running th government or even the laws they impose. To love America, all you need to do, is admire it’s capacity to change for the better, and to believe that it can progressively improve itself and purge itself of it’s guilt through improvements in policy, in position, and it’s treatment of other nations and people. They love this countries ability to redeem itself, as it has done many times in the past few centuries, to transcend prejudice and injustice.

To love America is to love what it can be as much as what it is.

I think in criticizing these people, you must allow that their positions come not from malevolence towards this country, but annoyance with policies and cultures they don’t like. These extremists on the left are no more un-American than these people on the right who insist on a complete and utter transformation of America into a Christian theocracy.

We should not be intolerant of these people, but remind ourselves that different people view the essential character of America in a different fashion. Some see secular humanism as the ideal of this country, some see Christian principle and law as that highest aspiration. Some see pacificism as the ideal, because they believe war can only destroy us, some see war as the only force that can save us from a hostile world.

All nations have such extremes, such debates about how their nations should or should not be. We have Democracy, a Republic that uses majority rule as a method to prevent minorities that impose their will by force from both developing and coming to power. Noam Chomsky, as influential as he is in some intellectual circles. doesn’t pull much weight with the majority of liberals. His influence, I think, is better felt through his studies on language.

Gore Vidal? I think more people know his name than know his work. I have read none of his works, the voracious reader that I am. I know about him mainly through a PBS special about him. If you think he represents the majority of liberal opinion, you’re wrong. Most liberals I know don’t question the legitimacy of the Louisiana purchase and the westward expansion (though the treatment of the natives along the way is sure a sticking point)

In conclusion, I would say your problem is that you don’t look at the left with enough nuance to recognize that by and large it is populated by the same kind of moderate realists that occupy most of the Republican party. We have our loonies and our ideologues. But we are common sense people for the most part, and we don’t like being portrayed as anti-American. I mean, how can you say half of America is against itself? It’s just not true. We believe in this country.

Eric-
Creating a democracy out of a dictatorship is not a solution, it’s a goal, and what we question are the insufficient means you are using to attain them. If you believe anything we say, which you seem not to, then you should believe us when we say we don’t want to lose this war.

Truth is, even if we win, we’re not going to be the ones to transform the Middle East. We can’t afford to be. That’s war forever, because the Arab and Muslim sense of identity is one that perseveres and thrives in the face of armed opposition. Simply put, war will only reinforce the error of jihadi islamic ideology, because that philosophy is centered around armed resistance to the west and it’s puppets.

When I advocate greater force, I do so with the idea of a shorter conflict, a briefer, more intense and more decisive fight that doesn’t allow opposition in Arab societies to fester into radical hostility. Think how long WWII would have lasted if we had not put in the millions of soldiers that we did. The last time we went into the gulf, we went in about 500,000 strong, with approximately 200,000 soldiers worth of international support. We go in know with one seventh of the international support, and one third approximately of our former manpower, and do so to win a war in a country many times the size of the one we freed.

The trick is, despite your sense to the opposite, Liberals in general see victory in Iraq as the only suitable solution. That’s why competency is our focus in this phase of the battle, not legitimacy. Whatever we say about the invasion that got us in this mess, the fight to stabilize Iraq is seen as legitimate for most liberals. What we don’t want, and absolutely can’t stand is the cult of personality that has built up in Republican circles concerning your leaders, evidenced in the very sense your people give that your leaders must be protected from a adversarial media.

Well, the media is supposed to look at things critically, and bring disputes and disagreements to light. They’re supposed to make things difficult for those in power, because otherwise, those in power will simply spin their way out of having to make difficult decisions, or even correct ones. No politician should ever get the sense that they are entitled to the public’s good opinion. That’s been this administration’s problem all along. They feel entitled to the public’s approval, and attack anybody who endangers it by inconvenient or damaging truths.

It all comes down to who you think deserves to get burned more: The man who fights for this country, or the man who deprives the soldier of the armor he needs to get back to his loved ones

As for Michael Moore’s comments, I think a close reading would reveal Moore’s point. His comparison hearkens back to another group of rebels fighting a foreign colonizing power who, at the end of the day, must pay a premium to keep their soldiers engaged in the fight. The minutemen, our revolution succeeded in part because they could afford to lose until they finally won. They had domestic support, could live off the land, knew the terrain, and could find refuge among the people in a way the British couldn’t. His point wasn’t one of sympathy, but rather empathy- of understanding the nature of the conflict and our adversaries in it.

His comment is marked by a reference to the inciting event to the conflict that lost us Najaf. He was wrong, in that the forces there did not have popular support, but he was right in that the closing of the newspaper did more to incite opposition to the US than leaving that paper open. It’s a hard lesson in the nature of democracy, really: it is often more harmful to get in the way of radical speech than it is to let it be. Note the lack of public support they experienced later. That meant people didn’t agree with the radicalism. We could have let this radical minority die out on its own, but instead, we made a martyr out of their organization.

I think the other comment is wrong, but he has his rationale. I think it’s in the UN’s best interest to help us clean up the mess, because the price of this thing failing is a catastrophe they will have to intervene in.

But his logic, as wrong as his conclusion is, is not altogether invalid. As a nation, we started a war in Iraq against the wishes of many countries and many folks around the world. Our government circumvented the U.N. on it’s way to that war.

We would foolish to expect the UN to automatically come to our aid after the abuse and disrespect we’ve sent their way. Why should they be so altruistic, so lacking in pride as to kowtow to us like that?

They should be willing to help us, nonetheless, on a conditional basis. They should have something to gain, something to show to people to say they didn’t do all that for nothing.

And we should be willing to admit our mistake. If we don’t do so, people have little reason to help us, because such help would be a vindication of us they have no desire to take part in.

As for the question of armor, it’s called being prepared. The possibility of an insurgency was real, and highlighted in several paper, but as that possibility was not politically popular with the ideologues in charge, they disregarded it. They did this, not realizing that the notions that were popular with them were not the limits of possibility.

This comes very close to treason in my book.

In my book, and most people’s I would hope; simply expressing “anti-American” sentiments isn’t treason. Treason is a crime; expressing ideas is not. See the First Amendment. Treason would be giving money to the insurgents, telling them where to attack for maximum effect, etc.

While we are defining words, how does wanting the US defeated qualify someone as a “liberal”? Pat Buchanan, for example, has also essentially said that he wants the US to fail in Iraq.

I get the credit/blame for the unsigned post.

Rocky,
Are you trying to say that money bought Bush the White House?
Do you believe that money doesn’t ‘buy’ just about every office run for in our great country?

Dawn, that’s exactly what I’m saying. It seems that money buys power.

What I don’t understand is, why someone would spend tens of millions of dollars to get a job that pays like an entry level CEO.

