No doubt. But I don’t particularly enjoy playing whack-a-mole with you.
Cheers.
Then why participate at all?
The Straight Dope – Fighting Ignorance Since 1973.
Just doing my share.
The only ones that confronted the Soviets were the Nazis and the Afghans. One loss, one win. Unless you implied the revisionist pap that Reagan caused the collapse of the USSR.
[QUOTE=Evil One]
Find that an unfamiliar concept, do you?
It’s just not applicable to Iraq, which is a nation comprised of several peoples.
That seems to be an unfamiliar concept to you.
Is that supposed to be an argument of sorts?
Hey, some plans worked so all our plans must work??
Most likely, the one who already is wrong and stubbornly refuses to accept otherwise. In this instance, you.
You post bald statements of “fact” without so much as a hint of substatiation, bold flights of rhetorical fancy. Let’s take just one: Saddam “harbored” terrorists.
How is it that you are privy to solid information that has escaped Congressional committees, seasoned reporters, and the like? How could they have failed so miserably to see what is so entirely clear to someone like yourself, who has the facts at this fingertips. You do, right? Have the facts at your fingertips, that is.
Would you be so kind as to share the sources of your infallible expertise? So that we may all gasp in admiration?
If patriotism is the last refuge of the soundrel, semantics is the first. :rolleyes: Anyone who claims not to know who we’re fighting or why we’re fighting them is either an utter fool or a contemptible liar, or both.
Unfortunately, the motives and behavior of many the war’s opponents and Bush’s critics is not ony highly questionable but profoundly contemptible.
Is this thread really a good idea?
Perhaps I just wanted to join the crowd, Luci.
Agreed – someone needs to read your post to Dear Misleader. For, according to him, up until recently, the people you were fighting in Iraq fit into one of these categories:
1-Foreign Terrorists
2-Regime Remnants – B’aath “dead-enders”
3-Criminal Elements
However, as the latest spin tell us, there’s now a new category of “insurgents” that have been deemed worthy enough to negociate with.
Not exactly news to those of us living in the fact-based community. Namely that there are any number of Iraqis that are willing to put up a legitimate and effective resistance to an invading/occupying force. So much so that both your civilian and military leaders have begun to publicy recognize that they cannot be defeated militarily.
I know, hard to imagine, ain’t it?
Speaking of semantics, that’s pretty close to an ad hominem there, bud. You might want to dial your obvious anger at all those treasonous libruhls down a notch.
Indulge 'em, why doncha. Since it’s so simple to do so, please explain precisely who we’re fighting right at this minute, and why we’re fighting them. I’ll listen.
Who: them that’s got oil.
Why: to get their oil.
Just thought I’d cut through the flummery and get to the root of the matter. 
Though why this ‘war on terror’ should be of any real concern to terrorists (particularly those who aren’t anywhere near any oil) is another question.
The Afghans opposed the Soviets kind of how the Viet Cong opposed the US - with a lot of help.
I know it’s obscure, but there was this thing called the Cold War that went on for a few years. Cuban Missle Crisis? Berlin Wall? Any of that ring a bell? Or are you just referring to open military conflict as a confrontation?
To be fair, it’s not the Americans fault the Iraqis took their oil and buried in their country.
Just referring to actual conflict. To my knowledge, nary a shot was fired in the Cold War.
Do come down out of your ivory tower and join that fact based community you’re so keen on.
The insurgents can’t win militarily, and they know that. What they’re counting on are Quislings and eunuchs, such as many of the posters on this thread, to win the war for them by undermining support for it. The vast majority of Iraqis, even among the Sunnis, do not support the insurgency and don’t want to see it win. Apparently you do.
Bush is entirely right when he says our enemies are simple criminals, Baathist diehards and violent religious fanatics. No doubt we are trying to negotiate with some elements of the insurgency. That is simply practical politics. Divide and conquer is a sound strategy. Are you aware, by the way, that U.S. Marines have witnessed different elements of the insurgency fighting among themselves? That doesn’t sound like a united movement confident of its ultimate victory.
Many of the war’s opponents simply don’t have the stomach for confronting and opposing Islamic fascism, and many others are simply the sort of bigots who would not support the United States if we were at war with a horde of flesh-eating zombies.
East German guards just threw sticks at people trying to cross the Berlin Wall? 
Nah. It’s like explaining to a creationist that evolution really did happen, or trying to convince a Holocaust denier that it’s simply absurd to insist the Holocaust was hoax. There’s no point in trying to teach a pig to sing, and there’s no point in trying to explain why the insurgents must not be allowed to win to the average leftie.