They want 20 k plus troops for something on top of whats already in theater. That suggests either they are going to do something about the Sadr city with or without the Iraqi permission. That airborne commander makes me think about Patton, from the movie anyways, where he is musing about fighting the russians and making it look like the russians fault.
Since the jam are now a political force in the new Iraqi parliament , destroying them is going to be out of the question. But pruning the branches majorly would give the Iraqi president more leverage against the remaining jam.
This is a truly amazing statement, a remarkable, deliberate twisting of another person’s words. What BrainGlutton said was:
BrainGlutton isn’t advocating killing more people to win the war, for Christ’s sake. He’s saying that the rpesence of U.S. troops is getting people killed. Body count damn well matters when it’s your family and friends being killed.
The central, more important result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is that many, many Iraqis have died, almost certainly more than would otherwise have died since 2003. The presence of American troops there has killed tens. and quite probably hundreds of thousands of people since 2003, and is killing people now. If you are advocating the continued presence of U.S. troops there, that’s fine - but that requires that you convince us it will prevent more deaths than it’s causing.
Even if we take it for granted that things will dissolve into civil war and disorder after the U.S. leaves, the argument for continued American occupation hinges on someone demonstrating that U.S. military force will prevent civil war from happening in a period of time short enough that they won’t kill the same number of people that would die in such a civil war anyway. And right now there is no reason to believe that is the case. The U.S. has been completely, one hundred percent incapable of creating a free and peaceful society there, and there’s no reason to have any confidence that’ll change.
That’s asinine. Are you saying using nuclear weapons would be okay because who cares about the body count? This “Body count” you’re so glibly throwing around is HUMAN LIVES, for fuck’s sake. Of course it matters. How many Iraqis have been killed by the U.S. and the shitstorm it’s created so far? Don’t you think that matters? Is any number of dead Iraqis permissible? I’m sorry, but there has to be some calculus here in terms of what permissible losses are or else the U.S. should just have nuked the entire country.
Martin, why not kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, if body count doesn’t matter? That will certainly stabilize the country. Or will you concede that at some point “body count” does matter?
First, I am very happy to see a war supporter caring about the Iraqi people. I only wish the architects of this fool’s war had thought similarly. I get very angry when I hear people wringing their hands over the 3000 or so soldiers we’ve lost. Screw that – that’s like a drunk driver complaining about a broken pinky after running a red light and killing a family of four.
Second, this war will have consequences for American interests abroad (and already has, really) for at least another generation, especially in the Middle East. I also would not be surprised if an Iraqi terrorist shows us some revenge on our soil within the next 30 years. The CIA likes to call that blowback.
Semantic blather. There aren’t pitched battles going on between mechanized units but how one could not describe the current situation as an out-and-out bloodbath is beyond me. How else would you describe 30 men armed with AKs and RPGs ambushing a convoy and killing or maiming half of our soldiers? If we can have a war on drugs I think I’m quite comfortable describing the current situation as a war. Not calling it a war is somewhat insulting, I would think, to anyone having to live over there, fearing for their safety every day.
It is amusing to me that you blame this on liberals, since war hawks are the classic examples of this attitude. “What?! We lost 20 guys? Wait, we got 300 of the enemy though? OK, we’re winning!” This sort of comforting logic ignores the underlying currents going against their entire strategy, namely the fact that 300 guys got pissed off enough to rise up against you, plus who knows how many people in the background to support them. It doesn’t bode well for the future in terms of counter-insurgency unless you plan on liquidating the country of all 16-45 year old males.
I agree! This is where the problem lies – the entire war wasn’t justified. But let’s throw that aside for a moment. The massacres of countless (indeed, no one is really sure – we don’t even bother anymore) Iraqis goes counter to our very goal. All of this right now is a result of our ham fisted, ignorant blundering. It is a huge, flashing neon sign: "Failed state! Chaos! Anarchy!"
I don’t know how to make you understand. A family being slaughtered by a roving death squad doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. All of these occurrences are interconnected and brings our stock lower and lower. Hearts and mind indeed.
The numbers of Iraqis who are working against us is a testament to our complete and utter failure. We can’t put the toothpaste back into this tube. We are and will forever be occupiers in their minds.