What I am saying is that this the most powerfull job in the world, and we got Alfred E. Newman.

Terrorism is not the answer

I love it when people try saying they are so right in their belief that war is wrong but they stand behind the soldiers, and then they support the people in office that do not stand behind the soldiers.

I also enjoy the exercise of free speech that all of us have been given and so willingly use, even if their opinions are misdirected.

The real problem about the equipment starts before a war by cutting the procurement of new and better equipment and parts. Not to mention the down-sizing of personnel that up keep the equipment.

When a war has already started, it is easy for people who don’t know better to start pointing fingers at the current President (especially if he is not from their party) and say it is his fault. When a war has begun, it is hard to make up for 12 years of cut backs over night; lack of equipment, people, and parts. No one has a magic wand to wave so we will have everything that is needed to win the war.

Supporting the elected officials that vote against defense bills, is to not support the military.

The reason we are in Iraq is due to faulty intelligence, not lies told to us by the administration. The intelligence problem has been bad since the Cold War ended and has just gotten worse. Almost the entire world thought there were WMD’s, even Mr. Kerry, President Clinton and the French.

I truly believe my family can sleep better knowing there has not been an attack on our soil since 9/11. This is because the terrorists have changed their focus to getting us out of their back yard and not coming into ours.

What makes me have this strong opinion is due to the fact that I am not speaking from a left or right bias or second hand information. I have been living it for 16 years. I was in the first war with Iraq, been to Bosnia, was in Kuwait when 9/11 happened and will be going back to defend your right to free speech, whether or not you agree with me. To defend the greatest country in the world, a country in which we can come and go as we please, practice whatever (if any) religion you choose, etc., etc……..

All I want is to know that when I am sent to a place to defend you, your neighbor, my family and friends and the United States in general that my collegues and I will not have to worry because the military budget has been cut like it has been over the last 12 years. I know this is an old clichet but it still holds true….the best offense is a good defense. Because if you support those that will give us the equipment, personnel and parts prior to the war we can finish it faster and safer once it starts as opposed to getting what we need after the war has started.

I know there will be those that will say they support us and I for one will not believe them. Because if you support the officials that do not support us or hold an opinion like Michael Moore, then you are letting us down. It is like giving me a pat on the back for a job well done when you have a knife in your hand. So if you think like him or support those in office that do not support the military then you really don’t support us…..it does not cut both ways.

So if you are not for the war and want it ended at any cost then say so but don’t try to take the high road and say “but I support the troops”. Most of us don’t believe it.

James,
Good post. Most of us who support the troops, the changes in the Middle East, and who voted for Bush cannot say things like you just did because we are not in the thick of it.
——
It bothers me when the blame is put in the wrong place for political purposes.
When the excuse is made that the reason Saddam was not removed earlier is, ‘It was too hard.’, is a poor one. That previous leaders knew there would be problems like the ones being faced now and this is why it wasn’t done.
If it had been done 20 years ago it may have been much easier and the changes in the Middle East may have already been accomplished. UBL may not have managed to pull off 9/11. Al Queda wouldn’t have such a following if this had been done 10 or 20 years ago.

That’s what makes me mad. That something drastic wasn’t done much earlier.
We have too many politicians who are more concerned with casting the ‘right vote’, the one that will get them re-elected, instead of doing the ‘right thing’.
Bush did the right thing when it comes to trying to change the Middle East. Someone had to do it.
Even Kerry supported the removal of Saddam.
Our troops are fighting for a good cause. Peace in the Middle East. Democracies. Freedom for the people.
Yes, it is hard.
We all have to support the move that was made to change the Middle East. People seem to forget the whole picture and focus in on something they think was done wrong, and start yelling about it. Fighting for their own party and agenda and doing anything to get the other party out.
I can’t believe that some people don’t want peace in the Middle East, but it sure sounds like it when they continue to bash Bush for missing WMD’s and lack of equipment.

Everyone needs to stop screaming about everything and start supporting the goal of peace and democracy in the Middle East. If we the people of these United States can’t come together in support of this, how can anyone expect the people of the Middle East to do it?

James-
Don’t blame this on Clinton. The vice president and the president’s father presided over many of those cuts. It was assumed by both sides of the aisle that we wouldn’t be required to fight a WWII style war anytime soon.

But it isn’t even as simple as that.

Rumsfeld decided to go light, even considering the forces he had. He was given estimates from 200,000 to 700,000, concerning manpower requirements. The first figure he gave to General Franks was 65,000. Rumsfeld, you see, is a transformationalist who believes that we should fight our future wars with hi-tech low-troop strength brigades, whose gadgetry will make up for their small size.

So, blaming Clinton misses the big picture. Yes he made cutbacks, but everybody was making them, in reality.

As for support of defense bills, I think you haven’t been told the whole truth. If you had been told more about the truth of the process, you would know that some defense bills do nothing to defend our country.

Some defense bills come with little riders that siphon off money for porkbarrel projects. Such riders have been a huge part of the reason why maintenance crews haven’t gotten the parts they needed, and our soldiers haven’t gotten the armor. We are maintaing empty parade grounds and subsidizing political gimmees for corrupt politicians because of such bills.

We are also having to deal with a massive deficit because of Bush’s war in Iraq, and his boneheaded fiscal stupidity during that war. No other president in history ever made the mistake of cutting taxes during a war.

Those two things were what Kerry was voting against. He had an alternative bill in hand that would take care of supplying our troops. That would pay for it with revenue instead of debt, and that would cut out much of the parasitic pork that the Republican congress had put on it. He wasn’t going to deprive our troops of anything. Of course, your Republican representatives didn’t mind leaving that inconvenient detail out.

Truth is, what got passed in that supplemental bill may very well be part of the junk that deprived our soldiers of supplies. Just goes to show you, you’ve got to read the fine print.

I can understand your personal connection to these politicians and officials. They can be quite charming, and know how to tell people like you things that resonate emotionally. But I have seen the facts of what they have done, and the fact is, the knife in your back is gripped in their hand.

They want the soldiers to win the war they never bothered to win in the drawing room. They never planned for contigencies they didn’t want to consider, and many of your leaders never looked beyond their own self-interests when it came to writing policy.

They should have seen it coming. There are offices in the Pentagon that do nothing but draw up plans and contingencies for things like this. We’re not dealing with amateurs here, or at least, we’re not supposed to be.

The business of military planning is so exhaustive, they write up plans even for wars they’d likely never fight- with allies, for example. The likelihood that nobody considered the possibility of insurgence is very low, especially with Army Chief of staff Eric Shinseki recommending several hundred thousand soldiers- he based his number on his experience in the quite contentious Balkans, where equally ancient grudges were being hashed out.

We could have been prepared, if we chose.

