You are confusing a Mission with the Reasons behind the mission.
The mission is to take the hill. The reason is to prevent the enemy from occupying it and shooting you from it.
The mission was to enact a Regime Change (heard that term before?), removing Saddam Hussien from power by use of force. The reasons were all that stuff you mentioned, which have not happened or were based on lies or didn’t make any sense at all. I am not a Bush supporter. I was not happy with the reasons used to justify this latest war, and I do not approve of many or even most of this administration’s actions.
But if you are going to attack the guy, use the right words, and attack for the right reasons. I personally do not like Hillary Clinton at all, but I have done the same thing to those who attacked her with the wrong words or for something she didn’t do. Bush has a LOT of things on which to base Pit Threads, I just think this one is weak.
Since more allied troops have been killed since we took the “hill” than during the actual battle for it, I would say the goal to “stop the enemy from shooting at us” has gone pretty piss-poorly.
“Mission Accomplished” was supposed to be a not-so-subtle suggestion that we had “won” the war in Iraq when, in fact, it was just beginning. We are now mired in a quagmire (yes, a quagmire) of trying to mainitain a military occupation in the face of guerilla warfare, a populace that hates us and wants us to leave, declining morale in the troops, a crisis in being able to replace those troops with fresh ones, and a giant, unproductive drain on the US economy. We have no vision for Iraq, no exit strategy, no plan, no endgame, no fucking clue what to do now that we’re in there. Bush is now reduced to trying to beg the UN for help but his raging ego won’t allow him to admit that he lied or made a mistake and it won’t allow him to relinquish any US authority so the UN has no choice but to tell him to piss off.
We are stuck with a giant fucking mess in Iraq that’s going to drag on for years and will continue to hurt the US economically and militarily and help no one but Dick Cheney and his Haliburton cronies.
Not only has Bush abjectly failed to even come close to achieving the long term (if illegal) objectives in Iraq. He hasn’t even achieved the short term (and equally illegal) goal of simply securing the country militarily.
Oh…and wasn’t another one of those “missions” to kill Saddam Hussein?
I wish Bush had already “illegally” secured Iraq. If he had then I could metaphorically spit on the grave of one of the worst killers in my lifetime – Saddam, not Bush. Just to be really clear.
This is definitely not my field of expertise, but I was under the impression that a helicopter, not another fixed-wing craft, would be the alternative mode of air transport for such an occasion. I belive that helicopters have less stringent dress codes.
Unless this’s all part of the Liberal Media Conspiracy[sup]TM[/sup] against Bush, it does indeed seem that a certain idea was meant to be conveyed. It just so happens that it was another misunderestimated idea about Iraq.
DtC, the goals have gone piss-poorly, and that enemy is still shooting at us, no questions there at all. I am not at all contradicting anything you said in your most recent post, with the possible exception of having a stated mission of killing Hussein, I am not sure if that was a mission of his body would not have upset anyone at the Pentagon.
The problem with that is that here in the UK we were told that Saddam had WMD’s which could hit British bases (e.g. in Cyprus) and that they would be ready for combat in 45 minutes. All this was stated by Prime Minister Blair to our Parliament as why we had to support the US going to war immediately, despite no UN approval.
The Hutton enquiry has now established that our intelligence was that Saddam had only battlefield WMDs, which were not immediately available, would not reach Cyprus and would not be used unless the US and UK attacked him. (Presumably the UK shared this intelligence with the US. :rolleyes: ).
So Saddam was no threat at all. This means that what you put above simply doesn’t apply.
Um, the ‘mission’ was to force Saddam to comply with UN resolutions concerning WMDs. (Of course the fact nobody can find any might be worth mentioning.)
Or you are saying that anyone can decide to attack a country to force ‘Regime Change’?
Does that make (to take a sickening example) 9/11 ‘legal’, then?
The hill example was just that, an example. It had nothing to do with Iraq. You are right in that it doesn’t apply, it wasn’t meant to.
Lies were told to the world in advance of the most recent war, I have no doubt about that. The US and British Military (and other nations) were not tasked with the mission of forcing any compliance. They were used as the threat for the governments to use to make Saddam comply. The mission, once the bullets began flying, had nothing to do with UN Resolutions, all that was in the past. I am not “saying that anyone can decide to attack a country to force ‘Regime Change’?”, I am saying the mission of the military was to oust the government, and that was done. I do not defend the war, I do not declare it was in accordance with international law, I do not say it should have been done without UNSC approval.