If by your own admission the body count doesn’t matter and we’ve already won the war…why don’t we just leave? Sure, thousands upon thousands of Iraqis will die and probably another million will leave the country (something like 1.5 million of the upper crust of their society have already left anyway) and anyone who cooperated with the foreigners will be slaughtered along with their families. But after enough killing it’ll all settle back into equilibrium and all will be…stable peachy.
Who stressed the body count in Nam. The army. When he count got ugly they quit .If they thought it would help them they would do it now. But 600,000 civilians is too ugly ,even for the neocons. How is the number of people killed a liberal number.?
Why would you put an Admiral in charge of CENTCOM, when its primary mission right now is a big ground war in Iraq?
I wonder if this signifies the impeding growth in importance of the Navy in the region. I believe another aircraft carrier has recently headed to the Gulf. And what would the Navy involvement be? Iran.
Maybe someone is predicting an upcoming conflict with Iran, and have decided to put the Navy in charge for a while.
I wasn’t aware constitutionality and morality were one and the same, I made no statements as to the constitutionality of either action.
As for the morality of either, I think you can’t make a moral judgment on “starting war without solid grounds” or “holding a person without trial” you can make moral judgments on individual cases of both, but I don’t believe they are issues which can be morally judged generally speaking. I mean, let’s assume I think Bush distorted the truth to build up support for an invasion of Iraq. Let’s stipulate I think that is definitely immoral.
But I’m damn certain that FDR distorted the truth, and even disobeyed Congress as he blatantly exacerbated tensions between the United States and the Axis Powers, pushing the U.S. inexorably towards war. I don’t think FDR wanted Pearl Harbor to be bombed by any means, did he want Japan or Germany to declare war on the United States? You better believe it. And he was clearly working towards that because he was not confident he could convince the populace to support the United States declaring war first. So I think we can say that FDR brought the United States into WWII built on many falsehoods, deceptions, and inappropriate covert acts. I also think he was right to do so and for him to have done any less would have been immoral.
Holding a person without trial, there’s another one. Habeas corpus can be suspended in certain cases, the constitution states this clearly. In such cases, the government would be acting constitutionally (I’m not arguing any such constitutional situation exists at present but it did, for example in the American Civil War.) Would you hold that a U.S. government which suspended HC in a constitutionally appropriate manner was acting immorally? To me, the issue as I said isn’t constitutionality though, because I don’t viewe constitutionality and morality to be one and the same. I can think of incidents where I would support holding someone without charging them even absent a constitutionally appropriate suspension of habeas corpus.
I didn’t twist BG’s words to say anything. I simply replied in regard to his assertion that we cannot lessen the body count, that I don’t know if we can or not, but that I think the body count is irrelevant.
I don’t see how you take that and equate it to me saying BG supports more troops and more killing, I’m just not even remotely aware of how you come to that conclusion.
You might be “damn certain” but I believe you are wrong in your assertion. Nothing that Roosevelt did was clandestine. All was right out in the open and subject to considerable dissent from isolationists. Isolationists constituted a considerable fraction of the people surrounding me. Lend-lease aid to Britain and others after the fall of France was an act of Congress. The destroyers for bases deal was ratified by Congress in that money was appropriated to construct the bases. The use of the US Navy to escort British ship might have been questionable but it was not underhanded and was publicly announced.
In short, all of Roosevelt’s actions were open and debated vigorously.
Your statement that the constitution permits the suspension of habeas corpus is disingenuous in that the impression is that it can be suspended freely. In fact, the constitution specifies the condistion of “rebellion or invasion” as the sole grounds for the suspension.
I think we need to go deeper than the question of constitutionality. To me the basic question is one of right and wrong. Why does the constitution forbid secret trials; require that defendants have a speedy trial; and forbid cruel and unusual punishment?
I think it is because the framers had experience with governments which denied such rights or practiced such wrongs. It can be argued that it is nothing but pragmatism at work. That the framers felt that the public would better support a government that allowed such rights and didn’t practice such things than one that was its opposite. However, why would the public do that? I believe that the framers felt that people would do so because they had the innate sense that secret trials and cruel punishment were simply wrong and that giving someone a prompt and open trial was right.
In short I think that the basis of civil rights is simply peoples’ sense of “right” and “wrong.”