But most importantly, any preparation would have been a choice. In 1941 or 1949, we didn’t have the choice to go to war, so preparation did have be handled on the fly. But in this case? The president said it himself: we fought Saddam at a time and place of our choosing.

According to Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, months before the war, Rumsfeld and the rest did hundreds of millions of dollars of preparation of the bases there to handle the troops and equipment- out of money for the Afghanistan war we were fighting at the time, no less. You would think that with four-hundred billion dollars in the defense budget this year, and hundreds of billions coming there through the supplementals, they could have taken care of this long ago. But of course, you would be failing to consider the human element.

Another Example of Bush’s Leadership:

new outrage:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&u=/chitribts/20041212/ts_chicagotrib/scroungingforiraqwarputsgisinjail&printer=1

“Six reservists, including two veteran officers who had received Bronze Stars, were court-martialed for what soldiers have been doing as long as there have been wars—scrounging to get what their outfit needed to do its job in Iraq.

Darrell Birt, one of those court-martialed for theft, destruction of Army property and conspiracy to cover up the crimes, had been decorated for his “initiative and courage” for leading his unit’s delivery of fuel over the perilous roads of Iraq in the war’s first months.

Now, Birt, 45, who was a chief warrant officer with 656th Transportation Company, based in Springfield, Ohio, and his commanding officer find themselves felons, dishonorably discharged and stripped of all military benefits.”

“The 656th played a crucial role in maintaining the gasoline supply that fueled everything from Black Hawk helicopters to Bradley Fighting Vehicles between Balad Airfield and Tikrit. The reservists in the company proudly boast that their fuel was in the vehicles driven by the 4th Infantry Division soldiers who found Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) hiding in a hole last year.

But when Birt’s unit was ordered to head into Iraq in the heat of battle in April 2003 from its base in Kuwait, Birt said the company didn’t have enough vehicles to haul the equipment it would need to do the job.

So, Birt explained, he and other reservists grabbed two tractors and two trailers left in Kuwait by other U.S. units that had already moved into Iraq.

Several weeks later, Birt and other reservists scrounged a third vehicle, an abandoned 5-ton cargo truck, and stripped it for parts they needed for repair of their trucks.

“We could have gone with what we had, but we would not have been able to complete our mission,” said Birt, who was released from the brig on Oct. 17 and is petitioning for clemency in hope that he can return to the reserves.

“I admit that what we did was technically against the rules, but it wasn’t for our own personal gain. It was so we could do our jobs.” “

They want the soldiers to win the war they never bothered to win in the drawing room. They never planned for contigencies they didn’t want to consider, and many of your leaders never looked beyond their own self-interests when it came to writing policy.

They should have seen it coming. There are offices in the Pentagon that do nothing but draw up plans and contingencies for things like this. We’re not dealing with amateurs here, or at least, we’re not supposed to be.

The flaw in your argument is that the war was won, and won quickly at that. With the lowest casualty rate in history.

This argument about what should have been done in hindsight for a myriad of details can be done for every military operation in history, well planned or not. For that matter I’d include the Kerry campaign in that. Murphy’s law is not countered by any measure of planning. Basically the left stubbornly refuses to be wrong. As I said before, for the left, Bush must fail in Iraq.

Rocky,

what scares me about money, is it just might be used to buy a presidency.

I got a check for my vote, haven’t you?

Eric,
I couldn’t agree more.
Lisa

Eric,
Out of all the points I am trying to make and the questions I have asked on the subject of your thread, why are you focusing on that one?

Eric,
If Bush fails it won’t matter whether you’re blue or red or green. It is going to suck equally for all of us.

In Japan there is an expression. Don’t fix the blame, fix the problem.
I don’t know if I would be so quick to claim victory in Iraq.

Eric-
Do you ever read these article’s carefully? It’d do you a lot of good. Mortality was low, not casualties. The article itself states in the subtitle that wounded counts were more indicative of the scale of the war.

Seven bullets are listed after the starting paragraph. of those, here they are:

— Medical personnel have been able to reduce the lethality of war injuries to the lowest percentage ever. In WW II 30 percent of Americans injured in combat died; in Vietnam, 24 percent. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it is just 10 percent.

— The article describes the triage system that has led to this astonishing improvement

— There is a shortage of medical personnel to carry out the triage (only 120 general surgeons on active duty, many on second deployment)

— The masking of the true human cost, intensity and scope of the war by the success in treating injuries (as of Nov. 16, 2004, 10,726 service members have suffered war injuries)

— The preponderance of blast injuries producing an unprecedented burden of patients with mangled extremities

— The epidemic of a multi-drug resistant bacterial infection in military hospitals

— Selective Service has updated a plan to allow rapid registration of 3.4 million health care workers 18 to 44 years of age.

Four of them, you should have caught right off the bat as worrisome:

— There is a shortage of medical personnel to carry out the triage (only 120 general surgeons on active duty, many on second deployment)

— The masking of the true human cost, intensity and scope of the war by the success in treating injuries (as of Nov. 16, 2004, 10,726 service members have suffered war injuries)

— The preponderance of blast injuries producing an unprecedented burden of patients with mangled extremities

— The epidemic of a multi-drug resistant bacterial infection in military hospitals

Taking the good news at face value, which I do, we can thankfully say that we have the lowest casualty rate ever. But those four worrisome bullets (out of seven, which you can see above) tell you four things that should be of concern

1)The surgeons pulling off these miracles are being worked to the limit.

2)Their success is hiding the true extent of the war’s violence. Taking into account the percentages, which put Vietnam’s rate of mortality among combat injured at 2.5 times that of Iraq’s.

In 1965, first year of the ground war we lost 1930 soldiers. divide that by 2.5, and you get 772. The unadulterated figure for the first year of this war? 601. if you look at the year total for this year, we’ve already moved up to about 800 for this year in general. Do note the overlap of different months for both figures

3)We have historically high rates for wounded soldiers losing limbs or getting them mangled. In short, soldiers are literally not coming back home in one piece. Something to consider before you go defending the casualty rates.

4)That last one is a doozy, because roadside bombs aren’t exactly sanitized for your protection. Debris, rocks, metal, burns, open wounds and fractures— soldiers aren’t getting clean wounds, typically.

So what does this mean? That we should stop the war right now? No, we just shouldn’t kid ourselves about the human cost.

Truth is, the reason fewer soldiers are dying is that we wrap many of them head to toe in Kevlar, and when they do get injured, we get them immediate, world-class healthcare. Should this system develop too many kinks, or the violence escalate in a way that strains our medical resources, you could see a disheartening rise in casualties. Why does this have an emotional impact? Perhaps because casualties escalate despite assurance that our enemies are getting weaker. If you would trust Americans not to get irrational when they mourn the dead in Iraq, maybe you’d get greater leeway, but most of the time, you think you have to sugar coat it.

