Name them.
So it was about oil in the end.
But I don’t think we will stay away if we redeploy.
As I propose, leaving is only part of the plan, I would not be surprised that we can control a lot by telling all the sides or strong men to come that we will give aerial protection and power to the ones that will not organize genocide, set terrorist camps, or give any control of the oil to radicals.
I commend to you the opinion of Lt. Gen. Wm. Odem (Ret.) who has some expertise in these things. You will find a lot to chew on here:
Of special note:
Head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, Odom teaches at Yale and is a fellow of the Hudson Institute.
Your point by point refutation of this callow dilletante is breathlessly awaited.
The “long term geopolitical reality” is that it’s a good idea to stop making people who call America evil look correct. The “geopolitical reality” is that it’s difficult to imagine consequences from leaving that would be as bad as those for staying. Especially the military ones; we’ve crippled ourselves militarily with the Iraq war.
Garbage. They already know that we have no guts, no “national will”; they already know that we are simply bullies. We only prey upon those who cannot or will not fight back, therefore since the Iraqi resistance is willing and able to fight back, their victory was always inevitable.
Probably not; they need to sell that oil, not drink it themselves. Besides, we’re doing plenty of economic damage to ourselves by pouring money into the Iraq black hole.
No . . . and the Iraq war helps create precisely that. It is one of the great truimphs of radical Islam, and we gave it to them.
Fine by me. Every American soldier who dies in Iraq is a victory for humanity in general. Right now the greatest danger to the world is America, IMHO. Not Islam, radical or not.
Aren’t the indigenous guerillas guaranteed to be able to outlast the occupiers? It’s their home and we will go home some time, won’t we?
These circumstance being that we are occupying Iraq. Do we intend to occupy Iran, North Korea, Russia, or China?
Why wouldn’t we withdraw, what with the war being long over and all?
Interestingly it cuts both ways :-
If no one in the Bush Administration is willing to lend what tiny shards are left of their good name to the credibility of this report, there’s damned sure no reason why anyone else should take it seriously.
The question of “what will it take to convince the skeptics” isn’t even remotely in play here.
Perhaps, but as David Simmons reminds us, we’re not going to stay forever.
As the NIE says, over the next 18 months, things are likely to continue to deteriorate in Iraq at the pace that they did in the last half of 2006 - even with us there.
As Gen. Odom says, this is the aftermath already.
You can say (as the NIE does) that things will get worse fast if we withdraw in a hurry. Things are going to get worse, period, and it’s just a question of when they will get to a certain level of badness. To say we need to stay because things will get to a certain level of badness by 2009 instead of 2011 if we pull out by 2008 sometime - the only question is, why should we sacrifice our troops just to ameliorate the pace of the deterioration somewhat?
At some point, we’ve got to stop worrying about what ‘emboldens our enemies’ and do what’s best for us - and what precious little, if anything, we can for Iraq in a short period of time. Because, whether we stay or go, our enemies win at this point. We’re tied down in a quagmire, getting our army chewed up, if we stay, and we’ve run with our tail between our legs if we leave.
Like it or not, we’re going to leave, and the only question is in what manner.
I can’t.
Since sarcasm is something I employ often, I feel compelled to declare this post sarcasm-free.
General Odem has put together a masterpiece. I have been saying for months that it is apparent that the Iraqis are apparently incapable of putting together a western-style democracy. As an advocate of personal responsibility and good personal choices, I find it hard to acknowledge that the environment that these people live in may not make it possible for them to make what I consider to be the right choice.
Another reason I hung on for so long is my contempt and frustration for those who called for the war to end even before it began. Things could have gone much better with some better post-invastion planning…but perhaps conditions never existed to make a constitutional democracy possible. I think that those on the far left are wrong on most everything (just like those on the far right). Admitting defeat would mean acknowledging victory for them and having to listen to a painful round of self-important "I told you so"ing from people I do not respect.
That said…it is time to pull out of Iraq to bases in the region and use the threat of air power to prevent genocide and other atrocities. It’s time to see if the Iraqis can sink or swim if our soldiers are no longer targets of rhetoric and bullets.
Thank you for dragging me here kicking and screaming, elucidator.