If body count is irrelevant, why not pull out all the troops? The body count may increase, but after the civil war, there will be stability.
If body count is irrelevant, why not simply use nuclear weapons to destroy all Iraq’s urban areas? That will guarantee peace and stability.
Of course body count is relevant. What a stupid thing to say. If fatalities aren’t relevant in wars, then why is everyone carrying guns?
I didn’t claim to you were accusing BrainGlutton of saying that. What I am saying is that you claimed BrainGlutton was referring to body counts in terms of measuring military success, which he was not.
The Sixth Amendment doesn’t apply to the people held in Guantanamo Bay. It’s outside the borders of the US, and the people held there are not charged with crimes. They are battlefield captures that would normally be Prisoners of War, but for the fact that they do not meet the criteria for POWs.
Why would they be? The BoR is intended as examples of rights secured by US citizens against the US government. Were any of those “grabbed” US citizens?
You’d make a better case, on consitutional grounds, with examples like Jose Padilla and Yasir Hamdi-- both US citizens detained without being charged. Of course, the courts have addressed those cases, which is how the system is supposed to work when one branch of the government gets out of line.
Invitation to hijack declined, with the observation that friend Bricker’s excerpt from the Bushivik Party Line depends on an exquisite series of parsings, all of which has been noted and debated elsewhere. If the issues involved were as utterly simple and undeniable as he presents them, no such debates would have been possible. And yet, there they are.
While I’m sure many of us admire a steadfast and resolute defense of the indefensible, it ain’t necessarily so. And it ain’t.
I think the Bushiviks are tipping thier hand a bit (seven-deuce, off). Recent events suggest that they are leaning towards the “80% option”, which is to say, opting for an alliance with the Shia against the Sunni.
Item: the wholly provocative execution of Saddam, with its clear message of insult to Sunni religious sensibilities can hardly be intended to promote reconciliation and comity, which is the line of horseshit they are currently feeding us. I think the intent is to “flush out” the Sunni insurgents by provoking them beyond endurance, while American forces are yet available to be sacrificed, er, deployed.
Item: the recent insistence by the Maliki government that its incursions into Baghdad are wholly non-sectarian, that they are intent on an even-handed suppression of illegal violence by any and all parties, including the Sadrist faction, despite the obvious fact that Muktada al-Sadr carries Maliki’s balls in his pocket, and can reach in and squeeze them whensoever he chooses.
Item: the simple fact that such a plan might very well “work”. In that if Sunni resitance is crushed, the resultant tyranny of the majority will bear a very close resemblance to stability, in the same way that graveyards are peaceful. A very simple, or simplistic, series of steps: establish stability, declare victory, hand out a bunch of medals and run for the helicopters. Victory.
This is like Bush looking for ways to work around what is just and fair. Can you find a legal excuse to mistreat human beings. It is still wrong to spirit people away from their homelands, stick them is prison and torture them, Yes. Saying they a not protected under the Bill OF Rights is Bs. We know it is wrong to torture . We know it is wrong to deny trials. There are ethical and moral principles involved.,not just legal.
There’s no way to know. We know these establishments exist. We know people have been taken.In the current climate of paranoia (not preparedness), local law enforcement might very well cover up such a kidnapping.
But the fact that the prisons have no official existance means that there is no oversight. And that a Federal Agency should be able to imprison human beings with no oversight or trial is a deadly threat to the Republic.
The administration is bound by law and treaty in its behavior overseas, but think about what you’re saying when you say the BoR applies to non-citizens not on US soil. Do our soldiers in Iraq have to get a warrant from a US judge before they search a house in Baghdad? Do they have to read the Miranda rights to suspected insurgents they pick up? How would the CIA operate as a spy orgnaization (which is what it essentially is) if it was constrained by the BoR when it performed its duties in foreign countries?
You simply misunderstand the phrase “human rights”. It does not imply any universality, nor any obligation on our part to extend them where they might very well prove inconvenient. Correctly understood, the phrase “human rights” underlines the *exclusivity * of their benefit, as they are not available to meerkats and celery.
That’s not what I said. In fact I specifically said otherwise, although I don’t think “righst” is the correct term. What they don’t have is Constitutional protections in the same manner that citizens do.