Trouble is, this is an age of hard-nosed information junkies, not unlike me. Sugar coat it, and we’ll find out the hard truth the hard way and hold it against you.

Eric wrote: I got a check for my vote, haven’t you?

What do you think the mindless drumbeat about tax cuts are about?

Eric says the war was won quickly and decisively. Interesting point of view. I’m selling vacation packages to the peaceful and pleasant Iraqi Hotel situated in balmy Bahgdad on the Euphrates. Wanna buy a time share there, Eric? I can get you a room with a view. I hear they will shower you with flowers upon your arrival.

I think that quake rattled your brain a little, buddy.

Rummy is gggggreat!!! I want him to run all the wars.

I love the argument that we were unprepared for invading Omaha Beach, therefore we should expect to be unprepared sixty years later to invade Iraq. Perhaps we should have used spears, I hear it worked for the Romans.

Stephen,

I did in fact read the entire article. What’s astounding to me is the effort put into finding the dark cloud in every silver lining when it can be pinned on Bush.

Here’s how partisan your viewpoint is. Every vehicle doesn’t have the latest armor? Bush’s fault. It should have been done before we went to war. Since it wasn’t every death is on Bush’s hands and Rumsfeld should resign. A traige system that produces the lowest mortality ever? Not Bush’s doing. There are still injuries. How about we interpret this story this way: We’ve never had a system of triage like this before except under Bush. Since it’s on his watch he should get the credit. eh?

The fact is that the triage system is due to Bush’s being in offfice just as much as the fact that every vehicle in the military does not yet have the highest technological protective armor. How many vehicles does the military have do you think?

…we’ll find out the hard truth the hard way and hold it against you.

I know, it seems to be the left’s only mission. Defeat the empire and defeat Bush.

Eric, the problems in Iraq aren’t just the vehicles. If that was all that was wrong, I’d support your position.

With the possible exception of removing Sadaam, Just about every other decision has been fouled up.

No one thought the US would have great difficulty defeating the Iraqi Army. Remember Desert Storm? That’s a staw man, Eric.

The problem here is you can’t see any problems with strategy, execution, geopolitcal position, or mission creep.You’re too busy cheerleading to analyze anything coherently.

What was nice about Rummy’s stumble and the SOLDIERS cheering is that it wiped the smug smile off a phoney’s face. People die when he screws up, when he lies about resources, when he gambles to prove a theory that in two years he hasn’t been able to admit was erroneous. He UNDERESTIMATED resistance, POORLY planned Stabilization, and LIED about making every effort to get vehicles armoured as evidenced by the reaction over the last few days.

I neither like or dislike Mr. Rumsfeld, but when he bumbles, stumbles and equivocates and causes UNECCESSARY casualties, I would like to have him lead a convey holding his M-16 and riding in an unarmoured vehicle, instead of our young men.

And while were at it, your attempts to demonize a reporter and a Soldier as stupid or collusive, and ignore the cheering Soldiers’ response to his question make me wonder if you shouldn’t be volunteered to chauffer Mr. Rumsfeld.

James, your argument is valid for Afghanistan. It is completely invalid for Iraq. Afghanistan harbored a direct and imminent threat toward the U.S. We had to go as soon as possible.

Iraq did not pose those threats, and even Bush has admitted that he never said Iraq posed an imminent threat. Therefore, the Bush administration had the time to prepare adequately before invading Iraq. But, chose not to.

Supporting the elected officials that vote against defense bills, is to not support the military.

If you are thinking of Kerry, Dick Cheney voted against a lot of same bills.

So if you are not for the war and want it ended at any cost then say so but don’t try to take the high road and say “but I support the troops”.

But what if it’s true? This is like a Democrat saying, “Don’t vote for Bush and pretend that you don’t hate Black people.”

It seems perfectly logical to me to “support” people and want them SAFE at HOME. Wouldn’t the soldiers who served in Vietnam have been better off if they didn’t get so much “support” from the likes of Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara?

This comes very close to treason in my book.

Oh, how tired. Your trolling has lost it’s vitality, Eric. Bullshit usually stinks; this is just sad.

Edward Pitts joins the likes of Dan Rather in manufacturing the news in order to advance their political agenda.

Do you have evidence that Dan Rather is culpable in the fabrication of those memos? Or are you just slandering an easy target?

No, it’s indicative of a suspension of critical judgment and reasoning […]

I am so sick of those on the left being so condescending to the right about their lack of intelligence.

Um, oops.

[…] never mind the philosophical implications of non-action in the face of real tyranny.

I get it. Why bother with real implications when the philosophical implications have such high poll numbers.

It is always amusing to listen to some people claim to love America. Do they like the current system of government? No. Do they like the current culture of most of the people? No. Are they proud of the history of our great republic? No. Do they think their country has been on balance a force for good? No. The list goes on, until you find that the only thing they seem to like about the U.S. is their absolute right to criticize everything else about it.

What’s your point? Isn’t that the prerogative of any American. Don’t like it? Tough shit.Your criticism doesn’t address the matter at hand or any anti-American, anti-imperialism arguments.

And the vacuous Hollywood cable is farther out.

Except for Governor Arnold and Mel Gibson, right?

I love it when people try saying they are so right in their belief that war is wrong but they stand behind the soldiers, and then they support the people in office that do not stand behind the soldiers.

I also enjoy the exercise of free speech that all of us have been given and so willingly use, even if their opinions are misdirected.

Oh, look. America has yet another authority. Fantastic. Just what we need.

Because if you support the officials that do not support us or hold an opinion like Michael Moore, then you are letting us down. […] So if you think like him or support those in office that do not support the military then you really don’t support us…..it does not cut both ways.

Hmn. I am tempted to point out the utter lack of nuance. If you don’t give the military money and equipment, you don’t support the military? I get it. You are going for the literal argument. How not clever. In your black and white world, what colors are on the American flag?

“Is the issue about armor or bringing down your political opponents?”
- It’s clearly about bringing down your political opponents.

Great post James! I know what its like and what you feel, I’ve been there friend.
If not for politics, many people would understand what clinton did to the military. I threw away 10 years of military service because of the disgrace and hardships I endured under that bastard.

Good post Eric. Anyone hoping for our defeat is a traitor and should be deported to whichever socialist country will take them. Hell, send them to canada for all I care. Then they can live the “good” life they want instead of the American life they don’t deserve.

Eric, When four out of seven of the points of the article indicate problems, it is not dark-cloud thinking, it’s denial on your part. I don’t know what the silver lining is in having more soldier get their limbs blown off, more soldiers get antibiotic resistant infections, and more of the surgeons who have to achieve these miracles getting overworked.