Did Bush ever read The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
Why is bush so hell-bent on picking ANOTHER un winnable fight? i’m quite sure the Iranians are willing to let arms flow into Iraq-but even they are not so foolish as to provide any direct aid. I agree-the administration has zero credibility at this mpoint-is this another “Gulf of Tonkin” incident? :smack:
President Ahmadinejad explains that :
This seems plausible. Regardless of whether Bush intends to bomb Tehran, these tales of Iranian interference do seem to have fired up his pro-war base a bit. The president needs needs that badly, if he’s to have any chance of rescuing his legacy.
Evil one, be cautious in where you reveal your new found wisdom. there are ‘group huggers’ out there on the left. :eek:
Incidently, that BBC story includes a link to these 10 pictures of the evidence presented at sunday’s conference.
It’s slighly more sophisticated than that. It’s a steady drip, drip, drip of little causes belli to both inoculate public opinion against a major bombing campaign and force Congress to okay it for ‘our boys’.
And it’ll probably work.
I’m sure the Iranians, or some parts of their state apparatus are providing aid of some sort. I’m equally certain the USA and the UK are arming and aiding all sorts of people around the world. The USA is flying over Iranian airspace and have lost drones. The USA is arming one side in the intra-Palestinian fighting. It is arming the same Somali warlords that it once fought against the Islamic Courts movement.
It is certainly ‘aiding’ opposition groups in Iran with the Iranian Freedom Act and in other ways as discussed in this thread
And none of this is a reasonable excuse for war, even one that just involves blowing the shit out of Muslims from a safe height away from the wilfully blind eye of US media.
And now the Gump Regime, having taken us to war against an Iraq so technically sophisticated it was about to kill us all, and having failed to secure ammo dumps and suspected WMD sites and flooded the country with billions of unaccounted for dollars, wants us to believe the Iraqi’s are too backward to make IED’s (a scary word for a weapon that’s been around since WW2) without Iran’s help. :rolleyes:
This has been claimed again and again and I’ve never seen anyone come up with a logical reason why it’s true. The new Iraqi government is dominated by the Shia, and incidentally hanged Iran’s greatest enemy. This government has the best chance of any to remain friendly with Iran. Why would Iran want to disrupt it?
Embolden, embolden, embolden. Christ, I’m sick of that stupid word.
The logical end of this “don’t embolden the enemy” line of reasoning is endless, nonstop warfare. Any reduction or cessation of hostilities now is “emboldening,” so it’s no longer possible to reduce hostilities without being an evil, terrorist-loving emboldener. Not attacking Iran, obviously, will embolden them, so go to war with them too. Syria? Can’t embolden them; time to attack!
Why is that a bad thing? It seems logical and smart for a populace to weigh the costs versus the benefits of a war. If they don’t do that calculation, then any war, no matter how retarded, would have to be supported; invade Canada! Invade Australia! Invade Belgium! Isn’t it kind of ludicrous for people NOT to consider the cost-benefit ratio of a war?
The national will should be worn down by pointless military deaths. Otherwise, there’ll be no end to war until the country is truly worn down on an economic and military level.
It would, except that the administration has been rattling sabers at Iran from the beginning, even before the White House needed an excuse to stay longer.
Hell, you started hearing “on to Tehran” and “on to Damascus” in some circles as soon as Baghdad fell.
If we are not defeated in Iraq, we will have to remain there pretty much forever.
Losing is the only way out. The only variable that changes with staying longer is that more Americans die. Invading Iran is no stupider than invading Afghanistan, or Iraq. And we all know one nation that is stupid enough to do that.
Another distinct advantage to loosing is that the next puppet government we set up will have yet another concrete example of how reliable American support is.
Pray for defeat.
Tris
As I understand things. GW doesn’t read much of anything. Why read when you have a “gut” in which you can have “feelsings?” Everyone knows that “gut feelings” are the only proper way to conduct foreign policy.
No, but he did read My Pet Goat.
Even Bush isn’t stupid enough to invade Iran- right now it simply isn’t possible, given the current overextension of the military. He might just lob a few bombs at a few choice targets but invasion would be insane, even for Bush and Cheney.
I didn’t change your mind, you did.