It’s the CIA, and they seriously disagree with you on the one solid fact you provided.
These 100+ Iraqi conventional munitions dumps bigger than Manhattan? Only if you’re talking about the poster, not the island. According to the CIA, there are two munitions dumps that large in Iraq, not over 100:
Not that searching those sites is trivial, but you see the discrepancy. It’s troubling, because you’re asking people here - including me - to believe you about more serious stuff that we can’t check.
And with respect to searching these places: there were those short lists of prospective WMD sites when the war began. There was one list of something like the top 17 prospective WMD sites; another included the top 60-some such sites. These, presumably, were the sites that Task Force 75 and Task Force 20 were supposed to check out. Were these gargantuan conventional munitions dumps on these short lists? It’s hard to envision such large munitions dumps being ‘looted to the ground’ between the time the front lines chased Saddam’s boys away, and the time Task Force 75 got there, 1-4 days later.
One factor that makes the casualty number comparisons somewhat odd is the perceived value of what’s being purchased with the lives of our men and women in uniform.
Can you elaborate? I can’t tell which conflict you think was worse. There certainly were grave doubts about “What the hell are we fightin’ for”, to quote Country Joe, back in the 60s. I was a young teenager then, but I remember the protests and general disatisfaction with the Vietman War to be much, much greater than what we are seeing now wrt Iraq.
Whenever Americans can both understand the goals of and motivations of a foreign, military venture and simultaneously approve of the two, then a signifigant tolerance for casualties will exist.
However, when the electorate in general does not understand the goals or motivations of a foreign, military venture, or when it does not approve of what it understands, the tolerance for casualties will small.
I think, (possibly incorrectly), that the US electorate perceived the value of what we were purchasing in Viet Nam to be greater than what we purchased in Somalia. I’d even be willing to wager that more than half of Americans couldn’t correctly identify, (on a multiple choice test), the reasons, (expressly, explicitly stated reasons of the Admin or otherwise), why we had those soldiers in Somalia, let alone coherently explain the reasons in their own words. Compared to my perceptions of the country during the “Viet Nam Era,” it seems that Joe Sixpack could adequately express the reasons why we were in Viet Nam.
I think that greater understanding of the whys and wherefores increases the electorate’s tolerance for the expenditure of lives.
I saw an article somehwere recently that compared the number of people lost by France during WWII with the number of casualties lost by the US and the Coalition. It also compared the tolerance levels of the respective populaces.
I also think that the perception of the US’s ability to usefully project power may be exagerated in the eyes of many Americans. I think that this has something to do with the issue @ hand. I don’t think that this perception is as important of an influencing factor.
Are you trying to say that there’s a low tolerance for casualties despite the “approval ratings” (w/o signifigantly addressing the portion of the sentence that deals with understanding the goals and motivations)?
Or
Are you saying that there’s high tolerance for casualties and your citing the “approval ratings” as one part in the sylogism that uses my sentence as a premise, (w/o signifigantly addressing the portion of the sentence that deals with understanding the goals and motivations)?
Are you trying to say that my statement that you quoted is false or some otherwise inaccurate, or that it’s true and a conclusion can be drawn from it and the poll numbers you presented?
Again, for emphasis- if even a hypothetical Democrat- one unsullied by real opinions and human flaws- can’t beat Bush, how can one expect the nominee to? Dean would need to grab every possible Democratic-leaning voter, and all of the undecided, and then a few more.
Because “unnamed Democrat” has no face, no headlines with his name in them, no endorsements, no TV commercials.
I think you’re reading it the wrong way, John. 41% is the starting point for any faceless Democrat, and the number will CLIMB from there as he claims the nomination, trounces Bush in debates, etc.
I’m not ready to call the election either way, but I think the popular vote will be 52-48 or closer.
Also, as a former holder of a TS-SCI level III clearance, even I know better than to go around advertising the fact that “I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T KNOW” on message boards. Stupid man, you’ll get your clearance pulled for that shit. And if you don’t, you should.
I call it like this. If Bush is reliably ahead by John Corrado’s 56%, it will be yellow. If it’s a toss-up, orange. If he’s behind 44% to 56%, red. More than 56%, and Look! The Liberals just went and burned the Capitol!
I was thinking about this today as well. I think you have the right general idea, but ain’t no way it’s ever going to be red. No way, no how. There would be mass panic thoughout the US with potential paralysis of the economy.
Incorrect. They couldn’t prove it to you, in public. Every president and every administration has to put up with this kind of thing because of security concerns with respect to methods, techniques and sources.
Make no mistake, Iraq under Saddam was an accident waiting to happen. The UN was either unwilling or unable to effect any serious change in the status quo, and the US just did the dirty deed after 12 years. Let’s just hope it wasn’t too late.