10 percent casualties per combat injury is pretty good, I’ll admit. I’m proud of our soldiers, and proud of our medics and battlefield surgeons. But the language of that report is outright stating that the low mortality rate is masking the human cost of the war- in other words, people are surviving injuries that would have killed them otherwise.

Any moderate perspective on the bullets describing the report would see that they are mostly negative. This is a a dark cloud with a silver-lining, but the rest of the information should alarm people.

Have you consider that we might be able to take the bad news, that we’re not giving up on the war effort? Our problem with Bush and the rest aren’t that they’re not chanting “peace and love” it’s that they’re acting like a bunch of slackers, and more soldiers are dying for less progress because of that.

It’s time to give the ego-tripping a rest, because we’re in this fight together, whether you like it or not.

Good post Eric. Anyone hoping for our defeat is a traitor and should be deported to whichever socialist country will take them. Hell, send them to canada for all I care. Then they can live the “good” life they want instead of the American life they don’t deserve.

YEAH! That’s the spirit!!!

But how about we let them stay and burn crosses in their front yards! (Or do we just save that for negros?)

Nothin’ like a little good ol’ fashioned Jesus-approved blood-purchased patriot tolerance from Tim to get the day goin!

So, disliking un-Americans who HATE America, now means you are a racist?
Sorry about that. Guess I should now go home and call my wife some racist names.
Hating America because of WHO is president is good and loving America and being patriotic is bad.
Being patriotic means your automatically a religious zealot, racist and intolerant.
Hating America and hoping she loses a war and more US soldiers die is good.
OK, I guess. If you say so.

I’m just glad that jesus approved my message. With me being an atheist and all, I really didnt think he would.

kctim wrote: “I’m just glad that jesus approved my message. With me being an atheist and all, I really didnt think he would.”

So…W is bringing God’s gift of freedom to Iraq (too bad those other countries don’t deserve it as much; perhaps they should try to kill Daddy) and you, you atheist, support this, huh? And all the other right wing agenda that W represents? Sanctioned prayer in school, “under God” allegiance, joining of the religious and civil definitions of marriage, etc., etc.? Sheesh!

Haha! Poor kctim. It’s getting so a Libertarian can’t even walk down the street without being mistaken for a dirty Republican. :)

Kctim, time to get over it, bud. It’s been 4 years since Clinton, when are you “dirty Republicans” going to stop whining and wringing hands over your “victim” status?:) What ever happened to “The buck stops, here”? Oops, that was a Democrat.

“you atheist, support this, huh? And all the other right wing agenda that W represents? Sanctioned prayer in school, “under God” allegiance, joining of the religious and civil definitions of marriage”

- Prayer in school, yes if voluntary. But not sanctioned. Please show me where the republicans are trying to make school prayer mandatory.
Under God allegiance? Why should I care if people say it or not.
Gay marriage? You really missed the boat on this one. Heck, I’ve even been to the left of some people in the blue column on this.

Greg
“Dirty repub” huh? Thats funny, but confuses me. I’m called a commie leftie by the right and a dirty repub by the left. All because I refuse to defend corrupt actions based on which party a person is in.
Victim status? Coming from somebody on the left, that is laughable. Everyone is a victim to the left, unless you are a real victim looking to protect yourself.
Get over clinton huh? Can’t, sorry. Bush sucks, clinton sucks and unless a real candidate that truly represents the people is elected in 08, the Dem and Rep parties will continue to be about themselves.

AP
No kidding. I think Greg and wimp would be pretty surprised if they had any clue as to what I really believe in.
Hell, I even agree with YOU on alot of things. I can’t be all that bad now, can I?

kctim, I was joking, repeating what AP said. I have a read alot of your posts:)Please note the smiley faces:):)

You don’t need to believe our troops are superhumans that have the ability to have bullets, RPGs and IEDs fired at them without any armor to protect them in order to support them.

Unfortunately Iraq is in turmoil with itself and has been for many decades. What people fail to realize is that, not unlike the Christian faith, the Islamic faith is divided too, Sunni and Shi’ite. This war has united the Muslim world for the first time in centuries. I have done extensive research into the Muslim culture and have found some very interesting similarities with our own. They are fighting to defend their way of life just like we would and a majority of Muslims want freedom of religion. I voted for the war because Saddam Hussein was an evil man. The man gassed his own people didn’t he? That would be good enough reason to go to war for me. Was not Hitler committing ‘ethnic cleansing’? The liberals hate to admit it but was it not Bill Clinton’s idea to go to Mogadishu? I didn’t here any public outcry on CNN or any other liberal media newschannel about that. Dan Rather thought it was a good idea to kill off warlords who were starving their own people. Like most liberals, however, Clinton chickened out and withdrew some 10,000 troops because it no longer fit his agenda. Personally, I think liberals are mad because their guy is not leading America to war. Jealousy is the reason liberals are so hot about us re-electing the president. Face the facts, the only democrat who successfully defeated “the enemy” was FDR in WWII. Since then, liberals have lead a series of half-hearted attempts (i.e. Kosovo) to free the world of tyranny. I would like to see the Democratic Party dissolve and splinter into several directions. Perhaps I would change my policy if the Democrats catered to me instead of elitist ideas. Liberals don’t care about the little man anymore, they are worried about personal gain and ambition. Perhaps one day the U.S. will not see such a divided peoples.

One more thing Liberals, since you hate America so much stop using your right to free speech. Start boycotting your rights as Americans just like the Baptists do with everything ‘pro-gay’.

chemtrooper-
Jealousy? That would imply we actually want to fight a poorly planned, poorly justified, and poorly supplied guerilla war in a hot third-world country. Or rather, fight another one.

You know, it’s funny, but everytime I check, the Democrats are suggesting overwhelming force, immediate action, immediate resupply, thorough planning- well, in short, we’ve been suggesting a better war. How can we be jealous of Bush’s war, if we think so much more highly of our own plans and ideas?

On Somalia- mission wasn’t to kill warlords. It was to get food to the hungry in that country. The Myopia of Blackhawk Down portrays it as an exercise in cut and run. Truth is, we were there long before that incident, and in fact long after it. (about six months) If you want a good perspective on that, you should try Battle Ready by General Zinni and Tom Clancy.

The NATO bombing of Kosovo, though sometimes hampered by politics, was extremely effective in bringing the hurt home to the Serbians who had played armchair warrior while their armies slaughter, raped and pillaged through the Albanian villages. It says something that Milosevic got kicked out of office by his own people after that. As far as our forces there, we put in enough to get the job done.

As far as Saddam and Evil goes, well, according to your rationale, any solution that got rid of him was the right thing to do. Never mind that Saddam is neither the only evil guy around or the most lethal. It just mattered that he happened to be evil and already beat up by our previous conflict with him.

Frankly, I’d rather go after the shitheads that have done damage to us, so that any shitheads that come after them will get the idea that people who damage our country get damaged right back. Reciprocity. Not diversion.

