No, the joke is your repeated denial of reality. Calling everyone who calls Bush and friends on their lies does not make one a conspiracy theorist; accusing them of being one is standard rhetoric for blind Bush supporters.
I ask again, why is Petraeus declared dishonest because the President put him in charge of military operations in Iraq?
It doesn’t appear that the Al Anbar Iraqis are trying to kick al Qaeda out because they support the central government. The level of violence in Iraq hasn’t decreased. The Iraqi army hasn’t shown up for “the surge” in anywhere near the desired numbers. The Iraqi political leaders continue to sit on their hands.
The Iraqis have been given chance after chance for their army to get organized into some kind of effective force. Their politicians have had repeated chances to formulate some sort of effective power sharing and haven’t done so. The question remains. If in September it’s decided that the surge hasn’t resulted in a big step toward an Iraqi government that can govern do we just pull out and say that Iraq wasn’t the central front in the so-called “war on global terror” after all?
And it seems to me that the view that the British are leaving only as the Iraqi army takes over is the result of the rosiest of rose colored glasses. Wasn’t a rather strict timetable for withdrawl announced independent of any Iraqi progress toward an effective army?
And, apparently, The Determiner™.
Once again, because Bush would never knowingly put an honest man in charge of anything.
Cite ?
LilShieste
I had a post here that belonged in the thread about Pvt. Lynch and Tillman.
What a maroon.
I note no-one has addressed this vital question.
I can’t find anything that shows that Petraeus is a dishonest man. In fact, he’s a favorite of the left in many circles for telling the truth with regards to the effectiveness of an army against an insurgency (in public and everything!).
Basically anything that’d we expect from a functioning society. Plot them on the graph from each year and see how things are going and if one can attribute them to anything we’re doing. Just like since the entire war began. There are lots of people whose job it is to deal with the tracking of just one of these and then meet with other experts to make a big report every once in awhile:
- Electrical supply in MW + availability
- Water supply (clean water + sewage treatment plants)
- Unemployment rate
- Other economic indicators (stocks? banks?)
- Number of children going through the school system.
- Number of engineers/doctors/four year college degrees produced
- Number of internally displaced persons (best guess)
- Number of violently killed (best guess)
- Number of public and private works projects
- Number of operational hospitals (how many are fully staffed? Halved? etc.)
- Imports/exports
And you get the prize. That’s what will really matter in the end, in the U.S. anyway.
Remember how much credibility Colin Powell had ? The moment he went to work for Bush, I immediately disregarded anything he said as a lie; his, or Bush’s. I was right. It’s the same thing all over again; I don’t care how good of a reputation someone has; working for Bush destroys it in my eyes.
Really? As soon as he worked for Bush? Way back then? I find that rather remarkable, since the mood of the time (to my young self anyway) was that Bush was sort of a clown, maybe not the sharpest tool in the box, but hey, he’s basically a good guy. I mean, I don’t think Powell said anything too amazingly bad until that infamous U.N. speech.
To suggest support for a plan that has essentially no practical chance of success is foolish.
Unlike most people, I paid attention to what people who had experienced him in Texas said about Bush’s incompetence and dishonesty in Texas, and his own personal history. As someone said at the time, Gore should have used the slogan “Elect Bush, and he’ll do to America what he did to Texas !”; they did, and Bush did. And more.
Bush simply is not a person who values honesty or has any principles, and anyone who does is simply incompatible with him. That’s one reason why Gore lost; unlike Clinton, he tried to play fair too much and assumed that Bush would; when Clinton ran against Bush the Elder he assumed that being a Bush, there was no depth to which he would not sink, and had counters ready. When Bush I tried to use his affairs against him, Clinton already had information on Bush’s available, because he knew that Bush would go for the sleaze. That family is vile and corrupt to the bone.
How do you know? Enlighten us.
How does this make Petreaus dishonest? Forget Bushisms for a moment, I want to know, you actually to pinpoint, what makes Petreaus dishonest.
This appears to be a set of conditions that would be fulfilled by a secular, democratic government. That, after considerable thrashing around, became the US administration’s goal in Iraq. What are the chances of that coming to pass? I think it is much more likely that we are spending lives and money to establish an Islamic theocracy that will have sufficient force to defend itself against the internal strife between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. I think that sort of government, with possibly a separate Kurdistan, will result irrespective of our actions so is it worth it to us to spend human and financial resources to establish it?
Anybody who doesn’t march in lockstep with Bush is fired. Petraeus cannot deviate from Bush’s policies or he will get the axe. That’s simply a fact. If he said Iraq was going horribly, he would be fired and replaced with someone who said it was going well.
Petraeus isn’t so naive that he’s unaware of Bush’s hiring/firing practices.
I doubt he’s afraid of being axed for speaking his mind.
My concern is that as the general in charge, it will be extremely hard (if not impossible) for him to admit he has failed. Which is why, he shouldn’t be making the call.
He won’t be making the call. He will present his findings and give his opinion to congress and the president. They will then argue about which of them makes the call.
Somehow the idea of GW making the call doesn’t comfort me any more than having Petraeus make the call.
Once again. He. Works. For. Bush. I can think of few worse stains on a person’s character. And I can’t “forget Bushisms” because that’s the whole point.
Then he’s a fool, or agrees with Bush.