Ha. No, you see, “unnamed Democrat” means “your favorite Democrat”, which means that if you take all of the current combined support of Dean, Kerry, Clark, Lieberman, etc., all together they still manage to get 41% of the vote to Bush’s 50%. 50% of the American populace would, right now, rather vote for Bush that not merely any Democrat currently running, but instead of any Democrat they currently imagine will run.
Once a specific Democrat gets chosen, that level of support will drop.
I don’t know, John. If you were to ask me if I were to vote for “any democrat” or “Dean”, my answer would be no for the first… hell, Sharpton? Lieberman? and yes to the second. Personalities win over generalities.
In the same poll, Dean loses to Bush 39-61. Given that he is the huge favorite to win the nomination, this is scaring many Democratic leaders, which is why there is so much mud-slinging at Dean right now.
The Democrats just don’t get it. They could put up a competitive candidate. I can even tell you what that candidate’s positions would be:
Fiscally responsible. Campaigning for reductions in the deficit, without repealing the major parts of the tax cut. Claims that Bush has turned out to be a big-spending politician with no discipline. Promises to bring the Democrats back to the Kennedy model - tough on defense, strong on civil liberties, and willing to engage with the world.
Supports war in Iraq, but think it was carried out poorly. Has positive recommendations that make sense for improving situation there.
Moves to the right of the President on Homeland security, claiming that what Bush has created is a huge, ineffective bureaucracy. Calls for more empowering of the citizenry, not less.
Against the Patriot act, or at least makes noises about the dangers to civil liberty it poses. Perhaps comes up with a new ‘Patriot-lite’ that retains some of the security features, with less intrusiveness.
Supports research into stem cells, cloning, nanotech, etc. Says history shows you can’t prevent technology from happening, so the government should embrace it and regulate it to try and curb the most excessive abuses. Says that these technologies are welcome because such research has great promise for the aged, playing into the hands of the baby boom voter.
Free, bonus issue - Claims that the government’s pandering to big media is just another corporate handout. Opposes the RIAA’s lawsuits, and wants to form a commission to look at revamping copyright law so that it makes sense in the 21st century.
There you go. That guy’s a winner. The closest politician to that guy, by the way, is Hillary Clinton. If she didn’t have such high negatives, she would be by far the Democrat’s best candidate this time around.
At this time in America, the Democrats need a Sam Nunn, or someone like that. A moderate, hard-edged Democrat with solid foreign foreign policy and defense credentials. If they nominate a hothead left-wing governor from a small state, they’ll get their asses kicked.
This statement is so amazing that I feel compelled to respond to it even though it was made ~10 days ago (when I was on vacation) and Simon X already has. This is just the most amazing re-write of history I have ever seen. The whole premise of this war is that Saddam absolutely had WMDs and that they posed such a significant threat to the U.S. that it was not enough even to have an incredibly intrusive inspection regime in Iraq.
Most of us opposing the war never claimed to know whether he had significant stocks of WMDs or not. In fact, if I had had to bet, I would have gone with, “He probably does have some WMDs but I doubt it is as much as has been implied and I don’t believe it poses a significant threat to the U.S.” Unless what we get out of Saddam incredibly alters what we now know, I am left not so much having to explain why I opposed the war but rather having to explain why I was so suckered into believing that Saddam might have had any significant WMDs in the first place.
The amazing story of all this is that, on the basis of what we know today, not only do those who supported the war (on the basis of the WMDs reason) have to feel they were lied to and deceived but that even those of us who opposed it feel deceived…i.e., while I knew Bush had a strong history of deception, I still underestimated the amount involved here.
Surely you are not trying to sell us on the idea that Saddam had in 2003 significant WMDs that were a compelling threat to the U.S. because we know he had them in the late 80s when he used them with hardly an ill word from the U.S. and a hearty handshake from Rumsfeld? We’re not questioning what he had in 1990. We are questioning what he had in 2003.
And, by the way, I think we do in fact know what happened to most of those that he had back then. Most were destroyed under the earlier inspection regimes and, for most of any remaining weapons that were not, they would have long since decayed to a state of uselessness. He’d have had to make more.
It usually helps secure your role as an authority if you occasionally prove to be right on something. And, no, I don’t think having advance word on the Saddam capture counts. We don’t doubt you are who you say you are. We just doubt that your mix of knowledge and opinions about WMDs in Iraq is more believable than others in high positions in the intelligence community, international inspections authority, etc. whose take on all this is much different. And, in that regard, you have been all bluster with no evidence that you are correct now some 9+ months after the fall of the Iraqi regime.
Was it that “absolutely” stated? I don’t think so. Go back and read the major speeches. Both President Bush and Secretary of State Powell gave a more nuanced justification. They reported (correctly) that Iraq was known by the United Nations inspectors to have had biological weapons, long range missiles, and nuclear weapons development programs. And that despite claims from Iraq that they had discontinued those programs and destroyed the materials, they had not presented convincing evidence of their destruction.
See Bush’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2002:
and Colin Powell’s speech to the same in February 2003: