and they’ll give us the ‘thumbs up’
(which totally doesn’t mean “Up Yours”, no, we’re sure of it!!!) 
12 days is hardly enough time to go by to declare it unwinnable and throw in the towel. Even if we had a retreat, so what? What does that mean. That this target was too strong to ever approach again? Hardly.
I don’t trust Bush or any of his henchman, or his alleged ‘reasons’ for this war. But we are not fucked. These things take time and losses, and even the occasional retreat, are to be expected.
Back in the 2000 election, the big issue was what each of the major candidates planned to do with the huge budget surplus.
Now we’ve seen what Bush has done with it, even before this expensive war. :smack:
You know it is really hard to say how the war is going
Yes, we have made a lot of progress in 12 days-
but we were led to believe that this war would be over very quickly. The Iraqi Army would give up as soon as Bush shook his fist at Saddam. The Republican Guard would fold, and someone from the Special Repbulican Gaurd would stick a shiv in Saddam’s back the first week.
We are bombing Baghdad from everywhere- bombing sorties are now being flown from Iraqi airfields, and from Missouri cornfields about 75 miles west of the college town from whence RexDart wrote his OP.
Some of these bombs are bound to fall on Iraqi civilians, and it would appear we may have fewer cruise missiles and precision guided bombs than we will need to do the job.
The Repbulican Guards can’t make any organized massed armored counter-attack against US forces. They would be blown to bits by American air power.
The Republican Guards are not stupid enough to fight a conventional fight against American forces.
The deal is that you’re just whistling terrors in the dark, we have no way of knowing what is going to happen. You’re projecting your heebie jeebies on real life, and I wish you’d just stop. Now is the time for honest analysis and appraisel, not guesswork and wild, baseless speculation.
And I’m including soldiers killed in rear areas in the total deaths figure.
Point-Counterpoint: The War On Iraq
edited to remove copyrighted material - see below - UB
ummm… wasn’t there something about a rolling start?
Doesn’t one suppose that the US/UK/(poland) and 13 countries-to-be-named-later coalition has a rather healthy foothold in Iraq?
And shan’t one consider the fact that it is really more of a political than a military snafu just now. A military victory would be so simple and quick. But the political fallout (of the inevitable civilian massacre) would be impossible for anyone involved to survive.
As for the supply lines-- so the guys in the Bradley’s got a little ahead of the milk wagon… big deal. So some embedee had to do with one MRE a day. IIRC, they have about 3000 calories in them-- not 1300 (maybe I’m wrong-- sorry).
Rest and refit. It’s a normal part of a invasion. Rumsfeld didn’t really fuck up all that bad… the force in the theatre right now was never meant to do the whole job by itself.
Hold up.
For the past few months, our military leaders, Rumsfeld, and Bush have all said that this would not be a 15 minute conflict- It was the media who portrayed it as such.
Now if you are foolish enough to believe everything you see and hear out of the mouths of the Dan Rathers & Wolf Blitzers of the world, then so be it; however if you actually pay attention to the original speakers, then you wouldn’t have been led to believe anything so ridiculous as thinking an entire military campaign would be ‘quick’.
Try convincing the Iraqis of that!!!
Maybe the media reports I’ve seen have been portraying things wrongly, but it seems to me that this gentle accurate bombing policy isn’t exactly winning hearts and minds to encourage an uprising.
yup-- think i’m wrong about the MRE calories… I guess I was figuring on the number of calories from a day’s rations (maybe about 3 MRE’s or 3600 kcals or so?)
I still can’t believe anyone who has read Collounsbury’s thread on GD, or even paid any attention to what’s going on in the rest of the world, really thinks we’ll come out of this with the world, especially the Middle East, thinking we’re some kind of great heroes. I especially can’t believe that anyone really thinks that terrorism won’t go way up with this action. I can at least respect the people who acknowledge this (or believe that the benefits are worth the increase), and discuss reasons it won’t be as bad as we think, or ways to deal with it.
But to think that the threat of terrorism will be reduced by war is completely unsupported by any sort of reality, and I’m frankly stunned that anyone at all here at the SDMB would actually believe this.
Look! RobbieFal posted a Jew RL!
Right after the ‘jhtml’ nonetheless!!! They even have their own mark-up language…
And there’s the rub. It’s not so great now, we’re getting some pretty bad press. If we step up the bombing intensity and win this thing quick, multiply those incidental civilian casualties tenfold and the public outrage by untold factors. Boy, would those Eurotrash socialists be pissed at us then, we’d never get another thing done ever in the “international community”. Heck, we might as well resign from the UN considering the total lack of influence we’d have there afterwards. But if we don’t, we’re staring at tens of thousands of American casualties over a period of years, and then we’re fucked at home. So damned if we do, damned if we don’t. It’s that position we’ve been placed into that I resent. That’s why we’re fucked. There’s just no way to come out of this thing in a good position.
Since the only one that posted anything even remotely resembling that position was me, I’ll point out that it was a satirical piece from the Onion. It satirises the “don’t worry” position of some war hawks.
[Fonzi on] AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa![/Fonzi off]
Ha! This Jew likes that. From now on, I’m gonna call it “JewHTML” instead of jhtml…
Gentiles beware! We’re taking over the software world now!
Sam
No you hold up Spit
I am certainly not foolish enough to believe anything out the mouths the Faux News Channel, nor everything from CBS or CNN.
But Bush and Rumsfeld played their little game of bait & switch with the American people in the media.
Yes, officially the American people were warned that this war wouldn’t be over in a week. But you don’t “sell” a war to the American people by telling them how difficult it is going to be.
Rumsfeld’s strategy was ‘shock & awe’, decapitate the Iraqi leadership and go in lightly with ground troops. It’s obvious that Rumsfeld has fallen for the oldest-trick-in-the-book, air power will win the war.
I was against this starting this war, especially without UN approval. I now reluctantly support Bush’s foolish war, since he has put American troop in harms way.
I concur. I would have done damn near anything to stop this from happening. I would have daubed myself with shit and set my hair on fire. But its too late. As odious and vile as it is, I can’t convince myself that there is any course of action but to go ahead with it. I would gladly accept a UN brokered cease fire, followed with intrusive inspections and a UN guaranteed election (Paging Dr. Carter, Dr. Jimmy Carter…) but I have no hope that the other side would buy it.
So here we are. I have to hope that it is the Iraqi soldiers who suffer and die, his children orphaned, his wife widowed, his home and hopes reduced to rubble. I cannot hope otherwise. But I promise I will never, ever forgive the men who forced this prayer upon me, so help me God.
From Richard Perle -
Cheney has made similar comments.
So, no, the media was not the one leading us astray.