As for who caters to you- I don’t want somebody catering to me. The Republican party has catered to the tastes and attitudes of the working and poor classes very successfully- while delivering for the interests of the rich and the powerful often against those of the very people they market so well to.

The Trick of the Republican party is they wrap elitist policies (like turning Social security into a stock gamble) in populist language. Religious elitism gets masked in talk of things being “faith-based”, “values based”. Tax cuts get called “Tax Relief”, though the largest recipients aren’t under that much stress from their taxes to begin with. The Estate Tax, a tax that applies 98 percent of the time to people getting money their rich parents earned, gets turned (pretty much in rhetoric alone) into the Death Tax, which means congress has to “Save the farm.” Even vouchers. I mean, the whole point of those is to advocate exclusive schools that can discriminate among those who are educated there above and beyond public schools, which must accept anybody regardless of income, color or creed.

Frankly, I think it’s a wonderful time to use my freedom of speech. I can celebrate the fact that you can insist on my silence all you want and I can go right on ahead making my peace.

The liberals hate to admit it but was it not Bill Clinton’s idea to go to Mogadishu?

No. It wasn’t. Bush’s Dad got us into Somalia. Not that anyone on the left complains about it. Clinton sucked it up and made the best of a bad situation, never blaming his predecessor. Our current yo-yo in chief could learn something from that.

Face the facts, the only democrat who successfully defeated “the enemy” was FDR in WWII.

What about Woodrow Wilson and World War I?

In my earlier post I meant to say that one does need to believe our soldiers can withstand all the things Iraqis fire at them without getting hurt. No matter how courageous a soldier is he will not live through getting hit by a RPG unless he is in an armored Humvee.

Warren
Humvee’s are only meant to provide protection against small arms fire.
Rapid troop movement and patrols.

Besides the fact that our reasons for being in Iraq have changed over and over, the more we get into this war, the more clueless we appear.

David,

Like many other people on the left you have the amazing ability to assume you know what a person is thinking, and are generally wrong, and then continue writing as if your assumption were fact.

In FACT I said nothing about soldiers shutting up, nor about them dying.

What I did say, and meant, was that soldiers have for generations had to scrabble for equipment because in peacetime nobody wishes to fund them, to keep equipment levels at peak and have all the new mod-cons.

That would include you.

You also seemed to assume I was, what was it, oh yes, A War Hawk, and as usual you carried on as if that assumption were fact when in fact you are wrong, again, I was for more time for UN inspections and more forceful adherence to UN stipulations.

You also seemed to have missed the part in my post where it is obvious I have fought for my country and portray me as someone who relishes war as long as I, or anybody I know, am nowhere near it.

How can someone with so much to say be so consistently wrong about a person I have no idea.

This thread was started about a reporter putting words into a soldier’s mouth, not a soldier himself complaining, as that is something soldiers do nearly as much as Democrats and is expected, but the sneaky, underhanded way in which someone from the news service made news, not reported it. It was not about me, my politics or who, why and what we are fighting in Iraq, or who’s sons and daughters are dying.

This type of sneaky, underhanded attack on political figures is happening all to often of late and should be stopped.

YNot

“This thread was started about a reporter putting words into a soldier’s mouth, not a soldier himself complaining, as that is something soldiers do nearly as much as Democrats and is expected, but the sneaky, underhanded way in which someone from the news service made news, not reported it.”

It would appear that you got your news from the Limbaugh school of spin.
The reporter, seeing that Rumsfeld wasn’t taking questions from reporters, asked the soldier to ask the question for him. Now it is entirely possible the reporter may have blackmailed the soldier into asking the question, however I highly doubt that the reporter forced the crowd to cheer.
Now that said, you may go back to beliving whatever you want to.

Rocky, as it appears you agree with me,

The reporter, seeing that Rumsfeld wasn’t taking questions from reporters, asked the soldier to ask the question for him.

So, if it wasn’t the message you were attacking it must have been me, correct?

Unlike a large percentile of America, I have no need for others, like Limbaugh, O’Reilly or Michael Moore to form my thoughts, I do pretty well on my own, thank you.

So, the question I have for you is, do you feel that it is a reporters job to report news, or to create news?

Simple, straight forward, so it should be easy to answer.

Ynot-
We came into this war not from peacetime, but from an ongoing War on Terrorism, a period in which much has been asked defense wise, and much has been granted. If Rumsfeld had asked, it would have been given to him. Who would have denied Rumsfeld the necessary tools to succeed in this war.

That soldier spoke the question of his own free will. I don’t know whether you understand it. You’re so used to accepting the media as the bad guy that you’ve failed to understand the frustration of your fellow soldiers out there. Instead, you have to focus on the minor mistakes of a reporter, and allege a dark conspiracy against the heroes of the Republic.

This wasn’t underhanded. This is what it takes to get that question asked of Rumsfeld. The soldier, in case you didn’t know, approached the reporter about the question first. The Reporter helped him with it. And after that, they together made sure the question would get asked.

It’s so easy for you guys to buy the liberal media myth, that they don’t even bother to provide any suitable defense for the response from the soldiers around the guy. You’re not telling me these soldiers cheered because they lost a bet with the reporter, are you? They cheered because that was their question, regardless of who came up with it. It wasn’t even the only tough question, but that’s easy to ignore, if you want to claim that it’s all character assassination.

Ask that soldier whether he’d ask the same question again. I think he’d say yes. Then where are you left? If that soldier, regardless of the reporter’s intervention, asked that question of his own free will, what then?

Will he become a slacker, a traitor helping to spread pessimism about the war? How many slights and snide remarks will you Republicans have to go through before you will question the policy itself? How many screwups will be revealed in the light of day before you admit that Rumsfeld should not be in the job?

You guys are willing to take far too much idiocy from your leaders. Were this a Democrat, he’d have been voted out of office long ago. You protect your own, protect the cronies, even at the expense of your countries safety and welfare. You guys should be ashamed of yourself.

Ynot,

”, that it was the reporters words, not the soldiers. Is that correct?”

Let me make this clear. This may just be a case of simple semantics, but in order to put words into the soldier’s mouth, the reporter would have had to be doing his report and say that the soldier said something, that the soldier actually didn’t say.

“So, if it wasn’t the message you were attacking it must have been me, correct?”

Attacking? I might have poked a little fun at you, but I don’t think that I attacked you.

“Unlike a large percentile of America, I have no need for others, like Limbaugh, O’Reilly or Michael Moore to form my thoughts, I do pretty well on my own, thank you.”

It’s funny, the words you use in your post are exactly the words used by Limbaugh to discribe the incident.

“So, the question I have for you is, do you feel that it is a reporters job to report news, or to create news?”