But even as you lay it out here, it still doesn’t fly. Regardless of the reasons for the mission, if the mission is accomplished, we can come home; we’re done.
At best, by your terminology, there were multiple missions, or one big mission with multiple stages. We accomplished Stage 1, the removal of Saddam and his henchmen from power. But we’ve got a long way to go before the full mission is accomplished (assuming we ever do), which is why we still have ~138,000 troops over there.
Getting back to the original debate, I think it’s kinda silly overall, since this will ultimately play out in the court of public opinion. If things are going well in Iraq this time next year, then Bush’s campaign will be using that shot in their campaign ads. If things are going to hell in a handbasket over there, then the Democratic candidate will be doing so.
What I can’t see a debate over is that that banner was there because the Bush PR people wanted it to be, and why they wanted it there. They were trying to get an image in the public’s mind, and they weren’t trying to convey detail in that image on the level of whether a certain aircraft carrier and its crew had accomplished its particular mission.
I’m not saying this is any more immoral than the usual day-by-day practice of politics tends to be. The Bushies were trying to make as much political hay as possible from the war; big surprise. That’s what politicians do. But it’s silly to argue that they were using that banner to convey a more detailed and specific message than the obvious one. Images just don’t work that way.
I understand your meaning too, Bill. But it’s still retroactively redefining the goals to match what you’ve already done, then declaring success. It’s an ancient tactic, and still effective if not looked at closely. Some of us [brushing sleeve and looking bashful] predicted that’s exactly what these guys would do.
But the list of goals of this war did and do include all those things we’ve listed, both real and imaginary, and they all were and are part of the military’s mission as well. If the meaning is constrained to simply what the Lincoln’s crew did, you have to restrict it even further to searching and destroying Iraqi aircraft (weren’t any) and a few tactical bombing raids. No doubt they did everything they were asked/ordered to do, and well. But the intended audience for this photo op was not just them, and the administration’s new-found insistence otherwise is simply craven. Or, judging from Rice’s tone of voice while repeating the same fantasies on the news shows this morning, desperate and pathetic. Take your pick.
Who do you think was intended to be influenced by that entire photo op exercise? If it was just the Lincoln’s crew, wouldn’t it have been staged entirely differently, if done at all? C’mon now, guys.
All I wanna know is, when the Re-Elect George W. Bush In 2004 campaign starts replaying that carrier footage in their commercials, are they going to digitally edit that banner to read “Mission Ongoing”?
Yes, I understand you were giving an example.
I just thought it was noteworthy to mention the coincidence (that Saddam was NOT going to fire on the UK).
Clearly you are not a politician, since you are both honest and reasonable. :eek:
I appreciate that the military have the task of doing the actual dangerous work for the politicians.
I would like to know what you think would have happened if, after say a week of the war, Saddam had announced that he would immediately comply with all UN resolutions. Would the war have continued?
If he sued for peace, I would say the advancing would stop and the terms given by the US/British would have been for him to leave the country with all his people and a laundry list of other things. Only saying he would comply with the resolutions at that time would be not enough, in my opinion, there would be much more stringent demands from the Allies.
There’s no evidence whatsoever that he wasn’t already complying with the UN resolutions, apart from the thoroughly discredited bullshit presented by Powell.
No, I don’t mean Saddam sues for peace.
I mean he agrees to comply with all UN resolutions, allows all UN weapon inspectors in and proves he has destroyed all WMDs etc.
At this point, what is Bush going to do?
Are you saying he is still going to insist that Saddam leave or be overthrown?
And if so, under what authority are these Allies going to continue the war?
What exactly was the mission, and when was it announced?
Oh dear. :rolleyes:
Is our civilised discourse too deep for you? :wally
My point is: what if Saddam clearly complied with all UN resolutions, including providing satisfactory evidence that all WMDs had been destroyed.
What would Bush have done?
What exactly was the US ‘mission’?
Not only that but Hutton has shown that Downing Street removed a section of the original intelligence report that said the threat of terrorism would most likely rise due to action in Iraq.
The gist of what annoys me is this: When it was politically expedient for one impression to be made, they made no qualms in allowing it. Now that it is politically expedient to deny that the impression was their intent, they try that spin. It falls under the “Insult my intelligence” method of politicking. See “I did not have sexual relations…” for another example. I think it should be beneath an administration to use 7th grade type argument styles as the official line. What’s next? A 4th grade rendition of “Ny-Uh. Nyah-huh. Ny-uh. Nyah-huh…”?
