Do you think we are going to end up with a repeat of the last days of Viet Nam? Embassy surrounded, constant helicopter flights out, and then to make things worse, years later we’ll be subjected to a Miss Baghdad on Broadway?
Well, captive audiences, anyway.
No - the Pentagon increased troop levels in anticipation of the elections.
Just finished reading the 38-page policy paper (National Strategy for Victory in Iraq) that went along with this speech, and it’s more of the same weary pie-in-the-sky crap. It’s like one of those term papers you write for school where you have five pages of content for a 50-page paper.
And not that this is important, but there’s a piece of fractured syntax in the thing that drives me nuts. It goes like this: “With resolve, victory will be achieved, although not by a date certain.” What the fuck? You could call it a typo, except the phrase actually appears twice.
Not true, as others have already pointed out.
There might be more “Iraqi units” now than at this time last year. The problem is that they are effectively religious- / ethnically-based militias. This makes conflict, up to the level of a civil war, more rather than less likely.
From a summary of a Wall Street Journal article (link to the summary, link to the article, subscription required):
I challenge you to find “Kurdlandia” on a map.
Cisco
I’m just curious about the war record of that professor. Did he ever serve in the military? Was he of draft age during the Vietnam conflict? OR is he just a John Wayne armchair patriot summer soldier Texas National Guard kind of guy?
As you can see, some of the folks from the Vietnam era (no I did not serve) are still hyper-sensitive to all the Monday morning quarterbacking from folks who were 1) two pounds overweight and “couldn’t” serve :rolleyes: 2) Would have gone but they were only ten years old at the time :rolleyes: 3) “Had other priorities” :rolleyes: as well as a zillion other bullshit excuses for not going.
When push comes to shove, and you just might have to put your life on the line, it is difficult to find the likes of a Nathan Hale or a Pat Tilman.
Give it a year or so before the top picture on this page becomes th e standard map of Kurdistan. The Kurds got the effective right to secede written into the constitution.
I was referring to the fact that while there is a Kurdistan, it is not called Kurdlandia.
Rumsfeld has announced that two brigades will be pulled out of Iraq. Of course, these two brigades aren’t even in Iraq at the moment–one is in Kuwait on standby and the other is in Kansas
Yeah I caught that as well. Pretty amusing.