Actually, they did call you up and ask you your opinion, last November. And you told them “keep on keepin’ on”. That’s what voting is all about, danceswithcats.
So Administration-connected croneys like Haliburton can profit off exclusive oil deals, lucrative no-bid contracts, overinflated mercenary assignments, and embezzle billions of taxpayer dollars as an extra bonus?
It’s all about the Benjamins, baby…
The price of gas went up, but the oil companies made their record profits so the People Who Bought The Government get what they want, don’t they? I am not “frustrated”, I am pissed off and fearful for the life of my brothers, and I do not “desire” their safe return, I am ghoddamn well demanding that this ghoddamn poor excuse of a diversion be stopped NOW. Will we look bad if we pull out now? I don’t give a fuck. Will it cost the oil companies the contracts they are secretly negotiating right now? I certainly fucking hope so. I don’t give a shit which political party comes out ahead if we abandon this rat-infested ship of a war. If the Republicans can somehow come out of this smelling like the proverbial rose, fine and fucking dandy, but bring my brothers home!
Another vote for your brothers, that volunteered for this service, to make it home safe.
I’ve gotten to the point that I want all troops returned immediately. Fuck all to what happens to those people that have to live there. The war was wrong, Bush was wrong, the US is wrong, etc. Fine, I hear ya. We should leave.
Just wondering if there’s any correlation between al_QuittaZ and, oh, the Nazi’s during the WWII cleanup.
Seems we spent more than a few years over there.
Oh, wait. We still have troops in Germany? When the fuck is that going to end? :rolleyes:
Well, if you want to concern yourself with oil money, look to a non-American
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Bad policy narrows acceptable options. This point has been covered.
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No, not crickets. IM-yes-actually-it-is-humble-this-timeO, it’s time for a phased withdrawl:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_08/006953.php
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_06/006615.php -
Regardless, our decision should be based upon fact-based analysis, not wishful thinking. The evidence that the current admin has reformed its ways is pretty limited. (Though it does exist: certain neocons have been shunted aside and pragmatists such as Rice wield more influence.)
Predictive accuracy is an outcome and indicator of superior judgment.
My first line, danceswithcats, was “Forgive me if I use you, danceswithcats as the hawk everyman for a moment while I give you the explanation you asked for.” I said that precisely because I understood that you might not be a hawk yourself. But feel free to get all huffy. It does, I find, allow one to avoid answering the substance of a rebuttal very nicely, does it not?
Sure. Agreed. A non sequitur, but agreed.
My side of the fence didn’t just say “don’t do that”. My side of the fence said “there will be no WMD” and there weren’t. My side of the fence said “the coalition will not be greeted like liberators” and they weren’t. My side of the fence said “ousting Saddam won’t hinder terrorism” and it hasn’t. My side of the fence said “this war will be expensive in Coalition money property and life” and it has been. My side of the fence said “the occupation of Iraq will be a quagmire” and it is.
My side of the fence (and don’t misunderstand me, I don’t take personal credit for this) made accurate predictions. Accurate predictions are pretty damn useful for planning and decision making, in the here and now.
But my side of the fence is not in power in the here and now. Whether the other side of the fence chooses to listen is not up to me.
Oh yeah.
Metaphors and analogies can be helpful. I opposed US armed intervention in Central America in the 1980s but I never claimed that is was another Vietnam. (Others did though).
In Iraq, insurgents have access to decent supply lines, owing to stockpiles stolen or set aside by Saddam, general chaos, and bordering countries. Furthermore, the US appears to have and underestimated nationalism and over-estimated the appeal of Western forms of government. The invasion lacked an exit strategy.
The Vietnamese analogy seems viable.
Now my poor fool is dead.
While I respect the pointless political pissing match this is turning into (who can write 10 reasons the other side sucks in the snow?) let me point these things out:
- Hagel was McCain’s campaign chair or somesuch during the 2000 primaries.
- Hagel hates Bush with the same fire that McCain does.
- Hagel would REALLY like to be the 2008 Republican nominee for President.
Triangulate those things and, regardless of whether Hagel believes what he says (which I’d bet he does), this is an attempt to raise his profile among a group of Republican primary voters he sees as ‘in play’…those who are having doubts about the war (or always had them) and could bring him to serious contention.
At this point? For their comrades. For the same reason that I am likely going back sometime in the next four months. I have a job to do, I’m going to do it, and I couldn’t bear being left on the sidelines while my friends take all the risks. These past two years have really bothered me for that very reason: I’m at home and they’re sticking their necks out. Some people would be thanking God for their good fortune. Not me. Instead I feel nothing but guilt.