How did the reporter “create the news”? I am assuming that, as all men have free will, that the soldier had the capability of not asking the question. In fact, if the soldier thought the question inapropriate, he had the responsibility not to ask it. I don’t think that soldiers are mindless robots.

The question should have been asked and answered a long time ago. And if you had actually seen the report you would have also seen that Rumsfeld danced around and didn’t bother to answer the question.

Well, now we know that not all soldiers voted for Bush and can some can also have a political agenda.

Anybody know Rumsfelds COMPLETE answer to the question and not just the snip the media wants you to hear?

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20041208-secdef1761.html

According to my count, there are twelve questions in all. The third question is the imfamous one, and I’ll quote it right here:

3)Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. My question is more logistical. We’ve had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we’ve always staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us? [Applause] SEC. RUMSFELD: I missed the first part of your question. And could you repeat it for me? 3b)Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north. SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on. And General Whitcomb, is there anything you’d want to add to that? GEN. WHITCOMB: Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I’d be happy to. That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. As the secretary has said, it’s not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it. The 699th, the team that we’ve got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles. But there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish. SEC. RUMSFELD: The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees. They’re not there anymore. [Cheers] [Applause] They’re en route out here, I can assure you. Next. Way in the back. Yes.

But it’s not the only one.

As follows:

5)Q: Yes, sir. Specialist Anderson, Alpha Company, 2nd Platoon. And my question is I was curious to know why I, as a single soldier, cannot enlist in the regular Army, but I can enlist in the National Guard and be deployed with a family care plan?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Your voice was dropping off on me and I’ve got an aviator’s ear.

5b)Q: Yes, sir. I was wanting to know why I cannot enlist as a single parent in the regular Army, but I can enlist in the National Guard and be deployed?

6)Q: Mr. Secretary, Specialist McKobiak (sp), 116th Calvary Brigade. My question is what is the Department of Defense, more specifically, the Army side of the house, doing to address shortages and antiquated equipment that National Guard soldiers, such as the 116th Calvary Brigade and the 278th ACR are going to roll into Iraq with?

9)Q: Mr. Secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Kronolog (sp). I’m the Inspector General for the 116th Brigade Combat team. We’re helping – or trying to help about 150 soldiers get their contingency travel pay. We’ve gone through the chain of command; we’ve tried IG channels. These soldiers have gone – some since July – without getting travel pay. Thousands of dollars, they’re having creditors call them at home, call their spouses at home, threatening collection action. We have a big problem. There seems to be a problem with the Defense Finance Accounting Service. Can you help us to understand that problem, Mr. Secretary or even better, can you point us to a resource that will help us get these soldiers paid? [Applause]

10)Q: Specialist Skarwin (Sp?) HHD 42nd Engineer Brigade. Mr. Secretary [Cheers] my question is with the current mission of the National Guard and Reserves being the same as our active duty counterparts, when are more of our benefits going to line up to the same as theirs, for example, retirement? [Cheers] [Applause]

12)Q: Good morning, sir. Staff Sergeant Latazinsky (sp), 1st COSCOM (sp), Fort Bragg, [Cheers] North Carolina. Yes, sir. My husband and myself, we both joined a volunteer Army. Currently, I’m serving under the Stop Loss Program. I would like to know how much longer do you foresee the military using this program?

Six questions, all and all, about half of them ,addressed serious problems the media has been reporting on, stop loss, lower benefits, double standards between the army and the national guard in equipment and recruitment. Among the other six relatively nice questions, it stands out that even without the coaching of a cadre of reporters, these were teh questions that dominated the Q+A session.

On my computer, with spaces, the session runs 415 lines. 107 of those lines are Rumsfeld’s initial speech. Okay, 308 of those lines deal with the questions. of those 308, 150 are spent adressing the edgier questions. This wasn’t one isolated question, fouling up a whole press conference, this was a substantial intrusion of real issues, controversial issues into this Q+A session, even to the last question, which was about the stop-loss program.

Yes, there are more softballs than one would expect, but I don’t know why you would expect such questions to make the news. Would you care to express to CNN why it has to cover jokes dealing with the Super Bowl or requests by the chaplain to take everybody to Disney World?

Truth is, while these thing might paint a more positive image of the war, they don’t paint much of a substantive picture. So, the question I would pose to you is, why should we ignore the economic problems of our servicemen and women, problems with Armor, and all those other issues, simply because you say the administration needs a break from all these cares we’ve laid on them?

From my perspective, they caused a lot of these problems themselves, in the way they’ve approached taking care of these problems. National Guard and Reservers constitute 40 percent of our soldiers in Iraq, approaching numbers of about 56,000. These are reserves only called up when the regular forces are too pinned down elsewhere to ship in more soldiers. We are at the limits for our volunteer forces under current administration policy. We must either add addition divisions to our army by expanding recruitment, or draft people. Either way, something has to be done, and we can no longer labor under the illusion that this will be a cheap or easy war.

I’m glad you’ve finally come to Bush’s conclusion that this war, the war on terror, will last at least a generation and it will not be cheap or easy. (I’m including Iraq in that by the way.) That is a strawman the left has constructed just like the fabrication of the words ‘imminent threat’.

What the left is now doing is circling. Looking for weakness. Looking for an easy target. This issue has nothing to do with caring about soldiers. Otherwise the left wouldn’t have voted for Kerry because he voted against the money to add armor to military vehicles.

All Trucks in Iraq Have Some Form of Armor, General Says

Eric
There is still no proof that Iraq was truly part of the war on terror before the war.
The WAR is over, we won. But only now is Iraq truly part of the war on terror.

“This issue has nothing to do with caring about soldiers.”
- I agree. Its ALL about keeping or getting a candidate into office.

Eric,
I’m still waiting for the fat lady to sing in Iraq.
Oh, BTW, Afganistan has had their largest crop of opium in years.

Another win for the war on terror.

Eric-

Even the nature of transporting logistical material has changed. In the past, military convoys would consist of 10 unarmored trucks bringing supplies up from a rear area, Fontaine said. In this new environment, convoys have gun trucks interspersed in the lineup; all trucks have communications; and all truckers are trained not only in driving, but also in soldiering.

In fact, they are not even called convoys anymore; they are “combat logistics patrols.”

I needed that laugh.

Are you kidding me? Do you actually read this crap, or do enjoy embarrassing yourself? Combat logistics patrols? Bullshit! It’s a supply convoy! And yes, you can include escorting military vehicles in there, that’s what they did during the Battle of the Atlantic.

Oh, and it doesn’t stop there:

In addition, the command has established four more logistics bases in Iraq. This eliminates a lot of the travel that was once necessary, officials said.

Fontaine also said the Air Force has increased the amount of materiel being flown in, further reducing the need for convoys. C-17s bring the equipment to a logistics base, and C-130s take it to forward operating bases. “There may be more cost (for the flights), but the cost in lives is more important,” he said.

In other words, we’re going to avoid the roads because we can’t control them. I saw a headline speaking of this exact shift of strategy. Trouble is, air transport will always do only half the job. Moving the materials the last mile will always expose vulnerabilities to the enemy and you still have the security problem to deal with. You have only changed the routes under attack, not alleviated the problem itself.

Eric, you buy this crap too easy. You’re passing this stuff on without even reading it all that well, maybe because you want a cheap victory against your naysayers. The trick is, we liberals have a very strong tradition of critical thought, and if you hand us doublespeak we’ll hand your hat. Give us some substance. Give us some reason to believe in anything your dishonest, disingenuous administration says.

Eric-

I’m glad you’ve finally come to Bush’s conclusion that this war, the war on terror, will last at least a generation and it will not be cheap or easy. (I’m including Iraq in that by the way.) That is a strawman the left has constructed just like the fabrication of the words ‘imminent threat’.

I’m curious, Eric. When Bush spoke of the need to go to war in Iraq, did he not say, that if we waited, the smoking gun might be a Mushroom cloud? Did Administration officials not spend months giving the impression that Iraq need to be disarmed, and that waiting to do this would end in another 9/11? Inform me, if you will, what the main subjects of the Secretary of State’s report to the UN were. Inform me what were the compelling points were that pushed the legislation through to authorize force in Iraq.

If you don’t think that fears of terrorism and Saddam’s supposed WMDs were not center-stage, then I don’t know what part of the theater you were in at the time. We didn’t go into Iraq to work Geopolitical magic, we went there, as a nation, to defend ourselves from the next attack.

Now, we know we were mislead terribly. Regardless of who lied, who made the mistakes, it is now apparent that we are having to fix a country to maintain our security that we didn’t have to break to defend ourselves in the first place. You think this is following up on success, we think this is avoiding a greater catastrophe. I think, if you climb your way out of the memory hole, you will discover that more of our predictions of the course of the war have come true.

As for every truck having some form of armor…

Well what kind do they have? Does some form of armor include jerry-rigged sandbags and compromised ballistic glass?

So don’t tell me they have some form of armor, tell me they have the armor it takes to deal with the attacks they’ve been suffering.

And if the Pentagon is doing everything it can to get armor, why is it that truck manufacturers are able to promise that they’ll triple their output? How can we triple what’s already going as fast as it can?

Rocky,

Treason is defined in the constitution:

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

Stephen,

Fine. Fire Rumsfeld. Replace Bush with Kerry. Or just go back in time and prevent the invasion itself.

You miss the point entirely. I want armor on those trucks. Rumsfeld wants armor on those trucks. What you are saying is that Rumsfeld is either incompetent or evil and wants there to be no armor on those trucks. Which is patently false.

Different vehicles are made with varying levels of protection Stephen. Not every vehicle is a tank and for good reason. Is it now your position and that of the Democratic party that every vehicle must have protection equal to a tank? This issue is being used as a political handgranade to try and trump up discontent.

The real animus is with the war itself. As I have seen repeatedly in responses. The troops were ‘endangered’ because we went to war. And since every protection wasn’t made available before we invaded, that proves the Bush Administration really just wanted to kill our soldiers. That is basically your argument.

What you are saying is that Rumsfeld is either incompetent or evil and wants there to be no armor on those trucks. Which is patently false.

I don’t recall ever saying that Rumsfeld wanted no armor on the trucks. I’m simply saying that he hasn’t, for some reason, achieved this simple goal. Which is not patently false, but absolutely true.

I also don’t recall saying every vehicle must be armored as heavy as the M-1 abrams. I do recall taking you to task for calling the Humvee one of the best Armored vehicles out there. Most Humvees are not armored, and even when they are, theirs is nowhere near the toughest we’ve got. So, in answer to your question, no, it is not our position that every Humvee be that well-armored. But hell, anything’s better than sandbags, scrap metal, and busted ballistic glass. Except of course, being left with just the armor Rumsfeld left them with.

This is a political hand grenade, indeed, but it’s one that Rumsfeld pulled the pin on himself, and dropped at his own feet. I am not falsely, but in fact truly discontented with Rumsfelds policies, and the facts support dissatisfaction with Rumsfeld’s performance.

You fail to understand the deep reserve of courage and will that exists today in the Democratic party and among liberals, especially after 9/11. You underestimate our ability to take bad news. In part, the troubles your people are in center around that underestimation.

But it also centers around policy that was sold under a set of supposed threats, but which is now sold under completely different terms. Americans, by and large did not go with this war to see us politically remake the Middle East. Whatever your original intentions were, what motivated people were the horrors of 9/11 and the wish not to repeat those.

It was those fears that your administration play upon in justifying this war, saying we had a dictator cooperating with al-Qaeda terrorists, and WMDs he could hand to them, and that if we waited, we would see a far worse catastrophe befall us. The Remaking of the Middle East was secondary then. But now it’s primary, and the facts paint a grim picture of just how much due diligence was employed in discovering the truth about Iraq. Regardless of what the administration intended, many people grasped on to the issues of terrorism and WMDs when deciding whether to support this war.

If the Administration used such fears merely as tools by which to manipulate our country into this war, then we fight and die in Iraq to protect our country from the consequences of our own leader’s mistakes and malfeasances. That is unacceptable.

I have said before, and will say it again as many times as I must: I will never blame any president for sending soldiers into battle to protect our country.

Hell, with Afghanistan, I was dissatisfied with the numbers of soldiers he sent in. With the invasion of Iraq done, and our country unable to undo it, I advocate the same thing: greater number of soldiers in harm’s way. Why? Because we leave Iraq now, as it is, at our own peril. I know that sooner or later, if we don’t resolve Iraq this time, we will have to come back a next time. One sequel is enough for my tastes, thank you very much.

Really, my argument is not that Bush just wants to kill our soldiers, my argument is that he has gotten them killed needlessly, and continues to fail to learn from errors that have had fatal consequences for America’s sons and daughters.

You should stop trying to argue my side of the debate. I have that well in hand, and I know what I think much better than you. You make erroneous assumptions about my attitudes, treating somebody who is very much hawkish in his attitudes about war as if he were a simpering dove who just couldn’t handle the bloodshed. The casualties of our soldiers do not represent to me a reason to fear our enemy, but rather an indictment of policies that sent our soldiers into battle without a realistic plan for a complete and lasting victory. Most of the soldiers dead now died because our president didn’t invest enough troops, enough planning and enough diplomacy into the fight to prevent or deal with uprisings against our occupational authority. I have no reason to believe that by going through the formalities of elections, of the handover of Soveignty or an