And that, Airman Doors, is one of the reasons to be hammering away at the jackasses who got us into this mess and the jackasses whose support made and still make it possible – the devotion to country and to duty of you and your fellows in service has been cynically abused by a pack of blundering, blinkered ideologues and rogues who still can’t admit they’re wrong, who still insist that we stay the course, no matter how high the cliff they’re speeding towards. It’s downright obscene.
To Jonathan Chance: I’m not shocked to hear that there’s an element of political calculation in Hagel’s comments. He’s a politician, it’s what they do. But I’ll tell you this – if he’s the nominee come 2008, as firmly determined to change our disastrous course as he says he is now, and his other positions are more in line with mine than the Democratic candidate’s, then hell, yeh, I’ll vote for him, even if my loonie liberal hand withers in horror as I pull the lever. Iraq is – or should be – way beyond a political policy disagreement at this point, lurching farther and farther into nightmare.
Huh? Does everybody have you on “Ignore” or are they simply too stunned to reply to a statement stupid, uninformed, and nonsensical even by YOUR poor standards?
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WHAT “Nazis during the WWII cleanup?” Guerrilla fighting did not continue after the German surrender except a few isolated incidents in the first few weeks.
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We stayed there to keep the Russians out, you blithering idiot!
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And I have little idea why we are still there except to boost the economy in the locales where we have bases, as if Germany needs an economic boost. Maybe we want to have the bases ready in case Liechtenstein gets territorial aspirations. OTOH, it’s nice to have our hospital at Ramstein so the wounded from our adventure in Iraq don’t have so far to travel.
I’ll take one from column B, please.
C’mon, duffer, that one was so lame you shoulda shot it before posting.
You forgot the reminder that Czarcasm’s brothers volunteered for military service (just in case Czarcasm was under the mistaken impression that they were drafted) ham-handedly inserted in the middle of the sentence hoping they return home safely:
Mmmmmm…classy.
Oh how I agree 100% with this, two of my co-workers re-enlisted in the PAANG as soon as they found out they will be getting deployed, I tried to re-enlist but couldn’t get a waiver for my knee.
One guy almost got a divorce from his wife, by re-enlisting but did it for the same reason I wanted too. Those where the same people we all served with for years prior to that, and we didn’t want them to go over without us. Not heroic, not gung-ho but simple comraderie.
Most of us in my company served or are currently serving, while my workload increased five-fold since the deployment of the 1/103 Armor and other PAANG units, its minor compared to what my co-workers are doing right now.
On preview I noticed Giraffes statements, from reading Czarcasm’s post I assumed the one brother might of fell prey to the Stop Loss program, cannot be sure if thats the case, but if it is the case, he has served his time and now is in a draft sort of thing. His volunteer days are gone.
Well, the current Standard Operating Response (SOR) is still, “They volunteered and therefore, fuck 'em”, right?
-Joe
Freedom ™ and Liberty ™
I’m still a little unclear as to how the Iraqis were going to take away our rights, but they were going to do it. The evening news tells me so.
A combination of mushroom clouds and Drones Of Nucular Anthrax Doom.
-Joe
Well, dear ETF, I don’t believe I was ever involved in a Vietnam/Iraq debate but I’ll give you my take on your question:
First of all - and I’ve said this before - war is a messy and unpredictable business. They can end more quickly or go on longer than anyone has the absolute ability to predict. There are many variables that come into play, and the variables themselves are constantly changing.
Secondly, the motives and goals behind our action in Iraq is completely different than was the case in Vietnam, where we were trying to keep a country from being overrun by its antagonistic neighbor to the north who was being supported by a superpower.
Third, it’s too early by far to be expecting the region to have become stabilized. It appears to me that you are expecting immediate results whereas we who support the war realize that the (greater) mideast stabilization we anticipate will be years in the making. To you, this is undoubtedly too long - but given the long-term history of the region and the utter lack of progress in this area over the last decades, I think increased stabilization that takes place over a period of years, or even decades, is a very good thing…and it is this long-term stabilization that those of us who support the war have had in mind, not the immediate stabilization that you seem to have expected in order for the war to have been considered a success in that regard.
Fourth, I don’t believe the opinion of one senator - Republican though he may be - is the definative final word on the success and/or character of our action in Iraq. The tone of your OP, plus the question it poses, seems merely to expose your own eagerness to prove us wrong, rather than to prove that we were actually wrong, which is a question that won’t be settled for many years, and probably not ever to your satisfacton.